March 29th, 2015 09:49 am

I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the documents carefully selected in the materials about the "Atrocities of the Liberators" .

We have no moral right to honor an army that has completely dishonored itself with total rape of children in front of their parents, massacres and torture of innocent civilians, robbery and legalized looting.

Atrocities against the population (rape and torture, followed by the murder of civilians) "liberators" began to engage in even in the Crimea. Thus, the commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front, General of the Army Petrov, in order No. 074 of June 8, 1944, condemned the “outrageous antics” of the soldiers of his front on the Soviet territory of Crimea, “even reaching armed robberies and killing local residents.”

In Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, the atrocities of the "liberators" increased, even more - in the Baltic countries, in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia, where acts of violence against the local population assumed horrific proportions. But complete terror came on the territory of Poland. Mass rapes of Polish women and girls began there, and the leadership of the troops, which had a negative attitude towards the Poles, turned a blind eye to this.

Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to explain these atrocities as "revenge on the Germans for the occupation." The Poles did not participate in this occupation, but they were raped almost to the same extent as the Germans. Therefore, the explanation must be sought elsewhere.

Sexual crimes (and not only in Germany, but even earlier in Poland) stained themselves not only soldiers and officers, but also the highest ranks of the Soviet army - the generals. Many Soviet "liberator" generals raped local girls. A typical example: Major General Berestov, commander of the 331st Infantry Division, on February 2, 1945, in Petershagen near Preussish Eilai, with one of his officers accompanying him, raped the daughter of a local peasant woman whom he forced to serve him, as well as a Polish girl (p. 349 in the cited book).

In general, almost the entire Soviet generals in East Germany were involved in sexual crimes in a particularly serious form: these are rape of children, rape with violence and mutilation (cutting off breasts, torturing female genital organs with all sorts of objects, gouging eyes, cutting off the tongue, nailing nails, etc.) - and the subsequent killing of the victims. Jochaim Hoffman, on the basis of documents, names the names of the main persons guilty or involved in such crimes: these are Marshal Zhukov, generals: Telegin, Kazakov, Rudenko, Malinin, Chernyakhovsky, Khokhlov, Razbiitsev, Glagolev, Karpenkov, Lakhtarin, Ryapasov, Andreev, Yastrebov , Tymchik, Okorokov, Berestov, Papchenko, Zaretsky, etc.

All of them either personally raped Germans and Poles, or participated in this, allowing and encouraging this with their instructions to the troops and covering these sexual crimes, which is a criminal offense and according to the Criminal Code of the USSR, a firing squad.

According to the most minimal estimates of the current studies of the FRG, in the winter of 1944 and in the spring of 1945, Soviet soldiers and officers killed in the territory they occupied (usually with the rape of women and children, with torture) 120,000 civilians (these were not killed during the fighting!). Another 200,000 innocent civilians perished in Soviet camps, more than 250,000 died in the course of deportation to Soviet labor slavery that began on February 3, 1945. Plus, infinitely many died from the occupational policy of "blockade - as revenge for the blockade of Leningrad" (in Koenigsberg alone, 90,000 people died of starvation and inhuman conditions of the "artificial blockade" during the occupation for six months).

Let me remind you that from October 1944, Stalin allowed military personnel to send parcels with trophies home (generals - 16 kg, officers - 10 kg, sergeants and privates - 5 kg). As letters from the front prove, this was taken in such a way that "looting is unequivocally authorized by the top leadership."

At the same time, the leadership allowed the soldiers to rape all women. So, the commander of the 153rd Infantry Division, Eliseev, announced to the troops in early October 1944:

“We are going to East Prussia. Red Army soldiers and officers are granted the following rights: 1) Destroy any German. 2) Seizure of property. 3) Rape of women. 4) Robbery. 5) ROA soldiers are not taken prisoner. You don't have to waste any ammo on them. They are beaten to death or trampled underfoot.” (BA-MA, RH 2/2684, 11/18/1944)

The main marauder in the Soviet army was Marshal G.K. Zhukov, who accepted the surrender of the German Wehrmacht. When he fell out of favor with Stalin and was transferred to the post of commander of the Odessa military district, Deputy Minister of Defense Bulganin, in a letter to Stalin in August 1946, reported that the customs authorities had detained 7 railway cars "with a total of 85 boxes of Albin furniture May" from Germany", which were to be transported to Odessa for Zhukov's personal needs. In another report to Stalin dated January 1948, Colonel-General of State Security Abakumov said that during a "secret search" at Zhukov's Moscow apartment and at his dacha, a large amount of stolen property was found. Specifically, among other things, they listed: 24 pieces of gold watches, 15 gold necklaces with pendants, gold rings and other jewelry, 4000 m of woolen and silk fabrics, more than 300 sable, fox and astrakhan skins, 44 valuable carpets and tapestries, partly from Potsdam and others locks, 55 expensive paintings, as well as boxes of porcelain, 2 boxes of silverware and 20 hunting rifles.

On January 12, 1948, in a letter to Politburo member Zhdanov, Zhukov acknowledged this looting, but for some reason forgot to write about it in his memoirs Memoirs and Reflections.

Sometimes the sadism of the "liberators" seems generally difficult to understand. Here, for example, is just one of the episodes listed below. As soon as on October 26, 1944, Soviet units invaded German territory, they began to commit incomprehensible atrocities there. Soldiers and officers of the 93rd Rifle Corps of the 43rd Army of the 1st Baltic Front in one estate nailed 5 children by their tongues to a large table and left them in this position to die. What for? Which of the "liberators" came up with such a sadistic execution of children? And were these "liberators" generally mentally normal, and not sadistic psychos?

