The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many have lost loved ones who were killed or tortured. In the article we will consider the concentration camps of the Nazis and the atrocities that took place on their territories.
What is a concentration camp?
concentration camp or concentration camp special place intended for the conclusion of persons of the following categories:
- political prisoners (opponents of the dictatorial regime);
- prisoners of war (captured soldiers and civilians).
The concentration camps of the Nazis were notorious for their inhuman cruelty to prisoners and impossible conditions of detention. These places of detention began to appear even before Hitler came to power, and even then they were divided into women's, men's and children's. Contained there, mostly Jews and opponents of the Nazi system.
Life in the camp
Humiliation and bullying for the prisoners began already from the moment of transportation. People were transported in freight cars, where there was not even running water and a fenced-off latrine. The natural need of the prisoners had to celebrate publicly, in a tank, standing in the middle of the car.
But this was only the beginning, a lot of bullying and torment was being prepared for the Nazi concentration camps objectionable to the Nazi regime. Torture of women and children, medical experiments, aimless exhausting work - this is not the whole list.
The conditions of detention can be judged from the letters of the prisoners: “they lived in hellish conditions, ragged, barefoot, hungry ... I was constantly and severely beaten, deprived of food and water, tortured ...”, “They shot, flogged, poisoned with dogs, drowned in water, beaten with sticks, starved. Infected with tuberculosis ... strangled by a cyclone. Poisoned with chlorine. Burned ... ".
The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was later used in the German textile industry. Doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, from whose hand thousands of people died. He investigated the mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they transplanted organs from each other, transfused blood, sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. He did sex reassignment surgery.
All fascist concentration camps became famous for such bullying, we will consider the names and conditions of detention in the main ones below.
Camp ration
Usually daily ration in the camp was as follows:
- bread - 130 gr;
- fat - 20 gr;
- meat - 30 gr;
- cereals - 120 gr;
- sugar - 27 gr.
Bread was handed out, and the rest of the food was used for cooking, which consisted of soup (given out 1 or 2 times a day) and porridge (150-200 gr). It should be noted that such a diet was intended only for workers. Those who for some reason remained unemployed received even less. Usually their portion consisted of only half a serving of bread.
List of concentration camps in different countries
Nazi concentration camps were created in the territories of Germany, allied and occupied countries. The list of them is long, but we will name the main ones:
- On the territory of Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;
- Austria - Mauthausen, Amstetten;
- France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
- Poland - Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
- Lithuania - Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
- Czechoslovakia - Kunta-gora, Natra, Glinsko;
- Estonia - Pirkul, Parnu, Klooga;
- Belarus - Minsk, Baranovichi;
- Latvia - Salaspils.
And it's far from full list all the concentration camps that were built by Nazi Germany in the pre-war and war years.
Salaspils
Salaspils can be said to be the most terrible concentration camp fascists, because, in addition to prisoners of war and Jews, children were also kept in it. It was located on the territory of occupied Latvia and was the central eastern camp. It was located near Riga and functioned from 1941 (September) to 1944 (summer).
Children in this camp were not only kept separately from adults and massacred, but were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Every day, about half a liter of blood was taken from all children, which led to the rapid death of donors.
Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then their corpses were burned. It was sent to medical research, during which more than 100,000 people died. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. The torture of children here was a routine affair that proceeded according to a schedule with meticulous records of the results.
Experiments on children
Testimony of witnesses and results of investigations revealed the following ways extermination of people in the Salaspils camp: beatings, hunger, arsenic poisoning, injection hazardous substances(most often children), performing surgeries without painkillers, pumping out blood (only in children), executions, torture, useless hard labor (transferring stones from place to place), gas chambers, burying alive. In order to save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed only with rifle butts. The atrocities of the Nazis in the concentration camps surpassed everything that humanity has seen in the New Age. Such an attitude towards people cannot be justified, because it violates all conceivable and inconceivable moral commandments.
Children did not stay long with their mothers, usually they were quickly taken away and distributed. So, children under the age of six were in a special barracks, where they were infected with measles. But they did not treat, but aggravated the disease, for example, by bathing, which is why the children died in 3-4 days. In this way, the Germans killed more than 3,000 people in one year. The bodies of the dead were partly burned, and partly buried in the camp.
The Act of the Nuremberg trials "on the extermination of children" cited next numbers: during the excavation of only one fifth of the territory of the concentration camp, 633 children's bodies aged 5 to 9 years were found, arranged in layers; a platform soaked in an oily substance was also found, where the remains of unburned children's bones (teeth, ribs, joints, etc.) were found.
Salaspils is truly the most terrible concentration camp of the Nazis, because the atrocities described above are far from all the torments to which the prisoners were subjected. So, in winter, the children brought in barefoot and naked were driven to a half-kilometer barrack, where they had to wash in ice water. After that, the children were driven to the next building in the same way, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. At the same time, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. All who survived after this procedure were also subjected to arsenic etching.
Infants were kept separately, injections were given to them, from which the child died in agony in a few days. They gave us coffee and poisoned cereals. About 150 children per day died from the experiments. The bodies of the dead were taken out in large baskets and burned, thrown into cesspools or buried near the camp.
Ravensbrück
If we start listing women's concentration camps fascists, then Ravensbrück will come first. It was the only camp of this type in Germany. It held thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war was overcrowded by fifteen thousand. Mostly Russian and Polish women were kept, Jews accounted for about 15 percent. There were no written instructions regarding torture and torture; the overseers chose the line of conduct themselves.
Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number. Also, the clothes indicated racial affiliation. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in the post-war years, 2-3 refugee families lived in them) about three hundred prisoners were kept, who were placed on three-story bunks. When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were driven into these cells, who had to sleep seven of them on the same bunk. There were several toilets and a washbasin in the barracks, but there were so few of them that the floors were littered with excrement after a few days. Such a picture was presented by almost all Nazi concentration camps (the photos presented here are only a small fraction of all the horrors).
But not all women ended up in the concentration camp; a selection was made beforehand. The strong and hardy, fit for work, were left, and the rest were destroyed. Prisoners worked at construction sites and sewing workshops.
Gradually, Ravensbrück was equipped with a crematorium, like all Nazi concentration camps. Gas chambers (nicknamed gas chambers by prisoners) appeared already at the end of the war. The ashes from the crematoria were sent to nearby fields as fertilizer.
Experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. In a special barracks called the "infirmary", German scientists tested new drugs, first infecting or crippling the test subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered for the rest of their lives from what they suffered. Experiments were also conducted with the irradiation of women with X-rays, from which hair fell out, skin was pigmented, and death occurred. Genital organs were cut out, after which few survived, and even those quickly grew old, and at 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out by all concentration camps of the Nazis, the torture of women and children is the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.
At the time of the liberation of the concentration camp by the Allies, five thousand women remained there, the rest were killed or transported to other places of detention. The Soviet troops who arrived in April 1945 adapted the camp barracks for the settlement of refugees. Later, Ravensbrück turned into a stationing point for Soviet military units.
Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald
The construction of the camp began in 1933, near the town of Weimar. Soon, Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive, who became the first prisoners, and they completed the construction of the "hellish" concentration camp.
The structure of all structures was strictly thought out. Immediately outside the gates began "Appelplat" (parade ground), specially designed for the formation of prisoners. Its capacity was twenty thousand people. Not far from the gate was a punishment cell for interrogations, and opposite the office was located, where the camp leader and the officer on duty lived - the camp authorities. Deeper were the barracks for prisoners. All barracks were numbered, there were 52 of them. At the same time, 43 were intended for housing, and workshops were arranged in the rest.
