Survivors in the horror of a concentration camp. Nazi concentration camps during World War II (with map)

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

What is a concentration camp

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living conditions

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

Most of the buildings were built on a quick fix, often they did not have a foundation or were converted from barns, stables, and warehouses. They had bunks in them, in the middle of the huge room there was one stove for heating in winter, there were no latrines. But there were rats.

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

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

The colors were distributed as follows:

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

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

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

Gas chamber

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

What did they feed?

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

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

The diet consisted of:

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

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

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

The most terrible tortures and experiments in human history

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

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

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

Above women

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

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

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

Over children

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

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

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

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

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

Above men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

List and description of death camps

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

Buchenwald

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

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

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

Auschwitz

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

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

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

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

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

Sobibor

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

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

Majdanek

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

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

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

Salaspils

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

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

Ravensbrück

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

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

Mauthausen

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

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

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

Irma Grese - Nazi overseer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josef Mengele - experiments on people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many lost loved ones who were killed or tortured.

In the article we will look at the Nazi concentration camps and the atrocities that happened on their territories. Actually, our big publication is about this and much more...

What is a concentration camp?

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

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

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

Life in a concentration camp

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

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

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

They were infected with tuberculosis... suffocated by a cyclone. Poisoned with chlorine. They burned..." The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was later used in the German textile industry. The doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, at whose hands thousands of people died.

He studied mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they received organ transplants from each other, blood transfusions, and sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. Performed sex reassignment surgery.

Everyone became famous for such bullying fascist concentration camps, the names and conditions of detention in the main ones we will consider below.

Camp diet

Typically, the daily ration in the camp was as follows:

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

Bread was handed out, and the rest of the products were used for cooking, which consisted of soup (issued 1 or 2 times a day) and porridge (150 - 200 grams). It should be noted that such a diet was intended only for working people.

Those who, for some reason, remained unemployed received even less. Usually their portion consisted of only half a portion of bread. List of concentration camps in different countries

List of the most terrible concentration camps

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

In Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;

1. Austria – Mauthausen, Amstetten; France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
2. Poland – Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
3. Lithuania – Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
4. Czechoslovakia - Kunta Gora, Natra, Hlinsko; Estonia – Pirkul, Pärnu, Klooga;
5. Belarus – Minsk, Baranovichi;
6. Latvia – Salaspils.

And this is far from full list all concentration camps that were built by Nazi Germany in the pre-war and war years.

Salaspils concentration camp

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

Children in this camp were not only kept separately from adults and exterminated en masse, but were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Every day, about half a liter of blood was taken from all children, which led to the rapid death of donors. Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then burned their corpses.

It was used for medical research, which killed more than 100,000 people. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. Torture of children was a routine activity here, carried out according to a schedule with the results carefully recorded.

Experiments on children

Testimony of witnesses and results of investigations revealed the following methods of extermination of people in the Salaspils camp:

• beating,
• hunger,
• arsenic poisoning,
• injection of hazardous substances (most often to children),
• carrying out surgical operations without painkillers,
• pumping out blood (children only),
• executions,
• torture,
• useless hard work (carrying stones from place to place),
• gas chambers,
• burying alive.

In order to save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed only with rifle butts. The atrocities of the Nazis in the concentration camps surpassed everything that humanity had seen in modern times.

Such an attitude towards people cannot be justified, because it violates all conceivable and inconceivable moral commandments. Children did not stay with their mothers for long and were usually quickly taken away and distributed.

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

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

Salaspils is truly the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because the atrocities described above are not all the tortures that the prisoners were subjected to. Thus, in winter, children brought in were driven barefoot and naked to a barracks for half a kilometer, where they had to wash themselves in icy water.

After this, the children were driven in the same way to the next building, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. Moreover, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. Everyone who survived this procedure was also subjected to arsenic poisoning. Infants were kept separately and given injections, from which the child died in agony within a few days.

They gave us coffee and poisoned cereals. About 150 children died from experiments per day. The bodies of the dead were carried out in large baskets and burned, dumped in cesspools, or buried near the camp.

If we start listing Nazi women's concentration camps, Ravensbrück will come first. This was the only camp of this type in Germany. It could accommodate thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war it was overcrowded by fifteen thousand.

Mostly Russian and Polish women were detained; Jews numbered approximately 15 percent. There were no prescribed instructions regarding torture and torment; the supervisors chose the line of behavior themselves. Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number.

Race was also indicated on clothing. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in the post-war years, 2-3 refugee families lived in them) there were approximately three hundred prisoners, who were housed on three-story bunks.

When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were herded into these cells, all of whom had to sleep on the same bunks. The barracks had several toilets and a washbasin, but there were so few of them that after a few days the floors were littered with excrement. Almost all Nazi concentration camps presented this picture (the photos presented here are only a small part of all the horrors).

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

Gas chambers (nicknamed gas chambers by prisoners) appeared towards the end of the war. Ashes from crematoria were sent to nearby fields as fertilizer. Prisoners worked at least 12 hours a day.

In a special barracks called the "infirmary", German scientists tested new medications, pre-infecting or crippling experimental subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered from what they had endured until the end of their lives. Experiments were also conducted with the irradiation of women with X-rays, which caused hair loss, skin pigmentation, and death.

Excisions of the genital organs were carried out, after which few survived, and even those quickly aged, and at the age of 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out in all Nazi concentration camps; torture of women and children was the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.

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

Ravensbrück later became a base for Soviet military units.

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

The structure of all structures was strictly thought out. Immediately behind the gate began the “Appelplat” (parallel ground), specially designed for the formation of prisoners. Its capacity was twenty thousand people. Not far from the gate there was a punishment cell for interrogations, and opposite there was an office where the camp fuehrer and the officer on duty - the camp authorities - lived.

Deeper down were the barracks for prisoners. All barracks were numbered, there were 52 of them. At the same time, 43 were intended for housing, and workshops were set up in the rest. The Nazi concentration camps left behind a terrible memory; their names still evoke fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald.

The crematorium was considered the most terrible place

People were invited there under the pretext of a medical examination. When the prisoner undressed, he was shot and the body was sent to the oven. Only men were kept in Buchenwald.

Upon arrival at the camp, they were assigned a number in German, which they had to learn within the first 24 hours. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky weapons factory, which was located a few kilometers from the camp. Continuing to describe the Nazi concentration camps, let us turn to the so-called “small camp” of Buchenwald.

Small camp of Buchenwald “Small camp” was the name of the quarantine zone. The living conditions here were, even compared to the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiegne camp were brought to this camp; they were mainly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were housed in tents.

The closer 1945 got, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the “small camp” included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in Nazi concentration camps was not only specially planned or for scientific purposes, life itself in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks; their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread; those who were not working were no longer entitled to it. Relations among prisoners were tough, with documented cases of cannibalism and murder for someone else's portion of bread.

A common practice was to store the bodies of the dead in barracks in order to receive their rations. The dead man's clothes were divided among his cellmates, and they often fought over them. Due to such conditions in the camp there were widespread infectious diseases. Vaccinations only worsened the situation, since injection syringes were not changed. Photos simply cannot convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. The stories of witnesses are not intended for the faint of heart.

In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to step far forward - no other country in the world had such a number of experimental people.

Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, the inhuman suffering that these innocent people endured.

Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated, organs were removed, and they were sterilized and castrated. They tested how long a person could withstand extreme cold or heat. They were specially infected with diseases and introduced experimental drugs.

Thus, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed in Buchenwald. In addition to typhus, prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid. Since 1939, the camp was run by Karl Koch. His wife, Ilse, was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her love of sadism and inhumane abuse of prisoners. They feared her more than her husband (Karl Koch) and Nazi doctors.

