Nazi toilets during the Jewish genocide. Communist torture of children, women and torture by children in the Solovetsky concentration camp

Of the 14,033 German concentration camps, the largest and most brutal women's camp was KZ Ravensbrück. Here, the “civilized” nation of Aryans not only used slave labor of prisoners, not only exterminated people, but also conducted medical experiments on women. Here there was a school of female guards who learned atrocities on living people. This was hell on earth.

Despite all the horrors that happened in this camp, it is little known to the general public. There were almost no British or Americans in it, and there were few Jews either. Therefore, there is little information in the media. Until 1993, there was a Soviet military unit on its territory, which was not easy for an ordinary person to get into. The German authorities, naturally, were also not eager to make public the unsightly activities of their ancestors. And only thanks to the organizations that united the surviving women in this hell, today we have some information.

The concentration camp of the Third Reich, Ravensbrück, was located in northeastern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin, near the village of the same name, which has now become part of the city of Fürstenberg. Existed from May 1939 until the end of April 1945. It was defined as a "guarded detention camp for women." The number of registered prisoners during its entire existence amounted to more than 153 thousand people. According to the Germans, 28 thousand prisoners died in the camp, according to the British - about 90 thousand. In reality, the death toll is between 40-42 thousand people of 40 nationalities. But these are dry statistics of general figures. We will try to look at the “creations of God’s chosen Teutonic knights” through the details of the functioning of the camp.

The emergence of the camp and the movement of the contingent

Construction of the camp began in November 1938 under the leadership of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The first section of the camp was built by prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The camp opened in May 1939. 867 women were transferred here from the Lichtenburg concentration camp, located in Saxony, to work on the further expansion of the concentration camp, as well as to build an SS settlement. The camp consisted of a main and auxiliary camps. The main camp housed only women and had a capacity of 6,000 people. In April 1941, a small men's camp with 350 prisoners was established adjacent to the main one. The concentration camp was surrounded by a moat and a concrete wall surrounded by barbed wire through which electric current was passed. In 1945 its area was approximately 170 hectares. In June 1942, in the immediate vicinity of the main camp, a concentration camp for youth “Uckermark” (youth protection camp) was built, to which about 400 girls arrived.

In June 1940, the SS company "Gesellschaft für Textil - und Lederverwertung mbH" (Society for Textile and Leather Manufacturing) was founded in Ravensbrück. An “industrial yard” with production workshops for traditional women’s work was built on the territory of the concentration camp. In June 1942, the German electrical engineering concern Siemens & Halske AG built 20 industrial barracks for forced labor of prisoners. In March 1943, the increased use of prisoners in the war industry began. For this purpose, external camps are opened, for example Karlshagen, Neubrandenburg and Velten. In total, the Ravensbrück concentration camp had more than 70 sections in which forced labor of women was used. The subcamps were located in the territory from the Baltic Sea to Bavaria, in particular in the following settlements: Ansbach, Barth, Belzig, Berlin (more than ten camps), Dabelow, Gentin, Dresden-Universelle, Karlshagen, Königsberg-Neimark, Klützow, Leipzig-Schönfeld, Malchow, Neubrandenburg, Peenemünde, Prenzlau, Rechlin, Retzow, Rostock, Rostock-Mariene, Feldberg, Velten, Fürstenberg, Hennigsdorf, Hohenlichen, Schwarzenforst, Schönefeld, Stargard, Eberswalde. According to the standards established by industrialists, prisoners were suitable for work only for the first three months, and then, due to physical unsuitability, they were subject to “disposal.” Industrialists, realizing the crimes they were committing, did their best to disguise these production areas. Even in the documentation they were described as some kind of warehouses. In May 1944, 2,500 women were transferred to the Heinkel arms factories in Rostock-Schwarzenfrost and Siemens in Zwodau. In total, during 1944, 70,000 prisoners were transferred from the Ravensbrück concentration camp to various places with military production.

Initially, the camp contained German women who “disgraced the nation”: criminals, women of “asocial behavior” and representatives of Jehovah’s Witnesses. In June 1939, 440 Roma women and children were deported from Burgenland (Austria) to Ravensbrück. From September to November of the same year, about 60 Poles from the so-called “imperial region” arrived at the camp. By December 1940, about 4,200 women, including from Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia, lived in 16 residential barracks. On New Year's Eve, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler personally came to inspect his brainchild. As a result of the visit, his official order appeared, which introduced flogging for female prisoners.

In April 1941, 3,500 new prisoners arrived at Ravensbrück, including women from the Netherlands, Poland and Yugoslavia. By November 1941, more than 1,200 women had been “liquidated” due to physical exhaustion in the Bernburg psychiatric hospital, where there was a euthanasia center. And already in 1943, the thrifty Germans in the camp built their own gas chambers and crematorium. In March 1942, about 1,000 women were sent from the Ravensbrück camp to build the Auschwitz death camp. In October 1942, the Main Directorate of Reich Security (RSHA) gave the order to make the camp “free of Jews.” More than 600 prisoners, including 522 Jewish women, were deported to Auschwitz. By December 1942, the number of prisoners in the camp had reached 10,800, including women from France, Belgium, Norway, Luxembourg and Romania.

From 1942, the camp became a supplier of women for the brothel system in the SS concentration camps. Mostly they recruited Polish and German women, less often French women. Some of them, after “complete wear and tear,” returned to the camp for “disposal.” From August 1942 to the beginning of 1943, a mass execution of the Polish aristocracy was carried out - the wives of senior officers and officers of the general staff. Almost 700 people were shot.

In February 1943, the first 536 Soviet prisoners of war were brought to Ravensbrück: female doctors, nurses and signalmen who participated in the battles for Crimea. Initially, their block was separated from all others by barbed wire. That same year, a transport carrying 1,000 French women arrived from Paris. By December 1943, there were 15,100 women prisoners under the command of the SS camp commandant in Ravensbrück itself and in external camps.

In February 1944, about 1,000 French women were transferred from the Compiegne prisons to the Ravensbrück camp; in the same month, a transport with prisoners from the Salaspils and Majdanek death camps arrived at the camp. Due to overcrowding in the barracks, large tents were erected in the camp in September, in which many women and children died during the winter. After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in October 1944, 12,000 Polish women and children were deported to Ravensbrück. On January 15, 1945, there were 46,070 female and 7,858 male prisoners in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, half of whom were in external camps. They were guarded by 1,000 male SS men and 546 female guards. In January-February, another 11,000 prisoners arrived from closed concentration camps and external camps. Due to the overcrowding of the camp, the leadership decided to “liquidate” sick and weak prisoners. As a result, in February-March 1945, about 5-6 thousand people were killed in gas chambers.

In total, from 1939 to 1945, 132 thousand women and children, 20 thousand men and a thousand girls of the “Uckermark youth protection camp” were registered as prisoners in the Ravensbrück camp. Since the camp’s documentation was almost completely destroyed, data on the size of the camp’s contingent, its movements, national composition and other information were established indirectly. For example, the proportions of the national composition were determined according to the list for a batch of prisoners of 25 thousand people. It turned out that 25% of them were Polish, 20% were German, 15% were Jewish and Russian, 7% were French, 5% were Gypsies. By category of charges - 84% were political, 12% - antisocial behavior, 2% - criminals, 1% - Jehovah's Witnesses.

By agreement of the Swedish and Danish Red Crosses with Himmler, in April 1945, 7.5 thousand Scandinavian women were removed from the Ravensbrück camp. They were taken out in columns of white buses with red crosses, as a result of which the rescue was called the white bus operation.

As the Eastern Front approached the camp, on April 27 the guards decided to evacuate the camp. 15 thousand prisoners were sent on a “death march” - a march to the West. About 3 thousand people remained in the camp, 300 of them were men. These were mainly seriously weakened and sick prisoners, as well as the personnel who served them. On April 30, 1945, the Red Army liberated the camp. The prisoners were on the “death march” until May 3, 1945, when they were overtaken by Soviet military units. Several hundred people died during the six days of the march. Approximately the same number died in the following weeks, until their lives were settled.

Living conditions in the camp

Those arriving at the camp, regardless of the time of year, were stripped naked in the courtyard and their hair was cut off. All personal belongings and documents were taken from the prisoners. Then they waited an hour or more to be allowed through the bathhouse. After the bath, the prisoners were given camp clothes, and they were distributed into blocks, where they received numbers and winkels. The resettlement was preceded by a medical examination of the women. Women were especially humiliated by the procedure of examination by a gynecologist. Before the examination, women were forced to shave their genital hair, and then they were searched, standard for a prison, i.e. everywhere.

