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In his memoirs, officer Bruno Schneider told what kind of instruction German soldiers went through before being sent to the Russian front. Regarding the women of the Red Army, the order stated one thing: “Shoot!”
This was done in many German units. Among those who died in battles and encirclement, a huge number of bodies of women in Red Army uniforms were found. Among them are many nurses and women paramedics. Traces on their bodies testified that many were brutally tortured and then shot.
Residents of Smagleevka (Voronezh region) told after their liberation in 1943 that at the beginning of the war in their village a young Red Army girl died a terrible death. She was badly injured. Despite this, the Nazis stripped her naked, dragged her onto the road and shot her.
Terrifying marks of torture remained on the body of the unfortunate woman. Before her death, her breasts were cut off, her entire face and hands were completely cut to pieces. The woman's body was a continuous bloody mess. They did the same with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Before the demonstration execution, the Nazis kept her half-naked in the cold for hours.
women in captivity
Those in captivity Soviet soldiers- and women too - it was supposed to be "sorted". The weakest, the wounded and exhausted were to be destroyed. The rest were used for the hardest work in concentration camps.
In addition to these atrocities, Red Army women were constantly subjected to rape. The highest military ranks of the Wehrmacht were forbidden to have intimate relations with the Slavs, so they did it secretly. The rank and file had a certain freedom here. Finding one Red Army woman or a nurse, she could be raped by a whole company of soldiers. If the girl did not die after that, she was shot.
In concentration camps, the leadership often chose the most attractive girls from among the prisoners and took them to their place to “serve”. So did the camp doctor Orlyand in Shpalaga (prisoner of war camp) No. 346 near the city of Kremenchug. The guards themselves regularly raped the prisoners of the women's block of the concentration camp.
So it was in Shpalaga No. 337 (Baranovichi), about which in 1967, during a meeting of the tribunal, the head of this camp, Yarosh, testified.
Shpalag No. 337 was distinguished by particularly cruel, inhuman conditions of detention. Both women and men of the Red Army were kept half-naked in the cold for hours. Hundreds of them were stuffed into the lice-infested barracks. Anyone who could not stand it and fell, the guards immediately shot. More than 700 captured servicemen were destroyed daily in Shpalaga No. 337.
And such atrocities are on the account of the "heroes of Ukraine"!
We read and absorb. This is to be conveyed to the minds of our children. We need to learn to decently interpret the detailed terrible truth about the atrocities of the Bandera heroes of the Zvaryche-Khoruzhev nation.
Detailed materials about the struggle of the "heroes of the nation" on this land with the civilian population can be easily dug up in any search engine.
This is our proud history.
"...upovtsy on the day of the anniversary of the UPA decided to present to their "general" unusual gift- 5 heads cut off from the Poles. He was pleasantly surprised by both the gift itself and the resourcefulness of his subordinates.
Such "zeal" confused even worldly-wise Germans. On May 28, 1943, the General Commissar of Volhynia and Podolia, Obergruppenführer Schöne, asked the “Metropolitan” Polikarp Sikorsky to appease his “flock”: “National bandits (italics mine) also show their activity in attacks on unarmed Poles. According to our calculations, 15,000 Poles have been muzzled today! The Janova Valley colony does not exist.”
In the Chronicle of the SS rifle division“Galicia”, which was led by its Military Administration, has the following entry: “03/20/44: there is a Ukrainian rebel in Volyn, who is probably already in Galicia, who boasts that he strangled 300 souls of Poles with his motuzka. He is considered a hero."
The Poles published dozens of volumes of such facts of the genocide, none of which the Banderaites refuted. Stories about such acts of the Craiova Army will be typed in no more than a common notebook. Yes, and that still needs to be backed up by substantial evidence.
Moreover, the Poles did not ignore the examples of mercy on the part of the Ukrainians. For example, in Virka, Kostopol district, Frantiszka Dzekanska, carrying her 5-year-old daughter Jadzia, was mortally wounded by a Bandera bullet. The same bullet grazed a child's leg. For 10 days the child was with the murdered mother, eating grains from spikelets. The Ukrainian teacher saved the girl.
At the same time, he certainly knew what threatened him with such an attitude towards "outsiders". After all, in the same county, Bandera’s people muzzled two Ukrainian children just because they were brought up in a Polish family, and they smashed the head of the three-year-old Stasik Pavlyuk against the wall, holding him by the legs.
Of course, a terrible revenge awaited those Ukrainians who had no enmity towards the Soviet soldiers-liberators. OUN regional guide Ivan Revenyuk (“Proud”) recalled how “at night, from the village of Khmyzovo, a village girl of 17 years old or even younger was brought to the forest. Her fault was that she, along with other rural girls, went to dances when a military unit of the Red Army was stationed in the village. Kubik (commander of the military district of the UPA "Tura") saw the girl and asked Varnak (the conductor of the Kovel district) for permission to personally interrogate her. He demanded that she confess that she was "walking" with the soldiers. The girl swore that it was not. “And I’ll check it now,” Kubik grinned, sharpening a pine stick with a knife. In a moment he jumped up to the prisoner and with a sharp end began to stick between her legs until he drove a pine stake into the girl's genitals.
