All Nazi concentration camps. Life and death in Nazi concentration camps

January 27, 2015, 15:30

On January 27, the world celebrates 70 years since liberation the Soviet army Nazi concentration camp "Auschwitz-Birkenau" (Auschwitz), where from 1941 to 1945, according to official figures, 1.4 million people died, of which about 1.1 million were Jews. The photographs below, published by Photochronograph, show the life and martyrdom of Auschwitz prisoners and others. concentration camps death, created in the territory controlled by fascist Germany.

Some of these photos can be traumatic. Therefore, we ask children and people with unstable mentality to refrain from viewing these photos.

Sending Slovak Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Arrival of the echelon with new prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Arrival of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prisoners are centrally assembled on the platform.

Arrival of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The first stage of selection. It was necessary to divide the prisoners into two columns separating men from women and children.

Arrival of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The guards form a column of prisoners.

Rabbis in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Railway tracks leading to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Registration photographs of children-prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Prisoners of the Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp on construction chemical plant German concern I.G. Farbenindustrie AG

The liberation by Soviet soldiers of the surviving prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Soviet soldiers consider children's clothes found in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

A group of children released from the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz). In total, about 7,500 people, including children, were released in the camp. The Germans managed to take about 50 thousand prisoners from Auschwitz to other camps before the Red Army units approached.

Released children, prisoners of the Auschwitz (Auschwitz) concentration camp, show camp numbers tattooed on their arms.

Liberated children from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Portrait of prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp after it was liberated by Soviet troops.

Aerial photography of the northwestern part of the Auschwitz concentration camp with the main objects of the camp marked: railroad station and camp "Auschwitz I".

Liberated prisoners of the Austrian concentration camp in the American military hospital.

Clothes of concentration camp prisoners abandoned after liberation in April 1945.

American soldiers inspect the site of the mass execution of 250 Polish and French prisoners at a concentration camp near Leipzig on April 19, 1945.

A Ukrainian girl released from a concentration camp in Salzburg, Austria, cooks food on a small stove.

Prisoners of the Flossenburg death camp after being liberated by the US 97th Infantry Division in May 1945. The emaciated prisoner in the center - a 23-year-old Czech - is ill with dysentery. The Flossenburg camp was located in Bavaria near the city of the same name on the border with the Czech Republic. It was created in May 1938. During the existence of the camp, about 96 thousand prisoners passed through it, of which more than 30 thousand died in the camp.

Ampfing concentration camp prisoners after their release.

View of the concentration camp at Grini in Norway.

Soviet prisoners in the Lamsdorf concentration camp (Stalag VIII-B, now the Polish village of Lambinovice).

The bodies of the executed SS guards observation tower"B" of the Dachau concentration camp.

Dachau is one of the first concentration camps in Germany. Founded by the Nazis in March 1933. The camp was located in southern Germany, 16 kilometers northwest of Munich. The number of prisoners held at Dachau from 1933 to 1945 exceeds 188,000. The death toll in the main camp and subcamps from January 1940 to May 1945 was at least 28,000.

View of the barracks of the Dachau concentration camp.

Soldiers of the US 45th Infantry Division show the bodies of prisoners in a wagon at the Dachau concentration camp to teenagers from the Hitler Youth.

View of the Buchenwald barracks after the liberation of the camp.

American generals George Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower in the Ohrdruf concentration camp at the fire, where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.

Soviet prisoners of war in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

The Stalag XVIIIA prisoner of war camp was located near the town of Wolfsberg (Austria). The camp contained approximately 30 thousand people: 10 thousand British and 20 thousand Soviet prisoners. Soviet prisoners were isolated in a separate area and did not intersect with other prisoners. In the English part of the ethnic English, there were only half, about 40 percent - Australians, the rest - Canadians, New Zealanders (including 320 Maori aborigines) and other natives of the colonies. Of the other nations in the camp were the French, downed American pilots. A feature of the camp was the liberal attitude of the administration to the presence of cameras in the British (this did not apply to the Soviets). Thanks to this, an impressive archive of photographs of life in the camp, made from the inside, that is, by the people who were in it, has come down to the present time.