Prisoners were given a striped dress and wooden shoes (clogs). On the left sleeve there was a camp number and a Winkel - a triangle-shaped badge, sewn above the camp number and colored depending on the category: red - for political prisoners and participants in the Resistance movement, yellow - for Jews, green - for criminals, purple - for Jehovah's Witnesses, black for gypsies, prostitutes, lesbians and thieves. In the center of the triangle was a letter indicating nationality. For example, the Polish Winkel was a red triangle with the letter “P”, the Russian one with the letter “R”. Soviet prisoners of war, upon arrival at the camp, refused to sew it onto their uniform. As a result, they received red Winkels with the letters “SU” - Soviet Union, thus positioning themselves as a special category of Soviet prisoners. Jewish women sometimes wore the Star of David instead of a triangle.

Like any prison, the camp had its own hierarchy of importance among prisoners. At its top were the German-speaking “political” and “criminals”, in the middle were the so-called Slavic races, below were the “asocial” - Jewish and Gypsy women.

The rise in the camp took place at four o'clock in the morning. The prisoners, having received half a mug of cold coffee drink, which was called coffee, lined up outside for roll call. The verification lasted 2-3 hours. On rainy days in spring and autumn, as well as on frosty days in winter, verifications were deliberately lengthened. During its implementation, prisoners were assigned to work individually or in entire groups or barracks. If the physically weak could not stand standing for a long time and fell, they were beaten with sticks, poisoned with dogs, or other measures of physical force were used, depending on the imagination of the warden. Often, beaten women never recovered and ended up on disposal lists. After verification, the prisoners went to work, which lasted 12-14 hours. During the day shift, prisoners were given a 30-minute break to eat “food.” They were given half a liter of water with rutabaga or potato peelings. There was no break during the night shift; food was given out only after returning from work. After the day shift, the prisoners lined up for the evening roll call, which lasted more than two hours, then received “coffee” and 200 g of bread.

The camp had strict rules, for violations of which physical punishment was applied. For example, dirty shoes or trousers resulted in flogging - 25-50 lashes on the bare buttocks. Punishments included deprivation of food, placement in a punishment cell, assignment to hard work, etc. and so on.

The main camp of Ravensbrück was designed for 6 thousand people, but in certain periods it housed 18-20 thousand prisoners. As a result of overpopulation, 3-4 people were accommodated in one bunk bed. As a rule, there was one blanket for three people. There were cases when prisoners were housed in canvas tents, where instead of bunks there was only a ball of straw. There was also not enough tableware for all the prisoners, so instead of bowls, they used used tin cans collected from a garbage dump.

The prisoners' clothing consisted of underwear and striped pajamas with trousers. Socks or stockings were not provided, so in both winter and summer women walked barefoot in wooden clogs. For the winter, they were given jackets that did little to protect them from the cold. Clothes were almost never changed, and even during rare washings it was difficult to get rid of the lice with which the camp was simply infested.

The most “comfortable” place to stay was the camp hospital. And although it was overcrowded, here the prisoners shared a bed only for two, had the opportunity to wash themselves and use bed linen. However, it was dangerous to “abuse” the hospital; those who lingered there risked being declared “terminally ill” and sent for disposal or being subjected to medical experiments by doctors.

All prisoners were required to work - either at industrial facilities or in household work in the camp. Those who did not want to work or did not fulfill the quota were severely beaten, deprived of food and, in the end, sent for disposal. Those without the strength to work faced the same path. In the camp there was an “industrial yard”, where sewing, textile and leather production worked, where prisoners were sent to work. At peak times, up to 5 thousand people worked there. This production was profitable, since the factories were simultaneously headed by the camp commandant, Fritz Suhren.

Siemens set up its own factories in close proximity to the concentration camp, in which prisoners were forced to make precision parts such as finely wound coils. At the end of 1944, the company moved all military telephone production to this so-called "Siemens warehouse", where up to 2,400 women worked. The conditions here were so bad that in May 1945, mountains of buried corpses were discovered right in front of the production building.

Among the camp prisoners were children who arrived with their mothers or were born on the spot. The first small group was made up of Gypsy children brought with their mothers from Burgenland (Austria). In July 1942, several children were brought from the liquidated Czech village of Lidice. The number of children increased significantly between April and October 1944. One group consisted of Roma children brought to the camp after the closure of the Roma camp at Auschwitz. The other consisted mainly of Polish children sent to Ravensbrück with their mothers after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, and Jewish children from the closed Budapest ghetto. According to records, between September 1944 and April 1945, 560 children were born in the camp (23 women had premature births, 20 children were stillborn). Most of these children died from malnutrition; the dates of death of 266 children were recorded. The number of survivors is unknown; according to one of the archival documents, about a hundred children survived in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. In total, between 1943 and 1945, there were 863-881 children aged 2 to 16 years old, representing 18 nations, in the concentration camp.

The correspondence of camp prisoners was strictly regulated. Special “postal sets” were made for the concentration camp, consisting of envelopes, letterheads and postcards. Special stickers with typographical text containing the following content were affixed to the cards: “On all postal items, prisoners must provide the following information: first and last name, year of birth, camp number, block number. If at least one of these data is missing, the postal item will be returned to the sender.”

On the envelopes and letterheads in the upper left corner were printed excerpts from the camp routine: “Women's concentration camp Ravensbrück. Extract from the camp routine. Each prisoner can send or receive one letter or one postcard per month. Letters can be written on four normal size pages and not exceed 15 lines each; on a postcard - 10 lines. Only one 12 pfennig postage stamp can be included in a letter. The rest will be confiscated for the benefit of indigent prisoners. Photos are not allowed to be sent. All mail must include the prisoner and barrack number. Parcels of any content will not be accepted. You can buy everything at the camp. Money can only be sent by mail. National Socialist newspapers are acceptable, but must be issued to the prisoners themselves through the postal censorship offices of the women's concentration camp. There is no point in submitting applications for release to the camp management. Camp Commandant."

Along the top edge of the envelope was typographical text: “Letters written unclearly and poorly readable are not subject to censorship and will be destroyed.” A boundary line was printed on the letterhead in the form of a frame, beyond which it was prohibited to go beyond.

Postal rules were often changed and formed within the SS apparatus, so there are quite a lot of examples of postal sets that have survived to this day.

Despite the existing prison hierarchies in the camp, a special system of relationships has developed among the prisoners. Women tried to create a kind of “camp families”: older women helped the young, secretly fed the children, helped them with clothes, as if they had collectively adopted them, since their own mothers did not always have access to their children, and in most cases they had not been in the family for a long time. alive. And although the camp population was constantly changing, the spirit of the “camp family” was preserved not only until liberation from the camp, but also for many years after the war. The older “camp inmates” continued to care for the younger ones and the surviving children. And this despite the fact that women spoke different languages, were of different religions and nationalities, occupied different social positions, and lived in different countries.

Camp and security

The main building on the camp grounds were huge gray barracks - wooden one-story buildings with tiny windows. The barracks were placed so that the windows of one building faced the back wall of the other and it was impossible to maintain even a visual connection between the barracks. In addition to residential barracks, the camp facilities included: barracks for guards and cadets of the guard school, a commandant's office, a hospital, hospital barracks, a sterilizer, a bathhouse, a laundry, a kitchen, a gas chamber, a crematorium, warehouses. The camp also included a separate men's camp, and nearby Ravensbrück was the site of the Uckermark camp. The camp did not have its own bakery, and bread was brought daily from Sachsenhausen, a men's camp 80 km to the south.

All residential barracks for prisoners were divided into two sleeping sections A and B. On either side of these were washing areas, with a row of twelve bathing basins and twelve latrines, as well as a common day room where the prisoners ate. Each barrack was designed for 150 people, however, in practice, the occupancy of the barracks was 3-5 times more. During the period of “overcrowding”, prisoners slept not only 3-4 people per bed on bunks, but also in rows on the floor. The sleeping areas were filled with three-story bunks made of wooden planks. In theory, each prisoner was entitled to a mattress stuffed with sawdust or shavings, the same pillow, a sheet and a blue-and-white checkered blanket. In fact, all soft equipment was divided depending on the number of prisoners housed in the barracks.

Unlike the men's concentration camps, Ravensbrück did not have fence walls with guard towers with machine guns everywhere. Where there were none, a double-row high-voltage wire fence was installed along the perimeter, accompanied by warning signs with a skull and crossbones.