One night, bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovoe and killed over 100 of its inhabitants in an hour and a half. In the Dyagun family, a Bandera man hacked to death three children. The smallest, four-year-old Vladik, cut off his arms and legs. In the Makukh family, the killers found two children - three-year-old Ivasik and ten-month-old Joseph. The ten-month-old child, seeing the man, was delighted and laughingly stretched out her hands to him, showing her four cloves. But the ruthless bandit slashed the baby's head with a knife, and cut his head with an ax to his brother Ivasik.
From the village of Volkovya one night, Bandera brought a whole family into the forest. For a long time they mocked the unfortunate people. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut open her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead they pushed in a live rabbit.
“They surpassed even the sadistic German SS with their atrocities. They torture our people, our peasants... Don't we know that they cut small children, smash their heads against the stone walls so that the brain flies out of them. Terrible brutal murders - these are the actions of these rabid wolves, ”Jaroslav Galan called out. With similar anger, the atrocities of Bandera were denounced by the OUN Melnyk, and the UPA of Bulba-Borovets, and the government of the West Ukrainian People's Republic in exile, and the Union of Sovereign Hetmans, who settled in Canada.
Although belatedly, some Bandera people still repent of their crimes. So in January 2004, an elderly woman came to the editorial office of Sovetskaya Luganshchina and handed over a package from her friend who had recently passed away. The guest of the editorial office explained that with her visit she was fulfilling the last will of a native of the Volyn region, an active Banderovka in the past, who by the end of her life rethought her life and decided with her confession to at least a little atone for an irreparable sin.
“I, Vdovichenko Nadezhda Timofeevna, a native of Volyn ... My family and I ask you to forgive us all posthumously, because when people read this letter, I will no longer be (a friend will fulfill my order).
Our parents had five, we were all inveterate Bandera: brother Stepan, sister Anna, me, sisters Olya and Nina. We all walked around in Bandera, slept in the huts during the day, and at night we walked and drove around the villages. We were given tasks to strangle those who sheltered Russian prisoners and the prisoners themselves. The men did this, and we women sorted out clothes, took away cows and pigs from dead people, cattle were slaughtered, everything was processed, stewed and stacked in barrels. Once, in one night, 84 people were strangled in the village of Romanov. They strangled the older people and the old, and the little children by the legs - once, hit the head on the door - and it's ready, and on the cart. We felt sorry for our men that they suffered hard during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night - to another village. There were people hiding. If a man was hiding, they were mistaken for women ...
Others were removed at Verkhovka: Kovalchuk's wife Tilimon for a long time did not admit where he was, and did not want to open it, but she was threatened, and she was forced to open it. They said: "Tell me where the husband is, and we will not touch you." She admitted that in a stack of straw, he was pulled out, beaten, beaten until they beat him. And the two children, Styopa and Olya, were good children, 14 and 12 years old ... The youngest was torn into two parts, and Yunka's mother no longer needed to be strangled, her heart broke. Young healthy guys were taken to the detachments to strangle people. So, from Verkhovka, two brothers Levchukiv, Nikolai and Stepan, did not want to strangle, and ran home. We sentenced them to death. When they went after them, the father says: "Take your sons - and I'm going." Kalina, the wife, also says: "Take your husband - and I'm going." They took them out for 400 meters and Nadia asks: “Let Kolya go,” and Kolya says: Nadia, don’t ask, no one asked Bandera to take time off and you won’t beg.” Kolya was killed. Nadya was killed, his father was killed, and Stepan was taken alive, they took him to the hut for two weeks in his underwear - a shirt and trousers, beat him with iron ramrods so that he would confess where the family was, but he was firm, did not admit to anything, and last evening they beat him , he asked to go to the toilet, one led him, and there was a strong snowstorm, the toilet was made of straw, and Stepan broke through the straw and ran away from our hands. We were given all the data from Verkhovka by fellow countrymen Petr Rimarchuk, Zhabsky and Puch.
... In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member Motrya. We took her to Verkhovka to the old Zhabsky and let's get a living heart. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand, and a heart in the other, to check how long the heart would beat in his hand. And when the Russians came, the sons wanted to erect a monument to him, they say, he fought for Ukraine.
A Jewish woman was walking with a child, ran away from the ghetto, they stopped her, beat her up and buried her in the forest. One of our Bandera went after Polish girls. They gave him the order to remove them, and he said that he threw them into the stream. Their mother came running, crying, asking if I had seen, I said no, let's go look, go over that stream, my mother and I go there. We were given an order: Jews, Poles, Russian prisoners and those who hide them, to strangle everyone without mercy. The Severin family was strangled, and the daughter was married in another village. She arrived in Romanov, but there were no parents, she began to cry and let's dig things out. Bandera came, took away the clothes, and closed the daughter alive in the same box and buried it. And her two small children remained at home. And if the children came with their mother, then they would be in that box. Was still in our village Kublyuk. He was sent to Kotov, Kivertsovsky district, to work. He worked for a week, and then what - they cut off Kublyuk's head, and a neighbor guy took his daughter. Bandera ordered to kill his daughter Sonya, and Vasily said: "Let's go to the forest for firewood." Let's go, Vasily brought Sonya dead, and told people that the tree had killed.
