The fate of German prisoners of war in the BSSR 1944 1954. German prisoners of war in the USSR: a little-known page in the history of World War II

On June 22, 1941, he was one of the first to experience the entire military power Nazi Germany. He was twice captured and passed through death camps, once arrested and exiled. Could have died at least three times: twice from enemy bullets and once from a powerful explosion.

More times could... die. For example, from hunger, cold, or some contagious disease in German concentration camps death, as well as shoot himself, hang himself or, at worst, rush to guard German camp or the Soviet Gulag out of despair, impotence or in hysterics ....

Relatives, especially the young wife, with whom he broke up shortly after the wedding, did not know whether he was alive, missing or dead. From him there was not a single news either from the first days of the war to its end, or after that for a long and tedious ten years.

Here is a brief summary of the story I heard about eight years ago from one of my colleagues. But the story about the unusual fate of this ordinary guy from the Kazakh village is fragmentary and inconsistent. Since he himself very rarely could pour out his soul to anyone. As you know, people who were captured by the Germans did not have to talk about their past on pain of reprisals.

The only person whom he nevertheless trusted was the now deceased father of my colleague, journalist and writer Tokhtarkhan Sharipzhanov, with whom he secluded more than once to tell about his ordeal. And later the father will tell his son Merkhat about this, and the son will tell the author of these lines.

I emphasize that this is not a fictional character, but a real one, as they say, from flesh and blood. And the name of this ordinary person with an unusual fate is Badirish Smagulov. The name of his wife is Lyazzatbanu, whom relatives and friends, and then the whole village, called Shokek for some reason. But further we will call her by her real sonorous name.

WEDDING BEFORE THE WAR

He was a simple aul guy, a tractor driver. As befits a Kazakh nomad, he was well versed in the intricacies of animal husbandry, he even knew how to milk, which more than once saved him from starvation far from his native land.

He was born in the village of Zhanazhol, then Samara, and now the Kokpektinsky district of the East Kazakhstan region in 1918, when in the Steppe region, and especially in the Semipalatinsk region, there was an unequal struggle between the armed formations of the Alash Orda and the already regular Red Army of the Soviets.

Soviet soldier Badirish Smagulov with his wife Lyazzatbanu.

In addition to him, the family also had older sisters, one of whom, Bagida-apai, just recently died in Almaty.

Lyazzatbanu and his brother were left orphans in early childhood, they were then taken in by close relatives of the deceased parents - Aisha and Nigmetulla Katiev. Moreover, according to the stories of one of the grandchildren of Aisha and Nigmetulla, they fell in love with adopted children even more than their own.

According to the same stories, Badirish was drafted into the army at the age of either 20 years old, or 21 years old, about one and a half to two years before the start of World War II, called the official propaganda of the Great Patriotic War.

Even from the old yellowed photographs, one cannot fail to notice that Badirish in his youth was a handsome and prominent guy - an enviable groom. Lyazzatbanu, as can be seen from the photograph, even in old age has lost little of her former girlish beauty.

Badirish and Lyazzatbanu got married either in 1939, or in 1940, when he was already over 20, she was hardly 18 years old. He went into the army literally the day after the wedding. Moreover, parents on both sides accelerated the wedding precisely because the groom was drafted into the army.

And even more so, as is usually the case in villages, everyone knew for a long time that they had been friends for a long time and loved each other. And so that no one would take her away, especially at that time (and even now in the south of Kazakhstan), a beautiful daughter-in-law could have been kidnapped, they decided to get married, and her parents did not mind, they were only happy.

In the prewar years, the Kazakhs still remained faithful to customs and traditions, especially in the villages, especially when it came to creating new family. Aul Zhanazhol was no exception. And of course, the wedding of Badirish and Lyazzatbanu took place with strict observance of the national marriage ceremony.

It was precisely because of the peculiarities of Kazakh wedding ceremonies that lasted three days or more that Badirish left for the army without having tasted the taste of the wedding night. The bride stayed with his parents.

IN THE PIT UNDER THE BODIES

Before the start of the war, according to the episodic recollections of my colleague and relatives Badirish Smagulov, he will have time to study at accelerated training courses for either junior commanders - sergeants, or junior officers.

June 1941, Brest Fortress, Belarus. In the early morning of June 22, 1941, the first massive air and ground strikes of the Nazi troops of Germany, which attacked the country of the Soviets without declaring war, were taken over by the legendary Brest Fortress, where Badirish Smagulov served as a junior commander.

After continuous fierce fighting, their unit retreats into the forest. The advanced units of the "invincible" Red Army are demoralized, the spirit is suppressed. From ordinary fighters to high command.

Proof of this: the commander of the unit where Badirish Smagulov served, having gathered the miserable remnants of the fighters in the forest, ordered (or announced?) Everyone to break into small detachments and break through from the encirclement to their own. Who can. In other words, as in the well-known fairy tale: “Save yourself who can!”

As a result, everyone was captured, with the possible exception of a few soldiers and officers. And then the Jews and everyone, presumably, similar to them, the entire command staff, as well as the communists, were selected from the bulk of the prisoners of war.

Unfortunately, the face of the ethnic Kazakh and junior commander, Badirish Smagulov, turned out to be not typical Kazakh. With a swarthy face, and even circumcised according to the Muslim rite, Badirish reminded the Germans more of a Jew or, at worst, a gypsy, as can be seen from his photograph.

In a word, he was among those Jews, officers and communists whom the Germans lined up on the edge of a freshly dug deep ditch and ... shot at close range. And here Badirish is saved for the first time by his natural ingenuity or instinct. He is one of the first to jump into the pit, not waiting for the automatic burst to rumble.

He ended up in a deep pit under the bodies of his fellow soldiers, who fell into it slain to death, while he himself did not even receive a scratch. Another miracle was that the Germans left without filling up the corpses and without leveling the pit to the ground.

Badirish also remembers that not all those who were shot were killed immediately. Many moaned before midnight, called for help. One Ukrainian, seeing him alive, asked to be finished off.

But Badirish did not do this: either his hand did not rise - he regretted it, - or he considered it a sin. He climbed out of the hole himself and for a very long time, for several days, he himself did not remember how long, wandered through the Belarusian forests. When he was already completely exhausted from hunger and fatigue, he knocked on the door of a village hut.

An elderly woman who opened the door, fed and watered him, arranged for him to spend the night in a bathhouse. However, when he woke up in the morning, he saw a German officer above him.

IN THE TURKESTAN LEGION

He did not claim that it was the old woman who told the Nazis about the fugitive Soviet soldier. But later he learned that bonuses in the form of occupation Reichsmarks or products were relied on for helping to capture the fugitive military.

Soviet soldier Badirish Smagulov (left).

In any case, Badirish did not say anything bad about this old woman. Despite the fact that it was in her house that he was captured for the second time - and now, apparently, for a long time. But the second time he managed to convince the Germans that he was neither a Jew nor a communist. But he admitted that he was a junior commander.

He was immediately sent deep into Germany, where, until the end of the war, Badirish visited both a camp for displaced persons and several concentration camps. In the death camps, he just needed the skills of a nomad cattle breeder and, oddly enough, the ability to milk.

Then Badirish will tell his relative Tokhtarkhan Sharipzhanov more than once and not without humor about how at the very beginning he managed to explain to the Germans and convince them of his ability to maintain and milk cattle. As a result, everywhere he would certainly find himself in a subsidiary farm and always had fresh milk, which helped him survive in the death camps.

It is not surprising that he once ended up in the Turkestan Legion, where, again, he was responsible for the subsidiary farm...

In the story of Badirish Smagulov about the Turkestan Legion, a remarkable moment is the episode how he saw Mustafa Shokai twice in a concentration camp. As you know, the leader of the Kazakh emigration, Mustafa Shokai, visited Soviet prisoners of war of Central Asian origin in German concentration camps. His memories of Shokai were filled with emotions and sincere admiration for his personality, ideas, charisma and oratorical talent.

When Mustafa Shokai spoke to the prisoners of war, people listened to him with bated breath, Badirish Smagulov said, former member Turkestan Legion. True, in order to somehow more fully and accurately convey his impression of Shokai, he compared him with Lenin. “This is a man of the level of Lenin,” said Badirish Smagulov, which was quite understandable.

With whom else could a person who grew up in an era when religion was declared “opium for the people” and banned, and the Bolshevik-communist regime imposed Lenin instead of God on the captive peoples, and his embalmed body was put on public display?!

No less exciting further development events. Once, a man dressed in the uniform of an American officer approached the former legionnaires from the Turkestan Legion, who were now captured by US troops. Having built them, he began to speak fluently in ... the Kazakh language.

But before that, on his orders, a barrel was placed in the center of the field in front of the formation. And then this officer said that everyone who wants to return to the Soviet Union must go to one side of the barrel.

“By agreement with the USSR, as with an allied state, we must hand over all of you to the Soviet troops. But we know that the Gulag is waiting for you there,” he said. “So right now you still have a choice. If you want to apply for asylum in the US, then stand on the other side.”

Many wished to return to their homeland, to the Soviet Union, says Badirish Smagulov. But he did not go over to either side, or to the other, but remained in place. This meant that he would remain in Europe.

Another man in the uniform of an American officer gave a stern warning that no help would be given to those who remained in Europe. Moreover, if they fall into the hands of the British, they will certainly be handed over to the Soviets in accordance with the agreement.

What did he do, where and on what means did our hero live or exist? He probably told his interlocutor, Tokhtarkhan Sharipzhanov, about this in detail. But my colleague, his son, only knew that Badirish Smagulov had visited many countries of Western Europe - West Germany, Italy, Austria. Apparently, in search of a better share.

IN THE GULAG

Beginning in the spring of 1953, after the death of Stalin, the leadership of the USSR conducted intensified propaganda in Europe, persuading its former citizens, not only former prisoners of German concentration camps and prisoners of war, but also those driven into Germany during the war years, and white emigrants to return to the country, swearing an oath them a full amnesty.

Like many, Badirish Smagulov also believed in it. Or, perhaps, he forced himself to believe, because, apparently, nostalgia for his native village, for the steppes and relatives did not give rest. And he decided to return.

