Female soldiers in German captivity. Chapter five from the book "Captivity

“I did not immediately decide to publish this chapter from the book “Captivity” on the site. This is one of the most terrible and heroic stories. Low bow to you, women, for everything you endured and, alas, never appreciated by the state, people, researchers. About this it was difficult to write. It is even more difficult to talk with former prisoners. A deep bow to you - the Heroines."

"And there were no such beautiful women on the whole earth..." Job (42:15)

"My tears were my bread day and night... ...my enemies scold me..." Psalter. (41:4:11)

From the first days of the war, tens of thousands of female medical workers were mobilized into the Red Army. Thousands of women volunteered to join the army and divisions of the people's militia. Based on the decrees of the State Defense Committee of March 25, April 13 and 23, 1942, mass mobilization of women began. Only at the call of the Komsomol, 550 thousand Soviet women became soldiers. 300,000 were drafted into the Air Defense Forces. Hundreds of thousands - to the military medical and sanitary service, signal troops, road and other units. In May 1942, another GKO decree was adopted - on the mobilization of 25,000 women in the Navy.

Three air regiments were formed from women: two bombers and one fighter, the 1st separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, and the 1st separate women's reserve rifle regiment.

Established in 1942, the Central Women's Sniper School trained 1,300 female snipers.

Ryazan Infantry School. Voroshilov trained women commanders of rifle units. In 1943 alone, 1388 people graduated from it.

During the war years, women served in all branches of the military and represented all military specialties. Women made up 41% of all doctors, 43% of paramedics, 100% of nurses. In total, 800 thousand women served in the Red Army.

However, female medical instructors and nurses in the active army accounted for only 40%, which violates the prevailing notion of a girl under fire rescuing the wounded. In his interview, A. Volkov, who went through the entire war as a medical instructor, refutes the myth that only girls were medical instructors. According to him, the girls were nurses and orderlies in the medical battalions, and mostly men served as medical instructors and orderlies on the front line in the trenches.

“They didn’t even take frail men to medical instructor courses. Only hefty ones! The work of a medical instructor is harder than that of a sapper. A medical instructor must crawl at least four times during the night to find the wounded. , so big, almost a kilometer on you! Yes, this is nonsense. We were especially warned: if you drag a wounded man to the rear, you will be shot on the spot for desertion. After all, what is a medical instructor for? A medical instructor must prevent a large loss of blood and apply a bandage. to drag him to the rear, for this, everything is subordinate to the medical instructor. There is always someone to take out of the battlefield. The medical instructor, after all, is subordinate to no one. Only the head of the medical battalion."

Not everything can be agreed with A. Volkov. The female medical instructors saved the wounded, pulling them out on themselves, dragging them behind them, there are many examples of this. Another thing is interesting. The women-front-line soldiers themselves note the discrepancy between the stereotypical screen images and the truth of the war.

For example, a former medical instructor Sofya Dubnyakova says: “I watch films about the war: a nurse is on the front line, she is neat, clean, not in wadded trousers, but in a skirt, she has a pilot on a tuft .... Well, not true! ... Is it we could pull out the wounded like this? .. You don’t really crawl in a skirt when there are only men around. But to tell the truth, skirts were only given to us at the end of the war. At the same time, we also received knitted underwear instead of men's underwear. "

In addition to medical instructors, among whom were women, there were porters in the sanrots - they were only men. They also helped the wounded. However, their main task is to carry the already bandaged wounded from the battlefield.

On August 3, 1941, the People's Commissar of Defense issued Order No. 281 "On the procedure for submitting military orderlies and porters to the government award for good combat work." The work of orderlies and porters was equated to a military feat. The said order stated: "For the removal from the battlefield of 15 wounded with their rifles or light machine guns, each orderly and porter should be presented with a government award with a medal "For Military Merit" or "For Courage." For the removal from the battlefield of 25 wounded with their weapons, submit to the Order of the Red Star, for the removal of 40 wounded - to the Order of the Red Banner, for the removal of 80 wounded - to the Order of Lenin.

150 thousand Soviet women were awarded military orders and medals. 200 - Orders of Glory 2nd and 3rd degree. Four became full cavaliers of the Order of Glory of three degrees. 86 women were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

At all times, the service of women in the army was considered immoral. There are many insulting lies about them, it is enough to recall PZh - a field wife.

Oddly enough, such an attitude towards women was engendered by front-line men. War veteran N.S. Posylayev recalls: “As a rule, women who got to the front soon became mistresses of officers. How else: if a woman is on her own, there will be no end to harassment.

To be continued...

A. Volkov said that when a group of girls arrived in the army, “merchants” immediately followed them: “First, the army headquarters took the youngest and most beautiful, then the headquarters of a lower rank.”

In the autumn of 1943, a medical orderly girl arrived in his company at night. And only one medical instructor is assigned to the company. It turns out that the girl “was molested everywhere, and since she did not yield to anyone, she was sent down below. From the headquarters of the army to the headquarters of the division, then to the headquarters of the regiment, then to the company, and the company commander sent the touchy into the trenches.

Zina Serdyukova, a former foreman of the reconnaissance company of the 6th Guards Cavalry Corps, knew how to deal strictly with soldiers and commanders, but one day the following happened:

“It was winter, the platoon lodged in a rural house, where I had a nook. In the evening I was summoned by the commander of the regiment. Sometimes he himself set the task of sending behind enemy lines. This time he was drunk, the table with the leftover food was not cleared. Without saying anything, he rushed towards me, trying to undress me. I knew how to fight, I'm a scout after all. And then he called the orderly, ordering me to be held. They both tore my clothes off. The landlady, who was quartered, flew into my cries, and only this saved me. I ran through the village, half-dressed, crazy. For some reason, I thought that I would find protection from the commander of the corps, General Sharaburko, he fatherly called me daughter. The adjutant did not let me in, but I rushed to the general, beaten, disheveled. She told incoherently how Colonel M. had tried to rape me. The general reassured me, saying that I would not see Colonel M. again. A month later, my company commander reported that the colonel had died in battle, he was part of a penal battalion. That's what war is, it's not just bombs, tanks, exhausting marches..."

Everything was in life at the front, where "there are four steps to death." However, most veterans with sincere respect remember the girls who fought at the front. Most often, those who sat in the rear, behind the backs of women who had gone to the front as volunteers, were most often slandered.

Former front-line soldiers, despite the difficulties they had to face in the men's team, remember their combat friends with warmth and gratitude.

Rashel Berezina, in the army since 1942 - interpreter-intelligence of military intelligence, ended the war in Vienna as a senior interpreter of the intelligence department of the First Guards Mechanized Corps under the command of Lieutenant General I.N. Russiyanov. She says that they treated her very respectfully, in the intelligence department in her presence they even stopped using foul language.

Maria Fridman, a scout of the 1st NKVD division, who fought in the Nevsky Dubrovka area near Leningrad, recalls that scouts protected her, filled her with sugar and chocolate, which they found in German dugouts. True, sometimes I had to defend myself with a "fist in the teeth."