An excerpt from Joachim Hoffmann's book "Stalin's War of Annihilation" (M., AST, 2006, pp. 321-347).

Incited by Soviet military propaganda and command structures of the Red Army, the soldiers of the 16th Guards Rifle Division of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps of the 11th Guards Army in the last decade of October 1944 began to massacre the peasant population in the ledge south of Gumbinnen. In this place, the Germans, having recaptured it, were able, as an exception, to conduct more detailed investigations. In Nemmersdorf alone, at least 72 men, women and children were killed, women and even girls were raped before that, several women were nailed to the barn gate. Not far from there, a large number of Germans and French prisoners of war, who were still in German captivity, fell at the hands of Soviet assassins. Everywhere in the surrounding settlements, the bodies of brutally murdered residents were found - for example, in Banfeld, the Teichhof estate, Alt Wusterwitz (there were also found in the barn the remains of several burned alive) and in other places. “The corpses of civilians were lying in masses by the road and in the courtyards of houses ... - said Ober-Lieutenant Dr. Amberger, - in particular, I saw many women who ... were raped and then killed with shots in the back of the head, and partially lay next to also killed children.

About his observations in Shillmeishen near Heidekrug in the Memel region, where on October 26, 1944 units of the 93rd Rifle Corps of the 43rd Army of the 1st Baltic Front invaded, the gunner Erich Cherkus from the 121st Artillery Regiment reported at his military judicial interrogation the following: “Near the barn, I found my father, lying face to the ground with a bullet hole in the back of his head ... In one room, a man and a woman were lying, their hands were tied behind their backs and both were tied to each other with one cord ... In another estate, we saw 5 children with tongues nailed to a large table. Despite intense searches, I did not find a trace of my mother ... On the way, we saw 5 girls tied with one cord, their clothes were almost completely removed, their backs were severely torn. It looked like the girls were being dragged quite far along the ground. In addition, we saw several completely crushed carts by the road.

It is impossible to strive to display all the terrible details, or, even more so, to present a complete picture of what happened. So let a number of selected examples give an idea of ​​the actions of the Red Army in the eastern provinces and after the resumption of the offensive in January 1945. The Federal Archives, in its report on "expulsion and crimes during exile" dated May 28, 1974, published accurate data from the so-called summary sheets about atrocities in two selected districts, namely in the East Prussian border district of Johannisburg and in the Silesian border district of Oppeln [now Opole, Poland]. According to these official investigations, in the district of Johannisburg, in the sector of the 50th Army of the 2nd Belorussian Front, along with countless other murders, there was a murder on January 24, 1945 of 120 (according to other sources - 97) civilians, as well as several German soldiers and French prisoners of war from a column of refugees along the Nickelsberg-Herzogdorf road south of Arys [now Orzysz, Poland]. On the Stollendorf-Arys road, 32 refugees were shot, and on the Arys-Driegelsdorf road near Shlagakrug on February 1, on the orders of a Soviet officer, about 50 people, mostly children and youth, were torn from their parents and relatives in refugee wagons. Near Gross Rosen (Gross Rozensko) the Soviets at the end of January 1945 burned about 30 people alive in a field shed. One witness saw how "one corpse after another" lay near the road to Arys. In Arys itself, "a large number of executions" were carried out, apparently at the assembly point, and in the torture cellar of the NKVD - "tortures of the most cruel kind" up to death.

In the Silesian district of Oppeln, servicemen of the 32nd and 34th Guards Rifle Corps of the 5th Guards Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front killed at least 1,264 German civilians by the end of January 1945. Russian Ostarbeiters, for the most part forcibly deported to work in Germany, and Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity also partially escaped their fate. In Oppeln, they were rounded up in a public place and, after a brief propaganda speech, they were killed. The same is attested about the Kruppamühle Ostarbeiter camp near the Malapane [Mala Panev] river in Upper Silesia. On January 20, 1945, after the Soviet tanks reached the camp, several hundred Russian men, women and children were called here and, as "traitors" and "accomplices of the fascists," they shot from machine guns or ground them with tank tracks. In Gottesdorf, on January 23, Soviet soldiers shot about 270 residents, including small children and 20-40 members of the Marian Brotherhood. In Karlsruhe [now Pokuj, Poland], 110 residents were shot, including residents of the Anninsky orphanage, in Kupp 60-70 residents, among them also residents of a nursing home and a priest who wanted to protect women from rape, etc. in other places . But Johannisburg and Oppeln were only two of the many districts in the eastern provinces of the German Reich occupied by the Red Army in 1945.

On the basis of reports from the field command services, the department of the "foreign armies of the East" of the General Staff of the Ground Forces compiled several lists "on violations of international law and atrocities committed by the Red Army in the occupied German territories", which, although they also do not give a general picture, but on the fresh traces of events document many Soviet atrocities with a certain degree of reliability. Thus, Army Group A reported on January 20, 1945, that all the inhabitants of the newly occupied night settlements of Reichtal [Rychtal] and Glaushe near Namslau [now Namysłow, Poland] were shot by Soviet soldiers of the 9th mechanized corps of the 3rd guards tank army. January 22, 1945, according to the report of the Army Group "Center", near Grünhain in the district of Wehlau [now. Znamensk, Russia] the tanks of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps "overtook, fired upon with tank shells and machine-gun bursts" a column of refugees 4 kilometers long, "mostly women and children", and "the rest were laid down by submachine gunners." A similar thing happened on the same day not far from there, near Gertlauken, where 50 people from the refugee column were killed by Soviet soldiers, partially shot in the back of the head.