The camp was guarded by special SS units and was administered by the SS. In addition to men, more than 150 women from the SS women's auxiliary unit provided security and supervision of order in the camp. They mainly performed the functions of supervisors, heads of blocks and some services. Block leaders (Blockfuehrerin), accompanied by SS men with dogs and whips, observed prisoners in the living quarters of Ravensbrück, took part in roll calls and food distribution. The women of the SS auxiliary service were neither members of the SS nor military personnel. They wore a special uniform, personally carried weapons, usually a pistol, had sticks and whips, and sometimes guard dogs. Without having any official rights in relation to prisoners, except for a report on the state of affairs or violations of the established order to the camp leadership, in practice they were the “arbiters” of the destinies of the prisoners. In fact, they did all the “dirty” work instead of the SS. They could apply to prisoners all the punishments accepted in the camp, up to and including murder. It should be noted that it was the female guards who were distinguished by their brutal cruelty towards prisoners, pathological sadism and misanthropy. Let us note several famous “non-humans in skirts”, whose guilt was proven after the war: Johanna Bormann (executed in 1946), Theresa Brandl (executed in 1948), Hermine Braunsteiner (sentenced to life imprisonment in 1981), Irma Grese ( executed in 1946), Greta Basel (executed in 1947), Ruth Neudeck (executed in 1948), Margarete Rabe (sentenced to life imprisonment, released early in 1954), Ida Schreiter (executed in 1948). ). They served not only in the Ravensbrück camp, but also in many others where there were women’s sections - in Auschwitz, Majdanik... Each of these “little beasts” was responsible for the death of 30 to 500 thousand prisoners.

In 1942 and 1943, a training base was also established in Ravensbrück to train SS auxiliary women for work in women's departments in concentration camps and prisons. According to various sources, 3500 – 3700 women passed it. It was here that they were taught cruelty and sadism, sexual perversion. Here they learned special methods of humiliating imprisoned women. It was here that they were trained to treat prisoners with fists, clubs, kicks with boots and baiting with dogs. Here they honed their “skill” of torture and abuse on prisoners. From here the most terrible destroyers of human souls emerged and spread throughout Europe.

Medical experiments

Medical experiments on prisoners in the camp began to be carried out already in 1940, although according to German data their beginning is determined in August 1942. After the war, of the many women subjected to medical experiments, only 86 survivors were found. Four of them testified at the Nuremberg trials.

A number of SS doctors under the leadership of SS-Hauptsturmführer Walter Sonntag and SS-Hauptsturmführer Gerhard Szydlauski were involved in conducting medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. The immediate leader of the experiments was Professor Karl Gebhardt, the personal physician of Heinrich Himmler (he was sentenced to death and hanged on June 2, 1948). In total, more than twenty flayers were involved in experiments on living people. In particular: Adolf Winkelmann, who studied human endurance. He is known for organizing the so-called “sports festival” in Ravensbrück. The SS men forced prisoners to do ditch jumping, running, and other onerous exercises. Many sick, elderly or tired women could not withstand these tortures and were sent to the gas chambers.

Herta Oberhäuser conducted experiments on transplantation of nerve, muscle and bone tissue. She killed healthy children through petroleum and barbiturate injections, then amputated limbs for research. The time between injection and death ranged from 3 to 5 minutes, while the person was fully conscious. She also performed limb transplants between women. The essence of the experiments was as follows: healthy women were mutilated and plaster was applied. To monitor the progress of the experiment, pieces of a living body were cut out and the bone was exposed. Sometimes prisoners had a healthy leg, arm or shoulder blade amputated and taken to the Hohenlichen concentration camp, to Professor Gebhardt, where he, along with other SS surgeons Stumpffegger and Schultz, “assigned” them to other experimental subjects. At the end of the experiments, Hertha Oberhäuser killed her experimental subjects by injection, in order to hide the results of the experiments from possible retribution after the war. It was believed that Oberhäuser killed more than 60 people during her experiments.

Benno Orendi conducted experiments on the regeneration of bones, muscles and nerves; studied the effect of antibiotics by infecting prisoners. Women were inflicted with gunshots, stabs, cuts and lacerations, bones were crushed and removed... Then they were infected with staphylococci, causative agents of gas gangrene and tetanus, as well as several types of bacteria simultaneously. Almost always, a deep incision, right down to the bone, to introduce bacteria into the prisoners was made on the upper part of the thigh. Wood, metal, or glass particles were often injected into the wound to make it more like a real gunshot wound.

Rolf Rosenthal, as a camp doctor, studied abortion after 8 months. The fetus was immediately burned in the boiler room, even if it was still alive.

Helmut Poppendieck, Percival Trade, Richard Trommer, Martin Hellinger participated in various medical experiments. In particular, they observed the processes of resuscitation, for which the prisoners were frozen. They conducted experiments on the sterilization of Jewish and Gypsy women to develop a method for the rapid sterilization of large masses. For example, in January 1945, 120-140 Roma women were sterilized. Sterilization experiments were also carried out on children from the 11th block of the camp. In general, we are talking about the sterilization of about 700 women in the camp. In addition to medical experiments, these same so-called doctors were also involved in the murder of patients. For example, Percival Trade killed tuberculosis patients by injection into the heart. They were also engaged in “culling” weak prisoners for subsequent murder in gas chambers. So Richard Trommer is responsible for more than 4.5 thousand victims selected by him for killing.

“Doctors” conspiratorially called their patients “laboratory rabbits” in their reports.

Methods of killing camp prisoners

According to the recollections of former camp prisoners, about 50 people died every day due to illness, cold, hunger, torture by guards and executions. And this was on ordinary days, when there were no mass liquidations. Until 1943, when their crematorium and gas chambers were built, large batches of prisoners to be killed were sent to other concentration camps, where this process was already put on the conveyor belt. Also, at first, doomed prisoners were transported to a psychiatric hospital in Bernburg, where the “inferior” were massacred. Daily executions of slaves were carried out in the forest in the vicinity of the camp. The Treit camp doctor was always present at them, who recorded the death, since after the executions there were often survivors. Since 1942, “the process was improved” and executions were carried out in a special so-called shooting range. A “dentist” was also present at the executions and pulled out gold teeth and crowns from the corpses.

With the advent of its own crematorium in the camp, the practice of “selection” of prisoners was introduced, which was carried out twice a month. Weak women were selected and sent to a separate barracks. There, the suicide bombers served their own “requiem service” - a mocking tradition of the ancient Orthodox rite. Candles were lit and prisoners were forced to sing psalms accompanied by an accordion and violin. Then they were taken in batches of 150 people to the gas chamber. Under the pretext of getting rid of lice, the prisoners were undressed and the doors were locked. A male prisoner climbed onto the roof and threw a gas canister into the cell through the hatch, which was immediately closed. After two or three minutes everyone was dead. The corpses were burned around the clock in three ovens of the crematorium. Unburned bones were crushed and sold along with the ashes to farmers. Excess ash was dumped into the nearby lake Schwedtsee.

The names of tens of thousands of prisoners who ended up in these dungeons remained unknown. Just before liberation, the SS destroyed almost all documents.

Retribution after the war

In 1946-1950, trials took place under the jurisdiction of Great Britain and France regarding crimes against humanity by concentration camp personnel. Of the 3,700 women concentration camp personnel, only 65 were put on trial. Of these, only 21 were sentenced to death, incl. 16 of them were from the Ravensbrück camp.

On March 10, 1950, the court sentenced the former camp commandant Fritz Suren and his assistant Hans Pflaum to death.

“Doctor Death” Oberhäuser turned out to be the only female doctor who was put on trial. During the trial, she insisted that a woman could not commit such heinous crimes. She also explained her actions by the fact that participation in experiments sentenced to death was the only chance of salvation (if they survived), since in case of refusal and active opposition to the experiments, women faced the death penalty. For war crimes and crimes against humanity, the court sentenced Oberhäuser to 20 years in prison. On January 31, 1951, the term was reduced to 10 years. On April 4, 1952, she was released early.

After her release, she first worked as a doctor in Stocksee and at the same time in the Johannite hospital in Plön. In 1956, she was recognized by one of the former prisoners of Ravensbrück. After this, she was fired from the Johannite hospital. After her dismissal, she opened a private medical practice, but amid ongoing protests she was forced to stop her medical activities. She died in 1978.

In total, 23 “doctor-experimenters” of Nazi Germany were brought to justice for medical experiments on people, 7 of whom were acquitted. How many lives they ruined remains unknown.

In 1973, the US government extradited former Ravensbrück subcamp prison guard Genthine Hermine Braunsteiner to Germany to face trial for war crimes. She was tracked down by the famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. In 2006, US authorities deported to Germany former warden of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, 84-year-old Elfriede Rinkel, who had lived in San Francisco since 1959.

This is where all the retribution ended, almost without even beginning.

Memory

The former main camp of Ravensbrück served from 1945 to 1993 as a barracks for a group of Soviet troops in Germany. In 1959, by order of the government of the GDR, the “National Memorial Complex Ravensbrück” was created on a small part of the territory of the former camp. The commandant's office, the building with the prisoners' cells, the crematorium and the access road to Lake Schwedtsee, as well as part of the camp wall were included in the memorial complex as original objects. On the shore of the lake, the memorial stele “The Bearer”, created by Will Lammert, was installed as a central design element. In areas used by Soviet troops, buildings such as a pathological department, a disinfection unit, a sewing workshop, the foundations of barracks, as well as camp roads have been preserved.