Soviet prisoners of war eating in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war near the barbed wire of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war at the barracks of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

British prisoners of war on the stage of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp theater.

Captured British corporal Eric Evans with three comrades on the territory of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Burnt bodies of prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp. Ohrdruf concentration camp was established in November 1944. During the war years, about 11,700 people died in the camp. Ohrdruf became the first concentration camp liberated by the army USA.

Bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald is one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, located near Weimar in Thuringia. From July 1937 to April 1945, about 250 thousand people were imprisoned in the camp. The number of victims of the camp is estimated at about 56 thousand prisoners.

Women from the SS guards of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp unload the corpses of prisoners for burial in mass grave. They were attracted to these works by the allies who liberated the camp. Around the moat is a convoy of English soldiers. Former guards are banned from wearing gloves as a punishment to put them at risk of contracting typhus.

Bergen-Belsen is a Nazi concentration camp located in the province of Hanover (now the territory of Lower Saxony), a mile from the village of Belsen and a few miles southwest of the city of Bergen. The camp was not gas chambers. But in 1943-1945, about 50 thousand prisoners died here, more than 35 thousand of them - from typhus a few months before the liberation of the camp. Total victims is about 70 thousand prisoners.

Six British prisoners in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners talking to German officer in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war change clothes in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Group photo of allied prisoners (British, Australians and New Zealanders) in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Band of captured allies (Australians, British and New Zealanders) on the territory of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Captured Allied soldiers play Two Up for cigarettes in the Stalag 383 concentration camp.

Two British prisoners at the wall of the barracks of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.

A German soldier-escort at the Stalag 383 concentration camp market, surrounded by captured allies.

A group photo of allied prisoners in the Stalag 383 concentration camp on Christmas Day 1943.

The barracks of the Vollan concentration camp in the Norwegian city of Trondheim after liberation.

A group of Soviet prisoners of war outside the gates of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation. Falstad is a Nazi concentration camp in Norway, located in the village of Ekne near Levanger. Created in September 1941. The number of dead prisoners - more than 200 people.

SS-Oberscharführer Erich Weber on vacation in the commandant's quarters of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.

Commandant of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Hauptscharführer Karl Denk (left) and SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber (right) in the commandant's room.

Five released prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp at the gate.

Prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) on vacation during a break between work in the field.

SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber, an employee of the Falstad concentration camp.

SS non-commissioned officers K. Denk, E. Weber and Luftwaffe sergeant R. Weber with two women in the commandant's office of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.

An employee of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad SS Obersturmführer Erich Weber in the kitchen of the commandant's house.

Soviet, Norwegian and Yugoslav prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp on vacation at the logging site.

The head of the women's block of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) Maria Robbe (Maria Robbe) with the police at the gates of the camp.

A group of Soviet prisoners of war on the territory of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.

Seven guards of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad at the main gate.

Panorama of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) after the liberation.

Black French prisoners in the Frontstalag 155 camp in the village of Lonvik.

Black French prisoners do laundry at the Frontstalag 155 camp in the village of Lonvik.

Participants of the Warsaw uprising from the Home Army in the barracks of a concentration camp in the area german village Oberlangen.

The body of a shot SS guard in a canal near the Dachau concentration camp.

Two American soldiers and a former prisoner fish the body of a shot SS guard from a canal near the Dachau concentration camp.

A column of prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) passes in the courtyard of the main building.

An emaciated Hungarian prisoner released from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

A liberated prisoner of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who fell ill with typhus in one of the camp barracks.

Prisoners demonstrate the process of destroying corpses in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp.

Red Army prisoners who died of hunger and cold. The POW camp was located in the village of Bolshaya Rossoshka near Stalingrad.

Body of Ohrdruf concentration camp guard killed by prisoners or American soldiers.