In West Prussia, in an unspecified locality, at the end of January, a long convoy of refugees was also overtaken by advanced Soviet tank detachments. According to several female survivors, tankers (of the 5th Guards Tank Army) doused the horses and wagons with gasoline and set them on fire: torches. After that, the Bolsheviks opened fire. Only a few managed to escape." Similarly, in Plonen at the end of January 1945, the tanks of the 5th Guards Tank Army attacked and shot down a refugee column. All women from 13 to 60 years old from this settlement, located near Elbing [now Elblag, Poland], were continuously raped by the Red Army "in the most cruel way." German soldiers from a tank reconnaissance found one woman with the lower part of her stomach torn open with a bayonet, and another young woman on wooden planks with a crushed face. Destroyed and plundered carts of refugees on both sides of the road, the corpses of passengers lying nearby in a roadside ditch, were also found in Maislatine near Elbing.

The deliberate destruction by caterpillars or shelling of refugee convoys, which stretched along the roads everywhere and are well recognized as such, was reported everywhere from the eastern provinces, for example, from the area of ​​\u200b\u200boperations of the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army. In the district of Waldrode, on January 18 and 19, 1945, in several places, such columns were stopped, attacked and partially destroyed, "falling women and children were shot or crushed" or, as another report says, "most of the women and children were killed." Soviet tanks fired at the German hospital transport from guns and machine guns near Waldrode, as a result of which "out of 1,000 wounded, only 80 were saved." In addition, there are reports of Soviet tank attacks on refugee columns from Schauerkirch, Gombin, where “ca. 800 women and children”, from Dietfurt-Fihlen and other settlements. Several such convoys were overtaken on January 19, 1945, and near Brest, south of Thorn [now Brzesc-Kujawski and Torun, Poland, respectively], in what was then Warthegau, the passengers, mostly women and children, were shot. According to a report dated February 1, 1945, in this area within three days "out of about 8,000 people, approximately 4,500 women and children were killed, the rest were completely dispersed, it can be assumed that most of them were destroyed in a similar way."

SILESIAN

Near the border of the Reich, west of Velun, Soviet soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front doused the wagons of the refugees with gasoline and burned them along with the passengers. Countless bodies of German men, women and children lay on the roads, partly in a mutilated state - with their throats cut, their tongues cut off, their stomachs ripped open. Also west of Wieluni, 25 employees (frontline workers) of the Organization Todt were shot by tank crews of the 3rd Guards Tank Army. All men were shot in Heinersdorf, women were raped by Soviet soldiers, and near Kunzendorf 25-30 Volkssturm men were shot in the back of the head. In the same way, in Glausch near Namslau, 18 people, "including men from the Volkssturm and nurses," died at the hands of assassins, soldiers of the 59th Army. In Beatengof near Olau [now Olawa, Poland], after re-occupying it, all the men were found dead with shots to the back of the head. The criminals were servicemen of the 5th Guards Army.

In Grünberg [now Zielona Gora, Poland], 8 families were killed by soldiers of the 9th Guards Tank Corps. The scene of terrible crimes was the Tannenfeld estate near Grottkau [now Grodkow, Poland]. There, the Red Army soldiers from the 229th Infantry Division raped two girls, and then killed them, abused them. One man's eyes were gouged out, his tongue was cut out. The same thing happened to a 43-year-old Polish woman who was then tortured to death.

In Alt-Grottkau, servicemen of the same division killed 14 prisoners of war, cut off their heads, gouged out their eyes and crushed them with tanks. The Red Army soldiers of the same rifle division were also responsible for the atrocities in the Schwarzengrund near Grottkau. They raped women, including monastic sisters, shot the peasant Kalert, cut open his wife's stomach, cut off her hands, shot the peasant Christoph and his son, and also a young girl. At the Eisdorf estate near Merzdorf, Soviet soldiers from the 5th Guards Army gouged out the eyes of an elderly man and an elderly woman, apparently a married couple, and cut off their noses and fingers. Nearby, 11 wounded Luftwaffe soldiers were found brutally murdered. Similarly, in Gutherstadt near Glogau [now Pyugow, Poland], 21 German prisoners of war were found killed by Red Army soldiers from the 4th Panzer Army. In the village of Heslicht near Strygau [now Strzegom, Poland], all the women were "raped one by one" by Red Army soldiers from the 9th Mechanized Corps. Maria Heinke found her husband, still showing faint signs of life, dying in a Soviet guardhouse. A medical examination revealed that his eyes had been gouged out, his tongue had been cut off, his arm had been broken several times and his skull had been crushed.

Soldiers of the 7th Guards Tank Corps in Ossig near Striegau raped women, killed 6-7 girls, shot 12 peasants and committed similar heinous crimes in Hertwisswaldau near Jauer [now Jawor, Poland]. In Liegnitz [now Legnica, Poland], the bodies of numerous civilians were found shot by Soviet soldiers from the 6th Army. In the town of Kostenblut near Neumarkt [now Sroda-Slianska, Poland], captured by units of the 7th Guards Tank Corps, women and girls were raped, including the mother of 8 children who was being demolished. Her brother, who tried to intercede for her, was shot dead. All foreign prisoners of war were shot, as well as 6 men and 3 women. Mass rape did not escape the sisters from the Catholic hospital.

