These photographs show the life and martyrdom of Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Some of these photos can be traumatic. Therefore, we ask children and mentally unstable people to refrain from viewing these photos.
Prisoners of the Flossenburg death camp after being liberated by the US 97th Infantry Division in May 1945. The emaciated prisoner in the center, a 23-year-old Czech, is sick with dysentery.
Ampfing concentration camp prisoners after their release.
View of the concentration camp at Grini in Norway.
Soviet prisoners in the Lamsdorf concentration camp (Stalag VIII-B, now the Polish village of Lambinovice.
The bodies of the executed SS guards at the observation tower "B" of the Dachau concentration camp.
View of the barracks of the Dachau concentration camp.
Soldiers of the US 45th Infantry Division show the bodies of prisoners in a wagon at the Dachau concentration camp to teenagers from the Hitler Youth.
View of the Buchenwald barracks after the liberation of the camp.
American generals George Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower in the Ohrdruf concentration camp at the fire, where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.
Soviet prisoners of war in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war eating in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war near the barbed wire of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Soviet prisoner of war at the barracks of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
British prisoners of war on the stage of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp theater.
Captured British corporal Eric Evans with three comrades at the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Burnt bodies of prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.
Bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Women from the SS guards of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp unload the corpses of prisoners for burial in a mass grave. They were attracted to these works by the allies who liberated the camp. Around the moat is a convoy of English soldiers. Former guards are banned from wearing gloves as a punishment to put them at risk of contracting typhus.
Six British prisoners in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners are talking to a German officer in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war change clothes in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Group photo of allied prisoners (British, Australians and New Zealanders) in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
An orchestra of captured allies (Australians, British and New Zealanders) on the territory of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.
Captured Allied soldiers play the game Two Up for cigarettes in the Stalag 383 concentration camp.
Two British prisoners at the wall of the barracks of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.
A German soldier-escort at the Stalag 383 concentration camp market, surrounded by captured allies.
Group photo of allied prisoners in the Stalag 383 concentration camp on Christmas Day 1943.
The barracks of the Vollan concentration camp in the Norwegian city of Trondheim after liberation.
A group of Soviet prisoners of war outside the gates of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.
SS-Oberscharführer Erich Weber on vacation in the commandant's quarters of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.
Commandant of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Hauptscharführer Karl Denk (left) and SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber (right) in the commandant's room.
Five released prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp at the gate.
Prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) on vacation during a break between work in the field.
SS-Oberscharführer Erich Weber, an employee of the Falstadt concentration camp
SS non-commissioned officers K. Denk, E. Weber and Luftwaffe sergeant R. Weber with two women in the commandant's office of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.
An employee of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber in the kitchen of the commandant's house.
Soviet, Norwegian and Yugoslav prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp on vacation at the logging site.
The head of the women's block of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) Maria Robbe (Maria Robbe) with the police at the gates of the camp.
Captured Soviet soldiers in the camp at the beginning of the war.
10231
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.
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 trial. 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.
There is no person in the world today who does not know what a concentration camp is. During the Second World War, these institutions, created to isolate political prisoners, prisoners of war and persons who posed a threat to the state, turned into houses of death and torture. Not many who got there managed to survive in harsh conditions, millions were tortured and died. Years after the end of the most terrible and bloody war in the history of mankind, memories of Nazi concentration camps still cause trembling in the body, horror in the soul and tears in the eyes of people.
What is a concentration camp
Concentration camps are special prisons created during military operations on the territory of the country, according to special legislative documents.
There were few repressed persons in them, the main contingent were representatives of the lower races, according to the Nazis: Slavs, Jews, gypsies and other nations to be exterminated. For this, the concentration camps of the Nazis were equipped with various means, with the help of which people were killed by tens and hundreds.
They were destroyed morally and physically: raped, experimented, burned alive, poisoned in gas chambers. Why and for what was justified by the ideology of the Nazis. Prisoners were considered unworthy to live in the world of the "chosen ones". The chronicle of the Holocaust of those times contains descriptions of thousands of incidents confirming the atrocities.