The Nazi concentration camps left a terrible memory behind them, their names still cause fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald. by the most scary place considered to be a crematorium. People were invited there under the pretext of a medical examination. When the prisoner undressed, he was shot, and the body was sent to the oven.
Only men were kept in Buchenwald. Upon arrival at the camp, they were assigned a number on German which had to be learned in the first day. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky weapons factory, which was located a few kilometers from the camp.
Continuing to describe the concentration camps of the Nazis, let us turn to the so-called "small camp" of Buchenwald.
Small Camp Buchenwald
The "Small Camp" was the quarantine zone. Living conditions here were, even in comparison with the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when the German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiègne camp were brought to this camp, mostly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were placed in tents. The closer 1945 was, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the "small camp" included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in the concentration camps of the Nazis was not only specially planned or for scientific purposes, the very life in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks, their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread, the unemployed were no longer supposed to.
Relations among the prisoners were tough, cases of cannibalism and murder for someone else's portion of bread were documented. It was a common practice to store the bodies of the dead in barracks in order to receive their rations. The clothes of the deceased were divided among his cellmates, and they often fought over them. Due to such conditions, infectious diseases were common in the camp. Vaccinations only exacerbated the situation, as injection syringes were not changed.
The photo is simply not able to convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. Witness accounts are not for the faint of heart. In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to take a step forward - there were not so many experimental people in any country in the world. Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, those inhuman sufferings that these innocent people endured.
Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated and organs were cut out, sterilized, castrated. They tested how long a person is able to withstand extreme cold or heat. Specially infected with diseases, introduced experimental drugs. So, in Buchenwald, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed. In addition to typhoid, the prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid.
Since 1939, the camp was run by Karl Koch. His wife, Ilse, was nicknamed the "Buchenwald witch" for her love of sadism and inhuman abuse of prisoners. She was more feared than her husband (Karl Koch) and the Nazi doctors. She was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshade". The woman owes this nickname to the fact that she made various decorative things from the skin of the killed prisoners, in particular, lampshades, which she was very proud of. Most of all, she liked to use the skin of Russian prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests, as well as the skin of gypsies. Things made of such material seemed to her the most elegant.
The liberation of Buchenwald took place on April 11, 1945 by the hands of the prisoners themselves. Having learned about the approach of the allied troops, they disarmed the guards, captured the camp leadership and ran the camp for two days until the American soldiers approached.
Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)
Listing the concentration camps of the Nazis, Auschwitz cannot be ignored. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died. The exact details of the dead have not yet been clarified. Most of the victims were Jewish prisoners of war, who were destroyed immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers.
The complex of concentration camps itself was called Auschwitz-Birkenau and was located on the outskirts of the Polish city of Auschwitz, whose name has become a household name. Above the camp gates were engraved the following words: "Work sets you free."
This huge complex, built in 1940, consisted of three camps:
- Auschwitz I or the main camp - the administration was located here;
- Auschwitz II or "Birkenau" - was called the death camp;
- Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz.
Initially, the camp was small and intended for political prisoners. But gradually more and more prisoners arrived in the camp, 70% of whom were destroyed immediately. Many tortures in Nazi concentration camps were borrowed from Auschwitz. So, the first gas chamber began to function in 1941. Gas "Cyclone B" was used. For the first time, the terrible invention was tested on Soviet and Polish prisoners with a total number of about nine hundred people.
Auschwitz II began its operation on March 1, 1942. Its territory included four crematoria and two gas chambers. In the same year, medical experiments began on women and men for sterilization and castration.
Small camps gradually formed around Birkenau, where prisoners were kept working in factories and mines. One of these camps gradually grew and became known as Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz. About ten thousand prisoners were kept here.
Like any Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz was well guarded. Contacts with outside world were banned, the territory was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, guard posts were set up around the camp at a distance of a kilometer.
On the territory of Auschwitz, five crematoria were continuously operating, which, according to experts, had a monthly output of approximately 270,000 corpses.
January 27, 1945 Soviet troops The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was liberated. By that time, about seven thousand prisoners remained alive. Such a small number of survivors is due to the fact that about a year before that, mass murders in gas chambers (gas chambers) began in the concentration camp.
Since 1947, a museum and a memorial complex began to function on the territory of the former concentration camp, dedicated to the memory of all those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Conclusion
For the entire duration of the war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. They were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It's hard to imagine what these people went through. But not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps was destined to be demolished by them. Thanks to Stalin, after their release, when they returned home, they received the stigma of "traitors". At home, the Gulag was waiting for them, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity was replaced by another for them. In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences.
Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after their release was not advertised and hushed up. But the people who survived this simply should not be forgotten.
The concentration camps of Nazi Germany were located throughout the country and served different purposes. They occupied hundreds of hectares of land and brought tangible income to the country's economy. Description of the history of the creation and organization of some of the most famous concentration camps of the Third Reich.
By the beginning of World War II, the system of concentration camps in Nazi Germany was already well established. The Nazis were not the inventors of this method of fighting large masses of people. The first concentration camp in the world was created during the Civil War in the United States of America in the town of Andersonville. However, it was after the defeat of Germany and the official courts for the Nazi crimes against humanity, when the whole truth of the Reich was revealed, that the world community was stirred up by the revealed information about what was happening behind the thick walls and rows of barbed wire.
In order to hold on to the power gained with such difficulty, Hitler had to quickly and effectively suppress any speeches against his regime. Therefore, the prisons available in Germany began to fill up quickly, and soon overflowed with political prisoners. These were German citizens who were sent to prison not for extermination, but for indoctrination. As a rule, a few months of staying in unpleasant dungeons was enough to quench the ardor of thirsty changes in the existing order of citizens. Once they ceased to pose a threat to the Nazi regime, they were released.
Over time, it turned out that the state had much more enemies than the prisons available. Then a proposal was made to solve the problem. The construction of places of mass concentrated detention of people objectionable to the regime, by the hands of these same people, was economically and politically beneficial to the Third Reich. The first concentration camps appeared on the basis of old abandoned barracks and factory workshops. But by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, they were already erected on any open space convenient for transporting prisoners there.
Buchenwald
Buchenwald concentration camp was built in the summer of 1937 in the heart of Germany near the city of Weimar. The project, like others like it, was strictly secret. Standartenführer Karl Koch, who was appointed commandant here, already had experience in managing camps. Prior to that, he managed to serve in Lichtenburg and Sachsenhausen. Now Koch was given the task of building the largest concentration camp in Germany. It was a great opportunity to forever write your name in the chronicles of Germany. The first concentration camps appeared in 1933. But this Koch had the opportunity to build from scratch. He felt like a king and a god there.
The main part of the inhabitants of Buchenwald were political prisoners. These were Germans who did not want to support Hitler's rule. Believers were also sent there, whose conscience did not allow them to kill and take up arms. Men who refused to serve in the army were considered dangerous opponents of the state. And since they did it out of religious conviction, they outlawed all religion. Therefore, all members of such a group, regardless of age and gender, were persecuted. The believers, who in Germany were called biebelforscher (Bible students) even had their own identification mark on clothes - a purple triangle.
Like other concentration camps, Buchenwald was supposed to benefit the new Germany. In addition to the usual use of slave labor for such places, experiments were carried out on living people within the walls of this camp. In order to study the development and course of contagious diseases, as well as to find out which vaccines are more effective, groups of prisoners were infected with tuberculosis and typhoid. After research, the victims of such medical experiments were sent to the gas chamber as waste material.
