March 29th, 2015 09:49 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Silesian district of Oppeln, servicemen of the 32nd and 34th Guards Rifle Corps of the 5th Guards Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front killed at least 1264 German civilians by the end of January 1945. Russian Ostarbeiters, for the most part forcibly deported to work in Germany, and Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity also partially escaped their fate. In Oppeln, they were rounded up in a public place and, after a brief propaganda speech, they were killed. The same is attested about the Kruppamühle Ostarbeiter camp near the Malapane [Mala Panev] river in Upper Silesia. On January 20, 1945, after the Soviet tanks had reached the camp, several hundred Russian men, women and children were called here and, as "traitors" and "accomplices of the Nazis", they were machine-gunned or crushed by tank tracks. In Gottesdorf, on January 23, Soviet soldiers shot about 270 residents, including small children and 20-40 members of the Marian Brotherhood. In Karlsruhe [now Pokuj, Poland], 110 residents were shot, including residents of the Anninsky orphanage, in Kupp 60-70 residents, among them also residents of a nursing home and a priest who wanted to protect women from rape, etc. in other places . But Johannisburg and Oppeln were only two of the many districts in the eastern provinces of the German Reich occupied by the Red Army in 1945.

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

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

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

SILESIAN

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

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

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

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

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

BRANDENBURG (mainly Neumark and Sternberger Land)

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

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

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

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

POMERANIA

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

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

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

EAST PRUSSIA

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

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

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

The uniform of many girls is semi-military-semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the 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 girl soldier - to captivity ... or to death?

It seems that the "Hans" do not look evil ... Although - who knows? In war, completely ordinary people often do such outrageous 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 also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background is visible part of the body of a car equipped to transport the wounded, 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 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 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 the last photographs of Soviet female soldiers who were taken prisoner 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 oven. 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. 16.

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. (On the activities of the 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 of the 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.

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 of Soviet women was adopted, which stated: “It is impossible to convey in words what the fascist villains are doing to a woman in the regions of the Soviet country temporarily captured by them. 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 us turn to documents that are more revealing than any literary description. Documents collected only for 1941.

“... It 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 of this - a new pain, a cry, an animal 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 out into the field more than 200 schoolchildren and schoolgirls who had come to the village to harvest, surrounded them and shot them down. 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 bloodied 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. 82 were shot. Among them was a 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 mockeries are committed over the victim, and in conclusion, her life is taken away, as a manifestation of the HIGHEST power. 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 Nazis, his cassock was torn off, his beard was burned, and he was stabbed 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. The fascist scoundrels raped the girl and then shot her.”

"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 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. (...) The German fascists raped all the women who were in this sanatorium. And then the mutilated, beaten sufferers were shot.”

Historical literature has 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 boards were standing 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 hear this even in the distance, and you can’t stand it, you 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.

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The story contains scenes of torture, violence, sex. If this offends your tender soul - do not read, but go to x ... from here!

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The plot takes place during the Great Patriotic War. A partisan detachment operates on the territory occupied by the Nazis. The Nazis know that there are many women among the partisans, but how to figure them out. Finally, they managed to catch the girl Katya when she was trying to draw a diagram of the location of German firing points ...

The captive girl was led into a small room at the school, where the Gestapo department was now located. A young officer interrogated Katya. In addition to him, there were several policemen and two vulgar-looking women in the room. Katya knew them, they served the Germans. I just didn't quite know how.

The officer instructed the guards holding the girl to let her go, which they did. He gestured for her to sit down. The girl sat down. The officer ordered one of the girls to bring tea. But Kate refused. The officer took a sip, then lit a cigarette. He offered Katya, but she refused. The officer started the conversation, and he spoke good Russian.

What is your name?

Katerina.

I know that you were engaged in intelligence in favor of the communists. This is true?

But you are so young, so beautiful. You probably fell into their service by accident?

Not! I am a Komsomol member and I want to become a communist, like my father, Hero of the Soviet Union, who died at the front.

