From the mid-19th century, the village of Filippovshchina in north-western Russia belonged to the estate of the noble family of German descent, von Berends, whose manor house (usad’ba) and surrounding park were located in the immediate vicinity.1“Usad’ba Berendsa.” After the October Revolution, Filippovshchina became part of the village soviet of Shchepets in the Gdov raion, Leningrad oblast (now Pskov oblast). In the course of Germany’s war of aggression against the Soviet Union (‘Operation Barbarossa’), the Gdov raion was conquered by the Wehrmacht between 15 and 18 July 1941 and remained under German occupation for a good two and a half years. Administratively, Filippovshchina became part of the Rear Army Area North [rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Nord] and fell under the jurisdiction of the 207th Security Division.
Occupation
In the first months of the occupation, the Gdov area became a gathering place for thousands of civilians who had been forcibly evacuated by the 18th Army from the areas near the front lines outside Leningrad or who had fled from there, further exacerbating the already tense supply situation.2Hürter, “Die Wehrmacht vor Leningrad,” 412–413. According to investigations by the Extraordinary State Commission (ESC), in 1941 the Germans also transported 26 Romani people, including ten children, from Luga to Filippovshchina and placed them with local Russian farmers in order to use the adults among them who were able to work as agricultural labourers. In this case, thus, the forced removal was also economically motivated.
However, the labour deployment did not last long, as the Roma from Filippovshchina rapidly fell victim to a targeted murder campaign. In February 1942, units said to have consisted of ‘Germans, Finns and Estonians’ combed through parts of the Gdov raion to track down partisans and their possible supporters among the local population. The composition of the units suggests that members of one of the six Estonian security groups or Security Group 187, which consisted mainly of Ingrian Finns and had been set up by Army High Command 18, were involved.
Murder of the Roma
At the end of February 1942, a 60-strong unit led by a German officer arrived in the village of Filippovshchina. In minus 30 degrees frost, they drove all the Roma, half-clothed, from their homes to a bridge at the entrance to the village. The remaining inhabitants were then also forced to gather near the bridge. In a speech to the assembled crowd, a German soldier accused the Roma of having contact with partisans, even though no investigations or interrogations had been carried out beforehand. The Romani families were then forced to dance in front of the assembled village as ‘nightmarish entertainment’ [radi kashmarnogo razvlecheniia] for the murderers before being shot with three machine guns.
After the shooting, the Russian villagers had to bury the bodies. A ten-year-old Romani boy, who had only been wounded in the hand by the bullets, tried in vain to escape with the help of the villagers. He was caught and buried alive on the orders of the German officer. The same fate befell small children and seriously injured adults.3GARF, f. 7021, op. 39, d. 457, ll. 1–17ob, here ll. 6ob–7, Report of the Extraordinary State Commission on Crimes Committed by the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices During the Occupation, undated [May 1944].
The sequence of events allows conclusions to be drawn about the perpetrators’ motivation. On the one hand, the murder campaign in Filippovshchina was directed specifically and exclusively against Romani people, and this indicates a racist motive that was given an explicitly antigypsy character by the cynical staging of a ‘last dance’ by the victims, invoking romanticised ethnic-cultural stereotypes and using them to humiliate the victims.
On the other hand, the perpetrators aimed to intimidate Filippovshchina’s Russian villagers, who were forced to witness the entire atrocity. However, the accusation of contact with partisans did not stick. More than two years after the events, the villagers were still shocked by the cruel murder of ‘completely innocent’ [ni v chem ne povinnykh] and ‘defenceless Gypsies and their children’ [nad bezzashchitnymi tsyganami i ikh det’mi].4Ibid.
End of the War
On 18 December 1943, the German occupiers carried out forced evacuations of settlements in the area of the village soviet of Shchepets. However, the remaining Russian inhabitants tried to escape capture by fleeing to the surrounding forests. As a result, several villages were burned down. This included Filippovshchina, where the Germans also burned four people alive and shot three others.
Filippovshchina was not rebuilt after its destruction in the war and is now a deserted village. In the course of its Leningrad-Novgorod operation, the Red Army liberated the Gdov raion in early February 1944. Shortly afterwards, the ESC began its investigation into the mass murder of the Romani people in Filippovshchina, and this was completed in May 1944. According to current knowledge, however, it has not been possible to identify and prosecute any individual perpetrators.