She was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". The woman owed this nickname to the fact that she made various decorative things from the skin of killed prisoners, in particular, lampshades, which she was very proud of. Most of all, she liked to use the skin of Russian prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests, as well as the skin of gypsies. Things made of such material seemed to her the most elegant.

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

When listing Nazi concentration camps, it is impossible to ignore Auschwitz. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died.

The exact details of the dead remain unclear. The victims were mainly Jewish prisoners of war, who were exterminated immediately upon arrival in gas chambers.

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

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

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

Initially, the camp was small and intended for political prisoners. But gradually more and more prisoners arrived at the camp, 70% of whom were destroyed immediately.

Many tortures in Nazi concentration camps were borrowed from Auschwitz. Thus, the first gas chamber began to function in 1941. The gas used was Cyclone B. The terrible invention was first tested on Soviet and Polish prisoners total number about nine hundred people.

Auschwitz II began its operation on March 1, 1942. Its territory included four crematoria and two gas chambers. In the same year, medical experiments on sterilization and castration began on women and men. Small camps gradually formed around Birkenau, where prisoners working in factories and mines were kept.

One of these camps gradually grew and became known as Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz. Approximately ten thousand prisoners were held here. Like any Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz was well guarded. Contacts with the outside world were prohibited, the territory was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and guard posts were set up around the camp at a distance of a kilometer.

Five crematoria operated continuously on the territory of Auschwitz, which, according to experts, had a monthly capacity of approximately 270 thousand corpses. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

By that time, approximately seven thousand prisoners remained alive. Such a small number of survivors is due to the fact that about a year earlier, mass murders in gas chambers (gas chambers) began in the concentration camp.

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

During the entire war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. These were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It’s hard to even imagine what these people went through. But it was not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps that they were destined to endure.

Thanks to Stalin, after their liberation, returning home, they received the stigma of “traitors.” The Gulag awaited them at home, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity gave way to another for them.

In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences. Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after release was not advertised and kept silent. But people who have experienced this simply should not be forgotten.

The dirty secret of the Nazi camps

Nazi atrocities continue to amaze modern people with its cruelty. Not long ago, another fact was discovered that made even seasoned researchers of that terrible time shudder. Unfortunately or fortunately, you will never find such information in history books...

The highest German officials during the Second World War went beyond all limits in satisfying their secret crazy desires. To stroke their ego, and at the same time curry favor with the Fuhrer, during the heyday of the concentration camps, they came up with a special “trick”.

To implement this plan, a couple of Jews were brought specifically to the house or office of a high-ranking Nazi. These could be particularly “dangerous” prisoners, or those who found the strength to resist the system. Of course, these were prisoners of concentration camps; most often they “got” to Auschwitz.

The prisoners were stripped naked and tied by their arms and legs to a urinal. In this situation, the poor Jew had nowhere to go: the ropes dug roughly into his skin, and he could only move his head freely. A high-ranking Nazi... relieved himself on a tied prisoner. Essentially, he used it as a toilet. Often the Nazis extinguished cigarette butts on the bodies of “living cisterns.”

It was considered especially chic to demonstrate such a toilet to your “comrades”. And then real hell began for the unfortunate man. Each guest intended to “leave his mark” on the body of the “household Jew.”

Such a “toilet” could serve for quite a long time - a month, or even two. Until he died from exhaustion in terrible agony...

The Nazis forced female prisoners into prostitution

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

Torment and death or prostitution - the Nazis faced this choice with European and Slavic women who found themselves in concentration camps. Of those several hundred girls who chose the second option, the administration staffed brothels in ten camps - not only those where prisoners were used as labor, but also others aimed at mass extermination.

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, German cultural scientist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sexual conveyors

At the beginning of the 21st century, German cultural scientist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sexual conveyors operating in the horrific conditions of German concentration camps and death factories.

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

Bed motivation

“Legalized sex” appeared in Nazi concentration camps in 1942. The SS men organized houses of tolerance in ten institutions, among which were mainly so-called labor camps - in the Austrian Mauthausen and its branch Gusen, the German Flossenburg, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen and Dora-Mittelbau.

In addition, the institution of forced prostitutes was also introduced in three death camps intended for the destruction of prisoners: in the Polish Auschwitz-Auschwitz and its “companion” Monowitz, as well as in the German Dachau.

The idea of ​​creating camp brothels belonged to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The researchers' findings suggest that he was impressed by the system of incentives used in Soviet forced labor camps to increase prisoners' productivity.

Himmler decided to adopt experience, simultaneously adding to the list of “incentives” something that was not in the Soviet system - “incentive” prostitution. The SS chief was confident that the right to visit a brothel, along with receiving other bonuses - cigarettes, cash or camp vouchers, an improved diet - could force prisoners to work harder and better.

In fact, the right to visit such institutions 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 even 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

Up to two hundred sex slaves worked in brothels at the same time. The largest number of women, two dozen, were kept in a brothel in Auschwitz.

Only female prisoners, usually attractive, aged 17 to 35, became brothel workers. 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 behind barbed wire, without problems, and even passed on their skills to inexperienced colleagues.

The SS recruited approximately a third of the sex slaves from prisoners of other nationalities - Polish, Ukrainian or Belarusian. 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 onto the sleeves of their robes.

The SS recruited approximately a third of the sex slaves from prisoners of other nationalities - Polish, Ukrainian or Belarusian.

Some of the girls voluntarily agreed to “work.” Thus, one former employee of the medical unit of Ravensbrück, the largest women’s concentration camp of 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 head of their barracks announced: “Whoever wants to work in a brothel, come to me. And keep in mind: if there are no volunteers, we will have to resort to force.”

The threat was not empty: as Sheina Epstein, a Jew 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 carried out 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 loudly 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 escape from [the camps] Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück,” said Liselotte B., a former prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, 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 the 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, medical workers in SS uniforms gave them calcium injections, they took disinfectant baths, ate and even sunbathed under quartz lamps.

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

The conveyor worked like clockwork and strictly according to 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 had lunch. By camp standards, there was so much food that prostitutes even exchanged food for clothes and other things. Everything ended with dinner, and at seven in the evening the two-hour work began. The camp prostitutes could not go out to see her only if they had “these days” or fell ill.

The procedure for providing intimate services, starting from the selection of men, was as detailed as possible. The only people who could get a woman were the so-called camp functionaries - internees, those involved in internal security, and prison guards.

Moreover, at first the doors of the 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. For example, logs of visits to a brothel in Mauthausen, which were meticulously kept by representatives of the administration, 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. Afterwards, they bought an entrance ticket for two Reichsmarks - this is slightly less than the cost of 20 cigarettes sold in the canteen. 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 a waiting room, where their data was verified. They then underwent a medical examination and received prophylactic injections. Next, the visitor was given the number of the room where he should go. There the intercourse took place. Only the “missionary position” was allowed. Conversations were not encouraged.

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

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

Body to work

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 Directorate.

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

Reich scientists 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 nations would be saved who would find a way to quickly cure the disease. In order to obtain a miracle cure, the SS 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 over to sadistic doctors.

Pregnant women were not spared in the camps. In some places they were immediately killed, in some places they were artificially aborted, and after five weeks they were sent back 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 then to experimentally determine how long a baby could live without nutrition.

Despicable prisoners

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

Some of the women, even finding themselves in a brothel, tried to defend their honor. For example, Walter came to Buchenwald as a virgin and, finding herself in the role of a prostitute, tried to defend herself from her first client with scissors.

The attempt failed, and according to accounting records, the former virgin satisfied six men that same day. Walter endured this because she knew that otherwise she would face a gas chamber, a crematorium, or a barracks for cruel experiments.