In the building of the former commandant's office there is an exhibition telling about the history of the camp. The exhibition focused primarily on the Resistance movement, which was organized by German communists in the concentration camp. On the recommendation of a commission of experts created in 1991, the exhibition in the commandant’s office building was closed due to its shortcomings from a scientific point of view. A new concept was developed and, in 1993, an exhibition on the history of the camp in the building of the former commandant's office reopened. In addition, since 1994, a second exhibition entitled “Women from Ravensbrück” has been on display here, telling about the biographies of 27 women, and in 1995 another exhibition “I greet you as a free person” was opened, introducing documents and photographs from the liberation period in 1945

Since 1982, the building that housed the prisoners' cells has housed the Exhibition of Nations, prepared in collaboration with individual organizations and committees of prisoners from different countries. This exhibition has also been updated in consultation with the relevant countries. In October 2004, a new permanent exhibition “In the retinue of an SS guard at the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp” opened. It is on display in one of the eight surviving former dormitories for female SS guard personnel.

In 2007, the Ravensbrück Museum opened the exhibition “Forced Sex in National Socialist Concentration Camps” (Sex-Zwangsarbeit in NS-Konzentrationslagern), telling the story of female prisoners who were forced into prostitution.

Instead of an epilogue. Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through German camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were exterminated by the Nazis. In the camps, not on the battlefield! For this, several dozen Nazi leaders were hanged, several thousand were sentenced to 5-20 years. However, in reality they served less than a third of the sentence. However, not one of them tried the conditions of a concentration camp. Is this fair? Is this a sufficient fuse for the emergence of neo-Nazism? Unanswered questions.

Based on materials from the sites: http://www.ravensbruck.nl/; https://ekabu.ru; http://argumentua.com; https://ru.wikipedia.org; https://gavailer.livejournal.com; https://medium.com; http://niklife.com.ua; https://www.vintag.es; http://womenineuropeanhistory.org; https://jwa.org.

Irma was one of five children in the family of Bertha and Alfred Grese. The family was dysfunctional, the parents didn’t get along, and that’s putting it mildly. When Irma was thirteen, her mother committed suicide by drinking hydrochloric acid - she found out that her husband was cheating on her. Two years later, the future warden dropped out of school, became imbued with Nazi ideology and became a fierce activist of the Hitler Youth.

For some time, young Grese was looking for her calling - she briefly worked as a nurse’s assistant in the SS sanatorium Hohenlichen, but this place was too boring for the active Irma. And at the age of 18, Grese joined the women's auxiliary unit of the SS and moved to a women's training base next to Ravensbrück, a women's concentration camp. After training, Grese remained as a volunteer at the camp and very soon received the post of guard, and a little later she was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Irma's reputation as a sadist and nymphomaniac was firmly established. She beat prisoners until their faces were a bloody pulp, kicked them until they were nearly dead with her pointy boots, poisoned women with hungry dogs, and forced prisoners to hold heavy stones over their heads until their arms were pierced with pain.

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Instead of a uniform, Grese wore a tight blue jacket, and even her whip was inlaid with pearls. Her refined appearance was also a kind of torture for the dirty prisoners of the concentration camp, dressed in nothing but rags.

Prisoner Olga Lengel, whose children died in the gas chambers, wrote in her memoirs “Five Chimneys” that it was Grese who was involved in the selection of women for the gas chambers (they never said that - they preferred the euphemism “special treatment”) and for Dr. Mengele’s medical experiments. Moreover, her choice fell not on the weak and “useless” prisoners, but on the most beautiful ones - those who could compete with the attractiveness of Grese herself. Lengel mentioned that Irma had lovers among the SS men, including Josef Mengele.

According to Gisella Perl, a Jewish doctor at Auschwitz, Irma experienced sexual arousal at the sight of women suffering.

The most surprising thing is that there were girls whom, for some mysterious reasons, Irma sympathized with. These were members of the camp orchestra, who, among other things, entertained the SS men with their music. In the very existence of such an orchestra there was something macabre, some kind of black irony. One of its participants, Yvette Lennon, recalls how her sister fell ill and she had to personally turn to Irma for help. And unexpectedly the matron expressed sympathy. She found Yvette a place in the kitchen and gave her sister extra rations so she could get back on her feet.

In 1945, Irma asked to be transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where the British captured her a month later.

At the Belsen trial, Irma, along with other camp workers, was sentenced to hanging. The former warden did not doubt for a second that she was right, that her choice was correct. The night before her execution, she loudly sang Nazi songs and walked to the gallows without flinching. When a rope was thrown around her neck, she sharply commanded: “Scnheller!” (“Faster!”)

Grese died at 22 years old.

There is not a person in the world today who does not know what a concentration camp is. During the Second World War, these institutions, created to isolate political prisoners, prisoners of war and persons who posed a threat to the state, turned into houses of death and torture. Not many who ended up there managed to survive the harsh conditions; millions were tortured and died. Years after the end of the most terrible and bloody war in the history of mankind, memories of the Nazi concentration camps still cause trembling in the body, horror in the soul and tears in people’s eyes.

What is a concentration camp

Concentration camps are special prisons created during military operations on the territory of the country, in accordance with special legislative documents.

There were few repressed people present in them; the main contingent were representatives of lower races, according to the Nazis: Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and other nations subject to extermination. For this purpose, Nazi concentration camps were equipped with various means with which people were killed in dozens and hundreds.

They were destroyed morally and physically: raped, experimented on, burned alive, poisoned in gas chambers. Why and for what was justified by the ideology of the Nazis. Prisoners were considered unworthy to live in the world of the “chosen ones.” The chronicle of the Holocaust of those times contains descriptions of thousands of incidents confirming the atrocities.

The truth about them became known from books, documentaries, and stories of those who managed to become free and get out alive.

The institutions built during the war were conceived by the Nazis as places of mass extermination, for which they received their true name - death camps. They were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers, soap factories, crematoria where hundreds of people could be burned a day, and other similar means for murder and torture.

No fewer people died from exhausting work, hunger, cold, punishment for the slightest disobedience and medical experiments.

Living conditions

For many people who passed the “road of death” beyond the walls of concentration camps, there was no turning back. Upon arrival at the place of detention, they were examined and “sorted”: children, old people, disabled people, wounded, mentally retarded and Jews were subjected to immediate destruction. Next, people “suitable” for work were distributed among men’s and women’s barracks.

Most of the buildings were built in haste; they often had no foundation or were converted from barns, stables, and warehouses. They had bunks in them, in the middle of the huge room there was one stove for heating in winter, there were no latrines. But there were rats.

Roll call, carried out at any time of the year, was considered a difficult test. People had to stand for hours in the rain, snow, and hail, and then return to cold, barely heated rooms. It is not surprising that many died from infectious and respiratory diseases and inflammation.

Each registered prisoner had a serial number on his chest (in Auschwitz he was tattooed) and a patch on his camp uniform indicating the “article” under which he was imprisoned in the camp. A similar winkel (colored triangle) was sewn on the left side of the chest and the right knee of the trouser leg.

The colors were distributed as follows:

• red - political prisoner;
• green - convicted of a criminal offense;
• black - dangerous, dissident persons;
• pink - persons with non-traditional sexual orientation;
• brown - gypsies.

Jews, if left alive, wore a yellow winkel and a hexagonal "Star of David". If a prisoner was considered a “racial polluter,” a black border was sewn around the triangle. Persons prone to escape wore a red and white target on their chest and back. The latter faced execution for just one glance towards a gate or wall.

Executions were carried out daily. Prisoners were shot, hanged, and beaten with whips for the slightest disobedience to the guards. Gas chambers, whose operating principle was to simultaneously exterminate several dozen people, operated around the clock in many concentration camps. Prisoners who helped remove the corpses of those strangled were also rarely left alive.

Gas chamber

The prisoners were also mocked morally, erasing their human dignity under conditions in which they ceased to feel like members of society and just people.

What did they feed?

In the early years of the concentration camps, the food provided to political prisoners, traitors and “dangerous elements” was quite high in calories. The Nazis understood that prisoners must have the strength to work, and at that time many sectors of the economy relied on their labor.

The situation changed in 1942-43, when the bulk of the prisoners were Slavs. If the diet of the German repressed was 700 kcal per day, the Poles and Russians did not receive even 500 kcal.

The diet consisted of:

• a liter per day of a herbal drink called “coffee”;
• water soup without fat, the basis of which was vegetables (mostly rotten) - 1 liter;
• bread (stale, moldy);
• sausages (approximately 30 grams);
• fat (margarine, lard, cheese) - 30 grams.

The Germans could count on sweets: jam or preserves, potatoes, cottage cheese and even fresh meat. They received special rations, which included cigarettes, sugar, goulash, dry broth, etc.

