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 Nazi Germany during 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, starvation, arsenic poisoning, injection of hazardous substances (most often to children), holding surgical operations without painkillers, pumping out blood (only in children), executions, torture, useless hard labor (carrying 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.
In Act Nuremberg Trials“about the extermination of children” the following numbers were given: during the excavation of only a 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 the half-kilometer barracks, where they had to wash themselves 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, dumped into cesspools or were 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 barrack called the "infirmary", German scientists tested new medications, pre-infecting or crippling 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 behind a terrible memory, 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 in the camp, infectious diseases. 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 concentration camp complex 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.
On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was liberated by Soviet troops. 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 dedicated to the memory of all those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany began to function on the territory of the former concentration camp.
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.
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The story contains scenes of torture, violence, sex. If this offends your tender soul - do not read, but go to x ... from here!
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The story takes place during the Great Patriotic War. A partisan detachment operates on the territory occupied by the Nazis. The Nazis know that there are many women among the partisans, but how to figure them out. Finally, they managed to catch the girl Katya when she was trying to draw a diagram of the location of German firing points ...
The captive girl was led into a small room at the school, where the Gestapo department was now located. A young officer interrogated Katya. In addition to him, there were several policemen and two vulgar-looking women in the room. Katya knew them, they served the Germans. I just didn't quite know how.
The officer instructed the guards holding the girl to let her go, which they did. He gestured for her to sit down. The girl sat down. The officer ordered one of the girls to bring tea. But Kate refused. The officer took a sip, then lit a cigarette. He offered Katya, but she refused. The officer started the conversation, and he spoke good Russian.
What is your name?
Katerina.
I know that you were engaged in intelligence in favor of the communists. This is true?
But you are so young, so beautiful. You probably fell into their service by accident?
Not! I am a member of the Komsomol and I want to become a communist, like my father, Hero Soviet Union who died at the front.
I regret being so young beautiful girl fell for the bait of the red-assed. At one time, my father served in the Russian army in the first world war. He commanded a company. He has many glorious victories and awards to his credit. But when the communists came to power, he was accused of being an enemy of the people for all his services to his homeland and shot. Starvation awaited my mother and me, as children of enemies of the people, but one of the Germans (who was in captivity and whom his father did not allow to be shot) helped us escape to Germany and even enter the service. I always wanted to be a hero like my father. And now I have come to save my homeland from the communists.
You are a fascist bitch, an invader, a murderer of innocent people...
We never kill innocent people. On the contrary, we return to them what the red-assed have taken from them. Yes, we recently hanged two women who set fire to houses where our soldiers temporarily settled. But the soldiers managed to run out, and the owners lost the last thing that the war had not taken away from them.
They fought against...
Your people!
Not true!
Okay, let's say we're invaders. You are now required to answer a few questions. After that, we will determine the punishment for you.
I will not answer your questions!
Okay, then name with whom you are organizing terrorist attacks against German soldiers.
Not true. We have been watching you.
Then why should I answer?
So that the innocent don't get hurt.
I won't name anyone...
Then I will invite the boys to untie your stubborn tongue.
You won't get anything!
And we'll see this. So far, there has not been a single case out of 15, and so that nothing has come of it ... Let the boys get to work!
The women of the Gulag are a special and endless topic for research. Zhezkazgan archives contain highly classified documents calling for justice and mercy.
The women were mocked by drunken camp leaders, but they resisted the violence, wrote complaints, to which, of course, no one reacted, as well as leaflets and posters. Many women were raped by the camp chiefs, and for every protest they either added a sentence or were shot. Shot right away.
So, for example, Antonina Nikolaevna KONSTANTINOVA was serving a term in the Prostonensky branch of the Karlag. On September 20, 1941, she was sentenced to death for a leaflet in which she wrote that she could not go to work due to lack of clothes. In addition, he is disabled and requires medical attention.
Pelageya Gavrilovna MYAGKOVA, who was born in 1887 in the village of Bogorodskoye, Moscow Region, and served time in Karazhal, Karaganda Region, was shot by a camp court for saying that they were forced to join collective farms.
Maria Dmitrievna TARATUKHINA was born in 1894 in the village of Uspensky Oryol region, shot in Karlag for saying that Soviet authority destroyed churches.
