THE TRAGEDY OF MY LIFE. Letter from the Red Army soldier Kiselev. Prepared for publication by Ilya Ehrenburg. A soldier of the Red Army, Zalman Ioselevich Kiselev, a resident of the town of Liozno, Vitebsk region, is getting acquainted with you. I'm in my fifth decade. And my life is broken, and the German's bloody boot

LETTER OF THE RED ARMY HOFMAN (Krasnopolye, Mogilev region). Prepared for publication by Ilya Ehrenburg. I will write about one more tragedy: about Krasnopol. 1,800 Jews died there, including my family: a beautiful daughter, a sick son, and a wife. Of all the Jews of Krasnopolye, miraculously survived

What I experienced in fascist captivity A letter from nine-year-old Boris Gershenzon from Uman to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee Dear uncles, I will now describe to you how I was tormented by the fascist monsters. As soon as the Germans arrived in the city of Uman, we were all herded into the ghetto. Among us were

Memoirs of the doctor Cecilia Mikhailovna Shapiro Cecilia Mikhailovna Shapiro, born in 1915, a doctor who lived in Minsk before the war, tells. The war caught her in the maternity hospital immediately after giving birth. With a five-year-old son, a newborn child and an old mother

In captivity (Minsk camp) Memoirs of a Red Army soldier Yefim Leinov Our unit was surrounded. It was in the Chernihiv region. I visited four camps: Novgorod-Seversk, Gomel, Bobruisk and Minsk. It is impossible to describe all the horrors. I'll stick with the last one

Captured by mermaids Once upon a time, the banks of Poltva outside the city were green with lush meadows, in which even colorful butterflies, dragonflies and grasshoppers rippled in the eyes, and the chirping was such that it buzzed in the head. And in those blissful times Martyn Belyak lived on Golosk, with whom

It's time for another story. This time I will share with you the story of one veteran. He is already eighty-four years old, but the old man is alert and has memory. His name is Nikolai Petrovich Dyadechkov. He served in the 143rd Guards Rifle Regiment, reached almost Berlin, was wounded and sent to the hospital.
What did he tell me? Before presenting his story, I will say a few more words - in those days it was not customary to talk about the unusual, as it was considered anti-scientific, a relic of the past, and so on.
And now the story itself.
When the war began, Nikolai Petrovich was visiting his aunt in Moscow. He went to the front among the first. He added three years to his age. He was taller and older than his age. It was possible to give all 20!
Survived both bombing and encirclement. He was captured and fled. But he did not tell anyone that he was in captivity. For captivity they could be shot, since people who were in captivity were considered enemies of the people. Those were the terrible times.
Everyone knows what kind of animals the Nazis were. And here is what Nikolai Petrovich found out about.
The Germans captured the village of Iskra. They created their own headquarters there, the population was forced to work for themselves. Someone was shot. Mostly those who could not work (small children and the elderly).
Dyadechkov's detachment was supposed to take the village into a ring and prevent the enemy from leaving the encirclement until the onset of the main forces. The spark was among the hills near the lakes. The hills are full of pine.
One night Nikolai Petrovich was on duty. I heard from the guys that the wolf got into the habit of going to their camp. Time is - the beast clings to man. Apparently they frightened him with bombing and shooting - they drove him out of the thicket. So the gray predator wanders in circles, looking for prey. No one saw the wolf close, more and more people noticed it from afar. And now Nikolai Petrovich stands at his post, the spark in the lowland shines with lights, the wind carries fragments of the speech of German and German songs. Overhead are pine branches, and the stars glisten through them. Frosty. November.
Nikolai suddenly feels that someone behind him is looking at him. Turns around, weapon at the ready. And behind the guy is worth. Shameless, young. Completely unfamiliar, and does not look like a German. He asked for water and food. Nicholas gave him food and drink. The guy thanked and went into the forest. And as soon as he left, it was as if an obsession left Nikolai. He was afraid - did anyone else see this person? After all, they can ask about him. Moreover, they will ask why Nikolai did not wake anyone up, did not ask him for documents, and so on.
Three days later, Nazi bombers arrived and bombed the hills. And then the Germans went and finished off those who were still alive.
For some reason, they didn’t finish Nikolai. His left leg and left arm were injured. Two Germans nearly got into a fight over a Russian soldier. A third, some German military rank, came and ordered to take the wounded with him.
It turns out that they foolishly left no one else alive. And they needed information about our troops and our plans. They kept Nikolai in a shed. The leg and arm, however, were bandaged. They came with interrogations, sometimes they beat me. On the fourth day, a bespectacled German came to him. It was immediately clear that the headquarters. Such people do not fight, but sit behind papers. He came and said that in the morning there would be an execution, since nothing could be learned from Nikolai and now he is no longer needed. He said and left.
Nicholas did not sleep all night. What is the use of sleep now? You won't sleep before you die. Suddenly he hears that someone is digging and scratching near the wall of the shed. Nikolay approached that wall. I listened. Indeed, someone is digging. Nothing is visible through the cracks between the boards.
Nicholas called. Nobody responded. He didn't feel like himself. Are the Germans freaking out? What kind of animal did you decide to set on? Nikolai had heard a lot about the atrocities of the Nazis: and how they threw babies to dogs to be torn to pieces ... and so on.
A small hole began to form under the wall, a failure. And half an hour later a huge gray beast climbed into the barn. All in the ground. How such a large animal crawled through the hole dug by him was a mystery. Nikolai clung to the opposite wall, to the boards, because he believed that this beast would devour him. There was no bright light in the shed, but there was a lantern at the door to the shed. True, outside. And its light made its way through the cracks in the interior of the barn.
The beast looked like a wolf, but larger and the head was not so elongated. The ears are smaller and were not located on the top of the head, but, as it were, on the sides of the head. The beast looked at Nikolai, as it seemed to him, for a long time. Then he climbed out through the hole. Nikolai, without thinking twice, climbed next. Nearly got stuck. When he got out, he was struck by the silence in the village. The Germans always guarded the village, but there seemed to be no one here. Without delving into the essence of this situation, Nikolai leaned towards the forest. How he just did not land in the lake or somewhere else - only God knows.
By dawn he was in unfamiliar places. He sat down on a fallen tree and fell asleep. I woke up in a hospital bed. Then it occurred to him to play amnesia. Temporary.
And after the war, almost five years later, he accidentally found out that the village of Iskra was found empty. There were no people in it. There was German equipment in some yards, weapons lay. But there were no people. But the information about all this was classified. Now I do not know.
Anything happened during the war. And even inexplicable.

Occupied Ukraine in 1941-1943 was turned by Germany into a huge forced labor camp with an extensive network of penal and punitive institutions. At that time, two camps were created and functioned in Konstantinovka: a transit camp for prisoners of war Dulag 172 and a correctional labor camp (penalty). Today we can learn the conditions of existence here on the other side of the barbed wire directly from the memoirs of a former prisoner.

Prehistory. The city museum has preserved a battered letter from the end of the 70s, sent by Ivan Iosifovich Balaev. From the letter it became known that he was a participant in the Great Patriotic War, as well as a prisoner of camps on the territory of Ukraine and Germany. At that time, he began to work on a book of his memoirs and asked for some information about the local camp (they are given in the text), where he was imprisoned at one time. However, subsequent correspondence, if any, is not known. And how his work ended - until today remained a mystery.

Museum staff decided to find out the fate of Ivan Iosifovich and his work. We managed to restore the address in detail using the envelope. However, almost 45 years have passed! Therefore, it was decided to write in two copies, the second - to the village council at the place of residence. And not in vain. Indeed, Ivan Iosifovich and his wife in 2001 moved to relatives in the village of Bolshoe Boldino. By the way, an interesting fact, in this village is the estate of A.S. Pushkin. This story could have ended already at this stage, if the second option had not worked - from the village council, for which thanks to them, the letter was sent to a new address. We were answered by his daughter and her husband - Valentina Ivanovna and Anatoly Alexandrovich Pykhonin.

On behalf of the museum and all history buffs, we sincerely thank you for their responsiveness. In their letter to the museum, they said the following. In the late 70s, Ivan Iosifovich sent his manuscript to the publishing house of military literature of the USSR and received a devastating review. “Its meaning was that a person who was a prisoner of the enemy cannot write memoirs and it is better for him to sit and not stick out. The review on one and a half sheets of typewritten text, written by the colonel, had 83 grammatical errors! After that, the manuscript was abandoned and accidentally discovered by us during the move. The book was published in a limited edition in 2005. Life is not endless and in 2008 Ivan Iosifovich died. We have two copies left, one of which we will send you.

