How the Nazis abused children in the Salaspils concentration camp. Women soldiers of the Red Army in German captivity

Illustration copyright BBC World Service

A remarkable book is going on sale in Russia - the diary of Soviet Army officer Vladimir Gelfand, in which the bloody everyday life of the Great Patriotic War is described without embellishment or cuts.

Some believe that a critical approach to the past is unethical or simply unacceptable, given the heroic sacrifices and deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens.

Others believe that future generations should know the true horrors of war and deserve to see the unvarnished picture.

BBC correspondent Lucy Ash I tried to understand some little-known pages of the history of the last world war.

Some of the facts and circumstances described in her article may be inappropriate for children.

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It's getting dark in Treptower Park on the outskirts of Berlin. I look at the monument to the liberator warrior towering above me against the background of the sunset sky.

A 12-meter tall soldier standing on the ruins of a swastika holds a sword in one hand, and a little German girl sits on his other hand.

Five thousand of the 80 thousand Soviet soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin between April 16 and May 2, 1945 are buried here.

The colossal proportions of this monument reflect the scale of the victims. At the top of the pedestal, reached by a long staircase, is the entrance to the memorial hall, illuminated like a religious shrine.

My attention was drawn to an inscription reminding me that Soviet people saved European civilization from fascism.

But for some in Germany, this memorial is an occasion for other memories.

Soviet soldiers raped countless women on the way to Berlin, but it was rarely talked about after the war - in both East and West Germany. And in Russia today few people talk about this.

Diary of Vladimir Gelfand

Many Russian media regularly dismiss rape stories as myths concocted in the West, but one of the many sources that has told us what happened is the diary of a Soviet officer.

Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand, a young Jew originally from Ukraine, kept his notes with extraordinary sincerity from 1941 until the end of the war, despite the then ban on keeping diaries in the Soviet army.

His son Vitaly, who allowed me to read the manuscript, found the diary when he was sorting through his father’s papers after his death. The diary was available online, but is now being published in Russia for the first time in book form. Two abridged editions of the diary were published in Germany and Sweden.

The diary tells of the lack of order and discipline in the regular troops: meager rations, lice, routine anti-Semitism and endless theft. As he says, the soldiers even stole the boots of their comrades.

In February 1945, Gelfand's military unit was based near the Oder River, preparing for an attack on Berlin. He recalls how his comrades surrounded and captured a German women's battalion.

“The day before yesterday, a women’s battalion operated on the left flank. It was completely defeated, and the captured German cats declared themselves avengers for their husbands who died at the front. I don’t know what they did with them, but the scoundrels should have been executed mercilessly,” wrote Vladimir Gelfand.

One of Gelfand's most revealing stories dates back to April 25, when he was already in Berlin. There Gelfand rode a bicycle for the first time in his life. Driving along the banks of the Spree River, he saw a group of women dragging their suitcases and bundles somewhere.

“I asked the German women where they lived, in broken German, and inquired why they left their home, and they spoke with horror about the grief that the frontline leaders had caused them on the first night the Red Army arrived here,” writes the diarist. .

“They poked here,” explained the beautiful German woman, lifting up her skirt, “all night, and there were so many of them. I was a girl,” she sighed and began to cry. “They ruined my youth. Among them were old, pimply, and they all climbed on They all poked me. There were at least twenty of them, yes, yes,” and she burst into tears.”

“They raped my daughter in front of me,” the poor mother interjected, “they can still come and rape my girl again.” Everyone was horrified by this again, and a bitter sob swept from corner to corner of the basement where the owners brought me. “Stay.” here,” the girl suddenly rushed to me, “you will sleep with me.” You can do whatever you want with me, but only you!” Gelfand writes in his diary.

"The hour of revenge has struck!"

German soldiers had by then stained themselves on Soviet territory with the heinous crimes they had committed for almost four years.

Vladimir Gelfand encountered evidence of these crimes as his unit fought its way towards Germany.

“When every day there is murder, every day there is injury, when they pass through villages destroyed by the Nazis... Dad has a lot of descriptions where villages were destroyed, even children, small Jewish children were destroyed... Even one-year-olds, two-year-olds... And this was not for some time, but for years. People walked and saw this. And they walked with one goal - to take revenge and kill,” says Vladimir Gelfand’s son Vitaly.

Vitaly Gelfand discovered this diary after his father’s death.

The Wehrmacht, as Nazi ideologists assumed, was a well-organized force of Aryans who would not stoop to sexual contact with the “Untermensch” (“subhumans”).

But this ban was ignored, says Oleg Budnitsky, a historian at the Higher School of Economics.

The German command was so concerned about the spread of venereal diseases among the troops that it organized a network of army brothels in the occupied territories.

It is difficult to find direct evidence of how German soldiers treated Russian women. Many victims simply did not survive.

But at the German-Russian Museum in Berlin, its director Jörg Morre showed me a photograph from the personal album of a German soldier, taken in Crimea.

The photograph shows the body of a woman sprawled on the ground.

"It looks like she was killed during or after a rape. Her skirt is hiked up and her hands are covering her face," says the museum director.

“This is a shocking photo. We had a debate in the museum about whether such photographs should be exhibited. This is war, this is sexual violence in the Soviet Union under the Germans. We show the war. We don’t talk about the war, but show it,” says Jörg Morre .

When the Red Army entered the “lair of the fascist beast,” as the Soviet press called Berlin at the time, posters encouraged the rage of the soldiers: “Soldier, you are on German soil. The hour of revenge has struck!”

