The idea of ​​the German occupiers about Soviet women was formed on the basis of Nazi propaganda, which claimed that on the most extensive eastern territory inhabited by semi-wild, dissolute ladies, devoid of intelligence, who have lost the concept of human virtues.

Having crossed the border of the USSR, the Nazi soldiers were forced to admit that the stereotypes imposed on them by the party did not at all correspond to reality.

Mercy

Among the amazing qualities of Soviet women, the German military especially noted their mercy and lack of hatred for the soldiers of the enemy army.

In the front-line records made by Major Küner there are passages dedicated to peasant women who, despite hardships and universal grief, did not become embittered, but shared the last meager food supplies with the needy fascists. It is also recorded there that “when we [the Germans] feel thirsty during the crossings, we go into their huts, and they give us milk,” thereby putting the invaders in an ethical impasse.

Chaplain Keeler, who served in the medical unit, by the will of fate, turned out to be a guest in the house of 77-year-old grandmother Alexandra, whose cordial care for him made him think about metaphysical questions: “She knows that we are fighting against them, and yet she knits socks for me . The feeling of enmity is probably unfamiliar to her. Poor people share their last good with us. Do they do it out of fear or do these people really innate feeling self-sacrifice? Or do they do it out of good nature or even out of love?

Kuhner's true bewilderment was caused by the strong maternal instinct of the Soviet woman, about which he wrote: "How often I saw Russian peasant women wailing over the wounded German soldiers, as if they were their own sons."

Moral

The real shock of the German occupiers was caused by the high morality of Soviet women. The thesis about the promiscuity of Eastern ladies, planted by fascist propaganda, turned out to be just a myth, devoid of foundation.

Wehrmacht soldier Michels, reflecting on this topic, wrote: “What did they tell us about the Russian woman? And how did we find it? I think that there is hardly a German soldier who has been in Russia who has not learned to appreciate and respect a Russian woman.”

All the fair sex brought to Germany from the occupied territories of the USSR for forced labor, immediately sent for a medical examination, during which very unexpected details were revealed.

Eirich's assistant doctor Hamm, on the pages of his notebook, left such a curious note: “The doctor who examined Russian girls ... was deeply impressed by the results of the examination: 99% of girls aged 18 to 35 turned out to be chaste,” followed by the addition “he thinks that in Orel it would be impossible to find girls for a brothel ... "

Similar data came from various enterprises where Soviet girls were sent, including from the Wolfen factory, whose representatives noted: “It seems that a Russian man pays due attention to a Russian woman, which ultimately is also reflected in the moral aspects of life” .

The writer Ernest Junger, who fought in the German troops, heard from the staff doctor von Grevenitz that the data on sexual debauchery Oriental women a complete deception, he realized that his feelings had not failed him. Endowed with the ability to peer into human souls, the writer, describing Russian young ladies, noticed “the sparkle of purity that surrounds their face. Its light does not have the glimmer of active virtue, but rather resembles the reflection of moonlight. However, just because of this, you feel the great power of this light ... "

performance

The German Panzer General Leo Geir von Schweppenburg, in his memoirs about Russian women, noted their "worth, without a doubt, purely physical performance." This trait of their character was also noticed by the German leadership, which decided to use the Eastern ladies stolen from the occupied territories as servants in the homes of devoted members of the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany.

The duties of the housekeeper included thorough cleaning of the apartments, which weighed down the pampered German Frau and had a bad effect on their precious health.

Cleanliness

One of the reasons for attracting Soviet women to housekeeping was their amazing cleanliness. The Germans broke into rather modest-looking houses civilians, marveled at their imbued folk motives interior decoration and tidiness.

Fascist servicemen who were expecting a meeting with the barbarians were discouraged by the beauty and personal hygiene of Soviet women, which was reported by one of the leaders of the Dortmund health department: “I was actually amazed by the good appearance workers from the East. The greatest surprise was caused by the teeth of the workers, since so far I have not yet found a single case of a Russian woman having bad teeth. Unlike us Germans, they must pay a lot of attention to keeping their teeth in order.”

And chaplain Franz, who by virtue of his calling did not have the right to look at a woman through the eyes of a man, stated with restraint: “About feminine Russian women (if I can put it that way), I got the impression that they are their own inner strength keep under moral control those Russians who can be considered barbarians.

Family bonds

The lies of the fascist agitators, who claimed that the totalitarian authorities Soviet Union completely destroyed the institution of the family, to which the Nazis sang praises.

From the front-line letters of German fighters, their relatives learned that women from the USSR were not robots without feelings at all, but quivering and caring daughters, mothers, wives and grandmothers. Moreover, the warmth and tightness of their family ties could only be envied. At every opportunity, numerous relatives communicate with each other and help each other.

Piety

The deep piety of Soviet women made a great impression on the Nazis, who, despite the official persecution of religion in the country, managed to keep in their souls close connection with God. Moving from one settlement to another, the Nazi soldiers found many churches and monasteries in which services were held.

Major K. Küner, in his memoirs, spoke about two peasant women he saw, who prayed frantically, standing among the ruins of a church burned by the Germans.

The surprise of the Nazis was caused by women prisoners of war who refused to work on the days church holidays, in some places the guards went towards religious feelings prisoners, and in others, a death sentence was imposed for disobedience.

"I did not immediately decide to publish this chapter from the book "Captivity" on the site. This is one of the most terrible and heroic stories. A low bow to you, women, for everything you endured and, alas, never appreciated by the state, people, and researchers. This was difficult to write about. It is even more difficult to talk to former prisoners. Low bow to you - the Heroine".

"And there were no such beautiful women on the whole earth..." Job (42:15)

"My tears were my bread day and night... ...my enemies scold me..." Psalter. (41:4:11)

From the first days of the war, tens of thousands of female medical workers were mobilized into the Red Army. Thousands of women volunteered to join the army and divisions of the people's militia. Based on the decrees of the State Defense Committee of March 25, April 13 and 23, 1942, mass mobilization of women began. Only at the call of the Komsomol, 550 thousand Soviet women became soldiers. 300,000 were drafted into the Air Defense Forces. Hundreds of thousands - to the military medical and sanitary service, signal troops, road and other units. In May 1942, another GKO decree was adopted - on the mobilization of 25,000 women in the Navy.

Three air regiments were formed from women: two bombers and one fighter, the 1st separate female volunteer rifle brigade, 1st Separate Women's Reserve Rifle Regiment.

Established in 1942, the Central Women's Sniper School trained 1,300 female snipers.

Ryazan Infantry School. Voroshilov trained women commanders of rifle units. In 1943 alone, 1388 people graduated from it.

During the war years, women served in all branches of the military and represented all military specialties. Women made up 41% of all doctors, 43% of paramedics, 100% of nurses. In total, 800 thousand women served in the Red Army.

