MOSCOW, September 29 (RAPSI) – The Prosecutor’s Office of the Novgorod Region is to petition a court to rule that an act of genocide against peoples of the Soviet Union was committed in Zhestyanaya Gorka village in 1942, according to a statement of Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office press service.

Acting on instructions of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Novgorod regional Prosecutor’s Office has studied the materials relating to a mass grave of at least 2,600 civilians and prisoners of war murdered by German troops in 1942 through 1943, which was discovered in the village, the statement reads.

The prosecutors are to petition the Soletsky District Court to rule that these mass murders were war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The mass murders were committed by a German Teilkommando, some members of which were natives of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, on orders of General Kurt Herzog, who in 1947 was found to be a war criminal by a military tribunal and sentenced to 25 years in prison.