Pilgramsdorf near Goldberg [now Zlotoria, Poland] was the scene of numerous murders, rapes and arsons by the soldiers of the 23rd Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade. In Beralsdorf, a suburb of Lauban [now Luban, Poland], 39 still remaining women were dishonored "in the meanest way" by Soviet soldiers from the 7th Guards Tank Corps, one woman was shot in the lower jaw, she was locked in a cellar and a few days later When she was seriously ill with a fever, three Red Army soldiers, one after another, "raped her, at gunpoint, in the most cruel way."

BRANDENBURG (mainly Neumark and Sternberger Land)

A general idea of ​​the treatment of the population in the eastern parts of the province of Brandenburg is given by the report of Russian agents Danilov and Chirshin, sent by the 103rd front intelligence department from February 24 to March 1, 1945. According to him, all Germans aged 12 years and older were mercilessly used on construction of fortifications, the unused part of the population was sent to the East, and the elderly were doomed to starvation. In Zorau [now Zary, Poland], Danilov and Chirshin saw "a mass of bodies of women and men ... killed (stabbed to death) and shot (shots in the back of the head and in the heart), lying in the streets, in yards and in houses." According to one Soviet officer, who himself was outraged by the extent of the terror, "all women and girls, regardless of age, were mercilessly raped." And in Skampe near Züllichau (now Skompe and Sulechow, Poland, respectively), Soviet soldiers from the 33rd Army unleashed a "terrible bloody terror." In almost all houses, "the strangled bodies of women, children and the elderly" were lying. Renchen [Benchen, now Zbonszyn, Poland], the corpses of a man and a woman were found. The woman's stomach was torn open, the fetus was torn out, and the hole in the stomach was filled with sewage and straw. Nearby were the corpses of three Volkssturm men hanged.

In Kai near Züllichau, servicemen of the same army shot the wounded, as well as women and children from one convoy, with shots in the back of the head. The city of Neu-Benchen [now Zbonszyk, Poland] was plundered by the Red Army and then deliberately set on fire. On the road Shvibus [now Swiebodzin, Poland] - Frankfurt, the Red Army soldiers from the 69th Army shot civilians, including women and children, so that the corpses lay "on top of each other." At Alt-Drevitz near Kalentsig, soldiers of the 1st Guards Tank Army shot a major of the medical service, a major and medical orderlies and at the same time opened fire on American prisoners of war who were being returned from the Alt-Drevitz base camp, wounding 20-30 of them and killing an unknown number . Near the road in front of Gross-Blumberg (on the Oder), in groups of 5-10, lay the bodies of about 40 German soldiers, who had been shot in the head or in the back of the head and then robbed. In Reppen, all the men from the passing refugee convoy were shot by Soviet soldiers from the 19th Army, and the women were raped. In Gassen near Sommerfeld [now respectively Yasen and Lubsko, Poland], the tanks of the 6th Guards Mechanized Corps opened indiscriminate fire on civilians. In Massina near Landsberg [now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland], soldiers of the 5th shock army shot an unknown number of residents, raped women and minors, and took out looted property. In an unknown settlement near Landsberg, servicemen of the 331st Rifle Division shot 8 male civilians after robbing them.

When parts of the Soviet 11th Tank Corps and the 4th Guards Rifle Corps suddenly broke into the city of Lebus, located west of the Oder, in early February, the robbery of the inhabitants immediately began, on the occasion of which a certain number of civilians were shot dead. The Red Army soldiers raped women and girls, two of whom were beaten with rifle butts. The unexpected breakthrough of the Soviet troops to the Oder and in places beyond the Oder became a nightmare for countless residents and German soldiers. In Gross-Neuendorf (on the Oder), 10 German prisoners of war were locked in a barn and killed with machine guns by Soviet soldiers (apparently, the 1st Guards Tank Army). In Reithwein and Trettin, servicemen (probably of the 8th Guards Army) shot down all German soldiers, police officers and other "fascists", as well as entire families in whose houses the Wehrmacht soldiers might have found refuge. In Wiesenau near Frankfurt, two women aged 65 and 55 were found dying after many hours of rape. In Tseden [now Tsedynia, Poland], a Soviet woman in an officer's uniform from the 5th Guards Tank Corps shot a merchant couple. And in Genshmar, Soviet soldiers killed a landowner, an estate manager and three workers.

On February 9, 1945, the strike group of the Vlasov army, led by Colonel Sakharov of the ROA, with the support of the Germans, again occupied the settlements of Neulevin and Kerstenbruch located in the bend of the Oder. According to a German report dated March 15, 1945, the population of both points "was subjected to the most terrible abuses" and was after that "under the terrible impression of the bloody Soviet terror." In Neulevin, a burgomaster was found shot dead, as well as a Wehrmacht soldier who was on vacation. In one shed lay the corpses of three desecrated and murdered women, two of whom had their legs tied. One German woman lay shot dead at the door of her house. An elderly couple was strangled. As criminals, as in the nearby village of Neubarnim, military personnel of the 9th Guards Tank Corps were identified. In Neubarnim, 19 inhabitants were found dead. The body of the innkeeper was mutilated, her legs tied with wire. Here, as in other settlements, women and girls were desecrated, and in Kerstenbruch even a 71-year-old woman with amputated legs was defiled. The picture of the violent crimes of the Soviet troops in these villages on the bend of the Oder, as elsewhere in the German eastern territories, is supplemented by looting and deliberate destruction.