The political department of the 19th Army, which was advancing towards Berlin along the Baltic Sea coast, announced that a real Soviet soldier was so full of hatred that the thought of sexual contact with German women would be disgusting to him. But this time too, the soldiers proved that their ideologists were wrong.

Historian Antony Beevor, while researching for his 2002 book Berlin: The Fall, found reports in the Russian state archives of an epidemic of sexual violence in Germany. These reports were sent by NKVD officers to Lavrentiy Beria at the end of 1944.

“They were passed on to Stalin,” says Beevor. “You can see by the marks whether they were read or not. They report mass rapes in East Prussia and how German women tried to kill themselves and their children to avoid this fate."

"Dungeon Dwellers"

Another wartime diary, kept by the fiancée of a German soldier, tells how some women adapted to this horrific situation in an attempt to survive.

Since April 20, 1945, the unnamed woman has been penning down on paper observations that are merciless in their honesty, insightful and sometimes tinged with gallows humor.

Her neighbors include “a young man in gray trousers and thick-rimmed glasses, who on closer inspection turns out to be a woman,” and three elderly sisters, she writes, “all three of them dressmakers, huddled together in one big black pudding.”

While waiting for the approaching units of the Red Army, women joked: “It’s better to have a Russian on me than a Yankee above me,” meaning that it would be better to be raped than to die in a carpet bombing by American aircraft.

But when soldiers entered their basement and tried to get the women out, they began begging the diarist to use her knowledge of Russian to complain to the Soviet command.

On the streets turned into ruins, she manages to find a Soviet officer. He shrugs. Despite Stalin's decree prohibiting violence against civilians, he says, "it still happens."

Nevertheless, the officer goes down with her to the basement and scolds the soldiers. But one of them is beside himself with anger. “What are you talking about? Look what the Germans did to our women!” he shouts. “They took my sister and...” The officer calms him down and takes the soldiers outside.

But when the diarist goes out into the corridor to check whether they have left or not, she is grabbed by the waiting soldiers and brutally raped, almost strangling her. The terrified neighbors, or “dungeon dwellers” as she calls them, are hiding in the basement, locking the door behind them.

“Finally, two iron bolts opened. Everyone was staring at me,” she writes. “My stockings are pulled down, my hands are holding the remains of the belt. I begin to shout: “You pigs!” I was raped here twice in a row, and you leave me lying here like a piece of dirt!"

She finds an officer from Leningrad with whom she shares a bed. Gradually, the relationship between the aggressor and the victim becomes less cruel, more reciprocal and ambiguous. The German woman and the Soviet officer even discuss literature and the meaning of life.

“In no way can one say that the major is raping me,” she writes. “Why am I doing this? For bacon, sugar, candles, canned meat? To some extent, I’m sure that’s true. But besides, I like Major, and the less he wants to get from me as a man, the more I like him as a person."

Many of her neighbors made similar deals with the victors of defeated Berlin.

When the diary was published in Germany in 1959 under the title "Woman in Berlin," the frank account sparked a wave of accusations that it had besmirched the honor of German women. It is not surprising that the author, anticipating this, demanded that the diary not be published again until her death.

Eisenhower: shoot on sight

Rape was not just a problem for the Red Army.

Bob Lilly, a historian at Northern Kentucky University, was able to gain access to US military court records.

His book (Taken by Force) caused so much controversy that at first no American publisher dared to publish it, and the first edition appeared in France.

Lilly estimates that about 14,000 rapes were committed by American soldiers in England, France and Germany from 1942 to 1945.

“There were very few cases of rape in England, but as soon as American soldiers crossed the English Channel, the number increased dramatically,” says Lilly.

According to him, rape has become a problem not only of image, but also of army discipline. "Eisenhower said shoot soldiers on sight and report executions in war newspapers like Stars and Stripes. Germany was the peak of this phenomenon," he says.

Were soldiers executed for rape?

But not in Germany?

No. Not a single soldier was executed for raping or killing German citizens, Lilly admits.

Today, historians continue to investigate sexual crimes committed by Allied troops in Germany.

For many years, the topic of sexual violence by Allied troops - American, British, French and Soviet soldiers - was officially hushed up in Germany. Few people reported this, and even fewer were willing to listen to all this.

Silence

It’s not easy to talk about such things in society in general. Moreover, in East Germany it was considered almost blasphemy to criticize Soviet heroes who defeated fascism.

And in West Germany, the guilt that Germans felt for the crimes of Nazism overshadowed the theme of the suffering of this people.

But in 2008, in Germany, based on the diary of a Berlin resident, the film “Nameless - One Woman in Berlin” was released with actress Nina Hoss in the title role.

The film was an eye-opener for Germans and encouraged many women to speak out about what happened to them. Among these women is Ingeborg Bullert.

Now 90, Ingeborg lives in Hamburg in an apartment full of photographs of cats and books about the theater. In 1945, she was 20. She dreamed of becoming an actress and lived with her mother on a rather fashionable street in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin.

When did it start Soviet offensive on the city, she hid in the basement of her house, like the author of the diary “Woman in Berlin”.

“Suddenly, tanks appeared on our street, the bodies of Russian and German soldiers were lying everywhere,” she recalls. “I remember the terrifying, drawn-out sound of falling Russian bombs. We called them Stalinorgels (“Stalin’s organs”).”

One day, during a break between bombings, Ingeborg crawled out of the basement and ran upstairs to get a rope, which she used for a lamp wick.