We present the chapter “Captivity”, dedicated to the stay in the Konstantinovka camp, from this autobiographical essay “I ask about one thing ...” memories of a former prisoner of war” and present to readers.

Brief biography of Ivan Iosifovich Balaev. Born in 1918 then in the Nizhny Novgorod province. In July 1940 he entered the Kharkov Military Medical School. In the first months of the war, he was released ahead of schedule and sent to the front as a paramedic of the 5th squadron of the 161st cavalry regiment. Participated in battles in the Donbass and near Kharkov. In February 1942 he was taken prisoner. Then he was in Konstantinovsky, Dnepropetrovsk, Slavutsky, Lvov, Potsdam and other camps for Soviet prisoners of war. For attempting to escape, he was severely beaten. In April 1945 he escaped from the Potsdam camp with a group of prisoners of war. He was enrolled as a private in the communications department of a motorized mechanized battalion. Participated in the battles for Potsdam, Berlin and in the liberation of Prague. Graduated from the Gorky Pedagogical Institute, candidate of pedagogical sciences. Published more than 50 scientific articles, the book "Home Experiment and Observations in Chemistry", etc.

On this we go directly to the memoirs and give the floor to their author.

A. Novoselsky

None of the wars is complete without capturing the enemy. Many wars in the past started for this. But before the Great Patriotic War, we were brought up on the fact that all military operations in a future war would be conducted on enemy territory and there could be no talk of any prisoners from our side.
During the period of hostilities, not a single soldier or officer thought about being captured by the enemy. In moments of leisure, they thought about the different paths of their fate: we can stay alive, we can seriously or easily injure, we can even kill. But get captured? No one could allow captivity, it did not fit in the mind. It could be with anyone, but not with me. But fate decreed otherwise. …