However, as soon as he crossed the western border of the USSR, handcuffs were put on his hands and he was immediately sent to the Gulag, on the Sakhalin Peninsula, where the prisoners worked in an underground mine.

Badirish worked in this mine for no more than one and a half to two years, until about the middle of 1955, when a fatal explosion occurred there. As a result, a man who came out of the bloodiest war in the history of mankind and a number of Nazi death camps without a scratch became a complete invalid in the Soviet Gulag. In peacetime.

Lyazzatbanu did not receive any news from her husband during the first days of the war, nor almost ten years after it, nor a "funeral", nor a message that she was "missing", but did not lose hope, remained devoted and faithful to her husband. And she was waiting for him.

Although friends, not to mention relatives, urged her to forget about him, think about herself and marry someone else and have children.

WITHOUT AN ARM AND EYE

But then one day, more than fifteen years later, sometime after the summer of 1955, Lyazzatbanu heard an unusual noise from the street. When she ran out, she saw a healthy man of Slavic appearance, who, accompanied by a crowd of onlookers, walked straight to her house, carrying in his hands some object of an incomprehensible shape.

This object turned out to be her long-awaited and ... unexpected husband, whose whole body was bandaged in places, wrapped in dirty rags in places. Needless to say, why he was reported in his arms - he could not stand on his feet.

Even relatives remember well that when Lyazzatbanu began to remove bandages and rags, money fell down, and “live”, which the post-war aul did not see at all. At that time, in the village, instead of a salary, the so-called workdays were recorded, according to which the villagers received food and everything else.

How the spouses, who parted while still young and beautiful, and who met already middle-aged people, recognized each other - this is unknown to us. It probably wasn't easy. And that's why. Badirish was without one arm almost to the shoulder and without one eye. The artificial eye did not close even in a dream and did not blink. The second - almost did not see.

Moreover, Badirish's entire face was disfigured by black coal dust, which had apparently been absorbed into the skin during an explosion in the mine. The children in the village were frightened by his appearance, some compared him with Fantômas, the main character of a French movie popular in the 1970s.

And be that as it may, the spouses Badirish and Lyazzatbanu Smagulov began to live and not grieve. Lyazzatbanu bore him three sons and the same number of daughters. Badirish manages to slightly restore his eyesight, learn how to use a prosthetic arm, which allowed him to work, even drive a combine and a tractor, hold a stalk and mow hay. And keep your family safe.

UNDER KGB CONTROL

Having raised six children, Badirish Smagulov died at the age of 70 in 1988.

Tokhtarkhan Sharipzhanov is perhaps the only one of all the relatives to whom Badirish dared to tell about his life, despite the control from the KG. After the funeral of Badirish, he recalled that several young people in civilian clothes came either from Almaty, or from Semey, or from Ust-Kamenogorsk to Zhanazhol and from the very beginning to the end of the funeral were in the village.

No one knew who these people were and why they had come to “pay their last respects” to the simple Kazakh Badirish Smagulov from a small Kazakh aul lost in the steppes.

And only Tokhtarkhan understood that these people were from the committee state security(KGB), which, apparently, had to make sure with their own eyes that for many years standing on a special register, “a person who was taken prisoner during the war years” really died and was buried.

And Tokhtarkhan also well remembered the words of Badirish that the KGB carefully monitored any possible relationship between former prisoners of war during the Second World War. Therefore, Tokhtarkhan believed, the main task of the unexpected guests, most likely, was to compile a list of those who came to Badirish's funeral.

It was the third year of Gorbachev's perestroika, Badirish finished his difficult earthly journey with dignity. But even in his last refuge in a small aul cemetery, he left under the watchful eye of the KGB.

Lyazzatbanu (Shokek-apai) Smagulova, his faithful wife, girlfriend and support in his difficult battle for the title of remaining human, left this world in 2004, at the age of 83.

One of the stereotypes persistently implanted in public consciousness, became a myth about the fate of Soviet prisoners of war after their release from German captivity. "Democratic" historians and publicists paint a kind of heartbreaking picture of how former Soviet servicemen released from German concentration camps were sent to Kolyma camps, or at least to penal battalions, almost without exception. It is believed that the Stalinist regime equated captivity with treason, with all consequences arising from this fact. However, this is only a myth and another lie.

According to Soviet pre-war legislation, only surrender, not caused by a combat situation, was considered a crime. For example, if a soldier of the Red Army fled with his position to the enemy, he would be shot at capture with confiscation of property. Prisoners of war who were captured due to circumstances beyond their control, in conditions caused by a combat situation, were not subject to criminal prosecution. Captivity was not a crime against the Motherland, but a tragedy.

They somewhat toughened their attitude to the problem of captivity in August 1941. A streak of terrible defeats led to significant losses of the Red Army, including prisoners. On August 16, 1941, the famous order No. 270 “On the responsibility of military personnel for surrendering and leaving weapons to the enemy” appeared, which was signed by Joseph Stalin. The order was quite consistent with the time - the enemy was rushing to the main Soviet centers, the situation was critical and required emergency solutions. Surrender was equated with treason.
The order had to be read in all divisions of the armed forces of the USSR. According to him, representatives commanders and political workers who during the battle tore off their insignia, surrendered or became deserters, were considered malicious deserters and were to be shot on the spot, and their families were to be arrested. Those who were surrounded were ordered to resist to the last opportunity, save their weapons, make their way to their own, and destroy commanders or Red Army soldiers who want to surrender by all means. The families of such traitors were to be deprived of state benefits and assistance. The order obligated to demote to the ranks or even shoot (if necessary) cowardly commanders and political workers. And in their place to put forward the brave and courageous people from the junior command staff or even distinguished privates.
In general, given the situation at the front - the period of heavy defeats of the Red Army, the loss of vast territories, the approach German troops to the most important centers of the Soviet Union - Leningrad, Moscow, Kyiv, the order was justified.

Fortunately, in practice, the harsh measures prescribed by order No. 270 were used very rarely, because. the account of those taken prisoner was not established. And already from the beginning of November 1941, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs again began to take actions to alleviate the life of Soviet prisoners of war who were in German captivity.

One of the reasons that led to the emergence of the myth about sending prisoners to Soviet camps was the check of prisoners of war in special camps of the NKVD. When released from German captivity, prisoners of war were sent there. From October 1941 to March 1944, 320,000 former prisoners of war passed through checks in such special camps. Moreover, in these camps, people were not only checked, but former prisoners of war restored their strength.

In fact, elementary common sense suggests that servicemen who have returned from captivity should be subjected to verification by counterintelligence agencies - if only because there are a certain number of enemy agents among them. The Germans actively used this channel to send their agents. Here is what V. Schellenberg wrote about this in his memoirs:
"Thousands of Russians were selected in the prisoner of war camps, who, after training, were parachuted into the depths of Russian territory. Their main task, along with the transfer of current information, was the political decomposition of the population and sabotage. Other groups were intended to fight partisans, for which they were thrown into as our agents to the Russian partisans. In order to achieve success as soon as possible, we began to recruit volunteers from among Russian prisoners of war right in the front line. "
Thus, the creation at the end of 1941, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 0521, of filtration camps to check those released from captivity was an urgent need.
Not only former prisoners of war were tested in these special camps. The contingent arriving there was divided into three accounting groups:
1st - prisoners of war and encircled;
2nd - ordinary policemen, village elders and other civilians suspected of treasonous activities;
3rd - civilians of military age who lived in the territory occupied by the enemy.
But maybe, from the filtration camps, the former prisoners were really driven en masse to Kolyma? Let us consider the archive data published on this topic.

Data on former prisoners of war held in special camps
between October 1941 and March 1944
Total received 317594
Checked and transferred to the Red Army 223281/70.3%
to the escort troops of the NKVD 4337 / 1.4%
to the defense industry 5716/1.8%
Lost in hospital 1529/0.5%
Died 1799/0.6%
In assault battalions 8255 / 2.6%
Arrested 11283/3.5%
Continue to be tested 61394/19.3%

So, as of March 1944, 256,200 former prisoners passed the NKVD check. Of them:
successfully passed the test - 234863 (91.7%)
sent to penal battalions - 8255 (3.2%)
arrested - 11283 (4.4%)
died - 1799 (0.7%).

And in November 1944, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution according to which released prisoners of war and Soviet citizens of military age, until the end of the war, were sent directly to reserve military units, bypassing special camps. Among them were more than 83 thousand officers. Of these, after verification, 56,160 people were dismissed from the army, more than 10 thousand were sent to the troops, 1,567 were deprived of their officer ranks and demoted to privates, 15,241 were transferred to privates and sergeants.
So, after getting acquainted with the facts, including those published by notorious anti-Stalinists, the myth about the tragic fate of the liberated Soviet prisoners of war bursts like a soap bubble. In fact, until the end of the war, the vast majority (over 90%) of Soviet soldiers released from German captivity, after the necessary checks in the special camps of the NKVD, returned to duty or were sent to work in industry. A small number (about 4%) were arrested and about the same number were sent to penal battalions.
It should be noted that the attitude towards former prisoners of war at the front was completely normal. After the war, people used to be reproached with captivity, but only on a personal level. This was due to the severe psychological trauma survivors of a terrible war, they were suspicious of those who were "on the other side." The state did not pursue former prisoners.

