Brutal torture of women by the Nazis. Nazi concentration camps, torture. The most terrible Nazi concentration camp List of concentration camps in different countries

home » Biology Brutal torture of women by the Nazis. Nazi concentration camps, torture. The most terrible Nazi concentration camp List of concentration camps in different countries

This small, clean house in Kristiansad next to the road to Stavanger and the port during the war years was the most terrible place in all of southern Norway. "Skrekkens hus" - "House of Horror" - that's what they called it in the city. Since January 1942, the Gestapo headquarters in southern Norway have been located in the city archive building. Arrested people were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, from here people were sent to concentration camps and to be shot. Now, in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where the prisoners were tortured, there is a museum that tells about what happened during the war years in the building of the state archive.

The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. There were only new lights and doors. The main exposition with archival materials, photographs, posters is arranged in the main corridor.

So the suspended arrested person was beaten with a chain.

So tortured with electric stoves. With the special zeal of the executioners, the hair on the head could catch fire in a person.

In this device, fingers were clamped, nails were pulled out. The machine is authentic - after the liberation of the city from the Germans, all the equipment of the torture chambers remained in its place and was saved.

Nearby - other devices for conducting interrogation with "addiction".

Reconstructions were arranged in several basements - as it looked then, in this very place. This is a cell where especially dangerous arrested persons were kept - members of the Norwegian Resistance who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.

The torture chamber was located in the next room. Here, a real scene of the torture of a married couple of underground workers taken by the Gestapo in 1943 during a communication session with an intelligence center in London is reproduced. Two Gestapo men torture a wife in front of her husband, who is chained to the wall. In the corner, on an iron beam, another member of the failed underground group is suspended. They say that before interrogations, the Gestapo were pumped up with alcohol and drugs.

Everything was left in the cell, as it was then, in 1943. If you turn over that pink stool at the woman's feet, you can see the mark of Kristiansand's Gestapo.

This is a reconstruction of the interrogation - the Gestapo provocateur (on the left) shows the arrested radio operator of the underground group (he is sitting on the right, in handcuffs) his radio station in a suitcase. In the center sits the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo, SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Kerner - I will talk about him later.

In this showcase are things and documents of those Norwegian patriots who were sent to the Grini concentration camp near Oslo, the main transit point in Norway, from where prisoners were sent to other concentration camps in Europe.

The system for designating different groups of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Jewish, political, gypsy, Spanish republican, dangerous criminal, felon, war criminal, Jehovah's Witness, homosexual. The letter N was written on the badge of a Norwegian political prisoner.

School tours are given to the museum. I stumbled across one of these - several local teenagers were walking down the corridors with Ture Robstad, a local war survivor volunteer. It is said that about 10,000 schoolchildren visit the museum in the Archive every year.

Toure tells the children about Auschwitz. Two boys from the group were there recently on an excursion.

Soviet prisoner of war in a concentration camp. In his hand is a homemade wooden bird.

In a separate display case, things made by Russian prisoners of war in Norwegian concentration camps. These handicrafts were exchanged by Russians for food from local residents. Our neighbor in Kristiansand had a whole collection of such wooden birds - on the way to school she often met groups of our prisoners going to work under escort, and gave them her breakfast in exchange for these carved wooden toys.

Reconstruction of a partisan radio station. Partisans in southern Norway transmitted to London information about the movements of German troops, the deployment of military equipment and ships. In the north, the Norwegians supplied intelligence to the Soviet Northern Fleet.

"Germany is a nation of creators."
Norwegian patriots had to work under the strongest pressure on the local population of Goebbels propaganda. The Germans set themselves the task of the speedy nazification of the country. Quisling's government made efforts for this in the field of education, culture, and sports. Quisling's (Nasjonal Samling) Nazi Party, even before the start of the war, inspired the Norwegians that the main threat to their security was the military power of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that the Finnish campaign of 1940 contributed to the intimidation of the Norwegians about Soviet aggression in the North. With the coming to power, Quisling only stepped up his propaganda with the help of the Goebbels department. The Nazis in Norway convinced the population that only a strong Germany could protect the Norwegians from the Bolsheviks.

Several posters distributed by the Nazis in Norway. "Norges nye nabo" - "The New Norwegian Neighbor", 1940. Pay attention to the now fashionable technique of "reversing" Latin letters to imitate the Cyrillic alphabet.

"Do you want it to be like this?"

The propaganda of the "new Norway" in every way emphasized the kinship of the "Nordic" peoples, their unity in the struggle against British imperialism and the "wild Bolshevik hordes". Norwegian patriots responded by using the symbol of King Haakon and his image in their struggle. The king's motto "Alt for Norge" was ridiculed in every possible way by the Nazis, who inspired the Norwegians that military difficulties were temporary and that Vidkun Quisling was the new leader of the nation.

Two walls in the gloomy corridors of the museum are given over to the materials of the criminal case, according to which the seven main Gestapo men were tried in Kristiansand. There have never been such cases in Norwegian judicial practice - the Norwegians tried Germans, citizens of another state, accused of crimes in Norway. Three hundred witnesses, about a dozen lawyers, the Norwegian and foreign press took part in the process. The Gestapo were tried for torture and humiliation of those arrested, there was a separate episode about the summary execution of 30 Russian and 1 Polish prisoners of war. On June 16, 1947, all were sentenced to death, which for the first time and temporarily was included in the Criminal Code of Norway immediately after the end of the war.

Rudolf Kerner is the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo. Former shoemaker. A notorious sadist, in Germany he had a criminal past. He sent several hundred members of the Norwegian Resistance to concentration camps, is guilty of the death of an organization of Soviet prisoners of war uncovered by the Gestapo in one of the concentration camps in southern Norway. He was, like the rest of his accomplices, sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1953 under an amnesty declared by the Norwegian government. He went to Germany, where his traces were lost.