However, women health instructors and nurses in active army accounted for only 40%, which violates the prevailing ideas about the girl under fire, rescuing the wounded. In his interview, A. Volkov, who went through the entire war as a medical instructor, refutes the myth that only girls were medical instructors. According to him, the girls were nurses and orderlies in the medical battalions, and mostly men served as medical instructors and orderlies on the front line in the trenches.

“They didn’t even take frail men to medical instructor courses. Only hefty ones! The work of a medical instructor is harder than that of a sapper. A medical instructor must crawl at least four times during the night to find the wounded. , so big, almost a kilometer on you! Yes, this is nonsense. We were especially warned: if you drag a wounded man to the rear, you will be shot on the spot for desertion. After all, what is a medical instructor for? A medical instructor must prevent a large loss of blood and apply a bandage. to drag him to the rear, for this, everything is subordinate to the medical instructor. There is always someone to take out of the battlefield. The medical instructor, after all, is subordinate to no one. Only the head of the medical battalion."

Not everything can be agreed with A. Volkov. The female medical instructors saved the wounded, pulling them out on themselves, dragging them behind them, there are many examples of this. Another thing is interesting. The women-front-line soldiers themselves note the discrepancy between the stereotypical screen images and the truth of the war.

For example, a former medical instructor Sofya Dubnyakova says: “I watch films about the war: a nurse is at the forefront, she is neat, clean, not in wadded trousers, but in a skirt, she has a pilot on a tuft .... Well, not true! ... Is it we could pull out the wounded like this? .. You don’t really crawl in a skirt when there are only men around. But to tell the truth, skirts were only given to us at the end of the war. At the same time, we also received knitted underwear instead of men's underwear. "

In addition to medical instructors, among whom were women, there were porters in the sanrots - they were only men. They also helped the wounded. However, their main task is to carry the already bandaged wounded from the battlefield.

On August 3, 1941, the People's Commissar of Defense issued Order No. 281 "On the procedure for submitting military orderlies and porters to the government award for good combat work." The work of orderlies and porters was equated to military feat. The said order stated: "For the removal from the battlefield of 15 wounded with their rifles or light machine guns, each orderly and porter should be presented with a government award with a medal "For Military Merit" or "For Courage." For the removal from the battlefield of 25 wounded with their weapons, submit to the Order of the Red Star, for the removal of 40 wounded - to the Order of the Red Banner, for the removal of 80 wounded - to the Order of Lenin.

150 thousand Soviet women were awarded military orders and medals. 200 - Orders of Glory 2nd and 3rd degree. four steel full cavaliers Order of Glory of three degrees. 86 women were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

At all times, the service of women in the army was considered immoral. There are many insulting lies about them, it is enough to recall PZh - a field wife.

Surprisingly, similar attitude to women gave birth to men-front-line soldiers. War veteran N.S. Posylayev recalls: “As a rule, women who got to the front soon became mistresses of officers. How else: if a woman is on her own, there will be no end to harassment.

To be continued...

A. Volkov said that when a group of girls arrived in the army, “merchants” immediately followed them: “First, the army headquarters took the youngest and most beautiful, then the headquarters of a lower rank.”

In the autumn of 1943, a medical orderly girl arrived in his company at night. And only one medical instructor is assigned to the company. It turns out that the girl “was molested everywhere, and since she did not yield to anyone, she was sent down below. From the headquarters of the army to the headquarters of the division, then to the headquarters of the regiment, then to the company, and the company commander sent the touchy into the trenches.

Zina Serdyukova, a former foreman of the reconnaissance company of the 6th Guards Cavalry Corps, knew how to deal strictly with soldiers and commanders, but one day the following happened:

“It was winter, the platoon lodged in farmhouse, there I had a nook. In the evening I was summoned by the commander of the regiment. Sometimes he himself set the task of sending behind enemy lines. This time he was drunk, the table with the leftover food was not cleared. Without saying anything, he rushed towards me, trying to undress me. I knew how to fight, I'm a scout after all. And then he called the orderly, ordering me to be held. They both tore my clothes off. The landlady, who was quartered, flew into my cries, and only this saved me. I ran through the village, half-dressed, crazy. For some reason, I thought that I would find protection from the commander of the corps, General Sharaburko, he fatherly called me daughter. The adjutant did not let me in, but I rushed to the general, beaten, disheveled. She told incoherently how Colonel M. had tried to rape me. The general reassured me, saying that I would not see Colonel M. again. A month later, my company commander reported that the colonel had died in battle, he was part of a penal battalion. That's what war is, it's not just bombs, tanks, exhausting marches..."

Everything was in life at the front, where "there are four steps to death." However, most veterans with sincere respect remember the girls who fought at the front. Most often, those who sat in the rear, behind the backs of women who had gone to the front as volunteers, were most often slandered.

Former front-line soldiers, despite the difficulties they had to face in the men's team, remember their combat friends with warmth and gratitude.

Rashel Berezina, in the army since 1942 - intelligence interpreter military intelligence, ended the war in Vienna as a senior translator of the intelligence department of the First Guards Mechanized Corps under the command of Lieutenant General I.N. Russiyanov. She says that they treated her very respectfully, in the intelligence department in her presence they even stopped using foul language.

Maria Fridman, a scout of the 1st NKVD division who fought in the Nevsky Dubrovka area near Leningrad, recalls that the scouts protected her, filled her with sugar and chocolate, which they found in German dugouts. True, sometimes I had to defend myself with a "fist in the teeth."

“If you don’t hit me in the teeth, you’ll be lost! .. In the end, the scouts began to protect me from other people’s boyfriends:“ If no one, then no one.

When volunteer girls from Leningrad appeared in the regiment, we were dragged every month to the “brood”, as we called it. In the medical battalion they checked if anyone got pregnant ... After one such “brood”, the regiment commander asked me in surprise: “Maruska, for whom are you protecting yourself? They will kill us anyway...” The people were rude, but kind. And fair. I never saw such militant justice as in the trenches.”

The everyday difficulties that Maria Fridman had to face at the front are now remembered with irony.

“The lice have eaten the soldiers. They pull off shirts, pants, but what about a girl? I had to look for an abandoned dugout and there, stripping naked, I tried to get rid of lice. Sometimes they helped me, someone would stand at the door and say: “Don’t poke your head, Maruska crushes lice there!”

A bath day! And go as needed! Somehow I got into seclusion, climbed under a bush, above the parapet of the trench, the Germans either did not immediately notice, or they let me sit quietly, but when I began to pull on my pants, it whistled from left and right. I fell into the trench, panties at the heels. Oh, they were guffawing in the trenches about how Maruskin blinded the Germans ...

At first, I confess, I was annoyed by this soldier's cackle, until I realized that they were not laughing at me, but at their own soldier's fate, in blood and lice, laughing in order to survive, not to go crazy. And it was enough for me that after a bloody skirmish someone asked in alarm: “Manka, are you alive?”

M. Fridman fought at the front and behind enemy lines, was wounded three times, was awarded the medal "For Courage", the Order of the Red Star ...

To be continued...

