On Tuesday, a monument to Nazi generals and collaborators was destroyed in Moscow. The monument was located in the inner courtyard of the Church of All Saints near Sokol subway station. Unknown vandals smashed the small obelisk with inscription to the Warriors of Russian Service Union, Russian Corps, Cossack Formation, Cossacks of the 15th Cavalry Corps (XV.Kosaken-Kavallerie-Korps) who Fell for the Faith and the Fatherland.

Monument to Nazi Collaborators Smashed in Moscow

On Tuesday, a monument to Nazi generals and collaborators was destroyed in Moscow. The monument was located in the inner courtyard of the Church of All Saints near Sokol subway station. Unknown vandals smashed the small obelisk with inscription to the Warriors of Russian Service Union, Russian Corps, Cossack Formation, Cossacks of the 15th Cavalry Corps (XV.Kosaken-Kavallerie-Korps) who Fell for the Faith and the Fatherland.

The monument bore the names of Russian generals and Russian emigres who collaborated with Hitler's Germany during WWII, and by name commemorated Krasnov (Krasnow), Shkuro (Schkuro), Sultan-Girei-Klych (Girej-Klytsch), Domanov (Domanow), Steivon, and SS Gruppenführer Helmuth von Pannwitz, the commander of the Russian SS volunteers and XV. Kosaken-Kavallerie-Korps.

In late May 1945 in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1923 the British turned over Russian Nazi prisoners of war to the Red Army. Helmuth von Pannwitz who could have escaped the Soviet captivity instead chose on his own free will to follow his Russian troops and was executed on January 16, 1947. In 1996 he was posthumously acquitted by the Russian Prosecutor General's office.

The monument commemorated ethnic units, which fought with Wehrmacht and SS against Soviet Union and its allies. The monument was built in the mid 1990s and became a magnet for informal neo-Nazi groups and Hitler fans. In the last decade several court attempts were made to demolish the monument or to move it legally.