Near the building of the Archive there is a modest monument to the Norwegian patriots who died at the hands of the Gestapo. In the local cemetery, not far from this place, the ashes of Soviet prisoners of war and English pilots, shot down by the Germans in the sky over Kristiansand, rest. Every year on May 8, flagpoles next to the graves raise the flags of the USSR, Great Britain and Norway.
In 1997, it was decided to sell the building of the Archive, from which the State Archive moved to another place, into private hands. Local veterans, public organizations strongly opposed, organized themselves into a special committee and ensured that in 1998 the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, transferred the historic building to the veterans' committee. Now here, along with the museum that I told you about, there are offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN

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This small, clean house in Kristiansad next to the road to Stavanger and the port during the war years was the most terrible place in all of southern Norway.

"Skrekkens hus" - "House of Horror" - that's what they called it in the city. Since January 1942, the Gestapo headquarters in southern Norway have been located in the city archive building. Arrested people were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, from here people were sent to concentration camps and to be shot.

Now, in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where the prisoners were tortured, there is a museum that tells about what happened during the war years in the building of the state archive.
The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. There were only new lights and doors. The main exposition with archival materials, photographs, posters is arranged in the main corridor.

So the suspended arrested person was beaten with a chain.

So tortured with electric stoves. With the special zeal of the executioners, the hair on the head could catch fire in a person.

I have written about water torture before. It was also used in the Archives.

Nearby - other devices for conducting interrogation with "addiction".

Everything was left in the cell, as it was then, in 1943. If you turn over that pink stool at the woman's feet, you can see the mark of Kristiansand's Gestapo.

Toure tells the children about Auschwitz. Two boys from the group were there recently on an excursion.

Soviet prisoner of war in a concentration camp. In his hand is a homemade wooden bird.

"Germany is a nation of creators."

Norwegian patriots had to work under the strongest pressure on the local population of Goebbels propaganda. The Germans set themselves the task of the speedy nazification of the country. Quisling's government made efforts for this in the field of education, culture, and sports. Quisling's (Nasjonal Samling) Nazi Party, even before the start of the war, inspired the Norwegians that the main threat to their security was the military power of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that the Finnish campaign of 1940 contributed to the intimidation of the Norwegians about Soviet aggression in the North. With the coming to power, Quisling only stepped up his propaganda with the help of the Goebbels department. The Nazis in Norway convinced the population that only a strong Germany could protect the Norwegians from the Bolsheviks.

"Do you want it to be like this?"

In 1997, it was decided to sell the building of the Archive, from which the State Archive moved to another place, into private hands. Local veterans, public organizations strongly opposed, organized themselves into a special committee and ensured that in 1998 the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, transferred the historic building to the veterans' committee. Now here, along with the museum that I told you about, there are offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN.

We can all agree that the Nazis did terrible things during World War II. The Holocaust was perhaps their most famous crime. But in the concentration camps, terrible and inhuman things happened that most people did not know about. The camp inmates were used as test subjects in many experiments that were very painful and usually resulted in death.
blood clotting experiments

Dr. Sigmund Rascher performed blood clotting experiments on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp. He created a drug, Polygal, which included beets and apple pectin. He believed that these pills could help stop bleeding from battle wounds or during surgical operations.

Each subject was given a tablet of the drug and shot in the neck or chest to test its effectiveness. The limbs were then amputated without anesthesia. Dr. Rascher created a company to produce these pills, which also employed prisoners.

Experiments with sulfa drugs

In the Ravensbrück concentration camp, the effectiveness of sulfonamides (or sulfanilamide preparations) was tested on prisoners. Subjects were given incisions on the outside of their calves. The doctors then rubbed the mixture of bacteria into the open wounds and stitched them up. To simulate combat situations, glass fragments were also brought into the wounds.

However, this method turned out to be too mild compared to the conditions at the fronts. To simulate gunshot wounds, blood vessels were tied off on both sides to cut off blood circulation. Then the prisoners were given sulfa drugs. Despite the advances made in the scientific and pharmaceutical fields through these experiments, the prisoners experienced terrible pain that led to severe injury or even death.

Freezing and Hypothermia Experiments

The German armies were ill-prepared for the cold that they faced on the Eastern Front and from which thousands of soldiers died. As a result, Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted experiments in Birkenau, Auschwitz and Dachau to find out two things: the time required for the body temperature to drop and death, and methods for reviving frozen people.

Naked prisoners were either placed in a barrel of ice water, or driven out into the street in sub-zero temperatures. Most of the victims died. Those who only fainted were subjected to painful resuscitation procedures. To revive the subjects, they were placed under lamps of sunlight, which burned their skin, forced to copulate with women, injected with boiling water or placed in baths of warm water (which turned out to be the most effective method).

Experiments with firebombs

For three months in 1943 and 1944, Buchenwald prisoners were tested for the effectiveness of pharmaceutical preparations against phosphorus burns caused by incendiary bombs. The test subjects were specially burned with a phosphorus composition from these bombs, which was a very painful procedure. Prisoners were seriously injured during these experiments.

sea water experiments

Experiments were conducted on Dachau prisoners to find ways to turn sea water into drinking water. The subjects were divided into four groups, whose members went without water, drank sea water, drank sea water treated according to the Burke method, and drank sea water without salt.

Subjects were given food and drink assigned to their group. Prisoners who received some form of seawater eventually suffered from severe diarrhea, convulsions, hallucinations, went insane, and eventually died.

In addition, the subjects were subjected to needle biopsy of the liver or lumbar punctures to collect data. These procedures were painful and in most cases ended in death.

Experiments with poisons

In Buchenwald, experiments were carried out on the effects of poisons on people. In 1943, poisons were secretly administered to prisoners.

Some died themselves from poisoned food. Others were killed for the sake of an autopsy. A year later, poisoned bullets were fired at the prisoners to speed up data collection. These test subjects experienced terrible torment.

Experiments with sterilization

As part of the extermination of all non-Aryans, Nazi doctors conducted mass sterilization experiments on prisoners from various concentration camps in search of the least laborious and cheapest method of sterilization.

In one series of experiments, a chemical irritant was injected into the reproductive organs of women to block the fallopian tubes. Some women have died after this procedure. Other women were killed for autopsies.

In a number of other experiments, prisoners were subjected to intense X-ray radiation, which led to severe burns on the abdomen, groin and buttocks. They were also left with incurable ulcers. Some test subjects died.

Bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and bone grafting experiments

For about a year, experiments were carried out on the prisoners of Ravensbrück to regenerate bones, muscles and nerves. Nerve surgeries included the removal of segments of nerves from the lower limbs.

