Vyritsa Blood Transfusion Camp: The Forgotten Holocaust Atrocity Near St. Petersburg

We have all heard of infamous concentration and extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Bolzano, and Bergen-Belsen. Some may even recognize lesser-known ones such as Ebensee, Plaszow, and others. However, very few have heard of a place called Vyritsa, near St. Petersburg, Russia.

In this location, investigators uncovered a horrifying mass grave: the remains of 1,362 Jews, including 675 infants and children, murdered in an especially cruel way. Their blood was systematically drained from their bodies to provide transfusions for wounded German soldiers fighting at the front.

The Discovery of the Mass Grave

The victims — almost all without visible wounds, were found naked and without shoes by search teams in the village of Novaya Burya, in the Lomonosovsky district near Leningrad.

Special excavation teams sent to the site filled 50 sacks with human remains of skulls and bones. Viktor Ionov, head of the excavation team, told the media: “We dig and dig, and it never ends. Babies and teenagers. Hundreds died here from chronic blood loss. Nearby there was an SS concentration camp. I believe these children were kept alive to provide constant blood transfusions for injured German soldiers and officers.”

Women, Mothers, and the Unborn

“Most of the adult victims were women, including at least three who were pregnant,” Ionov explained. “There were no bullet wounds on the bodies. Only a handful of the victims showed signs of being beaten. For the most part, there is no clear indication of how they died.”

A volunteer named Sergey Bergovoy, who personally helped collect the bones, explained: “The remains were lying in piles. I was completely shocked, despite all my previous experience in excavating mass graves. The hardest thing to digest, and the most mysterious, is that neither the elderly residents nor local historians remember anything about what happened here.”

No Records, No Memories

“There are no records in the military archives. I cannot understand why nobody knows anything at all about this place,” Bergovoy added.

One theory suggests the victims may have died of starvation during Russia’s brutal winters in World War II. However, experts have proposed a darker explanation: that the children’s remains came from the notorious ‘Blood Transfusion Camp’ at Vyritsa, near Gatchina, where more than 300 “young prisoners,” from infants up to age 14, were held for a single purpose — to be drained of blood for the Wehrmacht.

A Survivor’s Testimony

In this camp, some small children were allowed to remain with their mothers. One survivor recalled how his sister Elena died there in the clinic: “She begged me, ‘Please, Alexander, take me away from here. I don’t have any blood left.’ But they kept coming back for more. She died the next day.”

Among the remains, excavation experts discovered a tag marked with the number 1410. Its meaning remains a mystery.