What they did to women in concentration camps. Women soldiers in German captivity

“Skrekkens hus” - “House of Horror” - that’s what they called it in the city. Since January 1942, the city archive building has been the headquarters of the Gestapo in southern Norway. Those arrested were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, and from here people were sent to concentration camps and executions.

Now in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where prisoners were tortured, a museum has been opened that tells about what happened during the war in the state archive building.
The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. Only new lights and doors appeared. In the main corridor there is a main exhibition with archival materials, photographs, and posters.

Thus, a suspended prisoner was beaten with a chain.

This is how they tortured us with electric stoves. If the executioners were especially zealous, the hair on a person’s head could catch fire.

I have already written about waterboarding before. It was also used in the Archive.

Fingers were pinched in this device and nails were pulled out. The machine is authentic - after the liberation of the city from the Germans, all the equipment of the torture chambers remained in place and was preserved.

Nearby are other devices for conducting interrogation with “bias.”

Reconstructions have been carried out in several basement rooms - how it looked then, in this very place. This is a cell where especially dangerous prisoners were kept - members of the Norwegian Resistance who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.

In the next room there was a torture chamber. A real torture scene is reproduced here married couple underground workers captured by the Gestapo in 1943 during a communication session with the intelligence center in London. Two Gestapo men torture a wife in front of her husband, who is chained to the wall. In the corner, suspended from an iron beam, is another member of the failed underground group. They say that before the interrogations, the Gestapo officers were pumped up with alcohol and drugs.

Everything in the cell was left as it was then, in 1943. If you turn over that pink stool standing at the woman's feet, you can see the Gestapo mark of Kristiansand.

This is a reconstruction of an interrogation - a Gestapo provocateur (on the left) presents the arrested radio operator of an underground group (he sits on the right, in handcuffs) with his radio station in a suitcase. In the center sits the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo, SS Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Kerner - I’ll tell you about him later.

In this display case are things and documents of those Norwegian patriots who were sent to the Grini concentration camp near Oslo - the main transit point in Norway, from where prisoners were sent to other concentration camps in Europe.

System for designating different groups of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Jew, political, gypsy, Spanish Republican, dangerous criminal, criminal, war criminal, Jehovah's Witness, homosexual. The letter N was written on the badge of a Norwegian political prisoner.

School excursions are conducted to the museum. I came across one of these - several local teenagers were walking along the corridors with Toure Robstad, a volunteer from local war survivors. It is said that about 10,000 schoolchildren visit the museum at the Archives per year.

Toure tells the kids about Auschwitz. Two boys from the group were there recently on an excursion.

Soviet prisoner of war in a concentration camp. In his hand is a homemade wooden bird.

In a separate showcase are things made by the hands of Russian prisoners of war in Norwegian concentration camps. The Russians exchanged these crafts for food from local residents. Our neighbor in Kristiansand still had a whole collection of these wooden birds - on the way to school, she often met groups of our prisoners going to work under escort, and gave them her breakfast in exchange for these toys carved from wood.

Reconstruction of a partisan radio station. Partisans in southern Norway transmitted information to London about the movements of German troops, deployment military equipment and ships. In the north, the Norwegians supplied intelligence to the Soviet Northern Sea Fleet.

"Germany is a nation of creators."

Norwegian patriots had to work under conditions of intense pressure on the local population from Goebbels propaganda. The Germans set themselves the task of quickly Nazifying the country. The Quisling government made efforts for this in the fields of education, culture, and sports. Even before the war, Quisling's Nazi party (Nasjonal Samling) convinced the Norwegians that the main threat to their security was military power Soviet Union. It should be noted that the Finnish campaign of 1940 contributed greatly to intimidating the Norwegians about Soviet aggression in the North. Since coming to power, Quisling only intensified his propaganda with the help of Goebbels' department. The Nazis in Norway convinced the population that only a strong Germany could protect the Norwegians from the Bolsheviks.