Prisoners in the barracks of the Ebensee concentration camp.

Irma Grese and Josef Kramer in the prison yard of the German city of Celle. The head of the labor service of the women's unit of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp - Irma Grese (Irma Grese) and his commandant SS Hauptsturmführer (captain) Josef Kramer under British escort in the courtyard of the prison in Celle, Germany.

Girl prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac.

Soviet prisoners of war while carrying building elements for the barracks of the camp "Stalag 304" Zeithain.

Surrendered SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker (Heinrich Wicker, later shot by American soldiers) at the car with the bodies of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp. In the photo, second from the left is Victor Mairer, a representative of the Red Cross.

A man in civilian clothes stands near the bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
In the background, Christmas wreaths hang near the windows.

Released from captivity, the British and Americans are on the territory of the prisoner of war camp Dulag-Luft in Wetzlar, Germany.

Released prisoners from the Nordhausen death camp sit on the porch.

Prisoners of the concentration camp Gardelegen (Gardelegen), killed by guards shortly before the liberation of the camp.

In the back of the trailer - the corpses of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp, prepared for burning in the crematorium.

American generals (from right to left) Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton watch a demonstration of one of the methods of torture in the Gotha concentration camp.

Mountains of clothes of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp.

A released seven-year-old prisoner of the Buchenwald concentration camp in line before being sent to Switzerland.

Prisoners of the concentration camp Sachsenhausen (Sachsenhausen) on the line.

The Sachsenhausen camp was located near the city of Oranienburg in Germany. Created in July 1936. Number of prisoners in different years reached 60 thousand people. On the territory of Sachsenhausen, according to some sources, more than 100 thousand prisoners died in various ways.

A Soviet prisoner of war released from the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.

Soviet prisoners of war in a barracks after their release from the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.

A Soviet prisoner of war leaves a barrack at the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.

Women liberated by the Red Army from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, located 90 kilometers north of Berlin. Ravensbrück is a concentration camp of the Third Reich, located in northeastern Germany, 90 kilometers north of Berlin. It existed from May 1939 until the end of April 1945. The largest Nazi concentration camp for women. The number of registered prisoners for the entire period of its existence amounted to more than 130 thousand people. According to official figures, 90 thousand prisoners died here.

German officers and civilians walk past a group of Soviet prisoners during an inspection of a concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war in the camp in the ranks during verification.

Captured Soviet soldiers in the camp at the beginning of the war.

Captured Red Army soldiers enter the camp barracks.

Four Polish prisoners of the Oberlangen concentration camp (Oberlangen, Stalag VI C) after their liberation. Women were among the capitulated Warsaw insurgents.

The orchestra of prisoners of the Yanovsky concentration camp performs the "Tango of Death". On the eve of the liberation of Lvov by the Red Army, the Germans lined up a circle of 40 people from the orchestra. The camp guards surrounded the musicians in a tight ring and ordered them to play. First, the conductor of the Mund orchestra was executed, then, by order of the commandant, each orchestra member went to the center of the circle, laid his instrument on the ground and stripped naked, after which he was shot in the head.

The Ustaše execute prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp. Jasenovac is a system of death camps established by the Ustaše (Croatian Nazis) in August 1941. It was located on the territory of the Independent Croatian State, which collaborated with Nazi Germany, 60 kilometers from Zagreb. There is no consensus on the number of victims of Jasenovac. While the official Yugoslav authorities during the existence of this state supported the version of 840 thousand victims, according to the estimates of the Croatian historian Vladimir Zheryavic, their number was 83 thousand, the Serbian historian Bogoljub Kochovich - 70 thousand. memorial museum in Jasenovac contains information about 75,159 victims, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum says from 56-97 thousand victims.

Soviet child prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk. During the occupation of Soviet Karelia by the Finns, six concentration camps were created in Petrozavodsk to contain local Russian-speaking residents. Camp No. 6 was located in the area of ​​the Transshipment Exchange, it held 7,000 people.

