Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the city of Stavropol has declassified information about Ivan Klaas, a native of the Omsk region, convicted in 1965 of the mass murder of Jews during World War II. The communications department in Stavropol of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), located in the Caucasus region, released the details.
According to recently disclosed documents, Klaas voluntarily joined German forces in Ukraine in 1941, actively participating in the massacre of Soviet Jewish civilians in Crimea and the northern Caucasus. The declassification comes amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, with Russia seeking to highlight historical collaboration between some Ukrainians and the Nazis.
Russian sources state that Klaas was involved in the murder of 6,000 people who were taken to an execution site near Simferopol, Crimea. In total, around 12,000 Soviet civilians, including women, elderly and children, were killed there within two days. In one instance, Klaas directly participated in the execution of 23 Jewish citizens in the city of Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia.
An investigation into his wartime actions uncovered horrific crimes. During the war, Klaas lived in the village of Fedorovka in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, where he joined local police forces and helped in the mass murder and deportation of Soviet Jews. After German forces retreated, Klaas received German citizenship and was awarded a medal for his actions. At the end of the war, he surrendered to Soviet forces. Upon returning to the Soviet Union, he hid his war crimes and was convicted only for anti-Soviet propaganda in 1949. He was later pardoned in 1956.
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A location where Jews were murdred in Ukraine
(Photo: Russia’s Federal Security Service)
However, new witness testimonies led to a reopened case in 1965. Klaas admitted to the murders of numerous Jewish victims, and on August 16, 1965, the Stavropol Regional Court found him guilty and sentenced him to death by firing squad. The Russian FSB stated that the decision to declassify and release these archival records is part of ongoing efforts to counter the glorification of Nazism and to share historical records from World War II.
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