Not everyone had the strength to survive the violence. Some of the inhabitants of the camp brothels, according to researchers, committed suicide, and some lost their minds. Some survived, but remained captive to psychological problems for the rest of their lives.

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’, but quite another to say ‘I was forced to work as a prostitute,’” says Insa Eschebach, director of the Ravensbrück former camp memorial.

This essay is dedicated to the children's concentration camps that existed in Latvia during the German occupation in 1941-1944, the places of children's burials and the acts of extermination of minor prisoners. I recommend that especially impressionable people refrain from reading.

Somehow it happened that, remembering the horrors of the Great Patriotic War, we are talking about killed soldiers, prisoners of war, extermination and humiliation of civilians. But meanwhile, this so-called The category of civilians can be somewhat expanded. One more category of innocent victims can be identified - children. For some reason, it is not customary for us to talk about these victims; they are simply lost against the background of the overall horrific death toll. Personally, I have not yet come across detailed research on the topic of extermination of children on the territory of Latvia. However, often these little prisoners, having barely learned to pronounce individual words in their lives and were still unsteady on their feet, were kept without proper care and supervision, they were also killed, they were also mocked, their conditions of detention in the camps were no different from the conditions of detention adults...

To begin with, I will say a few words about the source of information. The information presented below is collected on the basis of materials from the investigation of the atrocities of the German fascists by the State Extraordinary Commission. The most extensive information on children’s camps is provided by the archival file entitled “Children’s camps and burials” (LVVA P-132, ap. 30, l. 27.), but quite a lot of fragmentary information is scattered throughout the P-132 fund, dedicated to reports and certificates commissions. Part of the information was gleaned from the file dedicated to “Acts and protocols of forensic examination” (LVVA P-132, ap. 30, l. 26.), there is some information about children’s camps in the file where “Certificates about those killed in Salaspils” are collected ( LVVA P-132, ap. 30, l. 38.), some of the data can be found in the file “On the victims of the Nazis in the LSSR” (LVVA P-132, ap. 30, l. 5.). All the information presented is the testimony of eyewitnesses, witnesses, participants in the events, both the prisoners themselves, and from interrogations of the accused guards and police officers.

According to the data of the Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of Crimes of the Nazi Invaders, the number of exterminated children on the territory of Latvia reaches 35,000 people. In the materials of the Riga trial of war criminals in 1946, the number of exterminated children in the camps on the territory of Riga is stated as 6,700; in addition, more than 8,000 who died in the ghetto should be added to this figure. One of the largest graves of children in Latvia is in Salaspils - 7,000 children, another is in the Dreilini forest in Riga, where about 2,000 children are buried.

Children's camps in Latvia

Riga:

E.Birznieka-Upisha street 4 (orphanage)

Gertrudes street 5 (organization " People's aid»)

Krasta St. 73 (Old Believers Community)

126 Kr. Barona St. (nunnery)

Kapselu street (orphanage)

In Latvia:

Orphanage in Bulduri

Orphanage in Dubulti

Orphanage in Maiori

Orphanage in Saulkrasti

Orphanage in Strenci

Orphanage in Baldone

Orphanage in Igat

Orphanage in Griva

Orphanage in Liepaja

In addition, children were kept in separate barracks in the Salaspils concentration camp, in cells of the Riga conscript prison, Riga Central Prison, as well as in other prisons in Latvian cities, children were kept in the SD department at 1 Reimers street, in the prefecture at 7 Aspazijas blvd. and others places.

Hitler's leadership, with stupid pedantry, exterminated the civilian population throughout the occupied territory of the Soviet Union. The masses of murdered children, before their painful death, were used in barbaric ways as living experimental material for inhumane experiments of “Aryan medicine.” The Germans organized a children's blood factory for the needs of the German army; a slave market was formed, where children were sold into slavery to local owners.

According to a special directive from the chief of police, SS Obergruppenführer F. Eckeln, under the pretext of fighting banditry in the temporarily occupied regions of Belarus, Leningrad, Kalinin, and Latgale bordering the LSSR during 1942-44. The local population was systematically driven into special camps in the cities of Riga, Daugavpils, Rezekne and other places in the LSSR. Civilians, called “evacuees,” were herded into concentration camps in inhumane conditions. In the camps, the Germans used a specially developed and thought-out system for the methodical extermination of tens of thousands of people.

Salaspils

In the photo: Liberated children of Salaspils in 1944.

Usually, before the eviction of a village, a punitive detachment burst into it, they burned houses, stole livestock, and plundered property. Many residents were killed on the spot or burned in their homes. Women and children were collected at railway stations, loaded into wagons, nailed up tightly and taken to camps. A week later they were taken to one of the camps or prison.

Witness Molotkovich L.V. from the village of Borodulino, Drissensky district, says: “A German punitive detachment descended on our village of Borodulino and began to burn our houses. Then, in the same order, the children, the eldest of whom was not yet 12 years old, were driven to another barracks, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days.”

In the photo: A punitive squad burns a village

The terrible hour for children and mothers in the concentration camp came when the Nazis, having lined up mothers with children in the middle of the camp, forcibly tore the babies away from the unfortunate mothers. Witness M.G. Brinkmane, who was held in the Salaspils concentration camp, says: “In Salaspils, a tragedy of mothers and children unheard of in the history of mankind took place. Tables were placed in front of the commandant's office, all the mothers and children were called, and the smug, well-fed commandants, who knew no boundaries in their cruelty, lined up at the table. They forcibly snatched children from their mothers' hands. The air was filled with the heartbreaking cries of mothers and the cries of children.”

Children, starting from infancy, were kept by the Germans separately and strictly isolated. The children in a separate barracks were in the state of small animals, deprived of even primitive care. 5-7 year old girls looked after the infants. Every day, German guards carried out the frozen corpses of dead children from the children's barracks in large baskets. They were dumped into cesspools, burned outside the camp fence, and partially buried in the forest near the camp.

Mass continuous mortality of children was caused by experiments for which juvenile prisoners of Salaspils were used as laboratory animals. German killer doctors injected sick children with various liquids, injected urine into the rectum, and forced them to take various drugs internally. After all these techniques, the children invariably died. The children were fed poisoned porridge, from which they died a painful death. All these experiments were supervised by the German doctor Meisner.

The forensic medical commission, having examined the territory of the garrison cemetery in Salaspils, found that part of the cemetery with an area of ​​2,500 square meters was completely covered with mounds at intervals of 0.2 to 0.5 meters. When only one-fifth of this territory was excavated, 632 child corpses aged 5 to 9 years were discovered in 54 graves; in most graves, the corpses were located in two or three layers. At a distance of 150 m from the cemetery towards railway the commission discovered an area measuring 25x27 meters, the soil of which was saturated with an oily substance and ash and containing parts of unburnt human bones, including many bones of children 5-9 years old, teeth, articular heads of femurs, humerus, ribs and other bones.

The commission divided these 632 children's corpses into age groups:

A) infants - 114

B) children from 1 to 3 years old - 106

C) children from 3 to 5 years old - 91

D) children from 5 to 8 years old - 117

D) children from 8 to 10 years old - 160

E) children over 10 years old - 44

Based on investigation materials, witness testimony, and exhumation data, it was established that during the three years of the existence of the Salaspils camp, the Germans killed at least 7,000 children, some who were burned and some who were buried in the garrison cemetery.

Witnesses Laugulaitis, Elterman, Viba and others say: “Selected children under the age of 5 were placed in a separate barrack, where they contracted measles and died in droves. Sick children were taken to the camp hospital, where they were bathed in cold water, from which they died within a day or two. In this way, in the Salaspils camp, the Germans killed more than 3,000 children under the age of 5 in one year.”