Estonian Zoya Andreevna KEOSK was given ten years for refusing to be "friends" with the head of the camp. Berlogina Natalya Fedorovna was given the same amount because she was beaten by the shooter of the escort squad, but she could not stand it and complained.
In the Zhezkazgan archives, thousands of such cases are kept under great secrecy, including leaflets of women written by them on pieces of sheets, footcloths, and on scraps of paper. They wrote on the walls of the barracks, on the fences, as evidenced by the materials of a thorough investigation into each such case.
A strong spirit of resistance to the regime emerged in the Kazakh camps. First, the prisoners of Ekibastuz went on a hunger strike together. In 1952 there were unrest in Karlag. The most active in the amount of 1200 people were sent by stage to Norilsk, but in the summer of 1953 they raised an uprising there, which lasted about 2 months.
In the autumn of 1952, a riot broke out in the Kengir camp department. It was attended by about 12 thousand people.
The riots began in one camp, and then spread to three others, including women's. The guards were confused, did not immediately use their weapons, the prisoners took advantage of their indecision, broke through the fences and united into one mass, covering all 4 OLPs, although the camp department was immediately surrounded by a triple ring of guards along the perimeter, machine guns were put up not only on the corner towers, but also in places probable breach of the main security fence.
Negotiations between the head of the Steplag and the leaders of the rebellion did not produce positive results. The camp did not go to work, the prisoners erected barricades, dug trenches and trenches, as at the front, preparing for a long defense. They made home-made knives, sabers, pikes, bombs, explosives for which were prepared in a chemical laboratory located in one of the camps - knowledge and experience came in handy former engineers and doctors of sciences.
The rebels held out for about a month, fortunately, food was on the territory of one of the OLPs, where the quartermaster supply base of the department was located. All this time there were negotiations.
Moscow was forced to send the entire top of the Gulag and the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Union to Steplag. The rebellion was very long and serious. The parties did not resolve the issues peacefully, then the authorities moved the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs raised from all over Kazakhstan and the Urals. A separate motorized rifle division named after Dzerzhinsky was transferred from near Moscow.
military offensive, where a division of personnel with four battle tanks was thrown against unarmed people. And so that the prisoners would not hear the roar of tank engines, when approaching the camp an hour before the operation and during it, several steam locomotives with freight cars ran on the railway line leading to the camp, clattered buffers, blew horns, created a cacophony of sounds throughout the district.
Tanks used live ammunition. They fired at trenches, barricades, ironed the barracks, crushed the resisters with caterpillars. The soldiers, when breaking through the defenses, aimed fire at the rebels. That was the order of the command, sanctioned by the prosecutor.
The assault began suddenly for the prisoners at dawn, and lasted about 4 hours. Everything was over with the sunrise. The camp was destroyed. Barracks, barricades and trenches burned down. Dozens of killed, crushed, burned prisoners were lying around, 400 people were seriously injured.
Those who surrendered were herded into barracks, disarmed, and then within a month, at the direction of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, they were taken to other Gulag camps, where they were all brought to justice.
The reason for the mass disobedience was the fact that the guards of the camp unit used weapons. It happened on 17 and 18 May when male prisoners tried to enter the women's area. This has already happened before, but the administration did not take decisive measures, especially since there were not even attempts to create a firing zone between the camps.
On the night of May 17, a group of prisoners destroyed the fence and entered the women's area. On the part of the administration, supervisory staff and security, an unsuccessful attempt was made to return the violators to their zone. This was done after warning shots. In the afternoon, the leadership, in agreement with the camp prosecutor, established fire zones between the women's camp and the household yard, as well as between the 2nd and 3rd men's camps, and announced to the prisoners a corresponding order, meaning the use of weapons in case of violation of established restrictions.
Despite this, on the night of May 18, 400 prisoners, despite the open fire on them, made breaches in the adobe walls and entered the women's zone. To restore order, a group of submachine gunners was introduced into the women's area. The prisoners threw stones at the soldiers. As a result, 13 people were killed and 43 wounded.
The uprising lasted 40 days. This was the only case in the history of the Gulag resistance when a government commission was created to find out the reasons. The decision on the fate of the rebels was made at the highest level...
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whatever life teaches us, but the heart believes in miracles...