Timofey lived in our village Oytsyus. The old, old grandfather that he said, so be it, was that a prophet from God. When the Germans arrived, they were immediately told that there was one in the village, and the Germans immediately went to the old man to tell him what would happen to them ... And he said to them: “I won’t tell you anything, because you will kill me ". The negotiator promised that they would not lay a finger on it. Then the grandfather said to them: "You will reach Moscow, but from there you will run away as best you can." The Germans did not touch him, but when the old prophet told the Banderas that they would not do anything by strangling the people of Ukraine, the Banderas came and beat him until they beat him.
Now I will describe my family. Brother Stepan was an inveterate Bandera, but I did not lag behind him, I went everywhere with Bandera, although I was married. When the Russians came, arrests began, people were taken out. Our family too. Olya agreed at the station, and they let her go, but Bandera came, took her away and strangled her. My father left with his mother and sister Nina in Russia. The mother is old. Nina flatly refused to go to work for Russia, then the authorities offered her to work as a secretary. But Nina said that she did not want to hold a Soviet pen in her hands. They again met her halfway: “If you don’t want to do anything, then sign that you will give out Bandera, and we will let you go home. Nina, without thinking for a long time, signed, and she was released. Nina had not yet arrived home, as Bandera was already waiting for her, they gathered a meeting of guys and girls and tried Nina: look, they say, whoever raises a hand against us, it will be like that with everyone. To this day, I don't know where it went.
All my life I carried a heavy stone in my heart, because I believed Bandera. I could sell any person if someone says something about Bandera. And they, cursed, may they be cursed by both God and people for all eternity. How many people have chopped up the innocent, and now they want to equate them with the defenders of Ukraine. And who did they fight? With their neighbors, damned murderers. How much blood is on their hands, how many boxes with the living are buried. People were taken out, but even now they do not want to return to that Bandera.
I tearfully beg you, people, forgive me my sins" (newspaper "Soviet Luganshchina", January 2004, N 1)...".
135 tortures and atrocities used by OUN-UPA terrorists against civilians
Driving a large and thick nail into the skull of the head.
Ripping off the hair from the head with the skin (scalping).
Striking with the butt of an ax on the skull of the head.
Striking with the butt of an ax on the forehead.
Carving on the forehead "eagle".
Driving a bayonet into the temple of the head.
Gouging out one eye.
Gouging out two eyes.
Nose cutting.
Circumcision of one ear.
Circumcision of both ears.
Piercing children with stakes through and through.
Punching with a pointed thick wire through and through from ear to ear.
Lip cutting.
Cutting the tongue.
Throat cutting.
Cutting the throat and pulling the tongue out through the hole.
Cutting the throat and inserting a piece into the hole.
Knocking out teeth.
Jaw breaking.
Tearing of the mouth from ear to ear.
Plugging mouths with tow when transporting still living victims.
Cutting the neck with a knife or sickle.
Vertical cutting of the head with an ax.
Rolling the head back.
Crushing of the head by placing in a vise and tightening the screw.
Cutting off the head with a sickle.
Cutting off the head with a scythe.
Cutting off the head with an axe.
Striking with an ax in the neck.
Stab wounds to the head.
Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back.
Infliction of other chopped wounds on the back.
Strikes with a bayonet in the back.
Breaking of the bones of the ribs of the chest.
Striking with a knife or bayonet at or near the heart.
Infliction of stab wounds to the chest with a knife or bayonet.
Cutting off women's breasts with a sickle.
Cutting off women's breasts and sprinkling salt on wounds.
Cutting off the genitals of male victims with a sickle.
Sawing the body in half with a carpenter's saw.
Infliction of stab wounds to the abdomen with a knife or bayonet.
Punching the belly of a pregnant woman with a bayonet.
Cutting the abdomen and pulling out the intestines in adults.
Cutting the abdomen of a woman with a long-term pregnancy and inserting instead of the removed fetus, for example, a live cat, and stitching the abdomen.
Cutting the abdomen and pouring boiling water inside - boiling water.
Cutting the stomach and putting stones inside it, as well as throwing it into the river.
Cutting the belly of pregnant women and spilling broken glass inside.
Pulling out the veins from the groin to the feet.
Investing in the groin - the vagina of a red-hot iron.
insertion into the vagina pine cones top side forward.
Inserting a pointed stake into the vagina and pushing it up to the throat, right through.
Cutting the women's front part of the body with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the insides outside.
Hanging victims by the insides.
Inserting a glass bottle into the vagina and breaking it.
Inserting a glass bottle into the anus and breaking it.
Cutting the abdomen and spilling the food inside, the so-called fodder flour, for hungry pigs, which pulled out this food along with the intestines and other entrails.
Chopping off one hand with an axe.
Chopping off both hands with an axe.
Penetration of the palm with a knife.
Cutting off the fingers with a knife.
Cutting off the palm.
Cauterization of the inside of the palm on the hot stove of a charcoal kitchen.
Chopping off the heel.
Severing of the foot above the heel bone.
Breaking with a blunt instrument of the bones of the hands in several places.
Breaking with a blunt instrument of the bones of the legs in several places.
Sawing the body, lined with boards on both sides, in half with a carpenter's saw.
Sawing the body in half with a special saw.
Sawing off both legs with a saw.
Sprinkling of bound feet with red-hot coal.
Nailing hands to the table, and feet to the floor.
Nailing in the church on the cross of hands and feet with nails.
Inflicting blows with an ax to the back of the head to the victims, previously laid on the floor.
Striking with an ax all over the body.