Front-line girls bore all the hardships frontline life on a par with men, not inferior to them either in courage or in military skill.

The Germans, in whose army women carried only auxiliary service, were extremely surprised by such an active participation of Soviet women in hostilities.

They even tried to play the "women's card" in their propaganda, talking about inhumanity Soviet system that throws women into the fire of war. An example of this propaganda is a German leaflet that appeared at the front in October 1943: "If a friend was wounded ..."

The Bolsheviks have always surprised the whole world. And in this war, they gave something completely new:

« Woman at the front! Since ancient times, people have been fighting and everyone has always believed that war is a man's business, men should fight, and it never occurred to anyone to involve women in war. True, there were individual cases, such as the notorious "shock girls" at the end of the last war - but these were exceptions and they went down in history as a curiosity or an anecdote.

But no one has thought of the mass involvement of women in the army as fighters, on the front line with weapons in their hands, except for the Bolsheviks.

Every nation seeks to protect its women from danger, to save a woman, because a woman is a mother, the preservation of the nation depends on her. Most of the men may perish, but the women must survive, otherwise the whole nation may perish."

Are the Germans suddenly thinking about the fate of the Russian people, they are concerned about the issue of its preservation. Of course not! It turns out that all this is just a preamble to the most important German thought:

“Therefore, the government of any other country, in the event of excessive losses threatening the further existence of the nation, would try to withdraw its country from the war, because everyone national government dear to your people." (Highlighted by the Germans. Here is the main idea: we must end the war, and we need a national government. - Aron Schneer).

« The Bolsheviks think otherwise. Georgian Stalin and various Kaganoviches, Berias, Mikoyans and the entire Jewish kahal (well, how to do without anti-Semitism in propaganda! - Aron Schneer), sitting on the people's neck, do not give a damn about the Russian people and all other peoples of Russia and Russia itself. They have one goal - to maintain their power and their skins. Therefore, they need war, war at all costs, war by any means, at the cost of any sacrifice, war until last man, to the last man and woman. “If a friend was wounded” - for example, both legs or arms were torn off, it doesn’t matter, to hell with him, the “girlfriend” will “know how” to die at the front, drag her there into the meat grinder of war, there’s nothing to be gentle with her. Stalin does not feel sorry for the Russian woman ... "

The Germans, of course, miscalculated, did not take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of thousands of Soviet women, volunteer girls. Of course, there were mobilizations, extraordinary measures in conditions of extreme danger, the tragic situation that had developed on the fronts, but it would be wrong not to take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of the youth born after the revolution and ideologically trained in prewar years to struggle and self-sacrifice.

One of these girls was Yulia Drunina, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who went to the front. A poem she wrote after the war explains why she and thousands of other girls volunteered for the front:

"I left my childhood To a dirty car, To an infantry train, To a medical platoon. ... I came from school To damp dugouts. From beautiful lady- In “mother” and “rewind”. Because the name is Closer than “Russia”, I couldn’t find it.”

Women fought at the front, thereby asserting their right, equal with men, to defend the Fatherland. The enemy repeatedly praised the participation of Soviet women in battles:

"Russian women ... communists hate any opponent, are fanatical, dangerous. Sanitary battalions in 1941 defended with grenades and rifles in their hands last frontier in front of Leningrad.

The liaison officer Prince Albert of Hohenzollern, who took part in the storming of Sevastopol in July 1942, "admired the Russians and especially women, who, according to him, show amazing courage, dignity and fortitude."

According to the Italian soldier, he and his comrades had to fight near Kharkov against the "Russian women's regiment". Several women were captured by the Italians. However, in accordance with the agreement between the Wehrmacht and the Italian army, all captured by the Italians were handed over to the Germans. The latter decided to shoot all the women. According to the Italian, "the women did not expect anything else. They only asked to be allowed to pre-bath and wash their dirty linen in order to die in pure form, as it should be according to the old Russian customs. The Germans granted their request. And here they are, having washed themselves and put on clean shirts, they went to be shot ... "

The fact that the story of the Italian about the participation of the female infantry unit in the battles is not fiction is confirmed by another story. Since both in Soviet scientific and in fiction, there were numerous references only to the exploits of individual women - representatives of all military specialties and never talked about the participation in the battles of individual female infantry units, I had to turn to the material published in the Vlasov newspaper Zarya.

To be continued...

The article "Valya Nesterenko - assistant commander of the intelligence platoon" tells about the fate of a Soviet girl taken prisoner. Valya graduated from the Ryazan Infantry School. According to her, about 400 women and girls studied with her:

“Why were they all volunteers? They were considered volunteers. But how did they go! They gathered young people, a representative from the district military registration and enlistment office comes to the meeting and asks: “How, girls, do you love Soviet power?” They answer - "We love" - ​​"So we must protect!" They write applications. And then try, refuse! And since 1942, mobilizations have begun at all. Everyone receives a summons, appears in the military registration and enlistment office. Goes to the commission. The commission gives a conclusion: they are fit for military service. They are sent to the unit. Those who are older or have children, - those who are mobilized for work. And those who are younger and without children, they go to the army. There were 200 people in my graduation. Some did not want to study, but then they were sent to dig trenches.

In our regiment of three battalions, there were two male and one female. The female was the first battalion - submachine gunners. In the beginning, there were girls from orphanages in it. They were desperate. We occupied with this battalion up to ten settlements, and then most of them were out of order. Requested a refill. Then the remnants of the battalion were withdrawn from the front and a new women's battalion was sent from Serpukhov. A women's division was specially formed there. There were older women and girls in the new battalion. All were mobilized. We studied for three months as submachine gunners. At first, while there were no big fights, they were brave.

Our regiment was advancing on the villages of Zhilino, Savkino, Surovezhki. Women's battalion acted in the middle, and men - from the left and right flanks. The women's battalion was to cross the Helm and advance to the edge of the forest. As soon as they climbed the hillock, the artillery began to beat. Girls and women started screaming and crying. They huddled together, so the German artillery put them all in a heap. There were at least 400 people in the battalion, and three girls survived from the entire battalion. What happened - and it's scary to look at ... mountains of female corpses. Is this a woman's business, war?"

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander Ober-Lieutenant Prince acquainted the soldiers with the order: "Shoot all women who serve in the Red Army." Numerous facts testify that this order was applied throughout the war.

In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war - a military doctor - was shot.

In Mglinsk Bryansk region in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them.

After the defeat of the Red Army in the Crimea in May 1942, an unknown girl in a military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko in the fishing village "Mayak" near Kerch. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: "Shoot, bastards! I'm dying for Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, dog death will come!" The girl was shot in the yard.

At the end of August 1942 in the village of Krymskaya Krasnodar Territory a group of sailors was shot, among them there were several girls in military uniform.

In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Alexandrovna, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.

In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.

On January 5, 1943, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured near the Severny farm. Among them - nurse named Luba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 "a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, her face, hands were cut, her breasts were cut off ..."

