Correspondent: Camp bed. The Nazis forced female prisoners into prostitution - Archive. Sisters, mothers, ladies: the theme of violence in women's camp memoirs

One of the most tragic and cynical pages in the annals of the Gulag is undoubtedly the one that tells about the fate of a woman behind barbed wire. A woman in the camps is a special tragedy, a special topic. Not only because a camp, a thorn, a logging site or a wheelbarrow do not fit with the idea of ​​the purpose of the fair sex. But also because a woman is a mother. Either the mother of children left in the wild, or giving birth in the camp.

The presence of women in camps and prisons for the leadership of the Gulag turned out to be a kind of “failure in the system”, because every year, and especially during periods of massive replenishment of the prison population, it caused a lot of problems, the solution to which could not be found.

The presence of a huge number of women in the camps, where there were minimal conditions for the existence of even a healthy man engaged in heavy physical labor, made the situation unpredictable and dangerous.

According to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, the total number of female prisoners held in camps and colonies for the period 1946 - 1950. characterized by the following data: as of January 1, 1946, 211,946 people, as of January 1, 1947 - 437,127 people, as of January 1, 1948 - 477,648 people, as of January 1, 1949 - 528,037 people, on January 1, 1950 - 521,588 people.

Until 1947, the NKVD instruction of 1939 “On the regime of detention of prisoners” No. 00889 was in force in camps and prisons. specified instructions allowed the combined placement of female and male prisoners in common areas, but in separate barracks. It was also allowed to place prisoners in residential areas in cases caused by the interests of production.

After the end of World War II, in the conditions of a new massive filling of the camps, the old rules were unable to effectively regulate the situation in the zones. The problem of cohabitation between prisoners and, quite naturally, a sharp increase in the number of pregnant women in camps and prisons became especially clear.

The reasons for such a sharp increase in the number of women becoming pregnant in prison lay, as they say, on the surface and were not a secret to the Gulag authorities.

“Before the war and even before 1947, a significant mass of the female contingent was sentenced to relatively short terms of imprisonment. This was a serious deterrent for women to cohabit, since they had the prospect of quickly returning to their family and building their lives normally. Those sentenced to long terms such a prospect in to a certain extent lose and are more likely to violate the regime and, in particular, to cohabitate and become pregnant, counting on this for a lighter situation and even early release from prison. Increasing the sentences of the majority of imprisoned women certainly affects the increase in pregnancy in camps and colonies” (GARF. Report on the state of isolation of imprisoned women and the presence of pregnancy in camps and colonies of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. F. 9414 D. 2549).

The last statement was not groundless, after a significant influx of women into the camps in 1945 - 1946 and the complications caused by this circumstance in the well-functioning mechanism of the prison economy, the authorities relented and in record time carried out two partial amnesties (in 1947 and 1949) for pregnant women and women with young children.

The response was not long in coming. According to the guards themselves, this measure “increased the desire of imprisoned women for cohabitation and pregnancy.”

The statistics for the camp authorities looked depressing.

As usual, after receiving the relevant information, on-site inspections were carried out and a thorough analysis of the current situation was made. Sometimes quite piquant details emerged.

“Facts of forcing women to commit are isolated. Such facts were revealed in the construction labor camp No. 352 of the Glavpromstroy Ministry of Internal Affairs, when the foremen of male brigades, long time working together with women's teams on one construction site, forced individual women into cohabitation either through threats or through promises of some material goods(for example, one male brigade attributed part of its output to the female brigade because the foreman of the male brigade cohabited with one of the female prisoners of the female brigade).”

In general, the situation threatened to completely get out of control. Due to the fact that the procedure for placing female prisoners, which was in force until 1947, in conditions of increasing prison terms, contributed to the rapid growth of cohabitation, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1947 took measures to strengthen the isolation of female prisoners from men. This was expressed in the newly published “Instructions on the regime of detention of prisoners in forced labor camps and colonies,” announced by order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 0190 of 1947.

This instruction provided for the creation of special women's units and only in exceptional cases was it allowed to place women in men's units, but in separate isolated areas.

“As of January 1, 1950, 545 separate women’s camp units were organized in camps and colonies, which housed 67% of female prisoners.

The remaining 33% of women are kept in common units with men, but in separate fenced off areas.”

During construction No. 501 (“Dead Road”), approximately every fourth or fifth camp was for women. The women's areas were no different from the men's. The same structure and, as a rule, the same work. In some cases, this could be work in sewing workshops, in others - logging, building embankments, “snow fighting” (that is, clearing the railroad bed of snow) in winter.

35 kilometers south of the Nadym pier, near the bank of the river. Heygiyaha (Longyugan) a women's logging column was built with three subdivisions. The terms of the “indictees”, who made up the overwhelming majority here, as stated by the former civilian cultural worker of the 9th camp department M.M. Solovyova, prevailed from 10 to 15 years. Women felled the wood and transported it to the desired location using horses.

Nikita Petrov’s study “GULAG” provides data on women in prisons in the USSR during the period we are considering. From January 1, 1948 to March 1, 1949, the number of convicted women with children increased by 138% and pregnant women by 98%. As of January 1, 1948, to March 1, 1949, there were 2,356,685 prisoners in the ITL and ITC. Women with children and pregnant women made up 6.3% of the total number of female prisoners held in camps and colonies. Convicted women with children and pregnant women held in places of detention were placed in 234 specially adapted premises (baby houses) and less often in separate sections barracks

Today there are ruins from the women's logging camp south of the city of Nadym, which allow us to get some idea of ​​the conditions in which the prisoners were kept. Women here were placed in dugout barracks, deepened by about 1 m 30 cm. The size of the dugouts varies, reaching a length of 15 meters.

Former from 1950 to 1953 In this camp, a civilian, Margarita Mikhailovna Solovyova, who served as a cult organizer here, reported that the dugouts were divided into two sections - 60 places each, each prisoner had their own bunks.

A former civilian worker reported about the work of women in this camp: “The camp included three subdivisions, i.e. work area. In the mornings, after roll call, they, led by the foreman, were taken out of the zone, where the prisoners were received by a convoy and taken to work. The women felled the wood all day and then took it to the shore. Lunch was delivered to the place of work. Rafts were made from fallen timber and sent to Nadym for sleepers. And cutting down wood is not a woman’s job. Try to pull this forest out on horseback. There were no tractors. They harnessed the horse to the drag and urged it on. And then the women work for a day, they come, and they are given gruel.”