The truth about them became known from books, documentaries, stories of those who managed to become free, get out of there alive.
The institutions built during the war years were conceived by the Nazis as places of mass extermination, for which they received the true name - death camps. They were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers, soap factories, crematoria, where hundreds of people could be burned a day, and other similar means for murder and torture.
No less number of people died from exhausting work, hunger, cold, punishment for the slightest disobedience and medical experiments.
living conditions
For many people who passed the "road of death" beyond the walls of the concentration camps, there was no turning back. Upon arrival at the place of detention, they were examined and "sorted": children, the elderly, the disabled, the wounded, the mentally retarded and the Jews were subjected to immediate destruction. Further, people "fit" for work were divided into male and female barracks.
Most of the buildings were built in haste, often they did not have a foundation or were converted from sheds, stables, warehouses. They put bunks in them, in the middle of a huge room there was one stove for heating in winter, there were no latrines. But there were rats.
The roll call, held at any time of the year, was considered a severe test. People had to stand for hours in the rain, snow, hail, and then return to cold, barely heated rooms. Not surprisingly, many died from infectious and respiratory diseases, inflammation.
Each registered prisoner had a serial number on his chest (in Auschwitz he was beaten out with a tattoo) and a stripe on the camp uniform indicating the “article” under which he was imprisoned in the camp. A similar winkel (colored triangle) was sewn on the left side of the chest and the right knee of the trouser leg.
The colors were distributed like this:
- red - political prisoner;
- green - convicted of a criminal offense;
- black - dangerous, dissident persons;
- pink - persons with non-traditional sexual orientation;
- brown - gypsies.
The Jews, if they were left alive, wore a yellow winkel and a hexagonal "Star of David". If the prisoner was recognized as a "racial defiler", a black border was sewn around the triangle. Runners wore a red and white target on their chest and back. The latter were expected to be shot at just one glance in the direction of the gate or wall.
Executions were carried out daily. Prisoners were shot, hanged, beaten with whips for the slightest disobedience to the guards. Gas chambers, whose principle of operation was the simultaneous destruction of several dozen people, worked around the clock in many concentration camps. The captives who helped clean up the corpses of the strangled were also rarely left alive.
Gas chamber
The prisoners were also mocked morally, erasing their human dignity under conditions in which they ceased to feel like members of society and just people.
What fed
In the first years of the existence of concentration camps, the food provided to political prisoners, traitors to the motherland and "dangerous elements" was quite high in calories. The Nazis understood that the prisoners should have the strength to work, and at that time many sectors of the economy were based on their work.
The situation changed in 1942-43, when the bulk of the prisoners were Slavs. If the diet of the German repressed was 700 kcal per day, the Poles and Russians did not receive even 500 kcal.
The diet consisted of:
- liters per day of an herbal drink called "coffee";
- soup on water without fat, the basis of which was vegetables (mostly rotten) - 1 liter;
- bread (stale, moldy);
- sausages (approximately 30 grams);
- fat (margarine, lard, cheese) - 30 grams.
The Germans could count on sweets: jam or preserves, potatoes, cottage cheese and even fresh meat. They received special rations that included cigarettes, sugar, goulash, dry broth, and more.
Beginning in 1943, when a turning point occurred in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet troops liberated the countries of Europe from the German invaders, concentration camp prisoners were massively destroyed in order to hide the traces of crimes. Since that time, in many camps, the already meager rations have been cut, and in some institutions people have stopped being fed altogether.
The most terrible torture and experiments in the history of mankind
Concentration camps will forever remain in the history of mankind as places where the Gestapo carried out the most terrible torture and medical experiments.
The task of the latter was considered to be "assistance to the army": doctors determined the boundaries of human capabilities, created new types of weapons, drugs that could help the soldiers of the Reich.
Almost 70% of the experimental subjects did not survive after such executions, almost all were incapacitated or crippled.
over women
One of the main goals of the SS was to cleanse the world of a non-Aryan nation. To do this, experiments were carried out on women in the camps to find the easiest and cheapest method of sterilization.