“Suddenly I saw two Russians pointing guns at me,” she says. “One of them forced me to take off my clothes and raped me. Then they switched places and the other one raped me. I thought I was going to die, that they were going to kill me.”

Then Ingeborg did not talk about what happened to her. She kept quiet about it for decades because talking about it would be too difficult. “My mother liked to brag that her daughter was untouched,” she recalls.

Wave of abortions

But many women in Berlin were raped. Ingeborg recalls that immediately after the war, women between 15 and 55 years of age were ordered to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

“In order to get ration cards, you needed a medical certificate, and I remember that all the doctors who issued them had waiting rooms full of women,” she recalls.

What was the actual scale of the rapes? The most often cited figures are 100 thousand women in Berlin and two million throughout Germany. These figures, hotly disputed, were extrapolated from the scant medical records that survive to this day.

At a former military plant that now houses the state archives, employee Martin Luchterhand shows me a stack of blue cardboard folders.

In Germany at that time, abortion was prohibited under Article 218 of the criminal code. But Luchterhand says there was a short period of time after the war when women were allowed to terminate their pregnancies. A special situation was associated with mass rapes in 1945.

From June 1945 to 1946, 995 abortion requests were approved in this area of ​​Berlin alone. Folders contain more than a thousand pages different color and size. One of the girls writes in round, childish handwriting that she was raped at home, in the living room, in front of her parents.

Bread instead of revenge

For some soldiers, once they got tipsy, women became trophies like watches or bicycles. But others behaved completely differently. In Moscow, I met 92-year-old veteran Yuri Lyashenko, who remembers how, instead of taking revenge, soldiers distributed bread to the Germans.

“Of course, we couldn’t feed everyone, right? And what we had, we shared with the children. Little children are so frightened, their eyes are so scary... I feel sorry for the children,” he recalls.

In a jacket hung with orders and medals, Yuri Lyashenko invites me to his small apartment on the top floor of a multi-story building and treats me to cognac and boiled eggs.

He tells me that he wanted to become an engineer, but was drafted into the army and, like Vladimir Gelfand, went through the entire war to Berlin.

Pouring cognac into glasses, he proposes a toast to peace. Toasts for peace often sound rote, but here you feel that the words come from the heart.

We talk about the beginning of the war, when his leg was almost amputated, and how he felt when he saw the red flag over the Reichstag. After some time, I decide to ask him about rape.

“I don’t know, our unit didn’t have this... Of course, obviously, such cases depended on the person himself, on the people,” says the war veteran. “You’ll come across one like that... One will help, and the other will abuse... On his face It’s not written, you don’t know it.”

Look back in time

We will probably never know the true extent of rape. Materials from Soviet military tribunals and many other documents remain closed. Recently The State Duma approved the law “on encroachment on historical memory”, according to which anyone who belittles the contribution of the USSR to the victory over fascism can earn a fine and up to five years in prison.

Vera Dubina, a young historian at the Humanitarian University in Moscow, says she knew nothing about these rapes until she received a scholarship to study in Berlin. After studying in Germany, she wrote a paper on this topic, but was unable to publish it.

“The Russian media reacted very aggressively,” she says. “People only want to know about our glorious victory in the Great Patriotic War, and now it is becoming increasingly difficult to conduct serious research."

History is often rewritten to suit the circumstances. This is why eyewitness accounts are so important. Testimonies of those who dared to speak on this topic now, in old age, and the stories of then young people who recorded their testimonies about what was happening during the war years.

“If people don’t want to know the truth, want to be mistaken and want to talk about how beautiful and noble everything was, this is stupid, this is self-deception,” he reminds. “The whole world understands this, and Russia understands this. And even those who stand behind these laws about the distortion of the past, they also understand. We cannot move into the future until we deal with the past."

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Note.This material was amended on September 25 and 28, 2015. We have removed the captions for two photographs, as well as the Twitter posts based on them. They do not meet the BBC's editorial standards and we understand that many found them offensive. We sincerely apologize.

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

What is a concentration camp?

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

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

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

Life in the camp

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

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

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

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

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

Camp diet

Typically the daily ration in the camp was as follows:

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

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

List of concentration camps in different countries

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

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

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

Salaspils

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

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

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

Experiments on children

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

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

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

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

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

Ravensbrück

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald

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

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

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

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

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

Small camp of Buchenwald

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

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

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

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

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

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

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

In development of the topic and in addition to the article Elena Senyavskaya, posted on the website on May 10, 2012, we bring to the attention of readers a new article by the same author, published in the magazine

At the final stage of the Great Patriotic War, having liberated Soviet territory occupied by the Germans and their satellites and pursuing the retreating enemy, the Red Army crossed the state border of the USSR. From that moment on, her victorious path began across the countries of Europe - both those that languished under fascist occupation for six years, and those who acted as an ally of the Third Reich in this war, and across the territory of Hitler’s Germany itself. During this advance to the West and the inevitable various contacts with the local population, Soviet military personnel, who had never been outside their own country before, received many new, very contradictory impressions about representatives of other peoples and cultures, which later formed the ethnopsychological stereotypes of their perception of Europeans . Among these impressions, the most important place was occupied by the image of European women. Mentions, and even detailed stories about them, are found in letters and diaries, on the pages of memoirs of many war participants, where lyrical and cynical assessments and intonations most often alternate.