Chopping a whole body into pieces with an ax.
Breaking on the living legs and arms in the so-called strap.
Nailing the tongue of a small child to the table with a knife, which later hung on it.
Cutting the child into pieces with a knife and throwing them around.
Opening the abdomen for children.
Nailing a small child to a table with a bayonet.
Hanging a male child by the genitals on a doorknob.
Knocking out the joints of the child's legs.
Knocking out the joints of the child's hands.
Strangulation of a child by throwing various rags on him.
Throwing little children alive into a deep well.
Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
Breaking the baby's head, taking it by the legs and hitting it against a wall or stove.
Hanging a monk by his feet near the pulpit in the church.
Planting a child on a stake.
Hanging a woman upside down on a tree and mocking her - cutting off her chest and tongue, dissecting her stomach, gouging out her eyes, and cutting off pieces of her body with knives.
Nailing a small child to a door.
Hanging upside down on a tree.
Hanging upside down on a tree.
Hanging on a tree with feet up and singeing the head from below with the fire of a fire lit under the head.
Throwing down from a cliff.
Drowning in the river.
Drowning by dropping into a deep well.
Drowning in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
Piercing with a pitchfork, and after roasting pieces of the body on a fire.
Throwing an adult into a fire in a forest clearing, around which Ukrainian girls sang and danced to the sounds of an accordion.
Driving a stake into the stomach through and through and strengthening it in the ground.
Tying a man to a tree and shooting him like a target.
Exposing in the cold naked or in linen.
Choking with a twisted soapy rope tied around the neck - a lasso.
Dragging the body along the street with a rope tied around the neck.
Tying the woman's legs to two trees, as well as her hands above her head, and cutting her stomach from the crotch to the chest.
Tearing the body with chains.
Dragging on the ground tied to a cart.
Dragging on the ground of a mother with three children tied to a wagon drawn by a horse, in such a way that one leg of the mother is tied with a chain to the wagon, and one leg of the eldest child is tied to the other leg of the mother, and tied to the other leg of the eldest child youngest child, and the leg of the youngest child is tied to the other leg of the youngest child.
Punching through the body with the barrel of a carbine.
Pulling the victim with barbed wire.
Pulling together two victims with barbed wire at the same time.
Pulling together with barbed wire several victims at the same time.
Periodically tightening the torso with barbed wire and pouring cold water on the victim every few hours in order to come to his senses and feel pain and suffering.
Burying the victim in a standing position in the ground up to the neck and leaving it in that position.
Buried in the ground alive up to the neck and later cut off the head with a scythe.
Tearing the body in half with the help of horses.
Tearing the body in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and then releasing them.
Throwing adults into the flames of a burning building.
Setting fire to the victim previously doused with kerosene.
Laying around the victim with sheaves of straw and setting them on fire, thus making the torch of Nero.
Stabbing a knife in the back and leaving it in the victim's body.
Putting a baby on a pitchfork and throwing him into the flames of a fire.
Cutting the skin off the face with blades.
Driven between the edges of oak stakes.
Hanging on barbed wire.
Ripping off the skin from the body and filling the wound with ink, as well as pouring boiling water over it.
Attaching the torso to a support and throwing knives at it.
Binding - shackling hands with barbed wire.
Inflicting fatal blows with a shovel.
Nailing hands to the threshold of the dwelling.
Dragging the body on the ground by legs tied with a rope.
On November 30, 1941, nonhumans in Nazi uniforms hanged a Russian heroine. Her name was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The memory of her and other heroes who gave their lives for our freedom is extremely important. How many of our media will remember Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and talk about her in the news this weekend? It’s not worth mentioning non-our media at all ...
I published an article about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The author of this material was our colleague from "" Unfortunately, over the past 2 years, this material has turned from historical into topical and acquired a completely different sound.
“On November 29, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya died heroically. Her feat has become a legend. She was the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. Her name has become a household name and is inscribed in capital letters in a heroic story. Russian people - the victorious people.
The Nazis beat and tortured
They kicked out barefoot in the cold,
Were hands twisted with ropes,
The interrogation went on for five hours.
There are scars and abrasions on your face,
But silence is the answer to the enemy.
Wooden platform with crossbar,
You are standing barefoot in the snow.
A young voice sounds over the conflagration,
Over silence frosty day:
“I’m not afraid to die, comrades,
My people will avenge me!
AGNIYA BARTO
For the first time, the fate of Zoya became widely known from the essay Peter Alexandrovich Lidov“Tanya”, published in the Pravda newspaper on January 27, 1942, and tells about the execution by the Nazis in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow, a partisan girl who called herself Tanya during interrogation. A photo was published nearby: mutilated female body with a rope around his neck. At that time, the real name of the deceased was not yet known. Simultaneously with the publication in Pravda in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" material has been published Sergei Lyubimov"We will not forget you, Tanya."
We had a cult of the feat of "Tanya" (Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and he firmly entered the ancestral memory of the people. Comrade Stalin introduced this cult personally . February 16 In 1942, she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. And Lidov's continuation article - "Who was Tanya", came out only two days later - 18th of Febuary 1942. Then the whole country learned the real name of the girl killed by the Nazis: Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, a student of the tenth grade of school N 201 of the Oktyabrsky district of Moscow. She was recognized by school friends from the photograph that accompanied Lidov's first essay.