Representatives of the weaker sex were injected with special chemical solutions into the uterus and fallopian tubes, designed to block the work of the reproductive system. Most of the test subjects died after such a procedure, the rest were killed in order to examine the state of the genital organs during the autopsy.
Often women were turned into sex slaves, forced to work in brothels and brothels organized at the camps. Most of them left the establishments dead, having not survived not only a huge number of "clients", but also monstrous mockery of themselves.
Over the children
The purpose of these experiments was to create a superior race. Thus, children with mental disabilities and genetic diseases were subjected to forcible killing (euthanasia) so that they would not be able to further reproduce “inferior” offspring.
Other children were placed in special "nurseries", where they were brought up at home and in harsh patriotic moods. Periodically, they were exposed to ultraviolet rays so that the hair acquired a light shade.
One of the most famous and monstrous experiments on children are those carried out on twins, representing an inferior race. They tried to change the color of their eyes, making injections of drugs, after which they died of pain or remained blind.
There were attempts to artificially create Siamese twins, that is, to sew children together, to transplant parts of each other's bodies into them. There are records of the introduction of viruses and infections to one of the twins and further study of the condition of both. If one of the couple died, the second was also killed in order to compare the state of internal organs and systems.
Children born in the camp were also subjected to strict selection, almost 90% of them were killed immediately or sent for experiments. Those who managed to survive were brought up and "Germanized".
over men
The representatives of the stronger sex were subjected to the most cruel and terrible tortures and experiments. To create and test drugs that improve blood clotting, which were needed by the military at the front, gunshot wounds were inflicted on men, after which observations were made about the rate at which bleeding stopped.
The tests included the study of the action of sulfonamides - antimicrobial substances designed to prevent the development of blood poisoning in frontline conditions. For this, parts of the body were injured and bacteria, fragments, earth were injected into the incisions, and then the wounds were sewn up. Another type of experiment is the ligation of veins and arteries on both sides of the wound being inflicted.
Means for recovery after chemical burns were created and tested. Men were doused with a composition identical to that found in phosphorus bombs or mustard gas, which at that time was poisoned by enemy "criminals" and the civilian population of cities during the occupation.
An important role in experiments with drugs was played by attempts to create vaccines against malaria and typhus. The test subjects were injected with the infection, and then - trial formulations to neutralize it. Some prisoners were not given immune protection at all, and they died in terrible agony.
To study the ability of the human body to withstand low temperatures and recover from significant hypothermia, men were placed in ice baths or driven naked into the cold outside. If, after such torture, the prisoner had signs of life, he was subjected to a resuscitation procedure, after which few managed to recover.
The main resurrection measures: irradiation with ultraviolet lamps, having sex, introducing boiling water into the body, placing in a bath with warm water.
In some concentration camps, attempts were made to turn sea water into drinking water. It was processed in various ways, and then given to prisoners, observing the reaction of the body. They also experimented with poisons, adding them to food and drinks.
One of the most terrible experiences are attempts to regenerate bone and nerve tissue. In the process of research, joints and bones were broken, observing their fusion, nerve fibers were removed, and the joints were changed in places.
Almost 80% of the participants in the experiments died during the experiments from unbearable pain or blood loss. The rest were killed in order to study the results of the study "from the inside." Few survived such abuses.
List and description of death camps
Concentration camps existed in many countries of the world, including the USSR, and were intended for a narrow circle of prisoners. However, only the Nazis received the name "death camps" for the atrocities carried out in them after Adolf Hitler came to power and the beginning of the Second World War.
Buchenwald
Located in the vicinity of the German city of Weimar, this camp, founded in 1937, has become one of the most famous and largest such establishments. It consisted of 66 branches, where prisoners worked for the benefit of the Reich.
Over the years of its existence, about 240 thousand people visited its barracks, of which 56 thousand prisoners officially died from murder and torture, among whom were representatives of 18 nations. How many there were in fact is not known for certain.
Buchenwald was liberated on April 10, 1945. A memorial complex in memory of its victims and heroes-liberators was created on the site of the camp.