After the end of the war, the mass release of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians who had been deported to forced labor in Germany and other countries began.
Of the prisoners of war released after the end of the war, only 14.69% were repressed. As a rule, these were Vlasovites and other accomplices of the invaders. Thus, according to the instructions given to the heads of the inspection bodies, the following were subject to arrest and trial from among the repatriates:
- the leading and commanding staff of the police, "people's guard", "people's militia", "Russian liberation army", national legions and other similar organizations;
- Ordinary police officers and ordinary members of the listed organizations who took part in punitive expeditions or were active in the performance of their duties;
- former soldiers of the Red Army who voluntarily went over to the side of the enemy;
- burgomasters, major fascist officials, employees of the Gestapo and other German punitive and intelligence agencies;
- village elders, who were active accomplices of the occupiers.
What was the further fate of these "freedom fighters" who fell into the hands of the NKVD? Most of them were declared that they deserved the most severe punishment, but in connection with the victory over Germany, the Soviet government showed them leniency, freeing them from criminal liability for treason, and limited themselves to sending them to a special settlement for a period of 6 years.
Such a manifestation of humanism was a complete surprise for the accomplices of the Nazis. Here is a typical episode. On November 6, 1944, two British ships arrived in Murmansk, carrying 9,907 former Soviet servicemen who fought in the ranks of the German army against the Anglo-American troops and were taken prisoner by them. Under Article 193 of the then Criminal Code of the RSFSR, only one punishment was provided for the transfer of military personnel to the side of the enemy in wartime - the death penalty with confiscation of property. Therefore, many "passengers" expected to be shot immediately on the Murmansk pier. However, official Soviet representatives explained that the Soviet government had forgiven them and that not only would they not be shot, but that they would generally be exempted from criminal liability for treason. For more than a year, these people were tested in the NKVD special camp, and then they were sent to a 6-year-old special settlement. In 1952, most of them were released, and their profiles did not show any criminal record, and the time spent working in the special settlement was included in the length of service.
In total in 1946-1947. 148,079 Vlasovites and other accomplices of the invaders were sent to the special settlement. As of January 1, 1953, 56,746 Vlasovites remained in the special settlement, 93,446 were released in 1951-1952. upon expiration of the term.
As for the accomplices of the invaders, who stained themselves with specific crimes, they were sent to the Gulag camps, making a worthy company to Solzhenitsyn there.

Enemy captivity is the inevitable fate of many soldiers and officers participating in any major battle. The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) was not only the bloodiest in the history of mankind, it also set an anti-record for the number of prisoners. More than 5 million Soviet citizens visited fascist concentration camps, only about a third of them returned to their homeland. They all learned something from the Germans.

The scale of the tragedy

As you know, during the First World War (1914-1918), more than 3.4 million Russian soldiers and officers were captured by representatives of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Of these, about 190 thousand people died. And although, according to numerous historical testimonies, the Germans treated our compatriots much worse than the captured French or British, the conditions of keeping Russian prisoners of war in Germany in those years are incomparable with the horrors of fascist concentration camps.

The racial theories of the German National Socialists led to monstrous in their cruelty massacres, torture and atrocities committed against defenseless people. Hunger, cold, disease, unbearable living conditions, Slave work and constant bullying - all this testifies to the systematic extermination of our compatriots. [S-BLOCK]

According to various experts, in total from 1941 to 1945 the Germans captured about 5.2 - 5.7 million Soviet citizens. There is no more accurate data, since no one thoroughly took into account all the partisans, underground fighters, reservists, militias and employees different departments trapped in enemy dungeons. Most of them died. It is known for sure that after the end of the war, more than 1 million 863 thousand people returned to their homeland. And about half of them were suspected by the NKVD of complicity with the Nazis.

The Soviet leadership, in general, considered every soldier and officer who surrendered as almost a deserter. And the natural desire of people to survive at any cost was perceived as a betrayal.

The Nazis made excuses

At least 3.5 million Soviet soldiers and officers died in captivity. High-ranking Nazis during Nuremberg Trials(1945-1946) tried to justify themselves by the fact that the leadership of the USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 1929. Say, this fact allowed the Germans to violate the norms international law towards Soviet citizens.

The Nazis were guided by two documents:

the directive “On the treatment of political commissars” of June 6, 1941 (the war had not yet begun), which obliged soldiers to shoot communists immediately after being captured;

the order of the command of the Wehrmacht "On the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war" of September 8, 1941, which actually untied the hands of the Nazi executioners.

More than 22 thousand concentration camps were created on the territory of Germany and the occupied states. It is simply impossible to talk about all of them in one article, so let's take as an example the infamous "Uman Pit", located on the territory of the Cherkasy region of Ukraine. There, Soviet prisoners of war were kept in a huge open-air pit. They died en masse from hunger, cold and disease. Nobody removed the bodies. Gradually, the camp "Uman Pit" turned into a huge mass grave.

Survival

The main thing that Soviet prisoners of war learned while being with the Germans was to survive. By some miracle, about a third of the prisoners managed to overcome all the hardships and hardships. Moreover, rational fascists often fed only those inhabitants of concentration camps who were used in various industries.

So, in order to maintain the efficiency of Soviet citizens in the camp located at locality Hammerstein (now it is the Polish town of Czarne), each person received daily: 200 g of bread, vegetable stew and a substitute for a coffee drink. In some other camps, the daily ration was half that.

It is worth saying that bread for prisoners was prepared from bran, cellulose and straw. And the stew and drink were small portions of a foul-smelling liquid, often causing vomiting.

If we take into account the cold, epidemics, overwork, then one has only to marvel at the rare ability to survive developed by Soviet prisoners of war.

Schools of saboteurs

Very often the Nazis put their prisoners in front of a choice: execution or cooperation? Under pain of death, some soldiers and officers chose the second option. Most of the prisoners who agreed to cooperate with the Nazis served as guards in the same concentration camps, fought with partisan formations, and participated in numerous punitive operations against the civilian population.

But the Germans often sent the most intelligent and active accomplices who gained confidence to sabotage schools of the Abwehr (Nazi intelligence). Graduates of such military schools were thrown into Soviet rear on parachutes. Their task was espionage in favor of the Germans, the spread of disinformation among the population of the USSR, as well as various sabotage: undermining railways and other infrastructure.

The main advantage of such saboteurs was their knowledge of Soviet reality, because no matter how you teach the son of a White Guard emigrant raised in Germany, he will still differ from a Soviet citizen in his manner of behavior in society. Such spies were quickly identified by the NKVD. It is a completely different matter - a traitor who grew up in the USSR. [S-BLOCK]

The Germans approached the training of agents carefully. Future saboteurs studied the basics of intelligence work, cartography, subversive work, they jumped with a parachute and drove different vehicles, mastered Morse code and work with a walkie-talkie. Sports training, methods of psychological influence, collection and analysis of information - all this was included in the course of a novice saboteur. The training period depended on the intended task and could last from one month to six months.

There were dozens of such centers organized by the Abwehr in Germany and in the occupied territories. For example, in the Mission intelligence school (near Kaliningrad), radio operators and intelligence officers were trained to work in the deep rear, and in Dahlwitz they taught parachuting and subversive activities, the Austrian town of Breitenfurt was a training center for technicians and flight personnel.

Slave work

Soviet prisoners of war were mercilessly exploited, forcing them to work 12 hours a day, and sometimes more. They were involved in hard work in the metallurgical and mining industries, in agriculture. In the mines and steel mills, prisoners of war were valued primarily as free labor.

According to historians, approximately 600-700 thousand former soldiers and officers of the Red Army were involved in various industries. And the income received by the German leadership as a result of their exploitation amounted to hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks.

Many German enterprises (breweries, car factories, agricultural complexes) paid the management of concentration camps for the "rent" of prisoners of war. They were also used by farmers, mainly during sowing and harvesting.

Some German historians, trying to somehow justify such exploitation of concentration camp prisoners, argue that in captivity they mastered new working specialties for themselves. Say, former soldiers and officers of the Red Army returned to their homeland as experienced mechanics, tractor drivers, electricians, turners or locksmiths.

But it's hard to believe. After all, highly skilled labor at German enterprises has always been the prerogative of the Germans, and the Nazis used representatives of other peoples only to perform hard and dirty work.

Warning: photo materials attached to the article +18. BUT I PLEASE LOOK AT THESE PICTURES
The article was written in 2011 for The Russian Battlfield website. All about the Great Patriotic War
the remaining 6 parts of the article http://www.battlefield.ru/article.html

During the Soviet Union, the topic of Soviet prisoners of war was under an unspoken ban. At most, it was admitted that a certain number of Soviet soldiers were captured. But there were practically no specific figures, only some of the most vague and obscure general figures were given. And only after almost half a century after the end of the Great Patriotic War, we started talking about the scale of the tragedy of Soviet prisoners of war. It was difficult to explain how the victorious Red Army, under the leadership of the CPSU and the brilliant leader of all time, managed to lose about 5 million military personnel only as prisoners during 1941-1945. And after all, two-thirds of these people died in German captivity, only a little more than 1.8 million former prisoners of war returned to the USSR. At Stalinist regime these people were the "pariahs" of the Great War. They were not stigmatized, but any questionnaire contained the question of whether the interviewee was in captivity. Captivity is a tarnished reputation, in the USSR it was easier for a coward to arrange his life than for a former warrior who honestly paid his debt to his country. Some (although not many) who returned from German captivity served time in the camps of their "native" Gulag only because they could not prove their innocence. Under Khrushchev, it became a little easier for them, but the nasty phrase "was in captivity" in all kinds of questionnaires ruined more than one thousand destinies. Finally, during the Brezhnev era, the prisoners were simply bashfully silent. The fact of being in German captivity in the biography of a Soviet citizen became an indelible shame for him, leading to suspicions of betrayal and espionage. This explains the paucity of Russian-language sources on the problem of Soviet prisoners of war.
Soviet prisoners of war being sanitized

A column of Soviet prisoners of war. Autumn 1941.

Himmler inspects the camp for Soviet prisoners of war near Minsk. 1941

In the West, any attempt to talk about German war crimes on the Eastern Front was regarded as a propaganda device. The lost war against the USSR smoothly flowed into its "cold" stage against the eastern "evil empire". And if the leadership of the FRG officially recognized the genocide of the Jewish people, and even "repented" for it, then nothing of the kind happened about the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians in the occupied territories. Even in modern Germany, there is a steady tendency to blame everything on the head of the "possessed" Hitler, the Nazi elite and the SS apparatus, and also in every way to whitewash the "glorious and heroic" Wehrmacht, " ordinary soldiers who honestly performed their duty "(I wonder which one?). In the memoirs of German soldiers all the time, as soon as the question comes about crimes, the author immediately declares that ordinary soldiers were all cool guys, and all the abominations were done by" animals "from the SS and Sonderkommandos Although almost without exception all former soviet soldiers they say that the vile attitude towards them began from the very first seconds of captivity, when they were not yet in the hands of "Nazis" from the SS, but in the noble and friendly embrace of "beautiful guys" from ordinary combat units, "who had nothing to do with the SS" .
Distribution of food in one of the transit camps.


A column of Soviet prisoners. Summer 1941 Kharkov area.


