Korocha [German: Korotscha] is a town in the raion of the same name in south-west Russia, which belonged to Kursk oblast until 1954 and is now part of Belgorod oblast. In the course of ‘Operation Blue’ [‘Unternehmen Blau’], Korocha was occupied by units of the 6th Army of Army Group B [German: Heeresgruppe B] on 1 July 1942. The administration of the town and the surrounding raion was soon transferred to the 2nd Hungarian Army, which was also under the command of the German Army Group B.
According to Soviet investigations, members of the Hungarian gendarmerie murdered a group of 45 Roma at two different crime scenes in Korocha in August 1942. Fifteen male Roma were shot in the garden of a private house after they had been forced to dig a mass grave intended for them. Their wives and children, four of whom were infants, were shot dead in the courtyard of a children’s home. Children who tried to run away were captured by the Hungarian gendarmes and buried alive.
According to a witness, the perpetrators accused their victims of stealing horses. The extent to which the accusation of the Hungarian gendarmerie was a pretence or based on antigypsyist prejudices cannot be proven on the basis of the available source material. However, the entire course of the violent crime indicates that the perpetrators were motivated by racism. So far, this is the only recorded case in which Hungarian occupiers murdered Russian Roma.
Korocha was liberated by the Red Army on 7 February 1943.