Auschwitz
In Germany it is better known as Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a complex that occupied a vast territory near the Polish Krakow. The concentration camp consisted of 3 main parts: a large administrative complex, the camp itself, where torture and massacres of prisoners were carried out, and a group of 45 small complexes with factories and work areas.
The victims of Auschwitz, according to official figures alone, were more than 4 million people, representatives of the "inferior races", according to the Nazis.
The “death camp” was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the troops of the Soviet Union. Two years later, the State Museum was opened on the territory of the main complex.
It presents expositions of things that belonged to the prisoners: toys that they made from wood, pictures, and other handicrafts that are exchanged for food from civilians passing by. Stylized scenes of interrogation and torture by the Gestapo, reflecting the violence of the Nazis.
The drawings and inscriptions on the walls of the barracks, made by prisoners doomed to death, remained unchanged. As the Poles themselves say today, Auschwitz is the bloodiest and most terrible point on the map of their homeland.
Sobibor
Another concentration camp in Poland, established in May 1942. The prisoners were mostly representatives of the Jewish nation, the number of those killed is about 250 thousand people.
One of the few institutions where the uprising of prisoners took place in October 1943, after which it was closed and wiped off the face of the earth.
Majdanek
The camp was founded in 1941, it was built in the suburbs of Lublin, Poland. It had 5 branches in the southeastern part of the country.
Over the years of its existence, about 1.5 million people of different nationalities died in its cells.
The surviving captives were released on July 23, 1944 by Soviet soldiers, and 2 years later a museum and research institutes were opened on its territory.
Salaspils
The camp, known as Kurtengorf, was built in October 1941 on the territory of Latvia, not far from Riga. Had several branches, the most famous - Ponary. The main prisoners were children who were subjected to medical experiments.
In recent years, prisoners have been used as blood donors for wounded German soldiers. The camp was burnt down in August 1944 by the Germans, who were forced to evacuate the remaining prisoners to other institutions under the offensive of the Soviet troops.
Ravensbrück
Built in 1938 near Fürstenberg. Before the start of the war of 1941-1945, it was exclusively female, it consisted mainly of partisans. After 1941, it was completed, after which it received a men's barracks and a children's barracks for underage girls.
Over the years of "work", the number of his captives amounted to more than 132 thousand of the fairer sex of different ages, of which almost 93 thousand died. The liberation of the prisoners took place on April 30, 1945 by Soviet troops.
Mauthausen
Austrian concentration camp built in July 1938. At first it was one of the major branches of Dachau, the first such institution in Germany, located near Munich. But since 1939 it has been functioning independently.
In 1940, it merged with the Gusen death camp, after which it became one of the largest concentration settlements on the territory of Nazi Germany.
During the war years, there were about 335 thousand natives of 15 European countries, 122 thousand of whom were brutally tortured and killed. The prisoners were released by the Americans, who entered the camp on May 5, 1945. A few years later, 12 states created a memorial museum here, erected monuments to the victims of Nazism.
Irma Grese - Nazi warden
The horrors of the concentration camps imprinted in the memory of people and the annals of history the names of individuals who can hardly be called people. One of them is Irma Grese, a young and beautiful German woman whose actions do not fit into the nature of human actions.
Today, many historians and psychiatrists are trying to explain her phenomenon by the suicide of her mother or the propaganda of fascism and Nazism, characteristic of that time, but it is impossible or difficult to find justification for her actions.
Already at the age of 15, the young girl was present in the Hitler Youth movement, a German youth organization whose main principle was racial purity. At the age of 20 in 1942, having changed several professions, Irma became a member of one of the auxiliary units of the SS. Her first place of work was the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was later replaced by Auschwitz, where she acted as the second person after the commandant.
The bullying of the "Blond Devil", as the prisoners called Grese, was felt by thousands of captive women and men. This "Beautiful Monster" destroyed people not only physically, but also morally. She beat a prisoner to death with a wicker whip that she carried with her, enjoyed shooting prisoners. One of the favorite entertainments of the "Angel of Death" was setting dogs on captives, which were previously starved for several days.