Knowing what awaits them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Often captured women were raped before they died. Hans Rudhoff, a soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, testifies that in the winter of 1942 "... Russian nurses lay on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... These dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written ".

In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the yard, where there were nurses from the hospital. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they dragged them into a barn and raped them. However, they were not killed.

Women prisoners of war who ended up in camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drogobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Lyuda. "Captain Stroher, the commandant of the camp, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Lyuda to a bunk, and in this position Stroehr raped her and then shot her."

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orlyand gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and "ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals - if they were sick with venereal diseases. He carried out an external examination himself. Chose 3 of them were young girls, took them to him to "serve". German soldiers and officers came for women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

The camp guards from among the former prisoners of war and camp policemen were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped captives or, under threat of death, forced them to cohabit with them. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 female prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, the former head of the camp guard A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped the prisoners of the women's bloc.

The Millerovo POW camp also contained female prisoners. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible:

"The policemen often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two in a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, outrage, mock, do whatever he pleases. Once, during the evening verification, the chief of police himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “A for those who do not want to go, arrange a “red firefighter". The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took red hot pepper big size, twisted it and inserted the girl into the vagina. Left in this position for half an hour. Shouting was forbidden. Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back their screams, and after such a punishment they long time couldn't move. The commandant, behind her back they called her a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated mockeries. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning. We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.

To be continued...

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely miserable impression. In the conditions of camp life, it was especially difficult for them: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.

In the fall of 1941, K. Kromiadi, a member of the commission for the distribution of labor, who visited the Sedlice camp, talked with the captured women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: "...everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves."

A group of female medical workers taken prisoner in the Kiev cauldron in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord".

Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk in Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was forbidden. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all the women with "the condition of a free settlement in Smolensk."

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were captured: doctors, nurses, nurses. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 female prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. Everyone was lined up in Rovno, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." who was separated from general group, shot. The rest were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the car into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered in a hole in the floor.

On the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and on February 23, 1943, the women were brought to the city of Zoes. Lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed special prestige among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm on behalf of all German said: "We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories." In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which, because of the crowding, it was impossible to sit down or move. It stayed that way for almost a day. And then the rebellious were sent to Ravensbrück.

This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear- shirt and shorts. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for half a year, but not everyone managed to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden blocks.

The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tiered plank beds with a narrow passage between them. For two prisoners, one cotton blanket was issued. In a separate room lived block - senior barracks. There was a washroom in the hallway.

Prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. In Ravensbrück, 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops were made, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.

The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.

Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS spread a rumor around the camp that a gang of female murderers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.

Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning for verification, sometimes lasting several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, as warm water did not have. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn.

Women whose hair survived began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that "Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion."

For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening we received for five people a small loaf of bread with an admixture of sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is testified in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, Sh. Müller: that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of impudence. All the first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp - the author's note) and deprived of lunch.

But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?

It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping alignment, walked, as if in a parade, minting a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The whole column moved as a single unit. Suddenly, a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up, huge country, Get up for a mortal battle...

Then they sang about Moscow.

The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment by marching the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...

It was not possible for the SS to leave Soviet women without lunch. Political prisoners took care of food for them in advance."

To be continued...

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once struck their enemies and fellow campers with their unity and spirit of resistance. One day 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to take the women away, the comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. "The remaining 500 people lined up five people at a time and went to the commandant. E.L. Klemm was the translator. The commandant drove the newcomers into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike."

In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in the city of Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove the wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who would agree to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia.

Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire.

Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Keep your head up, Russian girls! Above your head, be bold! We don't have long to endure, A nightingale will fly in in the spring... And open the doors for us to freedom, Remove a striped dress from our shoulders And heal deep wounds, Wipe tears from swollen eyes. Keep your head up, Russian girls! Be Russian everywhere, everywhere! Not long to wait, not long - And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germain Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: "... their solidarity was due to the fact that they had gone through an army school even before their capture. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also quite "rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their disobedience, unwillingness to obey the Germans."

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Prisoner of Auschwitz A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Claudia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.

In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and move into the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontieva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.

Air regiment navigator Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was taken prisoner and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.

Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between prisoners of war men and women was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, sometimes love was born, bestowing new life. As a rule, in such rare cases the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.

So, from the documents of the camp infirmary Stalag No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that "who arrived at the 1st City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, the nurse Sindeva Alexandra left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp."

In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war hardened. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be subjected to checks by the local Gestapo branch in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.

On the basis of this order, on April 11, 1944, the head of the Security Service and the SD issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. So Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - senior group seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in the city of Genthin. A lot of marriage was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera led the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.

In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? ” What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman vigorously resisted, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the furnace. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. "Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remained unknown.

To be continued...

Women who escaped from captivity continued to fight against the enemy. In secret message No. 12 dated July 17, 1942, the head of the security police of the occupied eastern regions imperial minister security of the XVII military district in the section "Jews" it is reported that in Uman "a Jewish doctor was arrested, who had previously served in the Red Army and was taken prisoner. After escaping from a prisoner of war camp, she took refuge in orphanage in Uman under a false name and was engaged medical practice. She used this opportunity to gain access to the POW camp for espionage purposes." Probably, the unknown heroine assisted the POWs.

Women prisoners of war, risking their lives, repeatedly saved their Jewish friends. In Dulag No. 160, Khorol, about 60 thousand prisoners were kept in a quarry on the territory of a brick factory. There was also a group of girls-prisoners of war. Of these, seven or eight remained alive by the spring of 1942. In the summer of 1942 they were all shot for harboring a Jewish woman.

In the autumn of 1942, in the Georgievsk camp, along with other prisoners, there were several hundred female prisoners of war. Once the Germans took the identified Jews to be shot. Among the doomed was Tsilya Gedaleva. AT last minute the German officer in charge of the massacre suddenly said: "Medchen raus! - The girl - get out!" And Tsilya returned to the women's barracks. Girlfriends gave Tsilya a new name - Fatima, and in the future, according to all documents, she passed as a Tatar.

Military doctor III rank Emma Lvovna Khotina from September 9 to 20 was surrounded in the Bryansk forests. Was taken prisoner. During next stage fled from the village of Kokarevka to Trubchevsk. Hiding under a false name, often changing apartments. She was helped by her comrades - Russian doctors who worked in the camp infirmary in Trubchevsk. They established contact with the partisans. And when on February 2, 1942, the partisans attacked Trubchevsk, 17 doctors, paramedics and nurses left with them. E. L. Khotina became the head of the sanitary service of the partisan association of the Zhytomyr region.