I regret that such a young beautiful girl fell for the bait of the red-assed. At one time, my father served in the Russian army in the First World War. He commanded a company. He has many glorious victories and awards to his credit. But when the communists came to power, he was accused of being an enemy of the people for all his services to his homeland and shot. Starvation awaited my mother and me, as children of enemies of the people, but one of the Germans (who was in captivity and whom his father did not allow to be shot) helped us escape to Germany and even enter the service. I always wanted to be a hero like my father. And now I have come to save my homeland from the communists.

You are a fascist bitch, an invader, a murderer of innocent people...

We never kill innocent people. On the contrary, we return to them what the red-assed have taken from them. Yes, we recently hanged two women who set fire to houses where our soldiers temporarily settled. But the soldiers managed to run out, and the owners lost the last thing that the war had not taken away from them.

They fought against...

Your people!

Not true!

Okay, let's say we're invaders. You are now required to answer a few questions. After that, we will determine the punishment for you.

I will not answer your questions!

Okay, then name with whom you are organizing terrorist attacks against German soldiers.

Not true. We have been watching you.

Then why should I answer?

So that the innocent don't get hurt.

I won't name anyone...

Then I will invite the boys to untie your stubborn tongue.

You won't get anything!

And we'll see this. So far, there has not been a single case out of 15, and so that nothing has come of it ... Let's get to work, boys!

1) Irma Grese - (October 7, 1923 - December 13, 1945) - overseer of the Nazi death camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
Among the nicknames of Irma were "Blond-haired devil", "Angel of death", "Beautiful monster". She used emotional and physical methods to torture prisoners, bludgeoned women to death, and reveled in the arbitrary shooting of prisoners. She starved her dogs to set them on her victims, and personally selected hundreds of people to be sent to the gas chambers. Greze wore heavy boots, and in addition to a pistol, she always had a wicker whip.

In the Western post-war press, the possible sexual deviations of Irma Grese, her numerous connections with the SS guards, with the commandant of Bergen-Belsen, Josef Kramer (“Belsen Beast”) were constantly discussed.
On April 17, 1945, she was taken prisoner by the British. The Belsen trial, initiated by a British military tribunal, lasted from September 17 to November 17, 1945. Together with Irma Grese, the cases of other camp workers were considered at this trial - commandant Josef Kramer, warden Joanna Bormann, nurse Elisabeth Volkenrath. Irma Grese was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
On the last night before her execution, Grese laughed and sang along with her colleague Elisabeth Volkenrath. Even when a noose was thrown around Irma Grese's neck, her face remained calm. Her last word was "Faster", addressed to the English executioner.

2) Ilse Koch - (September 22, 1906 - September 1, 1967) - German NSDAP activist, wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps. Best known under a pseudonym as "Frau Lampshade" Received the nickname "Buchenwald Witch" for the cruel torture of camp prisoners. Koch was also accused of making souvenirs from human skin (however, no reliable evidence of this was presented at the post-war trial of Ilse Koch).

On June 30, 1945, Koch was arrested by American troops and in 1947 sentenced to life imprisonment. However, a few years later, the American General Lucius Clay, the military commander of the American occupation zone in Germany, released her, considering the charges of issuing execution orders and making souvenirs from human skin insufficiently proven.

This decision caused a protest from the public, so in 1951 Ilse Koch was arrested in West Germany. A German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.

On September 1, 1967, Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in a cell in the Bavarian Eibach prison.

3) Louise Danz - b. December 11, 1917 - overseer of women's concentration camps. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but later released.

She began working in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, then she was transferred to Majdanek. Danz later served in Auschwitz and Malchow.
Prisoners later said that they were subjected to ill-treatment by Danz. She beat them, confiscated their winter clothes. In Malchow, where Danz had the position of senior warden, she starved the prisoners without giving food for 3 days. On April 2, 1945, she killed an underage girl.
Danz was arrested on 1 June 1945 in Lützow. At the trial of the Supreme National Tribunal, which lasted from November 24, 1947 to December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1956 for health reasons (!!!). In 1996, she was charged with the aforementioned murder of a child, but it was dropped after doctors said that Danz would be too hard to endure a re-imprisonment. She lives in Germany. Now she is 94 years old.

