BETRAYAL OF COSSACKS AT LIENTZ

Austria, June 1945.

Betrayal of Cossacks at Lientz. Painting by S.G.Korolkoff

The Effect of Yalta

For many of these Cossacks the joy of reunion with their kin and the happiness of finding security and refuge was short lived; in accordance with an agreement signed in Tehran and Yalta by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, they were forcibly surrendered by the Allies to the Reds and "repatriated" to the Soviet Union.

The most tragic event of this kind occurred near the city of Lienz, in Austria. Toward the end of the war General Krasnoff and some other Cossack leaders persuaded Hitler and his authorities to allow all civilians and non-fighting Cossacks to settle on a permanent basis in the sparsely settled foothills of the Italian Alps. The Cossacks moved there in numbers and established a refugee settlement, with several stanitzas and posts, with their administration, churches, schools and defense units. When the victorious Allies moved from central Italy into the Italian Alps, the German command ordered the Cossacks to leave their new homes and to retreat northward, into Austria. There, on the banks of the river Drave, near Lienz, the British army units caught up with the Cossacks and interned them in a hastily arranged camp. For a few days the British fed these refugees and created the impression that they understood the unique problem of this group, and could see the reason for their fear and uneasiness. The advance units of the Red Army were only a few miles to the east, rapidly surging to establish contact with the Allies. And then, suddenly, just when the Cossacks decided that under the protection of the British flag they had nothing to worry about, the sons of "perfidious Albion" turned over the free men of Cossackdom to their Communist enemies. On May 28, 1945, twenty-one hundred and forty-six Cossack officers and generals, including the world famous cavalry leaders, Generals Krasnoff, Shkuro  and Kiletch-Girey (all NOT SOVIET CITIZENS) , were, through a ruse, disarmed and carried in British cars and trucks to a neighboring town held by the Reds. There they were surrendered to the Red Army general, who immediately ordered them to stand trial for treason. Many of these Cossack leaders had never been nominally citizens and subjects of the Soviet Union, being the men who had left Russia in 1920, at the end of the civil war, and therefore could not be guilty of any treason. Some of these men were executed on the spot; the higher officers were subjected to mock trials at Moscow and were also executed. For example, General Krasnoff was hanged by a hook through the lower jaw, on a public square; this in the Twentieth Century in the capitol of the "most advanced nation of the world!" The bulk of this group was sent to slave labor camps in the Far North and Siberia, to suffer a slow and painful death in the hands of their tormentors.Three days later, on June 1, 1945, the rank and file of this group of Cossacks, 32,000 men, women and children(!), were similarly bayonetted by the British into cattle cars and camions, and delivered to the Bolsheviks, by them to be taken back to the Soviet Union, there to work and die as slaves of the "Great Father of the Peoples," Joseph Stalin. Similar scenes were enacted in the same year, 1945, in the American Zone of Occupation, in Austria and Germany. Many more thousands of Cossacks were beaten by rifle butts into waiting Soviet trucks and trains. Close to 45,000 Cossacks were in this manner "repatriated" into the land of their executioners. However, a great many Cossacks succeeded in fleeing these extraditions and hid themselves in the forests and mountains; many were saved by the local German population; but the greatest number of the escapees found safety and salvation in changing their identity, disguising themselves as Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles, Yugoslavians, Turks, Armenians and even Ethiopians. Eventually, as such, they were admitted into the camps for Displaced Persons. Under such assumed nationalities and names a considerable number of them came to the United States under the Displaced Persons Act; others left the D.P. camps for any land which would open its doors to them. But still a great number of such "turn coats" are in Germany and Austria, in France and Italy, afraid to disclose their real identity and feeling the uncomfortable proximity of the land beyond the Iron Curtain. They still distrust everybody and live in constant fear of extradition to the Soviets; they still play safe, and prefer to go about under the guise of their assumed nationalities. Their real names and origin they disclose only to their brother' Cossacks, particularly to the Cossack councils and unions.