“If you don’t hit me in the teeth, you’ll be lost! .. In the end, the scouts began to protect me from other people’s boyfriends:“ If no one, then no one.

When volunteer girls from Leningrad appeared in the regiment, we were dragged every month to the “brood”, as we called it. In the medical battalion they checked if anyone got pregnant ... After one such “brood”, the regiment commander asked me in surprise: “Maruska, for whom are you protecting yourself? They will kill us anyway...” The people were rude, but kind. And fair. I never saw such militant justice as in the trenches.”

The everyday difficulties that Maria Fridman had to face at the front are now remembered with irony.

“The lice have eaten the soldiers. They pull off shirts, pants, but what about a girl? I had to look for an abandoned dugout and there, stripping naked, I tried to get rid of lice. Sometimes they helped me, someone would stand at the door and say: “Don’t poke your head, Maruska crushes lice there!”

A bath day! And go as needed! I somehow retired, climbed under a bush, above the parapet of the trench, the Germans either did not immediately notice, or they let me sit quietly, but when I began to pull on my pants, it whistled from left and right. I fell into the trench, panties at the heels. Oh, they were guffawing in the trenches about how Maruskin blinded the Germans ...

At first, I must admit, this soldier's cackle irritated me, until I realized that they were not laughing at me, but at their own soldier's fate, in blood and lice, laughing in order to survive, not to go crazy. And it was enough for me that after a bloody skirmish someone asked in alarm: “Manka, are you alive?”

M. Fridman fought at the front and behind enemy lines, was wounded three times, was awarded the medal "For Courage", the Order of the Red Star ...

To be continued...

Front-line girls bore all the hardships of front-line life on an equal footing with men, not inferior to them either in courage or in military skill.

The Germans, in whose army women carried only auxiliary service, were extremely surprised by such an active participation of Soviet women in hostilities.

They even tried to play the "women's card" in their propaganda, talking about the inhumanity of the Soviet system, which throws women into the fire of war. An example of this propaganda is a German leaflet that appeared at the front in October 1943: "If a friend was wounded ..."

The Bolsheviks have always surprised the whole world. And in this war, they gave something completely new:

« Woman at the front! Since ancient times, people have been fighting and everyone has always believed that war is a man's business, men should fight, and it never occurred to anyone to involve women in war. True, there were individual cases, such as the notorious "shock girls" at the end of the last war - but these were exceptions and they went down in history as a curiosity or an anecdote.

But no one has thought of the mass involvement of women in the army as fighters, on the front line with weapons in their hands, except for the Bolsheviks.

Every nation seeks to protect its women from danger, to save a woman, because a woman is a mother, the preservation of the nation depends on her. Most of the men may perish, but the women must survive, otherwise the whole nation may perish."

Are the Germans suddenly thinking about the fate of the Russian people, they are concerned about the issue of its preservation. Of course not! It turns out that all this is just a preamble to the most important German thought:

“Therefore, the government of any other country, in the event of excessive losses threatening the continued existence of the nation, would try to withdraw its country from the war, because every national government cherishes its people.” (Highlighted by the Germans. Here is the main idea: we must end the war, and we need a national government. - Aron Schneer).

« The Bolsheviks think otherwise. Georgian Stalin and various Kaganoviches, Berias, Mikoyans and the entire Jewish kahal (well, how to do without anti-Semitism in propaganda! - Aron Schneer), sitting on the people's neck, do not give a damn about the Russian people and all other peoples of Russia and Russia itself. They have one goal - to maintain their power and their skins. Therefore, they need a war, a war at all costs, a war by any means, at the cost of any victims, a war to the last man, to the last man and woman. “If a friend was wounded” - for example, both legs or arms were torn off, it doesn’t matter, to hell with him, the “girlfriend” will “know how” to die at the front, drag her there into the meat grinder of war, there’s nothing to be gentle with her. Stalin does not feel sorry for the Russian woman ... "

The Germans, of course, miscalculated, did not take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of thousands of Soviet women, volunteer girls. Of course, there were mobilizations, extraordinary measures in conditions of extreme danger, the tragic situation that had developed on the fronts, but it would be wrong not to take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of the youth, born after the revolution and ideologically prepared in the pre-war years for struggle and self-sacrifice.

One of these girls was Yulia Drunina, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who went to the front. A poem she wrote after the war explains why she and thousands of other girls volunteered for the front:

"I left my childhood To a dirty car, To an infantry train, To a sanitary platoon. ... I came from school To damp dugouts. From the Beautiful Lady - To "mother" and "rewind". Because the name is Closer than "Russia", Couldn't find it."

Women fought at the front, thereby asserting their right, equal with men, to defend the Fatherland. The enemy repeatedly praised the participation of Soviet women in battles:

"Russian women ... communists hate any enemy, they are fanatical, dangerous. In 1941, the sanitary battalions defended the last frontiers before Leningrad with grenades and rifles in their hands."

The liaison officer Prince Albert of Hohenzollern, who took part in the storming of Sevastopol in July 1942, "admired the Russians and especially women, who, according to him, show amazing courage, dignity and fortitude."

According to the Italian soldier, he and his comrades had to fight near Kharkov against the "Russian women's regiment". Several women were captured by the Italians. However, in accordance with the agreement between the Wehrmacht and the Italian army, all captured by the Italians were handed over to the Germans. The latter decided to shoot all the women. According to the Italian, “the women did not expect anything else. They only asked to be allowed to pre-bath and wash their dirty linen in order to die in a clean state, as it should be according to old Russian customs. The Germans granted their request. And here they are, having washed and put on clean shirts, went to be shot ... "

The fact that the story of the Italian about the participation of the female infantry unit in the battles is not fiction is confirmed by another story. Since both in Soviet scientific and fiction literature, there were numerous references only to the exploits of individual women - representatives of all military specialties, and it was never told about the participation in battles of individual female infantry units, I had to turn to the material published in the Vlasov newspaper Zarya .

To be continued...

The article "Valya Nesterenko - assistant commander of the intelligence platoon" tells about the fate of a Soviet girl taken prisoner. Valya graduated from the Ryazan Infantry School. According to her, about 400 women and girls studied with her:

“Why were they all volunteers? They were considered volunteers. But how did they go! They gathered young people, a representative from the district military registration and enlistment office comes to the meeting and asks: “How, girls, do you love Soviet power?” They answer - "We love" - ​​"So we must protect!" They write applications. And then try, refuse! And since 1942, mobilizations have begun at all. Everyone receives a summons, appears in the military registration and enlistment office. Goes to the commission. The commission gives a conclusion: they are fit for military service. They are sent to the unit. Those who are older or have children, - those who are mobilized for work. And whoever is younger and without children, they go to the army. There were 200 people in my graduation. Some did not want to study, but then they were sent to dig trenches.

In our regiment of three battalions, there were two male and one female. The female was the first battalion - submachine gunners. In the beginning, there were girls from orphanages in it. They were desperate. With this battalion, we occupied up to ten settlements, and then most of them fell out of action. Requested a refill. Then the remnants of the battalion were withdrawn from the front and a new women's battalion was sent from Serpukhov. A women's division was specially formed there. There were older women and girls in the new battalion. All were mobilized. We studied for three months as submachine gunners. At first, while there were no big fights, they were brave.