... Under a reinforced escort of machine gunners, all the slaves, including the wounded, were driven through the streets of Slavyansk to the railway station. We walked through the streets accompanied by guards with dogs. Several women and an old man of seventy or eighty years old were standing at the edge of the street. He approached our column, wept, and loudly, stretching out his hands to the column, said:
- Children! Sons! You will be taken to the Konstantinovsky camp for prisoners. There you will be lost! If you can, run along the road, as best you can, but run! And then you'll be lost!
Two guards ran up to the old man and shouted: “Rus, partisan!” butts pushed him into our column. We were stunned by this turn of events. Why the old man, what did he do to them? On his attempts to get out of the column, he received additional butts on his back. And so the old man wandered with tears in his eyes as part of our column. The next day, already in the Konstantinovsky camp, he died. Who were you, an obscure old man with a good heart and a fierce hatred for the invaders? Eternal memory to you...
The column continued to be driven through the streets of the city with shouts and butts, the wounded were supported by healthy prisoners of war.
Suddenly, in many places we saw structures that did not fit into the overall picture of a rather ruined city. The structures looked like crosses, but... not crosses. Then I thought that the Germans are Catholics and Protestants, and their crosses are different from the Orthodox ones. We come closer, but these are the gallows! Indeed, an elderly bearded man hangs on the second of them, and a young woman hangs on the third...
We were shocked. Where are we? In the middle Ages? People of my generation knew about gallows only from books.
Before the capture, I knew from the newspapers about the atrocities of the Nazis in the temporarily occupied territory. But it is one thing for a newspaper to be wholly untrustworthy at any time and under any authority; it is quite another thing to see it all with one's own eyes.
Again, the thought drills the brain - to run! But how? There are guards and dogs all around. Throw yourself on the guard and die? Ridiculous, stupid. What can you prove with that! But ahead is a starvation, martyrdom, which neither relatives nor comrades in arms will ever know about.
Again and again I recall the recent past, I conduct an introspection: why did it happen that you, a Komsomol member, brought up on the conditions of Soviet reality, ended up with the enemy as a prisoner of war? Do you yourself admit the degree of guilt? If not, then who is to blame? That's how fate happened. And mine, and thousands like me. It's hard to find the culprit. I was seized with despair. There was an annoying thought to commit suicide. Later, I became convinced that the appearance of the first signs of despair, indifference in the conditions of captivity in fascist death camps is a dangerous sign, especially for the prisoner himself: he can finally sink and, ultimately, surely die.
Here is the railway station. With barking shouts, they began to drive them into a freight (veal) car. Man 65-68 in each. There is no bedding on the floor in the harsh January frost, and some do not even have overcoats and hats. It got dark, and it was dark in the car. In the booths, between the cars, German submachine gunners are talking to each other, stamping their boots. Suddenly we hear quiet Russian and Ukrainian speech. It was the railway workers who hitched our car to the train. They perfectly saw who was being loaded into the wagons and how. The railroad workers came closer, and as if checking with hammers and wrenches closer, and as if checking the reliability of the clutch with hammers and wrenches, they quietly informed us:
- Guys, you are being taken to the city of Konstantinovka. There, the Germans reliably and firmly set up a camp for prisoners of war and civilians, they feed very poorly, with or without reason, people are beaten with rubber truncheons. There is no place to sleep, the prisoners lie on the floor. At night the barracks are not opened, people are dying en masse. The same fate awaits you. There will be an opportunity, run on the way. Otherwise, you khan.
There was a shock numbness, everyone was silent. The railroad workers continued:
- We, who did not have time to evacuate the railway workers, were rounded up by the Germans and forced to work at the station by force. We were warned that in case of refusal, both we and our families would be sent to camps.
The German escorts could not but hear these conversations, but they probably did not understand Russian and Ukrainian.
Gradually we came to our senses, excited conversations began. How to be? What to do? How can you find out of the situation? Where to begin? And while the workers are spinning around our car, we ask them:
– What would you advise us? The car is strong and locked, security is nearby.
“Escape from this car is now impossible. Try to do it in Konstantinovka. In 10-12 hours you will be there. We know that several civilians work in the camp: a doctor from the city, several electricians, and someone else. They have permanent passes to the city and from the city to the camp. Try contacting them, maybe that will work.
There was at least some hope, ghostly, illusory, but hope.
The composition moved. We drive slowly, sometimes we stop for a while. The piercing cold of January frosts passes through the greatcoats. In the car we all stand, huddled up to each other to get a little warm. And also because there was simply nowhere to sit, and it was impossible to do this - because of the severe frost, a frosty wind always blew from below. The wounded were moaning.
It was getting light a little when we drove up to Konstantinovka. With shouts, the guards drove us out of the cars. An additional convoy with shepherd dogs arrived from the camp. Frozen and frostbitten, we fell out of the cars. The wounded and exhausted were carried out in their arms. In each car, our comrades were left lying dead.
We approach the gates of the camp. On the vast territory there are semi-basement, large barracks. There were several dozen of them. The entire territory of the camp is surrounded by several rows of barbed wire. In the corners there are towers on which young submachine gunners stand with their legs apart. Police guards walk in pairs along the barbed wire outside. As it became known later, according to the German classification, it was the Konstantinovsky penal labor camp for hard laborers, it was located in the workshops of a former chemical plant.
Before reaching the gates of the camp, we were counted. Zagainov and I were at the tail of the convoy with sanitary bags. We could have thrown them away - there was almost nothing left, but out of habit we keep them with us. There was a second gate in the inner camp. Here we were already met by Russian and Ukrainian policemen. Zagainov and I somehow lagged behind the column by 1-2 steps and immediately got batons on our backs from the police with an obscene cry: “Catch up with the column!”. It is noteworthy that we received the first batons not from the Germans, but from “our own”, the Slavs.
Perhaps, for the entire period of fascist captivity, this first punishment in a moral, psychological sense was the most depressing. It would be less offensive to receive the first blows from the Nazis themselves. Enemies are enemies. But from the Russians! It was embarrassing.
For Soviet prisoners of war, as it turned out, the most terrible thing in the camp was not the Germans, not the commandant, but their own. “Worse than hunger and disease in the camps were pestering policemen from prisoners of war” (Astashkov I.S. Memoirs. Here and further references by I. Balaev). As a rule, the police were formed from people who were physically strong, immoral, who knew neither pity nor compassion for their comrades. In the camp of the city of Konstantinovka, Stalin Region, "... the Russian policemen are healthy, they roll up their sleeves with a whip in their hands" (Shneer A. Voyna. Samizdat. jewniverse.ru).
The policemen were easily recognizable by the white bandage on the right sleeve with the inscription in German: “Policeman” and a baton in their hand. The clubs were rubber with a metal tip.
And here I am, a member of the Komsomol, a graduate of Soviet educational institutions, a citizen of the USSR, an officer received two clubs from a Russian scoundrel-traitor. Having lost my self-control, my mind, I wanted to break out of the column and give back to the policeman, but my comrade Zagainov restrained me: “No! Be patient! They'll kill you right away!"
We are marching through the camp. Again met the Germans, but those who seek out the Jews, political officers, commissars, command staff. Vigilantly peer into the passing column. A loud shout followed:
– Halt! (Stop!)
We stopped. I still cannot understand why we did not remove the insignia from the buttonholes: two head over heels with a bowl and a snake. There were so many events, upheavals. An officer approaches with a non-commissioned officer, They see the insignia on our buttonholes, sanitary bags on the sides and talk among themselves: “Doctor, doctor!”
The two of us were taken out of the common column and sent to a separate stone hut, which, in turn, was fenced with additional barbed wire. For the sake of objectivity, it must be said that the Germans were well versed in the insignia of officers of the Red Army. We did not know the insignia of the German army at all.
They took us to a stone building. Six people lay on roughly knocked together wooden bunks, three of them with bandaged heads, arms and legs. One captain, two senior lieutenants, the rest junior lieutenants. Everyone got up from their bunks, got to know each other. The types of troops were different: infantrymen, a tankman with a burnt face, one called himself a communications officer. One was healthy, not injured.
The old-timers of the barracks lived there for only one and a half to two weeks. The insignia of military distinction was not removed. The Germans looked at it then through their fingers. Comrades in misfortune introduced us to camp procedures. In particular, captive girls and women bring gruel and bread to our barracks. Warned: one small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust for 8 people. But most importantly, they all bring it. Like in a restaurant! During the distribution of gruel in one barrack, others were locked up. Handed out in one, open the next.
At four o'clock in the afternoon the girls brought "food". A lot has already been written about gruel: it's just boiled water, at the bottom of which there was about one spoonful of burnt wheat or rye. The loaf was divided exactly into 8 equal parts, which were distributed by lot. In the evening, an old civilian doctor came to our barracks and said that tomorrow we, military paramedics, would be taken to the “medical unit” of the camp (in German “revere”). We didn’t know what it was: good or bad. The old-timers said that typhus was rampant in the camp, and besides, many were dying of exhaustion. The total mortality is 70-80 people per day.
Indeed, the next morning we were taken to a special barrack, which was called the medical unit. It has three offices. The same old doctor met us. He said that together with the orderlies we would work in the medical unit. He immediately warned that the Germans would not give any privileges for this work, and there was a lot of work. Due to overcrowding and exceptionally poor nutrition, typhus is rampant in the camp. Tomorrow, he said, we will think together how to get out of this situation, at least partially. For the treatment of typhus, the German camp authorities practically do not issue any medicines. What we have: some bandages, cotton wool, lignin - we get it ourselves. The main scourge of the camp, he continued, is typhus and famine. Inside the camp workers from prisoners of war and civilians, i.e. the doctor, his assistant, two of us military paramedics and orderlies, do not have any elementary rights. The Germans from the commandant's office are afraid to enter the territory of the camp, so as not to get infected.
Further, he warned us that it was impossible to approach the barbed wire closer than 5 meters: the guards shot such prisoners of war without warning. You will live nearby, in a neighboring barrack. There are no bunks, but there is straw on the floor. At night, all the barracks, including the medical unit, are locked up by the Germans. Captured girls live through the partition in your barracks. They are under investigation by the Gestapo and are suspected of intelligence in favor of the Red Army. During interrogations, they are beaten. In the meantime, they perform the role of nurses: they pour and distribute gruel, wash floors, wash linen.
The doctor once again warned us not to say anything extra, there could be provocateurs.
- I can only help you with the following: I will ensure that the policemen do not pester you and do not beat you with batons, they are afraid of me, because in case of illness they will be treated by me. From tomorrow, prepare yourself white armbands with a red cross and always wear them on your right sleeve. Always! Please remember this.
Also, keep in mind that not all Germans are fascists. Among them there are also decent people. The following incident happened recently. At night, in a blizzard, a large group of prisoners took out some kind of sharp object, cut three rows of barbed wire and crawled out in single file. Moreover, the sentry saw everything, but pretended not to notice anything. When 110-120 people crawled out of the camp, he raised the alarm. About 30 people were then caught and shot, but about a hundred disappeared into the water: it is clear that they were hidden by the local population. From this fact, I conclude that not all Germans are enemies and fascists.
