Historians Explain Ethnic Profiling Behind Murder Of Children In Moglino Death Camp

ST.PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th October, 2020) The Nazis killed children coming from the families of Jews and Gypsies in the World War II-era concentration camp near the Moglino village in Russia's western Pskov region, Sputnik has learned from fellows of the Russian academy of Sciences' (RAN) St. Petersburg Institute of History and the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences (RARAN).

Earlier in the day, the Russian Investigative Committee announced the completion of excavation works in a recently-discovered mass grave in the territory of a WW2-era concentration camp in Moglino. Remains of 188 people were found, of them, 73 belonged to children.

"Children were exterminated simply because of their nationality � both, Jews and Gypsies. I think that it is still possible to establish the identity of specific executors. This would require international cooperation between archives and institutions," Dmitry Astashkin, a senior fellow of the RAN St. Petersburg Institute of History's Novgorod group, told Sputnik.

Establishing the identities of perpetrators is an achievable task, according to RARAN academic councilor Vladimir Kiknadze.

"First Nazi crimes in Moglino were identified back in the 1960s upon archival research. We tracked down the perpetrators, detained them and obtained evidence from witnesses. The criminals were sentenced. But not everyone was found � some hid, presumably, in the United States, Canada and Germany. Much time has passed, but we have grounds to believe that the new data would make it possible to identify the perpetrators," Kiknadze said.

According to the scientist, many former Nazi criminals who dodged liability under the Nuremberg Tribunal came to power in Germany as early as in the 1950s, and some of them were in charge of the bilateral state affairs with the Soviet Union.

The Moglino concentration camp was established in 1941 after the Nazis occupied Pskov. The camp was guarded by the Estonian police. According to materials from the Russian Federal Security Service's collection, the Nazis were going to "reward" this territory of occupied Pskov to Estonia after the war.

A similar mass execution of civilians by the Nazis in another then-occupied part of Russia � the Zhestyanaya Gorka village in the northwestern Novgorod Region � was recently recognized genocide by a Russian court. It became the first such legal precedent in Russia's history.