Our regiment was advancing on the villages of Zhilino, Savkino, Surovezhki. The women's battalion acted in the middle, and the men's - from the left and right flanks. The women's battalion was to cross the Helm and advance to the edge of the forest. As soon as they climbed the hillock, the artillery began to beat. Girls and women started screaming and crying. They huddled together, so the German artillery put them all in a heap. There were at least 400 people in the battalion, and three girls survived from the entire battalion. What happened - and it's scary to look at ... mountains of female corpses. Is this a woman's business, war?"

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander Ober-Lieutenant Prince acquainted the soldiers with the order: "Shoot all women who serve in the Red Army." Numerous facts testify that this order was applied throughout the war.

In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.

In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them.

After the defeat of the Red Army in the Crimea in May 1942, an unknown girl in a military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko in the fishing village "Mayak" near Kerch. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: "Shoot, you bastards! I'm dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!" The girl was shot in the yard.

At the end of August 1942, a group of sailors was shot in the village of Krymskaya in the Krasnodar Territory, among them there were several girls in military uniform.

In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Alexandrovna, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.

In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.

On January 5, 1943, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured near the Severny farm. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 "a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, her face, hands were cut, her breasts were cut off ..."

Knowing what awaits them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Often captured women were raped before they died. Hans Rudhoff, a soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, testifies that in the winter of 1942 "... Russian nurses lay on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... These dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written ".

In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the yard, where there were nurses from the hospital. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they dragged them into a barn and raped them. However, they were not killed.

Women prisoners of war who ended up in camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drogobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Lyuda. "Captain Stroher, the commandant of the camp, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Lyuda to a bunk, and in this position Stroehr raped her and then shot her."

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orlyand gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and "ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals - if they were sick with venereal diseases. He carried out an external examination himself. Chose 3 of them were young girls, took them to him to "serve". German soldiers and officers came for women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

The camp guards from among the former prisoners of war and camp policemen were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped captives or, under threat of death, forced them to cohabit with them. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 female prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, the former head of the camp guard A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped the prisoners of the women's bloc.

The Millerovo POW camp also contained female prisoners. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible:

"The policemen often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two in a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, outrage, mock, do whatever he pleases. Once, during the evening verification, the chief of police himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “A for those who do not want to go, arrange a “red fireman". The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, twisted it and inserted it into the girl's vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. It was forbidden to scream Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back their screams, and after such a punishment they could not move for a long time. la and other sophisticated bullying. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning. We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.

To be continued...

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely miserable impression. In the conditions of camp life, it was especially difficult for them: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.

In the fall of 1941, K. Kromiadi, a member of the commission for the distribution of labor, who visited the Sedlice camp, talked with the captured women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: "...everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves."

A group of female medical workers taken prisoner in the Kiev cauldron in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord".

Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk in Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was forbidden. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all the women with "the condition of a free settlement in Smolensk."

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were captured: doctors, nurses, nurses. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 female prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. Everyone was lined up in Rovno, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." Those who were separated from the general group were shot. The rest were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the car into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered in a hole in the floor.

On the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and on February 23, 1943, the women were brought to the city of Zoes. Lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed special prestige among women prisoners of war. EL Klemm, on behalf of everyone, declared in German: "We are prisoners of war and will not work at military factories." In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which, because of the crowding, it was impossible to sit down or move. It stayed that way for almost a day. And then the rebellious were sent to Ravensbrück.

This women's camp was established in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and shorts. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for half a year, but not everyone managed to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden blocks.

The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tiered plank beds with a narrow passage between them. For two prisoners, one cotton blanket was issued. In a separate room lived block - senior barracks. There was a washroom in the hallway.

Prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. In Ravensbrück, 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops were made, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.

The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.

Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS spread a rumor around the camp that a gang of female murderers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.

Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning for verification, sometimes lasting several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which the women used mainly to wash their hair, as there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn.

Women whose hair survived began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that "Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion."

For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening we received for five people a small loaf of bread with an admixture of sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is testified in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, Sh. Müller: that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of impudence. All the first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp - the author's note) and deprived of lunch.

But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?

It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping alignment, walked, as if in a parade, minting a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The whole column moved as a single unit. Suddenly, a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up, huge country, Get up for a mortal battle...

Then they sang about Moscow.

The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment by marching the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...

It was not possible for the SS to leave Soviet women without lunch. Political prisoners took care of food for them in advance."

To be continued...

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once struck their enemies and fellow campers with their unity and spirit of resistance. Once 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners destined to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to take the women away, the comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. "The remaining 500 people lined up five people at a time and went to the commandant. E.L. Klemm was the translator. The commandant drove the newcomers into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike."

In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in the city of Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove the wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who would agree to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia.

Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire.

Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Keep your head up, Russian girls! Above your head, be bold! We don't have long to endure, A nightingale will fly in in the spring... And open the doors for us to freedom, Remove a striped dress from our shoulders And heal deep wounds, Wipe tears from swollen eyes. Keep your head up, Russian girls! Be Russian everywhere, everywhere! Not long to wait, not long - And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germain Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: "... their solidarity was due to the fact that they had gone through an army school even before their capture. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also quite "rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their disobedience, unwillingness to obey the Germans."

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Prisoner of Auschwitz A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Claudia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.

In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and move into the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontieva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.

Air regiment navigator Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was taken prisoner and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.

Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between male and female prisoners of war was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love was sometimes born that gave new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.

So, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that "who arrived at the 1st City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, the nurse Sindeva Alexandra left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp."

In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war hardened. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be subjected to checks by the local Gestapo branch in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.

On the basis of this order, on April 11, 1944, the head of the Security Service and the SD issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - the eldest of a group of seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in the city of Gentin. A lot of marriage was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera led the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.

In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? ” What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a cremation cart and pushed into the oven. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. "Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remained unknown.

To be continued...

Women who escaped from captivity continued to fight against the enemy. In the secret message No. 12 dated July 17, 1942, the chief of the security police of the occupied eastern regions to the imperial minister of security of the XVII military district, in the section "Jews" it is reported that in Uman "a Jewish doctor was arrested, who had previously served in the Red Army and was taken prisoner "After escaping from a prisoner of war camp, she took refuge in an orphanage in Uman under a false name and practiced as a doctor. She used this opportunity to enter the prisoner of war camp for espionage." Probably, the unknown heroine assisted the prisoners of war.

Women prisoners of war, risking their lives, repeatedly saved their Jewish friends. In Dulag No. 160, Khorol, about 60 thousand prisoners were kept in a quarry on the territory of a brick factory. There was also a group of girls-prisoners of war. Of these, seven or eight remained alive by the spring of 1942. In the summer of 1942 they were all shot for harboring a Jewish woman.

