On July 9, 1941, 193 detainees were shot in Tartu prison and the Gray House courtyard[1][2] by the Soviet NKVD; their bodies were dumped in makeshift graves and in the prison well.

[3] The victims of the communist repressions of summer 1941 were detained in Tartu prison.

So at a meeting of the Estonian Communist Party's Tartu-region committee on the demand of local security leader Alfred Pressman (1894–1973) and with the consent of Estonian NKVD Tartu district leader Pavel Afanasjev (1903–1941) and Communist Party secretary Abronov, a decision was reached to execute the prisoners.

[4] Of the six murderers, four were ethnic Estonians, and one was a Peipsi-area Russian.

The most notable among them was the local Komsomol activist and later Thaw era deputy minister of interior of the Estonian SSR, Edmund Näär (1920–1973).