In August 1954, A. V. Snegov, a recently imprisoned himself, became deputy head of the political department of the Gulag of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. At one time, a major party and economic leader, he was arrested and on July 13, 1941 was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
On March 6, 1954, the case was dismissed for lack of corpus delicti. In December 1955 senior researcher E. G. Shirvindt became the special bureau of the Gulag of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The special bureau was engaged in studying the experience of the ITL in the re-education of prisoners (in 1956 it was renamed the Research Department of the Gulag of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). In 1922-1930, E. G. Shirvindt headed the Main Directorate of Places of Confinement of the NKVD of the RSFSR, and until 1938 he became a senior assistant to the USSR prosecutor. On March 11, 1938, Shirvindt was arrested in the office of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Zakovsky, and on June 20, 1939 he was convicted by the Military Collegium Supreme Court USSR for 10 years in the ITL, which he served in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Then in 1948 Shirvindt was sent to a special settlement; in October 1954 he received his freedom, and on March 5, 1955 he was rehabilitated. Both Snegov and Shirvindt were now given special ranks of lieutenant colonels of the internal service. However, the old traditions were also strong. According to the practice adopted under Stalin, in 1954 "members of the families of the enemies of the people - Beria and his accomplices" were evicted and then shot. Merkulov's mother and wife got to Kazakhstan; wife, daughter, mother and sister of Kobulov; wife and son Goglidze; Melik's wife and mother; wife and son, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law of Dekanozov; Vladimirsky's wife; two cousins Beria with their husbands. AT Krasnoyarsk region- Beria's sister, his nephew and niece, and also cousin with his wife. In Sverdlovsk - the wife and son of Beria. In 1955, the same fate awaited the families of convicted enemies of the people - Abakumov and his accomplices. Only on March 15, 1958, the KGB and the USSR prosecutor's office decided to release Beria's relatives, Abakumov and their accomplices from further stay in exile in the settlement, who were allowed to live freely throughout the USSR, except for Moscow.
The review and rehabilitation process that began in 1953 also affected former employees NKVD - NKGB - MGB - MVD. So, on July 13, 1953, among large group Generals sentenced to various terms under Stalin were rehabilitated by Lieutenant General K. F. Telegin (until 1941 he served in the political agencies of the NKVD troops, and before his arrest in 1948 he worked in the Soviet military administration in Germany) and Major General S A. Klepov ( former boss OBB NKVD). On May 26, 1954, along with many, he was rehabilitated according to " the Leningrad case" Lieutenant General P. N. Kubatkin.
Among the former senior officials of the central apparatus after 1953, the following were repressed: former Deputy Minister of State Security M. D. Ryumin (on July 7, 1954, sentenced to capital punishment (CMN), shot on July 22); On September 28, 1954, the former were convicted: Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs S. S. Mamulov - for 15 years in prison, Beria's assistant in the Council of Ministers of the USSR P. A. Sharia - for 10 years in prison, Beria's personal secretary in the Council of Ministers of the USSR F. V. Mukhanov - for 6 years of exile and many others.
December 19, 1954 former minister State Security Officer V. S. Abakumov, head of the medical unit for the Department of Internal Affairs of the MGB A. G. Leonov; his deputies M. T. Likhachev and V. I. Komarov were sentenced to VMN and shot on the same day.
In the early spring of 1956, a riot of prisoners broke out in the Fedorovsky camp department of the Karaganda ITL. This separate camp site was then located on the outskirts of the city, it contained about one and a half thousand people, mainly political prisoners from among the Baltic nationalists.
All of them had very long sentences - 15 and 20 years, many were tried recently, after the end of the war, so they had to sit for a long time, people could not stand it and broke into a riot, having learned that under certain articles they do not fall under amnesty.
For a week the camp was surrounded by troops at gunpoint. The soldiers were thrown into the assault, however, they did not use weapons, they acted with a bayonet and butt, so dozens of the recalcitrant were crippled.
More than 100 dogs were brought from all over the Karlag to Fedorovka to subdue the prisoners. The finale for the prisoners - participants in the riot is the same: beating, investigation, trial, a new term.
The development of virgin lands did not develop without the use of the labor of prisoners. They were brought here by echelons under guard. Those were householders.
In Atbasar (Akmola region), a special department was created to manage prisoners and build new virgin state farms.
The prisoners were used, as a rule, in the construction of the central estates of the newly created state farms. They built residential buildings, mechanical repair shops, shops, schools, warehouses and other industrial and special purpose facilities.