In the autumn of 1942, in the Georgievsk camp, along with other prisoners, there were several hundred female prisoners of war. Once the Germans took the identified Jews to be shot. Among the doomed was Tsilya Gedaleva. At the last minute, the German officer in charge of the massacre suddenly said: "Medchen raus! - The girl - get out!" And Tsilya returned to the women's barracks. Girlfriends gave Tsilya a new name - Fatima, and in the future, according to all documents, she passed as a Tatar.

Military doctor III rank Emma Lvovna Khotina from September 9 to 20 was surrounded in the Bryansk forests. Was taken prisoner. During the next stage, she fled from the village of Kokarevka to the city of Trubchevsk. Hiding under a false name, often changing apartments. She was helped by her comrades - Russian doctors who worked in the camp infirmary in Trubchevsk. They established contact with the partisans. And when on February 2, 1942, the partisans attacked Trubchevsk, 17 doctors, paramedics and nurses left with them. E. L. Khotina became the head of the sanitary service of the partisan association of the Zhytomyr region.

Sarah Zemelman - military paramedic, lieutenant of the medical service, worked in the mobile field hospital No. 75 of the South-Western Front. September 21, 1941 near Poltava, wounded in the leg, was taken prisoner along with the hospital. The head of the hospital, Vasilenko, handed Sarah documents in the name of Alexandra Mikhailovskaya, the murdered paramedic. There were no traitors among the hospital staff who were captured. Three months later, Sarah managed to escape from the camp. For a month she wandered through the forests and villages, until not far from Krivoy Rog, in the village of Veseli Terny, she was sheltered by the family of the paramedic-veterinarian Ivan Lebedchenko. For over a year, Sarah lived in the basement of the house. January 13, 1943 Merry Terny were liberated by the Red Army. Sarah went to the draft board and asked to go to the front, but she was placed in the filtration camp No. 258. They were called in for interrogations only at night. The investigators asked how she, a Jewess, survived in Nazi captivity? And only a meeting in the same camp with colleagues in the hospital - a radiologist and a chief surgeon - helped her.

S. Zemelman was sent to the medical battalion of the 3rd Pomor Division of the 1st Polish Army. She ended the war on the outskirts of Berlin on May 2, 1945. She was awarded three Orders of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, was awarded the Polish Order of the Silver Cross of Merit.

Unfortunately, after being released from the camps, the prisoners faced injustice, suspicion and contempt for them, who had gone through the hell of the German camps.

Grunya Grigoryeva recalls that the Red Army soldiers who liberated Ravensbrück on April 30, 1945, “... looked at the girls-prisoners of war as traitors. This shocked us. We did not expect such a meeting. Ours preferred French women more, Poles - foreigners.

After the end of the war, women prisoners of war went through all the torment and humiliation during SMERSH checks in filtration camps. Alexandra Ivanovna Max, one of 15 Soviet women liberated in the Neuhammer camp, tells how a Soviet officer in a repatriation camp chastised them: “Shame on you, you surrendered, you ...” And I argue with him: “Ah what were we supposed to do?" And he says: "You should have shot yourself, but not surrendered!" And I say: "Where did we have pistols?" - "Well, you could, you should have hanged yourself, killed yourself. But don't surrender."

Many front-line soldiers knew what awaited the former prisoners at home. One of the released women, N.A. Kurlyak, recalls: “We, 5 girls, were left to work in a Soviet military unit. We kept asking: “Send me home.” We were discouraged, begged: “Stay a little longer, they will look at you with contempt "But we didn't believe."

And already a few years after the war, a female doctor, a former prisoner, writes in a private letter: "... sometimes I am very sorry that I survived, because I always carry this dark spot of captivity. Still, many do not know what kind of “life” it was, if you can call it life. Many do not believe that we honestly endured the burdens of captivity there and remained honest citizens of the Soviet state. "

Staying in fascist captivity irreparably affected the health of many women. For most of them, while still in the camp, natural female processes stopped and many never recovered.

Some, transferred from POW camps to concentration camps, were subjected to sterilization. “I didn’t have children after being sterilized in the camp. And so I remained, as it were, a cripple ... Many of our girls did not have children. So some husbands left because they wanted to have children. And my husband did not leave me as I am, he says, we will live like that. And we still live with him. "

Would you install an application for reading epochtimes articles on your phone?

When it comes to wars and the horrendous conditions in which the captives had to exist, more often only men are meant. Meanwhile, around the world, women often found themselves in the camps of the warring parties. Many of them went crazy with despair and were ready to commit suicide, as their situation sometimes turned out to be even worse than that of the captive men.

Female soldiers of the Red Army in German captivity

During the Great Patriotic War, many women served in the Soviet army, and at the very first battles this came as a big surprise to the Germans. They took prisoners, and then they found among them not only men. It was not entirely clear to ordinary German soldiers what to do with women in uniform, so they clearly adhered to the orders of the Third Reich: the enemy is not worthy of the honor of appearing before a fair military court and can only be shot.

Women who miraculously survived were subjected to bullying, cruel torture and violence. They were beaten to death, repeatedly raped, obscene inscriptions were carved on their bodies and faces, or parts of their bodies were cut off, leaving them to bleed.

There were women prisoners of war in every German concentration camp. Over time, keeping in separate barracks and a ban on communication with men became an obligatory item. Throughout the detention there were no minimum sanitary conditions. Clean water and fresh linen were out of the question. Food was given out once a day, and sometimes with long breaks.

How do they survive in the captivity of the Islamic State?

The brutality of militants fighting for the Islamist groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State (banned in Russia) knows no bounds. Jihadists kidnap people, torture them in a sophisticated way and rarely agree to exchange the freedom of captives for a ransom. All those who voluntarily did not join them are considered enemies. Women and children are no exception.

On the contrary, building a just society of "true Islam", jihadists pay increased attention to the issue of interaction with women. According to Sharia law, they are obliged to devote all their time to the family: to raise children, take care of the household, and fulfill the orders of their husband. Accordingly, if women think otherwise, Islamists do not disdain to impose their rules by force.

Anyone who professed another religion before the arrival of IS will automatically be recognized as traitors. And they treat them accordingly: they are taken into slavery, bought and sold, forced to do hard and dirty work. The rape and mutilation of enslaved women has long been recognized by Islamic State theologians as one of Sharia law.

The life of the unfortunate captives has no value. They are used as human shields, forced to dig trenches and cover in crossfire, and sent to crowded places as suicide bombers.

German women in Eisenhower's "death camps"

Seeing off their husbands to the Second World War, German women did not suspect what it would turn out for them in case of defeat. Immediately after Victory Day, millions of Germans were captured: both military personnel and civilians. And if those who got to the British-Canadian troops were relatively lucky - most of them were sent for restoration work or released, then those who ended up in the Eisenhower camps had to endure real atrocities.

Women who had never taken part in hostilities were held in equal conditions with men. These were one of the largest prisoner-of-war camps: tens of thousands of people were herded into groups and kept for months right under the open sky, enclosing the area with barbed wire.