Bone experiments included breaking and repositioning bones in several places on the lower extremities. Fractures were not allowed to heal properly as doctors needed to study the healing process and also test different healing methods.

Doctors also removed numerous fragments of the tibia from the test subjects to study bone regeneration. Bone grafts included transplanting fragments of the left tibia to the right and vice versa. These experiments caused unbearable pain and severe injuries to the prisoners.

Experiments with typhus

From the end of 1941 until the beginning of 1945, doctors conducted experiments on the prisoners of Buchenwald and Natzweiler in the interests of the German armed forces. They were testing vaccines for typhus and other diseases.

Approximately 75% of test subjects were injected with trial typhoid vaccines or other chemicals. They were injected with a virus. As a result, more than 90% of them died.

The remaining 25% of the test subjects were injected with the virus without any prior protection. Most of them did not survive. Physicians also conducted experiments related to yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid, and other diseases. Hundreds of prisoners died, and more prisoners suffered unbearable pain as a result.

Twin experiments and genetic experiments

The purpose of the Holocaust was the elimination of all people of non-Aryan origin. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals and other people who did not meet certain requirements were to be exterminated so that only the "superior" Aryan race remained. Genetic experiments were carried out to provide the Nazi Party with scientific proof of the superiority of the Aryans.

Dr. Josef Mengele (also known as the "Angel of Death") had a strong interest in the twins. He separated them from the rest of the prisoners when they entered Auschwitz. The twins had to donate blood every day. The real purpose of this procedure is unknown.

The experiments with twins were extensive. They were to be carefully examined and every centimeter of their body measured. After that, comparisons were made to determine hereditary traits. Sometimes doctors performed mass blood transfusions from one twin to the other.

Since people of Aryan origin mostly had blue eyes, experiments were carried out to create them with chemical drops or injections into the iris of the eye. These procedures were very painful and led to infections and even blindness.

Injections and lumbar punctures were done without anesthesia. One twin deliberately contracted the disease, and the other did not. If one twin died, the other twin was killed and studied for comparison.

Amputations and removals of organs were also performed without anesthesia. Most of the twins who ended up in the concentration camp died in one way or another, and their autopsies were the last experiments.

Experiments with high altitudes

From March to August 1942, the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp were used as experimental subjects in experiments to test human endurance at high altitudes. The results of these experiments were to help the German air force.

The test subjects were placed in a low pressure chamber, which created atmospheric conditions at altitudes up to 21,000 meters. Most of the test subjects died, and the survivors suffered from various injuries from being at high altitudes.

Experiments with malaria

Over the course of more than three years, more than 1,000 Dachau prisoners were used in a series of experiments related to the search for a cure for malaria. Healthy prisoners were infected by mosquitoes or extracts from these mosquitoes.

Prisoners who contracted malaria were then treated with various drugs to test their effectiveness. Many prisoners died. The surviving prisoners suffered greatly and were mostly disabled for the rest of their lives.

. ("Red Star", USSR)

15.09.42: Dark animal malice lives in the Germans. “Lieutenant Kleist came up, looked at the wounded Russians and said: “These pigs must be shot right away.” “The woman was crying that all her beets were taken away from her, but Hitzder beat her.” “Yesterday we hanged two scoundrels, and somehow it became easier on the soul.” "I would not leave Russian children either - they will grow up and become partisans, they all need to be hanged." "If you leave at least one family, they will divorce and take revenge on us."

In impotent rage, the Fritz dream of gases. Feldwebel Schledeter writes to his wife: "If it were in my power, I would poison them with gases." Mother writes to non-commissioned officer Dobler: “We are told that the Russians need to be suffocated with gases, because there are too many of them, and too much.” ("Red Star", USSR)

09.08.42: “Kolya, it is difficult to write all that we have experienced. You know Valya Ivanova, secretary of the village council, and her daughter Nina and son Grisha well. The Nazi officers, wanting to get information from her about our partisans, decided to influence her by torturing her children. Having tied Valya's hands, these wild animals cut off the right ears of Nina and Grisha before her eyes, then the boy's left eye was gouged out, and the girl's five fingers were cut off on her right hand. Valya could not bear these wild tortures and died of a broken heart. The fascist executioners took the children tortured to death into the forest and threw them into the snow. We buried their corpses in the same grave with Valya.

The executioners also acted brutally with the girl of the teacher Maria Nikolaevna. Knowing that her husband was in a partisan detachment, the savages began torturing her daughter Vera. They pierced the palms, arms, and ears of a six-year-old girl with hot needles. Then, having achieved nothing from Maria Nikolaevna, they poisoned Vera. Maria Nikolaevna herself was subjected to inhuman torture. For 30-40 minutes, the German robbers forced her to stand barefoot in the snow, poured gasoline into her mouth, twisted her arms, and stabbed her whole body. Dying from torture, Maria Nikolaevna did not say a single word about the partisans.

In the neighboring village of Maloye Petrovo, the Nazi cannibals rounded up the entire adult able-bodied population for forced labor, and exterminated all the children and the elderly. Having driven 80 people into the barn, they doused them with gasoline and set them on fire. An hour later, only a pile of charred corpses remained on the spot. ( From a letter to the Red Army soldier Sidorov from his sisters Zina and Vera from). ("Red Star", USSR)

06.08.42: In the very first days of the occupation of the city, the Germans tortured Solovyov's son. Why did the Nazis brutally kill a teenager? This remained unknown. The Germans are killing Soviet people for no reason. Solovyov's wife and twin girls were severely starving. Somehow the mother managed to support the children, but at the end of winter they lost their mother. The Germans seized Solovyova on the street and drove her along with other women to the station. There they were put into wagons and sent to the slave market in Germany.

