Demetrius Kazamatsky

Holy Martyr Demetrius Kazamatsky was a psalm-⁠reader and received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 17 February 1938, at Butovo, near Moscow. He was born in 1871 in the village of Kryukovo, in the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Vasily Kazamatsky. He studied at the village school. From 1893 to 1897 he was in the army, as a non-⁠commissioned officer, and from 1908 to 1917 he was a police sergeant in the Volokolamsk district. From 1924 he was psalm-⁠reader at the church in the village of Dedenevo, then at the Transfiguration church in Kryukovo. He is commemorated on 17 February, on 29 May, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.

When the general persecution of the Russian Church began, agents of the NKVD called witnesses on duty: two chairmen, of the collective farm and of the village soviet, who signed protocols with false testimony. On 26 January 1938 Dmitry Vasilievich was arrested and imprisoned at Taganka, and the next day questioned. The investigator told him that the investigation had data on his counter-⁠revolutionary activity, and he answered that he had done no anti-⁠Soviet activity and could not give testimony about such a thing. On 11 February 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 17 February and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range.