There were no shelters for the prisoners. They were not given warm clothes or basic hygiene products. In order to somehow protect themselves from heavy rains and frosts, many dug holes and tried to build makeshift huts from tree branches. However, that wasn't really terrible. Both women and men in the Eisenhower camps were effectively starved. The American general himself signed an order stating that this category of prisoners does not fall under the Geneva Convention.

The American army reserves had a huge supply of food, but this did not prevent the victorious enemy from halving the rations of the prisoners, and after a while, cutting the portions by another third. People were so hungry that they ate grass and drank their own urine. The death rate in Eisenhower's "death camps" was more than 30%, and the bulk of them were women, pregnant girls and children.

Captured by Somali terrorists

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries, because a civil war has been going on on its territory for almost two decades. Most of this state is under the control of the Islamist group Al-Shabaab. The abduction of women, especially foreign women, has long been a common thing here.

Girls are taken prisoner for ransom, or used as "bait" in ambushes. The attitude towards captives is appropriate: they live in cramped rooms or pits, more like coffins, are forced to endure endless beatings and exist in a half-starved state. It often happens that women are subjected to gang rape. The only chance to get free is to wait for the help of the authorities. Even if the terrorists agree to the exchange, there is a real risk of ending up in jail for transferring funds.

Renouncing their own religion and converting to Islam is seen by many captives as a way to save their lives. This, in particular, happens because the kidnappers often talk about the commandments of the Koran, which forbid one Muslim to kill or rape another. However, in reality, even after the adoption of Islam, hostages are not treated better. But to all the already standard bullying is added the requirement to pray five times a day.

Many years after the war, it became known.

Instead of a preface:

"- When there were no gas chambers, we shot on Wednesdays and Fridays. Children tried to hide these days. Now the crematorium ovens work day and night and the children no longer hide. The children are used to it.

- This is the first eastern subgroup.

- How are you, children?

- How do you live, children?

- We live well, our health is good. Come.

- I don’t need to go to the gas station, I can still give blood.

- The rats ate my ration, so the blood did not go.

- I'm assigned to load coal into the crematorium tomorrow.

- I can donate blood.

- And I...

Take it.

- They don't know what it is?

- They forgot.

- Eat, children! Eat!

- Why didn't you take it?

- Wait, I'll take it.

- You might not get it.

- Lie down, it doesn't hurt, as if you'll fall asleep. Lie down!

- What's with them?

Why did they lie down?

"The kids probably thought they were given poison..."

A group of Soviet prisoners of war behind barbed wire

Majdanek. Poland

The girl is a prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac

KZ Mauthausen, jugendliche

Children of Buchenwald

Josef Mengele and child

Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials

Children of Buchenwald

Mauthausen children display numbers carved into their hands

Treblinka

Two sources. One says that this is Majdanek, the other - Auschwitz

Some critters use this photo as "proof" of the famine in Ukraine. It is not surprising that it is in the Nazi crimes that they draw "inspiration" for their "revelations"

These are the children released in Salaspils

"From the autumn of 1942, masses of women, old people, children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, Latgale were forcibly brought to the Salaspils concentration camp. Children from infancy to 12 years old were forcibly taken away from their mothers and kept in 9 barracks of them 3 hospitals, 2 for crippled children, and 4 barracks for healthy children.

The permanent contingent of children in Salaspils during 1943 and until 1944 was over 1,000 people. There was a systematic extermination of them by:

A) the organization of a blood factory for the needs of the German army, blood was taken from both adults and healthy children, including babies, until they fainted, after which sick children were taken to the so-called hospital, where they died;

B) gave the children poisoned coffee to drink;

C) children with measles were bathed, from which they died;

D) children were injected with children's, women's and even horse urine. Many children had festering and leaking eyes;

E) all children suffered from diarrhea of ​​a dysentery nature and dystrophy;

E) naked children in the winter were driven to the bathhouse in the snow at a distance of 500-800 meters and kept naked in the barracks for 4 days;

3) crippled and maimed children were taken out to be shot.

Mortality among children from the above causes averaged 300-400 per month during 1943/44. to the month of June.

According to preliminary data, over 500 children were exterminated in the Salaspils concentration camp in 1942; more than 6,000 people.

During 1943/44. more than 3,000 people who survived and endured torture were taken out of the concentration camp. For this purpose, a children's market was organized in Riga at 5 Gertrudes Street, where they were sold into slavery at 45 marks per summer.

Some of the children were placed in children's camps organized for this purpose after May 1, 1943 - in Dubulti, Bulduri, Saulkrasti. After that, the German fascists continued to supply the kulaks of Latvia with Russian children from the aforementioned camps and export them directly to the volosts of the counties of Latvia, they sold them for 45 Reichsmarks during the summer period.

Most of these children who were taken out and given up for education died, because. were easily susceptible to all kinds of diseases after losing blood in the Salaspils camp.

On the eve of the expulsion of the German fascists from Riga, on October 4-6, they loaded babies and toddlers under the age of 4 from the Riga orphanage and the Mayorsky orphanage, where children of executed parents were kept, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, prisons and partly from the Salaspils camp and exterminated 289 babies on that ship.

They were hijacked by the Germans to Libava, an orphanage for infants located there. Children from Baldonsky, Grivsky orphanages, nothing is known about their fate yet.

Not stopping before these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 in the stores of Riga sold substandard products, only on children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did the little ones die in droves. More than 400 children died in the Riga Children's Hospital alone in 9 months of 1944, including 71 children in September.

In these orphanages, the methods of raising and keeping children were policemen and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp Krause and another German Schaefer, who went to children's camps and houses where children were kept for "inspection".

It was also established that in the Dubulti camp, children were put in a punishment cell. For this, the former head of the camp, Benois, resorted to the assistance of the German SS police.

Senior detective of the NKVD captain g / security / Murman /

Children were brought from the eastern lands occupied by the Germans: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine. Children came to Latvia together with their mothers, where they were then forcibly separated. Mothers were used as free labor. Older children were also used in all kinds of auxiliary work.

According to the People's Commissariat of Education of the Latvian SSR, which investigated the facts of the deportation of the civilian population into German slavery, as of April 3, 1945, it is known that 2,802 children were distributed from the Salaspils concentration camp during the German occupation:

1) for kulak farms - 1,564 people.

2) in children's camps - 636 people.

3) taken up by individual citizens - 602 people.

The list was compiled on the basis of data from the card file of the Social Department of the Interior of the Latvian General Directorate "Ostland". Based on the same file, it was revealed that children were forced to work from the age of five.

In the last days of their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, homes for infants, grabbed children from apartments, herded them to the port of Riga, where they loaded them like cattle into the coal mines of steamships.

Through mass executions in the vicinity of Riga alone, the Germans killed about 10,000 children, whose corpses were burned. During mass executions, 17,765 children were killed.