POMERANIA

Only relatively few reports were received from Pomerania for February 1945, since the fighting for a breakthrough here did not really begin until the end of the month. But the report of the Georgian lieutenant Berakashvili, who, being seconded by the Georgian communications headquarters to the cadet school in Posen [now Poznan, Poland], there, together with other officers of volunteer units, participated in the defense of the fortress and made his way in the direction of Stettin [now Szczecin, Poland], nevertheless conveys some impressions of the area southeast of Stettin. ... The roads were often bordered by soldiers and civilians killed by a shot in the back of the head, "always half-dressed and, in any case, without boots." Lieutenant Berakashvili witnessed the brutal rape of a peasant's wife in the presence of screaming children near Schwarzenberg and found traces of looting and destruction everywhere. The city of Ban [now Banya, Poland] was “terribly destroyed”, on its streets there were “many corpses of civilians”, which, as the Red Army soldiers explained, were killed by them “in the form of retribution”.

The situation in the settlements around Pyritz [now Pyrzyce, Poland] fully confirmed these observations. In Billerbeck, the owner of the estate, as well as old and sick people, were shot, women and girls from the age of 10 were raped, apartments were robbed, and the remaining residents were stolen. On the Brederlov estate, the Red Army soldiers desecrated women and girls, one of whom was then shot, like the wife of a fugitive Wehrmacht vacationer. In Köselitz, the district chief, a peasant, a lieutenant on vacation, were killed, in Eichelshagen - the head of the grassroots level of the NSDAP and a peasant family of 6 people. The perpetrators in all cases were servicemen of the 61st Army. A similar thing happened in the villages around Greifenhagen [now Gryfino, Poland], south of Stettin. So, in Edersdorf, servicemen of the 2nd Guards Tank Army shot 10 evacuated women and a 15-year-old boy, finished off the still living victims with bayonets and pistol shots, and also “cut out” entire families with small children.

In Rorsdorf, Soviet soldiers shot many residents, including a wounded military vacationer. Women and girls were desecrated and then partly killed as well. In Gross-Zilber near Kallis, Red Army soldiers from the 7th Guards Cavalry Corps raped a young woman with a broomstick, cut off her left breast and crushed her skull. In Preisisch Friedland, Soviet soldiers from the 52nd Guards Rifle Division shot 8 men and 2 women, raped 34 women and girls. The commander of the German tank engineer battalion of the 7th Panzer Division announced the terrible event. At the end of February 1945, Soviet officers from the 1st (or 160th) rifle division north of Konitz drove several children aged 10-12 years old for reconnaissance into a minefield. German soldiers heard the "plaintive cries" of children, seriously wounded by exploding mines, "weakly bleeding from torn bodies."

EAST PRUSSIA

And in East Prussia, for which heavy battles were fought, in February 1945, atrocities continued with unrelenting force ... Thus, along the road near Landsberg, servicemen of the 1st Guards Tank Army killed German soldiers and civilians with bayonets, emphasis and partially cut out. In Landsberg, Soviet soldiers from the 331st Rifle Division herded the stunned population, including women and children, into basements, set houses on fire, and fired on people fleeing in panic. Many were burned alive. In a village near the Landsberg-Heilsberg road, servicemen of the same rifle division kept 37 women and girls locked up in the basement for 6 days and nights, they were partially chained there and raped many times daily with the participation of officers. Due to desperate screams, two of these Soviet officers cut out the tongues of two women with a "semicircular knife" in front of everyone. Two other women had their hands folded on top of each other nailed to the floor with a bayonet. German tank soldiers eventually managed to free only a few of the unfortunate women, 20 women died from abuse.

In Hanshagen near Preisisch-Eylau [now Bagrationovsk, Russia], Red Army soldiers from the 331st Rifle Division shot two mothers who opposed the rape of their daughters, and a father, whose daughter was at the same time pulled out of the kitchen and raped by a Soviet officer. Further, the following were killed: a married couple of teachers with 3 children, an unknown refugee girl, an innkeeper and a farmer, whose 21-year-old daughter was raped. In Petershagen near Preussisch-Eylau, soldiers of this division killed two men and a 16-year-old boy named Richard von Hoffmann, subjecting women and girls to severe violence.

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, a lot of laundry, subsequent ironing, and even the process of preparing food. 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 relatively recent events are psychologically closer to a modern person, 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 torture. The Nazis were also taught by their colleagues from the Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive bodies. So why was all this mockery of 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 confessing the victim to the crime, she could expect, depending on the degree of civilization of society, 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 at a short distance above the young shoots, and cut the ends of the stems at an 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

Both in and in the later period, various types of torture were used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary state authorities, today called law enforcement. He was part of a set of methods of investigation and inquiry. Since the second half of the 16th century, different types of bodily influence have been 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 some 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

At the end of the 17th century, a gradual departure from torture practice began and the transition from it to other, more humane methods of interrogation. 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 legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland changed at different times of 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, heavy objects 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 of 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 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, the Civil War broke out on the territory of the former Russian Empire, in which both warring parties most often did not consider themselves bound by the legislative norms that were binding under the tsar. 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 of their 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. Developed countries, declaring their commitment to rights and freedoms, are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories where 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...

