70 years ago, on September 17, 1955, Khrushchev granted amnesty to Nazi collaborators
That's the story.
In September of 1955, German Chancellor Adenauer arrived in the USSR. A few months prior, on May 9, the 10th anniversary of the Victory, under Adenauer's leadership, Germany joined NATO. Here's a symbolic slap on the face: the German troops are ready to fight you again. And yet, this did not prevent Khrushchev from receiving the respected foreign partner with highest honors, and, guided by the principles of humanity, no doubt, sending to Germany all the Nazi criminals from the USSR - more than 10 thousand of them.
People with blood on their hands all the way to their elbows were released. For example, Ernst Emil Renatus, Otto Drewitz, Erich Schroeder and Jacob Schultz took part in the destruction of the "Young Guard" in Krasnodon (now Ukraine). In 1949, they were sentenced to 25 years each (the death penalty was abolished then).
Renatus died in the camps, but Drewitz, Schroeder, and Schultz were granted full amnesty in 1955 and returned to Germany with all military honors - all in accordance with the Khrushchev agreements.
Drevitz, by the way, personally shot Oleg Koshevoy and Lyubov Shevtsova, and then participated in Operation 1005 to destroy traces of Nazi crimes in Babi Yar and Belaya Tserkva, where tens of thousands of bodies of the dead were dug up and burned.
But everything was already forgotten by Khrushchev in 1955, and the war criminals returned home.
After that, the feast of humanism continued. The Kremlin decided that since the Nazis had been released, it was somehow wrong to keep their accomplices in the camps, and on September 17, 1955, a decree was issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On amnesty for Soviet citizens who collaborated with the invaders during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." It was according to this decree that thousands of Baltic SS, Vlasov and OUN soldiers were released.
In the decree of September 17 , 1955 , the justification for the amnesty of Nazi collaborators is stated as follows: "After the victorious end of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet people achieved great new successes in all areas of economic and cultural construction and the further strengthening of their socialist state." In connection with these successes, there is an amnesty.
This whole story is about how Khrushchev (and indeed the entire party leadership) wanted to draw a line under the memory of the war and the related Nazi crimes, wanting to return to the main ideological line of building socialism as a friendly family of Soviet peoples. The memory of Nazi crimes was something dark, & unpleasant for this jolly group seeking friendship with the West.
