Malchow commemorates the victim of the Werwolf tragedy: a passionate remembering

Malchow commemorates the victim of the Werwolf tragedy: a passionate remembering

On July 4, 2025, numerous people gathered in Malchow, in the Mecklenburg Lake District district, to commemorate the victims of the "Werwolf tragedy". Among the participants were members of the then arrested and survivors who laid out flowers and wreaths on the memorial stone in front of the former seat of the Soviet secret police. The memorial event traditionally took place at 11:45 a.m. and was accompanied by a touching prayer.

like the ndr were reported after the second World War about 30 young people from Soviet secret service arrested and tortured. Among them were even 13-year-old young people who were suspected of being members of the SS underground movement "Werwolf" without any suitable evidence. The allegations later turned out to be baseless: Despite their innocence, the young people were partially sentenced to death or long prison terms.

a cruel chapter of history

These arrests took place between 1945 and 1946 when Malchow was occupied by the Red Army. The Soviet secret police, then active under the name GPU, went on with brutal hardness against the supposed enemies of the state. Nordkurier emphasizes that many of the young people affected, whose names and stories remained in the dark for a long time, did not survive and many lives were wiped out by the political persecution of the post -war period.

commemorating these tragedies has a long tradition in Malchow. Every year it is not only reminded of the arrested, but also the brutal methods with which the events were treated at the time, especially in Villa Blanck, where many of the young people were interrogated and tortured. Kirche-MV reports that this memory event has an important place in the history of the region and is part of a continuous memory process.

processing and rehabilitation

The rehabilitating steps for the adolescents concerned only came many years later: on October 18, 1991, the young people were rehabilitated by the prosecutor of the Russian Federation. But the memories of the injustice suffered remain. Burkhard Bley, state representative for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the processing of the SED dictatorship, gave the commemorative speech and reminded that thousands of young people in the Soviet occupation zone were arrested against the arrests, many of them were cruel death in prisons or specialists such as the NKVD prison No. 5 in Alt Strelitz.

This year Pastor Eckhard Känder, Mayor René Putzar and young people from the Fleesenschule actively participated in the memorial event. It turns out that the processing of these dark chapters of history will not disappear from the memory of the community and that the young generation wants to keep these memories alive. An important sign for the future.