The last place of service of Irma Grese was Bergen-Belsen, where, after his release, she was captured by the British military. The tribunal lasted 2 months, the verdict was unequivocal: "Guilty, subject to execution by hanging."
The iron rod, or maybe ostentatious bravado, was also present in the woman on the last night of her life - she sang songs and laughed out loud until the morning, which, according to psychologists, hid fear and hysteria before the impending death - too easy and simple for her.
Josef Mengele - experiments on people
The name of this man still causes horror among people, since it was he who came up with the most painful and terrible experiments on the human body and psyche.
Only according to official data, tens of thousands of prisoners became its victims. He personally sorted the victims upon arrival at the camp, then they were awaited by a thorough medical examination and terrible experiments.
The “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” managed to avoid a fair trial and imprisonment during the liberation of European countries from the Nazis. For a long time he lived in Latin America, carefully hiding from his pursuers and avoiding capture.
On the conscience of this doctor, anatomical autopsy of live newborns and castration of boys without the use of anesthesia, experiments on twins, dwarfs. There is evidence of how women were tortured by sterilization using x-rays. He assessed the endurance of the human body when exposed to an electric current.
Unfortunately for many prisoners of war, Josef Mengele still managed to avoid a fair punishment. After 35 years of living under false names, constantly escaping from pursuers, he drowned in the ocean, losing control of his body as a result of a stroke. The worst thing is that until the end of his life he was firmly convinced that "in his whole life he did not harm anyone personally."
Concentration camps were present in many countries of the world. The most famous for the Soviet people was the Gulag, created in the early years of the Bolsheviks coming to power. In total there were more than a hundred of them and, according to the NKVD, in 1922 alone there were more than 60 thousand “dissenters” and “dangerous to the authorities” prisoners.
But only the Nazis made it so that the word "concentration camp" went down in history as a place where they massively torture and exterminate the population. A place of bullying and humiliation committed by people against humanity.
Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kiev, were collected for transfer to the POW camp, August 1941:
The uniform of many girls is semi-military-semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniforms and uniform shoes of small sizes. On the left - a dull captured artillery lieutenant, maybe a "stage commander".
How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Lieutenant Prince, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in the Red Army.” Numerous facts testify that this order was applied throughout the war.
In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war - a military doctor - was shot.
In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them.
After the defeat of the Red Army in the Crimea in May 1942, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko in the Mayak fishing village near Kerch. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, fiends, will be dog's death! The girl was shot in the yard.
At the end of August 1942, a group of sailors was shot in the village of Krymskaya in the Krasnodar Territory, among them there were several girls in military uniform.
In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport with her in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Alexandrovna, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.
In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.
On January 5, 1943, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured near the Severny farm. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and humiliation, all those captured were shot.
Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (candidate officer, on the right) - escort a captured Soviet girl soldier - to captivity ... or to death?
It seems that the "Hans" do not look evil ... Although - who knows? In war, completely ordinary people often do such outrageous abominations that they would never have done in "another life" ...
The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army, model 1935 - male, and in good "commander" boots in size.
A similar photo, probably summer or early autumn 1941. The convoy is a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:
Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, her face, hands were cut, her breasts were cut off ... »
Knowing what awaits them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.
Often captured women were raped before they died. Hans Rudhoff, a soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, testifies that in the winter of 1942, “... Russian nurses lay on the roads. They were shot and thrown on the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written.
In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the yard, where there were nurses from the hospital. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they dragged them into a barn and raped them. However, they were not killed.
Women prisoners of war who ended up in camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drogobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Lyuda. “Captain Stroher, the commandant of the camp, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Lyuda to a bunk, and in this position Stroher raped her and then shot her.”
In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orlyand gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals - if they were sick with venereal diseases. He carried out the inspection himself. I chose 3 young girls from them, took them to my place to “serve”. German soldiers and officers came for women examined by doctors. Few of these women escaped rape.
A female soldier of the Red Army who was captured while trying to get out of the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941
Judging by their emaciated faces, they had to go through a lot even before being taken prisoner.
