Operation Keelhaul - another stain of bloody war & politics

Operation Keelhaul was a programme carried out in Northern Italy by British and American forces to repatriate Russian captives to the Soviet Union between August 14, 1946 and May 9, 1947.<sup id="cite_ref-tolstoy_0-0" class="reference">[1]</sup> The term has been later applied - specifically after the publication of Epstein's eponymous book - to other Allied acts of often forced repatriation of Russians after the ending of World War II that decided the fate of up to two million<sup id="cite_ref-Hornberger_1-0" class="reference">[2]</sup> post-war refugees fleeing eastern Europe.<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference">[3]</sup>


Read more here: Operation Keelhaul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


PS: thanks for user Macca that inspired me to do some google job for him

 

Alex,

Politics is a very dirty business, be it wartime or in peacetime.

Regards
Tom

 

Alex,
Politics is a very dirty business, be it wartime or in peacetime.


When they r mixed up - its worse of all.

 

Cemetery of victims of evacuation of russian cossacks to USSR in Peggetz-Lienz, Germany where were located their base. They were evacuated by british forces, some were killed when tried to escape or stay there.
Here: 23: Kosakenfriedhof, Lienz-Peggetz - st9fan

Link on wiki (unfortunately on german): Kosakenfriedhof in der Peggetz – Wikipedia

 

More info about extradiction of cossaks as part of operation Keelhaul: Don Cossacks

 

Another worthful link on operation Keelhaul: 1945… and beyond » Blood, Bread and Tears

 

And finally this link: Massacre of Cossacks at Lienz

In the evening of May 29th, British trucks equipped with loud speakers drove up to the tent camp Peggetz, where the Cossack regiments were camping, and announced that everybody had to get ready to be voluntarily repatriated into the Soviet Union. The British repeated this announcement on May 30th and May 31st. Everywhere the unanimous reaction of the Cossacks had been to refuse, and to emphasize their protest they declared a hunger strike and hoisted black banners. When British supply trucks rolled up as usual to certain distribution points, there was nobody to accept the rations and, having dumped the food on the ground, they drove away. No Cossack touched that food.
On the morning of June 1st the Cossacks of the Peggetz camp had decided to unite in prayer to God, maybe for the last time. For this purpose an altar was erected on the camp square and a crowd of thousands of aged, of women and children, gathered around. Cadets, as if to protect them, formed an outer ring, holding hands. Black banners were flying from every barrack.
This picture was deeply moving and awesome at the same time. No human nerves could have endured to watch this multitude kneeling, intensely praying, and bitterly weeping.
It was during this Liturgy that the British surrounded the camp area on three sides with tanks and soldiers armed with machine guns. The fourth side remained free: there was the deep and swift Drau river forming a natural barrier. Together with the tanks there appeared trucks and, about 150 to 200 yards away, on the railroad there pulled up a long train of freight cars, waiting for the victims, the Cossacks.
The British waited awhile. Then, seeing that the people did not discontinue their prayers, they fired a volley into the air, charging at the same time into the defenseless people who had sat down on the ground, embracing one another, and refusing to board the trucks.
Now there began a beastly, brutal, and inhuman bloodshed, a massacre of innocent human beings. They hit them with gunbutts, causing an indescribable panic. Soul-piercing screams filled the air. In this inconceivable cataclysm many were trampled to death, mainly children.
Whoever was able to do so put up a desperate defense as long as he had any strength left.
It was only the unconscious, many of them with broken limbs, whom the British were able to grab and dump like logs on their trucks filled with bodies.
When already on the trucks, some Cossacks, regaining consciousness, had jumped off. They were beaten until they fainted and were thrown on the trucks again. The cadets put up the fiercest resistance. They defended not only themselves, but did everything humanly possible to aid the women, the children, and the aged to escape imprisonment, repatriation, and their eventual doom in the USSR.
Numerous Cossacks and their wives committed suicide on that day, preferring death rather then deportation to a barbarous country which had once been Russia, our Fatherland.
Semiconscious, blood-soaked, and heavily wounded - that is how they filled the death train.
For unknown reasons the "Honorable Authority" had decided to give a respite, and the next voluntary transport "home" with respective victims was scheduled to take place on June 3rd. This respite saved the lives of many Cossacks and their wives.
During the night from June 1st to June 2nd there began the second act of the Cossacks' tragedy: the local population began to ransack the possessions of the Cossacks. Like black ravens who gather at the smell of fresh blood, the Austrians now looted the property of the Cossacks by the carload.
During these very days, and with equal procedures, the 15th Cossack Corps, consisting of 18,000 men, had been handed over to the Soviets near the town of Judenburg. Of this multitude there survived only 10 officers and 50 to 60 Cossacks who had broken the guards' cordon by using hand grenades, and who saved themselves by hiding in the nearby woods.


There is still something that is unspoken on that war.