In the summer of 1955, two photojournalists from regional newspapers arrived at the Shuisky state farm, took pictures of working prisoners at the construction site. new school and then in regional newspaper a photo appeared with the inscription: Komsomol volunteers from the city of Shuya are working hard at the construction site. Of course, there were no towers and barbed wire in the photo.
The summer of 1959 in the Karaganda steppe turned out to be extremely contrasting: the heat was up to 35 degrees, at night the temperature dropped to plus five. Mass colds. The leaders of the construction site, manager Vishenevsky and party organizer Korkin, dismissed complaints.
The main lever of the uprising was the eastern outskirts of Temirtau, where a tent settlement was set up. On the night of Sunday, August 2, a group of 100 people were returning from the dance floor. Having tasted the water from the cistern, the "Komsomol volunteers" in a rage overturned it: the water seemed rotten to them. Part of the angry crowd rushed to the doors of dining room No. 3, broke the lock and stole food. The rest robbed a mobile shop and a kiosk.
About 800 people moved to the Temirtau city police building, surrounded it, and began to break through. Policemen and unarmed cadets could not put up serious resistance. The attackers looted and burned the police car, broke into the building, cut off the connection, tried to break into the safe with weapons. On August 3, they again came to storm the city police building. Along the way, "volunteers" robbed food warehouses and shops. "Shock Komsomol construction" indulged in general drunkenness and revelry. Marauders cleaned out a brand new three-story department store, what they could not carry away was thrown into broken windows. Life in the city was paralyzed.
500 soldiers and officers arrived from Karaganda to suppress the uprising, led by the head of the Karlag, Major General Zapevalin. The opposing forces came face to face. The officers tried to call for prudence. In response, stones, bricks, bottles flew. And then the crowd began to shoot from machine guns.
The transfer of troops to Karaganda began. Airplanes roared day and night - they were carrying units of internal troops. They concentrated near Temirtau. Finally, the troops went on the attack. Prisoners were caught on trains, on the roads, but it was difficult to escape in the steppe. Voice of America reported that the death toll on both sides was about 300 people. The slain rebels are said to have been buried in a common grave dug by a bulldozer.
On August 4, a party activist of the Kazakhstan Magnitogorsk took place with the participation of L. I. Brezhnev and the first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan N. I. Belyaev. Here the first sad results of the riot were announced: 11 rioters were killed on the spot, five more died from wounds, 27 people were seriously injured. 28 soldiers and officers, police officers were delivered to medical institutions. Data on those killed among the military were not disclosed.
Mass terror under the conditions of a totalitarian system was the most severe not only in the history of the peoples of socialism, but of the entire civilized world. Terror was unleashed on unarmed compatriots in Peaceful time, without any objective reason for this, using the most vile means and techniques.
The Kazakh land has become the location of numerous Gulag camps - one of the most terrible inventions of totalitarianism.
Without knowing the whole truth about the past, it is impossible to confidently move forward, it is impossible to learn useful lessons. Only by restoring historical justice, paying deep respect to the memory of the innocent victims, can we restore human nobility, mercy, and morality. We must remember the monstrous tragedies of the past in order to prevent them in the future.
This name has become a symbol of the brutal attitude of the Nazis towards captured children.
During the three years of the existence of the camp (1941-1944) in Salaspils, according to various sources, about a hundred thousand people died, seven thousand of them were children.
The place from which they did not return
This camp was built by captured Jews in 1941 on the territory of the former Latvian training ground, 18 kilometers from Riga, near the village of the same name. According to the documents, Salaspils (German: Kurtenhof) was originally called an “educational labor camp”, and not a concentration camp.
An impressive area, fenced with barbed wire, was built up with hastily built wooden barracks. Each was designed for 200-300 people, but often in one room there were from 500 to 1000 people.
Initially, Jews deported from Germany to Latvia were doomed to death in the camp, but since 1942, "objectionable" from the most different countries: France, Germany, Austria, Soviet Union.
The Salaspils camp also gained notoriety because it was here that the Nazis took blood from innocent children for the needs of the army and mocked young prisoners in every possible way.
Full donors for the Reich
New prisoners were brought in regularly. They were forced to strip naked and sent to the so-called bathhouse. It was necessary to walk half a kilometer through the mud, and then wash in icy water. After that, the arrivals were placed in barracks, all things were taken away.