The strictness of the camp rules could not exclude contacts between female prisoners and guards and with male prisoners. Here, for example, is the story told by Margarita Mikhailovna Solovyova: “Basically, women considered each other. There were sometimes clashes and scandals, but all this quickly stopped. It was difficult in the fall when male prisoners brought hay for the horses on pontoons. Women unloaded. There was enough to do here. Here “love” began, running, fighting and massacre between women.

They ran to the pontoon, and the bank was steep... The soldiers shot upward so that they would disperse, but where would they go... Shoot, don’t shoot - they won’t leave. If she’s been sitting there for eight years and hasn’t seen anyone or anything, she doesn’t care if you kill her now or shoot her in a day. They attacked the men so much that at first it was scary.”

Some details of the situation of women in the “Construction 501” camps are presented, for example, “Protocol of the second party conference of the Obsky ITL Construction 501 of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. June 2 - 4, 1951, Salekhard."

It reports: “At the 34th women’s camp, when Ershov was the head of the camp, 59 men were kept for a long time, of which: 21 people, mostly convicted of criminal offenses - treason, were used in lower management, administrative work. And the camp was in the hands of these prisoners. Ershov himself used female prisoners for personal purposes as housekeepers and embroiderers of personal items.

Prisoners from the lower administration, taking advantage of Ershov's patronage, took away parcels and wages from prisoners, persuaded women to cohabitate - arbitrariness reigned. All this led to mass promiscuity among female prisoners.

Only this can explain that prisoner Egorova T.I., convicted of a minor crime, 19 years old, under the influence of criminal recidivism, committed the murder of prisoner Dunaeva M.V. etc.".

In the system of the Ob ITL, female prisoners were not trained at all as stove makers, carpenters, electricians, or track crew foremen. Therefore, in a number of cases, the local administration was simply forced to keep men in women’s camps.

The “Report on the state of the Construction Camp No. 503 of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs,” compiled in June 1951, in particular, analyzed the implementation of Ministerial Order No. 80 on the procedure for keeping female prisoners. The document reported that the order to separate women from men was not fully implemented, and, as a result, in column No. 54 “on the day of the inspection, 8 pregnant women were registered, in addition, in April, 11 pregnant women were transferred to another column... At column no. 22...14 cases of pregnancy were registered.”

In the book by Kurt Baerens “Germans in Penal Camps and Prisons” Soviet Union“, a former German prisoner deported from East Prussia and serving time in the Salekhard region testifies: “I remember as a special experience the mortal threat to life from a gang of seventy-eight Russian criminals who made up the contingent of the men’s camp. They were not properly indicated in the accompanying papers. They tried to enter our home by all means, including using homemade master keys, and were able to get into both halves of the women’s barracks, breaking into the floor and walls, and breaking out parts of the ceiling. The Russian guards did not protect us. Only twelve days after our appeal, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs took the criminals out of the camp.”

Documents from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, dated 1952 and 1953, shed some light on the situation of women and children in the system of the Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps at the end of the Stalin era.

“An extract from the report of the commission addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Comrade S.N. Kruglov, dated December 4, 1952, No. 50/2257 c,” indicated that the cost of keeping prisoners in the northern and Far Eastern camps of the GULZhDS is approximately twice as expensive as their maintenance in other camps. Based on this, it was concluded that it was necessary to place, in particular, mothers with children in Gulag camps located in more favorable climatic conditions. For reasons unknown to us, the conclusion to this proposal was negative.

As a result of difficult living conditions, in just 10 months of 1952, 1,486 cases of primary diseases were registered for an average monthly number of children - 408 people. Considering that during the same period 33 children died (or 8.1 percent of the total), it turns out that on average during this period each child suffered from various diseases four times. Among the causes of death, the leading causes were dysentery and dyspepsia - 45.5 percent, as well as pneumonia - 30.2 percent.

We would like to add the following: given that the mortality rate among prisoners was about 0.5 percent per year, we have to admit that children died 16 times more often.

In a report dated February 9, 1953, the Obskaya ITL and Construction Department 501 reported an improvement in the living conditions of mothers with children as a result of their relocation to newly converted premises from the Obskaya station to Salekhard and from Igarka to Ermakovo.
The so-called “Column of the Mother and Child Home” was built in Salekhard, in the Angalsky Cape area. There was also a maternity hospital there.

As N. Petrov notes in his study “GULAG”, the continuously increasing number of convicted women with children and pregnant women throughout the country put the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in a difficult situation due to exceptional difficulties in ensuring the correct upbringing of children, their normal placement and medical care. The average cost of maintaining one female prisoner with a child was 12 rubles per day. 72 kopecks or 4,643 rubles per year.

On August 28, 1950, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR prescribed the release from punishment of convicted pregnant women and women with young children. A certificate signed by the deputy head of the 2nd Directorate of the Gulag of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Colonel Nikulochkin, stated that on April 24, 1951, in pursuance of this decree, 100% of pregnant women and women with children in prison were released from places of detention, as well as 94 .5% of women who have children outside the colony camp. A total of 119,041 women were released out of 122,738 who fell into the listed categories.

On May 3, 1951, the head of the Gulag, Lieutenant General I. Dolgikh, documented: “3,697 women with children outside the camp colony were not released due to failure to receive documents confirming the presence of children.

The work to free women with children continues.”

No matter how harshly the then state, represented by its highest representatives, treated lawbreakers, it could not ignore the enormous demographic damage caused by the war. This damage had to be compensated, or at least not interfere with its compensation.

There were fewer women in the Gulag than men. Basically, these were the wives, daughters and sisters of enemies of the people. Many people think that women had it easier in the Gulag than men, although this is not true.

There were no separate standards for women. They worked the same as men, received the same rations, ate the same gruel and did not have any privileges during transportation. Although it still cannot be said that the camp experiences of men and women were the same.

Not all camps separated men and women. There was a high rate of rape in the "mixed" camps. Many were subjected to repeated and group violence. Usually the rapists were not political, but criminal prisoners. Sometimes there were cases of violence from the camp authorities. For sex, prisoners received more than Tasty food, better job or other concessions.