On April 11, 1945, an organized uprising of prisoners was raised in Buchenwald. It turned out to be successful. Encouraged by the proximity of the Allied army, the prisoners seized the commandant's office and waited for the arrival of American troops, who approached on the same day. Five days later, the Americans brought ordinary residents from the city of Weimar so that they could see with their own eyes what horror was happening outside the walls of the camp. This would allow, if necessary, to use their testimony as eyewitnesses during trials.
Auschwitz
The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland became the largest death camp in the history of the Third Reich. Initially, it was created, like many others, to resolve local problems - intimidate opponents, exterminate the local Jewish population. But soon the Auschwitz camp (that's how it was called in the German manner in all official German documents) was chosen for the final solution of the "Jewish question". Due to its convenient geographical location and good transport interchange, it was chosen to exterminate all the Jews from the European countries captured by Hitler.
Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland
Camp commandant Rudolf Höss was instructed to develop effective methodology to exterminate large groups of people. On September 3, 1941, Soviet prisoners of war (600 people) and 250 Polish prisoners were separated from the prisoners at the disposal of Höss. They were brought into one block and sprayed there poisonous gas Cyclone B. A few minutes later, all 850 people were dead. This was the first test of a gas chamber. In the second section of Auschwitz, random buildings were no longer used for gas chambers. They built specially designed hermetic buildings disguised as shared showers. Thus, the prisoner of the concentration camp sentenced to death did not suspect until the last that he was going to certain death. This prevented panic and resistance attempts.
So the murder of people in Auschwitz was brought to a production scale. From all over Europe, trains full of Jews were sent to Poland. After being gassed, the murdered Jews were sent to the crematorium. However, the pragmatic Germans burned only what they could not use. All personal belongings, including clothing, were confiscated, sorted and sent to special warehouses. Gold teeth were pulled out from the corpses. Human hair was used to fill mattresses. Soap was made from human fat. And even the ashes of the victims were used as fertilizer.
In addition, people in the concentration camp were also considered as material for medical experiments. Physicians worked in Auschwitz, who, as a practice, performed a variety of surgical operations on healthy people. The notorious doctor Josef Mengele, nicknamed the Angel of Death, conducted his experiments on twins there. Many of them were children.
Dachau
Dachau is the first concentration camp in Germany. In many ways it was experimental. The first prisoners of this camp had the opportunity to leave it in just a few months. Under the condition of a complete "re-education". In other words, when they moved to pose a political threat to the Nazi regime. In addition, Dachau was the first attempt to genetically cleanse the Aryan race by removing dubious "genetic material" from the public. Moreover, the selection went not only on the physical, but also on the moral character. So, prostitutes, homosexuals, vagrants, drug addicts and alcoholics were sent to the concentration camp.
There is a legend in Munich that Dachau was built near the city as a punishment for the fact that in the elections to the Reichstag all its inhabitants voted against Hitler. The fact is that the fetid smoke from the chimneys of the crematorium regularly covered the city blocks, spreading with the prevailing wind in this direction. But it's just local legend, which is not supported by any documents.
It was in Dachau that work began on improving the methods of influencing the human psyche. Here they invented, tested and improved the methods of torture used during the interrogation. Here, methods of mass suppression of the human will were honed. The will to live and resist. Subsequently, concentration camp inmates throughout Germany and beyond experienced the technique, originally developed in Dachau. Over time, the conditions of stay in the camp became tougher. Long gone are releases from prison. People were coming up with new ways to become useful in the development of the Third Reich.
Many prisoners had the opportunity to serve as guinea pigs for medical students. Healthy people performed surgery without the use of anesthesia. Soviet prisoners of war were used as live targets for training young soldiers. After classes, the unfinished were simply left at the training ground, and sometimes still alive they were sent to the crematorium. It is significant that healthy young men were selected for Dachau. Experiments were carried out on them to determine the limits of endurance of the human body. For example, prisoners were infected with malaria. Some died as a result of the course of the disease itself. However, most died from the treatments themselves.
In Dachau, Dr. Roscher, using a pressure chamber, found out how much pressure the human body can withstand. He put people in the chamber and simulated the situation in which a pilot could find himself at an extremely high altitude. They also tested what would happen with a fast forced parachute jump from such a height. The people were in terrible pain. They beat their heads against the wall of the cell and tore their heads bloody with their nails, trying to somehow reduce the terrible pressure. And the doctor at this time meticulously recorded the frequency of respiration and pulse. Units of test subjects who survived were immediately sent to the gas chamber. The experiments were classified under secrecy. It was impossible to allow information leakage.
Although most medical research took place in Dachau and Auschwitz, the concentration camp that supplied living material for the university in Germany was Sachsenhausen, located near the city of Friedenthal. Due to the use of such material, this institution has earned a reputation as a killer university.
Majdanek
In official documents, the new camp on the territory of occupied Poland was listed as "Dachau 2". But soon it acquired its own name - Majdanek - and even surpassed Dachau, in the image and likeness of which it was created. The concentration camps in Germany were secret facilities. But with regard to Majdanek, the Germans did not stand on ceremony. They wanted the Poles to know what was going on in the camp. It was located right next to the highway in the immediate vicinity of the city of Lublin. The putrid smell brought by the wind often completely enveloped the city. The inhabitants of Lublin knew about the executions of Soviet prisoners of war taking place in the nearby woods. They saw transports full of people and knew that gas chambers were destined for these unfortunate people.
The prisoners of Majdanek settled in the barracks intended for them. This was whole city with their regions. Five hundred and sixteen hectares of land fenced with barbed wire. There was even a section for women. And the chosen women went to the camp brothel, where the SS soldiers could satisfy their needs.
The Majdanek concentration camp began functioning in the fall of 1941. Initially, it was planned that only dissatisfied people from the surrounding area would be gathered here, as was the case with other local camps that were needed to strengthen new power and quickly deal with the dissatisfied. But a powerful flow of Soviet prisoners of war from the Eastern Front made adjustments to the planning of the camp. Now he had to accept thousands of captive men. In addition, this camp was included in the program for the final solution of the Jewish question. So, it had to be prepared for the rapid destruction of large parties of people.
When the operation "Erntefest" was carried out, during which they were supposed to destroy all the Jews remaining in the vicinity in one fell swoop, the camp leadership decided to shoot them. In advance, not far from the camp, the prisoners were ordered to dig a hundred-meter-long ditches, six meters wide and three meters deep. On November 3, 1943, 18,000 Jews were brought to these ditches. They were ordered to undress and lie face down on the ground. Moreover, the next row had to lie face down in the back of the previous one. Thus, we got a living carpet, folded according to the principle of tiles. Eighteen thousand heads were turned to the executioners.
Lively cheerful music began to play from loudspeakers around the perimeter of the camp. And then the massacre began. The SS men came close and shot at the back of the head of the lying man. Having finished with the first row, they pushed him into the ditch, and they began to methodically shoot the next one. When the ditches were full, they were only lightly covered with earth. In total, more than 40,000 people were killed in the Lublin region that day. This action was carried out in response to the uprising of the Jews in Sobibor and Treblinka. So the Germans wanted to protect themselves.
Operation Erntefest
During the three years of the existence of the death camp, five commandants were replaced in it. The first was Karl Koch, who was transferred to a new location from Buchenwald. The next is Max Koegel, who had previously been commandant of Ravensbrück. After them, Hermann Florshted, Martin Weiss served as commandants, and the last was Arthur Liebehenschel, the successor of Rudolf Höss in Auschwitz.