Based on the materials of the investigation for the rest of the cities and districts of the LSSR, the following number of exterminated children was established:

Abren County - 497
Ludza County - 732
Rezekne county and Rezekne - 2045, incl. through Rezekne Prison more than 1,200
Madona County - 373
Daugavpils - 3 960, incl. through Daugavpils prison 2000
Daugavpils County - 1,058
Valmiera county - 315
Jelgava - 697
Ilukst district - 190
Bauska county - 399
Valka County - 22
Cesis county - 32
Jekabpils county - 645
In total - 10 965 people.

In Riga, dead children were buried at Pokrovsky, Tornyakalns and Ivanovo cemeteries, as well as in the forest near the Salaspils camp.

in the moat

The bodies of two children-prisoners before the funeral. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 04/17/1945

Children behind the wire

Soviet children-prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk

“The girl who is second from the pillar on the right in the photo - Claudia Nyuppieva - published her memoirs many years later.

“I remember how people fainted from the heat in the so-called bathhouse, and then they were doused with cold water. I remember the disinfection of the barracks, after which there was a buzzing in the ears and many had nosebleeds, and that steam room, where all our rags were processed with great “dilience”. Once the steam room burned down, depriving many people of their last clothes.

The Finns shot prisoners in front of children, administered corporal punishment to women, children and the elderly, regardless of age. She also said that the Finns shot young guys before leaving Petrozavodsk and that her sister was saved by a miracle. According to available Finnish documents, only seven men were shot for trying to escape or for other crimes. During the conversation, it turned out that the Sobolev family was one of those who were taken out of Zaonezhye. Mother Soboleva and her six children had a hard time. Claudia said that their cow was taken away from them, they were deprived of the right to receive food for a month, then, in the summer of 1942, they were transported on a barge to Petrozavodsk and assigned to concentration camp number 6, to the 125th barrack. The mother was immediately taken to the hospital. Claudia recalled with horror the disinfection carried out by the Finns. People died in the so-called bath, and then they were doused with cold water. The food was bad, the food was spoiled, the clothes were worthless.

Only at the end of June 1944 were they able to get out from behind the barbed wire of the camp. There were six Sobolev sisters: 16-year-old Maria, 14-year-old Antonina, 12-year-old Raisa, nine-year-old Claudia, six-year-old Evgenia and very little Zoya, she was not yet three years old.

Worker Ivan Morekhodov spoke about the attitude of the Finns towards prisoners: "There was little food, and it was bad. The baths were terrible. The Finns did not show any pity."

In a Finnish concentration camp

Auschwitz (Auschwitz)

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka

The photographs of 14-year-old Czeslava Kwoka, courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, perished during World War II. In December 1942, the Polish Catholic Czesława, originally from Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz with her mother. They both died three months later. In 2005, photographer (and co-prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not realize why she was here and did not understand what she was being told. And then the kapo (prison guard) took a stick and hit her in the face. This German woman simply took out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful, young and innocent creature. She was crying, but there was nothing she could do. Before being photographed, the girl wiped her tears and blood from her broken lip. To be honest, I felt like I was being beaten, but I couldn't intervene. For me it would be fatal."

Only recently, researchers found that in a dozen European concentration camps, the Nazis forced female prisoners to engage in prostitution in special brothels, writes Vladimir Ginda in the column Archive in issue 31 of the magazine Correspondent dated August 9, 2013.

Torment and death or prostitution - before such a choice, the Nazis put Europeans and Slavs who ended up in concentration camps. Of the few hundred girls who chose the second option, the administration staffed brothels in ten camps - not only in those where prisoners were used as labor, but also in others aimed at mass destruction.

In Soviet and modern European historiography, this topic did not actually exist, only a couple of American scientists - Wendy Gertjensen and Jessica Hughes - raised some aspects of the problem in their scientific works.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the German culturologist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sexual conveyors.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the German culturologist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about the sexual conveyors that operated in the horrendous conditions of German concentration camps and death factories.

The result of nine years of research was the book published by Sommer in 2009 Brothel in a concentration camp which shocked European readers. On the basis of this work, an exhibition was organized in Berlin, Sex Work in Concentration Camps.

Bed motivation

“Legalized sex” appeared in Nazi concentration camps in 1942. The SS men organized brothels in ten institutions, among which were mainly the so-called labor camps - in the Austrian Mauthausen and its branch Gusen, the German Flossenburg, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen and Dora-Mittelbau. In addition, the institute of forced prostitutes was also introduced in three death camps intended for the extermination of prisoners: in the Polish Auschwitz-Auschwitz and its “satellite” Monowitz, as well as in the German Dachau.

The idea of ​​creating camp brothels belonged to the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The researchers' data suggests that he was impressed by the incentive system used in Soviet forced labor camps to increase inmate productivity.

Imperial War Museum
One of his barracks in Ravensbrück, Nazi Germany's largest women's concentration camp

Himmler decided to adopt the experience, along the way adding to the list of “incentives” something that was not in the Soviet system - “encouraging” prostitution. The SS chief was convinced that the right to visit a brothel, along with other bonuses - cigarettes, cash or camp vouchers, improved rations - could make the prisoners work harder and better.

In fact, the right to visit such establishments was predominantly held by camp guards from among the prisoners. And there is a logical explanation for this: most of the male prisoners were exhausted, so they did not think about any sexual attraction.

Hughes points out that the proportion of male prisoners who used the services of brothels was extremely small. In Buchenwald, according to her data, where about 12.5 thousand people were kept in September 1943, 0.77% of prisoners visited the public barracks in three months. A similar situation was in Dachau, where, as of September 1944, 0.75% of the 22 thousand prisoners who were there used the services of prostitutes.

heavy share

At the same time, up to two hundred sex slaves worked in brothels. Most of the women, two dozen, were kept in a brothel in Auschwitz.

Brothel workers were exclusively female prisoners, usually attractive, between the ages of 17 and 35. About 60-70% of them were of German origin, from among those whom the Reich authorities called "anti-social elements." Some were engaged in prostitution before entering the concentration camps, so they agreed to similar work, but already behind barbed wire, without any problems and even passed on their skills to inexperienced colleagues.

Approximately a third of the sex slaves the SS recruited from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belarusians. Jewish women were not allowed to do such work, and Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit brothels.

These workers wore special insignia - black triangles sewn on the sleeves of their robes.

Approximately a third of the sex slaves the SS recruited from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belarusians

Some of the girls voluntarily agreed to “work”. So, one former employee of the medical unit of Ravensbrück, the largest female concentration camp in the Third Reich, where up to 130 thousand people were kept, recalled: some women voluntarily went to a brothel because they were promised release after six months of work.

Spaniard Lola Casadel, a member of the Resistance movement, who ended up in the same camp in 1944, told how the headman of their barracks announced: “Whoever wants to work in a brothel, come to me. And remember: if there are no volunteers, we will have to resort to force.”

The threat was not empty: as Sheina Epshtein, a Jewish woman from the Kaunas ghetto, recalled, in the camp the inhabitants of the women's barracks lived in constant fear of the guards, who regularly raped the prisoners. The raids were made at night: drunken men walked along the bunks with flashlights, choosing the most beautiful victim.

“Their joy knew no bounds when they discovered that the girl was a virgin. Then they laughed out loud and called their colleagues,” Epstein said.