Further, beware of people who are often called to the commandant's office and the Gestapo. These are either already provocateurs, or they are being recruited into provocateurs. In general, it is advisable not to have any contacts with people who have been in the Gestapo, and, even more so, not to say anything superfluous with them. In time, perhaps, we will come up with something with your release, but this requires careful preparation.
And the last. The Germans are not fools, do not think that you can outsmart them. Gestapo workers are especially cunning and cunning. They all wear black uniforms. Try not to meet them. Beware of translator Ivanov. This is a scoundrel of scoundrels, a scoundrel of scoundrels. He pretends to be the son of a nobleman. By civil profession - an engineer. Wears a German army uniform. He sniffs out commissars, political officers, commanders, communists, Jews and gives them to the Gestapo. Their further fate is known - execution. For execution, the consent of the head of the Gestapo commandant's office of the camp or his deputy is required. The other day, this Ivanov beat two prisoners to death with a stick just for not giving way to him in time. Such cases on his part are not isolated. So not only typhus and hunger are rampant in the camp, but also utter arbitrariness.
We thanked the old man for detailed information about camp life.
That's the situation! Well, it turns out that we should serve the Germans? But why the Germans. We must help, to the best of our ability, our people who are in great trouble. To our doubts about this, the old doctor answered in the affirmative that in this situation our feasible work is not helping the Germans, but serving the unfortunate compatriots.
They took us to a brick hut, partitioned off in two halves with boards. One half was occupied by women, and the other half by orderlies, one paramedic and we, two newcomers. No bunks, just a thin layer of rotten straw on the floor, that's all.
After asking permission, we entered the second half, where there were girls and middle-aged women, a total of 9-10 people. We wanted to find out who they are. The fates that brought them to the camp were different. The Germans captured some when they moved from one farm to another in the frontline zone. Others were suspected of intelligence gathering, although the women denied this. Several were taken for harboring wounded Red Army soldiers. They had been in the camp for a long time. The Gestapo sometimes called them in, especially one who was suspected of being a spy. A little later they were all shot. Only one was suspected of intelligence, and they all were executed. Who would you really be, obscure war heroines? We will never know about this.
In the morning, when a civilian doctor arrived at the camp from the city, we, together with him and the orderlies, began to inspect all the barracks in order to separate the severely malnourished from the typhoid patients. Three huge barracks were allocated for the sick. All recognized patients with typhus (the presence of a rash on the skin of the abdomen) were placed in one. The rest of the seriously ill, who themselves were no longer able to move, had swollen legs, bags under their eyes and the wounded were placed in two other barracks. Three days were spent on all this preliminary work. Bandages were changed for the wounded. Bandaged with everything that could be bandaged: bandages, cotton, strips of clean linen. Managed to treat some of the wounds.
The typhoid patients were delirious: they moaned, screamed, cursed, uttered inarticulate cries. Chilled lotions were placed on their foreheads to reduce too high a temperature. The barracks were disinfected with a weak solution of creosol. About a week later, in one of their barracks, I heard a rather loud voice:
- Balaev! Balaev! Come here!
I quickly turned around, but could not understand who was calling me. The caller understood this, and beckoned me to him with his hand. I went. His eyes, arms, legs are swollen, he can hardly move, in civilian clothes. Asks:
- Don't you recognize me?
No, I can’t admit it, no matter how I strained my memory. I peer into his face, I can’t recognize anyone I know in him.
- I am a military assistant Kiselev, I studied with you at the Kharkov military medical school at the medical assistant's department.
It was only then that I remembered him, but he had changed so much that it was impossible to recognize him. We greeted, hugged. After calming down a little, I asked him:
- Under what circumstances were you captured and why are you wearing a civilian, and not a military uniform?
He, having somewhat recovered from the excitement and the bitterly joyful meeting, told me the last military episode from his front-line life.
“There was a hot battle between the German infantry and our units. Firepower from all weapons on both sides was strong. The Germans and ours have heavy losses. Many wounded. The Germans surrounded our regiment, as a result of which not all the wounded were sent to the rear. How to proceed with them? Leave to the mercy of the enemy? The radios were broken, and there was no communication with other divisions of the division. The command of the regiment decided to infiltrate in small groups through the battle formations of the Germans and leave their encirclement. But what about the wounded? Then the regimental commissar calls me and gives the following order:
– We will leave the environment. There is no way to take such a number of wounded with you and take them out of the dense ring of enemy encirclement. And you can't leave it unattended. Therefore, based on the current situation, I order you, military assistant Kiselev, to stay with the wounded. The command of the regiment sees no other way out. Take off your military uniform and change into civilian clothes, we have prepared clothes for you. Wear a white armband with a red cross on your right sleeve. When the Germans drive up and ask you who you are, answer that you are a paramedic from a civilian hospital in such and such a farm, came to look after the wounded, as all the military fled. If the Germans capture the wounded, then you will go to the farm, and you will wait for our instructions, which will come through a messenger. As a civilian, the Germans will not take you.
An order is an order, it was pointless to object, and I stayed. The shootout ended, there was silence for half an hour. And then... then everything went wrong.
The Germans drove up to the wounded in a truck. The interpreter asks who I am and how I got here. I answered as instructed by the commissar. The interpreter relayed my reply to the officer. He gave some order, and the soldiers began, like logs of firewood, throwing our wounded into the body, despite the screams and groans. We loaded the car, sat down ourselves and drove off. Some of the wounded remained. The car returned 30 minutes later. The wounded were quickly loaded, but they pushed me into the body as well. They brought us all to this Konstantinovsky camp for Soviet prisoners of war. Here I was afraid to call my military rank. I've been here for two weeks now, I'm very weak and ill.
I offered him the following: “Don't go anywhere. I'll be back in 5 minutes, I'll ask the head physician to transfer you to the barracks for the sick. Let's heal!" I instantly flew into the medical unit and ask the old doctor:
- Doctor, one paramedic, my school friend, is seriously ill, he needs to be fed somehow and prescribed treatment. And told him about the fate of the guy.
“Let him come here immediately, I will examine him.” After the inspection, take him to the barracks where you live, put him next to you. Remember, guys, we will need more doctors, paramedics, orderlies. There are thousands of sick and wounded.
I immediately ran to Kiselyov. I took him by the arm to the sanitary unit. Helped undress. The doctor listened to the condition of the lungs and heart and shook his head imperceptibly. They replaced his dirty, lousy linen with disinfected ones, laid another layer of straw on the floor, flooded the hut and laid it down. They gave me an extra portion of gruel, a piece of bread. He doesn't eat, he says he has no appetite.
The doctor told us that he was unlikely to last long: his heart was working with great interruptions, inflammation and focal tuberculosis of the lungs, general exhaustion, a drop in immunity. But we will heal. There is some aspirin, I would like to get sulfidine. The main thing for him now is to eat a little and drink hot homemade tea.
They looked after, treated, somehow fed, but the person was fading away every day, it began to talk heavily. On the eighth day, early in the morning, calmly, without groans, he died. Died in my arms. For the first time, my comrade and friend died in my arms.
Reported to the doctor.
- Pull yourself together, keep in mind that when a person loses faith in his strength, he dies faster. Don't forget where we are. You will see more death ahead.
Terrible camp everyday life continued, the thought of escaping was constantly sitting in my head.
It got warmer in the second half of February; we, prisoners of war, were happy about that. I was assigned to serve the barracks of typhus patients. It is difficult to say unequivocally why more prisoners died - typhus or starvation. Perhaps, nevertheless, from hunger, and the main cause of typhus itself is dystrophy, malnutrition, and lice. The overall mortality was 70-80 people per day. The dead were buried by a special team. Every morning the dead were loaded onto trucks and taken outside the camp. Their clothes and underwear were removed first. After washing, everything was handed over to the Germans. If it was possible to hide something, then it was exchanged with the policemen for bread.
Most patients have a high temperature, delusional. So we give out a little aspirin. I emphasize that it is not the camp authorities who give out, but we “get it”: some from our sanitary bags, and some are brought from the city by an old doctor.
The sick need to be fed, but there is nothing to feed: people with a high temperature do not eat gruel, only a little bread that the Germans prepare for prisoners, a special composition - from coarse flour mixed with finely ground sawdust. The Germans bring this bread to the barbed wire and throw it through it into the camp. The policemen then pick it up and cut it into portions of 200 grams. There was a massive number of patients with gastrointestinal diseases, many of them had bloody diarrhea: dysentery. A lot of people-shadows walk around the territory of the camp, according to the camp name "goal". These are completely weak-willed, completely weakened, downcast people, on their faces the seal of indifference is a sure sign that a person is on the eve of his death. Weak "diabolists" were also separated, but there was nothing to treat. Hands often dropped: how to help and how to help?
And how did the camp authorities look at all this? It, as I now believe, was interested in eliminating the epidemic of typhus inside the camp. The Germans were not worried about saving the lives of prisoners of war, no. They were concerned that this epidemic could also be transferred to the Germans themselves, who were very afraid of it and not unreasonably.
The Germans were interested in eliminating typhus, but ... they did nothing radical in resolving this issue. At the request of the doctor to help the sick in improving nutrition, the deputy commandant and the German military doctor gave a rude refusal; the second request - to help with medicines - is also refused; to install bunk beds for the sick is also a refusal.
But the Germans began to widely apply preventive measures for themselves. They began to enter the camp less frequently. A German military doctor generally very rarely visited the camp and never entered the barracks. Didn't even go to the bathroom. All medical personnel from prisoners had no right to approach the Germans closer than three steps, despite the fact that the attendants were in dressing gowns. In general, all Germans were terribly afraid of typhus.
The conclusion involuntarily suggested itself: the Germans created such conditions for prisoners of war under which the more Soviet people die, the better for the Nazis. Surely, for example, they could not order that the floors in the barracks for the sick and wounded be covered with a significant layer of straw, of which there was quite enough in the vicinity of Konstantinovka. But they, despite our repeated requests, did not do this either.
The service sanitary personnel thought for a long time how to get out of this situation, at least partially. And this way was found.
On the territory of the camp there was a small, primitive dezochamber (we called it a vosheboyka) and a small laundry room. Captured women (they had not yet been shot) washed all the dirty linen for the sick. It was a titanic work. Then this relatively clean underwear, tunics, trousers, overcoats were passed through the dezochamber one by one. This took another 6-7 days. Fearing the spread of epnbsp;idemia among the Germans themselves, they agreed to this. What to do with the straw in the barracks - there are also lice in it? One by one, the barracks were disinfected with a solution of unpleasantly smelling creosol.
No matter how hard it was, but an elementary sanitary order was created. But what about food and medicine? These are the most difficult questions in the conditions of fascist captivity. It's captivity. As it turned out later, the Germans also created work teams that were sent to work at industrial enterprises for peasants for agricultural work. In this case, the teams were fed tolerably. And the conditions in all the camps for Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-42 were terrible and nightmarish. These were death camps, arbitrariness, the greatest humiliations.