A Jewish woman with her daughter after being released from a German labor camp.

corpses Soviet citizens found on the territory of the Nazi concentration camp in Darnitsa. Kyiv region, November 1943.

General Eisenhower and other American officers look at the executed prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

The dead prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

Representatives of the prosecutor's office of the Estonian SSR at the bodies of the dead prisoners of the Klooga concentration camp. The Klooga concentration camp was located in Harju County, Keila Volost (35 kilometers from Tallinn).

Soviet child next to the murdered mother. concentration camp for civilian population"Ozarichi". Belarus, the town of Ozarichi, Domanovichsky district, Polesye region.

Soldiers from the US 157th Infantry Regiment shoot SS guards German concentration camp Dachau.

Concentration camp inmate Webbelin burst into tears when he learned that he was not included in the first group of prisoners sent to the hospital after release.

Residents of the German city of Weimar in the Buchenwald concentration camp near the bodies of dead prisoners. The Americans brought into the camp the inhabitants of Weimar, located near Buchenwald, most of whom declared that they knew nothing about this camp.

Unknown guard of the Buchenwald concentration camp, beaten and hanged by prisoners.

The guards of the Buchenwald concentration camp beaten by prisoners in a punishment cell on their knees.

An unknown guard of the Buchenwald concentration camp beaten by prisoners.

military personnel medical service 20 Corps of the US Third Army near a trailer with the corpses of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The bodies of prisoners who died in the train on the way to the Dachau concentration camp.

Liberated prisoners in one of the barracks of the Ebensee camp, two days after the arrival of the advance elements of the US 80th Infantry Division.

One of the emaciated prisoners of the Ebensee camp basks in the sun. The Ebensee concentration camp was located 40 kilometers from Salzburg (Austria). The camp existed from November 1943 to May 6, 1945. For 18 months, thousands of prisoners passed through it, many of whom died here. The names of 7113 dead in conditions of inhuman detention are known. The total number of victims is more than 8200 people.

Released from the Eselheide camp, Soviet prisoners of war rock an American soldier in their arms.
About 30,000 Soviet prisoners of war died in Ezelheide Camp No. 326; in April 1945, the Red Army soldiers who survived in captivity were liberated by units of the 9th US Army.

French Jews in the Drancy transit camp, before their onward transfer to German concentration camps.

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp guards load the corpses of dead prisoners onto a truck escorted by British soldiers.

Odilo Globocnik (far right) visits the Sobibor extermination camp, which operated from May 15, 1942 to October 15, 1943. About 250,000 Jews were killed here.

The corpse of a prisoner of the Dachau concentration camp, found by Allied soldiers in a railway car near the camp.

Human remains in the Stutthof concentration camp crematorium oven. Location: near Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland).

Hungarian actress Livia Nador, liberated from the Guzen concentration camp by soldiers of the 11th tank division United States in the Linz area, Austria.

The German boy is walking along dirt road, on the side of which lie the corpses of hundreds of prisoners who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

Arrest of commandant of the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen Josef Kramer by British troops. Subsequently, he was sentenced to death and hanged on December 13 in the Hameln prison.

Children behind barbed wire in the Buchenwald concentration camp after its release.

Soviet prisoners of war being disinfected in the German POW camp Zeithain.

Prisoners during the roll call in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Polish Jews await execution under guard German soldiers in the ravine. Presumably from the Belzec or Sobibor camp.

A surviving Buchenwald prisoner drinks water in front of the concentration camp barracks.

British soldiers inspect the crematorium oven at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The released children-prisoners of Buchenwald come out of the gates of the camp.

