TheTreuenbrietzen massacre may refer to two events inTreuenbrietzen, Germany, by the end ofWorld War II on the same day, April 23, 1945.
There was the Treuenbritzen subcamp of theSachsenhausen concentration camp. Among others it held Italian internees, who were (some of) Italian soldiers deported to Germany after Italy left theAxis powers in 1943. They worked in a small local ammunition factory. In 1945 theSoviet Army liberated the camp, but in two days, on April 23, 1945 theWehrmacht returned and the Germans executed 127 ItalianPOWs in the nearby Nichel forest. In several months after the war the massacred were reburied in the forest and later some of them were reburied in Italy and some in the Italian section ofWaldfriedhof Zehlendorf, Berlin.[1][2]
During the first occupation of Treuenbrietzen by the Red Army, on April 21 or 22 a higher Soviet officer was shot. After the second occupation of the town, Red Army soldiers rounded up the civilians and shot the adult men in a nearby forest. The official estimate is between 30 and 166 civilian victims. Some German sources claimed about 1,000 victims, but this must be rejected on the basis of the actual number of town residents.[3]