From the materials on the accused F. Eckeln, witness Saleyuma Emilia, born in 1886: “While imprisoned in the Salaspils camp since August 21, 1944, I saw that in a separate barrack No. 10B there were more than 100 Soviet children under the age of 10 years . At the beginning of September 1944, the Germans took all these children away and shot them. ... In January 1942, I personally saw how the German fascists at the Shkirotava station loaded 30-40 people at a time from the transported trains of children into green hermetically sealed vehicles. The car doors were tightly locked, then the children were taken away. After 30 minutes the cars returned. I know that the Germans exterminated children with gases in such cars. I can’t say how many children were gassed, but it was a lot.”

From a statement by citizen Viba Evelina Yanovna, born in 1897: “The Germans placed the selected children in a special camp barracks, and they died there in dozens. In March 1942 alone, 500 children died, those caring for the children told me about this. The dead children were buried in the cemetery, where the dead in the camp were buried, along the same road where they were led to execution, only to the left. Thus, I know that more than 3,000 children died and the same number were taken somewhere.”

Ten-year-old Natalya Lemeshonok (all five brothers and sisters - Natalya, Shura, Zhenya, Galya, Borya - were sent to the Salaspils concentration camp) talks about the lawlessness and truly brutal treatment: “We lived in a barracks, they didn’t let us go outside. Little Anya constantly cried and asked for bread, but I had nothing to give her. A few days later, we were taken to the hospital along with other children. There was a German doctor there, in the middle of the room there was a table with different instruments. Then they lined us up and said that a doctor would examine us. It was not clear what he was doing, but then one girl screamed very loudly. The doctor began stamping his foot and shouting at her. Coming closer, you could see how the doctor injected a needle into this girl, and blood flowed from her arm into a small bottle. When it was my turn, the doctor snatched Anya from me and laid me on the table. He held a needle and injected it into my arm. Then he approached his younger sister and did the same to her. We all cried. The doctor said that there was no point in crying, since we would all die anyway, otherwise we would be useful... A few days later, they took our blood again. Anya died." Natalya and Borya survived in the camp.

According to the testimony of witnesses, former prisoners of the Salaspils concentration camp, more than 12,000 children passed through this camp alone from the end of 1942 to the spring of 1944.

The direct exterminators of children in the Salaspils concentration camp were commandants Nikel and Krause, and their assistants Hepper, Berger, and Teckemeyer.

To get rid of the children as quickly as possible, cars with armed SS men drove to different camps and took children away from their parents. Children were torn from their arms, thrown into cars and taken away to be exterminated. Cases have been established of parents poisoning their own children to save them from a terrible death. The Nazis also threw dying children into the back and took them away.

Witness Ritov Ya.D. The commission showed: “There were about 400 children in the concentration camp in Riga in 1944. An order came from Berlin for the complete extermination of these children. The said order ordered that all children from the concentration camp be taken away to be killed. An SS truck arrived at the camp, containing about 40 children gathered from other camps. They were guarded by 10 SS men armed with machine guns. Corporal Schiffmacher gave the order to hand over all 12 children who were in the camp to the SS convoy. Parents hid their children... under the threat of shooting all the parents along with their children, and taking 25 hostages for one child, the children were collected. 4 mothers managed to poison their children. These children were also thrown into the truck in their dying state by the SS. There were incredible scenes of parents saying goodbye to their children. One eight-year-old girl, standing at the side of the truck, said to her sobbing mother: “Don’t cry, mom, this is my destiny.”

Witness Epshtein-Dagarov T.I. shows: “As I later established... cars with children arrived at the Mezaparks concentration camp on the same day. There they picked up a new batch of children from the concentration camp and moved on. I learned from the drivers that the car with the children went to the Shkirotava station, where the children were poisoned.”

Thus, at the last moment of their retreat from Riga, the Germans destroyed up to 700 children. These acts of violence were led by: General Commissioner Drexler, his employees Ziegenbein, Windgassen, Krebs.

Based on data from the Riga OAGS, as well as numerous testimonies, 3,311 children, mainly infants, died during the period of occupation, including during the year and a half of 1941-43. - 2,205, and for 9 months of 1944 - 1,106 children.

Prisons

The extermination of children also took place in the Gestapo and prisons. The dirty and smelly prison cells were never ventilated or heated, even in the most severe frosts. On dirty, cold floors, infested with various insects, unhappy mothers were forced to watch the gradual decline of their children. 100 grams of bread and half a liter of water - that’s all their meager ration for the day. There was no medical assistance provided.

During the bloody massacres of prisoners in prisons, where the Germans shot up to several hundred people, no exceptions were made for children. They died just like adults. Sometimes they “forgot” to shoot the children and they continued to drag out their miserable existence alone until the next execution.

During interrogation, the former warden of the Riga Central Prison testified that in the fourth building of the prison alone (there were six such buildings in total), where she worked for four months, at least 100 small children were kept and shot, and 4 children died of starvation.

The accused Veske V.Yu., born in 1915, a former prisoner of the Riga urgent prison, testifies that at the beginning of 1942, 150 children were shot in the urgent prison.

From the interrogation protocol of the accused Veske V.Yu., from November 1943 to June 1944, she worked as a nurse in the Salaspils concentration camp: “In the hospital in Salaspils there were children evacuated from Russia, there were 120 children’s beds in the hospital, 180 adults. Children mostly suffered from measles , dysentery, adults - typhus, pneumonia. At least 5 children died every day from 120 places. Children died from exhaustion, lack of medical care and deliberate murder.” The court file indicates that Veske Velta personally administered lethal injections to sick children.

Pregnant women languishing in the dungeons of the Gestapo were subjected to severe beatings during interrogations along with other prisoners. Zhukovskaya I.V. testified to the commission that she personally saw atrocities against pregnant women and babies while escorting groups of prisoners through the streets of Riga: “I will never forget one fact of German atrocities that occurred in my presence. The Germans were chasing a group of people, beating them with sticks. Suddenly one pregnant woman stopped and screamed wildly - she began to have labor pains. The German fascist guard began to beat her with a stick, and she immediately gave birth. The German immediately killed the woman and the newborn, smashing their heads with a stick.”

Lawyer K.G. Munkevich, who was held in the Central Prison for more than a year, told the commission: “Since July 1, 1941, the Central Prison began to be filled with prisoners along with their young children. Children were kept together with adults under the same conditions of diet and nutrition. Children shared the fate of their parents and died the same death as their parents. Many women were imprisoned while pregnant. Many pregnant women were shot, many gave birth right there in prison, and then were taken to the forest and shot along with their babies. If you imagine the period from 1941 to 1943, while I was kept in prison, about 3,000-3,500 children were taken away from there and shot or otherwise killed. Of course, this number is approximate, but I think it is lower than the actual number.”

According to the investigation, the commission found that the Germans killed about 3,500 children in Riga prisons and Gestapo dungeons. In the same way, the Germans committed atrocities against children in other cities of Latvia. For example, 2,000 children were exterminated in Daugavpils, 1,200 in Rezekne. Thus, 6,700 children were exterminated in Riga in prisons and the Gestapo during the period of German occupation. The organizers of the extermination of children in prisons were the German administration represented by Birkhan, Viya, Matels, Egel, Tabord, Albert.

In the spring of 1943, retreating German troops took with them the entire population from the occupied regions of the USSR. At this time, the flow of children into camps and prisons in Latvia increased, and therefore Latvian prisons are no longer able to accommodate prisoners. They begin to be destroyed en masse.