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 - a special place intended for the detention 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 were transplanted organs from each other, blood was transfused, 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 the 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 this is not a complete list of all the concentration camps that were built by Nazi Germany in the pre-war and war years.

Salaspils

Salaspils, one might say, is the most terrible concentration camp of the Nazis, because, in addition to prisoners of war and Jews, children were also kept there. 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

The testimonies of witnesses and the results of investigations revealed the following methods of extermination of people in the Salaspils camp: beatings, starvation, arsenic poisoning, injection of dangerous substances (most often for children), performing surgical operations without painkillers, pumping out blood (only for children), executions, torture, useless severe 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.

The following figures were given in the Act of the Nuremberg trials “on the extermination of children”: 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 the women's concentration camps of the Nazis, then Ravensbrück will be in the first place. 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 behind a terrible memory, their names still cause fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald. The crematorium was considered the most terrible place. 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 in German, which they had to learn 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 the outside world were forbidden, 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.

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, "undesirable" Jews from various countries were sent here: France, Germany, Austria, the 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 serial 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 a 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 of the 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. Mass graves and human remains were also found: ribs, hip bones, teeth.

One of the most eerie photographs, clearly illustrating 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 begins 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 Prisoners of the Salaspils Nazi Concentration Camp was held at the Russian Center for 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 express his original point of view on historical events, but received a harsh 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.

There is no person in the world today who does not know what a concentration camp is. During the Second World War, these institutions, created to isolate political prisoners, prisoners of war and persons who posed a threat to the state, turned into houses of death and torture. Not many who got there managed to survive in harsh conditions, millions were tortured and died. Years after the end of the most terrible and bloody war in the history of mankind, memories of Nazi concentration camps still cause trembling in the body, horror in the soul and tears in the eyes of people.

What is a concentration camp

Concentration camps are special prisons created during military operations on the territory of the country, according to special legislative documents.

There were few repressed persons in them, the main contingent were representatives of the lower races, according to the Nazis: Slavs, Jews, gypsies and other nations to be exterminated. For this, the concentration camps of the Nazis were equipped with various means, with the help of which people were killed by tens and hundreds.

They were destroyed morally and physically: raped, experimented, burned alive, poisoned in gas chambers. Why and for what was justified by the ideology of the Nazis. Prisoners were considered unworthy to live in the world of the "chosen ones". The chronicle of the Holocaust of those times contains descriptions of thousands of incidents confirming the atrocities.

The truth about them became known from books, documentaries, stories of those who managed to become free, get out of there alive.

The institutions built during the war years were conceived by the Nazis as places of mass extermination, for which they received the true name - death camps. They were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers, soap factories, crematoria, where hundreds of people could be burned a day, and other similar means for murder and torture.

No less number of people died from exhausting work, hunger, cold, punishment for the slightest disobedience and medical experiments.

living conditions

For many people who passed the "road of death" beyond the walls of the concentration camps, there was no turning back. Upon arrival at the place of detention, they were examined and "sorted": children, the elderly, the disabled, the wounded, the mentally retarded and Jews were subjected to immediate destruction. Further, people "fit" for work were divided into male and female barracks.

Most of the buildings were built in haste, often they did not have a foundation or were converted from sheds, stables, warehouses. They put bunks in them, in the middle of a huge room there was one stove for heating in winter, there were no latrines. But there were rats.

The roll call, held at any time of the year, was considered a severe test. People had to stand for hours in the rain, snow, hail, and then return to cold, barely heated rooms. Not surprisingly, many died from infectious and respiratory diseases, inflammation.

Each registered prisoner had a serial number on his chest (in Auschwitz he was beaten out with a tattoo) and a stripe on the camp uniform indicating the “article” under which he was imprisoned in the camp. A similar winkel (colored triangle) was sewn on the left side of the chest and the right knee of the trouser leg.

The colors were distributed like this:

• red - political prisoner;
• green - convicted of a criminal offense;
• black - dangerous, dissident persons;
• pink - persons with non-traditional sexual orientation;
• brown - gypsies.

The Jews, if they were left alive, wore a yellow winkel and a hexagonal "Star of David". If the prisoner was recognized as a "racial defiler", a black border was sewn around the triangle. Runners wore a red and white target on their chest and back. The latter were expected to be shot at just one glance in the direction of the gate or wall.

Executions were carried out daily. Prisoners were shot, hanged, beaten with whips for the slightest disobedience to the guards. Gas chambers, whose principle of operation was the simultaneous destruction of several dozen people, worked around the clock in many concentration camps. The captives who helped clean up the corpses of the strangled were also rarely left alive.

Gas chamber

The prisoners were also mocked morally, erasing their human dignity under conditions in which they ceased to feel like members of society and just people.

What fed

In the early years of the existence of concentration camps, the food provided to political prisoners, traitors to the motherland and "dangerous elements" was quite high in calories. The Nazis understood that the prisoners should have the strength to work, and at that time many sectors of the economy were based on their work.

The situation changed in 1942-43, when the bulk of the prisoners were Slavs. If the diet of the German repressed was 700 kcal per day, the Poles and Russians did not receive even 500 kcal.

The diet consisted of:

• liters per day of an herbal drink called "coffee";
• soup on water without fat, the basis of which was vegetables (mostly rotten) - 1 liter;
• bread (stale, moldy);
• sausages (approximately 30 grams);
• fat (margarine, lard, cheese) - 30 grams.

The Germans could count on sweets: jam or preserves, potatoes, cottage cheese and even fresh meat. They received special rations that included cigarettes, sugar, goulash, dry broth, and more.