Many women gave birth either on the way to the camp or in the camp. Sometimes prisoners thought that after the birth of a child or during pregnancy there might be some relief; some wanted to give birth loved one. Of course, there were some concessions: from three breaks a day to breastfeed a child up to a year to a rare amnesty. But basically, the living conditions of the child and mother were poor.

From the memoirs of prisoner Khava Volovich: “We were three mothers. We were given a small room in the barracks. The bugs here fell from the ceiling and from the walls like sand. All night long we robbed them from the children. And in the afternoon - to work, entrusting the kids to some activated old woman who ate the food left for the children. For a whole year I stood at night by the child’s bed, picked out bedbugs and prayed. I prayed that God would prolong my torment for at least a hundred years, but not separate me from my daughter. So that, be it a beggar or a cripple, he would release her from prison with her. So that I could, crawling at people’s feet and begging for alms, raise and educate her. But God did not answer my prayers. As soon as the child began to walk, as soon as I heard from him the first, caressing words, such wonderful words - “mama”, “mama”, when in the winter cold, dressed in rags, we were put in a heated vehicle and taken to the “mama” camp, where my angelic plumpness with golden curls soon turned into a pale shadow with blue circles under the eyes and parched lips.”

At the “mommy camp,” the nannies didn’t care about the children: “I saw the nannies wake up the kids at seven o’clock in the morning. They were pushed and kicked out of their unheated beds.<…>Pushing the children in the back with their fists and showering them with harsh abuse, they changed their undershirts and washed them with ice water. And the kids didn’t even dare cry. They just groaned like old men and hooted. This terrible hooting sound came from children's cribs all day long. Children who were supposed to be sitting or crawling lay on their backs, legs tucked up to their stomachs, and made these strange sounds, similar to a muffled moan of a pigeon.

For seventeen children there was one nanny who had to feed, wash, dress the children and keep the room clean. She tried to make the task easier for herself: from the kitchen the nanny brought porridge blazing with heat. Having laid it out in bowls, she snatched the first child she came across from the crib, bent his arms back, tied them to his body with a towel, and began stuffing him with hot porridge, spoon by spoon, like a turkey, leaving him no time to swallow.”

Many women later wrote memoirs and books about imprisonment in the Gulag, among them Chava Valovich, Evgenia Ginzburg, Nina Gagen-Thorn, Tamara Petkevich and many others.

Torture is often called various minor troubles that happen to everyone in everyday life. This definition is given to raising disobedient children, standing in line for a long time, doing a lot of laundry, then ironing clothes, and even the process of preparing food. All this, of course, can be very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of debilitation largely depends on the character and inclinations of the person), but still bears little resemblance to the most terrible torture in the history of mankind. The practice of interrogation with prejudice and other violent actions against prisoners took place in almost all countries of the world. The time frame is also not defined, but since to modern man psychologically closer to the relatively recent events, then his attention is drawn to the methods and special equipment, invented in the twentieth century, in particular in the German concentration camps of the times. But there were also ancient Eastern and medieval tortures. The fascists were also taught by their colleagues from Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive authorities. So why was all this mockery of people?

Meaning of the term

To begin with, when starting to study any issue or phenomenon, any researcher tries to define it. “To name it correctly is already half to understand” - says

So, torture is the deliberate infliction of suffering. In this case, the nature of the torment does not matter; it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or deprivation of sleep), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both “channels of influence.”

But it is not only the fact of suffering that matters. Senseless torment is called torture. Torture differs from it in its purposefulness. In other words, a person is beaten with a whip or hung on a rack for a reason, but in order to get some result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to admit guilt, divulge hidden information, and sometimes they are simply punished for some misdemeanor or crime. The twentieth century added one more item to the list of possible purposes of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes carried out with the aim of studying the body's reaction to unbearable conditions in order to determine the limits of human capabilities. These experiments were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as inhumane and pseudoscientific, which did not prevent their results from being studied by physiologists from the victorious countries after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Death or trial

The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that after receiving the result, even the most terrible tortures stopped. There was no point in continuing them. The position of executioner-executor, as a rule, was occupied by a professional who knew about painful techniques and the peculiarities of psychology, if not everything, then a lot, and there was no point in wasting his efforts on senseless bullying. After the victim confessed to a crime, depending on the degree of civilization of society, she could expect immediate death or treatment followed by trial. Legally formalized execution after biased interrogations during the investigation was characteristic of the punitive justice of Germany in the initial Hitler era and for Stalin’s “open trials” (the Shakhty case, the trial of the industrial party, reprisals against Trotskyists, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent suits and shown to the public. Broken morally, people most often obediently repeated everything that the investigators forced them to admit. Torture and executions were rampant. The veracity of the testimony did not matter. Both in Germany and in the USSR in the 1930s, the confession of the accused was considered the “queen of evidence” (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, USSR prosecutor). Brutal torture was used to obtain it.

Deadly torture of the Inquisition

In few areas of its activity (except perhaps in the manufacture of murder weapons) humanity has been so successful. It should be noted that in recent centuries there has even been some regression compared to ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the reason most often became the external attractiveness of the unfortunate victim. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who actually committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the unequivocal doom of the condemned. No matter how long the torment lasted, it only ended in the death of the condemned. The execution weapon could have been the Iron Maiden, the Brazen Bull, a bonfire, or the sharp-edged pendulum described by Edgar Poe, which was methodically lowered onto the victim’s chest inch by inch. Horrible torture The inquisitions were distinguished by their duration and were accompanied by unimaginable moral torment. The preliminary investigation could be carried out using other ingenious mechanical devices to slowly split the bones of the fingers and limbs and tear the muscle ligaments. The most famous weapons were:

A metal sliding bulb used for particularly sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;

- “Spanish boot”;

A Spanish chair with clamps and a brazier for the legs and buttocks;

An iron bra (pectoral), worn over the chest while hot;

- “crocodiles” and special forceps for crushing male genitals.

The executioners of the Inquisition also had other torture equipment, which it is better not for people with sensitive psyches to know about.