Children's camps in Riga

In Riga, special distribution points for the sale of children were created, offering live goods from 5 to 12 years of age. Here are some of the addresses of these points: in the courtyard of “People's Help” on Gertrudes street 5, in the Grebenshchikovsky community on Krasta street 73, in the orphanage on the street. Jumaras 4 (Birznieka-Upisa street) and in many others. Children who could not be used for work, aged from one to five years, were taken to a convent at 126 Kr. Barona Street. Children's camps were also located in Dubulti, Saulkrasti, Igat, Strenci.

In the photo: Former orphanage on E.Birznieka-Upisa street 4

Witness Richard Matisovich Murnieks, born in 1896, says: “In June 1944, I entered the Riga Orphanage for Infants, where I stayed until the day the Germans left Riga. There were many Russian children under the age of 3 in the house. Children came to the orphanage from the Salaspils concentration camp and the Riga prison. The German command had not previously raised questions about the evacuation of children, but in October 1944, before the German troops left Riga, our children’s home was taken to a ship. The cars with the children were accompanied by German soldiers. In total, 150 babies were taken from the orphanage. Since the children were brought from Salaspils and the Riga prison, I believe that the children were taken onto the ship for the purpose of exterminating them.”

In April 1943, covered German military vehicles approached the convent in Riga at 126 Kr. Barona Street. They are accompanied by German soldiers under the command of an officer. A terrible picture was revealed to the eyes of eyewitnesses: not a sound was heard from the closed bodies, children's voices were not heard. When the tarpaulin is pulled back, dozens of tortured, sick and exhausted children are revealed. They are huddled and shivering from the cold. The rags barely cover the small bodies covered with abscesses, lichens and scabs. Children are barefoot, without hats. From under the dirty rags that barely cover the unfortunates, cardboard boxes hanging on a rope can be seen on their chests. The signs have the following inscriptions: last name, first name, age. A number of tags contain one word: "Unbekanter" (unknown). The children huddle together and are silent. The children's barracks in the camp, eternal fear and threats, torture and terror of sadists weaned the little sufferers from speaking. The car follows the car. The Nazis brought 579 children aged from one to five years to the monastery. The transport is led by a German officer from the SD Schiffer.

In the photo: Convent on Kr. Barona street 126

Witness Skoldinova L.P. shows: “When I saw the first car, the body of which was full of children from one to five years old, sitting motionless, huddled from the cold, because... They were dressed in some rags, and a chill went down my skin. There were tears in everyone’s eyes, even the men.”

Witness Grabovskaya S.A. says: “The children looked old. They were thin and extremely sickly, and the main thing that struck them was the lack of childish gaiety, talkativeness and playfulness. They could stand for hours with their arms folded if you don’t sit them down, and if you sit them down, they sit just as quietly with their arms folded.”

Witness Osokina V.Ya. said: “A truck covered with a tarpaulin appeared. He drove into the yard and stopped. It seemed to everyone that it arrived empty, because... There was no sound coming from it, no crying, no childish cry. And the most characteristic thing in these pale, emaciated faces of the boys was the expression of extraordinary neglect and fear, and in some, the expression of complete indifference and dullness. The children did not speak at all for 2-3 days. Afterwards they explained this by saying that the Germans in the camp forbade them to cry and talk under pain of being shot.”

Subordinate to the fascist authorities, the Social Department, headed by Director Silis and German organization“People's Aid,” acting on the instructions of the commander of the German SD police of Latvia, Strauch, distributed children from collection points to rural farms as farm laborers. In the spring of 1943, advertisements for the distribution of work force.

Newspaper “Tēvija” of March 10, 1943, page 3: “Shepherds and auxiliary workers are distributed. A large number of teenagers from the border regions of Russia would like to be shepherds and auxiliary workers in the village. “People's Aid” took over the distribution of these teenagers. Agricultural households can submit their applications for shepherds and auxiliary workers at Raina Blvd. 27.”

The Germans deliver Soviet children aged 4 to 12 years to the “People's Aid” yard in Riga at 5 Gertrudes Street. The children are kept in the yard under the guard of German soldiers. The Germans here organize a bargaining, selling children for agricultural work as farm laborers. Each such slave brought the slave trader from 9 to 15 German marks per month. For this money, the new owners tried to squeeze everything possible out of the kids.

Galina Kukharenok, born in 1933, says: “The Germans took me, my brother Zhorzhik and Verochka to Ogre, to the same owner. I worked in his field, harvested rye and hay, harrowed, got up early for work, it was still dark, and finished work in the evening, when it became dark. My sister tended two cows, three calves and 14 sheep with this owner. Verochka was 4 years old.”

The children's registration point in Riga on October 2, 1943, in relation No. 315, reported to the Social Department: “Young children of Russian refugees ... without rest, from early morning until late at night in rags, without shoes, with very little food, often for several days without food, the sick, without medical care, working for their owners in jobs that are inappropriate for their age. With their ruthlessness, their owners have gone so far that they beat the unfortunate people who are unable to work from hunger... they are robbed, taking away the last remnants of things... when they cannot work due to illness, they are not given any food, they sleep in the kitchens on dirty floors.”

The same document tells about a little girl Galina, who is in the Rembat parish, Mucenieki manor, with the owner Zarins, that due to unbearable conditions she wants to commit suicide.

The commandant of Salaspils, Krause, toured farms where children worked and checked the condition of the slaves. After such trips, arriving at the camp, he announced to everyone that the children were living well.

A thorough examination of the files of the Ostland Social Department revealed that at least 2,200 children aged 4 years and older were sold to Latvian farms as slaves. However, according to the data established by the commission, in fact for 1943 and 1944. The Germans distributed up to 5,000 children to local owners, of which about 4,000 were subsequently deported to Germany.

Children's camps in Latvia

The abduction of children is accompanied by robberies of orphanages and civilians. Here's what the employees showed orphanage in Maiori Shirante T.K., Purmalit M., Chishmakova F.K., Schneider E.M.: “On October 4, 1944, the Germans came on five buses and forcibly took 133 children from an orphanage aged 2 to Riga up to 5 years old, who were taken to be loaded onto the ship. The German fascists robbed the orphanage, took all the food, broke into all the cabinets.”

Witnesses Krastins M.M., Purviskis R.M., Kazakevich M.G., employees of the 1st Riga House, testified that shortly before the liberation of Riga, on the eve of the retreat, the Germans arrived at the Riga Orphanage. First, they plundered the property of the orphanage, then they took 160 babies, took them to the port and loaded them into the hold of a ship for coal in the cold. Some of the children were sick and they were also taken away.

Parents Yurevich A.A., Klementyeva V.P., Oberts G.S., Borovskaya A.M. informed the commission that the German fascists, retreating from Riga, broke into apartments at night and took children away from their parents. Witness Yurevich A.A. stated: “The Germans began to hastily drive away civilians from here and take away children. Everyone was herded to the port, loaded onto ships... I saw the following tragic pictures: parents escorted their children away under guard. Children screamed, clung to their mothers, and became hysterical. At the same time, they clung to their mothers so much that they tore their dresses. The Germans mercilessly tore the children from the hands of the women and loaded them onto the ship like cattle. The picture was terrible."

The investigation established that during approximately a year of the existence of the Dubulti children's camp, out of a total number of 450 small children who passed through it, at least 300 children were sold into slavery. Similar circumstances have been established in children's camps in Saulkrasti, Strenci, Igata and in the Riga orphanage at 4 Yumaras Street.

Extract from the protocol of interrogation of witness Agafya Afanasyevna Dudareva, born in 1910, worked as a cook in the Dubulti children's camp.

Question: Tell us how the children were kept in the camp in Dubulti and Bulduri?