POWs at work. Winter 1941/42

Only since the mid-70s of the twentieth century, the attitude towards the conduct of military operations on the territory of the USSR began to slowly change, in particular, German researchers began to study the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in the Reich. Here the work of Heidelberg University professor Christian Streit played an important role. "They are not our comrades. Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945.", refuting many Western myths regarding the conduct of hostilities in the East. Streit has been working on his book for 16 years, and it is currently the most comprehensive study on the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany.

The ideological guidelines for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war came from the very top of the Nazi leadership. Long before the start of the campaign in the East, Hitler stated at a meeting on March 30, 1941:

"We must abandon the concept of soldier camaraderie. A communist has never been and never will be a comrade. We are talking about a struggle for annihilation. If we do not look at it this way, then, although we will defeat the enemy, the communist danger will arise again in 30 years ... "(Halder F. "War Diary". Vol. 2. M., 1969. P. 430).

"Political commissars are the basis of Bolshevism in the Red Army, bearers of an ideology hostile to National Socialism, and cannot be recognized as soldiers. Therefore, after captivity, they must be shot."

About the attitude towards the civilian population, Hitler stated:

"We are obliged to exterminate the population - this is part of our mission to protect the German nation. I have the right to destroy millions of people of an inferior race who multiply like worms."

Soviet prisoners of war from the Vyazemsky cauldron. Autumn 1941


For sanitation before shipping to Germany.

Prisoners of war in front of the bridge over the river San. June 23, 1941. According to statistics, NONE of these people will live until the spring of 1942

The ideology of National Socialism, coupled with racial theories, led to inhuman treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. For example, out of 1,547,000 French prisoners of war in German captivity, only about 40,000 died (2.6%), the death rate of Soviet prisoners of war according to the most sparing estimates amounted to 55%. For the autumn of 1941, the "normal" mortality of captured Soviet soldiers was 0.3% per day, that is about 10% per month! In October-November 1941, the death rate of our compatriots in German captivity reached 2% per day, and in some camps up to 4.3% per day. The mortality rate of captured Soviet soldiers in the same period in the camps of the General Government (Poland) was 4000-4600 people per day. By April 15, 1942, out of 361,612 prisoners transferred to Poland in the autumn of 1941, only 44,235 people survived. 7,559 prisoners fled, 292,560 died, and another 17,256 were "transferred to the SD" (i.e. shot). Thus, the mortality of Soviet prisoners of war in just 6-7 months reached 85.7%!

Finished off Soviet prisoners of march on the streets of Kyiv. 1941

Unfortunately, the size of the article does not allow for any sufficient coverage of this issue. My goal is to familiarize the reader with the numbers. Believe: THEY ARE TERRIBLE! But we must be aware of this, we must remember: millions of our compatriots were deliberately and ruthlessly destroyed. Finished wounded on the battlefield, shot at stages, starved to death, died of disease and overwork, they were purposefully destroyed by the fathers and grandfathers of those who live in Germany today. Question: what can such "parents" teach their children?

Soviet prisoners of war shot by the Germans during the retreat.


Unknown Soviet prisoner of war 1941.

German documents on the attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war

Let's start with a prehistory not directly related to the Great Patriotic War: for 40 months of the First World War, Russian imperial army lost 3,638,271 people captured and missing. Of these, 1,434,477 people were held in German captivity. Mortality among Russian prisoners was 5.4%, and not much higher than the natural mortality in Russia at that time. Moreover, the mortality among prisoners of other armies in German captivity was 3.5%, which was also a low figure. In those same years, there were 1,961,333 enemy prisoners of war in Russia, the mortality rate among them was 4.6%, which practically corresponded to natural mortality in Russia.

Everything has changed in 23 years. For example, the rules for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war prescribed:

"... the Bolshevik soldier has lost all right to claim to be treated as an honest soldier in accordance with the Geneva Agreement. Therefore, it is entirely consistent with the point of view and dignity of the German armed forces that every German soldier would draw a sharp line between himself and Soviet prisoners of war. The treatment must be cold, although correct. All sympathy, and even more so support, must be avoided most strictly. The feeling of pride and superiority of a German soldier assigned to watch over Soviet prisoners of war must at all times be noticeable to those around him. "

Soviet prisoners of war were practically not fed. Take a look at this scene.

Mass grave of Soviet prisoners of war unearthed by investigators of the Extraordinary State Commission of the USSR


Drover

In Western historiography, until the mid-70s of the 20th century, the version was quite common that Hitler's "criminal" orders were imposed on the opposition-minded Wehrmacht command and were almost never executed "on the ground." This "fairy tale" was born during the Nuremberg trials (protection actions). However, an analysis of the situation shows that, for example, the Order on Commissars was carried out very consistently in the troops. Not only all military personnel of Jewish nationality and political workers of the Red Army fell under the "selection" of the Einsatzkommandos of the SS, but in general everyone who could turn out to be a "potential enemy". The military elite of the Wehrmacht almost unanimously supported the Fuhrer. Hitler, in his unprecedentedly frank speech on March 30, 1941, "pressed" not on the racial causes of the "war of annihilation", but on the fight against an alien ideology, which was close in spirit to the military elite of the Wehrmacht. Halder's notes in his diary clearly indicate general support for Hitler's demands, in particular Halder wrote that "the war in the East is essentially different from the war in the West. In the East, cruelty is justified by the interests of the future!". Immediately after Hitler's keynote speech, the headquarters of the OKH (German OKH - Oberkommando des Heeres High Command of the Ground Forces) and OKW (German OKW - Oberkommando der Wermacht, High Command of the Armed Forces) began to draw up the Fuhrer's program into specific documents. The most odious and famous of them: "Directive on the establishment of an occupation regime on the territory of the Soviet Union to be captured"- 13.03.1941, "On military jurisdiction in the "Barbarossa" area and on the special powers of the troops"-13.05.1941, directives "On the behavior of troops in Russia"- 05/19/1941 and "On the treatment of political commissars", more often referred to as the "order on commissars" - 6/6/1941, order high command Wehrmacht on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war - 09/08/1941. These orders and directives were issued in different time, but their drafts were ready almost in the first week of April 1941 (except for the first and last document).

Unbroken

In almost all transit camps, our prisoners of war were kept in the open air in conditions of monstrous overcrowding.


German soldiers finish off a Soviet wounded man

It cannot be said that opposition to the opinion of Hitler and the High Command of the German Armed Forces on the conduct of the war in the East did not exist at all. For example, on April 8, 1941, Ulrich von Hassel, together with the chief of staff of Admiral Canaris, Colonel Oster, was with Colonel General Ludwig von Beck (who was a consistent opponent of Hitler). Hassel wrote: "The hairs stand on end from what is documented in the orders (!), Signed by Halder and given to the troops, regarding actions in Russia and from the systematic application of military justice in relation to civilian population in this mocking caricature of the law. Obeying Hitler's orders, Brauchitsch sacrifices the honor of the German army. "That's it, no more and no less. But the opposition to the decisions of the National Socialist leadership and the command of the Wehrmacht was passive and, until the very last moment, very sluggish.

I will definitely name the institutions and personally the "heroes" on whose orders the genocide was unleashed against the civilian population of the USSR and under whose "sensitive" supervision more than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war were destroyed. This is the leader of the German people A. Hitler, Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich, head of the OKV Field Marshal General Keitel Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces Field Marshal General f. Brauchitsch, Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Colonel General Halder, the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht and its chief, General of Artillery Yodel, head of the legal department of the Wehrmacht Leman, Department "L" OKW and personally his chief Major General Warlimont, group 4 / Qu (head of sub-to f. Tippelskirch), general for special assignments under the commander-in-chief of the ground forces, lieutenant general Muller, head of the legal department of the ground forces Latman, Quartermaster General Major General Wagner, head of the military-administrative department of the ground forces f. Altenstadt. And also ALL commanders of army groups, armies, tank groups, corps and even individual divisions of the German armed forces fall under this category (in particular, the famous order of the commander of the 6th field army f. Reichenau, duplicated almost unchanged in all formations of the Wehrmacht, is indicative).

Reasons for the mass capture of Soviet soldiers

Unpreparedness of the USSR for a modern highly maneuverable war (according to different reasons), tragic beginning hostilities led to the fact that by mid-July 1941, out of 170 Soviet divisions that were at the beginning of the war in the border military districts, 28 were surrounded and did not leave it, 70 units of the division class were actually defeated and became incapacitated. Huge masses of Soviet troops often randomly rolled back, and German motorized formations, moving at a speed of up to 50 km per day, cut off their escape routes, Soviet formations, units and subunits that did not have time to retreat were surrounded. Large and small "cauldrons" were formed, in which most of soldiers were taken prisoner.

Another reason for the mass capture of Soviet soldiers, especially in the initial period of the war, was their moral and psychological state. The existence of both defeatist sentiments among part of the Red Army and general anti-Soviet sentiments in certain strata Soviet society(for example, among the intelligentsia) is now no longer a secret.

It must be admitted that the defeatist mood that prevailed in the Red Army caused a certain number of Red Army soldiers and commanders to go over to the side of the enemy from the very first days of the war. Rarely, but it happened that entire military units with their weapons and led by their commanders crossed the front line in an organized manner. The first accurately dated incident of this kind took place on July 22, 1941, when two battalions defected to the enemy. 436th Infantry Regiment 155th rifle division, under the command of Major Kononov. It cannot be denied that this phenomenon persisted even at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War. So, in January 1945, the Germans recorded 988 Soviet defectors, in February - 422, in March - 565. It is difficult to understand what these people hoped for, most likely just private circumstances that forced them to seek salvation own life at the cost of betrayal.

Be that as it may, in 1941 prisoners accounted for 52.64% of the total number of losses Northwestern Front, 61.52% of the losses of the Western, 64.49% of the losses of the South-Western and 60.30% of the losses of the Southern fronts.