East, Ancient and Modern

No matter how ingenious the European inventors of self-harm techniques may be, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind were still invented in the East. The Inquisition used metal instruments, which sometimes had a very intricate design, while in Asia they preferred everything natural (today these products would probably be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything was used. Eastern torture and execution had the same goals as European ones, but technically differed in duration and greater sophistication. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scaphism (from the Greek word “scaphium” - trough). The victim was immobilized with shackles, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then the whole body was smeared with a sweet mixture, and lowered into the swamp. Blood-sucking insects a person was slowly eaten alive. They did the same thing in the case of execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate person was to be burned in the scorching sun, his eyelids were cut off for greater torment. There were other types of torture that used elements of the biosystem. For example, it is known that bamboo grows quickly, a meter per day. It is enough to simply hang the victim at a short distance above the young shoots, and cut off the ends of the stems under acute angle. The person being tortured has time to come to his senses, confess everything and hand over his accomplices. If he persists, he will slowly and painfully be pierced by the plants. This choice was not always provided, however.

Torture as a method of inquiry

Both in and later periods, various types of torture were used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary authorities state power, today called law enforcement. It was part of a set of investigation and inquiry techniques. From the second half of the 16th century, they practiced in Russia different types bodily influence, such as: whipping, hanging, racking, burning with pincers and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe was also by no means distinguished by humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying and even the fear of death did not guarantee finding out the truth. Moreover, in some cases the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case with a miller, which the inscription on the pediment of the French Palace of Justice calls for to be remembered. He took upon himself someone else's guilt under torture, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.

Abolition of torture in different countries

IN late XVII century, a gradual shift away from the practice of torture and a transition from it to other, more humane methods of inquiry began. One of the results of the Enlightenment was the realization that it is not the severity of punishment, but its inevitability that influences the reduction of criminal activity. In Prussia, torture was abolished in 1754; this country became the first to put its legal proceedings at the service of humanism. Then the process went progressively, different states followed her example in the following sequence:

Note:

*) the legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland has changed in different time the specified period.

Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.

Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774 by issuing a secret decree. By this, on the one hand, she continued to keep criminals at bay, but, on the other, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. This decision was formalized legally by Alexander I in 1801.

As for England, torture was prohibited there in 1772, but not all, but only some.

Illegal torture

The legislative ban did not mean their complete exclusion from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class who were ready to break the law in the name of its triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and if exposed, they were threatened with legal prosecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was necessary to “work with people” more carefully, without leaving visible traces. In the 19th and 20th centuries, objects that were heavy but had a soft surface were used, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation was manifested in the fact that most often these were codes of laws), rubber hoses, etc. They were not left without attention and methods of moral pressure. Some investigators sometimes threatened severe punishments, long sentences, and even reprisals against loved ones. This was also torture. The horror experienced by those under investigation prompted them to make confessions, incriminate themselves and receive undeserved punishments, until the majority of police officers performed their duty honestly, studying the evidence and collecting testimony to bring a substantiated charge. Everything changed after totalitarian and dictatorial regimes came to power in some countries. This happened in the 20th century.

After the October Revolution of 1917, on the territory of the former Russian Empire broke out Civil War, in which both warring parties most often did not consider themselves bound by the legislative norms that were mandatory under the tsar. Torture of prisoners of war in order to obtain information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. During the years of the Red Terror, executions most often took place, but mockery of representatives of the “exploiter class,” which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed “gentlemen,” became widespread. In the twenties, thirties and forties, the NKVD authorities used prohibited methods of interrogation, depriving those under investigation of sleep, food, water, beating and mutilating them. This was done with the permission of management, and sometimes on his direct instructions. The goal was rarely to find out the truth - repressions were carried out to intimidate, and the investigator’s task was to obtain a signature on a protocol containing a confession of counter-revolutionary activities, as well as slander of other citizens. As a rule, Stalin’s “backpack masters” did not use special torture devices, being content with available objects, such as a paperweight (they beat them on the head), or even an ordinary door, which pinched fingers and other protruding parts of the body.

In Nazi Germany

Torture in the concentration camps created after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously used in that they were a strange mixture of Eastern sophistication and European practicality. Initially, these “correctional institutions” were created for guilty Germans and representatives of national minorities declared hostile (Gypsies and Jews). Then came a series of experiments that were somewhat scientific in nature, but in cruelty exceeded the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind.
In an attempt to create antidotes and vaccines, Nazi SS doctors administered lethal injections to prisoners, performed operations without anesthesia, including abdominal ones, froze prisoners, starved them in the heat, and did not allow them to sleep, eat or drink. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the “production” of ideal soldiers, not afraid of frost, heat and injury, resistant to the effects of toxic substances and pathogenic bacilli. The history of torture during the Second World War forever imprinted the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, became the personification of inhumanity. They also conducted experiments on lengthening limbs by mechanical stretching, suffocating people in rarefied air, and other experiments that caused painful agony, sometimes lasting for long hours.

The torture of women by the Nazis concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them of reproductive function. Studied different methods- from simple ones (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated ones, which had the prospect of mass use in the event of a Reich victory (irradiation and exposure to chemicals).

It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when Soviet and allied troops began to liberate the concentration camps. Even appearance prisoners spoke more eloquently than any evidence that their very detention in inhuman conditions was torture.

Current state of affairs

The torture of the fascists became the standard of cruelty. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity sighed with joy in the hope that this would never happen again. Unfortunately, although not on such a scale, torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain some of the terrible signs modern world. Developed countries, declaring their commitment to rights and freedoms, are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories where compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners of secret prisons have been exposed to punitive forces for many years without specific charges being brought against them. The methods used by military personnel of many countries during local and major armed conflicts in relation to prisoners and those simply suspected of sympathizing with the enemy, sometimes exceed in cruelty and bullying of people in Nazi concentration camps. In international investigations of such precedents, too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe a duality of standards, when war crimes of one of the parties are completely or partially hushed up.

Will the era of a new Enlightenment come when torture will finally be finally and irrevocably recognized as a disgrace to humanity and banned? So far there is little hope for this...

Women of the Gulag are a special and endless topic for research. The Zhezkazgan archives contain highly classified documents calling for justice and mercy.