The eight-year-old girls were left alone. The Germans did not even spare them. Once the girls, completely emaciated, were tearing up a garbage pit with their swollen hands in search of food scraps. A passing German soldier emptied his machine gun at the children. The dead children lay by the pit for a long time, then they were taken out with garbage. ("Red Star", USSR)

JULY 1942 :

27.07.42: Scout Tikhonov was supposed to bring the prisoners alive so that they could be interrogated. But when capturing the "tongues", he inflicted such strong blows on them that he killed them to death. Tikhonov cried, promised to improve, but over and over again the same thing happened. According to him, he simply cannot restrain himself: the scout saw how the Germans raped and killed him in his native village. ("Time", USA)

18.07.42: In the village of Matuzovka (Ukraine), the Nazi executioners committed an unheard-of crime. The German military authorities ordered the peasants to hand over 2,000 poods of grain and 100 poods of meat within two days. The peasants said that they themselves were starving, as the German soldiers robbed them clean. On the third day, the German commandant ordered all the pregnant women of the village to report to the commandant's office. 27 pregnant women came to the call. Hitler's monsters drove them all into the cellar and threw them. ("Red Star", USSR)

17.07.42: The whole city speaks with a shudder about the savage massacre of three Soviet pilots who fell into the hands of the Nazis. They brought them to Luchesy, to the mountain, kindled a large fire and, with their hands and feet tied, pushed them into the fire. One of the pilots managed to shout: “Long live the Soviet Union!”, But at that time the hero was doused with kerosene, and he burst into flames ... It was not a century ago, in the dungeons of the Inquisition, but in the city of Vitebsk on June 3, 1942! At night, someone brought several wreaths of fresh flowers to the place of execution with a ribbon on which was written: "To Stalin's falcons from the citizens of Vitebsk." Until now, despite careful searches, the furious occupiers cannot find those who did this ...

The most terrible place in Vitebsk is the building of the Polytechnic, where the German punitive detachment is stationed. Guards of prisoner-of-war camps, executioners, rapists, marauders gather here. No one dares to pass near the Nazi den. Often, for fun, drunken punishers open fire on passers-by. Just two weeks ago, the Nazis dragged three girls here, raped them and then hanged them. The fascist monsters, with their typical German accuracy, changed the hanged every week. Now, with the onset of the heat, this is done daily. Every morning on Freedom Square in the square opposite the church, three new victims of fascist scoundrels appear on the gallows. ("Red Star", USSR)

12.07.42 : A captured German was asked: "How could you rape a thirteen-year-old girl?" The German blinked indifferently and replied: "For me, a woman is a toilet." He had blond curly hair and blue eyes. Looking at him, everyone turned away and thought in anguish: to forget that such trash exists in the world! ...

An English journalist who is now in Russia recently asked a German prisoner of war: "Aren't you ashamed to treat captured Red Army soldiers so brutally?" The German calmly replied: “That's why they are Russians...” The German writes to his brother: “It is not true that we kill children. You know how they love guys in Germany, in my company everyone will share the last with a child. And if we in Russia kill small representatives of a terrible tribe, this is dictated by state necessity. He is clear before himself: after all, he kills Russian children, that is, not children, but small "representatives of a terrible tribe." What can re-educate such a malicious idiot except for a projectile? What can shake him? ("Red Star", USSR)

05.07.42 : In Suzemka, everyone knew the modest, cheerful Nyura Turinova. On May 17, 1942, Nazi bandits captured Nyura. The commander of the German battalion with cynical impudence said to his bandits: This beauty is a reward for your exploits. Like a hungry pack of wolves, the Nazi scoundrels attacked the girl, dishonored, defiled her body and shot her in front of her mother ...

When the village of Gavrilov Guta flared up, set on fire from all over by fascist scoundrels, frightened residents began to rush about in fear, looking for a place where they could escape from fire and German bullets. The Goryakova sisters - Anya, 17 years old and Tanya, 7 years old, ran crying across the street to the garden. The Nazi bastards overtook them, grabbed them and threw them into the fire. In terrible agony, the sisters died. Three-year-old Valya Nikulichkin rushed to his mother, who was mocked by German bandits, began to cling to his torn jacket with his little hands. The Nazis began to throw the child away from the mother with kicks, like a soccer ball. Then one of the Nazi bandits grabbed the child by the neck and strangled him. Two children of Pelageya Belikova were torn off by robbers and then killed. They did the same with their mother...

In the village of Rogozhinka, the Nazis burned more than 100 houses. They shot, hanged and drowned in the river 20 people, including three children. One-year-old Misha Tereshkin, forgotten by his frightened mother, sat on the sand and cried. Noticing the boy, the bandits rushed to him. One of the fascists grabbed the child by the leg and, lifting him above his head, growled: “Russ. Partizan. Kaput". Then, with all his might, he threw the child. ("Red Star", USSR)

JUNE 1942 :

23.06.42: One commander told me: “... Our squad went in such a frost that my chest ached, the rifle barrel burned through a mitten. My guys got tired in the deep snow, depressed. Trouble, I think - how do we complete the task? What words will cheer them up? And most importantly - ahead - to knock out the Fritz and take the farm. Lips do not move in the cold, and I don’t know such words. Then it began to get light, we went out onto the road and we see - a completely naked baby is lying. They walked a little - another child is lying on the side of the road, and there are already several of them - some in a blanket laid on the snow, some somehow abandoned. Then we realized what had happened: the Germans were driving our women to their rear, the older children were still wandering somehow, and the babies were frozen in their mothers' arms. And the one who would sit down to wrap up the baby and feed him with a skinny breast, at least to warm it, - the guard tears the child from her chest, throws it away, and her - with a butt in the back, - "go, keep up, Russian pig" ...

My guys saw the children's corpses, and their lips parted, and frost came from their eyes, and there was no dullness ... and they didn’t have time to put on their pants, and they will never have to put them on again ... And my department, mind you, Alexei Nikolayevich, has since become noticeable ... ”(“ Red Star ”, USSR)

21.06.42: The Nazis dreamed of killing the nerve of our resistance - the self-consciousness of the Russian people. To do this, they destroyed our relics from Tolstoy's office to the museum in Borodino. They wanted to insult Russia by turning Odessa into a provincial city of lousy Romania and planting the Baltic rogue Rosenberg as governor of the "Ostland".