Having lost honor, and even the will to fight, some girls went to brothels, realizing that this was their last hope for survival.

“The most important thing is that we managed to break out of [the camps] Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück,” Liselotte B., a former prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, said about her “bed career”. “The main thing was to somehow survive.”

With Aryan meticulousness

After the initial selection, the workers were brought to special barracks in those concentration camps where they were planned to be used. To bring the emaciated prisoners into a more or less decent appearance, they were placed in the infirmary. There, paramedics in SS uniform gave them calcium injections, they took disinfectant baths, ate, and even sunbathed under quartz lamps.

There was no sympathy in all this, but only calculation: the bodies were prepared for hard work. As soon as the rehabilitation cycle ended, the girls became part of the sex assembly line. Work was daily, rest - only if there was no light or water, if an air raid alarm was announced, or during the broadcast of the speeches of the German leader Adolf Hitler on the radio.

The conveyor worked like clockwork and strictly on schedule. For example, in Buchenwald, prostitutes got up at 7:00 and took care of themselves until 19:00: they had breakfast, did exercises, underwent daily medical examinations, washed and cleaned, and dined. By camp standards, there was so much food that prostitutes even exchanged food for clothes and other things. Everything ended with dinner, and from seven in the evening the two-hour work began. Camp prostitutes could not go out to see her only if they had “these days” or they fell ill.

AP
Women and children in one of the barracks of the Bergen-Belsen camp, liberated by the British

The very procedure for providing intimate services, starting from the selection of men, was as detailed as possible. Mostly the so-called camp functionaries could get a woman - internees who were engaged in internal security and guards from among the prisoners.

Moreover, at first the doors of brothels were opened exclusively to the Germans or representatives of the peoples living on the territory of the Reich, as well as to the Spaniards and Czechs. Later, the circle of visitors was expanded - only Jews, Soviet prisoners of war and ordinary internees were excluded from it. For example, visit logs of a brothel in Mauthausen, meticulously kept by administration officials, show that 60% of the clients were criminals.

Men who wanted to indulge in carnal pleasures first had to get permission from the camp leadership. After that, they bought an entrance ticket for two Reichsmarks - this is slightly less than the cost of 20 cigarettes sold in the dining room. Of this amount, a quarter went to the woman herself, and only if she was German.

In the camp brothel, clients, first of all, found themselves in the waiting room, where their data was verified. Then they underwent a medical examination and received prophylactic injections. Next, the visitor was told the number of the room where he should go. There the intercourse took place. Only the “missionary position” was allowed. Conversations were not welcome.

Here is how one of the “concubines” kept there, Magdalena Walter, describes the work of a brothel in Buchenwald: “We had one bathroom with a toilet, where women went to wash themselves before the next visitor arrived. Immediately after washing, the client appeared. Everything worked like a conveyor; men were not allowed to stay in the room for more than 15 minutes.”

During the evening, the prostitute, according to the surviving documents, took 6-15 people.

body in action

Legalized prostitution was beneficial to the authorities. So, in Buchenwald alone, in the first six months of operation, the brothel earned 14-19 thousand Reichsmarks. The money went to the account of the German Economic Policy Department.

The Germans used women not only as an object of sexual pleasure, but also as scientific material. The inhabitants of the brothels carefully monitored hygiene, because any venereal disease could cost them their lives: infected prostitutes in the camps were not treated, but experiments were performed on them.

Imperial War Museum
Liberated prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen camp

The scientists of the Reich did this, fulfilling the will of Hitler: even before the war, he called syphilis one of the most dangerous diseases in Europe, capable of leading to disaster. The Fuhrer believed that only those peoples who would find a way to quickly cure the disease would be saved. For the sake of obtaining a miracle cure, the SS men turned infected women into living laboratories. However, they did not remain alive for long - intensive experiments quickly led the prisoners to a painful death.

Researchers have found a number of cases where even healthy prostitutes were given to be torn to pieces by sadistic doctors.

Pregnant women were not spared in the camps either. In some places they were immediately killed, in some places they were artificially interrupted, and after five weeks they were again sent “into service”. Moreover, abortions were performed at different times and in different ways - and this also became part of the research. Some prisoners were allowed to give birth, but only in order to experimentally determine how long a baby could live without food.

Despicable Prisoners

According to the former prisoner of Buchenwald, Dutchman Albert van Dijk, other prisoners despised the camp prostitutes, not paying attention to the fact that they were forced to go “on the panel” by cruel conditions of detention and an attempt to save their lives. And the very work of the inhabitants of brothels was akin to daily repeated rape.

Some of the women, even being in a brothel, tried to defend their honor. For example, Walter came to Buchenwald as a virgin and, being in the role of a prostitute, tried to protect herself from the first client with scissors. The attempt failed, and, according to the records, on the same day, the former virgin satisfied six men. Walter endured this because she knew that otherwise she would face a gas chamber, a crematorium or a barracks for cruel experiments.

Not everyone was strong enough to survive the violence. Some of the inhabitants of the camp brothels, according to researchers, took their own lives, some lost their minds. Some survived, but remained a prisoner of psychological problems for life. Physical liberation did not relieve them of the burden of the past, and after the war, camp prostitutes were forced to hide their history. Therefore, scientists have collected little documented evidence of life in these brothels.

"It's one thing to say 'I worked as a carpenter' or 'I built roads' and quite another to say 'I was forced to work as a prostitute,'" says Inza Eshebach, director of the memorial at the former Ravensbrück camp.

This material was published in issue 31 of the Korrespondent magazine dated August 9, 2013. Reprinting of publications of the Korrespondent magazine in full is prohibited. The rules for using the materials of the Korrespondent magazine published on the Korrespondent.net website can be found .

On November 30, 1941, nonhumans in Nazi uniforms hanged a Russian heroine. Her name was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The memory of her and other heroes who gave their lives for our freedom is extremely important. How many of our media will remember Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and talk about her in the news this weekend? It’s not worth mentioning non-our media at all ...

I published an article about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The author of this material was our colleague from "" Unfortunately, over the past 2 years, this material has turned from historical into topical and acquired a completely different sound.

“On November 29, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya died heroically. Her feat has become a legend. She was the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. Her name has become a household name and is inscribed in capital letters in a heroic story. Russian people - the victorious people.

The Nazis beat and tortured
They kicked out barefoot in the cold,
Were hands twisted with ropes,
The interrogation went on for five hours.
There are scars and abrasions on your face,
But silence is the answer to the enemy.
Wooden platform with crossbar,
You are standing barefoot in the snow.
A young voice sounds over the conflagration,

Over the silence of a frosty day:
“I’m not afraid to die, comrades,
My people will avenge me!

AGNIYA BARTO

For the first time, the fate of Zoya became widely known from the essay Peter Alexandrovich Lidov“Tanya”, published in the Pravda newspaper on January 27, 1942, and tells about the execution by the Nazis in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow, a partisan girl who called herself Tanya during interrogation. A photograph was published nearby: a mutilated female body with a rope around its neck. At that time, the real name of the deceased was not yet known. Simultaneously with the publication in Pravda in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" material has been published Sergei Lyubimov"We will not forget you, Tanya."