Treblinka
In Treblinka, there were two camps at once, which differed in numbers. Treblinka-1 was positioned as a labor camp, and Treblinka-2 as a death camp. At the end of May 1942, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the camp was built near the village of Treblinka, and by June it began to operate. This is the largest death camp built during the war years, with its own railway. The first victims, exiled there, bought train tickets themselves, not realizing that they were going to their death.
The secrecy stamp extended not only to the murders of prisoners - the very existence of the concentration camp was a secret long time. German planes were forbidden to fly over Treblinka, and at a distance of 1 km from it, soldiers were placed throughout the forest, who, when anyone approached, fired without any warning. Those who brought prisoners here were replaced by camp guards and never went inside, and a 3-meter wall did not allow them to become accidental witnesses of what was happening outside the fence.
Due to the complete secrecy in Treblinka, the presence of a large number of guards was not required: about 100 watchmen were enough - specially trained collaborators (Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles) and 30 SS men. Gas chambers disguised as showers were attached to the exhaust pipes of heavy tank engines. People who were in the shower died more from suffocation than from the lethal composition of the gas. However, they also used other methods: the air from the room was completely sucked out and the prisoners died from lack of oxygen.
After the massive attack of the Red Army on the Volga, Himmler personally came to Treblinka. Prior to his visit, the victims were buried, but that meant leaving footprints behind them. By his order, crematoria were built. Himmler gave the order to dig up the dead and cremate them. "Operation 1005" was the code name for the elimination of the traces of the murders. The prisoners themselves were engaged in the execution of the order, and soon despair helped them to decide: it was necessary to raise an uprising.
Hard work and gas chambers claimed the lives of new arrivals, so that approximately 1,000 prisoners remained in the camp at all times to keep it functioning. On August 2, 1943, 300 people decided to flee. Many camp buildings were set on fire and holes were made in the fence, but after the first successful minutes of the uprising, many had to unsuccessfully storm the gates, and not use the original plan. Two-thirds of the rebels were destroyed, and many were found in the forests and shot.
The autumn of 1943 is marked as the complete end of the operation of the concentration camp in Treblinka. For a long time, looting was widespread on the territory of the former concentration camp: many were looking for valuable things that once belonged to the victims. Treblinka was the second largest camp after Auschwitz in terms of the largest number of victims. In total, from 750 to 925 thousand people were killed here. To preserve the memory of the horrors that the victims of the concentration camp had to endure, a symbolic cemetery and a monument-mausoleum were later built in its place.
Ravensbrück
In German society, the role of women was to be limited to raising children and maintaining the home. They were not supposed to exert any political or social influence. Therefore, when the construction of concentration camps began, a separate complex for women was not envisaged. The only exception was the Ravensbrück concentration camp. It was built in 1939 in northern Germany near the village of Ravensbrück. The concentration camp takes its name from the name of this village. Today it has already become part of the city of Furstenberg that has spread to its territory.
The Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, the photos of which were taken after its liberation, has been little studied in comparison with other large concentration camps of the Third Reich. Since he was in the heart of the country - only 90 kilometers from Berlin, he was one of the last to be released. Therefore, the Nazis managed to reliably destroy all the documentation. In addition to the photographs taken after the liberation, only the stories of eyewitnesses could tell about what was happening in the camp, of whom not so many survived.
The Ravensbrück concentration camp was built to contain German women. Its first inhabitants were German prostitutes, lesbians, criminals and Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to renounce their faith. Subsequently, prisoners from the countries occupied by the Germans were also sent here. However, there were very few Jews in Ravensbrück. And in March 1942 they were all transferred to Auschwitz.
For all women arriving in Ravensbrück, camp life began the same way. They were stripped naked (while the season did not play any role) and inspected. Every woman and girl was subjected to humiliating gynecological examination. The guards were vigilant to ensure that the newcomers did not carry anything with them. Therefore, the procedures were not only morally overwhelming, but also painful. After that, each woman had to go through a bath. Waiting in line could last several hours. And only after the bath did the captives finally receive a camp uniform and a pair of heavy slippers.
The ascent through the camp was signaled at 4 am. The prisoners received half a cup of a watery drink that replaced coffee, and after the roll call they went to their workplaces. The working day, depending on the season, lasted from 12 to 14 hours. In the middle there was a half-hour break during which the women received bowls of swede broth. Every evening there was another roll call, which could last several hours. Moreover, in cold and rainy times, the guards often deliberately delayed this procedure.
Ravensbrück was also involved in medical experiments. Here they studied the course of gangrene and ways to deal with it. The fact is that the field of receiving gunshot wounds, many soldiers on the battlefield developed this complication, which was fraught with many deaths. The doctors were faced with the task of finding a quick and effective treatment. On experimental women, sulfonamide preparations were tested (these include streptocide). This happened as follows - on the upper thigh - where the emaciated women still had muscles - they made a deep incision (of course, without the use of any anesthesia). Bacteria were injected into an open wound, and in order to more conveniently monitor the development of a lesion in the tissues, a piece of nearby flesh was cut off. For more accurate modeling of field conditions, wounds were also injected metal shavings, glass shards and wood particles.
Women's concentration camps
Although among the German concentration camps only Ravensbrück was a women's camp (however, several thousand men were kept there in a separate part), in this system there were places reserved exclusively for women. Responsible for the functioning of the camps, Heinrich Himmler was very kind to his offspring. He frequently inspected the various camps, making any changes he felt were necessary, and continually tried to improve the performance and performance of these major suppliers. work force and material much needed by the German economy. After learning about the system of incentive incentives that were introduced in the Soviet labor camps, Himmler decided to use it to improve work efficiency. Along with monetary incentives, supplements to the diet and the issuance of camp vouchers, Himmler considered that the satisfaction of sexual desires could become a special privilege. So in ten concentration camps there were brothels for prisoners.
Women selected from the prisoners worked in them. They agreed to this, trying to save their lives. It was easier to survive in a brothel. Prostitutes were entitled to better food, they received the necessary medical care and they were not sent to physically backbreaking work. Visiting a prostitute, although a privilege, remained paid. The man had to pay two Reichsmarks (the cost of a pack of cigarettes). The "session" lasted strictly 15 minutes, strictly in the missionary position. Reports preserved in Buchenwald documents show that in just the first six months of operation, concentration camp brothels brought Germany 19,000 Reichsmarks.
18-year-old Soviet girl in extreme exhaustion. The photo was taken during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. This is the first German concentration camp, founded on March 22, 1933 near Munich (a city on the Isar River in southern Germany). It contained more than 200 thousand prisoners, according to official figures, of which 31,591 prisoners died from illness, malnutrition or committed suicide. The conditions of detention were so terrible that hundreds of people died here every week.
This photo was taken between 1941 and 1943 by the Holocaust Memorial in Paris. Pictured here is a German soldier aiming at a Ukrainian Jew during a mass execution in Vinnitsa (the city is located on the banks of the Southern Bug, 199 kilometers southwest of Kyiv). On the back of the photo card was written: "The last Jew of Vinnitsa."
The Holocaust is the persecution and mass extermination of Jews living in Germany during World War II during 1933-1945.
German soldiers interrogate Jews after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943. Thousands of people died of disease and starvation in the overcrowded Warsaw ghetto, where in October 1940 the Germans had herded over 3 million Polish Jews.