4) Jenny-Wanda Barkmann - (May 30, 1922 - July 4, 1946) Between 1940 and December 1943 she worked as a fashion model. In January 1944, she became a warden at the small Stutthof concentration camp, where she became famous for brutally beating female prisoners, some of them she beat to death. She also participated in the selection of women and children for the gas chambers. She was so cruel, but also very beautiful, that the female prisoners called her "Beautiful Ghost".

Jenny fled the camp in 1945 when Soviet troops began to approach the camp. But she was caught and arrested in May 1945 while trying to leave the train station in Gdansk. She is said to have flirted with the policemen guarding her and was not particularly worried about her fate. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was found guilty, after which she was given the last word. She stated, "Life is indeed a great pleasure, and the pleasure is usually short-lived."

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was publicly hanged on Biskupska Gorka near Gdansk on July 4, 1946. She was only 24 years old. Her body was burned, and the ashes were publicly washed away in the closet of the house where she was born.

5) Hertha Gertrud Bothe - (January 8, 1921 - March 16, 2000) - overseer of women's concentration camps. She was arrested on charges of war crimes, but later released.

In 1942 she received an invitation to work as a warden in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After four weeks of preliminary training, Bothe was sent to Stutthof, a concentration camp near the city of Gdańsk. In it, Bothe was nicknamed "The Sadist of Stutthof" because of her mistreatment of female prisoners.

In July 1944 she was sent by Gerda Steinhoff to the Bromberg-Ost concentration camp. From January 21, 1945, Bothe was a warden during the death march of prisoners, which took place from central Poland to the Bergen-Belsen camp. The march ended on February 20-26, 1945. In Bergen-Belsen, Bothe led a group of women, consisting of 60 people and engaged in the production of wood.

After the camp was liberated, she was arrested. At the Belzensky court, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Released earlier than the specified date on December 22, 1951. She died on March 16, 2000 in Huntsville, USA.

6) Maria Mandel (1912-1948) - Nazi war criminal. Occupying the post of head of the women's camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in the period 1942-1944, she is directly responsible for the death of about 500 thousand female prisoners.

Colleagues in the service described Mandel as an "extremely intelligent and dedicated" person. The Auschwitz prisoners among themselves called her a monster. Mandel personally selected prisoners, and sent them to the gas chambers by the thousands. There are cases when Mandel personally took several prisoners under her protection for a while, and when they bored her, she put them on the lists for destruction. Also, it was Mandel who came up with the idea and the creation of a women's camp orchestra, which met new prisoners at the gates with cheerful music. According to the recollections of survivors, Mandel was a music lover and treated the musicians from the orchestra well, she personally came to their barracks with a request to play something.

In 1944, Mandel was transferred to the post of head of the Muldorf concentration camp, one of the parts of the Dachau concentration camp, where she served until the end of the war with Germany. In May 1945, she fled to the mountains near her hometown, Münzkirchen. On August 10, 1945, Mandel was arrested by American troops. In November 1946, as a war criminal, she was handed over to the Polish authorities at their request. Mandel was one of the main defendants in the trial of Auschwitz workers, which took place in November-December 1947. The court sentenced her to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on January 24, 1948 in a Krakow prison.

7) Hildegard Neumann (May 4, 1919, Czechoslovakia -?) - senior warden in the Ravensbrück and Theresienstadt concentration camps.

Hildegard Neumann began her service in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in October 1944, immediately becoming a head overseer. Due to good work, she was transferred to the Theresienstadt concentration camp as the head of all camp guards. Beauty Hildegard, according to the prisoners, was cruel and merciless towards them.
She supervised between 10 and 30 female police officers and over 20,000 female Jewish prisoners. Neumann also facilitated the deportation of more than 40,000 women and children from Theresienstadt to the death camps of Auschwitz (Auschwitz) and Bergen-Belsen, where most of them were killed. Researchers estimate that more than 100,000 Jews were deported from the Theresienstadt camp and were killed or died in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, another 55,000 died in Theresienstadt itself.
Neumann left the camp in May 1945 and was not prosecuted for war crimes. Hildegard Neumann's subsequent fate is unknown.