The first European country to be entered by the Red Army in August 1944 was Romania. In “Notes on the War” by front-line poet Boris Slutsky we find very frank lines: “Suddenly, almost pushed into the sea, Constanta opens up. It almost coincides with the average dream of happiness and “after the war.” Restaurants. Bathrooms. Beds with clean linen. Stalls with reptilian sellers. And - women, smart city women - girls of Europe - the first tribute we took from the vanquished...” Then he describes his first impressions of “abroad”: “European hairdressing salons, where they soap their fingers and do not wash their brushes, the absence of a bathhouse, washing from the basin, “where first the dirt from your hands remains, and then your face is washed”, feather beds instead of blankets - out of disgust caused by everyday life, immediate generalizations were made... In Constance, we first encountered brothels... Our first delight at the fact of the existence of free love quickly passes. It’s not only the fear of infection and the high cost, but also contempt for the very possibility of buying a person... Many were proud of stories like: a Romanian husband complains to the commandant’s office that our officer did not pay his wife the agreed upon one and a half thousand lei. Everyone had a clear consciousness: “This is impossible here”... Probably, our soldiers will remember Romania as a country of syphilitics...” And he concludes that it was in Romania, this European backwater, that “our soldier most of all felt his elevation above Europe.”

Another Soviet officer, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Fyodor Smolnikov, wrote down his impressions of Bucharest on September 17, 1944 in his diary: “Ambassador Hotel, restaurant, ground floor. I see the idle public walking around, they have nothing to do, they are biding their time. They look at me like I'm a rarity. “Russian officer!!!” I am dressed very modestly, more than modestly. Let be. We will still be in Budapest. This is as true as the fact that I am in Bucharest. First class restaurant. The audience is dressed up, the most beautiful Romanian women stare provocatively (Hereinafter, it is emphasized by the author of the article). We spend the night in a first-class hotel. The capital's street is seething. There is no music, the audience is waiting. The capital, damn it! I will not give in to advertising..."

In Hungary, the Soviet army faced not only armed resistance, but also insidious stabs in the back from the population, when they “killed drunks and lone stragglers in the villages” and drowned them in silos. However, “women, not as depraved as the Romanians, gave in with shameful ease... A little love, a little dissipation, and most of all, of course, fear helped.” Quoting the words of one Hungarian lawyer: “It’s very good that Russians love children so much. It’s too bad that they love women so much,” Boris Slutsky comments: “He did not take into account that Hungarian women also loved Russians, that along with the dark fear that parted the knees of matrons and mothers of families, there was the tenderness of the girls and the desperate tenderness of the soldiers who gave themselves up to the murderers their husbands."

Grigory Chukhrai in his memoirs described such a case in Hungary. His part was stationed in one place. The owners of the house where he and the fighters were located, during the feast, “under the influence of Russian vodka, they relaxed and admitted that they were hiding their daughter in the attic.” The Soviet officers were indignant: “Who do you take us for? We are not fascists! “The owners were ashamed, and soon a lean girl named Mariyka appeared at the table and greedily began to eat. Then, having gotten used to it, she began to flirt and even ask us questions... By the end of dinner, everyone was in a friendly mood and drank to “borotshaz” (friendship). Mariyka understood this toast too straightforwardly. When we went to bed, she appeared in my room wearing only her undershirt. As a Soviet officer, I immediately realized: a provocation was being prepared. “They hope that I will be seduced by the charms of Mariyka, and they will make a fuss. But I won’t give in to provocation,” I thought. And Mariyka’s charms did not attract me - I showed her the door.

The next morning, the hostess, putting food on the table, rattled the dishes. “He’s nervous. The provocation failed!” - I thought. I shared this thought with our Hungarian translator. He burst out laughing.

This is not a provocation! They expressed friendship to you, but you neglected it. Now you are not considered a person in this house. You need to move to another apartment!

Why did they hide their daughter in the attic?

They were afraid of violence. It is customary in our country that a girl, with the approval of her parents, can experience intimacy with many men before getting married. They say here: you don’t buy a cat in a tied bag...”

Young, physically healthy men had a natural attraction to women. But the ease of European morals corrupted some of the Soviet fighters, and convinced others, on the contrary, that relationships should not be reduced to simple physiology. Sergeant Alexander Rodin wrote down his impressions of the visit - out of curiosity! - a brothel in Budapest, where part of it stood for some time after the end of the war: “...After leaving, a disgusting, shameful feeling of lies and falsehood arose, the picture of the woman’s obvious, blatant pretense could not escape my mind... It is interesting that such an unpleasant aftertaste from visiting a brothel remained not only with me, a young man who was also brought up on principles like “not to give a kiss without love, but also with most of our soldiers with whom I had to talk... Around the same days I had to talk with one a beautiful Magyar woman (she somehow knew Russian). When she asked if I liked it in Budapest, I replied that I liked it, but the brothels were embarrassing. "But why?" - asked the girl. Because it’s unnatural, wild,” I explained: “the woman takes the money and then immediately begins to “love!” The girl thought for a while, then nodded in agreement and said: “You’re right: it’s not nice to take money in advance...”

