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p Dear brothers, we believe you will soon arrive and probably find our letter. You will know that there was a concentration camp here. Not far from the camp, there stands a cross marking the remains of 7,000 Soviet people, shot or bayoneted or starved to death.... Something like 600 wounded prisoners have been murdered. We write to you just before our death. In five or ten minutes we shall also be killed.. ..

p Tell everyone about our fate. Get your revenge. Sensing the end is near, the fascists have gone mad torturing our people....

p Farewell! They’re coming for us.

p With communist greetings,
Senior Lieutenant in the Medical Corps
K. Kh. Khamedov
Medical Instructor
Kurchenko
Red Army Man
Andreyev

August 30, 1943

When the Donbas was liberated in September 1943, Soviet soldiers discovered many cases of the awful trail of bestiality left by the Germans. Many mines in the Donets Basin had been turned into mass graves. This letter was written by three p.o.w.s in the Chistyakov concentration camp shot by the nazis before the retreat.