Beginning in 1943, when there was a turning point in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet troops liberated European countries from German invaders, concentration camp prisoners were massacred to hide traces of crimes. Since that time, in many camps the already meager rations were cut, and in some institutions they stopped feeding people completely.

The most terrible tortures and experiments in human history

Concentration camps will forever remain in human history as places where the Gestapo carried out the most terrible tortures and medical experiments.

The task of the latter was considered to be “helping the army”: doctors determined the boundaries of human capabilities, created new types of weapons, drugs that could help the fighters of the Reich.

Almost 70% of the experimental subjects did not survive such executions; almost all turned out to be incapacitated or crippled.

Above women

One of the main goals of the SS men was to cleanse the world of non-Aryan nations. To achieve this, experiments were carried out on women in the camps to find the easiest and cheapest method of sterilization.

Representatives of the fairer sex had special chemical solutions infused into their uterus and fallopian tubes, designed to block the functioning of the reproductive system. Most of the experimental subjects died after such a procedure, the rest were killed in order to examine the condition of the genital organs during autopsy.

Women were often turned into sex slaves, forced to work in brothels and brothels run by the camps. Most of them left the establishments dead, having not survived not only a huge number of “clients”, but also monstrous abuse of themselves.

over children

The purpose of these experiments was to create a superior race. Thus, children with mental disabilities and genetic diseases were subjected to forced death (euthanasia) so that they would not have the opportunity to further reproduce “inferior” offspring.

Other children were placed in special “nurseries”, where they were raised in home conditions and strict patriotic sentiments. They were periodically exposed to ultraviolet rays to give the hair a lighter shade.

Some of the most famous and monstrous experiments on children are those carried out on twins, representing an inferior race. They tried to change the color of their eyes by injecting them with drugs, after which they died from pain or remained blind.

There were attempts to artificially create Siamese twins, that is, sew children together and transplant each other’s body parts into them. There are records of viruses and infections being administered to one of the twins and further study of the condition of both. If one of the couple died, the other was also killed in order to compare the condition of the internal organs and systems.

Children born in the camp were also subject to strict selection, almost 90% of them were killed immediately or sent for experiments. Those who managed to survive were brought up and “Germanized.”

Above men

Representatives of the stronger sex were subjected to the most cruel and terrible tortures and experiments. To create and test drugs that improve blood clotting, which were needed by the military at the front, men were inflicted with gunshot wounds, after which observations were made about the speed of bleeding cessation.

The tests included studying the effect of sulfonamides - antimicrobial substances designed to prevent the development of blood poisoning in front conditions. To do this, prisoners were injured in body parts and bacteria, fragments, and earth were injected into the incisions, and then the wounds were stitched up. Another type of experiment is ligation of veins and arteries on both sides of the wound.

Means for recovery from chemical burns were created and tested. The men were doused with a composition identical to that found in phosphorus bombs or mustard gas, which was used to poison enemy “criminals” and the civilian population of cities during the occupation at that time.

Attempts to create vaccines against malaria and typhus played a major role in drug experiments. The experimental subjects were injected with the infection, and then were given test compounds to neutralize it. Some prisoners were given no immune protection at all, and they died in terrible agony.

To study the human body's ability to withstand low temperatures and recover from significant hypothermia, men were placed in ice baths or driven naked into the cold outside. If after such torture the prisoner had signs of life, he was subjected to a resuscitation procedure, after which few managed to recover.

Basic measures for resurrection: irradiation with ultraviolet lamps, having sex, introducing boiling water into the body, placing in a bath with warm water.

In some concentration camps, attempts were made to turn sea water into drinking water. It was processed in different ways, and then given to prisoners, observing the body's reaction. They also experimented with poisons, adding them to food and drinks.

Attempts to regenerate bone and nerve tissue are considered one of the most terrible experiences. During the research, joints and bones were broken, their fusion was observed, nerve fibers were removed, and joints were swapped.

Almost 80% of the experiment participants died during the experiments from unbearable pain or blood loss. The rest were killed in order to study the results of the research “from the inside.” Only a few survived such abuses.

List and description of death camps

Concentration camps existed in many countries of the world, including the USSR, and were intended for a narrow circle of prisoners. However, only Nazi ones received the name “death camps” for the atrocities carried out in them after Adolf Hitler came to power and the beginning of the Second World War.

Buchenwald

Located in the vicinity of the German city of Weimar, this camp, founded in 1937, has become one of the most famous and largest of its kind. It consisted of 66 branches where prisoners worked for the benefit of the Reich.

Over the years of its existence, about 240 thousand people visited its barracks, of which 56 thousand prisoners officially died from murder and torture, among whom were representatives of 18 nations. How many of them there actually were is not known for certain.

Buchenwald was liberated on April 10, 1945. On the site of the camp, a memorial complex was created in memory of its victims and hero-liberators.

Auschwitz

In Germany it is better known as Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a complex that occupied a vast area near Polish Krakow. The concentration camp consisted of 3 main parts: a large administrative complex, the camp itself, where torture and massacres of prisoners were carried out, and a group of 45 small complexes with factories and working areas.

According to official data alone, the victims of Auschwitz were more than 4 million people, representatives of “inferior races”, according to the Nazis.

The “death camp” was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the troops of the Soviet Union. Two years later, the State Museum was opened on the territory of the main complex.

It features displays of things that belonged to prisoners: toys they made from wood, pictures, and other crafts that were exchanged for food with passing civilians. Scenes of interrogation and torture by the Gestapo are stylized, reflecting the violence of the Nazis.

The drawings and inscriptions on the walls of the barracks, made by prisoners doomed to death, remained unchanged. As the Poles themselves say today, Auschwitz is the bloodiest and most terrible point on the map of their homeland.

Sobibor

Another concentration camp on Polish territory, created in May 1942. The prisoners were mainly representatives of the Jewish nation, the number of those killed is about 250 thousand people.

One of the few institutions where a prisoner uprising took place in October 1943, after which it was closed and razed to the ground.

Majdanek

The year the camp was founded is considered to be 1941; it was built in the suburbs of Lublin, Poland. It had 5 branches in the south-eastern part of the country.

Over the years of its existence, about 1.5 million people of different nationalities died in its cells.

The surviving prisoners were released by Soviet soldiers on July 23, 1944, and 2 years later a museum and research institute were opened on its territory.

Salaspils

The camp, known as Kurtengorf, was built in October 1941 in Latvia, near Riga. It had several branches, the most famous being Ponar. The main prisoners were children on whom medical experiments were carried out.

In recent years, prisoners were used as blood donors for wounded German soldiers. The camp was burned down in August 1944 by the Germans, who were forced by the advance of Soviet troops to evacuate the remaining prisoners to other institutions.

Ravensbrück

Built in 1938 near Fürstenberg. Before the start of the war of 1941-1945, it was exclusively for women; it consisted mainly of partisans. After 1941 it was completed, after which it received a men's barracks and a children's barracks for young girls.

Over the years of “work”, the number of his captives amounted to more than 132 thousand representatives of the fairer sex of different ages, of which almost 93 thousand died. The release of prisoners took place on April 30, 1945 by Soviet troops.

Mauthausen

Austrian concentration camp, built in July 1938. At first it was one of the large branches of Dachau, the first such institution in Germany, located near Munich. But since 1939 it functioned independently.

In 1940, it merged with the Gusen death camp, after which it became one of the largest concentration settlements in Nazi Germany.

During the war years, there were about 335 thousand natives of 15 European countries, 122 thousand of whom were brutally tortured and killed. The prisoners were released by the Americans, who entered the camp on May 5, 1945. A few years later, 12 states created a memorial museum here and erected monuments to the victims of Nazism.

Irma Grese - Nazi overseer

The horrors of the concentration camps imprinted in the memory of people and the annals of history the names of individuals who can hardly be called human. One of them is considered to be Irma Grese, a young and beautiful German woman whose actions do not fit into the nature of human actions.

Today, many historians and psychiatrists are trying to explain her phenomenon by the suicide of her mother or the propaganda of fascism and Nazism characteristic of that time, but it is impossible or difficult to find a justification for her actions.

Already at the age of 15, the young girl was part of the Hitler Youth movement, a German youth organization whose main principle was racial purity. At the age of 20 in 1942, having changed several professions, Irma became a member of one of the SS auxiliary units. Her first place of work was the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was later replaced by Auschwitz, where she acted as second in command after the commandant.

The abuse of the “Blonde Devil,” as Grese was called by the prisoners, was felt by thousands of captive women and men. This “Beautiful Monster” destroyed people not only physically, but also morally. She beat a prisoner to death with a braided whip, which she carried with her, and enjoyed shooting prisoners. One of the favorite pastimes of the “Angel of Death” was setting dogs on captives, who were first starved for several days.

Irma Grese's last place of service was Bergen-Belsen, where, after its liberation, she was captured by the British military. The tribunal lasted 2 months, the verdict was clear: “Guilty, subject to death by hanging.”