Poland left a different impression. According to the poet David Samoilov, “...in Poland they kept us strict. It was difficult to escape from the location. And pranks were severely punished.” And he gives impressions of this country, where the only positive aspect was the beauty of Polish women. “I can’t say that we liked Poland very much,” he wrote. “Then I didn’t see anything noble or knightly in her.” On the contrary, everything was petty-bourgeois, peasant - both concepts and interests. Yes, and in eastern Poland they looked at us warily and semi-hostilely, trying to rip off what they could from the liberators. However, the women were comfortingly beautiful and flirtatious, they captivated us with their mannerisms, cooing speech, where everything suddenly became clear, and they themselves were sometimes captivated by the rough male strength or the soldier’s uniform. And their pale, emaciated former admirers, gritting their teeth, went into the shadows for the time being...”

But not all assessments of Polish women looked so romantic. On October 22, 1944, junior lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand wrote in his diary: “The city I left with the Polish name [Vladov] loomed in the distance. with beautiful Polish girls, proud to the point of disgust . ... They told me about Polish women: they lured our soldiers and officers into their arms, and when it came to bed, they cut off their penises with a razor, strangled them by the throat with their hands, and scratched their eyes. Crazy, wild, ugly females! You need to be careful with them and not get carried away by their beauty. And the Polish women are beautiful, they are scoundrels.” However, there are other moods in his records. On October 24, he records the following meeting: “Today my companions to one of the villages turned out to be beautiful Polish girls. They complained about the lack of guys in Poland. They also called me “sir”, but they were inviolable. I patted one of them gently on the shoulder, in response to her remark about men, and consoled her with the thought of the road to Russia being open to her - there were a lot of men there. She hurried to step aside, and in response to my words she replied that there would be men for her here too. We said goodbye with a handshake. So we didn’t come to an agreement, but they’re nice girls, even though they’re Polish.” A month later, on November 22, he wrote down his impressions of the first large Polish city he met, Minsk-Mazowiecki, and among the descriptions of architectural beauty and the number of bicycles that amazed him among all categories of the population, he gave a special place to the townspeople: “A noisy idle crowd, women, as one, in white special hats, apparently worn by the wind, which make them look like forties and surprise them with their novelty. Men in triangular caps and hats are fat, neat, empty. How many of them! ... Painted lips, penciled eyebrows, affectation, excessive delicacy . How different this is from natural human life. It seems that people themselves live and move specifically just to be looked at by others, and everyone will disappear when the last viewer leaves the city...”

Not only Polish city women, but also village women left a strong, albeit contradictory, impression of themselves. “I was amazed by the love of life of the Poles who survived the horrors of war and German occupation, recalled Alexander Rodin. – Sunday afternoon in a Polish village. Beautiful, elegant, in silk dresses and stockings, Polish women, who on weekdays are ordinary peasant women, rake manure, barefoot, and work tirelessly around the house. Older women also look fresh and young. Although there are black frames around the eyes...“He further quotes his diary entry from November 5, 1944: “Sunday, the residents are all dressed up. They are going to visit each other. Men in felt hats, ties, jumpers. Women in silk dresses, bright, unworn stockings. Pink-cheeked girls are “panenki”. Beautifully curled blonde hairstyles... The soldiers in the corner of the hut are also animated. But anyone who is sensitive will notice that this is a painful revival. Everyone laughs loudly to show that they don’t care, don’t even care at all, and aren’t envious at all. What are we, worse than them? The devil knows what happiness this is - a peaceful life! After all, I haven’t seen her at all in civilian life!” His fellow soldier, Sergeant Nikolai Nesterov, wrote in his diary that same day: “Today is a day off, the Poles, beautifully dressed, gather in one hut and sit in couples. It even makes you feel a little uneasy. Wouldn’t I be able to sit like that?..”

Soldier Galina Yartseva is much more merciless in her assessment of “European morals,” reminiscent of a “feast during the plague.” On February 24, 1945, she wrote to a friend from the front: “...If it were possible, we could send wonderful parcels of their captured items. There is something. This would be our barefoot and undressed people. What cities I saw, what men and women. And looking at them, you are overcome by such evil, such hatred! They walk, they love, they live, and you go and free them. They laugh at the Russians - "Schwein!" Yes Yes! Bastards... I don’t like anyone except the USSR, except those peoples who live among us. I don’t believe in any friendships with Poles and other Lithuanians...”

In Austria, where Soviet troops invaded in the spring of 1945, they were faced with “general capitulation”: “Entire villages were ruled by white rags. Elderly women raised their hands when meeting a man in a Red Army uniform.” It was here, according to B. Slutsky, that the soldiers “got their hands on the fair-haired women.” At the same time, “the Austrians did not turn out to be overly intractable. The vast majority of peasant girls married “spoiled.” The vacationing soldiers felt like they had Christ in their bosom. In Vienna, our guide, a bank official, was amazed at the persistence and impatience of the Russians. He believed that gallantry was enough to get everything he wanted from Vienna.” That is, it was not only a matter of fear, but also certain features of the national mentality and traditional behavior.

And finally, Germany. And the women of the enemy - mothers, wives, daughters, sisters of those who, from 1941 to 1944, mocked the civilian population in the occupied territory of the USSR. How did Soviet soldiers see them? The appearance of German women walking in a crowd of refugees is described in the diary of Vladimir Bogomolov: “Women - old and young - in hats, scarves with a turban and just a canopy, like our women, in elegant coats with fur collars and in tattered, incomprehensible cut clothes . Many women wear sunglasses to avoid squinting from the bright May sun and thereby protect their faces from wrinkles...." Lev Kopelev recalled a meeting in Allenstein with evacuated Berliners: "There are two women on the sidewalk. Intricate hats, one even with a veil. Good-quality coats, and they themselves are smooth and well-groomed.” And he quoted soldiers’ comments about them: “chickens”, “turkeys”, “if only they were so smooth...”