In Pushkin, in the alley that the young lyceum student loved, Russian people hung on the trees, an elderly man with a beard, a girl. Many pilgrims knew this alley, in our memory it was associated with the youth of Pushkin, with the youth of Russia. The Germans turned it into an alley of gallows. And women in the liberated villages told the soldiers about how the Germans killed children ... ("Red Star", USSR)

11.06.42: Notebook bound in brown leatherette - confession. In addition to philosophical books, Wolfgang Frentzel loves war, and he doesn’t care what to fight for and where ... The connoisseur of Plato loves to talk about morality: “Looking out the window of the car, you see people in tatters. Women and children want bread. Usually in response they are shown the muzzle of a gun. In the front line, the conversation is even simpler: a bullet between the ribs. By the way, the Russians deserved it, all without exception - men, women and children ... I have already got acquainted with the morality of the front, it is harsh, but good. That's why Wolfgang Frentzel needed to study Schopenhauer: he calls the killing of children "harsh morality"...

Fritz the philosopher was killed. Well, who would regret that? Probably even the fool Genkhen will breathe a sigh of relief when he learns that her "master" can no longer command. But, leafing through the brown book, you are amazed at the poverty of these learned cannibals. For torture, they need philosophical quotes. Near the gallows they are engaged in psychoanalysis. And I want to kill the philosopher-fritz twice: one bullet because he tormented Russian children, the second because, having finished off the child, he. ("Red Star", USSR)

10.06.42: The corpses of Red Army soldiers and commanders have bone fractures, skull fractures, numerous bruises, deep abrasions. Five of those killed had stab wounds to the face, some had their noses cut off and their eyes gouged out. Many prisoners were wounded and sick, as evidenced by bandages and bandages preserved on the bodies of the dead. Several corpses were found charred at the stake. The Nazis burned these people alive... It is enough to look at the mutilated people to imagine how sophisticated and painful torture they were subjected to: one corpse had its lower limbs cut off, its eyes gouged out, its genitals burned... Next to it was a corpse, also without a head, with crushed chest and taken out heart and lungs, German villains gouged out the eyes of several prisoners, chopped off their legs. Three corpses lay by the fire, the skin and muscles of which were cut off with a knife to the soles of the feet...

Near the village of Posadnikov Ostrov, 33 corpses of Red Army soldiers and commanders were recently discovered ... all 33 comrades were captured seriously wounded, their eyes were gouged out alive, many had their hands twisted, their lips were cut off, their toenails were torn out. Several corpses were chopped into small pieces, some were burned at the stake. Only fascist villains are capable of such nightmarish reprisals against defenseless wounded people.

Torture of prisoners of war became a system in the fascist army. Hitler's executioners act with sadistic sophistication. The other day, a group of signalers led by Lieutenant Khudenov, deploying a telephone hub in the forest, stumbled upon a terrible picture. Above the remains of the fire on two poles hung the twisted, charred corpse of a Red Army soldier. Death cramps remained on his face, which remained almost untouched by the fire. A little further away, the signalers saw a second fighter, tortured in the same brutal way. Chopped off limbs lay on the ground. ("Red Star", USSR)

MAY 1942 :

16.05.42: Senior Lieutenant Kharchenko received a letter from a friend of Ada, who had become a partisan, from the German rear. Here is the message: “Nicholas! You should look at the village... Gallows are set up along the streets... The Germans are killing civilians, torturing women and girls. Your parents - father and mother - were killed by the Nazis. In bestial malice, they chop off the fingers on their hands, cut off the breasts of women, and kill children. Your niece Sonya was killed. Savchenko, 95, was shot for not saying where his grandson Ivan was. Grandfather died with his head held high. He shouted: “I am not alone, there are many of us! The Ukrainian people have never kneeled before the enemy and!” ("Red Star", USSR)

10.05.42: Fallen to the level of wild beasts, the Nazis finish off the wounded Soviet soldiers, torture prisoners of war, and raise them to medieval bonfires. Terrible, nightmarish pictures rise before us. It seems that we do not live in the 20th century, but in those distant times, when in the wilds of the forests a savage, having captured his enemy, tore off his hair from his head along with his skin, like a victory trophy, and cut out belts from his back ...

Victims of the Rostov shootings, sprawled on the bloodied sidewalks, the bodies of the hanged, swinging on the gallows of Volokolamsk, the eyeless corpses of Soviet prisoners of war, mutilated beyond recognition and thrown into the pits near Kerch - this is how the Germans fight. And so everywhere where these hyenas in Hitler's uniforms passed ...

So we know why German soldiers kill babies, torture the wounded, rape girls: they are fighting "against a numerically superior enemy." They burn our cities, they trample our fields, they cut down our gardens, because we are "seized with the will to destroy." Behind the even voice of the announcer, one can feel the roar of an unbridled soldier, drunk on vodka and. ("Red Star", USSR)

05.05.42: Anger drives every soldier of fascism. When they lose a battle, they then hang the women or torture the children. Having entered a strange house and not finding prey in it, the fascist soldier kills the hostess. One German corporal wrote in his diary that his torture "amuses and even makes him hot"...

For us, the Nazis are not just opponents: for us, the Nazis are not people, the Nazis for us are murderers, executioners, moral freaks, cruel fanatics, and therefore we hate them. Many of us at the beginning of this extraordinary war did not understand who was trampling on our land. People who were too gullible or too distrustful thought that Hitler's army was the army of a state, hostile, but cultured, that it consisted of educated officers and disciplined soldiers. The naive believed that people were going against us. But monsters marched against us, choosing a skull as their emblem, young and shameless robbers, vandals, eager to destroy everything on. ("Red Star", USSR)

01.05.42: The atrocities of the Nazis have long been written in the newspapers. Now the horror stories have passed into private letters. Now it is not the lecturers who are talking about fascism, but the collective farmers of the liberated villages. In one village near Mozhaisk, prisoners were brought in with me. The dog approached the Germans and, grumbling, stepped aside. The woman said, "Even a dog understands"... Everyone hates them. It seems that the rivers will throw away their impure bodies. It seems that the earth will vomit them. ("Red Star", USSR)

APRIL 1942 :

17.04.42: In Mariupol, over the heads of corpses lying on the street, an announcement hung with the following content: “For every German policeman, 10 Russians will be shot.” The teenager Fedya Safonov read this announcement aloud. There was a German nearby. He took out a revolver and shot the boy. For what? Why? Nobody could understand...