The women were mocked by drunken camp commanders, but they resisted the violence, wrote complaints, to which, naturally, no one responded, as well as leaflets and posters. Many women were raped by camp commanders, and for any protest they either added time to prison or were shot. They shot me right away.

So, for example, Antonina Nikolaevna KONSTANTINOVA served her sentence in the Prostonensky department of Karlag. On September 20, 1941, she was sentenced to death for a leaflet in which she wrote that she could not go to work due to lack of clothes. In addition, he is disabled and requires medical assistance.

Pelageya Gavrilovna MYAGKOVA, born in 1887 in the village of Bogorodskoye, Moscow region and serving time in Karazhal, Karaganda region, was shot by a camp court for saying that she was forced to join collective farms.

Maria Dmitrievna TARATUKHINA was born in 1894 in the village of Uspenskoye, Oryol region, and was shot in Karlag for saying that Soviet power had destroyed churches.

Estonian Zoya Andreevna KEOSK was given ten years longer because she refused to be “friends” with the head of the camp. Natalya Fedorovna BERLOGINA was given the same amount of money because she was beaten by a convoy squad shooter, but she couldn’t stand it and complained.

In the Zhezkazgan archives, thousands of similar cases are kept in great secrecy, including leaflets by women, written by them on pieces of sheets, footcloths, and scraps of paper. They wrote on the walls of the barracks, on the fences, as evidenced by the materials of a thorough investigation into each such case.

A strong spirit of resistance to the regime emerged in the Kazakh camps. First, the prisoners of Ekibastuz went on a hunger strike together. In 1952 there were unrest in Karlag. The most active ones, 1,200 people, were sent to Norilsk, but in the summer of 1953 they started an uprising there, which lasted about 2 months.

In the fall of 1952, a riot broke out in the Kengir camp department. About 12 thousand people took part in it.

The riots began in one camp, and then spread to three others, including women's camps. The guards were confused, did not immediately use weapons, the prisoners took advantage of the indecision, broke through the fences and united into one mass, covering all 4 OLPA, although the camp department along the perimeter was immediately surrounded by a triple ring of guards, machine guns were posted not only on the corner towers, but also in places probable breach of the main security fence.

Negotiations between the chief of Steplag and the leaders of the riot did not produce positive results. The camp did not go out to work; the prisoners erected barricades, dug trenches and trenches, as at the front, preparing for a long defense. They made homemade knives, sabers, pikes, bombs, explosives for which were prepared in a chemical laboratory located in one of the camps - the knowledge and experience of former engineers and doctors of science came in handy.

The rebels held out for about a month, fortunately, food products were located on the territory of one of the OLPs, where the department's quartermaster supply base was located. Negotiations were going on all this time.

Moscow was forced to send the entire top of the Gulag and the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Union to Steplag. The riot was very long and serious. The parties did not resolve the issues peacefully, then the authorities moved the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops raised from all over Kazakhstan and the Urals. A separate special purpose motorized rifle division named after Dzerzhinsky was transferred from near Moscow.

A military offensive, where they threw about a division of personnel with four battle tanks against unarmed people. And so that the prisoners would not hear the roar of tank engines, when approaching the camp an hour before the operation and during it, several steam locomotives with freight cars were running on the railway line leading to the camp, clanging their buffers, sounding their horns, creating a cacophony of sounds throughout the entire area.

The tanks used live shells. They fired at trenches and barricades, ironed barracks, and crushed those resisting with their tracks. When breaking through the defense, the soldiers fired aimed fire at the rioters. This was the order of the command, authorized by the prosecutor.

The assault began suddenly for the prisoners at dawn and lasted about 4 hours. By sunrise it was all over. The camp was destroyed. The barracks, barricades and trenches were burning down. Dozens of dead, crushed, and burned prisoners were lying around; 400 people were seriously injured.

Those who surrendered were driven into barracks, disarmed, and then within a month, at the direction of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, they were taken to other Gulag camps, where everyone was brought to criminal responsibility.

The reason for mass disobedience was the fact that the guards of the camp unit used weapons. This happened on May 17 and 18 when male prisoners tried to enter the women's area. This had already happened before, but the administration did not take decisive measures, especially since there were not even attempts to create a fire zone between the camp points.

On the night of May 17, a group of prisoners destroyed the fence and entered the women's area. An unsuccessful attempt was made by the administration, supervisory staff and security to return the violators to their zone. This was done after warning shots were fired. During the day, the leadership, in agreement with the camp prosecutor, established fire zones between the women's camp and the utility yard, as well as between the 2nd and 3rd men's camps, and announced to the prisoners the corresponding order, meaning the use of weapons in case of violation of the established restrictions.

Despite this, on the night of May 18, 400 prisoners, despite the fire opened on them, made breaks in the adobe walls and entered the women's area. To restore order, a group of machine gunners was introduced into the women's zone. The prisoners threw stones at the soldiers. As a result, 13 people were killed and 43 wounded.

The uprising lasted 40 days. This was the only time in the history of Gulag resistance when a government commission was created to determine the reasons. The decision on the fate of the rebels was made at the highest level...
__________________
no matter what life teaches us, the heart believes in miracles...
In August 1954, A.V. Snegov, himself a recent prisoner, became deputy head of the political department of the Gulag Ministry of Internal Affairs. At one time a major party and economic leader, he was arrested and on July 13, 1941, sentenced to 15 years in prison.

On March 6, 1954, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence of a crime. In December 1955, the eldest research fellow The special bureau of the Gulag Ministry of Internal Affairs became E. G. Shirvindt. The Special Bureau was studying the experience of the correctional labor camp in the re-education of prisoners (in 1956 it was renamed the Gulag Research Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). In 1922-1930, E. G. Shirvindt headed the Main Directorate of Places of Detention of the NKVD of the RSFSR, and until 1938 he became a senior assistant prosecutor of the USSR. On March 11, 1938, in the office of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Zakovsky, Shirvindt was arrested, and on June 20, 1939, he was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR to 10 years in a labor camp, which he served in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Then in 1948, Shirvindt was sent to a special settlement; in October 1954 he received his freedom, and on March 5, 1955 he was rehabilitated. Both Snegov and Shirvindt were now given the special ranks of lieutenant colonels of the internal service. However, the old traditions were also strong. According to the practice adopted under Stalin, in 1954 “members of the families of enemies of the people - Beria and his accomplices” were evicted and then shot. Merkulov’s mother and wife ended up in Kazakhstan; wife, daughter, mother and sister of Kobulov; Goglidze's wife and son; wife and mother of Melik; wife and son, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law of Dekanozov; Vladzimirsky's wife; two cousins ​​of Beria along with their husbands. In the Krasnoyarsk Territory - Beria’s sister, his nephew and niece, as well as cousin with my wife. Beria's wife and son are in Sverdlovsk. In 1955, the same fate awaited the families of convicted enemies of the people - Abakumov and his accomplices. Only on March 15, 1958, the KGB and the USSR prosecutor's office decided to release from further stay in exile the relatives of Beria, Abakumov and their accomplices, who were allowed to live freely throughout the entire territory of the USSR, except Moscow.