The treatment of the wounded (not with abdominal wounds) was easier. There were small stocks of dressings, he made splints for the wounded with broken bones of the limbs. But the drugs were tight. Some assistance was rendered by a civilian doctor of the medical unit. He managed to get a strong moonshine to sterilize some alcohol, iodine tincture, solutions of hydrogen peroxide and rivanol for washing and disinfecting festering wounds. Somewhere in the city, he got hold of a small bottle of technical fish oil, persuaded the Germans to ship it to the camp. Fish oil promoted wound healing with its rich vitamin content. After preliminary treatment and treatment, the patients were sent to the "infirmary". What kind of "infirmary" it was, it will be discussed separately.
But this is one side of the matter. The second side - what to do with food for the seriously ill and wounded? Partially the issue was resolved. The fact is that the tanks with gruel in the common kitchen were filled by cooks in the presence of policemen standing at the boilers with rubber truncheons. Doctors sharply raised the question before the policemen and cooks that the gruel for the sick and wounded should be dispensed thicker. After all, a cook from a cauldron with a scoop can hurt her in different ways. Again, the thought drills the brain - to run! But how? There are guards and dogs all around. Throw yourself on the guard and die? Ridiculous, stupid. What can you prove with that! But there is also a starvation, martyrdom ahead, which neither relatives nor comrades in arms will ever know about. They agreed to this. The fact is that the police were afraid of our doctors: in case of illness, they also ended up in the medical unit, where prisoners of war were treated. The Germans did not send sick policemen for treatment to any of their hospitals. They looked at them, in this case, as if they were prisoners of the same kind. That's why the police agreed to the doctors' proposal!
By the way, it should be noted that the Germans, when they entered the camp, did not have any rubber truncheons. They entrusted this "luxury" to their servants, the policemen. True, the officers had whips with them, but they rarely used them.
The old civilian doctor continued to show energetic activity. His plan was as follows. Firstly, among the captive patients there are few residents of Konstantinovka or its environs. The doctor agreed with the camp commandant that their relatives would have the opportunity once a week to deliver small food parcels to sick captive relatives and fellow countrymen.
Oddly enough, the commandant's office agreed to this. Why the Germans went for it, I still can’t understand. I see the following as the main reason: the camp was at the disposal of the German rear armies, and although it was guarded very carefully, the guards were carried by ordinary infantry units. Among the security units at that time there were no SS and SD units, as the more cruel and sadistic bodies of Nazi Germany.
In other words, front-line infantry soldiers, including part of the officers, guarded the camp. Some of them, apparently, looked somewhat differently at the mass disasters of Soviet prisoners of war.
How did you deal with transmissions?
Under the guidance of doctors, the paramedics were given the intended transfer to the patient. They fed almost by force, but the sick ate especially well when the crisis had already passed. If it was impossible to feed the sick because of the high temperature, the doctor closed the transfers for prisoners in a locker. Otherwise it would be impossible. After all, everyone was hungry! If a package intended for a patient could not be delivered due to the death of the patient, it was distributed among other patients at the direction of the doctors. I affirm that such a decision at that time was the only correct one. But the transfers did not last long and were not widespread.
Another source of replenishment of food was the exchange of linen for food among the population. The inhabitants of the city willingly exchanged food for clothing. The clothes from the dead prisoners of war were washed, disinfected, and stealthily from the Germans exchanged teams that took the corpses out of the camp.
At the expense of the dead, we could often get an additional amount of even bad, but still bread. The fact is that the Germans, I believe, did not know the exact number of prisoners in the camp because of the high mortality. Fearing an infection, they rarely counted the prisoners themselves, entrusting this matter to the doctors of the camp. Therefore, the number of deaths was underestimated, due to which they received an additional number of "rations".
However, all our efforts could not radically improve the situation in the camp. Basic conditions were necessary: ​​food and medicines, but they were not available. Many died from gastrointestinal diseases, pneumonia, tuberculosis ...
I stayed in this camp for twelve days, and on the thirteenth I fell ill. A high temperature appeared, the old doctor examined me and said:
- Vanya, you have a classic form of typhus - characteristic small dotted spots - a rash on the skin of the abdomen. Plus high temperature. Lie down in your barracks. A paramedic, a lieutenant and a pilot are already there. We will do our best to save you.
That's the thing! I had an excellent idea of ​​what typhus was like in a nightmarish camp, and what its outcome would be. This meant that within a month I would be 80-90% guaranteed to be in a mass grave.
The doctor should always cheer everyone up, he tried to calm me too:
“Don’t worry too much—not everyone dies.” You see for yourself that some people get better...
My heart became anxious, melancholy, apathy appeared, indifference to everything. I realized that this is almost certain death, and in the coming weeks. Yes, I saw that even in the conditions of the camp, very few recovered. But there were only a few of them, and they were no longer people, but living skeletons covered in leather. After recovery, such people have a strong appetite. They need to eat a lot and eat well, but there was no food. So they still died. Although we sometimes managed to give such prisoners an extra scoop of gruel, but in essence this did not change anything in their tragic fate. It turned out that the efforts of the medical staff in the end did not give the desired positive result. Death daily mowed down dozens of healthy and especially sick and recovering prisoners of war.
And here I lie. A few days later, because of the high temperature, he began to lose consciousness frequently and for a long time. I learned about this from the staff much later. He lay with a high temperature for more than thirty days, most of which he was in an unconscious state. According to the stories, almost daily a civilian doctor visited me and others, the old man forced the female nurses to take the temperature. He often brought crackers from the city and, when we were conscious, with some home-made tea, he almost forcibly forced us to eat and drink all this, as well as slurp a portion of the gruel, which always tasted disgusting.
The old man managed to get some medicines in the city, which were allowed to be taken inside. Some herbal infusions were used. It is necessary to pay tribute to the girls and women who cared for me and all other patients. In addition, they washed the floors in typhoid barracks, distributed gruel, washed and disinfected linen, although they knew very well that they themselves could become infected. All this was before their execution.
The time came, and the crisis of my illness passed, the temperature subsided, and I finally regained consciousness. Someone gave me a small mirror and I didn't recognize myself in it! There was almost no hair on the head, the face and body were thin, the legs became thin, a dull, indifferent look.
The doctor encourages
- The crisis is over for you, but you still have to lie down for a few more days. It would be necessary to feed, but, apart from the gruel, there is nothing.
Appetite appeared "brutal", but there was nothing to eat. Sometimes the staff would bring us crackers. As soon as you fall asleep, you are sure to dream of some kind of food, moreover, the tastiest. You wake up, there is nothing.
Practice has long proven that of all the existing trials and tribulations, the most difficult and difficult thing for a person to endure is the feeling of hunger. Neither cold, nor pain, nor insomnia can compare with the experience of constant hunger.
The doctor reassured him that a person who has been ill with typhus does not get sick again with this disease, but if he gets sick again, then in a very mild form. I knew about this before, but the whole point was that something had to be eaten. At the expense of the dead, they began to give us, like other patients, an additional piece of "sawdust" bread. But still there was not enough food. And I found a small way out. You may not believe it, but I still have a watch! This thing in the camp had some value. I asked one of the orderlies to ask the policemen how much bread they would give for a good watch. It turned out: two loaves of real clean bread. This is wealth that cannot be replaced by any gold in camp conditions! God be with them, for hours. Exchanged. He fed himself and gave to his comrades. More often began to visit in the spring air. They managed to bring some dirty technical fat from the city, according to doctors, of very dubious quality. But they took a chance: one teaspoon a day. Fat resembled tar, but it turned out to be useful. The matter was on the mend. Played a role and the youth of the body. The thought of escape loomed like a star again.
Shortly after a relative recovery, the head physician called me to him:
- Vanya, you have now developed immunity to typhus, so you will help treat the sick in the first barracks.
I did not object: after all, this is essentially an order, at least from a senior to a subordinate. It was a barrack for seriously ill patients with typhus. There are groans in the barracks, incoherent speech, screams, most of them are delirious. A particular difficulty was not to miss the moment when the patient briefly regains consciousness, and at that moment to forcefully feed him gruel and rations of surrogate bread, to measure and record the temperature. In addition, many patients had a risk of pressure sores on the body during prolonged lying. From time to time, with the orderlies and part of the convalescents, they carefully turned the patients from one side to the other.
In everyday work, longing, indifference, hopelessness and hopelessness of the situation were dulled. There was a feeling of need for you on the part of the patients, and this was reassuring.
In the first days there was dizziness and general weakness. He worked for a week, the old man calls again:
- Vanya, in the so-called hospital for prisoners of war, a terrible epidemic of typhus has arisen, which mows down exhausted, starving people. They are our Soviet people. Those who have recovered from typhus are sent there, one doctor and two paramedics. However, if you do not want, I can not order.
What is this "hospital"? I asked.
He brought me up to speed.
The hospital is located near the camp zone in a two-story stone building, surrounded by several rows of barbed wire. In the corners of the territory there are towers with machine gunners, between the towers from the outside, Russian and Ukrainian police officers with rifles and carbines walk. In addition to the POW medical staff, there are two civilian doctors from the city. Seriously ill soldiers and officers are in the hospital. There are no police inside the hospital. The food is the same as in the camp. He warned not to talk too much with the sick - there may be provocateurs. It may sometimes be possible to exchange disinfected linen and clothes of the dead for bread. But the Germans do it with difficulty. Sometimes civilian doctors bring something for the sick, but at the checkpoint the bags are carefully checked by the guards. The rest is complete isolation from the outside world.
He agreed to go to work in this "hospital". With a small party of the wounded, we were sent on foot under escort to this "hospital". We must pay tribute to the fact that along the way we, emaciated and emaciated people, were not beaten by the German escorts, although this slow mournful procession lasted about an hour for 2 kilometers of the way. The civilian population during our procession through the city was not allowed to approach the column.
At the entrance to the hospital, the senior guard handed a paper to the guard, we were counted, and the gates were opened.
Quietly and slowly wandering through the territory of the hospital. Here, at least, the policemen with their rubber truncheons are not visible. April spring makes itself felt: in some places bright green grass sprouts.
We, paramedics and doctors with bandages with a red cross on the sleeves of our overcoats (the old doctor took care of this - so as not to receive unnecessary kicks and beatings on the way), were met by a hospital doctor and separated from the rest of the sick and wounded. He took me to the first floor of the building. Two-tiered wooden bunks with rough mattresses made of rotten straw were installed in the barracks. The windows are barred with metal bars. Before us, an old paramedic and medical instructor, an Ossetian by nationality, lived and worked here. The doctor who brought us said:
- You will live here. Barracks are locked at night. Tomorrow morning to work, there are a lot of sick and wounded.
In the morning we got acquainted with the medical personnel from the prisoners of war.
A week after arriving at the hospital, the doctor warned us that among the orderlies, cleaners, food distributors there were former criminals, mostly Ukrainians by nationality, and advised us not to have any unnecessary conversations with them. Named specific names. Later we became convinced of this by their prison jargon.