German prisoners of war are being escorted through the Majdanek concentration camp. In front of the prisoners, the remains of the prisoners of the death camp lie on the ground, and the crematorium ovens are also visible. Majdanek death camp was on the outskirts Polish city Lublin. In total, about 150 thousand prisoners visited here, about 80 thousand were killed, of which 60 thousand were Jews. The mass extermination of people in gas chambers in the camp began in 1942. Carbon monoxide (carbon monoxide) was first used as a poisonous gas, and since April 1942, Zyklon B. Majdanek has been one of the two death camps of the Third Reich where this gas was used (the second is Auschwitz).

Soviet prisoners of war in the Zeithain camp are disinfected before being sent to Belgium.

Mauthausen prisoners look at an SS officer.

Death march from the Dachau concentration camp.

Forced labor prisoners. Quarry "Weiner Graben" in the concentration camp Mauthausen, Austria.

Representatives of the prosecutor's office of the Estonian SSR at the bodies of the dead prisoners of the Klooga concentration camp.

The arrested commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Joseph Kramer, in shackles and guarded by an English escort. Nicknamed "Belsen beast", Kramer was convicted by an English court for war crimes and in December 1945 hanged in the prison of Hameln.

Bones of the killed prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp (Lublin, Poland).

The furnace of the Majdanek concentration camp crematorium (Lublin, Poland). On the left, Lieutenant A.A. Guyvik.

Lieutenant A.A. Guivik holds the remains of prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp in his hands.

A column of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp on the march in the suburbs of Munich.

A young man released from the Mauthausen camp.

The corpse of a prisoner of the Leipzig-Tekla concentration camp on barbed wire.

The remains of prisoners in the crematorium of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar.

One of the 150 victims among the prisoners who died in the concentration camp in Gardelegen.

In April 1945, in the Gardelegen concentration camp, the SS drove about 1,100 prisoners into a barn and set it on fire. Some of the victims tried to escape but were shot dead by the guards.

Meeting of the Americans - the liberators of the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Residents of the city of Ludwigslust pass by the bodies of prisoners of the same name concentration camp for prisoners of war. The bodies of the victims were found by members of the US 82nd Airborne Division. The bodies were found in pits in the camp yard and in the interior. By order of the Americans civilians district was obliged to come to the camp to get acquainted with the results of the crimes of the Nazis.

Dora-Mittelbau work camps killed by the Nazis. Dora-Mittelbau (other names: Dora, Nordhausen) - a Nazi concentration camp, was formed on August 28, 1943, 5 kilometers from the city of Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany, as a division of the already existing Buchenwald camp. For 18 months of existence, 60 thousand prisoners of 21 nationalities passed through the camp, approximately 20 thousand died in custody.

American generals Patton, Bradley, Eisenhower in the Ohrdruf concentration camp at the fire, where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.

Soviet prisoners of war liberated by the Americans from a camp near the French town of Sarguemines, bordering Germany.

On the victim's arm is a deep burn from phosphorus. The experiment was to set fire to a mixture of phosphorus and rubber on the skin of a living person.

Liberated prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Liberated prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Soviet prisoner of war full release US troops Buchenwald camp, points to a former guard who brutally beat the prisoners.

SS soldiers lined up on the parade ground of the Plaszow concentration camp.

Former guard of the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen F. Herzog disassembles a pile of corpses of prisoners.

Soviet prisoners of war liberated by the Americans from the camp in Eselheide.

A pile of corpses of prisoners in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp.

A pile of corpses of prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The bodies of prisoners of the Lambach concentration camp in the forest before burial.

A French prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp on the floor of a barrack among dead comrades.

Soldiers from the American 42nd Infantry Division at the car with the bodies of the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp.

Ebensee concentration camp prisoners.

The corpses of prisoners in the courtyard of the Dora-Mittelbau camp.

Prisoners of the German concentration camp Webbelin waiting for medical help.

A prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau (Nordhausen) camp shows American soldier camp crematorium.