The total number of Soviet prisoners of war.
In 1941, according to German data, about 2,561,000 Soviet troops were captured in large "cauldrons". The reports of the German command reported that 300,000 people were taken prisoner in boilers near Bialystok, Grodno and Minsk, 103,000 near Uman, 450,000 near Vitebsk, Mogilev, Orsha and Gomel, 180,000 near Smolensk, in the Kyiv region - 665,000, near Chernigov - 100,000, in the Mariupol region - 100,000, near Bryansk and Vyazma 663,000 people. In 1942, in two more large "cauldrons" near Kerch (May 1942) - 150,000, near Kharkov (at the same time) - 240,000 people. Here we must immediately make a reservation that the German data seem to be overestimated, because the declared number of prisoners often exceeds the number of armies and fronts that took part in a particular operation. The most striking example of this is the Kyiv boiler. The Germans announced the capture of 665,000 people east of the capital of Ukraine, although the full payroll of the Southwestern Front by the time the Kyiv defensive operation did not exceed 627,000 people. Moreover, about 150,000 Red Army soldiers remained outside the encirclement, and about 30,000 more managed to get out of the "cauldron".

K. Streit, the most authoritative specialist on Soviet prisoners of war in World War II, claims that in 1941 the Wehrmacht captured 2,465,000 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, including: Army Group North - 84,000, Army Group "Center" - 1,413,000 and Army Group "South" - 968,000 people. And this is only in large "boilers". In total, according to Streit, in 1941, 3.4 million Soviet troops were captured by the German armed forces. This is approximately 65% ​​of the total number of Soviet prisoners of war captured between June 22, 1941 and May 9, 1945.

In any case, the number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the armed forces of the Reich before the beginning of 1942 cannot be accurately calculated. The fact is that in 1941, the provision of reports to the higher headquarters of the Wehrmacht on the number of captured Soviet troops was not mandatory. The order on this issue was given by the high command of the ground forces only in January 1942. But there is no doubt that the number of Red Army soldiers captured in 1941 exceeded 2.5 million people.

Also, there is still no accurate data on total Soviet prisoners of war captured by the German armed forces from June 1941 to April 1945. A. Dallin, using German data, cites a figure of 5.7 million people, a team of authors led by Colonel General G.F. Krivosheeva, in the edition of her monograph from 2010, reports 5,059 million people (of which about 500 thousand are called up for military service, but were captured by the enemy on their way to military units), K. Streit estimates the number of prisoners from 5.2 to 5 .7 million

It should be borne in mind here that the Germans could include such categories of Soviet citizens as prisoners of war: captured partisans, underground workers, personnel of incomplete militia formations, local air defense, fighter battalions and police, as well as railway workers and paramilitary formations of civilian departments. Plus, a certain number of civilians driven away for forced labor in the Reich or occupied countries, as well as taken hostage, also got here. That is, the Germans tried to "isolate" as much of the male population of the USSR of military age as possible, without particularly hiding it. For example, in the Minsk camp for prisoners of war there were about 100,000 actually captured soldiers of the Red Army and about 40,000 civilians, and this is practically the entire male population of Minsk. The Germans followed this practice in the future. Here is an excerpt from the order of the command of the 2nd Panzer Army of May 11, 1943:

"When occupying individual settlements, it is necessary to immediately and suddenly capture existing men aged 15 to 65 years, if they can be classified as capable of bearing weapons, send them under guard by rail to transit camp 142 in Bryansk. Captured, capable of bearing weapons , announce that they will henceforth be considered prisoners of war, and that at the slightest attempt to escape they will be shot.

Given this, the number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans in 1941-1945. ranges from 5.05 to 5.2 million people, including about 0.5 million people who were not formally military personnel.

Prisoners from the Vyazma cauldron.


Execution of Soviet prisoners of war who tried to escape

THE ESCAPE


It is necessary to mention the fact that a certain number of Soviet prisoners of war were released from captivity by the Germans. So, by July 1941, a large number of prisoners of war had accumulated in collection points and transit camps in the zone of responsibility of the OKH, for the maintenance of which there were no funds at all. Concerning German command took an unprecedented step - by order of the quartermaster general of July 25, 1941 No. 11/4590, Soviet prisoners of war of a number of nationalities (ethnic Germans, Balts, Ukrainians, and then Belarusians) were released. However, by order of the OKB of 13.11.41 No. 3900, this practice was discontinued. In total, 318,770 people were released during this period, of which 292,702 people were released in the OKH zone, and 26,068 people in the OKV zone. Among them are 277,761 Ukrainians. Subsequently, only persons who joined volunteer security and other formations, as well as the police, were released. From January 1942 to May 1, 1944, the Germans liberated 823,230 Soviet prisoners of war, of which 535,523 people were in the OKH zone, and 287,707 people in the OKV zone. I want to emphasize that we have no moral right to condemn these people, because in the vast majority of cases it was for a Soviet prisoner of war the only way to survive. Another thing is that most of the Soviet prisoners of war deliberately refused any cooperation with the enemy, which in those conditions was actually tantamount to suicide.



Finishing off an exhausted prisoner


Soviet wounded - the first minutes of captivity. Most likely they will be beaten.

On September 30, 1941, an order was given to the commandants of the camps in the east to start file cabinets for prisoners of war. But this had to be done after the end of the campaign on the Eastern Front. It was especially emphasized that only information on those prisoners who, "after the selection" carried out by the Einsatzkommandos (Sonderkommandos), "finally remain in the camps or in the corresponding works" should be reported to the central information department. From this it directly follows that the documents of the central information department do not contain data on previously destroyed prisoners of war during redeployment and filtration. Apparently, this is why there are almost no complete documents on Soviet prisoners of war in the Reichskommissariats "Ostland" (Baltic) and "Ukraine", where a significant number of prisoners were kept in the autumn of 1941.
Mass execution of Soviet prisoners of war near Kharkov. 1942


Crimea 1942. Ditch with the bodies of prisoners shot by the Germans.

Pair photo to this one. Soviet prisoners of war are digging their own grave.

The reporting by the OKW Prisoner of War Division to the International Committee of the Red Cross covered only the OKW subordinate camp system. Information about Soviet prisoners of war began to come to the committee only from February 1942, when a decision was made to use their labor in the German military industry.

The system of camps for keeping Soviet prisoners of war.

All cases related to the maintenance of foreign prisoners of war in the Reich were handled by the department of prisoners of war of the Wehrmacht as part of the general directorate of the armed forces, led by General Hermann Reinecke. The department was headed by: Colonel Breuer (1939-1941), General Grevenitz (1942-1944), General Westhoff (1944), and SS-Obergruppenführer Berger (1944-1945). In each military district (and later in the occupied territories), transferred to civilian control, there was a "commander of prisoners of war" (commandant for the affairs of prisoners of war of the corresponding district).

The Germans created a very wide network of camps for the maintenance of prisoners of war and "ostarbeiters" (citizens of the USSR forcibly driven into slavery). POW camps were divided into five categories:
1. Collection points (camps),
2. Transit camps (Dulag, Dulag),
3. Permanent camps (Stalag, Stalag) and their variety for the command staff of the Red Army (Oflag),
4. Main work camps,
5. Small work camps.
Camp near Petrozavodsk


In such conditions, our prisoners were transported in the winter of 1941/42. Mortality at the stages of shipment reached 50%

HUNGER

Collection points were located in close proximity to the front line, here the final disarmament of the prisoners took place, and primary accounting documents were compiled. The transit camps were located near major railway junctions. After "sorting" (namely in quotation marks), the prisoners were usually sent to camps with a permanent location. Stalags differed in numbers, and at the same time they contained a large number of prisoners of war. For example, in "Stalag-126" (Smolensk) in April 1942 there were 20,000 people, in "Stalag-350" (near Riga) at the end of 1941 - 40,000 people. Each "stalag" was the base for a network of major work camps subordinate to it. The main work camps had the name of the corresponding Stalag with the addition of a letter, and they contained several thousand people. Small work camps were subordinate to the main work camps or directly to the Stalags. They were most often named after the name of the settlement in which they were located, and according to the name of the main work camp, they contained from several tens to several hundred prisoners of war.

In total, this German-style harmonious system included about 22,000 large and small camps. They simultaneously contained more than 2 million Soviet prisoners of war. The camps were located both on the territory of the Reich and on the territory of the occupied countries.

In the front line and in the rear of the army, the prisoners were in charge of the relevant services of the OKH. On the territory of the OKH, only transit camps were usually located, and the stalags were already in the department of the OKW - that is, within the boundaries of the military districts on the territory of the Reich, the General Government and the Reich Commissariats. As the German army advanced, the dulags turned into permanent camps (oflags and stalags).

In the OKH, the service of the Army Quartermaster General took care of the prisoners. Several local commandant's offices were subordinate to her, each of which had several dulags. The camps in the OKW system were subordinate to the POW administration of the corresponding military district.
Soviet prisoner of war tortured by the Finns

This senior lieutenant had a star carved on his forehead before his death.


Sources:
Funds Federal Archive Germany - Military archive. Freiburg. (Bundesarchivs/Militararchiv (BA/MA)
OKW:
Documents of the propaganda department of the Wehrmacht RW 4/v. 253;257;298.
Particularly important cases according to the plan "Barbarossa" of the department "L IV" of the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht RW 4 / v. 575; 577; 578.
Documents of GA "Sever" (OKW/Nord) OKW/32.
Documents of the information bureau of the Wehrmacht RW 6/v. 220;222.
Documents of the Prisoner of War Division (OKW/AWA/Kgf.) RW 5/v. 242, RW 6/v. 12; 270,271,272,273,274; 276,277,278,279;450,451,452,453. Management documents military economy and weapons (OKW/WiRuArnt) Wi/IF 5/530;5.624;5.1189;5.1213;5.1767;2717;5.3064; 5.3190;5.3434;5.3560;5.3561;5.3562.
OKH:
Documents of the chief of armaments of the ground forces and the commander of the army of the reserve (OKH / ChHRu u. BdE) H1 / 441. Documents of the department of foreign armies "Vostok" general staff ground forces (OKH / GenStdH / Abt. Fremde Heere Ost) P3 / 304; 512; 728; 729.
Documents of the head of the archive of the ground forces H / 40/54.