Beginning in 1943, when a turning point occurred in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet troops liberated the countries of Europe from the German invaders, concentration camp prisoners were massacred in order to hide the traces of crimes. Since that time, in many camps, the already meager rations have been cut, and in some institutions people have stopped being fed altogether.

The most terrible torture and experiments in the history of mankind

Concentration camps will forever remain in the history of mankind as places where the Gestapo carried out the most terrible torture and medical experiments.

The task of the latter was considered to be “assistance to the army”: doctors determined the boundaries of human capabilities, created new types of weapons, drugs that could help the soldiers of the Reich.

Almost 70% of the experimental subjects did not survive after such executions, almost all were incapacitated or crippled.

over women

One of the main goals of the SS was to cleanse the world of a non-Aryan nation. To do this, experiments were carried out on women in the camps to find the easiest and cheapest method of sterilization.

Representatives of the weaker sex were injected with special chemical solutions into the uterus and fallopian tubes, designed to block the work of the reproductive system. Most of the test subjects died after such a procedure, the rest were killed in order to examine the state of the genital organs during the autopsy.

Often women were turned into sex slaves, forced to work in brothels and brothels organized at the camps. Most of them left the establishments dead, having not survived not only a huge number of "clients", but also monstrous mockery of themselves.

Over the children

The purpose of these experiments was to create a superior race. Thus, children with mental disabilities and genetic diseases were subjected to forcible killing (euthanasia) so that they would not be able to further reproduce “inferior” offspring.

Other children were placed in special "nurseries", where they were brought up at home and in harsh patriotic moods. Periodically, they were exposed to ultraviolet rays so that the hair acquired a light shade.

One of the most famous and monstrous experiments on children are those carried out on twins, representing an inferior race. They tried to change the color of their eyes, making injections of drugs, after which they died of pain or remained blind.

There were attempts to artificially create Siamese twins, that is, to sew children together, to transplant parts of each other's bodies into them. There are records of the introduction of viruses and infections to one of the twins and further study of the condition of both. If one of the couple died, the second was also killed in order to compare the state of internal organs and systems.

Children born in the camp were also subjected to strict selection, almost 90% of them were killed immediately or sent for experiments. Those who managed to survive were brought up and "Germanized".

over men

The representatives of the stronger sex were subjected to the most cruel and terrible tortures and experiments. To create and test drugs that improve blood clotting, which were needed by the military at the front, gunshot wounds were inflicted on men, after which observations were made about the rate at which bleeding stopped.

The tests included the study of the action of sulfonamides - antimicrobial substances designed to prevent the development of blood poisoning in frontline conditions. For this, parts of the body were injured and bacteria, fragments, earth were injected into the incisions, and then the wounds were sewn up. Another type of experiment is the ligation of veins and arteries on both sides of the wound being inflicted.

Means for recovery after chemical burns were created and tested. Men were doused with a composition identical to that found in phosphorus bombs or mustard gas, which at that time was poisoned by enemy "criminals" and the civilian population of cities during the occupation.

An important role in experiments with drugs was played by attempts to create vaccines against malaria and typhus. The test subjects were injected with the infection, and then - trial formulations to neutralize it. Some prisoners were given no immune protection at all, and they died in terrible agony.

To study the ability of the human body to withstand low temperatures and recover from significant hypothermia, men were placed in ice baths or driven naked into the cold outside. If after such torture the prisoner had signs of life, he was subjected to a resuscitation procedure, after which few managed to recover.

The main resurrection measures: irradiation with ultraviolet lamps, having sex, introducing boiling water into the body, placing in a bath with warm water.

In some concentration camps, attempts were made to turn sea water into drinking water. It was processed in various ways, and then given to prisoners, observing the reaction of the body. They also experimented with poisons, adding them to food and drinks.

One of the most terrible experiences are attempts to regenerate bone and nerve tissue. In the process of research, joints and bones were broken, observing their fusion, nerve fibers were removed, and the joints were changed in places.

Almost 80% of the participants in the experiments died during the experiments from unbearable pain or blood loss. The rest were killed in order to study the results of the study "from the inside." Few survived such abuses.

List and description of death camps

Concentration camps existed in many countries of the world, including the USSR, and were intended for a narrow circle of prisoners. However, only the Nazis received the name "death camps" for the atrocities carried out in them after Adolf Hitler came to power and the beginning of the Second World War.

Buchenwald

Located in the vicinity of the German city of Weimar, this camp, founded in 1937, has become one of the most famous and largest such establishments. It consisted of 66 branches, where prisoners worked for the benefit of the Reich.

During the years of its existence, about 240 thousand people visited its barracks, of which 56 thousand prisoners officially died from murder and torture, among whom were representatives of 18 nations. How many there were in fact is not known for certain.

Buchenwald was liberated on April 10, 1945. A memorial complex in memory of its victims and heroes-liberators was created on the site of the camp.

Auschwitz

In Germany it is better known as Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a complex that occupied a vast territory near the Polish Krakow. The concentration camp consisted of 3 main parts: a large administrative complex, the camp itself, where prisoners were tortured and massacred, and a group of 45 small complexes with factories and work areas.

The victims of Auschwitz, according to official figures alone, were more than 4 million people, representatives of the "inferior races", according to the Nazis.

The “death camp” was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the troops of the Soviet Union. Two years later, the State Museum was opened on the territory of the main complex.