The chambers in the barracks were large, no bedding, only rough mattresses with rotten straw, located right on the floor.
The "manager" of the hospital was a non-commissioned officer who spoke Russian quite tolerably.
At the request of our doctor to put up wooden bunks, at least for the most seriously ill and wounded, he received a rude rebuke from the non-commissioned officer:
“We have here not a sanatorium or a resort, but a hospital for prisoners of war of the army hostile to great Germany. Don't forget this if you don't want to get into the Gestapo! There you will be given such “bunks” that you will never remember them again!
Then the patients, having heard this conversation, after the departure of the German, went to the doctor:
“Doctor, don’t ask more about us. Will the fascists help us? There will be no help, and you will suffer.
There was a little bit for the wounded: some surgical instrument, cotton wool, dressing material, tincture of iodine, rivanol. individual pharmaceuticals. All this was trophy, that is, ours, seized from civilian medical institutions.
Every morning, except Sunday, two Russian civilian doctors came to the hospital to work - a young man and a girl whose name was Nadia. The Germans paid them. It was rumored that she spent her free time with a German non-commissioned officer. You can judge it any way you like. But what she sometimes brought food to the hospital for seriously ill patients - I knew about this. I have seen it myself many times. Although at that time the inhabitants of Konstantinovka themselves lived from hand to mouth. One spring, they brought cheap jam to the hospital in two large closed tin cans. The non-commissioned officer takes one can and hands it to her, saying: "For the good work", Nadia told him "Danke" (thank you). He knew perfectly well that she would give this jar to the sick. And so it happened, two hours later, when the German left, she ordered to open the jar and distribute the contents to the sick and wounded. Each got 20-25 grams, but it was jam! Yes, she probably met with a German, but she helped the prisoners of war as much as she could.
“Doctor “Nadya”, maiden name Visloguzova, according to a member of the underground group of the city, medical worker Ekaterina Nikolaevna Fedorenko, left with the Germans during the retreat” (Letter to the author of the city museum director Dontsov B.N.). The end of May came, it became quite warm, the grass grew. When cooking the gruel, they began to add finely chopped nettles, but the doctors warned: boil everything thoroughly!
Many patients were very edematous: they drank a lot of water, and there was little food. Mortality has not decreased. The Germans took the underwear of the dead prisoners of war strictly into account, although they, of course, did not use it. Some of them had spare pairs of linen and towels. A small part of this was exchanged for food and distributed to the sick. But famine, as in the camp, hung like a sword of Damocles over our heads. How to get out of the situation?
One of the doctors suggested the following idea. It is necessary to select something for the population from a small supply of medicines, for example, aspirin, pyramidon, tincture of iodine and others, but so as not to deprive the captive patients. Persuade "Unter" and two paramedics with this stuff (under guard, of course) to go to the nearest farms to Konstantinovka to exchange medicines for food. In fact, hiding behind this action, we were going to ask the population for alms, alms. We had little hope that the Germans would agree to this. But, oddly enough, the non-commissioned officer agreed, having singled out a young, muzzy submachine gunner as a guard. I also wanted to get into this company, but the doctor did not allow it. I was still weak from the typhus, and there were six seriously ill patients in my ward who needed constant supervision. My comrade and the medical instructor accompanied by a submachine gunner went with a basket.
It was impossible for them to even think about escaping, since all the farms surrounding the city were packed with military units, but they told about this later.
And they said the following. Having learned where they came from and for what purpose they wander at gunpoint, the population greeted them very friendly. The population said that things were also very bad with their products, a lot was confiscated by the Germans. But everyone did something to help. Of course, our payment for groceries was purely symbolic. The basket was quickly filled: someone puts a piece of bread or a few potatoes, someone an egg. We collected 30 eggs, even a small jar of butter.
The German machine gunner, escorting them back to the city, was on the alert all the time. But what was the surprise and disappointment when they were brought back to the hospital. The Germans took all the eggs, butter and part of the bread (for dogs) from the basket. Only the miserable remnants of the collected were allowed to be carried to the hospital. Now we are convinced of the naivety of our undertaking. It was necessary to know the Nazis!
Again dreams about pies, cheesecakes, bread, soup. When will all this end?
Some Germans, free from guard duty, entered the territory of the hospital (of course, they did not look into the wards - they were afraid). I remember one elderly German who spoke Russian tolerably. He treated the prisoners kindly, especially the sick. Once in the summer, looking around so that his colleagues would not see his act, he gave two walking patients a piece of good real bread. In a conversation with our captive doctor, he said that during the First World War he was a prisoner of the Russians. The Russians always treated him well and fed him well. He sharply condemned the act of those Germans who took away the products collected from the population. Therefore, not everyone was unambiguously captured, not all Germans were notorious fascists.
One day in the first decade of June 1942, I went into the barracks for doctors. Two of the three doctors were on site. A third enters, white-faced and agitated. A colleague asks him: “What happened?”. He excitedly told us the following:
- A few days ago, the Germans placed a traitor and a traitor in one of the chambers. He has an old wound on his leg and something with the intestines. He calls himself an engineer, a native and resident of Stalingrad. Gestapo officials gave him paper, whatman paper, pencils, and ink. He sits and draws a map of the city of Stalingrad, he probably knows his city very well. The Gestapo visited him both yesterday and today, they were interested in how the work was going, they brought him good food and schnapps. How to deal with this scoundrel?
“Balaev, invite an officer from the eighth ward to consult with us,” the eldest of the doctors asked me.
The fact is that in this ward there was a prisoner-of-war officer wounded in the leg with one “sleeper” in his buttonholes. It was said among the doctors that it was the regimental commissar. He was treated in this ward for the fifth week, we knew him well, got used to him. He was a charming man, well versed in the modern military and political situation. In any case, we believed and trusted him, consulted with him on some issues, but also helped as much as we could in order to heal the wound faster. That's what they sent me for. Included.
“Hello, comrades, what happened?”
The Doctor told him about the traitorous engineer. There were three doctors in the room, me and another paramedic. The conversation was quiet, with the door closed. The captain's opinion was asked. He asks us a counter question:
– And what do you think?
- Eliminate! - was a unanimous decision. But one of the doctors mumbled about medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath.
- Dear doctor! There is a war going on, moreover, a hard, bloody war. It will take many millions of lives. Every honest person should help his army, his people, in any way he can. What is this engineer? He decided to help the enemy, the Germans need the scheme-plan of Stalingrad for some military purpose. With his deed, he goes against his people, against his countrymen, the Stalingraders. What can be said about medical ethics? The captain was excited and angry.
Everything, it was decided to destroy, liquidate! But how?
The goal is set, but how to achieve it, in what ways and means? After all, this must be done in such a way that the Gestapo does not have any suspicions in the unnatural death of their henchman. Otherwise, many people will suffer.
One of the doctors took the risk and, under the guise of an ordinary injection, injected phenol into the traitor's vein. In the morning, the Germans became aware of the death of the engineer. They raised a fuss, but there was no evidence of a violent death, and gradually everything calmed down.
Warm, dry weather set in in June in Donbass. All day the walking wounded and sick were in the fresh air, leaving the barracks with a specific smell of carbolic acid. It was possible to walk around the hospital, but in many places there were warning signs in German and Russian: “Do not come closer than 5 meters to the wire! Security shoots without warning!
The question constantly arose: “How is it there, at the front, how is it at home? How is the family?". The fresh summer air made me feel even more hungry.
Once the German escorts gathered all the orderlies, paramedics, cleaners, convalescents, a total of 35-40 people and led through the gate.
We wondered where they were taking us? But we had not even gone 25 meters from the fence, when they stopped us, gave us shovels in our hands and ordered: “Dig”. Dig for a long time. The pit turned out to be 20x20 in size and about 3 meters deep. So a mass grave was dug, where the corpses of the dead in the hospital were piled up. And the death rate was high. The dead were thrown into the pit, the layer was sprinkled with bleach, which was also sprinkled, etc. Sad, terrible picture. You will involuntarily think: “What if you will also lie in the next layer?”
The expectation of a possible death at the front, on the front line, differs from this expectation in fascist captivity. There, such a state rarely comes; in the daily worries of military labor, it is not enough to think about it. Then, on the front line, each warrior understands in the name of what he can be wounded or killed. And here? Here the expectation of possible death is daily, hourly. And most importantly - in the name of what such death?
In the summer of 1942, the Germans excitedly began to talk about the fall of Sevastopol. Sevastopol was occupied by the Germans on July 3, 1942. The heroic defenders of Sevastopol kept the defense of the city for 250 days and, of course, pulled back large Nazi forces. We all grieved over the fall of the Black Sea base.
I remember such a case. Somehow in the month of May, the Germans escorted a new prisoner of war to us, a military doctor of the 1st rank. He was middle-aged, sociable, able and loved to draw well. A German comes and tells him to draw a portrait of him from nature. Brings good paper. I entered this doctor's cell and saw a German soldier sitting on a roughly knocked together stool and posing while the doctor was drawing. With me, the portrait-drawing was finished. There was a similarity, but the hand of a professional artist was not felt. Then came the second, the third...
But this doctor had to live in our hospital no more than 6-7 days. One morning he was gone. The doctor, who lived with him for a short time, told the following. Last night, four SS men (black uniform) armed with machine guns broke into the barracks with an interpreter. They named the doctor. He got up and walked towards them. One of the visitors takes a photograph out of his pocket and compares it with the doctor's face. And suddenly the cry of the SS man: “Veg! Rous! Schweinerein! (Quickly! Come out! Pig!). In the morning, a German from the hospital guard told us that it was a Soviet intelligence agent, and he was tracked down by a woman working for the Germans. Everything, of course, could be ...
The surname of this doctor was erased from memory, then, if he was a scout, the surname did not mean anything.
Police guards were also allowed to enter the territory of the infirmary. Some of the sick and wounded managed to exchange through them accidentally remaining spare linen for bread.
Smokers were especially pitiful. It was painful and pitiful to watch how some of them exchanged an already meager ration of bread for 3-4 rolls of shag! In the camp, I saw people madly drawn to tobacco smoke, all the time preoccupied with looking for moss, grass, dung, cigarette butts - God knows what, what can be wrapped in paper to smoke. There was always a standard answer to the persuasion of doctors: “we ourselves know that we smoke to the detriment of our health, but we cannot quit.” Such people quickly became edematous, weakened. They quickly descended, turning into "goal", and, in the end, died faster than the others.
In September, I, two paramedics and three doctors, were sent to the rear with the next transport of prisoners from the camp, under heavy guard, in “veal” cars packed with people. There was a rumor that they were being sent to the Dnepropetrovsk POW camp. Thus ended my tragic Konstantinovsky epic - the first period of torment, suffering, hunger, illness, humiliation and shame. “For 22 months of fascist occupation in the city of Konstantinovka, 15,382 prisoners of war and civilians were shot and tortured. 1424 inhabitants were driven away to Germany” (Letter to the head of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Konstantinovsky GK KPU S. Nesterenko).
On September 26, 1942, the Soviet Information Bureau reported: "In Stalingrad, in certain sectors of the front, the enemy reached the Volga ...".