Here the "Hans" are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves will quickly experience all the "joys" of captivity !! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already drunk dashingly to the full extent at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity ...
On the left photo (September 1941, again near Kiev -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her hand in captivity; an unprecedented thing, a watch is the optimal camp currency!) Do not look desperate or exhausted. Captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... Is it a staged photo, or was a relatively humane camp commandant really caught, who ensured a tolerable existence?
The camp guards from among the former prisoners of war and camp policemen were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped captives or, under threat of death, forced them to cohabit with them. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 female prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, the former head of the camp guard A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped the prisoners of the women's bloc.
The Millerovo POW camp also contained female prisoners. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible:
“Police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two in a room. During these two hours, he could use her as a thing, abuse, mock, do whatever he pleases.
Once, during the evening verification, the chief of police himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “For those who do not want to go, arrange a“ red fireman ”. The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl's vagina. Left in this position for half an hour. Shouting was forbidden. Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back the cry, and after such a punishment they could not move for a long time.
The commandant, behind her back they called her a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated mockeries. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning.
We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.
Female doctors of the Red Army, who were taken prisoner, worked in camp infirmaries in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps).
There may also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background you can see part of the body of a car equipped to transport the wounded, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.
Infirmary hut of the POW camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941): 
In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.
Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely miserable impression. In the conditions of camp life, it was especially difficult for them: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.
In the fall of 1941, K. Kromiadi, a member of the commission for the distribution of labor, who visited the Sedlice camp, talked with the captured women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.”
A group of female health workers taken prisoner in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord".
Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk in Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was forbidden. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with the "condition of a free settlement in Smolensk."
Crimea, summer 1942. Quite young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young soldier girl:
Most likely - not a doctor: her hands are clean, in a recent battle she did not bandage the wounded.
After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were taken prisoner: doctors, nurses, nurses. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 female prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. Everyone was lined up in Rovno, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." Those who were separated from the general group were shot. The rest were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the car into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered in a hole in the floor.
On the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and on February 23, 1943, the women were brought to the city of Zoes. Lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed special prestige among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, said in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work at military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which, because of the crowding, it was impossible to sit down or move. It stayed that way for almost a day. And then the rebellious were sent to Ravensbrück. This women's camp was established in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and shorts. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for half a year, but not everyone managed to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden blocks.
The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tiered plank beds with a narrow passage between them. For two prisoners, one cotton blanket was issued. In a separate room lived block - senior barracks. There was a washroom in the corridor.
A group of Soviet women prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):
The prisoners carry all their meager possessions; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them "like a woman" tied their heads with handkerchiefs and took off their heavy boots.
Ibid, Stalag 370, Simferopol:
Prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. In Ravensbrück, 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops were made, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.
The first Soviet female prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.
Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS spread a rumor around the camp that a gang of female murderers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.
Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning for verification, sometimes lasting several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.
Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which the women used mainly to wash their hair, as there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn.
Women whose hair survived began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden scallop they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion.
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, for five people, they received a small loaf of bread with an admixture of sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.
The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is testified in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, S. Müller:
“...on one Sunday in April, we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to comply with some order, referring to the fact that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated like prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of insolence. The whole first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp. - A. Sh.) and deprived of lunch.
But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?
It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping alignment, walked, as if in a parade, minting a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The whole column moved as a single unit. Suddenly, a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: “One, two, three!” And they sang:
Get up great country
Rise to the death fight...
I had heard them sing this song under their breath in their barracks before. But here it sounded like a call to fight, like faith in a quick victory.
Then they sang about Moscow.
The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment by marching the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...
It was not possible for the SS to leave Soviet women without lunch. Political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.
Soviet women prisoners of war more than once struck their enemies and fellow campers with their unity and spirit of resistance. Once 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners destined to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to take the women away, the comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up five people and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove the newcomers into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.
In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in the city of Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove the wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who would agree to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia.
Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire.
Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:
Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Above your head, be bold!
We don't have long to endure.