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"Criminal goals - criminal means." Documents on the occupation policy of Nazi Germany on the territory of the USSR. M. Politizdat, 1968
"Top secret. Only for command." Documents and materials. M. "Science" 1967
N. Alekseev "Responsibility of Nazi criminals" M. "International Relations" 1968
N. Müller "The Wehrmacht and the occupation, 1941-1944. On the role of the Wehrmacht and its governing bodies in the implementation of the occupation regime on Soviet territory" M. Voenizdat 1974
K. Streit "They should not be considered soldiers. Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war 1941-1945". M. "Progress" 1979
V. Galitsky. "The problem of prisoners of war and the attitude to it Soviet state". "State and Law" No. 4, 1990
M. Semiryaga "The prison empire of Nazism and its collapse" M. "Jur. Literature" 1991
V. Gurkin "About human losses on the Soviet-German front in 1941-1945." NiNI №3 1992
"Nuremberg trials. Crimes against humanity". Collection of materials in 8 volumes. M. "Legal Literature" 1991-1997.
M. Erin "Soviet prisoners of war in Germany during the Second World War" "Questions of History" No. 11-12, 1995
C. Streit "Soviet prisoners of war in Germany/Russia and Germany during the years of war and peace (1941-1995)". M. "Gaia" 1995
P. Polyan "Victims of two dictatorships. Life, work, humiliation and death of Soviet prisoners of war and Ostarbeiters in a foreign land and at home." M. "ROSSPEN" 2002
M. Erin "Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany 1941-1945. Problems of research". Yaroslavl. YarSU 2005
"War of extermination in the east. Crimes of the Wehrmacht in the USSR. 1941-1944. Reports" edited by G. Gortsik and K. Shtang. M. "Airo-XX" 2005
W. Wette "The Image of the Enemy: Racist Elements in German Propaganda Against the Soviet Union". M. "Yauza", EKSMO 2005
K. Streit "They are not our comrades. Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945". M. "Russian panorama" 2009
"The Great Patriotic War without the stamp of secrecy. The book of losses." A team of authors led by G.F. Krivosheeva M. Veche 2010

Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. took millions of lives, crippled many destinies. The war affected everyone: first of all, the military, who fiercely defended their homeland, their relatives and friends, and many other people. The victims of the Great Patriotic War also include victims of political repressions, political prisoners, special settlers who were illegally convicted by the government and expelled from their homes. Basically, these were people of German nationality, deported from the regions of the Volga region. They were taken out with their whole families to remote places to work in the labor army as cheap labor. Millions of lives were ruined by inhuman working and living conditions, and no attention was paid to this. In many such families, as soon as a child was born, he was immediately declared an "enemy of the people" and a special document was imposed on him, like on all political prisoners.

They all wanted only one thing - to survive. Overcoming life's obstacles, giving everything for the good of the family, these people showed an example of masculinity, resilience, true faith in a brighter future.

I chose this research topic because I became very interested in the fate of the deported Volga Germans. I could not remain indifferent to the fact of the resettlement of those several hundred thousand living on native land for a long time, a ruthless attitude towards them during the years of repression.

In my work, I want to tell about the fate of some of them, about harsh truth those years, about their living conditions without exaggeration. Many of these people came to the city of Oktyabrsky and became part of it, because it was they who built the city, made it the way their children and grandchildren see it today. I am a resident of the city of Oktyabrsky, and I am proud of this, as well as the fact that I live in the same city with such strong in spirit, purposeful, courageous people, which I will talk about in my work. Their life is intertwined with the life of Oktyabrsky, and I hope that they do not regret in any way that they have their own small homeland.

Deportation of Volga Germans

The beginning of the mass deportation of Volga Germans to the regions of Siberia and Kazakhstan was initiated by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region", issued on August 28, 1941.

Decree "On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region"

The people of the Republic of Germans in the Volga region began to be subjected to repression at the second stage as early as 1936, when the historic campaign of searching for "enemies of the people" began.

On January 19, 1937, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted a special resolution "On the Nemobkom of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union", in which it sharply criticized the regional committee for "Contamination with party organizations and government agencies"foreign elements".

The February-March Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, at which Stalin expressed the idea of ​​intensifying the class struggle, gave a bloody impetus to the struggle against the "enemies of the people."

In August-October 1937, all members of the bureau of the regional party committee, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and almost the entire government were arrested in the ASSR NP. In total, 145 senior officials of the Republic and hundreds of communists were arrested and shot for "counter-revolutionary activities". In total, on 15.11.1938, 1002 Germans were convicted, of which 567 were shot on the basis of the verdicts of the "Troika" and special tribunals.

On August 26, 1941, a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party "On the resettlement of all Germans from the ASSR NP to other territories and regions" was signed. It was prepared in deep secrecy and was not brought to the attention of the leaders of the ASSR NP. On August 26, 12,350 personnel of the NKVD troops arrived in the areas of German eviction.

Only on August 27 was it brought to the party and Soviet leadership republics the notorious Decree of the PVS of the USSR of August 28, 1941 "On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region." Paragraph 17 read: "The resettlement will begin on September 3, 1941 and end on September 20, 1941."

The entire German population was subject to resettlement, including mixed families, where the head of the family was a German. Wives could avoid their fate on the condition of a divorce. German women whose husbands were not of German nationality were not evicted. The deportee received a summons from the local NKVD, and 24 hours were allotted for preparation. It was allowed to take with them up to 200 kilograms of property and food, but most of the property was placed in a backpack. Columns of NKVD troops being resettled under escort were sent to railway stations, loaded into Pullman cars. A typical echelon consisted of 50-60 wagons, accompanied by an escort, a paramedic and a nurse. Terrible overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, lack of high-quality drinking water, food - all this led to diseases and death of people. But the worst was yet to come. On the ground, many arrivals had to spend the winter in hastily built wooden barracks, dugouts, and even in tents. From the resettled, the so-called labor columns were organized, which were sent to the most difficult work in various industries. The death of people here has become massive.

After the war, those deported from the camps were transferred to the so-called special settlements under the supervision of commandant's offices, in which they had to be constantly registered. Until 1953, they did not have the right to change their place of residence - for violation of this ban, they were threatened with many years of imprisonment, or even execution. Only in 1972 was the ban on returning to their former places of residence lifted, before deportation.

It is officially confirmed that in some camps the proportion of deaths from overwork, cold and hunger reached 50 percent. The exact number of deaths has not yet been established, but statistics have already predicted that it is hundreds of thousands of people.

Extract from the protocol No. 51 of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee

Extract from Protocol No. 51 "On Anti-Soviet Elements"

With the beginning of the repressions, a ban was imposed on the use of the native language, and after all, the native language is the basis of the foundations of any ethnic group. In addition, with the liquidation of the republic of the Volga Germans, the Russian Germans lost the entire material and social base of cultural life: they lost their schools, theaters, churches, newspapers, publishing houses; ethnicity was dispersed. If before the deportation about 10% of Germans lived beyond the Urals, then after it - already about 90%. Ethnic, economic, cultural and even family ties were severed - the very foundation necessary for the reproduction of an ethnic group.

From the mid-1950s, decrees and decrees began to be issued in the USSR, weakening the regime of special settlements. However, they did not make significant changes in life. Soviet Germans. These documents applied only to certain categories of special settlers. And besides, most of the special settlers themselves did not know anything about these documents, which were kept secret. In December 1955, the special settlement regime was abolished, in 1972 restrictions on the choice of place of residence were lifted, and in 1974 the Germans were allowed to return to the places from which they had been evicted.

AT new Russia Laws “On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples” and “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repressions” were adopted. On February 24, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, speaking at the Federal Assembly, apologized to the victims on behalf of the state. But it is no longer possible to return what was irretrievably lost, hundreds of thousands of lives.

Germans in Bashkiria

According to the 1979 census, 11,326 people of German nationality live in Bashkortostan. At present, the Germans are settled mainly in cities (8261 people - 1979). In rural areas, the German population (3065 people) lives in small compact groups in the Blagovarsky district, Sterlitamaksky, Abzelilovsky, Tuimazinsky and other areas.

In modern historical, political, philosophical literature Germans living in Russia are considered as a single people, calling them "Russian Germans", and during the existence of the USSR - "Soviet Germans".

During the Great Patriotic War, the German population in Bashkiria with everything Soviet people shared the hardships of war. Although it was not subject to deportation by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 28, 1941, however, the entire adult population went through the labor army.

Hardworking and peaceful people represented by 400,000 Volga Russian Germans with a broken fate, at the direction of Stalin and the hands of Beria, he turned out to be mercilessly scattered in cold Siberia, in the sands of Kazakhstan.

About 96 repressed rehabilitated Germans live in the city of Oktyabrsky, including children who suffered from repression. They arrived here in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly from places of deportation in the Krasnoyarsk and Altai Territories, Kazakhstan, as well as from Azerbaijan, the Moscow and Gorky Regions, where they were resettled to a special settlement. In the city of Oktyabrsky, the place of their constant meeting is the national cultural center "Wiedergeburt" ("Revival"), formed in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR. The main activities are cultural and educational events.

I have repeatedly been here, collecting information about the repressed during the Great Patriotic War and getting acquainted with interesting people. The center is visited not only by Germans, but also by people of other nationalities, ages and religions. They live together like a big multinational family. Now the same conditions for study, rest and work have been created, as for all citizens. Their children study in schools, gymnasiums, and institutes.

The head of the center of national cultures "Wiedergeburt" is Voldemar Alexandrovich Greb. He was born in the village of Vinzemiller in the Zelmansky district of the ASSR NP in 1937. He came to Oktyabrsky in 1946 as a nine-year-old youth from the Krasnoyarsk Territory after a five-year stay with his parents in the Balakhtinsky District. On January 15, 1942, Voldemar Alekandrovich's father and aunt were taken to the labor army.

(Reference. On the basis of the GKO resolution - 1123 ss of 10. 0442 "On the procedure for using Germans - migrants of military age" in order to rationally use them, all men aged 17 to 50 years in the amount of 120,000 people were mobilized into work columns for the entire time war. It was the so-called labor army. R. M.)

Voldemar Alexandrovich Greb Alexander Reingoldovich Greb

Father was sent to Sverdlovsk region Krasnoturinsk, where he worked on the construction of the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant, together with prisoners behind barbed wire. He was saved by parcels from his mother, mainly tobacco, which he exchanged for pieces of bread or potatoes. The family of Voldemar Alexandrovich survived during the war due to the fact that the mother with three children was not mobilized into work columns, and the grandfather, due to age and health status, was not subject to mobilization into the labor army. They ate mostly the same things that they fed cattle - berries and mushrooms. Many were doomed to starvation in cold Siberia. On the eve of winter, people died in batches.

