Operation Altona (ii)

(suburb of the German city of Hamburg)

'Altona' (ii) was a German support undertaking for 'Hamburg' (ii) to prevent Soviet partisans from escaping to the south (22/29 December 1942).

The operation involved Sicherheitsdienst personnel, police and SS troops of the Kampfgruppe 'von Gottberg' under the command of SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen-SS Curt von Gottberg in the Belorussian region of the German-occupied western USSR, targeted the area of Kossów and Blythen to the south of Slonim, and resulted in the deaths of 1,032 persons, almost all of them merely members of the local population rather than real partisans.