The uprising against the occupation of Europe by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto took place on April 19, 1943. During this riot, about 7,000 ghetto defenders were killed and about 6,000 were burned alive as a result of massive arson of buildings by German troops. The surviving residents, and this is about 15 thousand people, were sent to the Treblinka death camp. On May 16 of the same year, the ghetto was finally liquidated.
The Treblinka death camp was organized by the Nazis in occupied Poland, 80 kilometers northeast of Warsaw. During the existence of the camp (from July 22, 1942 to October 1943), about 800 thousand people died in it.
To preserve the memory of the tragic events of the 20th century, the international public figure Vyacheslav Kantor founded and headed the World Holocaust Forum.
1943 A man takes the bodies of two Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. Every morning several dozen corpses were removed from the streets. The bodies of Jews who died of starvation were burned in deep pits.
The officially established food rations for the ghetto were designed to starve the inhabitants to death. In the second half of 1941, the food ration for Jews was 184 kilocalories.
On October 16, 1940, Governor General Hans Frank decided to organize a ghetto, during the existence of which the population decreased from 450 thousand to 37 thousand people. The Nazis claimed that the Jews were carriers of infectious diseases, and their isolation would help protect the rest of the population from epidemics.
On April 19, 1943, German soldiers escort a group of Jews to the Warsaw Ghetto, among whom there are small children. This picture was attached to the report of SS Gruppenfuehrer Stroop to his commander and was used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials in 1945.
After the uprising, the Warsaw ghetto was liquidated. 7 thousand (out of more than 56 thousand) captured Jews were shot, the rest were transferred to death camps or concentration camps. The photo shows the ruins of a ghetto destroyed by SS soldiers. The Warsaw ghetto existed for several years, during which time 300,000 Polish Jews perished there.
In the second half of 1941, the food ration for Jews was 184 kilocalories.
Mass execution of Jews in Mizoch (urban-type settlement, the center of the Mizoch settlement council of the Zdolbunovsky district of the Rovno region of Ukraine), Ukrainian SSR. In October 1942, the inhabitants of Mizoch opposed the Ukrainian auxiliary units and the German policemen, who intended to liquidate the population of the ghetto. Photo courtesy of the Paris Holocaust Memorial.
Deported Jews in the Drancy transit camp, on their way to a German concentration camp, 1942. In July 1942, the French police rounded up more than 13,000 Jews (including more than 4,000 children) to the Vel d'Hiv winter velodrome in the southwestern part of Paris, and then sent them to the railway terminal in Drancy, northeast of Paris. Paris and deported to the east. Almost no one returned home ...
"Dranci" - a Nazi concentration camp and transit point that existed in 1941-1944 in France, was used for the temporary detention of Jews, who were subsequently sent to death camps.
This photo is courtesy of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It depicts Anne Frank, who in August 1944, together with her family and other people, was hiding from the German occupiers. Later, everyone was captured and sent to prisons and concentration camps. Anna died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen (a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony, located a mile from the village of Belsen and a few miles southwest of Bergen) at the age of 15. Since the posthumous publication of her diary, Frank has become a symbol of all Jews killed during World War II.
Arrival of a train with Jews from Carpathian Rus at the Auschwitz-2 death camp, also known as Birkenau, in Poland, May 1939.
Auschwitz, Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau - a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945 to the west of the General Government, near the city of Auschwitz, which in 1939 was annexed to the territory of the Third Reich by Hitler's decree.
At Auschwitz 2, hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies and prisoners of other nationalities were kept in one-story wooden barracks. The number of victims of this camp amounted to more than a million people. New prisoners arrived daily by train to Auschwitz 2, where they were divided into four groups. The first - three-quarters of all those brought in (women, children, the elderly and all those who were not fit for work) went to the gas chambers for several hours. The second - went to hard labor at various industrial enterprises (most of the prisoners died from illness and beatings). The third group went to various medical experiments to Dr. Josef Mengele, known by the nickname "angel of death." This group consisted mainly of twins and dwarfs. The fourth - consisted mainly of women who were used by the Germans as servants and personal slaves.
14-year-old Cheslava Kvoka. Photo courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where great amount people, mostly Jews. In December 1942, a Polish Catholic, Czeslaw, ended up in a concentration camp with her mother. They both died three months later. In 2005, photographer and former prisoner Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was young and very scared, she did not understand why she was here and what she was being told. And then the prison guard took a stick and hit her in the face. The girl was crying, but she couldn't help it. I felt like I was being beaten, but I couldn't intervene. For me it would be fatal."
A victim of Nazi medical experiments that were carried out in the German city of Ravensbrück. Photo showing a man's hand with a deep burn from phosphorus, taken in November 1943. During the experiment, a mixture of phosphorus and rubber was applied to the subject's skin, which was then set on fire. After 20 seconds, the flame was extinguished with water. After three days, the burn was treated with liquid echinacin, and the wound healed after two weeks.
Josef Mengele was a German doctor who conducted experiments on the prisoners of the Auschwitz camp during World War II. He was personally involved in the selection of prisoners for his experiments, more than 400 thousand people, by his order, were sent to the gas chambers of the death camp. After the war he moved from Germany to latin america(for fear of persecution), where he died in 1979.
Jewish prisoners in "Buchenwald", one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, located near Weimar in Thuringia. Many medical experiments were carried out on the prisoners, as a result of which most died a painful death. People were infected with typhus, tuberculosis and other dangerous diseases(to test the effect of vaccines), which later almost instantly escalated into epidemics due to overcrowding in barracks, insufficient hygiene, poor nutrition, and also due to the fact that all this infection did not respond to treatment.
There is a huge camp documentation on the conduct of hormonal experiments, carried out on the secret decree of the SS, Dr. Karl Wernet - he performed operations on sewing homosexual men into the inguinal region of a capsule with "male hormone", which was supposed to make them heterosexuals.
American soldiers inspect the wagons with the bodies of the dead in the Dachau concentration camp on May 3, 1945. During the war, Dachau was known as the most sinister concentration camp, where the most sophisticated medical experiments were carried out on prisoners, who were visited regularly by many high-ranking Nazis.
An emaciated Frenchman sits among the dead at Dora-Mittelbau, a Nazi concentration camp established on August 28, 1943, located 5 kilometers from the city of Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. Dora-Mittelbau is a subdivision of the Buchenwald camp.
The bodies of the dead are piled up against the wall of the crematorium in the German Dachau concentration camp. The photo was taken on May 14, 1945 by soldiers of the 7th US Army who entered the camp.
In the entire history of Auschwitz, there were about 700 escape attempts, 300 of which were successful. If someone escaped, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all the prisoners from his block were killed - this was the most effective method that prevented attempts to escape. January 27 is the official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.
An American soldier inspects thousands of gold wedding rings that were confiscated from Jews by the Nazis and hidden in the salt mines of Heilbronn (a city in Germany, Baden-Württemberg).
American soldiers examine lifeless bodies in a crematorium oven, April 1945.
A pile of ashes and bones in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. Photo taken April 25, 1945. In 1958, a memorial complex was founded on the territory of the camp - on the site of the barracks, only a cobbled foundation remained, with a memorial inscription (the number of the barrack and who was in it) at the place where the building was previously located. Also, the building of the crematorium has survived to this day, with plates with names in different languages embedded in the walls (relatives of the victims immortalized their memory), observation towers and barbed wire in several rows. The entrance to the camp lies through the gate, untouched since those terrible times, the inscription on which reads: “Jedem das Seine” (“To each his own”).
Prisoners greet American soldiers near an electric fence in the Dachau concentration camp (one of the first concentration camps in Germany).