The nightingale will fly in the spring ...
And open the door for us to freedom,
Takes the striped dress off her shoulders
And heal deep wounds
Wipe the tears from swollen eyes.
Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
Not long to wait, not long -
And we will be on Russian soil.
The former prisoner Germaine Tillon in her memoirs gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their solidarity was explained by the fact that they had gone through army school even before being captured. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their disobedience, unwillingness to obey the Germans. 
Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Prisoner of Auschwitz A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Claudia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.
In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and move into the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.
Navigator of the air regiment Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.
Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between male and female prisoners of war was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love was sometimes born that gave new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
So, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “the nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”
Probably one of the last photographs of Soviet female soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:
Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - "For Courage" (dark edging on the block), the second may have "BZ". There is an opinion that these are female pilots, but - IMHO - it is unlikely: both have "clean" shoulder straps of privates.
In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war hardened. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be subjected to checks by the local Gestapo branch in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.
On the basis of this order, on April 11, 1944, the head of the Security Service and the SD issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - the eldest of a group of seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in the city of Gentin. A lot of marriage was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera led the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? ” What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman vigorously resisted, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
________________________________________ ____________________
Yad Vashem archive. M-33/1190, l. 110.
There. M-37/178, l. 17.
There. M-33/482, l. 16.
There. M-33/60, l. 38.
There. M-33/303, l 115.
There. M-33/309, l. 51.
There. M-33/295, l. 5.
There. M-33/302, l. 32.
P. Rafes. They didn't repent then. From Notes of the Translator of Divisional Intelligence. "Spark". Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.
Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, l. 94-95.
Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - "Spark". M., 1998. No. 6.
Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, l. eleven.
Yad Vashem archive. M-33/230, l. 38.53.94; M-37/1191, l. 26
B. P. Sherman. ... And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists in the city of Baranovichi and its environs on June 27, 1941 - July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.
S. M. Fischer. Memories. Manuscript. Author's archive.
K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.
T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944… p. 143.
Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/626, l. 50-52. M-33/627, sheet. 62-63.
N. Lemeshchuk. I didn't bow my head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in the Nazi camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32-33.
There. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security agencies, where they sought her confession of betrayal, committed suicide
G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. On Sat. "Witnesses for the Prosecution". L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Locksmith team Ravensbrück. Memoirs of a Prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.
Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.
G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.
S. Muller. Locksmith team Ravensbrück ... p. 51-52.
Women of Ravensbrück… p.127.
G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol fortress. Simferopol. 1965, p. 82-83.
G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.
N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In: In Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk. 1958, p. 84.
A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war ... p. 62.
A. Nikiforova. This shouldn't happen again. M., 1958, p. 6-11.
N. Lemeshchuk. Head not bowed... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Archive Yad Vashem. М-33/438 part II, l. 127.
A. Stream. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener… S. 153.
A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again... p. 106.
A. Stream. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener…. S. 153-154.
Many Soviet women who served in the Red Army were ready to commit suicide so as not to be captured. Violence, bullying, painful executions - such a fate awaited most of the captured nurses, signalmen, intelligence officers. Only a few ended up in prisoner-of-war camps, but even there their situation was often even worse than that of Red Army men.
During the Great Patriotic War, more than 800 thousand women fought in the ranks of the Red Army. The Germans equated Soviet nurses, intelligence officers, snipers with partisans and did not consider them military personnel. Therefore, the German command did not extend to them even those few international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war that applied to Soviet male soldiers.
Soviet front-line nurse.
In the materials of the Nuremberg trials, an order was preserved that was in force throughout the war: to shoot all "commissars who can be recognized by the Soviet star on their sleeves and Russian women in uniform."
The execution most often completed a series of bullying: women were beaten, brutally raped, and curses were carved on their bodies. The bodies were often stripped and thrown away without even thinking about burial. In the book of Aron Schneer, the testimony of a German soldier Hans Rudhoff, who in 1942 saw dead Soviet nurses, is given: “They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked."