An iron core, or perhaps ostentatious bravado, was present in the woman even on the last night of her life - she sang songs until the morning and laughed loudly, which, according to psychologists, hid the fear and hysteria of the upcoming death - too easy and simple for her.

Josef Mengele - experiments on people

The name of this man still causes horror among people, since he was the one who came up with the most painful and terrible experiments on the human body and psyche.

According to official data alone, tens of thousands of prisoners became its victims. He personally sorted the victims upon arrival at the camp, then they were subjected to a thorough medical examination and terrible experiments.

The “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” managed to avoid a fair trial and imprisonment during the liberation of European countries from the Nazis. For a long time he lived in Latin America, carefully hiding from his pursuers and avoiding capture.

This doctor is responsible for the anatomical dissection of living newborns and castration of boys without the use of anesthesia, experiments on twins, and dwarfs. There is evidence of women being tortured and sterilized using X-rays. They assessed the endurance of the human body when exposed to electric current.

Unfortunately for many prisoners of war, Josef Mengele still managed to avoid fair punishment. After 35 years of living under false names and constantly running away from his pursuers, he drowned in the ocean, losing control of his body as a result of a stroke. The worst thing is that until the end of his life he was firmly convinced that “in his entire life he had never personally harmed anyone.”

Concentration camps were present in many countries around the world. The most famous for the Soviet people was the Gulag, created in the first years of the Bolsheviks coming to power. In total, there were more than a hundred of them and, according to the NKVD, in 1922 alone they housed more than 60 thousand “dissidents” and “dangerous to the authorities” prisoners.

But only the Nazis made the word “concentration camp” go down in history as a place where people were massively tortured and exterminated. A place of abuse and humiliation committed by people against humanity.

The word Auschwitz (or Auschwitz) in the minds of many people is a symbol or even the quintessence of evil, horror, death, a concentration of the most unimaginable inhuman cruelties and torture. Many today dispute what former prisoners and historians say happened here. This is their personal right and opinion. But after visiting Auschwitz and seeing with your own eyes huge rooms filled with... glasses, tens of thousands of pairs of shoes, tons of cut hair and... children's things... You feel empty inside. And my hair is moving in horror. The horror of realizing that this hair, glasses and shoes belonged to a living person. Maybe a postman, or maybe a student. An ordinary worker or market trader. Or a girl. Or a seven year old child. Which they cut off, removed, and threw into a common pile. To another hundred of the same. Auschwitz. A place of evil and inhumanity.

Young student Tadeusz Uzynski arrived in the first echelon with prisoners. As I already said in yesterday’s report, the Auschwitz concentration camp began to function in 1940, as a camp for Polish political prisoners. The first prisoners of Auschwitz were 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow. At the time of its founding, the camp had 20 buildings - former Polish military barracks. Some of them were converted for mass housing of people, and 6 more buildings were additionally built. The average number of prisoners fluctuated between 13-16 thousand people, and in 1942 reached 20 thousand. The Auschwitz camp became the base camp for a whole network of new camps - in 1941, the Auschwitz II - Birkenau camp was built 3 km away, and in 1943 - Auschwitz III - Monowitz. In addition, in 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, built near metallurgical plants, factories and mines, which were subordinate to the Auschwitz III concentration camp. And the camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau completely turned into a plant for the extermination of people.

In 1943, a tattoo of the prisoner's number on the arm was introduced. For infants and young children, the number was most often applied to the thigh. According to the Auschwitz State Museum, this concentration camp was the only Nazi camp in which prisoners had numbers tattooed on them.

Depending on the reasons for their arrest, prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, along with their numbers, were sewn onto their camp clothes. Political prisoners were given a red triangle, criminals were given a green triangle. Gypsies and antisocial elements received black triangles, Jehovah's Witnesses received purple ones, and homosexuals received pink ones. Jews wore a six-pointed star consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for the arrest. Soviet prisoners of war had a patch in the form of the letters SU. The camp clothes were quite thin and provided almost no protection from the cold. Linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even once a month, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics of typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies

Prisoners in the Auschwitz I camp lived in brick blocks, in Auschwitz II-Birkenau - mainly in wooden barracks. Brick blocks were only in the women's section of the Auschwitz II camp. During the entire existence of the Auschwitz I camp, there were about 400 thousand prisoners of different nationalities, Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners of building No. 11 awaiting conclusion of the Gestapo police tribunal. One of the disasters of camp life was the inspections at which the number of prisoners was checked. They lasted several, and sometimes over 10 hours (for example, 19 hours on July 6, 1940). Camp authorities very often announced penalty checks, during which prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were tests when they had to hold their hands up for several hours.

Housing conditions varied greatly in different periods, but they were always catastrophic. The prisoners, who were brought in at the very beginning in the first trains, slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor.

Later, hay bedding was introduced. These were thin mattresses filled with a small amount of it. In a room that barely accommodated 40-50 people, about 200 prisoners slept.

With the increase in the number of prisoners in the camp, the need arose to densify their accommodation. Three-tier bunks appeared. There were 2 people lying on one tier. The bedding was usually rotted straw. The prisoners covered themselves with rags and whatever they had. In the Auschwitz camp the bunks were wooden, in Auschwitz-Birkenau they were both wooden and brick with wooden flooring.

Compared to the conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the toilet of the Auschwitz I camp looked like a real miracle of civilization

toilet barracks in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp

Wash room. The water was only cold and the prisoner only had access to it for a few minutes a day. Prisoners were allowed to wash extremely rarely, and for them it was a real holiday

Sign with the number of the residential unit on the wall

Until 1944, when Auschwitz became an extermination factory, most prisoners were sent to grueling labor every day. At first they worked to expand the camp, and then they were used as slaves in the industrial facilities of the Third Reich. Every day, columns of exhausted slaves went out and entered through gates with the cynical inscription “Arbeit macht Frei” (Work makes you free). The prisoner had to do the work running, without a second of rest. The pace of work, meager portions of food and constant beatings increased the mortality rate. During the return of prisoners to the camp, those killed or exhausted, who could not move on their own, were dragged or carried in wheelbarrows. And at this time, a brass band consisting of prisoners played for them near the gates of the camp.

For every inhabitant of Auschwitz, block No. 11 was one of the most terrible places. Unlike other blocks, its doors were always closed. The windows were completely bricked up. Only on the first floor there were two windows - in the room where the SS men were on duty. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the emergency police court, which came to the Auschwitz camp from Katowice once or twice a month. During 2-3 hours of his work, he imposed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.

The cramped cells, which sometimes housed a huge number of people awaiting sentencing, had only a tiny barred window near the ceiling. And on the street side near these windows there were tin boxes that blocked these windows from the influx of fresh air

Those sentenced to death were forced to undress in this room before execution. If there were few of them that day, then the sentence was carried out right here.

If there were many condemned, they were taken to the “Wall of Death,” which was located behind a high fence with a blind gate between buildings 10 and 11. Large numbers of their camp number were written on the chests of undressed people with an ink pencil (until 1943, when tattoos appeared on the arm), so that later it would be easy to identify the corpse.

Under the stone fence in the courtyard of block 11, a large wall was built of black insulating boards, lined with absorbent material. This wall became the last facet of life for thousands of people sentenced to death by the Gestapo court for unwillingness to betray their homeland, attempted escape and political “crimes.”

Fibers of death. The condemned were shot by the reportfuehrer or members of the political department. For this, they used a small-caliber rifle so as not to attract too much attention with the sounds of shots. After all, very close there was a stone wall, behind which there was a highway.

The Auschwitz camp had a whole system of punishments for prisoners. It can also be called one of the fragments of their deliberate destruction. The prisoner was punished for picking an apple or finding a potato in a field, relieving himself while working, or for working too slowly. One of the most terrible places of punishment, often leading to the death of a prisoner, was one of the basements of building 11. Here in the back room there were four narrow vertical sealed punishment cells measuring 90x90 centimeters in perimeter. Each of them had a door with a metal bolt at the bottom.

The person being punished was forced to squeeze inside through this door and it was bolted. A person could only be standing in this cage. So he stood there without food or water for as long as the SS men wanted. Often this was the last punishment in the life of a prisoner.

Sending punished prisoners to standing cells

In September 1941, the first attempt was made to mass exterminate people using gas. About 600 Soviet prisoners of war and about 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital were placed in small batches in sealed cells in the basement of the 11th building.

Copper pipelines with valves were already installed along the walls of the chambers. Gas flowed through them into the chambers...

The names of the exterminated people were entered into the "Day Status Book" of the Auschwitz camp

Lists of people sentenced to death by the extraordinary police court

Found notes left by those sentenced to death on scraps of paper

In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp along with their parents. These were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most Jewish children died in gas chambers immediately after arriving at the camp. The rest, after a strict selection, were sent to a camp where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults.