Sarah Zemelman - military paramedic, lieutenant of the medical service, worked in the mobile field hospital No. 75 Southwestern Front. September 21, 1941 near Poltava, wounded in the leg, was taken prisoner along with the hospital. The head of the hospital, Vasilenko, handed Sarah documents in the name of Alexandra Mikhailovskaya, the murdered paramedic. There were no traitors among the hospital staff who were captured. Three months later, Sarah managed to escape from the camp. For a month she wandered through the forests and villages, until not far from Krivoy Rog, in the village of Veseli Terny, she was sheltered by the family of the paramedic-veterinarian Ivan Lebedchenko. For over a year, Sarah lived in the basement of the house. January 13, 1943 Merry Terny were liberated by the Red Army. Sarah went to the draft board and asked to go to the front, but she was placed in the filtration camp No. 258. They were called in for interrogations only at night. The investigators asked how she, a Jewess, survived in Nazi captivity? And only a meeting in the same camp with colleagues in the hospital - a radiologist and a chief surgeon - helped her.

S. Zemelman was sent to the medical battalion of the 3rd Pomor Division of the 1st Polish Army. She ended the war on the outskirts of Berlin on May 2, 1945. She was awarded three Orders of the Red Star, the Order Patriotic War 1st degree, awarded the Polish Order of the Silver Cross of Merit.

Unfortunately, after being released from the camps, the prisoners faced injustice, suspicion and contempt for them, who had gone through the hell of the German camps.

Grunya Grigoryeva recalls that the Red Army soldiers who liberated Ravensbrück on April 30, 1945, “... looked at the girls-prisoners of war as traitors. This shocked us. We did not expect such a meeting. Ours preferred French women more, Poles - foreigners.

After the end of the war, women prisoners of war went through all the torment and humiliation during SMERSH checks in filtration camps. Alexandra Ivanovna Max, one of 15 Soviet women liberated in the Neuhammer camp, tells how Soviet officer in the camp for repatriates, he scolded them: "Shame on you, you surrendered to captivity, you ..." And I argue with him: "What were we supposed to do?" And he says: "You should have shot yourself, but not surrendered!" And I say: "Where did we have pistols?" - "Well, you could, you should have hanged yourself, killed yourself. But don't surrender."

Many front-line soldiers knew what awaited the former prisoners at home. One of the released women, N.A. Kurlyak, recalls: “We, 5 girls, were left to work in a Soviet military unit. We kept asking: “Send me home.” We were discouraged, begged: “Stay a little longer, they will look at you with contempt "But we didn't believe."

And already a few years after the war, a female doctor, a former prisoner, writes in a private letter: "... sometimes I am very sorry that I survived, because I always carry this dark spot of captivity. Still, many do not know what kind of “life” it was, if you can call it life.Many do not believe that we honestly endured the burdens of captivity there and remained honest citizens Soviet State".

Staying in fascist captivity irreparably affected the health of many women. For most of them, while still in the camp, natural female processes stopped and many never recovered.

Some, transferred from POW camps to concentration camps, were subjected to sterilization. “I didn’t have children after being sterilized in the camp. And so I remained like a cripple ... Many of our girls did not have children. So some husbands left because they wanted to have children. And my husband didn’t leave me as I am, he says, we will live like that. And we still live with him. "

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Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kyiv, were collected for transfer to the POW camp, August 1941:

The dress code of many girls is semi-military-semi-civilian, which is typical for initial stage war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniforms and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left - a dull captured artillery lieutenant, maybe a "stage commander".

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Lieutenant Prince, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in the Red Army.” Numerous facts testify that this order was applied throughout the war.
In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war - a military doctor - was shot.
In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them.
After the defeat of the Red Army in the Crimea in May 1942, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko in the Mayak fishing village near Kerch. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, fiends, will be dog's death! The girl was shot in the yard.
At the end of August 1942, a group of sailors was shot in the village of Krymskaya in the Krasnodar Territory, among them there were several girls in military uniform.
In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport with her in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Alexandrovna, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.
In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.
On January 5, 1943, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured near the Severny farm. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and humiliation, all those captured were shot.

Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (candidate officer, on the right) - escort a captured Soviet soldier girl - to captivity ... or to death?

It seems that the "Hans" do not look evil ... Although - who knows? Completely at war ordinary people often they do such transcendent abominations that they would never have done in "another life" ...
The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army, model 1935 - male, and in good "commander" boots in size.

A similar photo, probably summer or early autumn 1941. The convoy is a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, her face, hands were cut, her breasts were cut off ... »
Knowing what awaits them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.
Often captured women were raped before they died. Hans Rudhoff, a soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, testifies that in the winter of 1942, “... Russian nurses lay on the roads. They were shot and thrown on the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written.
In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the yard, where there were nurses from the hospital. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they dragged them into a barn and raped them. However, they were not killed.
Women prisoners of war who ended up in camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drogobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Lyuda. “Captain Stroher, the commandant of the camp, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Luda to a bunk, and in this position Stroher raped her and then shot her.”
In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orlyand gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals - whether they were sick with venereal diseases. He carried out the inspection himself. I chose 3 young girls from them, took them to my place to “serve”. German soldiers and officers came for women examined by doctors. Few of these women escaped rape.

A female soldier of the Red Army who was captured while trying to get out of the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941


Judging by their emaciated faces, they had to go through a lot even before being taken prisoner.

Here the "Hans" are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves will quickly experience all the "joys" of captivity !! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already drunk dashingly to the full extent at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity ...

On the left photo (September 1941, again near Kyiv -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her hand in captivity; an unprecedented thing, a watch is the optimal camp currency!) Do not look desperate or exhausted. Captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... Is it a staged photo, or was a relatively humane camp commandant really caught, who ensured a tolerable existence?

The camp guards from among the former prisoners of war and camp policemen were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped captives or, under threat of death, forced them to cohabit with them. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 female prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, the former head of the camp guard A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped the prisoners of the women's bloc.
The Millerovo POW camp also contained female prisoners. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible:
“Police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two in a room. During these two hours, he could use her as a thing, abuse, mock, do whatever he pleases.
Once, during the evening verification, the chief of police himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “For those who do not want to go, arrange a“ red fireman ”. The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl's vagina. Left in this position for half an hour. Shouting was forbidden. Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back the cry, and after such a punishment they could not move for a long time.
The commandant, behind her back they called her a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated mockeries. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning.
We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.

Female doctors of the Red Army, who were taken prisoner, worked in camp infirmaries in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps).

There may be German field hospital in frontline- in the background, a part of the body of a car equipped for transporting the wounded is visible, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.

Infirmary hut of the POW camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941):

In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely miserable impression. In the conditions of camp life, it was especially difficult for them: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.
In the fall of 1941, K. Kromiadi, a member of the commission for the distribution of labor, who visited the Sedlice camp, talked with the captured women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.”
A group of female health workers taken prisoner in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord".
Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk in Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was forbidden. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with the "condition of a free settlement in Smolensk."

Crimea, summer 1942. Quite young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young soldier girl:

Most likely - not a doctor: her hands are clean, in a recent battle she did not bandage the wounded.