My name is Wolfgang Morel. It is a Huguenot surname because my ancestors came from France in the 17th century. I was born in 1922. Until the age of ten, he studied at a folk school, and then for almost nine years at a gymnasium in the city of Breslau, now Wroclaw. From there, on July 5, 1941, I was drafted into the army. I just turned 19 years old.

I avoided labor service (before serving in the army, young Germans had to work for six months for the Imperial Labor Service) and I was left to myself for six months. It was like a breath of fresh air before the army, before captivity.

Before you got to Russia, what did you know about the USSR?

Russia was a closed country for us. The Soviet Union didn't want to keep in touch with the West, but the West didn't want contacts with Russia either - both sides were afraid. However, back in 1938, as a 16-year-old boy, I listened to a German radio station that broadcast regularly from Moscow. I must say the programs were not interesting - solid propaganda. Production, visits of leaders and so on - this was of no interest to anyone in Germany. There was also information about political repressions in the Soviet Union. In 1939, when there was a turn in foreign policy, when Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact, we saw Soviet troops, soldiers, officers, tanks - it was very interesting. After the signing of the treaty, interest in the Soviet Union greatly increased. Some of my school friends started learning Russian. They said this: "In the future we will have close economic relations and we must speak Russian."

When did the image of the USSR as an enemy begin to take shape?

Only after the start of the war. In early 1941, relations were felt to be deteriorating. There were rumors that the USSR was going to stop exporting grain to Germany. wanted to export their grain.

How did you perceive the beginning of the war with the Soviet Union?

Feelings were very different. Some believed that in a week all enemies in the East would be destroyed, as happened in Poland and in the West. But the older generation took this war with skepticism. My father, who fought in Russia during the First World War, was convinced that we would not bring this war to a happy end.

At the end of June I received a letter in which I was ordered to be at the barracks of a military unit at such and such an hour on such and such a date. The barracks was located in my hometown, so it was not far to go. I was trained as a radio operator for two months. However, at first I played tennis more. The fact is that my father was a famous tennis player and I myself started playing at the age of five. Our tennis club was located near the barracks. Once in a conversation, I told the company commander about this. He really wanted to learn how to play and immediately took me with him to training. So I left the barracks much earlier than the others. Instead of drill training, I played tennis. The company commander was not interested in my combat training, he wanted me to play with him. When training in the specialty began, the games ended. We were taught to receive and transmit on the key, taught to eavesdrop on enemy conversations in English and Russian. I had to learn the Russian signs of the Morse code. Each character of the Latin alphabet is encoded by four Morse characters, and the Cyrillic alphabet by five. It wasn't easy to master it. Soon the training ended, the cadets of the next set came and I was left as an instructor, although I did not want to. I wanted to go to the front, because it was believed that the war was about to end. We defeated France, Poland, Norway - Russia will not last long, and after the war it is better to be an active participant in it - more benefits. In December, soldiers from rear units were assembled throughout Germany to be sent to the Eastern Front. I filed a report and was transferred to a team to be sent to war.

We traveled to Orsha by rail, and from Orsha to Rzhev we were transferred to transport Yu-52s. Apparently, replenishment was urgently needed. I must say that when we arrived in Rzhev I was struck by the lack of order. The mood of the army was at zero.

I ended up in the 7th Panzer Division. The famous division commanded by General Rommel. By the time we arrived, there were no tanks in the divisions - they were abandoned due to lack of fuel and shells.

Have you been given winter gear?

No, but we received several sets of summer. We were given three shirts. In addition, I received an additional overcoat. And after all in January there were frosts under forty degrees! Our government slept through the onset of winter. For example, the order to collect skis from the population for the army came out only in March 1942!

When you arrived in Russia, what struck you the most?

Space. We had little contact with the local population. Sometimes they stopped in huts. The local people helped us.

From our group, skiers began to be selected for operations behind enemy lines - it was necessary to connect to enemy communication lines and listen to them. I did not get into this group, and on January 10 we were already on the front line as a simple infantryman. We cleared roads from snow, fought.

What was fed at the front?

There was always hot food. They gave chocolate and cola, sometimes liquor - not every day and limited.

Already on January 22, I was taken prisoner. I was alone in the outpost when I saw a group of Russian soldiers, about fifteen in winter clothes on skis. It was useless to shoot, but I was not going to surrender either. When they came closer, I saw that they were Mongols. They were considered especially cruel. There were rumors that they found mutilated corpses of German prisoners with gouged out eyes. I was not ready to accept such a death. In addition, I was very afraid that they would torture me during interrogation at the Russian headquarters: I had nothing to say - I was a simple soldier. Fear of captivity and a painful death under torture led me to the decision to commit suicide. I took my Mauser 98k by the barrel, and when they approached about ten meters I put it in my mouth and pulled the trigger with my foot. The Russian winter and the quality of German weapons saved my life: if it weren’t so cold, and if the parts of the weapons weren’t so well fitted that they froze, then we wouldn’t be talking to you. They surrounded me. Someone said "Hyundai hoch". I put my hands up, but in one hand I held a rifle. One of them approached me, took the rifle and said something. It seems to me that he said: "Rejoice that the war is over for you." I realized that they are quite friendly. Apparently I was the first German they saw. I was searched. Although I was not a heavy smoker, I had a pack of 250 R-6 cigarettes in my satchel. All smokers received a cigarette and the rest was returned to me. I then exchanged these cigarettes for food. In addition, the soldiers found a toothbrush. Apparently they encountered her for the first time - they looked at her carefully and laughed. One elderly soldier with a beard patted my overcoat and dismissively threw: “Hitler”, then pointed to his fur coat, hat and respectfully said: “Stalin!” They immediately wanted to interrogate me, but no one spoke German. They had a small dictionary, which included a chapter on "interrogation of a prisoner": "Wie heissen Sie? What's the last name? - I called myself. - "What part" - "I don't understand." During the interrogation, I decided to hold on to the last minute and not reveal the number of my unit. After a little torment with me, they stopped the interrogation. An elderly soldier who praised his uniform was ordered to accompany me to the headquarters, which was six kilometers away in a village we had left two or three days ago. He was skiing, and I was walking on one and a half meters of snow. As soon as he took a couple of steps, I remained many meters behind him. Then he pointed to my shoulders and the ends of the skis. I could punch him in the temple, take the skis and run away, but I didn't have the will to resist. After 9 hours in 30-40 degree frost, I simply did not have the strength to decide on such an act.