We had a cult of the feat of "Tanya" (Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and he firmly entered the ancestral memory of the people. Comrade Stalin introduced this cult personally . February 16 In 1942, she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. And Lidov's continuation article - "Who was Tanya", came out only two days later - 18th of Febuary 1942. Then the whole country learned the real name of the girl killed by the Nazis: Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, a student of the tenth grade of school N 201 of the Oktyabrsky district of Moscow. She was recognized by school friends from the photograph that accompanied Lidov's first essay.

“In the early days of December 1941, in Petrishchevo, near the town of Vereya,” Lidov wrote, “the Germans executed an eighteen-year-old Muscovite Komsomol member who called herself Tatiana ... She died in enemy captivity on a fascist rack, without a single sound betraying her suffering, without betraying her comrades. She was martyred as a heroine, as the daughter of a great nation that no one can ever break! May her memory live forever!”

During the interrogation, the German officer, according to Lidov, asked the eighteen-year-old girl the main question: “Tell me, where is Stalin?” “Stalin is at his post,” Tatiana replied.

in the newspaper "Publicity". September 24, 1997 in the material of professor-historian Ivan Osadchy under the heading "Her name and feat are immortal" An act was published, drawn up in the village of Petrishchevo on January 25, 1942:

“We, the undersigned, - a commission consisting of: Mikhail Ivanovich Berezin, chairman of the Gribtsovsky Village Council, Claudia Prokofievna Strukova, secretary, eyewitness collective farmers of the 8th March collective farm - Vasily Alexandrovich Kulik and Evdokia Petrovna Voronina - drew up this act as follows: During the period of occupation Vereisky district, a girl who called herself Tanya was hanged by German soldiers in the village of Petrishchevo. Later it turned out that it was a partisan girl from Moscow - Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, born in 1923. German soldiers caught her while she was on a combat mission, setting fire to a stable with more than 300 horses. The German sentry grabbed her from behind, and she did not have time to shoot.

She was taken to the house of Sedova Maria Ivanovna, undressed and interrogated. But there was no need to get any information from her. After interrogation at Sedova, barefoot and undressed, she was taken to Voronina's house, where the headquarters was located. There they continued to interrogate, but she answered all the questions: “No! Don't know!". Having achieved nothing, the officer ordered that they start beating her with belts. The hostess, who was driven onto the stove, counted about 200 blows. She didn't scream or even utter a single moan. And after this torture she answered again: “No! I will not say! Don't know!"

She was taken out of Voronina's house; she walked, stepping with her bare feet in the snow, they brought Kulik to the house. Exhausted and tormented, she was in the circle of enemies. The German soldiers mocked her in every possible way. She asked for a drink - the German brought her a lit lamp. And someone ran a saw across her back. Then all the soldiers left, only one sentry remained. Her hands were tied back. The legs are frostbitten. The sentry ordered her to get up and led her out into the street under a rifle. And again she walked, stepping barefoot in the snow, and drove until she herself froze. The sentries changed every 15 minutes. And so they continued to drive her down the street all night.

Says P.Ya. Kulik (maiden name Petrushina, 33 years old): “They brought her in and put her on a bench, and she groaned. Her lips were black, black, parched, and a swollen face on her forehead. She asked for a drink from my husband. We asked: "Can I?" They said: “No,” and one of them, instead of water, raised a burning kerosene lamp without glass to his chin.

When I spoke to her, she told me: “Victory is still ours. Let them shoot me, let these monsters mock me, but still they won't shoot us all. There are still 170 million of us, the Russian people have always won, and now the victory will be ours.”

In the morning she was led to the gallows and began to take pictures ... She shouted: “Citizens! You don’t stand, don’t look, but you need to help fight! After that, one officer swung, while others shouted at her.

Then she said: “Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it's too late, surrender." The officer yelled angrily: "Rus!" - “The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated,” she said all this at the moment when she was photographed ...

Then they put up a box. She, without any command, stood on the box herself. A German approached and began to put on a noose. At that time, she shouted: “No matter how much you hang us, you don’t hang everyone, we are 170 million. But our comrades will avenge you for me.” She said this already with a noose around her neck.A few seconds before death and a moment before Eternity, she announced, with a noose around her neck, the verdict of the Soviet people: “ Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!

In the morning they built a gallows, gathered the population and hanged them publicly. But they continued to mock the hanged woman. Her left breast was cut off, her legs were cut with knives.

When our troops drove the Germans from Moscow, they hurried to remove Zoya's body and bury it outside the village, burned the gallows at night, as if wanting to hide the traces of their crime. They hanged her in early December 1941. That is what the present act is drawn up for."

And a little later, photographs found in the pocket of a murdered German were brought to the editorial office of Pravda. 5 pictures captured the moments of the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. At the same time, another essay by Peter Lidov appeared, dedicated to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, under the heading “5 photographs”.

Why did the young intelligence officer call herself this name (or the name "Taon"), and why did Comrade Stalin single out her feat? Indeed, at the same time, many Soviet people committed no less heroic deeds. For example, on the same day, November 29, 1942, in the same Moscow region, partisan Vera Voloshina was executed, for her feat she was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree (1966) and the title of Hero of Russia (1994).

For the successful mobilization of the entire Soviet people, Russian civilization, Stalin used the language of symbols and those trigger points that can extract a layer of heroic victories from the ancestral memory of Russians. We remember the famous speech at the parade on November 7, 1941, in which both the great Russian commanders and the national liberation wars are mentioned, in which we invariably emerged victorious. Thus, parallels were drawn between the victories of the ancestors and the current inevitable Victory. The surname Kosmodemyanskaya comes from the consecrated names of two Russian heroes - Kozma and Demyan. In the city of Murom there is a church named after them, erected by order of Ivan the Terrible.

The tent of Ivan the Terrible once stood at that place, and Kuznetsky Posad was located nearby. The king was thinking about how to cross the Oka, on the other side of which the enemy camp was located. Then two blacksmith brothers, whose names were Kozma and Demyan, appeared in the tent, who offered their help to the king. At night, in the darkness, the brothers quietly crept into the enemy camp and set fire to the khan's tent. While the camp was extinguishing the fire and looking for scouts, the troops of Ivan the Terrible, taking advantage of the commotion in the enemy camp, crossed the river. Demyan and Kozma died, and a church was built in their honor and named after the heroes.

As a result - in one family, both children perform feats and are awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union! The name of the Heroes in the USSR was called the streets. Normally there would be two streets named after each of the Heroes. But in Moscow one the street, and not by chance, received a "double" name - Zoe and Alexander Kosmodemyansky

In 1944, the film "Zoya" was filmed, which received in Cannes in 1946 at the 1st International Film Festival the award for best screenplay. Also, the film "Zoya" was awarded Stalin Prize I degree, received it Leo Arnstam(director), Galina Vodyanitskaya(performer of the role of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and Alexander Shelenkov(cameraman).