There were no names, surnames, titles - only sequence numbers. Many died almost immediately, while those who managed to survive after several days of imprisonment and torture were “sorted out”.
The children were separated from their parents. If the mothers did not give, the guards took the babies by force. There were terrible screams and screams. Many women went crazy; some of them were placed in the hospital, and some were shot on the spot.
Infants and children under the age of six were sent to a special barrack, where they died of starvation and disease. The Nazis experimented on older prisoners: they injected poisons, performed operations without anesthesia, took blood from children, which was transferred to hospitals for wounded soldiers of the German army. Many children became "full donors" - they took blood from them until they died.
Considering that the prisoners were practically not fed: a piece of bread and a gruel from vegetable waste, the number of child deaths was in the hundreds per day. The corpses, like garbage, were taken out in huge baskets and burned in crematorium ovens or dumped into disposal pits.
Covering up traces
In August 1944, before the arrival Soviet troops, in an attempt to destroy the traces of atrocities, the Nazis burned down many barracks. The surviving prisoners were taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, and German prisoners of war were kept on the territory of Salaspils until October 1946.
After the liberation of Riga from the Nazis, a commission to investigate Nazi atrocities found 652 children's corpses in the camp. Also found mass graves and the remains of people: ribs, hip bones, teeth.
One of the most eerie photographs that clearly illustrates the events of that time is the “Salaspils Madonna”, the corpse of a woman who hugs a dead baby. It was found that they were buried alive.
The truth pricks the eyes
Only in 1967, the Salaspils memorial complex was erected on the site of the camp, which still exists today. Many famous Russian and Latvian sculptors and architects worked on the ensemble, including Ernst Unknown. The road to Salaspils starts with a massive concrete slab, the inscription on which reads: "The earth groans behind these walls."
Further, on a small field, figures-symbols with "speaking" names rise: "Unbroken", "Humiliated", "Oath", "Mother". On either side of the road are barracks with iron bars where people bring flowers, children's toys and sweets, and on the black marble wall, serifs measure the days spent by the innocent in the "death camp".
To date, some Latvian historians blasphemously call the Salaspils camp "educational and labor" and "socially useful", refusing to recognize the atrocities that were committed near Riga during the Second World War.
In 2015, an exhibition dedicated to the victims of Salaspils was banned in Latvia. Officials considered that such an event would harm the image of the country. As a result, the exposition “Stolen childhood. Victims of the Holocaust through the eyes of young Nazi prisoners Salaspils concentration camp» was held in Russian center science and culture in Paris.
In 2017, there was also a scandal at the press conference “Salaspils camp, history and memory”. One of the speakers tried to present his original point of view on historical events, but received a strong rebuff from the participants. “It hurts to hear how you are trying to forget about the past today. We cannot allow such terrible events to happen again. God forbid you experience something like this,” one of the women who managed to survive in Salaspils addressed the speaker.
Next, you will find the history of the German Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was built specifically for female prisoners who worked here for the benefit of the Third Reich, and liberated on April 30, 1945 by the Red Army.
Guarded Detention Camp for Women" Ravensbrück was built in 1939 by prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
The camp consisted of several parts, one of which had a small men's section. The camp was built for the forced labor of prisoners. The products of the CC Gesellschaft für Textil und Lederverwertung mbH (“Society for Textile and Leather Production”), the German electrical engineering concern Siemens & Halske AG and
some others.
Initially, German women were sent to the camp, "dishonoring the nation": "criminals", women of "antisocial behavior" and members of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect. Later, gypsies and Poles began to be sent here. In March 1942, most of them were sent to build the Auschwitz death camp, and in October 1942, the “liberation of the camp from the Jews” began: more than 600 prisoners,
including 522 Jews, were deported to Auschwitz. In February 1943, the first Soviet prisoners of war appeared here. By December 1943, there were 15,100 female prisoners in Ravensbrück and in the outer camps.
Blanca Rothschild, prisoner of the camp: “In Ravensbrück, hell awaited us. All of our clothes were taken from us. Made us get through medical examination, and it was ... even the word "shameful" does not fit here, because there was nothing human in the people who conducted it. They were worse than animals. Many of us were very young girls who had never been examined by a gynecologist, and they were looking for, God knows, whether diamonds, or something else. We were forced to go through this. I have never seen such a chair as there in my life. Every minute there was a humiliation."