SS men treat the population in an atrocious manner. They spare no one, whether it be a woman or a man. I saw the SS hang 14 people. It was February 13, 1942 near Yukhnov. I asked why these people were hanged, but they didn’t give me any answer, they just grinned and said: “Now you will see how these people will be.” ("Red Star", USSR)

10.04.42: The Red Army soldiers drove the Nazis out of the village of Verkhne-Olgovo, Velizhsky district, Smolensk region. A terrible picture appeared before their eyes. Everywhere are the corpses of civilians - tortured, stabbed, burned alive by the Nazi scoundrels. The Germans did not stay long in the village, but they left a terrible mark behind them. And the long list of victims opens with the names of dishonored and abused women...

Collective farmer Matveyeva Aksinya - raped by a group of German soldiers, severely beaten and shot dead. Collective farmer Kuzmina Pelageya - raped by a group of German soldiers and thrown into a burning house. Burnt alive. Collective farmer Matveeva Natalya - raped by the Germans and brutally murdered. Fedorova Maria Markovna - raped by the Germans and then burned alive at the stake ... In the village of Semenovskoe, Kalinin Region, the Nazis raped 25-year-old Olga Tikhonova, the pregnant wife of a Red Army soldier, the mother of three children. Tikhonova was due to give birth in a few days. The monsters tied the woman's hands with a rope, cut her throat and. ("Red Star", USSR)

07.04.42: What horrors, Lieutenant Schumann! You thought that wolves would have fun living in a Russian sheepfold. Didn't you feel that the sky was "insensitive" when you hung Russian girls? Didn't you understand that the void is "ruthless" when you buried Ukrainian women alive in the ground? Didn't you find the horror "silent" when you cut Jewish children to pieces? Then you were not up to rhymes - you were in a hurry to send your wolf cubs children's things covered in blood. Then you did not shout that the person is lonely. You even claimed that talking about a person is a "burp" ... ("Red Star", USSR)

05.04.42: Too often we now see the Fritz, who, whimpering and wiping their nose with their sleeves, mutter "Hitler kaput." It is useful to restore the image of a summer German. Here is what Hans Heil wrote in July: “Russians are real cattle. The order is not to take anyone prisoner. Any means to destroy the enemy is correct. Otherwise, you can not deal with this rabble.

“We cut off the chins of Russian prisoners, gouged out their eyes, cut off their backsides. There is only one law - merciless destruction. Everything must proceed without so-called humanity.” “Shots are heard every minute in the city. Each shot means that another humanoid Russian animal has been sent to the right place. “This gang is to be destroyed. Men and women, you need. ("Red Star", USSR)

MARCH 1942 :

31.03.42: On the night of March 6, four German officers broke into Nefedova's house. They were drunk, brandishing pistols, and demanded that the old housewife immediately hand over the partisans to them. Nefedova explained to them that she didn’t have any partisans. Then the Germans ordered Nefedova’s daughters, Olga, who was 21 years old, and Varvara, 19, to follow them. Two days later, a truck drove up to the house and pulled out mutilated girls. Their fingers and toes were turned out, and their backs were tattooed, apparently with a red-hot iron. Here, near the house, the Germans put together a gallows and hanged the sisters. The mother was not allowed to leave the house. "You have young daughters," one of the officers told her in broken Russian, "they should always be in front of your eyes." Nefedova went crazy ....

Every German feels himself the sovereign master of any inhabitant of Vitebsk. Boundless and wild arbitrariness is the basis of the order established here by the occupiers. Recently, on the 4th Elaginskaya street in the house number 3, the following incident occurred. Ivan Stefanovsky, a former oil refinery worker, died of typhus. On the same day, his son Nikolai and his wife's sister Sonya Voinova died. Stefanovsky's wife, Natalia Petrovna, was also ill. Surrounded by corpses, she tossed about in delirium. In this state, she was caught by police supervision. The senior policeman demanded an explanation why the corpses had not been removed? Having received no answer, he immediately shot Stefanovskaya for ... malicious distribution. ("Red Star", USSR)

25.03.42: We see Kharkiv - the industrial heart of our beloved Ukraine... The corpses of the hanged hang from the balconies. From the cellars of the Gestapo, the screams of the tortured are muffled. In the "house of death" on Cold Mountain, German boots trample the bodies of prisoners of war rushing about in delirium. Graves are dug in the courtyards of houses - the corpses of those who died of starvation are lowered there.

We see Orel, our native Russian city... Hungry children and old people rummage through the landfills in search of scraps. Volleys are thundering - this is the Nazis shooting their victims. Drunken soldiers are dragging half-dressed, tormented women into dens. Rubber truncheons are whistling in police cells.

Before us is Staraya Russa ... Now the fascist invaders have declared the original Russian city supposedly an ancient German burg. They mock peaceful Russa. The Germans herded cattle into the ancient Old Russian cathedral. Undressed residents are driven out into the cold - to dig fortifications. A groan stands over Staraya Russa...

Wanting, apparently, to give the city a "German" appearance, the Nazis drove cattle into an ancient beautiful old Russian cathedral, hung the corpses of people tortured by them at the intersections of the main streets, opened brothels, where women and teenage girls are dragged by force ... An announcement hangs: "At the birth of the ninth living child or the seventh son, parents have the right to choose Adolf Hitler or Imperial Marshal Hermann Goering as godparents." And next to it, two pregnant women, Nilova and Boitsova, are hanged on the street. A third woman, Prokofieva, is also hanging, after which four small ones remained guys. What are these women hanged for? So, for. ("Red Star", USSR)

24.03.42: We found this terrible photographic document in the uniform of a murdered fascist after a battle near a village in the Kharkov region. The fascist was killed in the back. He was running. Among the pornographic postcards, cards of the wife and mistresses, this picture lay for an hour ...