Answer: In Dubulti Kid `s camp was organized in June 1943, by which time I had just arrived there, and by the winter of 1943, around December, I was transferred to Bulduri. In Dubulti we were kept under lock and key. The children were kept separately. There were up to 20 of us female parents who served the children. In order to hide their atrocities of exterminating Russian children, the German fascists and their accomplices raised a whole howl, shouted that they were saving Russian children from the horrors of the Bolsheviks, called the occupied Soviet territories places liberated from the Bolsheviks, began to baptize children and march them to church. , there they were kept for a long time during worship, so that the exhausted children, who had survived the horrors of the Salaspils concentration camp, who had lost the blood that the German fascists forcibly took from them for their needs, fainted, and small children urinated on themselves in the church, but this was not kept some zealous German servants and they continued to torture the children. I emphasize Russian children because... there were no other children here. In both Dubulti and Bulduri churches, priests prayed for the victory of German weapons, indicating that the Germans had liberated Soviet Union from the Bolsheviks. Priests from Riga, Dubulti and Bulduri came to the children in the camp, where they preached that the Germans had liberated them.

While this camp was in Dubulti, there were two German protege teachers there in 1943. One is Uncle Alik, the second is Lev Vladimirovich, I don’t know their last names. The first was Armenian, the second Russian, they drilled the children in the German spirit, drove them in formation, beat them with whips, put them in a punishment cell, a dark closet, giving them bread and water. When I stood up for the children after such abuse, this uncle Alik hit me with a whip. I ran to the head of Benois, Olga Alekseevna, who attacked me, asking why I was interfering in something that was not my own business and interfering with raising children. When I pointed out that they should not be tortured, because... they were all exhausted after the Salaspils concentration camp, and they continued to be bullied, then Benoit, after consulting with Uncle Alik, they told me to take the children with me and took me to the second floor, where they locked me with my three sons Victor, Mikhail and Vladimir, and my daughter Lida they made me work for me. At the same time, Benoit told me that the children would be taken away from me and I would be sent to Salaspils, she started calling Salaspils. The children ran under the window and shouted to me that Uncle Alik was calling to send me to Salaspils. I don’t remember what happened to me. The children who were with me later told me that I wanted to throw little Volodya out the window, and Victor grabbed him from me, that I was tearing my hair out, and I don’t remember when they let me out. Then Benoit came up to me and repeated: “you will know how to meddle in your own business, you need to obey.” This Alik and Lev Vladimirovich taught children to shout “Heil Hitler.” Then this Alik left for Germany, around December 1943, and Lev Vladimirovich was in Riga, they say that he is still in Riga.

During the German occupation, the nutrition of children in this camp was very poor; children were given 200 grams of bread per day. They gave very little cereal and butter on the ration cards, and Benoit put what she received on her table. Before the liberation of Bulduri from the Germans, children lived from hand to mouth, the food was poor, children were put in a corner for misdeeds, and left without lunch. The boys did not want to go to church, so they were left without lunch. German SS officers came to see Benoit's manager, and she treated them to children's rations. The former head, Olga Kachalova, was a completely different person and did not pursue German-fascist policies, but Benoit did. Before the retreat, the Germans ordered everyone to be loaded onto the trains along with their children, but the trains could no longer run, because... the paths were cut off. Benoit’s manager told him not to load, but to hide everything in the cellar; the Germans, seeing that there was no one there, calmed down. In the morning, leaving the cellar, we saw that the cars intended for loading were on fire. In this way we were saved from death. If we had boarded the carriages, the Germans would have burned us along with the children. I would call this children's institution a children's camp for Russian children. When I called it an orphanage, I said that I would be responsible for it; it should be called a camp. More than 500 children passed through this camp; from the camp, many children were sent to shepherds, who were kept disgustingly. After the kulaks had reduced the child to exhaustion in their household, they brought back these dirty, sick and ragged children to the camp.”

Ghetto

In the terrible overcrowding of the Riga ghetto, in which 35,000 people were subjected to sophisticated abuses of the human person, about 8,000 children under the age of 12 languished. All of them were destroyed by the German fascists and their local collaborators in a massacre between November 29 and December 9, 1941.

When columns of those doomed to death, escorted by policemen and SS men, were driven to slaughter in the Rumbula forest, the executioners were impatient. Right there on the streets of the city, the executioners amused themselves by using special sticks to catch mothers and children from the suicide column, drag them to the edge and immediately kill them at point-blank range.

The two-story building of the ghetto hospital at that time was overcrowded with sick children. The Germans threw sick children through the windows, aiming to hit the trucks parked near the hospital.

Krunkin B.E. talks about the atrocities of the fascists against children imprisoned in the ghetto: “... almost all Jewish children died in the ghetto during mass executions. But even before that, the executioners Cukurs and Dantzkop often came to the ghetto. Having caught the first child they came across, one of them threw the child into the air, and the other shot at him. In addition, Cukurs and Dantzkop grabbed the children by the legs, swung them and banged their heads against the wall. I saw it personally. There were many such cases. In addition, I remember this incident: the ghetto commandant Krause met a Jewish girl about 4 years old and affectionately asked her if she wanted some candy. When the child responded, not knowing what awaited him, Krause ordered her to open her mouth, when she did this, he pointed the gun and shot her in the mouth.”

Dr. Press told the commission: “At the gates of the ghetto, where the guards lived, the police threw a child into the air and, in the presence of the mother, amused themselves by picking up this child at bayonets.”

Witness Saliums K.K. testified to the commission: “Women with children were sent to be shot; there were a lot of children. Other mothers had two or three children. Many children walked in columns under heavy German police protection. Around the end of December 1941, in the morning at about 8 o'clock, the Germans drove three large parties of children to extermination school age. Each party consisted of at least 200 people. The children cried terribly, screamed and called their mothers, screaming for help. All these children were exterminated in Rumbula. The children were not shot, but killed with blows from machine guns and pistol grips to the head and dumped directly into a pit. When they buried the grave, not everyone was dead yet and the earth was shaking from the bodies of the buried children.”

In the photo: Civilians shot by the Germans in Liepaja in December 1941.

Witness Ritov Ya.D. testified to the commission: “I first encountered murdered children on November 29, 1941 under the following circumstances: I was called to the “Jewish Committee” and instructed to organize the removal of corpses that were lying on Ludzas and Liksnas streets in the ghetto. These were the corpses of the inhabitants of the ghetto in Rumbula who were driven away on November 29th. I managed to get 20 sleds with transport workers and volunteers of about 100 people. On the morning of November 29, 1941, at about 8 o’clock, I went out to Ludzas Street with a group of transport workers. Columns of people being driven to be shot continued to move through the streets. Individual columns consisted of approximately 1,500 people. At the front of the column were two German police officers, and on the sides and behind the column were approximately 50 local armed police. Using specially adapted sticks, the police caught women with children and old people by the legs or necks from the columns. At the same time, women and children fell, they were immediately shot at point-blank range from rifles at the edge of the column, putting the muzzle close to the head. The victims' heads were smashed into pieces. In my presence, the columns moved along Ludzas Street for about two hours and during all this time, about 350-400 people were killed in the mentioned way, who remained lying on the pavement. Among these corpses, a third were children. When the next columns passed, we began to clean up the corpses remaining on the pavement after November 29 and 30, 1941. Our team removed at least 100 corpses, but in total there were at least 700-800 corpses on the streets. About a third of them were children. We transported the corpses to the Jewish cemetery, first we laid them out, then we began to dump them randomly. I observed the following scene there: at the gates of the cemetery stood a group of children, about 15 people, aged from 2 to 12 years. There were two old women with them. This batch of victims was pulled out of the column. There were police officers standing next to this group. Children and old women stood at attention - they were forbidden to move. When I was leaving the cemetery with the sled, I turned around and saw how the police were driving this group of children and both old women into the cemetery. Immediately, a second later, shots rang out - this group was shot. That day, November 30th, I worked only until lunch, because... My nerves couldn't stand it anymore. The two-story building of the ghetto children's hospital was overcrowded with sick children. The SS threw sick children out of the window, aiming to hit the trucks parked near the hospital. The children’s brains were scattered in all directions.”