General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other American officers at the Ohrdruf concentration camp shortly after its release in April 1945. When the American army began to approach the camp, the guards shot the remaining prisoners. The Ohrdruf camp was established in November 1944 as a subdivision of Buchenwald to house prisoners forced to build bunkers, tunnels and mines.
A dying prisoner in a concentration camp in Nordhausen, Germany, April 18, 1945.
The death march of prisoners from the Dachau camp through the streets of Grunwald on April 29, 1945. As the Allied forces went on the offensive, thousands of prisoners moved from outlying POW camps into the interior of Germany. Thousands of prisoners who could not stand such a road were shot on the spot.
American soldiers walk past corpses (over 3,000 bodies) lying on the ground behind the barracks at the Nazi concentration camp at Nordhausen on April 17, 1945. The camp is located 112 kilometers west of Leipzig. The US Army found only a small group of survivors.
The lifeless body of a prisoner lies near a wagon near the Dachau concentration camp, May 1945.
Soldiers-liberators of the Third Army under the command of Lieutenant General George S. Paton on the territory of the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945.
On their way to the Austrian border, soldiers of the 12th Armored Division under the command of General Patch witnessed the terrible spectacles that took place in the prisoner of war camp at Schwabmünchen, southwest of Munich. More than 4,000 Jews of various nationalities were kept in the camp. The prisoners were burned alive by the guards, who set fire to the sleeping barracks and shot at anyone who tried to escape. The photo shows the bodies of some Jews found by soldiers of the 7th US Army in Schwabmünchen, May 1, 1945.
A dead prisoner lies on a barbed wire fence in the Leipzig-Teckle (a concentration camp that is part of the Buchenwald).
By order of the American army, German soldiers carried the bodies of the victims of Nazi repressions from the Austrian Lambach concentration camp and buried them on May 6, 1945. 18 thousand prisoners were kept in the camp, 1600 people lived in each of the barracks. There were no beds or any sanitary conditions in the buildings, and every day 40 to 50 prisoners died here.
A man, lost in thought, sits near a charred body in the Thekla camp near Leipzig, April 18, 1954. The workers of the Tecla plant were locked in one of the buildings and burned alive. The fire claimed the lives of about 300 people. Those who managed to escape were killed by members of the Hitler Youth, a youthful paramilitary National Socialist organization led by the Reichsugendführer (the highest position in the Hitler Youth).
The charred bodies of political prisoners lie at the entrance to a barn in Gardelegen (a city in Germany, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt) on April 16, 1945. They died at the hands of the SS, who set fire to the barn. Those who tried to escape were overtaken by Nazi bullets. Of the 1,100 prisoners, only twelve managed to escape. 
Human remains in the German concentration camp at Nordhausen, discovered by soldiers of the 3rd Armored Division of the US Army on April 25, 1945.
When American soldiers liberated the prisoners of the German Dachau concentration camp, they killed several SS men and threw their bodies into a moat that surrounded the camp.
Lieutenant Colonel Ed Sailer of Louisville, Kentucky, stands among the bodies of Holocaust victims and addresses 200 German civilians. The photo was taken in the Landsberg concentration camp, May 15, 1945.
Hungry and extremely emaciated prisoners in the Ebensee concentration camp, where the Germans carried out "scientific" experiments. The photo was taken on May 7, 1945.
One of the prisoners recognizes a former guard who brutally beat prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Thuringia.
The lifeless bodies of emaciated prisoners lie on the territory of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The British Army found the bodies of 60,000 men, women and children who had died of starvation and various diseases.
SS men stack the bodies of the dead in a truck at the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp on April 17, 1945. In the background are British soldiers with guns.
Residents of the German city of Ludwigslust inspect a nearby concentration camp, May 6, 1945, on whose territory the bodies of victims of Nazi repressions were found. In one of the pits were 300 emaciated bodies.
Many decomposing bodies were found by British soldiers in the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its liberation on April 20, 1945. About 60,000 civilians died from typhus, typhoid and dysentery.
Arrest of Josef Kramer, commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, April 28, 1945. Kramer, nicknamed "The Beast of Belsen", was executed after a trial in December 1945.
SS women unload the bodies of victims at the Belsen concentration camp on April 28, 1945. British soldiers with rifles are standing on a pile of earth, which will be covered with a mass grave.
An SS man among hundreds of corpses in a mass grave of concentration camp victims in Belsen, Germany, April 1945.
In the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp alone, about 100,000 people died.
A German woman covers her son's eyes with her hand as she passes the exhumed bodies of 57 Soviet citizens who were killed by the SS and buried in a mass grave shortly before the arrival of the American army.
On April 27, 1940, the first Auschwitz concentration camp was created, designed for the mass extermination of people.
Concentration camp - places for forced isolation of real or perceived opponents of the state, the political regime, etc. Unlike prisons, ordinary camps for prisoners of war and refugees, concentration camps were created according to special decrees during the war, the aggravation of the political struggle.
In fascist Germany, concentration camps are an instrument of mass state terror and genocide. Although the term "concentration camp" was used to refer to all Nazi camps, there were actually several types of camps, and the concentration camp was just one of them.
Other types of camps included labor and hard labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and POW camps. As the war progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was used in the concentration camps as well.
Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were created after the Nazis came to power in order to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The first concentration camp in Germany was established near Dachau in March 1933.
By the beginning of World War II, 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists were in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In later years Nazi Germany on the territory of the European countries it occupied, it created a gigantic network of concentration camps, turned into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people.
Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic; total extermination of Jews, Gypsies. To do this, they were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers and other means of mass extermination of people, crematoria.
(Military Encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing. Moscow. In 8 volumes - 2004. ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)
There were even special death camps (destruction), where the liquidation of prisoners went on at a continuous and accelerated pace. These camps were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that in these camps, people doomed to death had to spend literally a few hours. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor was built, turning several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.
Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of their freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled all aspects of their lives. Violators of the order were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, deprivation of food and other forms of punishment. Prisoners were classified according to their place of birth and reasons for imprisonment.
Initially, prisoners in the camps were divided into four groups: political opponents of the regime, representatives of "inferior races", criminals and "unreliable elements". The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, was subject to unconditional physical extermination and was kept in separate barracks.
They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, sent to the most exhausting work. Among the political prisoners were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists and social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, members of various religious sects. Among the "unreliable" were homosexuals, alarmists, dissatisfied, etc.
The concentration camps also housed criminals who were used by the administration as overseers of political prisoners.
All prisoners of concentration camps were required to wear distinctive signs on their clothes, including serial number and a colored triangle ("winkel") on the left chest and right knee. (In Auschwitz, the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm.) All political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals - green, "unreliable" - black, homosexuals - pink, gypsies - brown.
In addition to the classification triangle, the Jews also wore yellow, as well as a six-pointed "Star of David". A Jew who violated racial laws ("racial defiler") had to wear a black border around a green or yellow triangle.
Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore a sewn letter "F", the Poles - "P", etc.). The letter "K" denoted a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter "A" denoted a violator of labor discipline (from German Arbeit - "work"). The feeble-minded wore the patch Blid - "fool". Prisoners who participated or were suspected of escaping were required to wear a red and white target on their chest and back.
The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where they were kept and destroyed in the most difficult conditions various methods and means people - 14,033 points.
Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.
The system of concentration camps in Germany was liquidated along with the defeat of Hitlerism, condemned in the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity.