How did the German women behave when meeting with Soviet troops? In the report of the deputy. Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. Alexandrov dated April 30, 1945 about the attitude of the civilian population of Berlin to the personnel of the Red Army troops said: “As soon as our units occupy one or another area of ​​the city, the residents They gradually begin to take to the streets, almost all of them have white bands on their sleeves. When meeting our military personnel, many women raise their hands up, cry and shake with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all what their fascist propaganda portrayed them to be, this fear quickly passes, more and more the population takes to the streets and offers their services, trying in every possible way to emphasize their loyal attitude to the Red Army.”

The winners were most impressed by the humility and prudence of the German women. In this regard, it is worth citing the story of mortarman N.A. Orlov, who was shocked by the behavior of German women in 1945: “No one in the Minbat killed German civilians. Our special officer was a “Germanophile”. If this happened, then the reaction of the punitive authorities to such an excess would be quick. Regarding violence against German women. It seems to me that when talking about this phenomenon, some people “exaggerate things” a little. I remember an example of a different kind. We went to some German city and settled in houses. “Frau,” about 45 years old, appears and asks for “Ger Commandant.” They brought her to Marchenko. She declares that she is in charge of the quarter, and has gathered 20 German women for sexual (!!!) service of Russian soldiers. Marchenko understood German, and to the political officer Dolgoborodov standing next to me, I translated the meaning of what the German woman said. The reaction of our officers was angry and abusive. The German woman was driven away, along with her “squad” ready for service. In general, the German submission stunned us. They expected it from the Germans guerrilla warfare, sabotage. But for this nation, order - "Ordnung" - is above all. If you are a winner, then they are “on their hind legs”, and consciously and not under duress. This is the psychology..."

David Samoilov cites a similar incident in his military notes: “In Arendsfeld, where we had just settled down, a small crowd of women with children appeared. They were led by a huge mustachioed German woman of about fifty - Frau Friedrich. She stated that she was a representative of the civilian population and asked to register the remaining residents. We replied that this could be done as soon as the commandant’s office appeared.

This is impossible,” said Frau Friedrich. - There are women and children here. They need to be registered.

The civilian population confirmed her words with screams and tears.

Not knowing what to do, I invited them to take the basement of the house where we were located. And they, reassured, went down to the basement and began to settle down there, waiting for the authorities.

“Herr Commissar,” Frau Friedrich told me complacently (I was wearing a leather jacket). “We understand that soldiers have small needs. “They are ready,” Frau Friedrich continued, “to give them several younger women for...

I did not continue the conversation with Frau Friedrich.”

After communicating with residents of Berlin on May 2, 1945, Vladimir Bogomolov wrote in his diary: “We are entering one of the surviving houses. Everything is quiet, dead. We knock and ask you to open it. You can hear whispering, muffled and excited conversations in the corridor. Finally the door opens. The ageless women, huddled in a tight group, bow fearfully, low and obsequiously. German women are afraid of us, they were told that Soviet soldiers, especially Asians, would rape and kill them... Fear and hatred are on their faces. But sometimes it seems that they like to be defeated - their behavior is so helpful, their smiles and words are so touching. These days there are stories in circulation about how our soldier entered a German apartment, asked for a drink, and the German woman, as soon as she saw him, lay down on the sofa and took off her tights.”

“All German women are depraved. They have nothing against being slept with." , - this opinion existed in Soviet troops and was supported not only by many clear examples, but also their unpleasant consequences, which military doctors soon discovered.

Directive of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00343/Ш dated April 15, 1945 stated: “During the presence of troops on enemy territory, cases of venereal diseases among military personnel increased sharply. A study of the reasons for this situation shows that sexually transmitted diseases are widespread among Germans. The Germans, before the retreat, and also now, in the territory we occupied, took the path of artificially infecting German women with syphilis and gonorrhoea in order to create large centers for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among Red Army soldiers».

The Military Council of the 47th Army reported on April 26, 1945 that “...In March, the number of sexually transmitted diseases among military personnel increased compared to February of this year. four times. ... The female part of the German population in the surveyed areas is affected by 8-15%. There are cases when the enemy deliberately leaves German women with venereal diseases behind to infect military personnel.”

To implement the Resolution of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 056 of April 18, 1945 on the prevention of venereal diseases in the troops of the 33rd Army, the following leaflet was issued:

“Comrade military personnel!

You are being seduced by German women whose husbands visited all the brothels in Europe, became infected themselves and infected their German women.

Before you are those German women who were specially left by the enemy to spread venereal diseases and thereby incapacitate the Red Army soldiers.

We must understand that our victory over the enemy is close and that soon you will have the opportunity to return to your families.

With what eyes will someone who brings a contagious disease look into the eyes of their loved ones?

Can we, warriors of the heroic Red Army, be the source of infectious diseases in our country? NO! For the moral image of a Red Army warrior must be as pure as the image of his Motherland and family!”

Even in the memoirs of Lev Kopelev, who angrily describes the facts of violence and looting by Soviet military personnel in East Prussia, there are lines that reflect the other side of the “relationships” with the local population: “They talked about the obedience, servility, ingratiation of the Germans: this is what they are like, for they sell a loaf of bread and their wives and daughters.” The disgusting tone in which Kopelev conveys these “stories” implies their unreliability. However, they are confirmed by many sources.