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were taken prisoner: doctors, nurses, nurses. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 female prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. Everyone was lined up in Rovno, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." Those who were separated from the general group were shot. The rest were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the car into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered in a hole in the floor.
On the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and on February 23, 1943, the women were brought to the city of Zoes. Lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed special prestige among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, said in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work at military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which, because of the crowding, it was impossible to sit down or move. It stayed that way for almost a day. And then the rebellious were sent to Ravensbrück. This women's camp was established in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and shorts. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for half a year, but not everyone managed to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden blocks.
The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tiered plank beds with a narrow passage between them. For two prisoners, one cotton blanket was issued. In a separate room lived block - senior barracks. There was a washroom in the corridor.

A group of Soviet women prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):


The prisoners carry all their meager possessions; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them "like a woman" tied their heads with handkerchiefs and took off their heavy boots.

Ibid, Stalag 370, Simferopol:

Prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. In Ravensbrück, 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops were made, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.
The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.
Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS spread a rumor around the camp that a gang of female murderers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.
Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning for verification, sometimes lasting several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.
Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which the women used mainly to wash their hair, as there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn.
Women whose hair survived began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden scallop they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion.
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, for five people, they received a small loaf of bread with an admixture of sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is testified in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, S. Müller:
“...on one Sunday in April, we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to follow some order, referring to the fact that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated like prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of insolence. The whole first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp. - A. Sh.) and deprived of lunch.
But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?
It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping alignment, walked, as if in a parade, minting a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The whole column moved as a single unit. Suddenly, a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up great country
Rise to the death fight...

I had heard them sing this song under their breath in their barracks before. But here it sounded like a call to fight, like faith in a quick victory.
Then they sang about Moscow.
The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment by marching the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...
It was not possible for the SS to leave Soviet women without lunch. Political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once struck their enemies and fellow campers with their unity and spirit of resistance. Once 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners destined to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to take the women away, the comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up five people and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove the newcomers into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.
In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in the city of Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove the wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who would agree to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia.
Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire.
Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Above your head, be bold!
We don't have long to endure.
The nightingale will fly in the spring ...
And open the door for us to freedom,
Takes the striped dress off her shoulders
And heal deep wounds
Wipe the tears from swollen eyes.
Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
Not long to wait, not long -
And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their solidarity was explained by the fact that they had gone through army school even before being captured. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their disobedience, unwillingness to obey the Germans.

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Prisoner of Auschwitz A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Claudia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.
In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and move into the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.
Navigator of the air regiment Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.
Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between male and female prisoners of war was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love was sometimes born that gave new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
So, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “the nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”

Probably one of recent photos Soviet women soldiers who were captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:

Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - "For Courage" (dark edging on the block), the second may have "BZ". There is an opinion that these are female pilots, but - IMHO - it is unlikely: both have "clean" shoulder straps of privates.

In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war hardened. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be subjected to checks by the local Gestapo branch in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.
On the basis of this order, on April 11, 1944, the head of the Security Service and the SD issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - the eldest of a group of seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in the city of Gentin. A lot of marriage was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera led the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? ” What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman vigorously resisted, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the furnace. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
________________________________________ ____________________

Yad Vashem archive. M-33/1190, l. 110.

There. M-37/178, l. 17.

There. M-33/482, l. sixteen.

There. M-33/60, l. 38.

There. M-33/303, l 115.

There. M-33/309, l. 51.

There. M-33/295, l. 5.

There. M-33/302, l. 32.

P. Rafes. They didn't repent then. From Notes of the Translator of Divisional Intelligence. "Spark". Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.

Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, l. 94-95.

Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - "Spark". M., 1998. No. 6.

Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, l. eleven.

Yad Vashem archive. M-33/230, l. 38.53.94; M-37/1191, l. 26

B. P. Sherman. ... And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists in the city of Baranovichi and its environs on June 27, 1941 - July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.

S. M. Fischer. Memories. Manuscript. Author's archive.

K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.

T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944… p. 143.

Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/626, l. 50-52. M-33/627, sheet. 62-63.

N. Lemeshchuk. I didn't bow my head. (About activity anti-fascist underground in the Nazi camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32-33.

There. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security agencies, where they sought her confession of betrayal, committed suicide

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. On Sat. "Witnesses for the Prosecution". L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Locksmith team Ravensbrück. Memoirs of a Prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.

Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.

S. Muller. Locksmith team Ravensbrück ... p. 51-52.

Women of Ravensbrück… p.127.

G. Vaneev. Heroines Sevastopol fortress. Simferopol. 1965, p. 82-83.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.

N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In: In Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk. 1958, p. 84.

A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war ... p. 62.

A. Nikiforova. This shouldn't happen again. M., 1958, p. 6-11.

N. Lemeshchuk. Head not bowed... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Archive Yad Vashem. М-33/438 part II, l. 127.

A. Stream. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener… S. 153.

A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again... p. 106.

A. Stream. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener…. S. 153-154.

Second World War rolled over humanity. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the belligerents did truly monstrous things, justifying everything with war.

Of course, in this regard, the Nazis were especially distinguished, and this is not even taking into account the Holocaust. There are many both documented and frankly fictional stories about what the German soldiers did.

One of the high-ranking German officers recalled the briefings they went through. Interestingly, there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”

Most did so, but among the dead, the bodies of women in the form of the Red Army are often found - soldiers, nurses or nurses, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.

Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And in spite of everything they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.

But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a continuous bloody mess. The Nazis did the same with female partisans. Before being executed, they could be stripped naked and kept in the cold for a long time.

Of course, the captives were constantly raped. And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to have an intimate relationship with the captives, then ordinary privates had more freedom in this matter. And if the girl did not die after a whole company used her, then she was simply shot.

The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and someone from higher ranks camp took her to him as a servant. Although it did not save much from rape.

In this regard, camp No. 337 was the most cruel place. There, the prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were settled in the barracks at once, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were destroyed daily in the Stalag.

Women were subjected to the same torture as men, and even much worse. In terms of torture, the Nazis could be envied by the Spanish Inquisition. Very often, girls were bullied by other women, such as the wives of commandants, just for fun. The nickname of the commandant of Stalag No. 337 was "cannibal".

O.Kazarinov "Unknown Faces of War". Chapter 5

Forensic psychologists have long established that rape, as a rule, is explained not by the desire for sexual satisfaction, but by the desire for power, the desire to emphasize one's superiority over the weaker way of humiliating him, a sense of revenge.

What, if not war, contributes to the manifestation of all these base feelings?

On September 7, 1941, at a rally in Moscow, an appeal was adopted by Soviet women, which said: “It is impossible to convey in words what the fascist villains are doing to a woman in the areas temporarily captured by them. Soviet country. Their sadism knows no bounds. These vile cowards drive women, children and old people ahead of them in order to hide from the fire of the Red Army. They rip open the stomachs of the victims they rape, cut out their breasts, they crush them with cars, they tear them apart with tanks ... "

In what state can a woman who is subjected to violence be, defenseless, overwhelmed by a sense of her own defilement, shame?