Remember, fighter, these faces of the killed, tortured, these women and young men. Remember these burning, looted houses. Hide this picture and take a look at it before the attack. Maybe among these corpses is your father, your mother, your brother, sister, fiancee, son, daughter, who remained in Ukraine, captured by Nazi bandits. So let vengeance burn even stronger in your brave heart. Blood for blood, death for death. Forward, fighter, on! ("Red Star", USSR)

06.03.42: We didn't care about their family life. While Goebbels, with the agility of a flea, stole various Gretchens, we could only frown in disgust .. But now baboons are outrageous on our land. They desecrate our women. I saw photographs found in the pocket of a German officer: Russian girls, stripped naked, crying, surrounded by Fritz ... Brothels are open in Smolensk, Kharkov, Novgorod, Vitebsk, everywhere. ("Red Star", USSR)

03.03.42: Bursting into us, they calmly tortured us and hung us with pleasure. For a short time they stunned us with their impudence: the crash of motorcycles, indiscriminate firing, massacres of civilians and bright, shameless eyes. All this is behind. The breed of the animal has been studied and described. There was a catcher for the animal. In the summer, our fighters called the German soldiers "German". In winter, they demoted the German to Fritz. This short nickname expresses contempt...

Our fighters did not hang and will not hang: they are warriors, not executioners. Our fighters do not torture women: they are people, not fascists... The German army? Cruel and mischievous little souls! They taught us great hatred. They taught us and ("Red Star", USSR)

03.02.42: The General continues. How should a German soldier behave in Russia? "We have conquered this country and we are masters." "There should be no leniency towards the population." “A healthy sense of revenge and disgust for everything Russian should not be suppressed among the soldiers, but, on the contrary, strengthened in every possible way.”

There are no words, the general's students are capable. They don't have to be persuaded. They kill children and rape old women without the invitation of the general. In vain only the general speaks of revenge. We did not attack German cities at night without warning, we did not destroy hundreds of foreign cities. We didn't burn the villages. We didn't torture guys and hang women. It's not for executioners to talk about revenge. We are still only counting their crimes. Court . ("Red Star", USSR)

JANUARY 1942 :

28.01.42 : Anticipating his death, Nemchura prepares new tortures. Disciples of the rickety leg, all these "herr-doctors" sit and figure out what other tortures to betray our wives and our children. They were not particularly "sensitive" to us. They ripped open the bellies of pregnant women. They gave horse urine to the dying wounded. They raped the girls, and then carried them to the ice and again. ("Red Star", USSR)

25.01.42 : The commission, which included professors A.M. Vershinsky and V.M. Gradis, found that at the time of the occupation by the Germans with. Burashevo in the hospital were treated 530 patients. On the first day, the Nazis plundered food supplies here. Service personnel were denied access to patients from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. Under the threat of bloody reprisals, the invaders forbade feeding and watering the sick. The villains forced some of the sick to be discharged, but when they came out, they were shot. 80 patients were forcibly put into buses, taken to the village of Brednevo and shot there. Weak and helpless Nazis threw bayonets from the bed, and some were immediately killed. The crimes of the Nazis were not limited to this. They killed more than 300 patients by injecting them under the skin and into the veins with lethal doses of drugs and. ("Red Star", USSR)

14.01.42 : German orders ... are reduced to a wild massacre of the population. If you walk down the street after six o'clock in the evening - execution, if a villager does not register with the police - execution, if someone tries to pass through the Dnieper in an unspecified place - execution, if you keep a stock of food in excess of a meager norm - execution. And only minor offenses are punishable by flogging. If a child lashes out and breaks the glass in the window, they will definitely pour 10-15 rods into him. So they flog on the Dneprovka farm, in the villages of Lyubimovka and Mikhailovka, in the neighboring villages of the Nikopol region.

People are starving. Fodder beetroot and corn are a delicacy that collective farmers do their best to hide from the voracious German locust. The Germans and Italians are robbing the population everywhere, taking it away. ("Red Star", USSR)

08.01.42 : According to incomplete data, the Germans shot at least 6,000 people in Lvov, over 8,000 people in Odessa, about 8,500 people were shot and hanged in Kamenetz-Podolsk, over 10,500 people were machine-gunned in Dnepropetrovsk, and more than 3,000 local residents were torn to pieces in Mariupol, including many old people, women and children, who were robbed and stripped naked before being executed. In Kerch, according to preliminary data, about 7,000 people were killed by Nazi brigands...

The scale of the German atrocities is staggering. Centuries have passed since the St. Bartholomew night, when about ten thousand Huguenots were killed in sleepy Paris, but humanity cannot forget this terrible crime. What can be said about the German villains who destroyed fifty-two thousand innocent people in Kyiv alone! The atrocities of the enemy show that Hitler's Germany tried to carry out on our soil a cold-blooded program of mass murder. The fascists would like to destroy the Soviet people, drive them to the grave, throw the monuments of their proud spirit into dust, turn into beggarly slaves those who survive from this carefully thought out. ("Red Star", USSR)

01.01.42 : The corpses swing on the gallows. Many corpses under the ruins of houses. Killed children, tortured women under fences. Mutilated bodies of Red Army soldiers under the walls of houses. These are the prisoners and the wounded, who were dying in agony ... A German, covered with lice and covered with abscesses, is shivering from the cold, raising his hands to surrender. His teeth are chattering from cold and fear. Stuttering, he begs for mercy.

But ask, how many of our prisoners were tortured by the barbarian obedient today? Ask how many of our wounded he finished off, bursting into wild laughter? Ask how many women he raped, how many children he stabbed to death with his bayonet? How many houses did you set on fire? How many nooses did he tighten around the necks of peasants and workers in the areas occupied by the German army? Look into his cowardly eyes - what would he do with you if he turned out to be the winner! ...

German hands bear traces of blood from the tortures committed on women, children and the elderly. They spared nothing and no one. They destroyed our houses, gardens, factories, museums, libraries, men, women, children ... When you go on the attack, Red Army soldier, and the face of a German turned white with fright - remember! It was he who threw bombs on the houses of Moscow! It was he who hung the girls in Kharkov! It was he who staged the pogroms in Kyiv. It was he who turned the flowering Ukrainian land into ashes and a conflagration. It was he who gouged out the eyes of our wounded with a bayonet and mocked (Special archive)
("Time", USA)
("Pravda", USSR)
("The New York Times", USA)
("Red Star", USSR)
("Red Star", USSR)
("Izvestia", USSR)

The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many have lost loved ones who were killed or tortured. In the article we will consider the concentration camps of the Nazis and the atrocities that took place on their territories.

What is a concentration camp?