It presents expositions of things that belonged to prisoners: toys that they made from wood, pictures, and other handicrafts that are exchanged for food from civilians passing by. Stylized scenes of interrogation and torture by the Gestapo, reflecting the violence of the Nazis.

The drawings and inscriptions on the walls of the barracks, made by prisoners doomed to death, remained unchanged. As the Poles themselves say today, Auschwitz is the bloodiest and most terrible point on the map of their homeland.

Sobibor

Another concentration camp in Poland, established in May 1942. The prisoners were mostly representatives of the Jewish nation, the number of those killed is about 250 thousand people.

One of the few institutions where the uprising of prisoners took place in October 1943, after which it was closed and wiped off the face of the earth.

Majdanek

The camp was founded in 1941, it was built in the suburbs of Lublin, Poland. It had 5 branches in the southeastern part of the country.

Over the years of its existence, about 1.5 million people of different nationalities died in its cells.

The surviving captives were released on July 23, 1944 by Soviet soldiers, and 2 years later a museum and research institutes were opened on its territory.

Salaspils

The camp, known as Kurtengorf, was built in October 1941 on the territory of Latvia, not far from Riga. Had several branches, the most famous - Ponary. The main prisoners were children who were subjected to medical experiments.

In recent years, prisoners have been used as blood donors for wounded German soldiers. The camp was burnt down in August 1944 by the Germans, who were forced to evacuate the remaining prisoners to other institutions under the offensive of the Soviet troops.

Ravensbrück

Built in 1938 near Fürstenberg. Before the start of the war of 1941-1945, it was exclusively female, it consisted mainly of partisans. After 1941, it was completed, after which it received a men's barracks and a children's barracks for underage girls.

Over the years of "work", the number of his captives amounted to more than 132 thousand of the fairer sex of different ages, of which almost 93 thousand died. The liberation of the prisoners took place on April 30, 1945 by Soviet troops.

Mauthausen

Austrian concentration camp built in July 1938. At first it was one of the major branches of Dachau, the first such institution in Germany, located near Munich. But since 1939 it has been functioning independently.

In 1940, it merged with the Gusen death camp, after which it became one of the largest concentration settlements on the territory of Nazi Germany.

During the war years, there were about 335 thousand natives of 15 European countries, 122 thousand of whom were brutally tortured and killed. The prisoners were released by the Americans, who entered the camp on May 5, 1945. A few years later, 12 states created a memorial museum here, erected monuments to the victims of Nazism.

Irma Grese - Nazi warden

The horrors of the concentration camps imprinted in the memory of people and the annals of history the names of individuals who can hardly be called people. One of them is Irma Grese, a young and beautiful German woman whose actions do not fit into the nature of human actions.

Today, many historians and psychiatrists are trying to explain her phenomenon by the suicide of her mother or the propaganda of fascism and Nazism, characteristic of that time, but it is impossible or difficult to find an excuse for her actions.

Already at the age of 15, the young girl was present in the Hitler Youth movement, a German youth organization whose main principle was racial purity. At the age of 20 in 1942, having changed several professions, Irma became a member of one of the auxiliary units of the SS. Her first place of work was the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was later replaced by Auschwitz, where she acted as the second person after the commandant.

The bullying of the "Blond Devil", as the prisoners called Grese, was felt by thousands of captive women and men. This "Beautiful Monster" destroyed people not only physically, but also morally. She beat a prisoner to death with a wicker whip that she carried with her, enjoyed shooting prisoners. One of the favorite entertainments of the "Angel of Death" was setting dogs on captives, which were previously starved for several days.

The last place of service of Irma Grese was Bergen-Belsen, where, after his release, she was captured by the British military. The tribunal lasted 2 months, the verdict was unequivocal: "Guilty, subject to execution by hanging."

The iron rod, or maybe ostentatious bravado, was also present in the woman on the last night of her life - she sang songs and laughed out loud until the morning, which, according to psychologists, hid fear and hysteria before the impending death - too easy and simple for her.

Josef Mengele - experiments on people

The name of this man still causes horror among people, since it was he who came up with the most painful and terrible experiments on the human body and psyche.

Only according to official data, tens of thousands of prisoners became its victims. He personally sorted the victims upon arrival at the camp, then they were awaited by a thorough medical examination and terrible experiments.

The “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” managed to avoid a fair trial and imprisonment during the liberation of European countries from the Nazis. For a long time he lived in Latin America, carefully hiding from his pursuers and avoiding capture.

On the conscience of this doctor, anatomical autopsy of live newborns and castration of boys without the use of anesthesia, experiments on twins, dwarfs. There is evidence of how women were tortured by sterilization using x-rays. He assessed the endurance of the human body when exposed to an electric current.

Unfortunately for many prisoners of war, Josef Mengele still managed to avoid a fair punishment. After 35 years of living under false names, constantly escaping from pursuers, he drowned in the ocean, losing control of his body as a result of a stroke. The worst thing is that until the end of his life he was firmly convinced that "in his whole life he did not harm anyone personally."

Concentration camps were present in many countries of the world. The most famous for the Soviet people was the Gulag, created in the early years of the Bolsheviks coming to power. In total there were more than a hundred of them and, according to the NKVD, in 1922 alone there were more than 60 thousand “dissenters” and “dangerous to the authorities” prisoners.

But only the Nazis made it so that the word "concentration camp" went down in history as a place where they massively torture and exterminate the population. A place of bullying and humiliation committed by people against humanity.