The process of reviewing cases and rehabilitation that began in 1953 also affected former employees of the NKVD - NKGB - MGB - MVD. So, on July 13, 1953, among large group generals sentenced to different deadlines even under Stalin, Lieutenant General K.F. Telegin (until 1941 he served in the political agencies of the NKVD troops, and before his arrest in 1948 he worked in the Soviet military administration in Germany) and Major General S.A. Klepov (former Head of the NKVD OBB). On May 26, 1954, along with many others, Lieutenant General P.N. Kubatkin was rehabilitated in the “Leningrad case.”

Among the former senior officials of the central apparatus after 1953, the following were subjected to repression: former Deputy Minister of State Security M.D. Ryumin (on July 7, 1954, sentenced to capital punishment, executed on July 22); On September 28, 1954, the former were sentenced: Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs S.S. Mamulov - to 15 years in prison, Beria's assistant in the Council of Ministers of the USSR P.A. Shariya - to 10 years in prison, Beria's personal secretary in the Council of Ministers of the USSR F. V. Mukhanov - 6 years of exile and many others.

December 19, 1954 former minister state security V. S. Abakumov, head of the medical unit for the Department of Internal Affairs of the MGB A. G. Leonov; his deputies M.T. Likhachev and V.I. Komarov were sentenced to VMN and executed on the same day.

In the early spring of 1956, a riot of prisoners broke out in the Fedorovsky camp department of the Karaganda ITL. This separate camp site was then located on the outskirts of the city, it contained about one and a half thousand people, mainly political prisoners from among the Baltic nationalists.

All of them had very long sentences - 15 and 20 years, many were tried recently, after the end of the war, so they had to sit for a long time, people could not stand it and broke into a riot, having learned that under certain articles they were not eligible for amnesty.

For a week the camp was completely surrounded by troops at gunpoint. The soldiers were thrown into the assault, however, they did not use weapons, they used a bayonet and a rifle butt, and dozens of disobedient people were maimed.

More than 100 dogs were then brought from all over Karlag to Fedorovka to subdue the prisoners. The ending for the prisoners who took part in the riot is the same: beating, investigation, trial, new sentence.

The development of virgin lands did not take place without the use of prison labor. They were transported here in trains under guard. They were household workers.

In Atbasar (Akmola region), a special department was created to manage prisoners and build new virgin state farms.

Prisoners were used, as a rule, in the construction of the central estates of the newly created state farms. They built residential buildings, mechanical repair shops, shops, schools, warehouses and other industrial and special purpose facilities.

In the summer of 1955, two photojournalists from regional newspapers came to the Shuisky state farm, took photographs of prisoners working on the construction of a new school, and then a photo appeared in the regional newspaper with the inscription: Komsomol volunteers from the city of Shui are working hard on the construction. Of course, there were no towers in the photo and barbed wire.

The summer of 1959 in the Karaganda steppe turned out to be extremely contrasting: the heat reached 35 degrees, at night the temperature dropped to plus five. In the tent city, crowded with Komsomol members and verbota, mass colds began. The construction managers, manager Vishenevsky and party organizer Korkin, brushed aside the complaints.

The main lever of the uprising was the eastern outskirts of Temirtau, where a tent settlement was set up. On the night of Sunday, August 2, a group of 100 people was returning from the dance floor. Having tasted the water from the tank, the “Komsomol volunteers” in a rage overturned it: the water seemed rotten to them. Part of the angry crowd rushed to the doors of dining room No. 3, broke the lock and stole the food. The rest robbed a car shop and a kiosk.

About 800 people moved to the Temirtau city police building, surrounded it, and began to break through. The police and unarmed cadets were unable to provide serious resistance. The attackers looted and burned a police car, broke into the building, cut off communications, and tried to break into a safe with weapons. On August 3, they again came to storm the city police building. Along the way, the “volunteers” robbed food warehouses and stores. The “shock Komsomol construction” indulged in general drunkenness and revelry. Looters robbed a brand new three-story department store; what they could not carry away was thrown into broken windows. Life in the city was paralyzed.

500 soldiers and officers, led by the chief of Karlag, Major General Zapevalin, arrived from Karaganda to suppress the uprising. Opposing forces came face to face. The officers tried to appeal to prudence. In response, stones, bricks, and bottles were thrown. And then they started shooting at the crowd from machine guns.

The transfer of troops to Karaganda began. Airplanes roared day and night - they were carrying units of internal troops. They concentrated near Temirtau. Finally the troops went on the attack. Prisoners were caught on trains and on the roads, but it was difficult to escape in the steppe. The Voice of America reported that the death toll on both sides was about 300 people. The killed rebels are said to have been buried in a mass grave dug by a bulldozer.

On August 4, a party activist of the Kazakhstan Magnitogorsk took place with the participation of L. I. Brezhnev and the first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan N. I. Belyaev. Here the first sad results of the riot were announced: 11 rioters were killed on the spot, another five died from their wounds, and 27 people were seriously injured. 28 soldiers, officers and police officers were taken to medical institutions. Data on those killed among the military were not made public.

Mass terror under a totalitarian system was the most severe not only in the history of the peoples of socialism, but also of the entire civilized world. Terror was unleashed on unarmed compatriots in peacetime, without any objective grounds, using the most vile means and techniques.

The Kazakh land became the location of numerous Gulag camps - one of the most terrible inventions of totalitarianism.

