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The working group to clarify the boundaries of the Moglino camp made reassuring conclusions for the Moglino SEZ

After the publication of the material “A Special Economic Concentration Camp?” in the July 22 issue of the Pskov Province. [ 1 ], which described the appeal of the writer and journalist Yuri Alekseev to the acting governor of the region regarding the possible coincidence of the sites of mass executions during the Great Patriotic War and the territory of the Moglino special economic zone, an off-site meeting of the interdepartmental working group was held dedicated to clarifying the boundaries of the Moglino camp. According to the chairman of the State Committee for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Elena Yakovleva, the participants of the trip saw with their own eyes that the future technopark and the former concentration camp are two different sites.

As Yuri Alekseev, a journalist and author of the book “Moglin Camp: The History of One “Little Factory of Death” (1941–1944),” told PG, representatives of the regional administration contacted him literally on the day the newspaper was published. Although the reaction to his appeal on the website turchak.ru was rather modest, offline the authorities treated the situation with due seriousness.

On July 25, a working group consisting of the chairman of the regional committee for the protection of cultural heritage sites Elena Yakovleva, the chairman of the committee on youth policy Alexander Egorov, the deputy chairman of the committee on economic development and investment policy Tatyana Kirilenok, the general director of OJSC Special Economic Zone PTP "Moglino" went to Moglino. Olga Torbich, as well as representatives of the Tyamshansky volost of the Pskov region. The working group included a researcher of fortifications of the 20th century as experts. Andrey Ivanov and Yuri Alekseev himself.

Having met near the memorial sign erected in Moglino in memory of those killed in the war, the working group studied the layout of the camp on the ground, known from testimony during interrogations in the investigation of Nazi atrocities on Pskov land. Then the meeting participants found the ruins of a pillbox, around which, as Yuri Alekseev wrote in his book, there may most likely be mass graves.

“Everyone saw with their own eyes that the boundaries of the Moglino technology park are located at a considerable distance from the site of the proposed burial,” said Elena Yakovleva. According to her, we are talking about several tens of meters.

Between the former concentration camp territory and the SEZ, today there is another industrial enterprise, where the working group found a guard, and a neglected agricultural plot. The security guard explained that the neighboring land belongs to the owner living in the Republic of Latvia. The site is not developed and is slowly being overgrown with forest; It was there that the ruins of a pillbox were discovered, near which one should look for the burial places of those executed.

As a result of the meeting, it was decided to continue studying the problem. On the one hand, the Youth Affairs Committee is working on the issue of organizing search operations and installing a memorial sign at the burial site; on the other hand, the regional administration will try to contact the owner of the land.

“For our part, on the basis of the law on funeral business, we will remind the local authorities that they needed to survey this territory before transferring it for economic development,” says Elena Yakovleva. “If the technology park did this - then archaeologists were still doing this, and we determined (quite accurately, as it now turned out) that there was no overlap - then this area was allocated without any survey.”

The management of OJSC “Special Economic Zone PPT “Moglino”, for its part, promises to provide assistance, including with the financing of search and memorial events. At the same time, Yuri Alekseev’s idea of organizing a museum of fascist occupation on the territory of Moglino will be worked out - this is the maximum program. At a minimum, an information board will have to be installed next to the SEZ, telling about the history of the area during the Great Patriotic War.

Svetlana PROKOPEVA

See: S. Prokopyeva. “A special economic concentration camp?” // “PG”, No. 29 (701) from July 22 - August 5, 2014