Fragments of bones are still found in this earth. The crematorium could not cope with huge amount corpses, although they built two sets of furnaces. They burned badly, fragments of bodies remained - the ashes were buried in pits around the concentration camp. 72 years have passed, but mushroom pickers in the forest often come across pieces of skulls with eye sockets, bones of arms or legs, crushed fingers - not to mention decayed fragments of the striped “robe” of prisoners. The Stutthof concentration camp (50 kilometers from the city of Gdansk) was founded on September 2, 1939 - the day after the start of World War II, and its prisoners were liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945. The main thing that Stutthof became famous for was these are "experiments" by SS doctors, who, using humans as guinea pigs, made soap from human fat. A bar of this soap was later used at the Nuremberg trials as an example of Nazi fanaticism. Now some historians (not only in Poland, but also in other countries) are saying: this is “military folklore”, fantasy, this could not be.

Soap from prisoners

The museum complex Stutthof receives 100,000 visitors a year. Barracks, towers for SS machine gunners, a crematorium and a gas chamber are available for viewing: a small one, for about 30 people. The building was built in the fall of 1944, before that they had been "coping" with the usual methods - typhus, exhausting work, hunger. An employee of the museum, guiding me through the barracks, says: on average, the life expectancy of the inhabitants of Stutthof was 3 months. As evidenced archival documents, one of the female prisoners weighed 19 kg before her death. Behind the glass, I suddenly see large wooden shoes, as if from a medieval fairy tale. I ask: what is it? It turns out that the guards took away the shoes of the prisoners and in return gave out just such “shoes” that erased the legs to bloody calluses. In winter, the prisoners worked in the same “robe”, only a light cape was required - many died from hypothermia. It was believed that 85,000 people died in the camp, but in recent times EU historians are reassessing: the number of dead prisoners has been reduced to 65,000.

In 2006, the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland analyzed the same soap presented at the Nuremberg Trials, says the guide Danuta Okhotska. - Contrary to expectations, the results were confirmed - it really was made by a Nazi professor Rudolf Spanner from human fat. However, now researchers in Poland say: there is no exact confirmation that the soap was made specifically from the bodies of Stutthof prisoners. It is possible that the corpses of those who died from natural causes homeless people brought from the streets of Gdansk. Professor Spanner did visit Stutthof in different time, but the production of "soap of the dead" was not carried out on an industrial scale.

Gas chamber and crematorium at the Stutthof concentration camp. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Hans Weingartz

"People were skinned"

The Institute of National Memory of Poland is the same “glorious” organization that advocates the demolition of all monuments to Soviet soldiers, and in this case the situation turned out to be tragicomic. Officials specifically ordered a soap analysis in order to obtain proof of the "lie Soviet propaganda in Nuremberg, but it turned out the other way around. About industrial scale- Spanner made up to 100 kg of soap from "human material" in the period 1943-1944. and, according to the testimonies of its employees, repeatedly went to Stutthof for "raw materials". Polish investigator Tuvia Friedman published a book where he described the impressions of Spanner's laboratory after the liberation of Gdansk: “We had the feeling that we had been in hell. One room was filled with naked corpses. The other was lined with boards on which the skins taken from many people were stretched. Almost immediately, a furnace was discovered in which the Germans experimented with making soap using human fat as a raw material. Several bars of this "soap" lay nearby. An employee of the museum shows me the hospital used for the experiments of SS doctors - relatively healthy prisoners were placed here under the formal pretext of "treatment". Doctor Carl Clauberg went to Stutthof on short business trips from Auschwitz to sterilize women, and SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Wernet from Buchenwald cut out people's tonsils and tongues, replacing them with artificial organs. Vernet's results were not satisfied - the victims of the experiments were killed in a gas chamber. There are no exhibits in the concentration camp museum about the savage activities of Clauberg, Wernet and Spanner - they "have little documentary evidence." Although during Nuremberg Trials the same “human soap” from Stutthof was demonstrated and the testimony of dozens of witnesses was voiced.