Children were registered and photographed in the same way as adults and designated as political prisoners.

One of the most terrible pages in the history of Auschwitz were medical experiments by SS doctors. Including over children. For example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a quick method of biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10. Dr. Josef Mengele conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities as part of genetic and anthropological experiments. In addition, various kinds of experiments were carried out at Auschwitz using new drugs and preparations, toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin transplants were carried out, etc.

Conclusion on the results of X-rays carried out during the experiments with the twins by Dr. Mengele.

Letter from Heinrich Himmler in which he orders a series of sterilization experiments to begin

Cards of recording anthropometric data of experimental prisoners as part of Dr. Mengele's experiments.

Pages of the register of the dead, which contain the names of 80 boys who died after injections of phenol as part of medical experiments

List of released prisoners placed in a Soviet hospital for treatment

In the autumn of 1941, a gas chamber using Zyklon B gas began operating in the Auschwitz camp. It was produced by the Degesch company, which received about 300 thousand marks of profit from the sale of this gas during the period 1941-1944. To kill 1,500 people, according to Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess, about 5-7 kg of gas was needed.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, a huge number of used Zyklon B cans and cans with unused contents were found in the camp warehouses. During the period 1942-1943, according to documents, about 20 thousand kg of Zyklon B crystals were delivered to Auschwitz alone.

Most Jews doomed to death arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau with the conviction that they were being taken “for settlement” to eastern Europe. This was especially true for Jews from Greece and Hungary, to whom the Germans even sold non-existent building plots and lands or offered work in fictitious factories. That is why people sent to the camp for extermination often brought with them the most valuable things, jewelry and money.

Upon arrival at the unloading platform, all things and valuables were taken from people, SS doctors selected the deported people. Those who were declared unable to work were sent to gas chambers. According to the testimony of Rudolf Hoess, there were about 70-75% of those who arrived.

Items found in Auschwitz warehouses after the liberation of the camp

Model of the gas chamber and crematorium II of Auschwitz-Birkenau. People were convinced that they were being sent to a bathhouse, so they looked relatively calm.

Here, prisoners are forced to take off their clothes and are moved to the next room, which simulates a bathhouse. There were shower holes under the ceiling through which no water ever flowed. About 2,000 people were brought into a room of about 210 square meters, after which the doors were closed and gas was supplied to the room. People died within 15-20 minutes. The gold teeth of the dead were pulled out, rings and earrings were removed, and women's hair was cut off.

After this, the corpses were transported to the crematorium ovens, where the fire roared continuously. When the ovens overflowed or when the pipes were damaged from overload, the bodies were destroyed in the burning areas behind the crematoria. All these actions were carried out by prisoners belonging to the so-called Sonderkommando group. At the peak of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, its number was about 1,000 people.

A photograph taken by one of the Sonderkommando members, which shows the process of burning dead people.

In the Auschwitz camp, the crematorium was located outside the camp fence. Its largest room was the morgue, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber.

Here, in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from the ghettos located in Upper Silesia were exterminated.

In the second hall there were three double ovens, in which up to 350 bodies were burned during the day.

One retort held 2-3 corpses.

“To know is to remember. Remember so as not to repeat it” - this succinct phrase perfectly reflects the meaning of writing this article, the meaning of you reading it. Each of us needs to remember the brutal cruelty that a person is capable of when an idea stands above human life.

Creation of concentration camps

In the history of the creation of concentration camps, we can distinguish the following main periods:

1. Before 1934. This phase marked the beginning of the Nazi rule, when the need arose to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The camps were more like prisons. They immediately became a place where the law did not apply, and no organizations were able to penetrate inside. So, for example, if a fire broke out, fire brigades were not allowed to enter the territory.
2. 1936 —1938 During this period, new camps were built: the old ones were no longer enough, because... Now not only political prisoners, but also citizens declared a disgrace to the German nation (parasites and homeless people) ended up there. Then the number of prisoners increased sharply due to the outbreak of war and the first exile of Jews, which occurred after Kristallnacht (November 1938).
3. 1939-1942 Prisoners from occupied countries - France, Poland, Belgium - were sent to the camps.
4. 1942 —1945 During this period, the persecution of Jews intensified, and Soviet prisoners of war also ended up in the hands of the Nazis. Thus,

The Nazis needed new places for the organized murder of millions of people.

Concentration camp victims

1. Representatives of the "lower races"- Jews and Gypsies, who were kept in separate barracks and were subjected to complete physical extermination, they were starved and sent to the most grueling work.

2. Political opponents of the regime. Among them were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists, social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, and members of various religious sects.

3. Criminals, whom the administration often used as overseers of political prisoners.

4. “Unreliable elements”, which were considered homosexuals, alarmists, etc.

Distinguishing marks

The duty of each prisoner was to wear a distinctive sign on his clothing, a serial number and a triangle on his chest and right knee. Political prisoners were marked with a red triangle, criminals – green, “unreliable” – black, homosexuals – pink, gypsies – brown, Jews – yellow, plus they were required to wear a six-pointed Star of David. Jewish defilers (those who violated racial laws) wore a black border around a green or yellow triangle.

Foreigners were marked with a stitched capital letter of the country's name: for the French - the letter “F”, for the Poles “P”, etc.

The letter “A” (from the word “Arbeit”) was sewn on violators of labor discipline, the letter “K” (from the word “Kriegsverbrecher”) on war criminals, and the word “Blid” (fool) on those with mental retardation. A red and white target on the chest and back was mandatory for prisoners involved in the escape.

Buchenwald

Buchenwald is considered one of the largest concentration camps built in Germany. On July 15, 1937, the first prisoners arrived here - Jews, gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, opponents of the Nazi regime. For moral suppression, a phrase was carved on the gate, enhancing the cruelty of the situation in which the prisoners found themselves: “To each his own.”

In the period 1937-1945. More than 250 thousand people were imprisoned in Buchenwald. In the main part of the concentration camp and in 136 branches, prisoners were mercilessly exploited. 56 thousand people died: they were killed, died of hunger, typhus, dysentery, died during medical experiments (to test new vaccines, prisoners were infected with typhus and tuberculosis, and poisoned). In 1941 Soviet prisoners of war end up here. Over the entire history of Buchenwald, 8 thousand prisoners from the USSR were shot.

Despite the harsh conditions, the prisoners managed to create several resistance groups, the strongest of which was a group of Soviet prisoners of war. The prisoners, risking their lives every day, prepared an uprising for several years. The capture had to happen the moment the Soviet or American army arrived. However, they had to do this earlier. In 1945 The Nazi leaders, who were already aware of the sad outcome of the war for them, resorted to the complete extermination of prisoners in order to hide the evidence of such a large-scale crime. April 11, 1945 the prisoners began an armed uprising. After about 30 minutes, two hundred SS men were captured, and by the end of the day Buchenwald was completely under the control of the rebels! Only two days later American troops arrived there. More than 20 thousand prisoners were released, including 900 children.

In 1958 A memorial complex was opened on the territory of Buchenwald.

Auschwitz

Auschwitz is a complex of German concentration and death camps. In the period 1941-1945. 1 million 400 thousand people were killed there. (According to some historians, this figure reaches 4 million people). Of these, 15 thousand were Soviet prisoners of war. It is impossible to establish the exact number of victims, since many documents were deliberately destroyed.

Even before arriving at this center of violence and cruelty, people were subjected to physical and moral suppression. They were brought to the concentration camp by trains, where there were no toilets and no stops were made. The unbearable smell could be heard even far from the train. People were given neither food nor water - it is not surprising that thousands of people were already dying on the road. The survivors had yet to experience all the horrors of being in a real human hell: separation from loved ones, torture, brutal medical experiments and, of course, death.

Upon arrival, prisoners were divided into two groups: those who were immediately exterminated (children, the disabled, the elderly, the wounded) and those who could be exploited before extermination. The latter were kept in unbearable conditions: they slept next to rodents, lice, and bedbugs on straw that lay on the concrete floor (later it was replaced by thin mattresses with straw, and later three-tier bunks were invented). In a space that could accommodate 40 people, 200 people lived. The prisoners had almost no access to water and washed extremely rarely, which is why various infectious diseases flourished in the barracks. The prisoners' diet was more than meager: a piece of bread, some acorns, a glass of water for breakfast, beet and potato peel soup for lunch, a slice of bread for dinner. In order not to die, the captives had to eat grass and roots, which often resulted in poisoning and death.

The morning began with roll calls, where prisoners had to stand for several hours and hope that they would not be found unfit for work, because in this case they would be immediately destroyed. Then they went to places of grueling work - buildings, plants and factories, to agriculture (people were harnessed instead of bulls and horses). The efficiency of their work was quite low: a hungry, exhausted person is simply not able to do the work efficiently. Therefore, the prisoner worked for 3-4 months, after which he was sent to a crematorium or gas chamber, and a new one came in his place. Thus, a continuous conveyor of labor was established, which completely satisfied the interests of the Nazis. Only the phrase “Arbit macht frei” (German: “work leads to freedom”) carved on the gate was completely meaningless - work here only led to inevitable death.

