According to eyewitness accounts, there were three three-armed gallows on the ‘hill’. This was confirmed by the results of archaeological research conducted in the fort in 2020. Traces of logs driven into the ground were discovered whose arrangement formed the shape of three-armed gallows.
Due to the number of people hanged on them, the gallows were referred to as ‘wholesalers’ by prisoners.
The photo shows the remains of a gallows.
The photo shows the remains of a gallows.
Originally, it was used as a rally point for troops and for conducting military exercises. During World War II, the Germans used the courtyard as a place for executing prisoners and a mass graveyard for the victims of their crimes. Fort prisoners referred to it as the ‘hill’. From the barracks building, the Germans led convicts uphill to the right fortress courtyard. According to prisoner accounts, there was a large gallows here large enough for 12 prisoners to be hanged at the same time. The Germans also ordered large pits to be dug for dumping the bodies of the executed. In order to eliminate all evidence of their crimes, the graves were dug up and the bodies extracted from them were burned on special grates.
During the exhumations of 1945 and 1948, the bodies of those victims who had not been burnt by the Germans, as well as the ashes of victims of earlier executions were extracted from the pits.
Between 2018 and 2020, the Institute of National Remembrance conducted an archaeological study on the ‘hill’, as well as an exhumation. This led to the discovery of still-unexhumed remains. They were buried in the war cemetery located in the left courtyard of the fortress.
In the picture: Excavating the corpses of prisoners in April 1945.
In the picture: The remains of the victims discovered on the ‘hill’ during the exhumation conducted by the Institute of National Remembrance in 2019.
One version of the commemorative album documenting the exhumations carried out in April 1945.
One version of the commemorative album documenting the exhumations carried out in April 1945.
Temporary cemetery in the fort where the bodies of the victims excavated in April 1945 were moved, photograph probably from 1946.
Temporary cemetery in the fort where the bodies of the victims excavated in April 1945 were moved, photograph probably from 1946.
Temporary cemetery in the fort where the bodies of the victims excavated in April 1945 were moved, photograph probably from 1946.