Russians, wherever you are, love Russia, its past, present, and future, remain faithful sons and daughters of your country. These words are inscribed on one of the nameless graves in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genèvieve-des-Bois in Paris.

In May-June 1945, a tragedy of Russian Cossacks occurred in a small Alpine town located in a picturesque valley at the confluence of the Drava and Isel rivers. According to the decisions made at the Yalta Conference, the Anglo-American allies committed to handing over all displaced persons who were citizens of the USSR as of 1939 to the Soviet Union. The allies also handed over a significant portion of the first wave of emigrants and their descendants who were not Soviet citizens.

On May 2, 1945, the leadership of the Cossack Host announced their relocation to East Tyrol for an honorable surrender to the British. On the same day, the British arrived in the Drava valley and accepted the surrender, after which the Cossacks surrendered almost all their weapons and were placed in camps around Lienz.

On May 28, the British, under the pretext of a conference, handed over about 2,500 Cossack officers and generals to the NKVD. By the morning of June 1, the Cossacks gathered in the main square of the Peggetz camp for a liturgy. At the moment of communion, conducted by 32 priests and four deacons, British troops appeared.

The British suddenly attacked the Cossacks, using firearms, bayonets, rifle butts, and clubs, breaking through the chain of unarmed cadets and beating everyone indiscriminately, including the elderly, women, and children.

The handover of the Cossacks continued until mid-June 1945. By this time, more than 36,000 Cossacks and between 5,000 to 7,000 Caucasians had been deported from the vicinity of Lienz to the USSR, including at least 3,000 old emigrants. More than 4,000 people hid in the forests and mountains, and at least a thousand died during the operation on June 1. Similar events occurred north of Klagenfurt, where the British handed over about 25,000 Cossacks of the 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps under the command of General Helmut von Pannwitz to the NKVD. These Cossacks, hailing from the Don, Kuban, Terek, and Astrakhan, fought against Tito's partisans in Croatia, while their families were in General P.N. Krasnov's 'Cossack Host.' General von Pannwitz, a convinced anti-fascist, voluntarily chose to share the fate of his Cossacks and was executed in 1947 at Lubyanka along with Generals P.N. Krasnov, S. Krasnov, A.G. Shkuro, and others.