“In the early days of December 1941, in Petrishchevo, near the town of Vereya,” Lidov wrote, “the Germans executed an eighteen-year-old Muscovite Komsomol member who called herself Tatyana ... She died in enemy captivity on a fascist rack, without a single sound betraying her suffering, without betraying her comrades. She was martyred as a heroine, as the daughter of a great nation that no one can ever break! May her memory live forever!”
During the interrogation, the German officer, according to Lidov, asked the eighteen-year-old girl the main question: “Tell me, where is Stalin?” “Stalin is at his post,” Tatiana replied.
in the newspaper "Publicity". September 24, 1997 in the material of professor-historian Ivan Osadchy under the heading "Her name and feat are immortal" An act was published, drawn up in the village of Petrishchevo on January 25, 1942:
“We, the undersigned, - a commission consisting of: Mikhail Ivanovich Berezin, Chairman of the Gribtsovsky Village Council, Claudia Prokofievna Strukova, Secretary, Claudia Prokofievna Strukova, Collective Farm Eyewitnesses of the 8th March Collective Farm - Vasily Alexandrovich Kulik and Evdokia Petrovna Voronina - drew up this act as follows: During the period of occupation Vereisky district, a girl who called herself Tanya was hanged by German soldiers in the village of Petrishchevo. Later it turned out that it was a partisan girl from Moscow - Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, born in 1923. German soldiers caught her while she was on a combat mission, setting fire to a stable with more than 300 horses. The German sentry grabbed her from behind, and she did not have time to shoot.
She was taken to the house of Sedova Maria Ivanovna, undressed and interrogated. But there was no need to get any information from her. After interrogation at Sedova, barefoot and undressed, she was taken to Voronina's house, where the headquarters was located. There they continued to interrogate, but she answered all the questions: “No! Don't know!". Having achieved nothing, the officer ordered that they start beating her with belts. The hostess, who was driven onto the stove, counted about 200 blows. She didn't scream or even utter a single moan. And after this torture she answered again: “No! I will not say! Don't know!"
She was taken out of Voronina's house; she walked, stepping with her bare feet in the snow, they brought Kulik to the house. Exhausted and tormented, she was in the circle of enemies. The German soldiers mocked her in every possible way. She asked for a drink - the German brought her a lit lamp. And someone ran a saw across her back. Then all the soldiers left, only one sentry remained. Her hands were tied back. The legs are frostbitten. The sentry ordered her to get up and led her out into the street under a rifle. And again she walked, stepping barefoot in the snow, and drove until she herself froze. The sentries changed every 15 minutes. And so they continued to drive her down the street all night.
P.Ya. Kulik tells ( maiden name Petrushina, 33 years old): “They brought her in and put her on a bench, and she groaned. Her lips were black, black, parched, and a swollen face on her forehead. She asked for a drink from my husband. We asked: "Can I?" They said: “No,” and one of them, instead of water, raised a burning kerosene lamp without glass to his chin.
When I spoke to her, she told me: “Victory is still ours. Let them shoot me, let these monsters mock me, but still they won't shoot us all. There are still 170 million of us, the Russian people have always won, and now the victory will be ours.”
In the morning she was led to the gallows and began to take pictures ... She shouted: “Citizens! You don’t stand, don’t look, but you need to help fight! After that, one officer swung, while others shouted at her.
Then she said: “Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it's too late, surrender." The officer yelled angrily: "Rus!" - “The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated,” she said all this at the moment when she was photographed ...
Then they put up a box. She, without any command, stood on the box herself. A German approached and began to put on a noose. At that time, she shouted: “No matter how much you hang us, you don’t hang everyone, we are 170 million. But our comrades will avenge you for me.” She said this already with a noose around her neck.A few seconds before death and a moment before Eternity, she announced, with a noose around her neck, the verdict of the Soviet people: “ Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!
In the morning they built a gallows, gathered the population and hanged them publicly. But they continued to mock the hanged woman. Her left breast was cut off, her legs were cut with knives.
When our troops drove the Germans away from Moscow, they hurried to remove Zoya's body and bury it outside the village, burned the gallows at night, as if wanting to hide the traces of their crime. They hanged her in early December 1941. That is what the present act is drawn up for."
And a little later, photographs found in the pocket of a murdered German were brought to the editorial office of Pravda. 5 pictures captured the moments of the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. At the same time, another essay by Peter Lidov appeared, dedicated to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, under the heading “5 photographs”.
Why did the young intelligence officer call herself this name (or the name "Taon"), and why did Comrade Stalin single out her feat? Indeed, at the same time, many Soviet people committed no less heroic deeds. For example, on the same day, November 29, 1942, in the same Moscow region, partisan Vera Voloshina was executed, for her feat she was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree (1966) and the title of Hero of Russia (1994).
For the successful mobilization of the entire Soviet people, Russian civilization, Stalin used the language of symbols and those trigger points that can extract a layer of heroic victories from the ancestral memory of Russians. We remember the famous speech at the parade on November 7, 1941, in which both the great Russian commanders and the national liberation wars are mentioned, in which we invariably emerged victorious. Thus, parallels were drawn between the victories of the ancestors and the current inevitable Victory. The surname Kosmodemyanskaya comes from the consecrated names of two Russian heroes - Kozma and Demyan. In the city of Murom there is a church named after them, erected by order of Ivan the Terrible.
