German forces recaptured Metgethen on 19 February in a successful bid to reopen the vital road and railway line between Königsberg and the Baltic Sea harbour of Pillau.

[1] In one of the eyewitness reports, Captain Hermann Sommer, former staff officer of the fortress commander of Königsberg Otto Lasch, stated:[2] I made my own observations on February 27th, 1945, when I came to Metgethen on official business.

When I drove my motorcycle, just before the railway-crossing, into a gravel-pit, in order to inspect the building there for its usability, I found, behind it, the corpses of twelve women and six children.

Most of the children had had their skulls broken with a blunt object or their tiny bodies perforated with innumerable bayonet stabs.

On all of them, black-and-blue marks of beating were clearly visible.The Library of Congress possesses an album of 26 mounted photographs, with the cover title Bildbericht über von den Bolschewisten ermordete und geschändete Deutsche in Metgethen ('Picture report about the Germans murdered and desecrated by Bolshevists at Metgethen').