The first interrogation at headquarters was conducted by the commissar. But before I was called for interrogation, I was sitting in the hallway of the house. I decided to take a moment and shake out the snow that had accumulated in my boots. I managed to take off only one boot when an officer of a heroic appearance addressed me, dressed in an astrakhan cape. In French, which he spoke better than I, he said: "It's lucky that you were captured, you will definitely return home." He distracted me from shaking the snow out of my boots, which later cost me dearly. We were interrupted by an interpreter shouting from behind the door: “Come in!”. The offer of a light snack was accepted by my empty stomach immediately. When black bread, bacon and a glass of water were handed to me, my hesitant glance caught the commissar's eyes. He motioned to the interpreter to taste the food. "As you can see, we're not going to poison you!" I was very thirsty, but instead of water there was vodka in the glass! Then the interrogation began. I was again asked to give my last name, first name, date of birth. Then came the main question: “Which military unit?” I refused to answer this question. . The blow of the pistol on the table made me come up with an answer: "1st Division, 5th Regiment." Complete fantasy. Not surprisingly, the commissioner immediately exploded: "You're lying!" - I repeated. - "Lies!" He took a small book in which the divisions and their regiments were apparently recorded: “Listen, you serve in the 7th Panzer Division, 7th Infantry Regiment, 6th Company.” It turned out that two comrades from my company had been taken prisoner the day before, and they told me in which unit they served. This ended the interrogation. During the interrogation, the snow in the boot, which I did not have time to take off, melted. I was taken outside and taken to a neighboring village. During the transition, the water in the boot froze, I stopped feeling my toes. In this village I joined a group of three prisoners of war. For almost ten days we walked from village to village. One of my comrades died in my arms from loss of strength. We often felt the hatred of the local population, whose houses were destroyed to the ground during the retreat in the implementation of the scorched earth tactics. To angry shouts: "Fin, Fin!" we answered: "Germanic!" and in most cases the locals left us alone. I had frostbite on my right foot, my right boot was torn, and I used the second shirt as a dressing. In such a pitiful condition, we met the crew of the News of the Week film magazine, past which we had to walk several times in deep snow. They said to go and go again. We tried to hold on so that the idea of ​​the German army was not so bad. Our "provisions" on this "campaign" consisted mainly of empty bread and ice-cold well water, from which I got pneumonia. Only at the Shakhovskaya station, restored after the bombing, did the three of us get into a freight car, where an orderly was already waiting for us. During the two or three days that the train traveled to Moscow, he provided us with the necessary medicines and food, which he cooked on a cast-iron stove. For us it was a feast, while there was still an appetite. The hardships we have experienced have taken a toll on our health. I suffered from dysentery and pneumonia. Approximately two weeks after the capture, we arrived at one of the freight stations in Moscow and found shelter on the bare floor near the wagon coupler. Two days later, we couldn't believe our eyes. The sentry put us in a white, six-seat ZIS limousine, on which was painted a red cross and a red crescent. On the way to the hospital, it seemed to us that the driver was deliberately driving in a roundabout way to show us the city. He proudly commented on the places we passed: Red Square with Lenin's mausoleum, the Kremlin. Twice we crossed the Moscow River. The military hospital was hopelessly overflowing with the wounded. But here we took a bath that had a beneficial effect on us. They bandaged my frostbitten leg and hung it over the tub with lifting blocks. We never saw our uniform again, as we had to put on Russian clothes. We were sent to the boiler room. There were already ten completely exhausted comrades there. There was water on the floor, steam escaping from leaky pipes in the air, and drops of condensate crawled along the walls. The beds were stretchers raised on bricks. We were given rubber boots so we could go to the toilet. Even the orderlies who appeared from time to time were in rubber boots. We spent several days in this terrible dungeon. Feverish dreams caused by illness drag on memories of that time… After five or maybe ten days, we were transferred to Vladimir. We were placed directly in the military hospital, located in the building of the theological seminary. At that time there was no prisoner-of-war camp in Vladimir where we could be accommodated in the infirmary. There were already 17 of us and we occupied a separate room. The beds were covered with sheets. How did you decide to place us together with the Russian wounded? A clear violation of the ban on contact. A Russian friend of mine, who by the nature of his activity was studying the fate of German prisoners of war in Vladimir, admitted to me that he had never seen anything like it. In the archives of the Soviet Army in St. Petersburg, he came across a card from a file cabinet documenting our existence. For us, this decision was a great happiness, and for some even salvation. There we felt treated as if we were our own, in terms of medical care and living conditions. Our food was not inferior to the food of the Red Army. There was no security, but despite this, no one even thought about escaping. Medical examinations were held twice a day, mostly by female doctors, less often by the head physician himself. Most of us have suffered from frostbite.

I already got there. My appetite disappeared and I began to put the bread that was given to us under the pillow. My neighbor said that I was a fool and should distribute it among the others, since I am not a tenant anyway. This rudeness saved me! I realized that if I want to go home, I have to force myself to eat. Gradually I started to improve. My pneumonia gave up after two months of treatment, including cupping. Dysentery was taken by the horns by the introduction of potassium permanganate intramuscularly and the intake of 55 percent ethyl alcohol, which caused indescribable envy of others. We were treated like sick people. Even the slightly injured and slowly recovering were exempted from any work. It was performed by sisters and nannies. The Kazakh cook often brought a full portion of soup or porridge to the brim. The only German word he knew was: "Noodles!". And when he said it, he always smiled broadly. When we noticed that the attitude of the Russians towards us was normal, then our hostile attitude diminished. This was also helped by a charming female doctor, who, with her sensitive, restrained attitude, treated us with sympathy. We called her "Snow White".

Less pleasant were the regular visits of the political commissar, who haughtily and in every detail told us about the new successes of the Russian winter offensive. A comrade from Upper Silesia - his jaw was crushed - tried to transfer his knowledge of the Polish language into Russian and translated as best he could. Judging by the fact that he himself understood no more than half, he was not at all ready to translate everything and instead scolded the political commissar and Soviet propaganda. The same one, not noticing the game of our "translator", encouraged him to translate further. Often we could hardly contain our laughter. Quite different news reached us in the summer. Two hairdressers said in great secrecy that the Germans were standing near Cairo, and the Japanese had occupied Singapore. And then the question immediately arose: what awaits us in the event of a passionately desired victory? The commissar hung a poster over our beds: "Death to the fascist invaders!" Outwardly, we were no different from the Russian wounded: white underwear, a blue dressing gown and house slippers. During private meetings in the corridor and the toilet in us, of course. the Germans were immediately recognized. And only a few of our neighbors, whom we already knew and avoided, such meetings aroused indignation. In most cases, the response has been different. About half were neutral towards us, and about a third showed varying degrees of interest. The highest degree of trust was a pinch of shag, and sometimes even a rolled cigarette, lightly lit and handed over to us. Suffering from the fact that shag was not part of our diet, passionate smokers, as soon as they regained the ability to move around, set up duty in the corridor to collect tobacco. The guard, who changed every half an hour, went out into the corridor, stood in front of our door and drew attention to himself with a typical movement of the smokers' hand, "shooting" chinarik or a pinch of shag. So the problem with tobacco was somehow solved.

What conversations were going on between the prisoners?

Conversations between soldiers at home were only on the topic of women, but in captivity, topic No. 1 was food. I remember one conversation well. One comrade said that after dinner he could eat three more times, then his neighbor grabbed his wooden crutch and wanted to beat him, because in his opinion it would be possible to eat not three, but ten times.

Were there officers among you or were there only soldiers?

There were no officers.

In the middle of summer, almost everyone was healthy again, the wounds healed, no one died. And even those who recovered earlier still remained in the infirmary. At the end of August, an order came to be transferred to a labor camp, first in Moscow, and from there to the Ufa region in the Urals. After an almost heavenly time in the infirmary, I realized that I had completely lost the habit of physical work. But parting became even more difficult because I was treated here kindly and mercifully. In 1949, after spending almost eight years in captivity, I returned home.
Interview and literary adaptation: A. Drabkin