Concentration camp or concentration camp - a special place intended for the detention of persons of the following categories:

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

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

Life in the camp

Humiliation and bullying for the prisoners began already from the moment of transportation. People were transported in freight cars, where there was not even running water and a fenced-off latrine. The natural need of the prisoners had to celebrate publicly, in a tank, standing in the middle of the car.

But this was only the beginning, a lot of bullying and torment was being prepared for the Nazi concentration camps objectionable to the Nazi regime. Torture of women and children, medical experiments, aimless exhausting work - this is not the whole list.

The conditions of detention can be judged from the letters of the prisoners: “they lived in hellish conditions, ragged, barefoot, hungry ... I was constantly and severely beaten, deprived of food and water, tortured ...”, “They shot, flogged, poisoned with dogs, drowned in water, beaten with sticks, starved. Infected with tuberculosis ... strangled by a cyclone. Poisoned with chlorine. Burned ... ".

The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was later used in the German textile industry. Doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, from whose hand thousands of people died. He investigated the mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they transplanted organs from each other, transfused blood, sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. He did sex reassignment surgery.

All fascist concentration camps became famous for such bullying, we will consider the names and conditions of detention in the main ones below.

Camp ration

Usually the daily ration in the camp was as follows:

bread - 130 gr;
fat - 20 gr;
meat - 30 gr;
cereals - 120 gr;
sugar - 27 gr.

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

List of concentration camps in different countries

Nazi concentration camps were created in the territories of Germany, allied and occupied countries. The list of them is long, but we will name the main ones:

On the territory of Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;
Austria - Mauthausen, Amstetten;
France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
Poland - Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
Lithuania - Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
Czechoslovakia - Kunta-gora, Natra, Glinsko;
Estonia - Pirkul, Parnu, Klooga;
Belarus - Minsk, Baranovichi;
Latvia - Salaspils.

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

Salaspils

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

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

Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then their corpses were burned. It was sent to medical research, during which more than 100,000 people died. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. The torture of children here was a routine affair that proceeded according to a schedule with meticulous records of the results.

Experiments on children

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

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

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

Salaspils is truly the most terrible concentration camp of the Nazis, because the atrocities described above are far from all the torments to which the prisoners were subjected. So, in winter, the children brought in barefoot and naked were driven to a half-kilometer barrack, where they had to wash in ice water. After that, the children were driven to the next building in the same way, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. At the same time, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. All who survived after this procedure were also subjected to arsenic etching.

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

Ravensbrück

If we start listing the women's concentration camps of the Nazis, then Ravensbrück will be in the first place. It was the only camp of this type in Germany. It held thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war was overcrowded by fifteen thousand. Mostly Russian and Polish women were kept, Jews accounted for about 15 percent. There were no written instructions regarding torture and torture; the overseers chose the line of conduct themselves.

Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number. Also, the clothes indicated racial affiliation. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in the post-war years, 2-3 refugee families lived in them) about three hundred prisoners were kept, who were placed on three-story bunks. When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were driven into these cells, who had to sleep seven of them on the same bunk. There were several toilets and a washbasin in the barracks, but there were so few of them that the floors were littered with excrement after a few days. Such a picture was presented by almost all Nazi concentration camps (the photos presented here are only a small fraction of all the horrors).

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

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

Experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. In a special barracks called the "infirmary", German scientists tested new drugs, first infecting or crippling the test subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered for the rest of their lives from what they suffered. Experiments were also conducted with the irradiation of women with X-rays, from which hair fell out, skin was pigmented, and death occurred. Genital organs were cut out, after which few survived, and even those quickly grew old, and at 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out by all concentration camps of the Nazis, the torture of women and children is the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.

At the time of the liberation of the concentration camp by the Allies, five thousand women remained there, the rest were killed or transported to other places of detention. The Soviet troops who arrived in April 1945 adapted the camp barracks for the settlement of refugees. Later, Ravensbrück turned into a stationing point for Soviet military units.

Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald

The construction of the camp began in 1933, near the town of Weimar. Soon, Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive, who became the first prisoners, and they completed the construction of the "hellish" concentration camp.

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

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

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

Continuing to describe the concentration camps of the Nazis, let us turn to the so-called "small camp" of Buchenwald.

Small Camp Buchenwald

The "Small Camp" was the quarantine zone. Living conditions here were, even in comparison with the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when the German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiègne camp were brought to this camp, mostly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were placed in tents. The closer 1945 was, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the "small camp" included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in the concentration camps of the Nazis was not only specially planned or for scientific purposes, the very life in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks, their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread, the unemployed were no longer supposed to.

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

The photo is simply not able to convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. Witness accounts are not for the faint of heart. In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to take a step forward - there were not so many experimental people in any country in the world. Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, those inhuman sufferings that these innocent people endured.

Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated and organs were cut out, sterilized, castrated. They tested how long a person is able to withstand extreme cold or heat. Specially infected with diseases, introduced experimental drugs. So, in Buchenwald, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed. In addition to typhoid, the prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid.

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

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

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)

Listing the concentration camps of the Nazis, Auschwitz cannot be ignored. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died. The exact details of the dead have not yet been clarified. Most of the victims were Jewish prisoners of war, who were destroyed immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers.

The concentration camp complex itself was called Auschwitz-Birkenau and was located on the outskirts of the Polish city of Auschwitz, whose name has become a household name. Above the camp gates were engraved the following words: "Work sets you free."

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the territory of Auschwitz, five crematoria were continuously operating, which, according to experts, had a monthly output of approximately 270,000 corpses.

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

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

Conclusion

For the entire duration of the war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. They were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It's hard to imagine what these people went through. But not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps was destined to be demolished by them. Thanks to Stalin, after their release, when they returned home, they received the stigma of "traitors". At home, the Gulag was waiting for them, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity was replaced by another for them. In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences.

Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after their release was not advertised and hushed up. But the people who survived this simply should not be forgotten.

What is a concentration camp?

Life in the camp

Camp ration

List of concentration camps in different countries

Salaspils

Experiments on children

Ravensbrück

Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald

Small Camp Buchenwald

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)

Conclusion

ecosystems

Zoology

Biology

Long 19th century

recent history

Middle Ages

new time

Interwar period