In 1946, the Greb family was relocated to Bashkiria in agreement with the special commandant's office, and in 1947 my father also came to Oktyabrsky. Here they built a large dugout where they all lived together. In 1952, Voldemar Aleksandrovich graduated from the 7th grade. Having received a passport, a 16-year-old boy went to work at construction sites in Oktyabrsky. In 1956, he was deregistered in the special commandant's office. In 1957, with great desire, he joined the Army (before the Germans were not taken). He served for three years on the border with Iran in the city of Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan SSR.

He was demobilized in 1960 with the rank of foreman of a company. The family grew up two sons. Both of them received higher education. Despite all the difficulties in life, Voldemar Alexandrovich considers himself happy man in his Small Motherland- Bashkortostan.

I cannot but tell about another person - Neiman Olga Iosifovna, 85 years old. Her family of 9 was deported in September 1941 to East Kazakhstan, the village of Putintsevo. From there, in January 1942, my father and older brother were taken to the labor army and sent to the Kaisky district of the Kirov region. Olga Iosifovna herself, together with her forty-year-old mother, was also mobilized into the labor army and sent to Syzran. They lived there in a barracks. Performed various works: unloaded wagons with lime, plastered houses at construction sites, were lumberjacks in the forest, fitters and locksmiths.

Olga Iosifovna Neiman

I see in the eyes of Olga Iosifovna a quiet sadness. In 1944 they were relocated to the city of Orsk, Orenburg region. In October 1946, they moved to the city of Oktyabrsky and were registered with the special commandant's office. During the period of being in the labor army - 15 years, they worked 14 - 16 hours a day. His father died of starvation at the age of 53 in the Kirov region, his brother Oscar died of exhaustion at the age of 24.

In the post-war period, until 1956, the Germans in the republic were in a commandant's regime and were limited in their right to move. War, repression, the situation of the Germans in the war and post-war years, general socio-economic difficulties in the country during this period led to a decrease in the German population.

After the deportation of 1941 and several decades of oblivion, steps are being taken to revive the national culture, language, and traditions. Dozens of newspapers are published, festivals are held, museum expositions are formed, and the history of the Germans in Russia is told. At the state level, a cultural national autonomy Russian Germans.

At the same time, the hope that arose in the second half of the 1980s for the complete rehabilitation and revival of the autonomous German republics on the Volga has now practically died out. This means that part of the Germans connects their future with Germany, where an endless stream of immigrants is directed. Today the question arose about the very existence of Germans in the multinational Russian state.

To understand the problems of the Germans in Russia, it is necessary to know their past well. It is history that will make it possible to reveal and understand the causes of the processes currently taking place among Russian Germans.

YOUR NAME-IN MY HEART - OCTOBER

Oktyabrsky is the fourth largest city after Ufa, Sterlitamak and Salavat. The appearance and development of Oktyabrsky refers to the very difficult period in the history of the country - the war, the post-war restoration of the national economy. A modern city was built before the eyes of one generation.

The history of Oktyabrsky is not only a story about oil pioneers, conquerors of the earth’s bowels, but also a vivid story about how the heroic efforts of builders (including special settlers from Leningrad and the Volga region) built a city on a wasteland, which is one of the most beautiful in republic. The builders were just as important actors, like oil producers: they built residential buildings, socio-cultural objects of the village, the scale of which required its transformation into a city.

On April 5, 1946, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR was promulgated on the transformation of the workers' settlement of Oktyabrsky, Tuymazinsky district, into a city of republican subordination. Before that, it took a whole decade to prove that the alleged virgin oil is not just the predictions and hypotheses of scientists, but reality. The transformation of a purely agrarian Tuimazy region into an oil-producing region is the work of amazing people. Obstacles and barriers retreated before their perseverance, the bowels of the earth opened up.

That's how it was

In the autumn of 1937, a place was chosen for the construction of an oilmen's settlement. Exploration wells had already produced oil, and the contours of a new oil field were looming. Drillers and builders came here; it was necessary to settle them somewhere, and so that the work was nearby.

In 1938 and 1939, two dozen one-story houses, a canteen, and a post office were built in the new settlement. At the same time, three two-story houses and a bakery were built. This is how the first street of the settlement was built, which the oil workers called Sotsgorod. With the discovery of Devonian oil in September 1944, this street of the village became the first street of the city of Oktyabrsky. She received the name Devonian.

In 1942, about a thousand Germans were brought to the Oktyabrsky, which was under construction. These were Labor Army members, special settlers from Leningrad, the Volga region, etc.

They sawed wood, mined stones in quarries. Many were sent to oil production enterprises.

The labor of prisoners was also used in the construction of the city. On the site of the city bus station there was a camp where “25-year-olds” were kept - scientists, engineers, military men, repressed in different years.

At that time, young people from the surrounding villages were traveling to the oil fields in the hope of better life. But for the Germans, coming here meant bondage - a special commandant's office, hard work, a half-starved existence. However, for many of them, this city eventually became dear and beloved.

And even when the opportunity arises to leave for their historical homeland, which provides much more comfortable living conditions, many Germans remained in Oktyabrsky.

October under construction

In 1946, the young city of Oktyabrsky appeared in the west of Bashkortostan - a city of builders, oil workers and romantics. The youth poured into the city. Many began to enroll in the teams of builders of the city of Oktyabrsky. This list also includes 18-year-old Tatiana Denisova.

While selecting material for my work, I unexpectedly found this name in an information source and immediately decided to find out about the fate of this girl and her possible connection with the life of the city of Oktyabrsky.

So, Tatyana Egorovna Denisova was born in 1928 in the village of Gusevo, Bakalinsky District, Bashkir ASSR. Back in August 1933, her family was dispossessed, as a result of which all property, all real estate, and all livestock were taken away. There were 18 people on the street. But in the same village there were also very kind, sympathetic people who let a large family in for temporary residence.

Two years later, a dugout was built, and in September the family moved. Two years later, Tatyana Yegorovna went to school, but she had to finish only two classes, since there were no clothes. Soon, at the age of 43, Tatyana Egorovna's mother, Afanasia Alekseevna, died, and her father, Yegor Ivanovich, went missing. Orphaned, impoverished and hungry children of 13 years old experienced ruthless need and hardships of the harsh years of repression.

Tatyana Egorovna Denisova

God, it turns out, gave her not only life, but also great willpower, hard work, dedication, great intuition, an immense love for life.

Upon arrival in Sotsgorod (the future city of Oktyabrsky), Tatyana Yegorovna lived in " tent city". She worked first at the harvesting of firewood in the forest, then at the unloading of goods, and later as a turner. Bread, butter, sugar and other products appeared on the table.

After some time she moved to the drilling office as a digger; soon got a job new specialty- stoker at the boiler room. The work is not prestigious, but requires certain knowledge in physics and chemistry. And Tatyana has only 4 classes of education. I had to continue my studies at night school. She was in the fifth grade, and her daughter Valentina is already in the sixth. Valentina was 13 years old, and her mother was 37. Truly, a unique case of the struggle for survival.

But that is not all. In 1953, after the birth of her daughter, Tatyana was transferred from the hostel to a one-room apartment of 12 sq. meters, where another woman is settled - Anna Lobova - with her one-year-old daughter. Since the mother led an immoral lifestyle, and the child stopped taking the mother’s breast and constantly cried, Tatyana Yegorovna took the girl Lyuba to herself and left her until the age of four.

In 1959 Lyuba's mother died, and Tatyana brought the girl to her place in Oktyabrsky. Subsequently, Lyuba Lobova graduated from 10 classes, received the specialty of a financier. Now she lives in Ukraine with her family, she has three children.

The long-suffering Tatyana Egorovna Denisova went on a well-deserved rest in 1978, was awarded the medal "Veteran of Labour".

Her life is an example of courage, perseverance, love of life to every person.

The fate of the repressed Germans during the Great Patriotic War is not to be envied. These people had a hard fate, insurmountable trials, with which many, despite this, coped.

The construction of Oktyabrsky has become an integral part of the lives of many people involved in this work. I especially remember those hard years repressed, who, in inhuman conditions, on the verge of life and death, in the suppression of the authorities, contributed to the creation of the future city. Many construction, logging teams were then created. Among them was a logging team that provided Oktyabrsky with timber and fuel.

I began to look for information about this brigade and found out that Erna Alexandrovna Tsvetkova-Wirt, who was repressed in 1942, was its leader. It so happened that fate brought me together with the wonderful poetess A. A. Haag. She shared with me her memories of the fate of many repressed Germans who were expelled from the Volga region. About her - a little later. In the meantime, I'll tell you about the difficult fate of one ex girlfriend- a worker who ended up in a detachment of those who participated in the construction of our city. The already mentioned A. A. Gaag helped me to contact her. I met with her and asked her to talk about her difficult life, about her participation in the construction of Oktyabrsky.

Erna Alexandrovna was born in 1923. She was mobilized together with her family from the Volga region. She recalls: “We were expelled on September 4, 1941, to the Tyukhtetsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. In November 1942, he was mobilized into the labor army and sent to Bashkiria. By distribution in Ufa, I ended up in Sotsgorod. From the Urussy station to Sotsgorod, 360 Labor Army girls of German nationality walked. There was no city here. On December 3, they were registered with the special commandant's office and on December 4 they went to work. I joined the lumberjack team. Worked in the forest until February 1944 - more than a year- 12-14 hours a day in winter, 16 hours a day in summer. Our team provided the city with fuel, and the builders with timber. Overalls, shoes were not given. The girls were soon left in rags, in bast shoes, which, later, they wove themselves. In the winter of 1943 - 44. starved, by the spring of 1943 we began to eat birch and linden buds.