The tent of Ivan the Terrible once stood at that place, and Kuznetsky Posad was located nearby. The king was thinking about how to cross the Oka, on the other side of which the enemy camp was located. Then two blacksmith brothers, whose names were Kozma and Demyan, appeared in the tent, who offered their help to the king. At night, in the darkness, the brothers quietly crept into the enemy camp and set fire to the khan's tent. While the camp was extinguishing the fire and looking for scouts, the troops of Ivan the Terrible, taking advantage of the commotion in the enemy camp, crossed the river. Demyan and Kozma died, and a church was built in their honor and named after the heroes.
As a result - in one family, both children perform feats and are awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union! The name of the Heroes in the USSR was called the streets. Normally there would be two streets named after each of the Heroes. But in Moscow one the street, and not by chance, received a "double" name - Zoe and Alexander Kosmodemyansky
In 1944, the film "Zoya" was filmed, which received in Cannes in 1946 at the 1st International Film Festival the award for best screenplay. Also, the film "Zoya" was awarded Stalin Prize I degree, received it Leo Arnstam(producer), Galina Vodyanitskaya(performer of the role of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and Alexander Shelenkov(cameraman).
Only recently, researchers found that in a dozen European concentration camps, the Nazis forced female prisoners to engage in prostitution in special brothels, writes Vladimir Ginda in the column Archive in issue 31 of the magazine Correspondent dated August 9, 2013.
Torment and death or prostitution - before such a choice, the Nazis put Europeans and Slavs who ended up in concentration camps. Of the few hundred girls who chose the second option, the administration staffed brothels in ten camps - not only in those where prisoners were used as labor, but also in others aimed at mass destruction.
In Soviet and modern European historiography, this topic did not actually exist, only a couple of American scientists - Wendy Gertjensen and Jessica Hughes - raised some aspects of the problem in their scientific works.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the German culturologist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sexual conveyors.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the German culturologist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about the sexual conveyors that operated in the horrendous conditions of German concentration camps and death factories.
The result of nine years of research was the book published by Sommer in 2009 Brothel in a concentration camp which shocked European readers. On the basis of this work, an exhibition was organized in Berlin, Sex Work in Concentration Camps.
Bed motivation
“Legalized sex” appeared in Nazi concentration camps in 1942. The SS men organized brothels in ten institutions, among which were mainly the so-called labor camps - in the Austrian Mauthausen and its branch Gusen, the German Flossenburg, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen and Dora-Mittelbau. In addition, the institute of forced prostitutes was also introduced in three death camps intended for the extermination of prisoners: in the Polish Auschwitz-Auschwitz and its “satellite” Monowitz, as well as in the German Dachau.
The idea of creating camp brothels belonged to the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The researchers' data suggests that he was impressed by the incentive system used in Soviet forced labor camps to increase inmate productivity.
Imperial War Museum
One of his barracks in Ravensbrück, Nazi Germany's largest women's concentration camp
Himmler decided to adopt the experience, along the way adding to the list of “incentives” something that was not in the Soviet system - “encouraging” prostitution. The SS chief was convinced that the right to visit a brothel, along with other bonuses - cigarettes, cash or camp vouchers, improved rations - could make the prisoners work harder and better.
In fact, the right to visit such establishments was predominantly held by camp guards from among the prisoners. And there is a logical explanation for this: most of the male prisoners were exhausted, so they did not think about any sexual attraction.
Hughes points out that the proportion of male prisoners who used the services of brothels was extremely small. In Buchenwald, according to her data, where about 12.5 thousand people were kept in September 1943, 0.77% of prisoners visited the public barracks in three months. A similar situation was in Dachau, where, as of September 1944, 0.75% of the 22 thousand prisoners who were there used the services of prostitutes.
heavy share
At the same time, up to two hundred sex slaves worked in brothels. Most of the women, two dozen, were kept in a brothel in Auschwitz.
Brothel workers were exclusively female prisoners, usually attractive, between the ages of 17 and 35. About 60-70% of them were of German origin, from among those whom the Reich authorities called "anti-social elements." Some were engaged in prostitution before entering the concentration camps, so they agreed to similar work, but already behind barbed wire, without any problems and even passed on their skills to inexperienced colleagues.
Approximately a third of the sex slaves the SS recruited from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belarusians. Jewish women were not allowed to do such work, and Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit brothels.
These workers wore special insignia - black triangles sewn on the sleeves of their robes.
Approximately a third of the sex slaves the SS recruited from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belarusians
Some of the girls voluntarily agreed to “work”. So, one former employee of the Ravensbrück medical unit - the largest female concentration camp in the Third Reich, where up to 130 thousand people were kept - recalled: some women voluntarily went to a brothel, because they were promised release after six months of work.
Spaniard Lola Casadel, a member of the Resistance movement, who ended up in the same camp in 1944, told how the headman of their barracks announced: “Whoever wants to work in a brothel, come to me. And remember: if there are no volunteers, we will have to resort to force.”
The threat was not empty: as Sheina Epshtein, a Jewish woman from the Kaunas ghetto, recalled, in the camp the inhabitants of the women's barracks lived in constant fear of the guards, who regularly raped the prisoners. The raids were made at night: drunken men walked along the bunks with flashlights, choosing the most beautiful victim.