But this fate was not the worst. It was harder for everyone who fell under the knife of the so-called doctors who practiced chilling medical experiments. It should be noted that the operations were carried out without painkillers, the wounds were not treated, which, of course, led to a painful death. The value of human life - child or adult - was zero, senseless and severe suffering was not taken into account. The effects of chemicals on the human body were studied. The latest pharmaceuticals were tested. Prisoners were artificially infected with malaria, hepatitis and other dangerous diseases as an experiment. Castration of men and sterilization of women, especially young women, were often carried out, accompanied by removal of the ovaries (mainly Jewish and Gypsy women were subject to these terrible experiments). Such painful operations were carried out to realize one of the main goals of the Nazis - to stop childbearing among peoples disliked by the Nazi regime.

The key figures in these abuses of the human body were the leaders of the experiments, Karl Cauberg and Joseph Mengel. The latter, from the memories of the survivors, was a polite and courteous man, which terrified the prisoners even more.

After arriving at Silaspils, the children were almost immediately separated from their mothers. These were painful scenes, full of despair and pain of distraught mothers - it was obvious to everyone that they would see each other for the last time. Women clung tightly to their children, screamed, fought, some turned gray before our eyes...

Then it is difficult to describe what happened in words - they dealt so ruthlessly with both adults and children. They were beaten, starved, tortured, shot, poisoned, killed in gas chambers,

They performed surgeries without anesthesia and injected dangerous substances. Blood was pumped out of children's veins and then used for wounded SS officers. The number of child donors reaches 12 thousand. It should be noted that 1.5 liters of blood were taken from the child every day - it is not surprising that the death of the little donor occurred quite quickly.

To save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed with rifle butts. Children under 6 years of age were placed in a separate barracks, infected with measles, and then they were treated with something that was strictly forbidden for this disease - they were bathed. The disease progressed, after which they died within two to three days. So, in one year about 3 thousand people were killed.

Sometimes children were sold to farm owners for 9-15 marks. The weakest, not suitable for labor use, and as a result, not bought, were simply shot.

The children were kept in the most terrible conditions. From the memoirs of a boy who miraculously survived: “The children in the orphanage went to bed very early, hoping to sleep away from eternal hunger and illness. There were so many lice and fleas that even now, remembering those horrors, my hair stands on end. Every evening I undressed my sister and took off handfuls of these creatures, but there were a lot of them in all the seams and stitches of my clothes.”

Now in that place, soaked in children’s blood, there is a memorial complex that reminded us of those terrible events.

Dachau

The Dachau camp, one of the first concentration camps in Germany, was founded in 1933. in Dachau, located near Munich. More than 250 thousand were hostages at Dachau. people, about 70 thousand were tortured or killed. people (12 thousand were Soviet citizens). It should be noted that this camp needed mainly healthy and young victims aged 20-45 years, but there were also other age groups.

Initially, the camp was created to “re-educate” oppositionists of the Nazi regime. Soon it turned into a platform for practicing punishments and cruel experiments, protected from prying eyes. One of the areas of medical experiments was the creation of a super-warrior (this was Hitler’s idea long before the start of World War II), so special attention was paid to research into the capabilities of the human body.

It is difficult to imagine what kind of torment the prisoners of Dachau had to go through when they fell into the hands of K. Schilling and Z. Rascher. The first infected with malaria and then carried out treatment, most of which was unsuccessful, leading to death. Another passion of his was freezing people. They were left in the cold for dozens of hours, doused with cold water or immersed in it. Naturally, all this was carried out without anesthesia - it was considered too expensive. True, sometimes narcotic drugs were used as painkillers. However, this was not done for humane reasons, but in order to maintain the secrecy of the process: the test subjects screamed too loudly.

Unthinkable experiments were also carried out to “warm” frozen bodies through sexual intercourse using captive women.

Dr. Rusher specialized in modeling extreme conditions and establishing human endurance. He placed prisoners in a pressure chamber, changed the pressure and loads. As a rule, the unfortunates died from torture, and the survivors went crazy.

In addition, the situation of a person falling into the sea was simulated. People were placed in a special chamber and given only salt water for 5 days.

To help you understand how cynical the doctors were towards the prisoners at the Dachau camp, try to imagine the following. The skins were removed from the corpses to make saddles and clothing items. The corpses were boiled, the skeletons were removed and used as models and visual aids. For such mockery of human bodies, entire blocks with the necessary settings were created.

Dachau was liberated by American troops in April 1945.

Majdanek

This death camp is located near the Polish city of Lublin. Its prisoners were mainly prisoners of war transferred from other concentration camps.

According to official statistics, 1 million 500 thousand prisoners became victims of Majdanek, of which 300 thousand died. However, at present, the exhibition of the Majdanek State Museum provides completely different data: the number of prisoners was reduced to 150 thousand, killed - 80 thousand.

The mass extermination of people in the camp began in the fall of 1942. At the same time, a shockingly cruel action was carried out

with the cynical name “Erntefes”, which is translated from it. means "harvest festival". All the Jews were herded into one place and ordered to lie down along the ditch like tiles, then the SS men shot the unfortunate people in the back of the head. After a layer of people had been killed, the SS men again forced the Jews to lie down in the ditch and shot - and so on until the three-meter trench was filled with corpses. The massacre was accompanied by loud music, which was quite in the spirit of the SS.

From the story of a former concentration camp prisoner who, while still a boy, ended up within the walls of Majdanek:

“The Germans loved both cleanliness and order. Daisies were blooming around the camp. And in exactly the same way - cleanly and neatly - the Germans destroyed us.”

“When we were fed in our barracks, given rotten gruel - all the food bowls were covered with a thick layer of human saliva - the children licked these bowls several times.”

“The Germans began to take away children from Jews, supposedly for the bathhouse. But parents are hard to fool. They knew that the children were being taken to be burned alive in the crematorium. There was loud screaming and crying over the camp. Shots and barking dogs were heard. Until now, our hearts are breaking from our complete helplessness and defenselessness. Many Jewish mothers were given water and they fainted. The Germans took the children away, and for a long time the heavy smell of burnt hair, bones, and human bodies hung over the camp. The children were burned alive."

« During the day, Grandpa Petya was at work. They worked with a pickaxe - they mined limestone. They were brought in in the evening. We saw them lined up in a column and forced to lie down on the table one by one. They were beaten with sticks. They were then forced to run a long distance. Those who fell while running were shot on the spot by the Nazis. And so every evening. Why they were beaten, what they were guilty of, we didn’t know.”

“And the day of parting came. The convoy with mom drove away. Here mom is already at the checkpoint, now - on the highway behind the checkpoint - mom is leaving. I see everything - she waves her yellow handkerchief at me. My heart was breaking. I shouted to the entire Majdanek camp. To somehow calm me down, a young German woman in military uniform took me in her arms and began to calm me down. I kept screaming. I beat her with my small, childish feet. The German woman felt sorry for me and just stroked my head with her hand. Of course, the heart of any woman, be it German, will tremble.”

Treblinka

Treblinka - two concentration camps (Treblinka 1 - “labor camp” and Treblinka 2 - “death camp”) in occupied Poland, near the village of Treblinka. In the first camp, about 10 thousand were killed. people, in the second – about 800 thousand. 99.5% of those killed were Jews from Poland, about 2 thousand were Gypsies.

From the memoirs of Samuel Willenberg:

“In the pit were the remains of bodies that had not yet been consumed by the fire lit underneath them. Remains of men, women and small children. This picture simply paralyzed me. I heard burning hair crackle and bones burst. There was acrid smoke in my nose, tears were welling up in my eyes... How to describe and express this? There are things that I remember, but they cannot be expressed in words.”

“One day I came across something familiar. Brown children's coat with bright green trim on the sleeves. My mother used exactly the same green fabric to cover the coat of my younger sister Tamara. It was hard to make a mistake. Next to it was a skirt with flowers - my older sister Itta. Both of them disappeared somewhere in Częstochowa before we were taken away. I kept hoping that they were saved. Then I realized that no. I remember how I held these things and pressed my lips together in helplessness and hatred. Then I wiped my face. It was dry. I couldn’t even cry anymore.”

Treblinka II was liquidated in the summer of 1943, Treblinka I in July 1944 as Soviet troops approached.

Ravensbrück

The Ravensbrück camp was founded near the city of Fürstenberg in 1938. In 1939-1945. 132 thousand women and several hundred children of more than 40 nationalities passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were killed.

Monument to the women and children who died in the Ravensbrück camp

This is what one of the prisoners, Blanca Rothschild, remembers about her arrival at the camp.