In the mind there is a stupor from the murders going on around. Thoughts are paralyzed. Shock. Alien uniforms, alien speech, alien smells. They are not even perceived as male rapists. These are some monstrous creatures from another world.

And they ruthlessly destroy all the concepts of chastity, decency, modesty brought up over the years. They get to what has always been hidden from prying eyes, the exposure of which has always been considered indecent, what they whispered about in doorways, that they trust only the most beloved people and doctors ...

Helplessness, despair, humiliation, fear, disgust, pain - everything is intertwined in one ball, tearing from the inside, destroying human dignity. This ball breaks the will, burns the soul, kills the personality. Life is drinking… Clothes are being torn off… And there is no way to resist it. THIS is going to happen anyway.

I think thousands and thousands of women cursed at such moments nature, by the will of which they were born women.

Let's turn to documents that are more revealing than any literary description. Documents collected only for 1941.

“... This happened in the apartment of a young teacher, Elena K. In broad daylight, a group of drunken German officers burst in here. At this time, the teacher was studying with three girls, her students. Having locked the door, the bandits ordered Elena K. to undress. The young woman resolutely refused to comply with this impudent demand. Then the Nazis tore off her clothes and raped her in front of the children. The girls tried to protect the teacher, but the bastards also brutally abused them. The five-year-old son of the teacher remained in the room. Not daring to scream, the child looked at what was happening with eyes wide open in horror. A fascist officer approached him and cut him in two with a blow of a checker.

From the testimony of Lidia N., Rostov:

“Yesterday I heard a loud knock on the door. When I approached the door, they beat it with rifle butts, trying to break it down. 5 German soldiers broke into the apartment. They kicked my father, mother and little brother out of the apartment. After that, I found my brother's corpse in the stairwell. A German soldier threw him from the third floor of our house, as eyewitnesses told me. He had a broken head. Mother and father were shot at the entrance of our house. I myself was subjected to gang violence. I was unconscious. When I woke up, I heard the hysterical screams of women in neighboring apartments. That evening, all the apartments in our house were desecrated by the Germans. They raped all the women." Creepy document! The experienced fear of this woman is involuntarily conveyed by a few mean lines. Blows of rifle butts at the door. Five monsters. Fear for oneself, for relatives taken away in an unknown direction: “Why? To not see what happens? Arrested? Killed? Doomed to a vile torture that robbed consciousness. A multiplied nightmare from the "hysterical screams of women in neighboring apartments", as if the whole house was groaning. Unreality…

Statement by a resident of the village of Novo-Ivanovka, Maria Tarantseva: “Having burst into my house, four German soldiers brutally raped my daughters Vera and Pelageya.”

“On the very first evening in the city of Luga, the Nazis caught 8 girls on the streets and raped them.”

"In the mountains. Tikhvin, Leningrad region 15-year-old M. Kolodetskaya, being wounded by a shrapnel, was brought to the hospital (formerly the monastery), where the wounded German soldiers were. Despite being wounded, Kolodetskaya was raped by a group of German soldiers, which caused her death.

Every time you shudder when you think about what is hidden behind the dry text of the document. The girl is bleeding, she hurts from the wound. Why did this war start? And finally, the hospital. Smell of iodine, bandages. People. Let even non-Russians. They will help her. After all, people are being treated in hospitals. And suddenly instead - new pain, scream, bestial longing, leading to madness ... And consciousness is slowly fading away. Forever and ever.

“In the Belarusian town of Shatsk, the Nazis gathered all the young girls, raped them, and then drove them naked to the square and forced them to dance. Those who resisted were shot on the spot by the fascist fiends. Such violence and abuse by the invaders was a widespread mass phenomenon.

“On the very first day in the village of Basmanovo Smolensk region fascist monsters drove into the field more than 200 schoolchildren and schoolgirls who had come to the village to harvest, surrounded them and shot them. They took the schoolgirls to their rear "for the gentlemen of the officers." I struggle and cannot imagine these girls who came to the village as a noisy group of classmates, with their teenage love and feelings, with the carelessness and cheerfulness inherent in this age. The girls, who then immediately, at once, saw the bloody corpses of their boys and, without having time to comprehend, refusing to believe in what had happened, ended up in a hell created by adults.

“On the very first day of the arrival of the Germans in Krasnaya Polyana, two fascists appeared to Alexandra Yakovlevna (Demyanova). They saw in the room the daughter of Demyanova - 14-year-old Nyura - a frail and in poor health girl. A German officer grabbed a teenager and raped her in front of her mother. On December 10, the doctor of the local gynecological hospital, having examined the girl, stated that this Nazi bandit had infected her with syphilis. In a neighboring apartment, fascist cattle raped another 14-year-old girl, Tonya I.

On December 9, 1941, the corpse of a Finnish officer was found in Krasnaya Polyana. A collection of women's buttons was found in the pocket - 37 pieces, counting the rapes. And in Krasnaya Polyana, he raped Margarita K. and also tore a button from her blouse.

The killed soldiers often found "trophies" in the form of buttons, stockings, curls of women's hair. They found photographs depicting scenes of violence, letters and diaries in which they described their "exploits".

“In letters, the Nazis share their adventures with cynical frankness and bragging. Corporal Felix Kapdels sends a letter to his friend: “Having rummaged through the chests and organized a good dinner, we began to have fun. The girl was angry, but we also organized her. It doesn’t matter that the whole department…”

Corporal Georg Pfaler writes without hesitation to his mother (!) in Sappenfeld: “We spent three days in a small town ... You can imagine how much we ate in three days. And how many chests and cupboards have been dug up, how many little ladies have been spoiled ... Now our life is merry, not like in the trenches ... "

In the diary of the murdered chief corporal there is the following entry: “October 12. Today I took part in cleaning the camp from suspicious ones. Shot 82. Among them was beautiful woman. We, Karl and I, took her to the operating room, she bit and howled. After 40 minutes, she was shot. Memory is a few minutes of pleasure.

With prisoners who did not have time to get rid of such documents compromising them, the conversation was short: they were taken aside and - a bullet in the back of the head.

A woman in military uniform evoked special hatred from her enemies. She is not only a woman - she is also a soldier fighting with you! And if the captured male soldiers were broken morally and physically by barbaric torture, then the female soldiers were broken by rape. (They also resorted to him during interrogations. The Germans raped the girls from the Young Guard, and threw one naked on a red-hot stove.)

Medical workers who fell into their hands were raped without exception.

“Two kilometers south of the village of Akimovka (Melitopol region), the Germans attacked a car in which there were two wounded Red Army soldiers and a female paramedic accompanying them. They dragged the woman into the sunflowers, raped her, and then shot her. The wounded Red Army soldiers twisted their arms and also shot them ... "

“In the village of Voronki, in Ukraine, the Germans placed 40 wounded Red Army soldiers, prisoners of war and nurses in the premises of a former hospital. The nurses were raped and shot, and guards were placed near the wounded ... "

“In Krasnaya Polyana, wounded soldiers and a wounded nurse were not given water for 4 days and 7 days of food, and then they were given salt water to drink. The nurse began to agonize. The dying girl was raped by the Nazis in front of the wounded Red Army soldiers.

