Hans von der Heide on Red Partisans

So suddenly, very suddenly and unexpectedly [we] moved to the Eastern Front and we got to xxx Chakov (Kharkiv) in August 1943.
Q Where is Chakov located?
Chakov is one of the major cities in the Ukraine.
Q And the USSR
...in the USSR in the Ukraine.
Q So you were fighting in the Soviet Union in 1943?
That’s right and from then on. This was when I arrived in Chakov what was about the last time that the city was reoccupied by the Germans. It had changed the occupants three or four times before and from then on we were more or less under retreat to the area of [I hear “Citomia”, but possibly ‘Zaporizhia’ which was captured by USSR on 14 October 1943] which is the capital of the Ukraine and further west places like “Citomia” and “Veryseth” [spelling?] and towards Christmas in that same year … it was on Christmas Eve exactly ... we were overrun by two divisions of Russian infantry and artillery and things like that, and thousands of tanks, so we lost all our guns within half an hour. [They] were all destroyed.
Q How were they destroyed? By the tanks.
Yes, by the tanks, I think.
Q Did you have any relationship with the local people in the Ukraine when you were serving in that area
Oh certainly, we used to be quartered in their [houses] which were normally just rough, you know, small farm houses they had and they were very kindly to us and we were kind to them we had no reason whatsoever to have in any way animosity against the Russian people, not at all. In fact when they had their celebrations, for instance, I remember on one occasion a boy of 21 and is his sister, they were twins, they had their 21st. birthday celebration, so we were all very happy and they were playing the balalaika and we were dancing and all that sort of thing. Not at all any animosity with the Russian people, and they too. So everybody that was not exactly involved with the guns themselves, the gunners you know, from my field at the time I was “training” a telephone operator, another medical orderly and others were maybe the typists and things like that. All these people from the whole battalion were come together and they were ordered to move about 50 kilometers away from the area right in the middle of the forest where they said there was a headquarters of the partisans, and we were about 120 men, and 20 of us [non combatants], and so we moved toward this village, and this little combat unit, as you may call it, was led by the Medical Officer, strangely enough a medical officer.
Q So why was the Medical Officer leading you?
Well he was also one of those officers as well, that is, personnel that were not directly involved with the guns [non combatants]. Because they'll have to wait and stay around because the guns could arrive any day, any hour now, that’s the reason. So, closely before coming to that village, the doctor had to figure out a plan. He said, what I'm doing now is I'm going into the village with 20 others, so the rest of you will be distributed in three circles around this village, and we’ll investigate what's going on there. If it is really a headquarters of the partisans and whatever.
Q The headquarters of what?
Of the partisans of the Russian guerrilla forces.
Q Ah, of the partisans. [Same word in German and English but pronounced differently]
Ok, and I happened to be among the other people - only 100 of us - who were surrounding this village in the woods. And then, like a watcher we were to remain there until further orders. So we waited there for one hour, I don't know, maybe one and a half hours. And then very shortly but very clearly there was the noise of heavy machine-gun fire from the direction of the outside village. And then a deathly silence again. So we had orders to wait and like good soldiers and we did so and waited for while, and then a messenger came around and had an order to go to the village to gather there. So we went to the village and there I saw the Medical Officer and 19 of my comrades, one of them had got away. They were hung up in the tree like pigs, their feet upside down and they were cut from all the way through like a butcher would would exhibit his pig in the shop window. And some of them they cut their testicles off and they were stuck in their mouths and all that. They [made] such a dreadful sight that I was sick for weeks after that. I'll never get that to go away from my memory. And this, of course, was nothing surprising. And I'm not relating just one single incident. Things like that were happening in Russia in that part of the Earth practically every day.
Q These were the irregular forces, the so-called Soviet persons, who were committing these actions?
Maybe, in retrospect, I would say that the whole enterprise was a mistake. It was a bit maybe careless of the Medical Officer to go right in the village in this area in the middle of a forest. There were only 20 of them, so before they even had a chance to leave the truck they were already firing at hi