"Cultural" Nazis

I draw your attention to the fact that we have a whole exposition devoted to the liberation of Stutthof by Soviet troops on May 9, 1945, - says the doctor Marcin Owsiński, head of the research department of the museum. - It is noted that it was precisely the release of prisoners, and not the replacement of one occupation with another, as it is now fashionable to say. People rejoiced at the arrival of the Red Army. As for the SS experiments in the concentration camp - I assure you, there is no politics here. We are working with documentary evidence, and most of the papers were destroyed by the Germans during the retreat from Stutthof. If they appear, we will immediately make changes to the exhibition.

A film about the entry of the Red Army into Stutthof is shown in the museum's cinema hall - archival footage. It is noted that by this time only 200 emaciated prisoners remained in the concentration camp and “then N-KVD sent some to Siberia”. No confirmation, no names - but a fly in the ointment spoils a barrel of honey: there is clearly a goal - to show that the liberators were not so good. On the crematorium there is a sign in Polish: "We thank the Red Army for our liberation." She is old, from the old days. Soviet soldiers, including my great-grandfather (buried in Polish soil), saved Poland from dozens of "death factories" like Stutthof, which entangled the country with a deadly network of furnaces and gas chambers, but now they are trying to downplay the significance of their victories. Say, the atrocities of the SS doctors are not confirmed, fewer people died in the camps, and in general - the crimes of the invaders are exaggerated. Moreover, Poland declares this, where the Nazis destroyed a fifth of the entire population. To be honest, I want to call ambulance", so that Polish politicians were taken to a psychiatric hospital.

As a publicist from Warsaw said Maciej Wisniewski: "We will still live to see the time when they say: the Nazis were a cultured people, they built hospitals and schools in Poland, and the Soviet Union unleashed the war." I would not want to live up to these times. But for some reason it seems to me that they are not far off.

This name has become a symbol of the brutal attitude of the Nazis towards captured children.

During the three years of the existence of the camp (1941-1944) in Salaspils, according to various sources, about a hundred thousand people died, seven thousand of them were children.

The place from which they did not return

This camp was built by captured Jews in 1941 on the territory of the former Latvian training ground, 18 kilometers from Riga, near the village of the same name. According to the documents, Salaspils (German: Kurtenhof) was originally called an “educational labor camp”, and not a concentration camp.

An impressive area, fenced with barbed wire, was built up with hastily built wooden barracks. Each was designed for 200-300 people, but often in one room there were from 500 to 1000 people.

Initially, Jews deported from Germany to Latvia were doomed to death in the camp, but since 1942, "objectionable" from the most different countries: France, Germany, Austria, Soviet Union.

The Salaspils camp also gained notoriety because it was here that the Nazis took blood from innocent children for the needs of the army and mocked young prisoners in every possible way.

Full donors for the Reich

New prisoners were brought in regularly. They were forced to strip naked and sent to the so-called bathhouse. I had to walk half a kilometer through the mud, and then wash in ice water. After that, the arrivals were placed in barracks, all things were taken away.

There were no names, surnames, titles - only sequence numbers. Many died almost immediately, while those who managed to survive after several days of imprisonment and torture were “sorted out”.

The children were separated from their parents. If the mothers did not give, the guards took the babies by force. There were terrible screams and screams. Many women went crazy; some of them were placed in the hospital, and some were shot on the spot.

Infants and children under the age of six were sent to a special barrack, where they died of starvation and disease. The Nazis experimented on older prisoners: they injected poisons, performed operations without anesthesia, took blood from children, which was transferred to hospitals for wounded soldiers german army. Many children became "full donors" - they took blood from them until they died.

Considering that the prisoners were practically not fed: a piece of bread and a gruel from vegetable waste, the number of child deaths was in the hundreds per day. The corpses, like garbage, were taken out in huge baskets and burned in crematorium ovens or dumped into disposal pits.

Covering up traces

In August 1944, before the arrival of the Soviet troops, in an attempt to destroy the traces of atrocities, the Nazis burned down many barracks. The surviving prisoners were taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, and German prisoners of war were kept on the territory of Salaspils until October 1946.