Currently, Germany has adopted the division of places of forced detention of people during the Second World War into concentration camps and "other places of forced detention, under conditions equated to concentration camps," in which, as a rule, forced labor was used.
The list of concentration camps includes approximately 1,650 names of concentration camps of the international classification (main and their external teams).
On the territory of Belarus, 21 camps were approved as "other places", on the territory of Ukraine - 27 camps, on the territory of Lithuania - 9, Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).
On the territory of the Russian Federation, places of detention in the city of Roslavl (camp 130), the village of Uritsky (camp 142) and Gatchina are recognized as "other places".
List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)
1.Arbeitsdorf (Germany)
2. Auschwitz/Oswiecim-Birkenau (Poland)
3. Bergen-Belsen (Germany)
4. Buchenwald (Germany)
5. Warsaw (Poland)
6. Herzogenbusch (Netherlands)
7. Gross-Rosen (Germany)
8. Dachau (Germany)
9. Kauen/Kaunas (Lithuania)
10. Krakow-Plaschow (Poland)
11. Sachsenhausen (GDR‑FRG)
12. Lublin/Majdanek (Poland)
13. Mauthausen (Austria)
14. Mittelbau-Dora (Germany)
15. Natzweiler (France)
16. Neuengamme (Germany)
17. Niederhagen-Wewelsburg (Germany)
18. Ravensbrück (Germany)
19. Riga-Kaiserwald (Latvia)
20. Faifara/Vaivara (Estonia)
21. Flossenburg (Germany)
22. Stutthof (Poland).
Major Nazi concentration camps
Buchenwald is one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of the city of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external working teams. The largest ones: "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld) and "Ohrdruf" (in Thuringia), where the FAA projectiles were mounted. From 1937 to 1945 about 239 thousand people were prisoners of the camp. In total, 56 thousand prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured in Buchenwald.
The camp was liberated on April 10, 1945 by units of the 80th US division. In 1958, a memorial complex dedicated to him was opened in Buchenwald. heroes and victims of the concentration camp.
Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau), also known as German names Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau - a complex of German concentration camps, located in 1940-1945. in southern Poland, 60 km west of Krakow. The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz-1 (served as the administrative center of the entire complex), Auschwitz-2 (also known as Birkenau, "death camp"), Auschwitz-3 (a group of approximately 45 small camps created at factories and mines around general complex).
More than 4 million people died in Auschwitz, including more than 1.2 million Jews, 140 thousand Poles, 20 thousand Gypsies, 10 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. In 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Oswiecim-Brzezinka) was opened in Oswiecim.
Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, established in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had about 130 branches and external work teams located in Southern Germany. More than 250 thousand people from 24 countries were prisoners of Dachau; about 70 thousand people were tortured or killed (including about 12 thousand Soviet citizens).
In 1960, a monument to the dead was unveiled in Dachau.
Majdanek (Majdanek) - a Nazi concentration camp, was created in the suburbs of the Polish city of Lublin in 1941. It had branches in southeastern Poland: Budzyn (near Krasnik), Plaszow (near Krakow), Travniki (near Vepshem), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. in the camp, the Nazis destroyed about 1.5 million people of various nationalities. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on July 23, 1944. In 1947, a museum and research institute was opened in Majdanek.
Treblinka - Nazi concentration camps near the station. Treblinka in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland. In Treblinka I (1941-1944, the so-called labor camp), about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II (1942-1943, an extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the Nazis suppressed an uprising of prisoners, after which the camp was liquidated. The Treblinka I camp was liquidated in July 1944 when the Soviet troops approached.
In 1964, on the site of Treblinka II, a memorial symbolic cemetery for the victims of fascist terror was opened: 17,000 tombstones made of irregularly shaped stones, a monument-mausoleum.
Ravensbruck (Ravensbruck) - a concentration camp was founded near the city of Furstenberg in 1938 as an exclusively female camp, but later a small camp for men and another for girls were created nearby. In 1939-1945. 132,000 women and several hundred children from 23 European countries passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were destroyed. On April 30, 1945, the prisoners of Ravensbrück were liberated by the soldiers of the Soviet army.
Mauthausen (Mauthausen) - a concentration camp was established in July 1938, 4 km from the city of Mauthausen (Austria) as a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. Since March 1939 - an independent camp. In 1940, it was merged with the Gusen concentration camp and became known as Mauthausen-Gusen. It had about 50 branches scattered throughout the territory of the former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945) there were about 335 thousand people from 15 countries in it. Only according to the surviving records, more than 122 thousand people were killed in the camp, including more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops.
After the war, on the site of Mauthausen, 12 states, including the Soviet Union, created memorial museum, erected monuments to those who died in the camp.
Torture is often referred to as various minor troubles that happen to everyone in everyday life. This definition is awarded to the upbringing of naughty children, long standing in line, big washing, subsequent ironing and even the process of cooking. All this, of course, can be very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of exhaustion largely depends on the character and inclinations of the person), but still bears little resemblance to the most terrible torture in the history of mankind. The practice of interrogations "with partiality" and other violent acts against prisoners took place in almost all countries of the world. The time frame is also not defined, but since modern man psychologically closer are relatively recent events, then his attention is drawn to the methods and special equipment invented in the twentieth century, in particular in German concentration camps of the time. But there were both ancient Eastern and medieval tortures. The Nazis were also taught by their colleagues from the Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive bodies. So why was everything over people?
Meaning of the term
To begin with, when starting to study any issue or phenomenon, any researcher tries to define it. “To name it correctly is already half to understand” - says
So, torture is the deliberate infliction of suffering. At the same time, the nature of the torment does not matter, it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or sleep deprivation), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both "channels of influence".
But it is not only the fact of suffering that matters. Senseless torment is called torture. Torture differs from it in purposefulness. In other words, a person is whipped or hung on a rack not just like that, but in order to get some kind of result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to confess guilt, disclose hidden information, and sometimes simply punished for some misconduct or crime. The twentieth century added another item to the list of possible targets of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes carried out in order to study the reaction of the body to unbearable conditions in order to determine the limit of human capabilities. These experiments were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as inhumane and pseudoscientific, which did not prevent them from studying their results after the defeat of Nazi Germany by physiologists of the victorious countries.
Death or Judgment
The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that after receiving the result, even the most terrible tortures stopped. There was no point in continuing. The position of executioner-executor, as a rule, was occupied by a professional who knew about pain techniques and peculiarities of psychology, if not all, then a lot, and there was no point in wasting his efforts on senseless bullying. After the victim confessed to the crime, depending on the degree of civilization of society, she could expect immediate death or treatment, followed by trial. A legal execution after partial interrogations during the investigation was characteristic of the punitive justice of Germany in the initial Hitler era and of Stalin's "open trials" (the Shakhty case, the trial of the industrial party, the massacre of Trotskyists, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent costumes and shown to the public. Broken morally, people most often dutifully repeated everything that investigators forced them to confess. Torture and executions were put on stream. The veracity of the testimony did not matter. Both in Germany and in the USSR of the 1930s, the confession of the accused was considered the “queen of evidence” (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, USSR prosecutor). Severe torture was used to obtain it.