Without knowing the whole truth about the past, it is impossible to move forward confidently, it is impossible to extract useful lessons. Only by restoring historical justice By paying tribute to deep respect to the memory of those who died innocently, we can restore human nobility, mercy, and morality. We must remember the monstrous tragedies of the past in order to prevent them in the future.

Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many lost loved ones who were killed or tortured. In the article we will look at the Nazi concentration camps and the atrocities that happened on their territories.

What is a concentration camp?

A concentration camp or concentration camp is a special place intended for the detention of persons of the following categories:

• political prisoners (opponents of the dictatorial regime);
• prisoners of war (captured soldiers and civilians).

Nazi concentration camps became notorious for their inhuman cruelty to prisoners and impossible conditions of detention. These places of detention began to appear even before Hitler came to power, and even then they were divided into women's, men's and children's. Mainly Jews and opponents of the Nazi system were kept there.

Life in the camp

Humiliation and abuse for prisoners began from the moment of transportation. People were transported in freight cars, where there was not even running water or a fenced-off latrine. Prisoners had to relieve themselves publicly, in a tank standing in the middle of the carriage.

But this was only the beginning; a lot of abuse and torture were prepared for the concentration camps of fascists who were undesirable to the Nazi regime. Torture of women and children, medical experiments, aimless exhausting work - this is not the whole list.

The conditions of detention can be judged from the prisoners’ letters: “they lived in hellish conditions, ragged, barefoot, hungry... I was constantly and severely beaten, deprived of food and water, tortured...”, “They shot me, flogged me, poisoned me with dogs, drowned me in water, beat me to death.” with sticks and starvation. They were infected with tuberculosis... suffocated by a cyclone. Poisoned with chlorine. They burned..."

The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was then used in the German textile industry. The doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, at whose hands thousands of people died. He studied mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they received organ transplants from each other, blood transfusions, and sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. Performed sex reassignment surgery.

All fascist concentration camps became famous for such abuses; we will look at the names and conditions of detention in the main ones below.

Camp diet

Typically, the daily ration in the camp was as follows:

• bread - 130 gr;
• fat - 20 g;
• meat - 30 g;
• cereal - 120 gr;
• sugar - 27 gr.

Bread was handed out, and the rest of the products were used for cooking, which consisted of soup (issued 1 or 2 times a day) and porridge (150 - 200 grams). It should be noted that such a diet was intended only for working people. Those who, for some reason, remained unemployed received even less. Usually their portion consisted of only half a portion of bread.

List of concentration camps in different countries

Fascist concentration camps were created in the territories of Germany, allied and occupied countries. There are a lot of them, but let’s name the main ones:

• In Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;
• Austria - Mauthausen, Amstetten;
• France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
• Poland - Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
• Lithuania - Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
• Czechoslovakia - Kunta Gora, Natra, Hlinsko;
• Estonia - Pirkul, Pärnu, Klooga;
• Belarus - Minsk, Baranovichi;
• Latvia - Salaspils.

And this is not a complete list of all the concentration camps that were built by Nazi Germany in the pre-war and war years.

Salaspils

Salaspils, one might say, is the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because in addition to prisoners of war and Jews, children were also kept there. It was located on the territory of occupied Latvia and was the central eastern camp. It was located near Riga and operated from 1941 (September) to 1944 (summer).

Children in this camp were not only kept separately from adults and exterminated en masse, but were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Every day, about half a liter of blood was taken from all children, which led to the rapid death of donors.

Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then their corpses were burned. It was used for medical research that killed more than 100,000 people. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. Torture of children was a routine activity here, carried out according to a schedule with the results carefully recorded.

Experiments on children

Testimony of witnesses and results of investigations revealed the following methods of extermination of people in the Salaspils camp: beating, starvation, arsenic poisoning, injection hazardous substances(most often for children), performing surgical operations without painkillers, pumping out blood (only for children), executions, torture, useless hard work (carrying stones from place to place), gas chambers, burying alive. In order to save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed only with rifle butts. The atrocities of the Nazis in the concentration camps surpassed everything that humanity had seen in modern times. Such an attitude towards people cannot be justified, because it violates all conceivable and inconceivable moral commandments.

Children did not stay with their mothers for long and were usually quickly taken away and distributed. Thus, children under six years of age were kept in a special barracks where they were infected with measles. But they did not treat it, but aggravated the disease, for example, by bathing, which is why the children died within 3-4 days. The Germans killed more than 3,000 people in one year in this way. The bodies of the dead were partly burned and partly buried on the camp grounds.

The Act of the Nuremberg Trials “on the extermination of children” provided the following numbers: during the excavation of only a fifth of the concentration camp territory, 633 bodies of children aged 5 to 9 years, arranged in layers, were discovered; an area soaked in an oily substance was also found, where the remains of unburned children’s bones (teeth, ribs, joints, etc.) were found.

Salaspils is truly the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because the atrocities described above are not all the tortures that the prisoners were subjected to. Thus, in winter, children brought in barefoot and naked were driven half a kilometer to a barracks, where they had to wash themselves in ice water. After this, the children were driven in the same way to the next building, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. Moreover, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. Everyone who survived this procedure was also subjected to arsenic poisoning.

Infants were kept separately and given injections, from which the child died in agony within a few days. They gave us coffee and poisoned cereals. About 150 children died from experiments per day. The bodies of the dead were carried out to large baskets and were burned, dumped in cesspools, or buried near the camp.

Ravensbrück

If we start listing Nazi women's concentration camps, Ravensbrück will come first. This was the only camp of this type in Germany. It could accommodate thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war it was overcrowded by fifteen thousand. Mostly Russian and Polish women were detained; Jews numbered approximately 15 percent. There were no prescribed instructions regarding torture and torment; the supervisors chose the line of behavior themselves.

Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number. Race was also indicated on clothing. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in the post-war years, 2-3 refugee families lived in them) there were approximately three hundred prisoners, who were housed on three-story bunks. When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were herded into these cells, all of whom had to sleep on the same bunks. The barracks had several toilets and a washbasin, but there were so few of them that after a few days the floors were littered with excrement. Almost all Nazi concentration camps presented this picture (the photos presented here are only a small fraction of all the horrors).