Svetlana Aleksievich in the book "War has no woman's face" quotes the memoirs of one of the female soldiers. According to her, they always kept two cartridges for themselves in order to shoot themselves, and not be captured. The second cartridge is in case of a misfire. The same participant in the war recalled what happened to the captured nineteen-year-old nurse. When they found her, her chest was cut off and her eyes were gouged out: “They put her on a stake ... Frost, and she is white-white, and her hair is all gray.” In the backpack, the deceased girl had letters from home and a children's toy.
SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, known for his cruelty, equated women with commissars and Jews. All of them, according to his order, were supposed to be interrogated with passion and then shot.
Women soldiers in the camps
Those women who managed to escape execution were sent to camps. Almost constant violence awaited them there. Especially cruel were the policemen and those male prisoners of war who agreed to work for the Nazis and joined the camp guards. Women were often given to them "as a reward" for their service.
In the camps, there were often no basic living conditions. The prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp tried to make their existence as easy as possible: they washed their hair with ersatz coffee that was given out for breakfast, they secretly made their own combs.
According to the norms of international law, prisoners of war could not be involved in work in military factories. But this was not applied to women. In 1943, the captured Elizaveta Klemm tried on behalf of a group of prisoners to protest the decision of the Germans to send Soviet women to the factory. In response to this, the authorities first beat everyone, and then herded them into a cramped room where it was impossible even to move.
In Ravensbrück, female prisoners of war sewed uniforms for the German troops and worked in the infirmary. In April 1943, the famous “protest march” took place there: the camp authorities wanted to punish the recalcitrants who invoked the Geneva Convention and demanded that they be treated as prisoners of war. The women were to march through the camp. And they marched. But not doomed, but chasing a step, as in a parade, in a slender column, with the song "Holy War". The effect of punishment turned out to be the opposite: they wanted to humiliate women, but instead they received evidence of intransigence and fortitude.
In 1942, Elena Zaitseva, a nurse, was taken prisoner near Kharkov. She was pregnant, but hid it from the Germans. She was selected to work at a military factory in Neusen. The working day lasted 12 hours, they spent the night in the workshop on wooden plank beds. The prisoners were fed turnips and potatoes. Zaitseva worked until childbirth, nuns from a nearby monastery helped to take them. The newborn was given to the nuns, and the mother returned to work. After the end of the war, mother and daughter managed to reunite. But there are few such stories with happy endings.
Soviet women in a concentration camp.
Only in 1944 was a special circular issued by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD on the treatment of female prisoners of war. They, like other Soviet prisoners, were to be subjected to a police check. If it turned out that a woman was “politically unreliable”, then the status of a prisoner of war was removed from her and she was handed over to the security police. The rest were sent to concentration camps. In fact, this was the first document in which women who served in the Soviet army were equated with male prisoners of war.
"Unreliable" after interrogations were sent to execution. In 1944, a female major was brought to the Stutthof concentration camp. Even in the crematorium, they continued to mock her until she spat in the German's face. After that, she was pushed alive into the furnace.
Soviet women in a column of prisoners of war.
There were cases when women were released from the camp and transferred to the status of civilian workers. But it is difficult to say what was the percentage of those actually released. Aron Schneer notes that in the cards of many Jewish prisoners of war, the entry “released and sent to the labor exchange” actually meant something completely different. They were formally released, but in fact they were transferred from the Stalags to concentration camps, where they were executed.
After captivity
Some women managed to escape from captivity and even return to the unit. But being in captivity changed them irreversibly. Valentina Kostromitina, who served as a medical instructor, recalled her friend Musa, who had been in captivity. She was "terribly afraid to go into the landing, because she was in captivity." She never managed to "cross the bridge on the pier and board the boat." The stories of a friend made such an impression that Kostromitina was afraid of captivity even more than bombing.
A considerable number of Soviet women prisoners of war after the camps could not have children. Often they were experimented on, subjected to forced sterilization.
Those who survived to the end of the war were under pressure from their own: often women were reproached for surviving captivity. They were expected to commit suicide but not surrender. At the same time, even the fact that many did not have any weapons with them at the time of captivity was not taken into account.