Vladimir Gelfand described in his diary his courtship of a German girl (the entry was made six months after the end of the war, on October 26, 1945, but still very typical): “I wanted to thoroughly enjoy the caresses of pretty Margot - kisses and hugs alone were not enough. I expected more, but did not dare to demand and insist. The girl's mother was pleased with me. Still would! At the altar of trust and favor from my relatives, I brought sweets and butter, sausage, and expensive German cigarettes. Already half of these products are enough to have complete grounds and the right to do anything with your daughter in front of the mother’s eyes, and she will not say anything against. For food today is more valuable than even life, and even such a young and sweet sensual woman as the gentle beauty Margot.”

Interesting diary entries were left by the Australian war correspondent Osmar White, who in 1944-1945. was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army under the command of George Paton. This is what he wrote down in Berlin in May 1945, literally a few days after the end of the assault: “I walked through the night cabarets, starting with Femina near Potsdammerplatz. It was a warm and humid evening. The smell of sewage and rotting corpses filled the air. The façade of Femina was covered with futuristic nudes and advertisements in four languages. The dance hall and restaurant were filled with Russian, British and American officers escorting (or hunting for) the women. A bottle of wine cost $25, a horse meat and potato hamburger cost $10, and a pack of American cigarettes cost a staggering $20. The women of Berlin had their cheeks rouged and their lips painted so that it seemed as if Hitler had won the war. Many women wore silk stockings. The lady hostess of the evening opened the concert in German, Russian, English and French. This provoked a barb from the Russian artillery captain who was sitting next to me. He leaned towards me and said in decent English: “Such a quick transition from national to international! RAF bombs are great professors, aren't they?"

The general impression of European women that Soviet military personnel had was sleek and elegant (in comparison with their war-weary compatriots in the half-starved rear, on lands liberated from occupation, and even with front-line friends dressed in washed out tunics), accessible, selfish, promiscuous or cowardly. submissive. The exceptions were Yugoslav and Bulgarian women. The stern and ascetic Yugoslav partisans were perceived as comrades and were considered inviolable. And given the strict morals in the Yugoslav army, “the partisan girls probably looked at the PPZH [field wives] as beings of a special, nasty kind.” Boris Slutsky recalled about Bulgarian women this way: “...After Ukrainian complacency, after Romanian debauchery, the severe inaccessibility of Bulgarian women struck our people. Almost no one boasted of victories. This was the only country where officers were often accompanied on walks by men, and almost never by women. Later, the Bulgarians were proud when they were told that the Russians were going to return to Bulgaria for brides - the only ones in the world who remained pure and untouched.”

The Czech beauties who joyfully greeted the Soviet soldiers-liberators left a pleasant impression of themselves. Confused tank crews from combat vehicles covered with oil and dust, decorated with wreaths and flowers, said to each other: “...Something is a tank bride, to clean it up. And the girls, you know, are hooking them. Good people. I haven’t seen such sincere people for a long time...” The friendliness and cordiality of the Czechs was sincere. “...- If it were possible, I would kiss all the soldiers and officers of the Red Army because they liberated my Prague,” said ... a Prague tram worker to the general friendly and approving laughter,” - this is how he described the atmosphere in the liberated Czech capital and the mood of local residents May 11, 1945 Boris Polevoy.

But in other countries through which the winning army passed, the female part of the population did not command respect. “In Europe, women gave up, changed before anyone else... - wrote B. Slutsky. - I have always been shocked, confused, disoriented by lightness, shameful lightness love relationship. Decent women, certainly unselfish, were like prostitutes - hasty availability, desire to avoid intermediate stages, disinterest in the motives that push a man to get closer to them. Like people who recognized three obscene words from the entire lexicon of love poetry, they reduced the whole matter to a few body movements, causing resentment and contempt among the most yellow-faced of our officers... The restraining motives were not ethics at all, but the fear of getting infected, the fear of publicity, of pregnancy.” , - and added that under the conditions of conquest, “general depravity covered and hid the special female depravity, made it invisible and unashamed.”

However, among the motives that contributed to the spread of “international love”, despite all the prohibitions and harsh orders of the Soviet command, there were several more: women’s curiosity for “exotic” lovers and the unprecedented generosity of Russians towards the object of their affection, which distinguished them favorably from stingy European men.

Junior Lieutenant Daniil Zlatkin ended up in Denmark, on the island of Bornholm, at the very end of the war. In his interview, he said that the interest of Russian men and European women in each other was mutual: “We didn’t see women, but we had to... And when we arrived in Denmark... it’s free, please. They wanted to check, test, try the Russian people, what it is, how it is, and it seemed to work better than the Danes. Why? We were selfless and kind... I gave half a table a box of chocolates, I gave 100 roses unknown woman… For birthday…"

At the same time, few people thought about a serious relationship or marriage, due to the fact that the Soviet leadership clearly outlined its position on this issue. The Resolution of the Military Council of the 4th Ukrainian Front dated April 12, 1945 stated: “1. Explain to all officers and all personnel of the front troops that marriage with foreign women is illegal and is strictly prohibited. 2. All cases of military personnel marrying foreign women, as well as connections between our people and hostile elements of foreign states, must be reported immediately upon command to bring the perpetrators to justice for loss of vigilance and violation of Soviet laws.” The directive from the head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Belorussian Front dated April 14, 1945 read: “According to the head of the Main Personnel Directorate of NGOs, the Center continues to receive applications from officers of the active army with a request to sanction marriages with women of foreign countries (Poles, Bulgarians, Czechs) and etc.). Such facts should be considered as a dulling of vigilance and dulling of patriotic feelings. Therefore, it is necessary in political and educational work to pay attention to a deep explanation of the inadmissibility of such acts on the part of Red Army officers. Explain to all officers who do not understand the futility of such marriages, the inadvisability of marrying foreign women, even to the point of outright prohibition, and not allow a single case.”