“Their joy knew no bounds when they discovered that the girl was a virgin. Then they laughed out loud and called their colleagues,” Epstein said.
Having lost honor, and even the will to fight, some girls went to brothels, realizing that this was their last hope for survival.
“The most important thing is that we managed to break out of [the camps] Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück,” Liselotte B., a former prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, said about her “bed career”. “The main thing was to somehow survive.”
With Aryan meticulousness
After the initial selection, the workers were brought to special barracks in those concentration camps where they were planned to be used. To bring the emaciated prisoners into a more or less decent appearance, they were placed in the infirmary. There, paramedics in SS uniform gave them calcium injections, they took disinfectant baths, ate, and even sunbathed under quartz lamps.
There was no sympathy in all this, but only calculation: the bodies were prepared for hard work. As soon as the rehabilitation cycle ended, the girls became part of the sex assembly line. Work was daily, rest - only if there was no light or water, if an air raid alert was announced, or during the broadcast of speeches by the German leader Adolf Hitler on the radio.
The conveyor worked like clockwork and strictly on schedule. For example, in Buchenwald, prostitutes got up at 7:00 and took care of themselves until 19:00: they had breakfast, did exercises, underwent daily medical examinations, washed and cleaned, and dined. By camp standards, there was so much food that prostitutes even exchanged food for clothes and other things. Everything ended with dinner, and from seven in the evening the two-hour work began. Camp prostitutes could not go out to see her only if they had “these days” or they fell ill.
AP
Women and children in one of the barracks of the Bergen-Belsen camp, liberated by the British
The very procedure for providing intimate services, starting from the selection of men, was as detailed as possible. Mostly the so-called camp functionaries could get a woman - internees who were engaged in internal security and guards from among the prisoners.
Moreover, at first the doors of brothels were opened exclusively to the Germans or representatives of the peoples living on the territory of the Reich, as well as to the Spaniards and Czechs. Later, the circle of visitors was expanded - only Jews, Soviet prisoners of war and ordinary internees were excluded from it. For example, visit logs of a brothel in Mauthausen, meticulously kept by administration officials, show that 60% of the clients were criminals.
Men who wanted to indulge in carnal pleasures first had to get permission from the camp leadership. After that, they bought an entrance ticket for two Reichsmarks - this is slightly less than the cost of 20 cigarettes sold in the dining room. Of this amount, a quarter went to the woman herself, and only if she was German.
In the camp brothel, clients, first of all, found themselves in the waiting room, where their data was verified. Then they underwent a medical examination and received prophylactic injections. Next, the visitor was told the number of the room where he should go. There the intercourse took place. Only the “missionary position” was allowed. Conversations were not welcome.
Here is how one of the “concubines” kept there, Magdalena Walter, describes the work of a brothel in Buchenwald: “We had one bathroom with a toilet, where women went to wash themselves before the next visitor arrived. Immediately after washing, the client appeared. Everything worked like a conveyor; men were not allowed to stay in the room for more than 15 minutes.”
During the evening, the prostitute, according to the surviving documents, took 6-15 people.
body in action
Legalized prostitution was beneficial to the authorities. So, in Buchenwald alone, in the first six months of operation, the brothel earned 14-19 thousand Reichsmarks. The money went to the account of the German Economic Policy Department.
The Germans used women not only as an object of sexual pleasure, but also as scientific material. The inhabitants of the brothels carefully monitored hygiene, because any venereal disease could cost them their lives: infected prostitutes in the camps were not treated, but experiments were performed on them.
Imperial War Museum
Liberated prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen camp
The scientists of the Reich did this, fulfilling the will of Hitler: even before the war, he called syphilis one of the most dangerous diseases in Europe, capable of leading to disaster. The Fuhrer believed that only those peoples who would find a way to quickly cure the disease would be saved. For the sake of obtaining a miracle cure, the SS men turned infected women into living laboratories. However, they did not remain alive for long - intensive experiments quickly led the prisoners to a painful death.
Researchers have found a number of cases where even healthy prostitutes were given to be torn to pieces by sadistic doctors.
Pregnant women were not spared in the camps either. In some places they were immediately killed, in some places they were artificially interrupted, and after five weeks they were again sent “into service”. Moreover, abortions were performed on different terms and in many ways - and this also became part of the research. Some prisoners were allowed to give birth, but only in order to experimentally determine how long a baby could live without food.
Despicable Prisoners
According to the former prisoner of Buchenwald, Dutchman Albert van Dijk, other prisoners despised the camp prostitutes, not paying attention to the fact that they were forced to go “on the panel” by cruel conditions of detention and an attempt to save their lives. And the very work of the inhabitants of brothels was akin to daily repeated rape.
Some of the women, even being in a brothel, tried to defend their honor. For example, Walter came to Buchenwald as a virgin and, being in the role of a prostitute, tried to protect herself from the first client with scissors. The attempt failed, and, according to the records, on the same day, the former virgin satisfied six men. Walter endured this because she knew that otherwise she would face a gas chamber, a crematorium or a barracks for cruel experiments.
Not everyone was strong enough to survive the violence. Some of the inhabitants of the camp brothels, according to researchers, took their own lives, some lost their minds. Some survived, but remained a prisoner of psychological problems for life. Physical liberation did not relieve them of the burden of the past, and after the war, camp prostitutes were forced to hide their history. Therefore, scientists have collected little documented evidence of life in these brothels.