Deadly torture of the Inquisition
In few areas of its activity (except in the manufacture of murder weapons) humanity has succeeded so much. At the same time, it should be noted that in recent centuries there has even been some regression compared to ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the external attractiveness of the unfortunate victim most often became the reason. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who actually committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the unequivocal doom of the condemned. No matter how long the torment lasted, it ended only in the death of the condemned. As an execution weapon, they could use the Iron Maiden, the Copper Bull, a fire, or the sharp-edged pendulum described by Edgar Pom, methodically lowered inch by inch onto the chest of the victim. The terrible tortures of the Inquisition differed in duration and were accompanied by unthinkable moral torments. The preliminary investigation may have been carried out with the use of other ingenious mechanical devices to slowly split the bones of the fingers and limbs and rupture the muscular ligaments. The most famous tools are:
A metal expanding pear used for particularly sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;
- "Spanish boot";
A Spanish armchair with clamps and a brazier for the legs and buttocks;
An iron bra (pectoral), worn on the chest in a red-hot form;
- "crocodiles" and special tongs for crushing the male genitalia.
The executioners of the Inquisition also had other torture equipment, which it is better not to know about for people with a sensitive psyche.
East, Ancient and Modern
No matter how ingenious the European inventors of self-damaging technology may be, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind were still invented in the East. The Inquisition used metal tools, which sometimes had a very intricate design, while in Asia they preferred everything natural, natural (today these tools would probably be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything went into action. Eastern torture and executions had the same goals as European ones, but were technically longer and more sophisticated. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scaphism (from the Greek word "skafium" - a trough). The victim was immobilized with chains, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then smeared the whole body with a sweet composition, and lowered into the swamp. Blood-sucking insects slowly ate a person alive. The same was done approximately in the case of execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate man was to be burned in the scorching sun, his eyelids were cut off for greater torment. There were other types of torture that used elements of the biosystem. For example, bamboo is known to grow rapidly, up to a meter a day. It is enough just to hang the victim on short distance above the young shoots, and cut the ends of the stems under acute angle. The victim has time to change his mind, confess to everything and betray his accomplices. If he persists, he will slowly and painfully be pierced by plants. This choice was not always available, however.
Torture as a method of inquiry
And in and in more late period different kinds torture was used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary bodies state power, today called law enforcement. He was part of a set of methods of investigation and inquiry. From the second half of the XVI For centuries, different types of bodily influence were practiced in Russia, such as: whip, suspension, rack, cauterization with ticks and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe, too, was by no means distinguished by humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying, and even the fear of death did not guarantee the clarification of the truth. Moreover, in individual cases the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case of a miller, which is remembered by an inscription on the pediment of the French Palace of Justice. He took on someone else's guilt under torture, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.
Abolition of torture in different countries
IN late XVII century, a gradual departure from torture practice and the transition from it to other, more human methods of interrogation began. One of the results of the Enlightenment was the realization that not the cruelty of punishment, but its inevitability affects the reduction of criminal activity. In Prussia, torture has been abolished since 1754, this country was the first to put its legal proceedings at the service of humanism. Then the process went forward, different states followed suit in the following sequence:
| STATE | The Year of the Fatal Ban on Torture | Year of official prohibition of torture |
| Denmark | 1776 | 1787 |
| Austria | 1780 | 1789 |
| France | ||
| Netherlands | 1789 | 1789 |
| Sicilian kingdoms | 1789 | 1789 |
| Austrian Netherlands | 1794 | 1794 |
| Republic of Venice | 1800 | 1800 |
| Bavaria | 1806 | 1806 |
| papal states | 1815 | 1815 |
| Norway | 1819 | 1819 |
| Hanover | 1822 | 1822 |
| Portugal | 1826 | 1826 |
| Greece | 1827 | 1827 |
| Switzerland (*) | 1831-1854 | 1854 |
Note:
*) the laws of the various cantons of Switzerland have changed in different time the specified period.
Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.
Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774 by issuing a secret decree. By this, on the one hand, she continued to keep criminals in fear, but, on the other, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. This decision was legally formalized by Alexander I in 1801.
As for England, torture was banned there in 1772, but not all, but only some.
Illegal torture
The legislative ban did not at all mean their complete exclusion from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class, ready to break the law in the name of its triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and if exposed, they were threatened with legal prosecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was required to "work with people" more carefully, without leaving visible traces. In the 19th and 20th centuries, objects heavy but with a soft surface were used, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation was that most often these were codes of laws), rubber hoses, etc. attention and methods moral pressure. Some interrogators sometimes threatened severe punishments, lengthy sentences, and even reprisals against loved ones. It was also torture. The horror experienced by the defendants prompted them to make confessions, slander themselves and receive undeserved punishments, until the majority of police officers performed their duty honestly, studying the evidence and collecting evidence for a justified charge. Everything changed after totalitarian and dictatorial regimes came to power in some countries. It happened in the 20th century.
After the October Revolution of 1917 on the territory of the former Russian Empire erupted Civil War, in which both belligerents most often did not consider themselves bound legislative norms, which were obligatory under the king. Torture of prisoners of war in order to obtain information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. During the years of the Red Terror, most often executions took place, but bullying of representatives of the "class of exploiters", which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed "gentlemen", took on a mass character. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the NKVD used forbidden interrogation methods, depriving detainees of sleep, food, water, beating and mutilating them. This was done with the permission of the leadership, and sometimes on his direct instructions. The goal was rarely to find out the truth - the repressions were carried out for intimidation, and the task of the investigator was to obtain a signature on the protocol containing a confession in counter-revolutionary activities, as well as a slander of other citizens. As a rule, Stalin's "shoulder masters" did not use special torture devices, being content with available items, such as a paperweight (they were beaten on the head), or even an ordinary door, which pinched fingers and other protruding parts of the body.
In Nazi Germany
Torture in the concentration camps established after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously practiced in that they were a strange mixture of Eastern sophistication with European practicality. Initially, these "correctional institutions" were created for guilty Germans and representatives of national minorities declared hostile (Gypsies and Jews). Then came the turn of experiments that had the character of some scientific character, but in cruelty surpassed the most terrible torture in the history of mankind.
In attempts to create antidotes and vaccines, Nazi SS doctors administered lethal injections to prisoners, performed operations without anesthesia, including abdominal ones, froze prisoners, put them in heat, and did not let them sleep, eat and drink. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the "production" of ideal soldiers who are not afraid of frost, heat and mutilation, resistant to the effects of poisonous substances and pathogenic bacilli. The history of torture during the Second World War forever imprinted the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, became the personification of inhumanity. They also conducted experiments on lengthening limbs by mechanical stretching, strangling people in rarefied air, and other experiments that caused excruciating agony, sometimes lasting for long hours.
The torture of women by the Nazis concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them reproductive function. Various methods were studied - from simple ones (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated ones, which, if the Reich won, had the prospect of mass application (irradiation and exposure to chemicals).
It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when the concentration camps began to liberate Soviet and allied troops. Even the appearance of the prisoners spoke more eloquently than any evidence that in itself their detention in inhuman conditions was torture.
The current state of affairs
Nazi torture became the standard of cruelty. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity sighed with joy in the hope that this would never happen again. Unfortunately, although not on such a scale, but the torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain one of the terrible signs of the modern world. The developed countries, declaring their commitment to rights and freedoms, are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories in which compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners of secret prisons have been subjected to the influence of punitive organs for many years without any specific charges being brought against them. The methods used by the military personnel of many countries during local and major armed conflicts in relation to prisoners and those simply suspected of sympathizing with the enemy sometimes surpass cruelty and mockery of people in Nazi concentration camps. In the international investigation of such precedents, too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe the duality of standards, when the war crimes of one of the parties are completely or partially hushed up.
Will the era of a new Enlightenment come, when torture will finally be finally and irrevocably recognized as a disgrace to humanity and will be banned? So far there is little hope...