And the women had no illusions about the intentions of their gentlemen. “At the beginning of 1945, even the stupidest Hungarian peasant women did not believe our promises. European women were already aware that we were forbidden to marry foreigners, and they suspected that there was a similar order also about appearing together in a restaurant, cinema, etc. This did not prevent them from loving our ladies’ men, but it gave this love a purely “out-of-the-way” [carnal] character,” wrote B. Slutsky.

In general, it should be recognized that the image of European women formed by the soldiers of the Red Army in 1944-1945, with rare exceptions, turned out to be very far from the suffering figure with hands chained, looking with hope from the Soviet poster “Europe will be free!” .

Notes
Slutsky B. Notes about the war. Poems and ballads. St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 174.
Right there. pp. 46-48.
Right there. pp. 46-48.
Smolnikov F.M. Let's fight! Diary of a front-line soldier. Letters from the front. M., 2000. pp. 228-229.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. pp. 110, 107.
Right there. P. 177.
Chukhrai G. My war. M.: Algorithm, 2001. pp. 258-259.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000. P. 127.
Samoilov D. People of one option. From military notes // Aurora. 1990. No. 2. P. 67.
Right there. pp. 70-71.
Gelfand V.N. Diaries 1941-1946. http://militera.lib.ru/db/gelfand_vn/05.html
Right there.
Right there.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000. P. 110.
Right there. pp. 122-123.
Right there. P. 123.
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. F. 372. Op. 6570. D; 76. L. 86.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. P. 125.
Right there. pp. 127-128.
Bogomolov V.O. Germany Berlin. Spring 1945 // Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did I dream about you?.. M.: Magazine “Our Contemporary”, No. 10-12, 2005, No. 1, 2006. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03. html
Kopelev L. Keep forever. In 2 books. Book 1: Parts 1-4. M.: Terra, 2004. Ch. 11. http://lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (hereinafter referred to as RGASPI). F. 17. Op. 125. D. 321. L. 10-12.
From an interview with N.A. Orlov on the “I Remember” website. http://www.iremember.ru/minometchiki/orlov-naum-aronovich/stranitsa-6.html
Samoilov D. Decree. op. P. 88.
Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did I dream about you?.. // Our contemporary. 2005. No. 10-12; 2006. No. 1. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03.html
From the Political Report on communicating to the personnel the directive of Comrade. Stalin No. 11072 dated April 20, 1945 in the 185th Infantry Division. April 26, 1945 Quote. by: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
Quote By: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
Right there.
Right there.
State Archives of the Russian Federation. F. r-9401. Op. 2. D. 96. L.203.
Kopelev L. Decree. op. Ch. 12. http://lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Gelfand V.N. Decree. op.
White Osmar. Conquerors" Road: An Eyewitness Account of Germany 1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003. XVII, 221 pp. http://www.argo.net.au/andre/osmarwhite.html
Slutsky B. Decree. op. P. 99.
Right there. P. 71.
Polevoy B. Liberation of Prague // From the Soviet Information Bureau... Journalism and essays of the war years. 1941-1945. T. 2. 1943-1945. M.: APN Publishing House, 1982. P. 439.
Right there. pp. 177-178.
Right there. P. 180.
From an interview with D.F. Zlatkin dated June 16, 1997 // Personal archive.
Quote By: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/04.html
Right there.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. pp. 180-181.

The article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Research Foundation, project No. 11-01-00363a.

The design uses a Soviet poster from 1944 “Europe will be free!” Artist V. Koretsky

Women captured by the Germans. How the Nazis abused captured Soviet women

Second World War rolled through humanity like a skating rink. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the warring parties did truly monstrous things, justifying everything by war.

Carefully! The material presented in this selection may seem unpleasant or intimidating.

Of course, the Nazis were especially distinguished in this regard, and this does not even take into account the Holocaust. There are many documented and outright fictional stories about what German soldiers did.

One senior German officer recalled the briefings they received. It is interesting that there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”

Most did just that, but among the dead they often find the bodies of women in the uniform of the Red Army - soldiers, nurses or orderlies, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.

Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when the Nazis visited them, they found a seriously wounded girl. And despite everything, they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.

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But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a bloody mess. The Nazis did much the same with female partisans. Before execution, they could be stripped naked and for a long time keep in the cold.

Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Germans, part 1

Of course, the captives were constantly raped.

Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Finns and Germans, part 2. Jewish women

And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to have intimate relations with captives, then ordinary rank and file had more freedom in this matter.

And if the girl did not die after the whole company had used her, then she was simply shot.

The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and one of the higher ranks of the camp took her as a servant. Although this did not save much from rape.

In this regard, the most cruel place was camp No. 337. There, prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were put into barracks at a time, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were exterminated in Stalag every day.

Women were subjected to the same torture as men, if not much worse. In terms of torture, the Spanish Inquisition could envy the Nazis.

Soviet soldiers knew exactly what was happening in the concentration camps and the risks of captivity. Therefore, no one wanted or intended to give up. They fought to the end, until death; she was the only winner in those terrible years.

Happy memory to all those who died in the war...

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