"It's one thing to say 'I worked as a carpenter' or 'I built roads' and quite another to say 'I was forced to work as a prostitute,'" says Inza Eshebach, director of the memorial at the former Ravensbrück camp.
This material was published in issue 31 of the Korrespondent magazine dated August 9, 2013. Reprinting of publications of the Korrespondent magazine in full is prohibited. The rules for using the materials of the Korrespondent magazine published on the Korrespondent.net website can be found .
Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kyiv, were collected for transfer to a prisoner of war camp, August 1941:
The dress code of many girls is semi-military-semi-civilian, which is typical for initial stage war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniforms and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left is a dull captured artillery lieutenant, perhaps the “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” (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1190, fol. 110). 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 was shot - a military doctor (Archive Yad Vashem. M-37/178, fol. 17.).
- In Mglinsk Bryansk region in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them (Archive of Yad Vashem. M-33/482, fol. 16.).
- After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the Mayak fishing village near Kerch, an unknown girl was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko military uniform. 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 (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/60, fol. 38.).
- At the end of August 1942, a group of sailors was shot in the village of Krymskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among them there were several girls in military uniform (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/303, l 115.).
- In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Alexandrovna, 1923. Born in the village of Novo-Romanovka (Archive of Yad Vashem. M-33/309, fol. 51.).
- In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/295, fol. 5.).
- 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 abuse, all those captured were shot. (Archive of Yad Vashem. M-33/302, fol. 32.).
It seems that the "Hans" do not look evil ... Although - who knows? Completely at war ordinary people often they 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 ... » (P. Rafes. Then they had not yet repented. From the Notes of the translator of divisional intelligence. "Spark". Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.)
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.” (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, fol. 94–95.).
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 did not kill (Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - "Spark". M., 1998. No. 6.).
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” (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, fol. 11.).
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. (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/230, fol. 38,53,94; M-37/1191, fol. 26.).
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 can 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 right photo (September 1941, again near Kyiv -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her hand in captivity; an unprecedented thing, a watch is the optimal camp currency!) Do not look desperate or exhausted. Captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... A staged photo, or did they really get a relatively humane camp commandant 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 (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, testimonies. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.).
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: “Policemen often looked into this barrack. 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, the 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 red hot pepper big size, twisted it and inserted the girl into the vagina. Left in this position for half an hour. Shouting was forbidden. Many girls had bitten lips - they were holding back their screams, and after such a punishment they for a long time couldn't move.
The commandant, behind her back they called her a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated mockeries. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning.
We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman ” (S. M. Fisher. Memoirs. Manuscript. Author's archive.).
Women 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 German soldiers the hand is bandaged in the photo.
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.
K. Kromiadi, who visited the Sedlice camp in the autumn of 1941, was a member of the distribution commission work force, talked with 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" (K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany ... p. 197.).
A group of female medical workers taken prisoner in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord" (T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944 ... p. 143.).
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" (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/626, fol. 50–52. M-33/627, fol. 62–63.).
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 captured: doctors, nurses, nurses (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in the Nazi camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32–33.). 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 (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author 9.10.1992.).
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 (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author on 9.10.1992. 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). 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 a block - the older barracks. There was a washroom in the hallway (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. In the collection “Witnesses for the Prosecution”. L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Ravensbruck locksmith team. Memoirs of a prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.).
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. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women. (Women of Ravensbruck. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.).
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. (Voices. Memoirs of prisoners of the Nazi camps. M., 1994, p. 164.).
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2–3 boiled potatoes. In the evening they received a small loaf of bread for five people mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win ... p. 160.).
The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is evidenced in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, S. Müller: of the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they are to be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp) 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...
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. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance” (Sh. Müller. Ravensbrück locksmith team… pp. 51–52.).
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, in 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. (Women of Ravensbrück… p.127.).
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 (G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol fortress. Simferopol. 1965, p. 82–83.).
Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win ... p. 187.).
And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by unknown author (N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In Sat.: In Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk. 1958, p. 84.):
Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Above your head, be bold!
We don't have long to endure.
The nightingale will fly in the spring ...
And open the door for us to freedom,
Takes the striped dress off her shoulders
And heal deep wounds
Wipe the tears from swollen eyes.
Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
Not long to wait, not long -
And we will be on Russian soil.
Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their solidarity was explained by the fact that they had gone through army school even before being captured. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - benevolent and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebelliousness, unwillingness to obey the Germans " (Voices, pp. 74–5.).
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 (A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war ... p. 62.).
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 (A. Nikiforova. This should not happen again. M., 1958, p. 6–11.).
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 (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head ... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.).
Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between prisoners of war men and women was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, sometimes love was born, bestowing new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
So, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “the nurse Sindeva Aleksandra, who arrived at the City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp” (Yad Vashem archive. M-33/438 part II, fol. 127.).
Probably one of the last photographs of Soviet female soldiers captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:
Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - "For Courage" (dark edging on the block), the second may have "BZ". There is an opinion that these are pilots, but 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. (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener… S. 153.).
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. (A. Nikiforova. This should not happen again ... p. 106.).
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium, the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? » What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the Motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: "And this is for your homeland." There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman vigorously resisted, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the furnace. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener…. S. 153–154.). Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