All belongings were taken away from those who arrived in the camp and they were given a striped dress, slippers and a stripe, colored depending on the category to which the prisoner belonged: red for political prisoners and members of the resistance movement, yellow for Jews, green for criminals , purple - for Jehovah's Witnesses, black - for gypsies, prostitutes, lesbians and thieves; in the center of the triangle was a letter indicating nationality.
Stella Kugelman, a camp prisoner who ended up in Ravensbrück at the age of 5: “I was in the camp under the care of other women who fed and hid me, I called them all mothers. Sometimes they showed me mine real mother in the window of the barracks, where I was not allowed to go. I was a child and I thought that this was normal, that it should be so. Once my next camp mother, a German, anti-fascist Klara, told me: “Stella, your mother was burned, she is no more.” To my surprise, I did not react, but then I always knew and remembered this - that my mother was burned. I realized this nightmare much later, five years later, already in an orphanage near Bryansk, on the New Year tree. I was sitting near the stove, watching the firewood burning, and suddenly I realized what exactly the Nazis had done to my mother. I remember that I screamed, told the teacher about this - we cried with her all night.
There were many children in the camp. Many were born there, but they were taken from their mothers. According to the records, between September 1944 and April 1945, 560 children were born in the camp (23 women had premature births, 20 children were stillborn, 5 abortions were performed). About a hundred of them survived. Most of the children died of exhaustion.
The prisoners lived according to a strict routine. Waking up at 4 am. Later - breakfast, consisting of half a glass of cold coffee without bread. Then - roll call, which lasted 2 - 3 hours, regardless of the weather. Moreover, checks were deliberately extended in winter. After that, the prisoners went to work, which lasted 12 to 14 hours with breaks for lunch, which consisted of 0.5 liters of water with rutabagas or potato peels. After work - a new roll call, at the end of which they gave out coffee and 200 gr. of bread
Memoirs of a camp prisoner Nina Kharlamova: “I killed chief physician Percy Treite, an executioner with a medical degree. How many of his patients he killed by ordering his SS sisters to inject poison into their veins! How many tuberculosis patients sent to gas chamber! How many he assigned to the “black transport”, which was also called “himmeltransport”, that is, “transport to heaven”. He was called so because he went to the camps, where there were crematoriums, in which all those who arrived with such transport were burned.
In 1944, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler personally visited Ravensbrück. He gave the order to destroy all the sick, unable to move independently. This was done by the chief camp doctor Percy Treite, known for his cruelty. According to the recollections of the prisoners, he killed everyone indiscriminately, he himself daily selected batches of prisoners for burning and liked to perform operations without anesthesia.
Between 50,000 and 92,000 people died there during the camp's operation. Most of the prisoners died from malnutrition, exhausting work, poor sanitary conditions, bullying guards. Twice a month, a selection of prisoners to be destroyed was carried out. Up to 50 people were killed in the camp every day. Medical experiments were constantly carried out: the prisoners were injected with staphylococci, causative agents of gas gangrene and tetanus, as well as several types of bacteria at the same time, women were specially mutilated, healthy limbs were amputated, and then they were “planted” with other prisoners, sterilizations were carried out. In the fall of 1943, a crematorium was built for the concentration camp.
On April 27, 1945, the evacuation of the camp began. More than 20 thousand people were driven away by the Germans in the western direction. 3.5 thousand people remained in the camp. On April 28, the march reached the commune of Retzow, the outer camp of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The next and last stop was the outer camp of Ravensbrück Malchow. Here the SS guards locked the gates of the camp and the barracks and abandoned the prisoners. The next day, Malchow was liberated by the Red Army.
In the photo: liberated Ravensbrück prisoner Henrietta Wuth.
On April 30, 1945, on the day of the liberation of the camp, the prisoners of Ravensbrück took an oath: “In the name of the many thousands of victims of the tortured, in the name of mothers and sisters turned into ashes, in the name of all the victims of fascism, we swear! Never forget the black night of Ravensbrück. Tell children about everything. Strengthen friendship, peace and unity until the end of your days. Destroy fascism. This is the motto and the result of the struggle. Already on May 3, 1945, the camp began to work as a military hospital, in which the best Soviet doctors from the nearest military locations worked. The Book of Memory of those killed in Ravensbrück was created many years later, since just before the liberation, the Germans destroyed almost all the documents.
