Sabotage in Pskov: How in 1943 more than 700 fascists were killed in one film show

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On November 13, 1943, the Nazi-occupied Pskov town of Porkhov was shaken by a powerful explosion. A local cinema took off, where German soldiers whiled away the evening while watching a simple comedy. The sabotage, organized by the local projectionist Konstantin Chekhovich, remained in the history of one of the largest partisan campaigns during the Great Patriotic War. It has not been established exactly how many Nazis were liquidated as a result of that operation. But historians admit that the number of victims exceeded 7 hundred fascists.

Partisans in the zone of German occupation

Odessa resident Konstantin Chekhovich immediately after leaving school decided to connect his life with engineering. After graduating from the Industrial Institute in 1939, the young man was drafted into the army and ended up in the Baltic States, where he successfully studied the sapper craft. When Chekhovich reached the command level, the battalion commander summoned him and announced his transfer to the special group of the Leningrad Mountain Rifle Brigade. The candidacy was not chosen by chance. While serving in the immediate vicinity of the Germans, Chekhovich caught fascist habits and orders. Konstantin's group was given the task of organizing acts of sabotage in the territory occupied by the enemy. The activities of the sabotage group were supposed to turn into an adequate response to the ruthless actions of the invaders who came to a foreign land and established their own inhuman order.

Undercover agent and bribery of the commandant's trust

Fulfilling the very first task in August 1941, Chekhovich's detachment was ambushed. All, except for Constantine, died, and he himself was seriously wounded and taken prisoner. Due to the incapacitated state of the soldier, supervision over him was weak, so that at the first opportunity the saboteur found the strength to escape. Chekhovich joined the Leningrad partisans, where an experienced sapper was accepted into a large partisan family. From new colleagues, Konstantin received a task: to merge with the local population in the occupied city of Porkhov, turning into a "sleeping agent". So two years passed while Chekhovich skillfully rubbed himself into the credibility of the Nazis, showing himself to be a skillful conspirator. The townspeople saw in him Hitler's henchman, not guessing about the true intentions of the saboteur.

In Porkhov, Konstantin got married, and his wife's parental home in a neighboring village became a meeting place for partisans. At first, Chekhovich worked as a watchmaker, then got a job at a local power plant. Initially, it was conceived to blow it up, but the Germans strengthened the protection of the structure, and the idea had to be abandoned. Then the man decided to break into the city cinema. For some reason, the Germans, who zealously guarded all infrastructure facilities, underestimated the threat to the place where their own officers regularly gather. The former home of the city merchant, where the cinema was located, also housed the SS Security Service and the Abwehr residence. Having conceived a new sabotage plan, Chekhovich began to carefully prepare and wait.

Operation "Cinema" and blowing up the hall with hundreds of Wehrmacht soldiers

Trotyl was handed over to Chekhovich by partisans. A very risky scheme was approved: Konstantin and his wife went to the forest to pick mushrooms and berries, or they went to visit her relatives, returning with bales of "booty and treats." The bags, of course, contained explosives. Then it was necessary to bring tens of kilograms of TNT directly into the cinema. It took months. Konstantin was helped by a 15-year-old partisan who got a job in a cinema as a cleaner and had access to the back rooms. Chekhovich, having a technical education and sapper experience, tried to hide the charges along the supporting columns and walls so that the building collapsed like a house of cards. So, in fact, everything turned out.

By November 1943, the premiere of the sensational film "Circus Artists" reached the Eastern Front. There were a lot of people who wanted to while away the evening watching the film, so the cinema hall was filled to capacity. They even had to announce a second evening film show, which, however, was not destined to take place. On the evening of November 13, under the roof of the merchant's house, which housed the cinema, gathered, according to various estimates, up to 700 Wehrmacht soldiers. At exactly 20.00, the building flew into the air. The whole city felt the force of the shock wave, which grew into the groans of the Germans trapped under the rubble. And at these minutes Konstantin Chekhovich, whose forces committed one of the largest sabotage of the Great Patriotic War in terms of the number of victims, was leaving along a country road beyond the horizon on a bicycle. According to official information, not a single participant in the film show survived after that explosion.

The search for the saboteur and life after

The Nazi command did not immediately realize the scale of the incident. The Wehrmacht tore and threw in a rage, promising to raze the area to the ground if the saboteur was not identified. The remaining fascist forces of the occupation zone carefully combed every meter of Porkhov and found a broken clock near the explosion site. By order of the Hitlerite commander, all local residents were herded for interrogation, trying to find out whose thing it was. Someone could not stand the pressure and let slip that he was the owner of the watch, but shortly before the incident he handed it over to the projectionist for repair. The Germans rushed in search of Chekhovich, but that was gone.

After the Victory, Konstantin Chekhovich worked in the construction industry in the Office of Railway Restoration Works. Then he moved the family to his native Odessa, where he replaced the chairman of the district executive committee, and later headed a shop at a mechanical plant. Chekhovich received his only award (the Order of the Patriotic War) only in 1985 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory. And at the site of the explosion in Porkhov, a memorial plaque appeared, the inscription on which testified to the posthumous conferment of the title of honorary citizen of the city to Chekhovich. The same title was awarded to Evgenia Vasilyeva, a cinema cleaner who helped carry explosives inside.

Men were not always involved in sabotage. After all, history has kept names 5 bravest spies to kill Nazis during World War II