In the autumn of 1942, in the combat zone, a major sabotage took place on the railway, which caused damage to Soviet military convoys transporting equipment and soldiers to the front. The immediate reaction of the NKVD and military counterintelligence bore fruit: it discovered that a group of teenagers – saboteurs from a German sabotage camp, a fascist formation in occupied territory, had been launched onto the front line through a marshy wooded area. This camp was formed from a former orphanage for children of “enemies of the people”, which had not been evacuated in time. The fascists expected that these unfortunate orphans, still marked by their fate, would be convenient to turn into docile instruments for carrying out various acts of sabotage. But this calculation turned out not to be really justified...