After the liberation of Riga from the Nazis, a commission to investigate Nazi atrocities found 652 children's corpses in the camp. Mass graves and human remains were also found: ribs, hip bones, teeth.

One of the most eerie photographs that clearly illustrates the events of that time is the “Salaspils Madonna”, the corpse of a woman who hugs a dead baby. It was found that they were buried alive.

The truth pricks the eyes

Only in 1967, the Salaspils Palace was erected on the site of the camp. memorial Complex which exists to this day. Many famous Russian and Latvian sculptors and architects worked on the ensemble, including Ernst Unknown. The road to Salaspils begins with a massive concrete slab, the inscription on which reads: "The earth groans behind these walls."

Further, on a small field, figures-symbols with "speaking" names rise: "Unbroken", "Humiliated", "Oath", "Mother". On either side of the road are barracks with iron bars where people bring flowers, children's toys and sweets, and on the black marble wall, serifs measure the days spent by the innocent in the "death camp".

To date, some Latvian historians blasphemously call the Salaspils camp "educational and labor" and "socially useful", refusing to recognize the atrocities that were committed near Riga during the Second World War.

In 2015, an exhibition dedicated to the victims of Salaspils was banned in Latvia. Officials considered that such an event would harm the image of the country. As a result, the exposition “Stolen childhood. Victims of the Holocaust through the eyes of young Nazi prisoners Salaspils concentration camp» was held in Russian center science and culture in Paris.

In 2017, there was also a scandal at the press conference “Salaspils camp, history and memory”. One of the speakers tried to present his original point of view on historical events, but received a strong rebuff from the participants. “It hurts to hear how you are trying to forget about the past today. We cannot allow such terrible events to happen again. God forbid you experience something like this,” one of the women who managed to survive in Salaspils addressed the speaker.

Noted Historian, Professor at Bierbeck College University of London Nikolaus Wachsmann researched and presented complete history Nazi concentration camps from 1933 to 1945.

"Story Nazi concentration camps"based on authentic documentary materials about the camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, Ravensbrück and many others (twenty-two large camps and more than a thousand satellite camps entangled Germany and Europe), the author presented the history of creation, goals, principles, structure and control system of this monstrous misanthropic machine for the destruction of people, turning Special attention to the incredibly cruel conditions of detention of prisoners in them.

Concluding his colossal work, the author expresses the idea that "the system of concentration camps was a great perverter of values, is a history of inhuman mutations of conscience that made violence, torture and murder the norm." And insists: modern world has no right to forget about it.

The appendix provides data on the prisoners of the camps from 1935 to 1945.

Chapter 1. THE FIRST CAMPS
Bloody spring and summer
Coordination
open terror

Chapter 2. SS CAMP SYSTEM
The Persistence of Change
SS camps
Worlds of Prisoners

Chapter 3. EXTENSION
Social Outsiders
Forced labor
Jews

Chapter 4. WAR
SS concentration camps during the war
Path to perdition
Suffering scale

Chapter 5. MASS DESTRUCTION
Killing the physically weak
Destruction of Soviet prisoners of war
Deadly utopias

Chapter 6. Holocaust
Auschwitz and the Nazi "Final Solution"
Jewish Question"
"Death Factories"
Genocide and the concentration camp system

Chapter 7
Jewish prisoners in the East
SS routine
Robbery and corruption

Chapter 8. ECONOMY AND DESTRUCTION
Oswald Pohl and the SS Main Administrative Office
Slave work
"Guinea pigs"

Chapter 9. CONCENTRATION CAMPS EVERYWHERE
Agony
Branches of concentration camps
External world

Chapter 10
Community under duress
Capo
Disobedience

Chapter 11. DEATH OR FREEDOM
Beginning of the End
Apocalypse
Last weeks

APPS
Dynamics of the number of prisoners in SS concentration camps, 1934-1945
Number of SS prisoners who died in concentration camps
Notes
Abbreviations
Sources
Gratitude

978-5-227-07301-3

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