But not all women ended up in the concentration camp; a selection was made beforehand. The strong and resilient, fit for work, were left behind, and the rest were destroyed. Prisoners worked at construction sites and sewing workshops.

Gradually, Ravensbrück was equipped with a crematorium, like all Nazi concentration camps. Gas chambers (nicknamed gas chambers by prisoners) appeared towards the end of the war. Ashes from crematoria were sent to nearby fields as fertilizer.

Experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. In a special barracks called the "infirmary", German scientists tested new medications, pre-infecting or crippling experimental subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered from what they had endured until the end of their lives. Experiments were also conducted with the irradiation of women with X-rays, which caused hair loss, skin pigmentation, and death. Excisions of the genital organs were carried out, after which few survived, and even those quickly aged, and at the age of 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out in all Nazi concentration camps; torture of women and children was the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.

At the time of the liberation of the concentration camp by the Allies, five thousand women remained there; the rest were killed or transported to other places of detention. The Soviet troops who arrived in April 1945 adapted the camp barracks to accommodate refugees. Ravensbrück later became a base for Soviet military units.

Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald

Construction of the camp began in 1933, near the town of Weimar. Soon, Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive, becoming the first prisoners, and they completed the construction of the “hellish” concentration camp.

The structure of all structures was strictly thought out. Immediately behind the gate began the “Appelplat” (parallel ground), specially designed for the formation of prisoners. Its capacity was twenty thousand people. Not far from the gate there was a punishment cell for interrogations, and opposite there was an office where the camp fuehrer and the officer on duty - the camp authorities - lived. Deeper down were the barracks for prisoners. All barracks were numbered, there were 52 of them. At the same time, 43 were intended for housing, and workshops were set up in the rest.

The Nazi concentration camps left behind a terrible memory; their names still evoke fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald. The most scary place considered a crematorium. People were invited there under the pretext of a medical examination. When the prisoner undressed, he was shot and the body was sent to the oven.

Only men were kept in Buchenwald. Upon arrival at the camp, they were assigned a number in German, which they had to learn within the first 24 hours. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky weapons factory, which was located a few kilometers from the camp.

Continuing to describe the Nazi concentration camps, let us turn to the so-called “small camp” of Buchenwald.

Small camp of Buchenwald

The “small camp” was the name given to the quarantine zone. The living conditions here were, even compared to the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiegne camp were brought to this camp; they were mainly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were housed in tents. The closer 1945 got, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the “small camp” included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in Nazi concentration camps was not only specially planned or for scientific purposes, life itself in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks; their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread; those who were not working were no longer entitled to it.

Relations among prisoners were tough; cases of cannibalism and murder for someone else's portion of bread were documented. A common practice was to store the bodies of the dead in barracks in order to receive their rations. The dead man's clothes were divided among his cellmates, and they often fought over them. Due to such conditions in the camp there were widespread infectious diseases. Vaccinations only worsened the situation, since injection syringes were not changed.

Photos simply cannot convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. The stories of witnesses are not intended for the faint of heart. In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to step far forward - no other country in the world had such a number of experimental people. Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, the inhuman suffering that these innocent people endured.

Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated, organs were removed, and they were sterilized and castrated. They tested how long a person could withstand extreme cold or heat. They were specially infected with diseases and introduced experimental drugs. Thus, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed in Buchenwald. In addition to typhus, prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid.

Since 1939, the camp was run by Karl Koch. His wife, Ilse, was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her love of sadism and inhumane abuse of prisoners. They feared her more than her husband (Karl Koch) and Nazi doctors. She was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". The woman owed this nickname to the fact that she made various decorative things from the skin of killed prisoners, in particular, lampshades, which she was very proud of. Most of all, she liked to use the skin of Russian prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests, as well as the skin of gypsies. Things made of such material seemed to her the most elegant.

The liberation of Buchenwald took place on April 11, 1945, at the hands of the prisoners themselves. Having learned about the approach of the allied troops, they disarmed the guards, captured the camp leadership and controlled the camp for two days until American soldiers approached.

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)

When listing Nazi concentration camps, it is impossible to ignore Auschwitz. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died. The exact details of the dead remain unclear. The victims were mainly Jewish prisoners of war, who were exterminated immediately upon arrival in gas chambers.

The concentration camp complex itself was called Auschwitz-Birkenau and was located on the outskirts of the Polish city of Auschwitz, whose name became a household name. The following words were engraved above the camp gate: “Work sets you free.”

This huge complex, built in 1940, consisted of three camps:

• Auschwitz I or the main camp - the administration was located here;
• Auschwitz II or "Birkenau" - was called a death camp;
• Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz.

Initially, the camp was small and intended for political prisoners. But gradually more and more prisoners arrived at the camp, 70% of whom were destroyed immediately. Many tortures in Nazi concentration camps were borrowed from Auschwitz. Thus, the first gas chamber began to function in 1941. The gas used was Cyclone B. The terrible invention was first tested on Soviet and Polish prisoners totaling about nine hundred people.

Auschwitz II began its operation on March 1, 1942. Its territory included four crematoria and two gas chambers. In the same year, medical experiments on sterilization and castration began on women and men.

Small camps gradually formed around Birkenau, where prisoners working in factories and mines were kept. One of these camps gradually grew and became known as Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz. Approximately ten thousand prisoners were held here.

Like any Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz was well guarded. Contacts with outside world were banned, the territory was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and guard posts were set up around the camp at a distance of a kilometer.

Five crematoria operated continuously on the territory of Auschwitz, which, according to experts, had a monthly capacity of approximately 270 thousand corpses.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. By that time, approximately seven thousand prisoners remained alive. Such a small number of survivors is due to the fact that about a year earlier, the concentration camp began massacres in gas chambers (gas chambers).

Since 1947, a museum and memorial complex dedicated to the memory of all those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany began to function on the territory of the former concentration camp.

Conclusion

During the entire war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. These were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It’s hard to even imagine what these people went through. But it was not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps that they were destined to endure. Thanks to Stalin, after their liberation, returning home, they received the stigma of “traitors.” The Gulag awaited them at home, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity gave way to another for them. In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences.

Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after release was not advertised and kept silent. But people who have experienced this simply should not be forgotten.