Dreylini

Truck after truck goes into the Dreilini forest. According to eyewitness K.K. Liepins, who worked as a farm laborer at the Sheiman estate throughout the entire period of the German occupation, the Germans set up a death conveyor at the edge of the forest: “Hearing shots in the forest, I went to the place of execution to see what the Germans were doing with their victims. I managed to get to a distance of 100 meters, and then I saw the following picture: a car was approaching, a German military man climbed in, threw those sitting there to the ground, and another German immediately stunned the victim with a stick, apparently an iron one, to the head. The stunned man was dragged further, undressed, then dragged to a pile of dead bodies, where he was shot in the back of the head. After this, the naked person was thrown onto a pile of dead bodies, which were then burned. A special conveyor belt of death was set up with German pedantry. The children were thrown to the ground, grabbed by the legs and arms, and immediately shot.”

Witness E.V. Denisevich says: “I know that during the period of the German occupation of Riga, they committed terrible crimes and shot innocent civilian Soviet citizens, including women and children. Personally, I was an eyewitness to the following Nazi atrocities: Around August or September 1944, I went to the Sheimansky forest to pick mushrooms. When I was walking through the forest, from behind the trees I saw several cars covered in black drive into the forest. These cars stopped on a mountain in the forest and armed German soldiers with dogs first got out of them, and then they began to unload women and children from the cars and immediately shoot them. Moreover, two cars were with women and children, and one car was with boys. Women and children, whom the Germans shot, screamed for salvation and cried. From these screams I realized that the women and children brought were Russian, since they screamed in Russian. I was very frightened by this picture and started running.”

Based on the testimony of eyewitnesses Liepins, Karklints, Silins, Unfericht, Walter, Denisevich and others, it was established that in August 1944, at least 2,000 children were brought to the Dreylinsky forest by the Germans in 67 cars and shot in the forest.

REFERENCE

On the extermination of children in the city of Riga and its surroundings

From the first days of the Nazi occupation of Riga, women along with their children were arrested here and placed in emergency and Riga central prisons. From where part of it was exterminated, and part was sent to the Riga Orphanage for Infants, the Major Orphanage, to the orphanages of Riga - on Kapselu St., Yumaras St., in Igata, Baldone of Riga County, Libava, etc.

These orphanages received children from the Gestapo and the Riga Prefecture, and later, in 42/43, from the Salaspils concentration camp.

It has been established that at least 2,000 children were constantly kept in the Riga Central Prison in 1941-43, some of whom were taken along with adults to be executed in Bikernieki. By 07/21/1943 alone, more than 2,000 children were shot from Riga prisons, including from the Riga urgent prison, only at the beginning of 1942, 150 children were taken immediately to be shot.

Since the fall of 1942, masses of women, old people, and children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, and 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 which 3 were so-called hospital barracks, 2 for crippled children and 4 barracks for healthy children.

The permanent population of children in Salaspils was more than 1,000 people during 1943 and 1944. Their systematic extermination took place there by:

According to preliminary data, over 500 children were exterminated in the Salaspils concentration camp in 1942, and in 1943/44. more than 6,000 people.

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

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

Most of these children who were taken out and given away to be raised 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 infants and toddlers under the age of 4 from the Riga orphanage and the Major orphanage, where the children of executed parents, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, and prisons, were loaded onto the ship "Menden" and partly from the Salaspils camp and exterminated 289 small children on that ship.

They were driven away by the Germans to Libau, an orphanage for infants located there. Children from Baldonsky and Grivsky orphanages; nothing is known about their fate yet.

Not stopping at these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 sold low-quality products in Riga stores only using children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did small children 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 maintaining children were police and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp, Krause, and another German, Schaefer, who went to the children's camps and houses where the children were kept for “inspection.”

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

Senior NKVD operative officer, security captain /Murman/

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

According to the People's Commissariat of Education of the LSSR, which investigated the facts of the abduction of civilians 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) on kulak farms - 1,564 people.

2) to children's camps - 636 people.

3) taken into care by individual citizens - 602 people.

The list is compiled on the basis of data from the card index of the Social Department of Internal Affairs 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 last days During their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, into the homes of infants, into apartments, grabbed children, drove them to the port of Riga, where they loaded them like cattle into the coal mines of steamships.

Valka County - 22

Cesis County - 32

Jekabpils County - 645

Total - 10,965 people.

In Riga, dead children were buried at the Pokrovskoye, Tornakalnskoye and Ivanovskoye cemeteries, as well as in the forest near the Salaspils camp.

Compiled by Vlad Bogov

Torture is often called various minor troubles that happen to everyone in everyday life. This definition is given to raising disobedient children, standing in line for a long time, doing a lot of laundry, then ironing clothes, and even the process of preparing food. All this, of course, can be very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of debilitation largely depends on the character and inclinations of the person), but still bears little resemblance to the most terrible torture in the history of mankind. The practice of “biased” interrogations and other violent actions against prisoners took place in almost all countries of the world. The time frame is also not defined, but since relatively recent events are psychologically closer to modern man, his attention is drawn to the methods and special equipment invented in the twentieth century, in particular in German concentration camps times But there were both ancient Eastern and medieval tortures. The fascists were also taught by their colleagues from Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive bodies. So why was everything over people?

Meaning of the term

To begin with, when starting to study any issue or phenomenon, any researcher tries to define it. “To name it correctly is already half to understand” - says

So, torture is the deliberate infliction of suffering. In this case, the nature of the torment does not matter; it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or deprivation of sleep), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both “channels of influence.”

But it is not only the fact of suffering that matters. Senseless torment is called torture. Torture differs from it in its purposefulness. In other words, a person is beaten with a whip or hung on a rack for a reason, but in order to get some result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to admit guilt, divulge hidden information, and sometimes they are simply punished for some misdemeanor or crime. The twentieth century added one more item to the list of possible purposes of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes carried out with the aim of studying the body's reaction to unbearable conditions in order to determine the limits of human capabilities. These experiments were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as inhumane and pseudoscientific, which did not prevent their results from being studied by physiologists from the victorious countries after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Death or trial

The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that after receiving the result, even the most terrible tortures stopped. There was no point in continuing them. The position of executioner-executor, as a rule, was occupied by a professional who knew about painful techniques and the peculiarities of psychology, if not everything, then a lot, and there was no point in wasting his efforts on senseless bullying. After the victim confessed to a crime, depending on the degree of civilization of society, she could expect immediate death or treatment followed by trial. Legally formalized execution after biased interrogations during the investigation was characteristic of the punitive justice of Germany in the initial Hitler era and for Stalin’s “open trials” (the Shakhty case, the trial of the industrial party, reprisals against Trotskyists, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent suits and shown to the public. Broken morally, people most often obediently repeated everything that the investigators forced them to admit. Torture and executions were rampant. The veracity of the testimony did not matter. Both in Germany and in the USSR in the 1930s, the confession of the accused was considered the “queen of evidence” (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, USSR prosecutor). Brutal torture used to obtain it.