The twisted logic of war requires the rapist to exercise FULL power. So, just humiliating the victim is not enough. And then unthinkable bullying is performed on the victim, and in conclusion, her life is taken away from her, as a manifestation of THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY. Otherwise, what good, she will think that she gave you pleasure! And you can look weak in her eyes, since you could not control your sexual desire. Hence the sadistic treatment and murders.

“Hitler's robbers in one village seized a fifteen-year-old girl and brutally raped her. Sixteen beasts tormented this girl. She resisted, she called for her mother, she screamed. They gouged out her eyes and threw her, torn to pieces, spat on the street ... It was in the Belarusian town of Chernin.

“In the city of Lvov, 32 workers of a Lvov garment factory were raped and then killed by German stormtroopers. Drunken German soldiers dragged Lvov girls and young women to Kosciuszko Park and brutally raped them. The old priest V.L. Pomaznev, who, with a cross in his hands, tried to prevent violence against girls, was beaten by the fascists, tore off his cassock, burned his beard and stabbed him with a bayonet.

“The streets of the village of K., where the Germans had been rampaging for some time, were strewn with the corpses of women, old people, and children. The surviving residents of the village told the Red Army soldiers that the Nazis drove all the girls into the hospital building and raped them. Then they locked the doors and set fire to the building.”

“In the Begoml region, the wife of a Soviet worker was raped, and then put on a bayonet.”

“In Dnepropetrovsk, on Bolshaya Bazarnaya Street, drunken soldiers detained three women. Tying them to poles, the Germans wildly abused them, and then killed them.

“In the village of Milyutino, the Germans arrested 24 collective farmers and took them to a neighboring village. Among those arrested was thirteen-year-old Anastasia Davydova. Having thrown the peasants into a dark barn, the Nazis began torturing them, demanding information about the partisans. Everyone was silent. Then the Germans took the girl out of the barn and asked in what direction the collective farm cattle had been driven away. The young patriot refused to answer. Fascist scoundrels girl was raped and then shot.”

"The Germans have invaded us! Their officers dragged two 16-year-old girls to the cemetery and abused them. Then they ordered the soldiers to hang them on trees. The soldiers obeyed the order and hung them upside down. In the same place, the soldiers abused 9 elderly women.” (Collective farmer Petrova from the Plowman collective farm.)

“We were standing in the village of Bolshoe Pankratovo. It was on Monday the 21st, at four o'clock in the morning. The fascist officer went through the village, went into all the houses, took away money and things from the peasants, threatened that he would shoot all the inhabitants. Then we came to the house at the hospital. There were a doctor and a girl. He told the girl: "Follow me to the commandant's office, I have to check your documents." I saw her hide her passport on her chest. He took her to the garden near the hospital itself and raped her there. Then the girl rushed into the field, she screamed, it was clear that she had lost her mind. He caught up with her and soon showed me a passport in the blood ... "

“The Nazis broke into the sanatorium of the People's Commissariat of Health in Augustow. (…) German fascists raped all the women who were in this sanatorium. And then the mutilated, beaten sufferers were shot.”

AT historical literature It has been repeatedly noted that “when investigating war crimes, many documents and evidence were found about the rape of young pregnant women, who then had their throats cut and their chests pierced with bayonets. Obviously, hatred of the female breast is in the blood of the Germans.

I will cite several such documents and testimonies.

“In the village of Semenovskoye, Kalinin Region, the Germans raped 25-year-old Olga Tikhonova, the wife of a Red Army soldier, mother of three children, who was in the last stage of pregnancy, and tied her hands with twine. After the rape, the Germans slit her throat, pierced both breasts and sadistically drilled them out.”

“In Belarus, near the city of Borisov, 75 women and girls fell into the hands of the Nazis, who fled when the German troops approached. The Germans raped and then brutally killed 36 women and girls. 16-year-old girl L.I. Melchukova, on the orders of the German officer Gummer, was taken to the forest by the soldiers, where they raped her. Some time later, other women, also taken to the forest, saw that there were boards near the trees, and the dying Melchukova was pinned to the boards with bayonets, in which the Germans, in front of other women, in particular V.I. Alperenko and V.M. Bereznikova, they cut off her breasts ... "

(With all my rich imagination, I can’t imagine what an inhuman cry that accompanied the torment of women should have stood over this Belarusian place, over this forest. It seems that you will hear this even in the distance, and you can’t stand it, plug your ears with both hands, and run away because you know it's PEOPLE SCREAMING.)

“In the village of Zh., on the road, we saw the mutilated, undressed corpse of the old man Timofey Vasilyevich Globa. All of it is slashed with ramrods, riddled with bullets. Not far away in the garden lay a murdered naked girl. Her eyes were gouged out, her right breast was cut off, and a bayonet was sticking out of her left. This is the daughter of the old man Globa - Galya.

When the Nazis broke into the village, the girl hid in the garden, where she spent three days. By the morning of the fourth day, Galya decided to make her way to the hut, hoping to get something to eat. Here she was overtaken by a German officer. At the cry of his daughter, the sick Globa ran out and hit the rapist with a crutch. Two more bandit officers jumped out of the hut, called the soldiers, grabbed Galya and her father. The girl was stripped, raped and brutally abused, and her father was kept to see everything. They gouged out her eyes, cut off her right breast, and inserted a bayonet into her left. Then Timofei Globa was also undressed, put on the body of his daughter (!) and beaten with ramrods. And when he, having gathered the rest of his strength, tried to run away, they overtook him on the road, shot him and stabbed him with bayonets.

It was considered some kind of special "daring" to rape and torture women in front of people close to them: husbands, parents, children. Perhaps the spectators were needed to demonstrate their “strength” in front of them and emphasize their humiliating helplessness?

“Everywhere brutalized German bandits break into houses, rape women and girls in front of their relatives and their children, mock the raped and brutally deal with their victims right there.”

“In the village of Puchki, the collective farmer Terekhin Ivan Gavrilovich was walking with his wife Polina Borisovna. Several German soldiers grabbed Polina, dragged her aside, threw her on the snow, and in front of her husband began to rape her in turn. The woman screamed and resisted with all her might.

Then the fascist rapist shot her point-blank. Polina Terekhova thrashed in agony. Her husband escaped from the hands of the rapists and rushed to the dying. But the Germans caught up with him and put 6 bullets in his back.

“On the Apnas farm, drunken German soldiers raped a 16-year-old girl and threw her into a well. They also threw her mother there, who was trying to prevent the rapists.

Vasily Visnichenko from the village of Generalskoye testified: “German soldiers grabbed me and took me to headquarters. One of the Nazis at that time dragged my wife to the cellar. When I returned, I saw that my wife was lying in the cellar, her dress was torn and she was already dead. The villains raped her and killed her with one bullet in the head, the other in the heart.