I remember the “state of emergency” in the winter of 1943: incessant rains washed out the roads and the highway in the fall, and we found ourselves cut off from the city, which was left without fuel, and the builders without construction timber. They closed the only bakery in town. We were instructed to cut down the forest for the construction of another route. They worked from dark to dark. We brought the number of lumberjacks to 40 people. The manager of TNS ("Transneftservice") Nifontov I.P. arrived, who had 5 files in his pocket. Handing them to me, he said: "Take care, no more." He was accompanied by the director of the drilling office Potyukaev I.A., the head of the special detachment and the representative of the special commandant's office, the director of the Chertov canteen, in the back of the "lorry" of which there were two sacks of potatoes. Soon the "road of life" was laid and the state of emergency was eliminated.

In February 1944, I was appointed the head of the column of girls (Germans) of oil workers, and the head of the column of builders - T. A. Gardt, the nurse - M. A. Gardt. At that time we lived in large dugouts, worked seven days a week and no holidays. All the girls mastered their specialty well: masons E. Shtol, F. Shtol, R. Stork, E. Shifelbain. ; loaders: S. Berne, M. Baumgertner, F. Gaun. They built the first rubble houses, moreover, everything was done by hand.

I remember many oilmen. These are A. Euler, E. Zero, S. Nosk, M. Richelhof, E. Gaag, M. Liebrecht, I. Safraiter, M. Gaag, operators E. Kaiser, crane operators V. Donau, E. Bikkart, A. Aab . Girls worked at all the boiler houses of the city - labor army soldiers.

“Before my eyes,” Erna Yakovlevna continues to recall, “a whole galaxy of oilmen grew up from simple former village girls 15–18 years old – labor army workers: horsemen, drill workers. I remember the rig builders E. Kremer, A. Hart, A. Gantsgorn.”

Here I notice tears in Erna Yakovlevna’s eyes: “These labor army soldiers, guiltless girls, disenfranchised workers, were under the strict gaze of the special commandant’s office, submitted to a bitter fate. We tried to work overtime, because during these hours they began to give additional coupons: a bowl of soup, 10 g of butter, 100 g of bread. It was a great support for the weakened girls - the labor army."

Then the question followed: “Does Erna Alexandrovna remember September 26, 1944, when well No. 100 gave a fountain of Devonian oil?” It should be noted that well No. 100 created the prerequisites for the construction of Oktyabrsky. The first gusher of oil at this well brought incredible delight to the oil workers and accelerated the process of urban development.

“I remember well,” the answer immediately sounded, “then six of my girls worked there with the master A.T. Trypolsky. Minister Kuvykin S.I. came to celebrate this event.”

As a gift to Tripolsky A.T., the minister brought 8,000 rubles and a fur coat. The master took the fur coat, but refused the money, saying "Give the money to the defense fund."

“Now the chest of the labor army, which includes the German girls who were in the detachment of the first builders of the city of October in those anxious days of repression and the harsh years of the Patriotic War,” concludes Erna Yakovlevna, “adorns the medal “For valiant labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945. ". This is true. I am proud that with my conscientious work I brought our victory over the enemy closer.”

Erna Yakovlevna Tsvetkova- Wirth

Erna Yakovlevna has 49 years of work experience in Oktyabrsky, 28 of which she gave to oil workers and builders, and 21 years she helped treat patients in a tuberculosis dispensary.

More recently, Erna Yakovlevna decided to write about her life in the harsh years of repression in the city newspaper. Although it was painful for her to remember the past years, she wanted modern youth to know how the city of Oktyabrsky, native to many, arose, to know the truth about the life of the repressed, at least by her own example. Some parts of her memoirs were published, but much remained unpublished. All this is in the attachments to work.

The story of this woman's life shocked me. I was amazed at the stamina and fortitude of the very young German girls at that time, who faced such difficult trials.

But I promised to tell you about A. A. The Hague. Her fate was also not easy. Anna Andreevna was born in the Caspian Sea and from her very birth (in 1946 (the year the city of Oktyabrsky was founded!) Was on the list as an “unreliable element”, stayed in this rank until 1956, that is, 10 years, although she was absolutely innocent.

Her parents G. G. Gaag, A. Kh. Gaag with two younger children in September 1941 were expelled from their native village of Gelzel, Zelmansky district of the ASSR NP to Novosibirsk region. Their eldest daughters Ekaterina and Margarita, after mobilization, were part of the labor army in the "Sotsgorod" (the future city of Oktyabrsky).

Anna Andreevna GaagAnna Khristianovna Gaag

The older sisters, the Labor Army men, worked at logging sites as lumberjacks, harvested firewood for heating the city, and built houses at construction sites. Ekaterina was awarded medals "For Labor Distinction", "Veteran of Labour".

Anna Andreevna herself worked for 40 years in institutions public education city, a veteran of pedagogical work. A new Small Motherland, Bashkiria, appeared for her family.

Many works by Anna Haag are dedicated to the motherland; there are poems to those illegally convicted, after reading which one cannot but be touched: so many feelings and emotions, thoughts about hard fates, injustice, but about hope for the good and the best, gratitude for the hospitality poured into them!

One of these is the poem "Bow to the Earth":

Bow to you, Bashkir land!

You accepted us uninvited.

Gave shelter, warmth and bread,

Decided many fates.

We are all slaves of fate

And prisoners of a great war.

But time dissolved this captivity,

Lifted my people from their knees.

Bashkir land, you accepted many.

Forever - sheltered and saved the eternal.

About those who survived, we know with you

And we send you a bow to the earth from us!

In the heart of Anna Andreevna, the hope has not yet died out that justice will finally prevail for the whole people, that the resettlement of her people to an ethnic homeland that is foreign, in fact, to Russian Germans, will stop.

The older generation in the city are people with amazing destinies who were not broken by incredible difficulties. For example, Lydia Flyusovna Funk - Novokreschenova. She was evacuated to Ufa from Kyiv region, then ended up in Sotsgorod. She worked mainly as a loader in construction, raised two children. But even now, at 83, she is cheerful, loves life, music, has been singing in the choir for more than 10 years. Olga Iosifovna Music. For her terrible years– military: evacuation from Krasnodar to Syzran, then to Orenburg, then to our city. She worked as a fitter, scaffolder and mechanic, but remained an optimist. Alfrid Khristianovich Alles worked in drilling office No. 1, became a renowned foreman, and was an active trade union leader. You can name a lot of former Labor Army members. No matter how difficult it was, people found themselves on this earth and made their own, and considerable contribution to the construction of the city, thus becoming an integral part of its history. There is much evidence of how locals helped the Germans, who were in a particularly difficult situation, oppressed not so much even physically as morally. The human community today is made up of people of different generations, ordinary workers and leaders, oil workers, artists, teachers. Love gained through such torments is amazing love.

Oktyabrsky city today

The city of Oktyabrsky is the fifth largest city in the republic. Its population is 111.8 thousand people. Our city arose where the Turkic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric and other peoples lived side by side for centuries. The romance of a big deal, the opportunity to prove oneself, find happiness, become famous, finally earn money - all this attracts a wide variety of people. They extract oil, build a city, create families and raise children. No one pays attention to national peculiarities, does not infringe on someone's rights. Multinationality makes the life of the city brighter and more interesting. To compare how the population and national composition changed, I will cite the results of the population census.

Census data:

1959 1970 1979 1989 2002

Urban population 64717 77054 88278 104536 108647

Bashkirs 4901 6167 7883 9822 14235

Russian 33552 38808 41740 45595 44382

Tatars 17432 23327 29210 38600 40306

Chuvash 1061 1471 1936 2384 2105

Mari 220 356 681 1387 1342

Ukrainians 2435 2320 2284 2345 1807

Mordva 1468 1407 1462 1356 1069

Udmurts 128 173 227 273 233

Belarusians 387 383 385 399 273

Germans x x x 1692 1152

These are not all nationalities whose representatives live in our city. As can be seen from the data, the population of the city in different years was by no means uniform. But we can definitely say that the population is growing every day, the number of representatives of each nationality is becoming more and more. Our city is multinational and this cannot but rejoice. We are all different, but we are all Octobers.

Population of Oktyabrsky in 1959, 1979 and 1999

Today, the Germans of the Volga region, subjected to repression, can sleep peacefully, without fear for their lives and the lives of their children. The persecution is over, restless, hard times when "every movement" is supervised.

Moreover, they are equal citizens of the state, receive benefits, as well as compensation for the damage caused during the harsh years of repression.

The current generation of city residents should be grateful to them, because it is thanks to their efforts that the city looks like it is shown in the photographs. Much of all this was erected and built by their efforts and efforts for future generations of residents of the city of Oktyabrsky, the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Administration building of Oktyabrsky

Conclusion

In my work, I tried to tell about the hard lot of the repressed, including the repressed Volga Germans, illustrating pages from the life of some of them. Undoubtedly, the number of those stories that I learned about and, with the consent of my interlocutors, formalized in my work is only a drop in the ocean compared to hundreds of thousands of similar tragic destinies, people who had to live during the years of repression. These are the stories of people whose rights were severely infringed, their lives were devalued, and no personal efforts could overcome the cruel state machine. Fearing for their families, not sparing their strength, these people overcame even overwhelming obstacles, lived in inhuman conditions, and most importantly tried to survive. The desire to survive gives a person strength, makes him more confident, does not allow him to stop. It was this power that helped those many who were displaced from their homes during the years of repression. With each fate disposed of in different ways. Some (for example, the heroes of my story) got into construction work. Among the builders of the city of Oktyabrsky there were many repressed, deported from the regions of the Volga region. Their fates are intertwined with the life of the city. Definitely, they have made an invaluable contribution to its development. Unfortunately, little is known about their fate, almost nothing is written about them. It would be desirable that the veil of secrecy, which for a long time hid information about the lives of hundreds of thousands of repressed from prying ears, was slightly opened. This needs to be known to modern youth, who, to be honest, vaguely imagine those times.

This job gave me a lot: I learned how to interview, work with historical documents, I learned many life stories of the old-timers of our city who participated in its founding, and the stories of the repressed Volga Germans simply amazed me, expanded my understanding of those times. I think it makes sense to continue this work, because the topic is very interesting and inexhaustible.

In the end, I want to remind you that August 6 is the Day of the Repressed Germans - probably not everyone knows about this either. It would be great if there were more events dedicated to this date. This will awaken in each of us respect not only for the repressed Germans, but for any nationality in general, and will also help to learn about the harsh years and strong people whose willpower and desire to survive is worth envying.