Deadly torture of the Inquisition

In few areas of its activity (except perhaps in the manufacture of murder weapons) humanity has been so successful. It should be noted that in recent centuries there has even been some regression compared to ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the reason most often became the external attractiveness of the unfortunate victim. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who actually committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the unequivocal doom of the condemned. No matter how long the torment lasted, it only ended in the death of the condemned. The execution weapon could have been the Iron Maiden, the Brazen Bull, a bonfire, or the sharp-edged pendulum described by Edgar Poe, which was methodically lowered onto the victim’s chest inch by inch. Horrible torture The inquisitions were distinguished by their duration and were accompanied by unimaginable moral torment. The preliminary investigation may have involved the use of other ingenious mechanical devices to slowly disintegrate the bones of the fingers and limbs and sever the muscle ligaments. The most famous weapons were:

A metal sliding bulb used for particularly sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;

- “Spanish boot”;

A Spanish chair with clamps and a brazier for the legs and buttocks;

An iron bra (pectoral), worn over the chest while hot;

- “crocodiles” and special forceps for crushing male genitals.

The executioners of the Inquisition also had other torture equipment, which it is better not for people with sensitive psyches to know about.

East, Ancient and Modern

No matter how ingenious the European inventors of self-harm techniques may be, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind were still invented in the East. The Inquisition used metal tools, which sometimes had a very intricate design, in Asia they preferred everything natural, natural (today these products would probably be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything was used. Eastern torture and execution had the same goals as European ones, but technically differed in duration and greater sophistication. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scaphism (from the Greek word “scaphium” - trough). The victim was immobilized with shackles, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then the whole body was smeared with a sweet mixture, and lowered into the swamp. The blood-sucking insects slowly ate the man alive. They did the same thing in the case of execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate person was to be burned in the scorching sun, his eyelids were cut off for greater torment. There were other types of torture in which elements of the biosystem were used. For example, it is known that bamboo grows quickly, a meter per day. It is enough to simply hang the victim at a short distance above the young shoots, and cut off the ends of the stems at an acute angle. The person being tortured has time to come to his senses, confess everything and hand over his accomplices. If he persists, he will slowly and painfully be pierced by the plants. This choice was not always provided, however.

Torture as a method of inquiry

Both in and in a later period, various types of torture were used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary government bodies, today called law enforcement. It was part of a set of investigation and inquiry techniques. From the second half XVI centuries in Russia, different types of bodily influence were practiced, such as: whipping, hanging, racking, cauterization with pincers and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe was also by no means distinguished by humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying and even the fear of death did not guarantee finding out the truth. Moreover, in some cases the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case with a miller, which the inscription on the pediment of the French Palace of Justice calls for to be remembered. He took upon himself someone else's guilt under torture, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.

Abolition of torture in different countries

IN late XVII century, a gradual shift away from the practice of torture and a transition from it to other, more humane methods of inquiry began. One of the results of the Enlightenment was the realization that it is not the severity of punishment, but its inevitability that influences the reduction of criminal activity. In Prussia, torture was abolished in 1754; this country became the first to put its legal proceedings at the service of humanism. Then the process went progressively, different states followed her example in the following sequence:

STATE	Year of the phatic ban on torture	Year of official ban on torture
Denmark	1776	1787
Austria	1780	1789
France
Netherlands	1789	1789
Sicilian kingdoms	1789	1789
Austrian Netherlands	1794	1794
Venetian Republic	1800	1800
Bavaria	1806	1806
Papal States	1815	1815
Norway	1819	1819
Hanover	1822	1822
Portugal	1826	1826
Greece	1827	1827
Switzerland (*)	1831-1854	1854

Note:

*) the legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland changed at different times during this period.

Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.

Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774 by issuing a secret decree. By this, on the one hand, she continued to keep criminals at bay, but, on the other, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. This decision was formalized legally by Alexander I in 1801.

As for England, torture was prohibited there in 1772, but not all, but only some.

Illegal torture

The legislative ban did not mean their complete exclusion from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class who were ready to break the law in the name of its triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and if exposed, they were threatened with legal prosecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was necessary to “work with people” more carefully, without leaving visible traces. In the 19th and 20th centuries, heavy objects with a soft surface were used, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation was manifested in the fact that most often these were codes of laws), rubber hoses, etc. They were not left without attention and methods of moral pressure. Some investigators sometimes threatened severe punishments, long sentences, and even reprisals against loved ones. This was also torture. The horror experienced by those under investigation prompted them to make confessions, incriminate themselves and receive undeserved punishments, until the majority of police officers performed their duty honestly, studying evidence and collecting testimony to bring a reasonable accusation. Everything changed after totalitarian and dictatorial regimes came to power in some countries. This happened in the 20th century.

After the October Revolution of 1917, on the territory of the former Russian Empire broke out Civil War, in which both warring parties most often did not consider themselves bound by the legislative norms that were mandatory under the tsar. Torture of prisoners of war in order to obtain information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. During the years of the Red Terror, executions most often took place, but mockery of representatives of the “exploiter class,” which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed “gentlemen,” became widespread. In the twenties, thirties and forties, the NKVD authorities used prohibited methods of interrogation, depriving those under investigation of sleep, food, water, beating and mutilating them. This was done with the permission of management, and sometimes on his direct instructions. The goal was rarely to find out the truth - repressions were carried out to intimidate, and the investigator’s task was to obtain a signature on a protocol containing a confession of counter-revolutionary activities, as well as slander of other citizens. As a rule, Stalin’s “backpack masters” did not use special torture devices, being content with available objects, such as a paperweight (they hit them on the head), or even an ordinary door, which pinched fingers and other protruding parts of the body.

In Nazi Germany

Torture in the concentration camps created after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously used in that it was a strange mixture of Eastern sophistication and European practicality. Initially, these “correctional institutions” were created for guilty Germans and representatives of national minorities declared hostile (Gypsies and Jews). Then came a series of experiments that were somewhat scientific in nature, but in cruelty exceeded the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind.
In an attempt to create antidotes and vaccines, Nazi SS doctors administered lethal injections to prisoners, performed operations without anesthesia, including abdominal ones, froze prisoners, starved them in the heat, and did not allow them to sleep, eat or drink. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the “production” of ideal soldiers, not afraid of frost, heat and injury, resistant to the effects of toxic substances and pathogenic bacilli. The history of torture during the Second World War forever imprinted the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, became the personification of inhumanity. They also conducted experiments on lengthening limbs by mechanical stretching, suffocating people in rarefied air, and other experiments that caused painful agony, sometimes lasting for long hours.

The torture of women by the Nazis concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them of reproductive function. Various methods were studied - from simple ones (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated ones, which had the prospect of mass application in the event of a Reich victory (irradiation and exposure to chemicals).

It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when Soviet and allied troops began to liberate the concentration camps. Even appearance prisoners spoke more eloquently than any evidence that their very detention in inhuman conditions was torture.

Current state of affairs

The torture of the fascists became the standard of cruelty. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity sighed with joy in the hope that this would never happen again. Unfortunately, although not on such a scale, torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain some of the terrible signs of the modern world. Developed countries, declaring their commitment to rights and freedoms, are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories where compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners of secret prisons have been exposed to punitive forces for many years without specific charges being brought against them. The methods used by military personnel of many countries during local and major armed conflicts in relation to prisoners and those simply suspected of sympathizing with the enemy are sometimes superior in cruelty to the abuse of people in Nazi concentration camps. In international investigations of such precedents, too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe a duality of standards, when war crimes of one of the parties are completely or partially hushed up.

Will the era of a new Enlightenment come when torture will finally be finally and irrevocably recognized as a disgrace to humanity and banned? So far there is little hope for this...