Several posters distributed by the Nazis in Norway. “Norges nye nabo” – “New Norwegian Neighbor”, 1940. Pay attention to the now fashionable technique of “reversing” Latin letters to imitate the Cyrillic alphabet.

“Do you want it to be like this?”

The propaganda of the “new Norway” strongly emphasized the kinship of the two “Nordic” peoples, their unity in the fight against British imperialism and the “wild Bolshevik hordes.” Norwegian patriots responded by using the symbol of King Haakon and his image in their struggle. The king’s motto “Alt for Norge” was ridiculed in every possible way by the Nazis, who inspired the Norwegians that military difficulties were a temporary phenomenon and Vidkun Quisling - new leader nation.

Two walls in the gloomy corridors of the museum are devoted to the materials of the criminal case in which the seven main Gestapo men in Kristiansand were tried. In Norwegian judicial practice Such cases have never happened before - Norwegians tried Germans, citizens of another state, accused of crimes on Norwegian territory. Three hundred witnesses, about a dozen lawyers, and the Norwegian and foreign press participated in the trial. The Gestapo men were tried for torture and abuse of those arrested; there was a separate episode about the summary execution of 30 Russians and 1 Polish prisoner of war. On June 16, 1947, all were sentenced to death penalty, which was first and temporarily included in the Norwegian Criminal Code immediately after the end of the war.

Rudolf Kerner is the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo. Former shoemaker teacher. A notorious sadist, he had a criminal record in Germany. He sent several hundred members of the Norwegian Resistance to concentration camps, and was responsible for the death of an organization of Soviet prisoners of war discovered by the Gestapo in one of the concentration camps in southern Norway. He, like the rest of his accomplices, was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1953 under an amnesty declared by the Norwegian government. He left for Germany, where his traces were lost.

Next to the Archive building there is a modest monument to the Norwegian patriots who died at the hands of the Gestapo. In the local cemetery, not far from this place, lie the ashes of Soviet prisoners of war and British pilots shot down by the Germans in the skies over Kristiansand. Every year on May 8th, the flags of the USSR, Great Britain and Norway are raised on flagpoles next to the graves.

In 1997, the Archive building, from which the state archive moved to another location, was decided to be sold into private hands. Local veterans public organizations came out sharply against it, organized themselves into a special committee and ensured that in 1998 the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, transferred the historical building to the veterans' committee. Now here, along with the museum I told you about, there are offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN.

The commander of the 4th Field Army, Kluge, on June 29, 1941, without any fuss, gave the order - all women in military uniform- shoot. True, already on July 1, 1941, the OKH pulled him back, even for the Germans this was too much.

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. Torture, bullying, violence and executions were commonplace.

Below are several examples of how “civilized” Germans treated female military prisoners.

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

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

After the defeat of the Red Army units in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village “Mayak” not far from Kerch, Buryachenko was hiding in the house of a resident unknown girl in military uniform. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, you bastards! I'm dying for Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!” The girl was shot in the yard.

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

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

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

On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all prisoners were shot.

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

Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. Soldier from the 11th tank division Hans Rudhof testifies that in the winter of 1942 “... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written.”

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

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

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

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female medical workers were captured: doctors, nurses, and orderlies. First, they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. On February 23, 1943, they were brought to the city of Zoes. They lined them up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. A Jewish woman, a history teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, who pretended to be a Serbian. She enjoyed special authority among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm on behalf of everyone on German stated: “We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories.”

In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which it was impossible to sit down or move due to the cramped conditions. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the disobedient ones were sent to Ravensbrück. This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear- shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.

Reading about the facts of the savage attitude of the Nazis towards captured female Red Army soldiers, I would like to appeal to those who tirelessly churn out fake news about the alleged 100,000 raped German women in Germany by Soviet soldiers - it’s a shame, gentlemen, it’s a shame and it’s not good.

Executed female soldiers of the Red Army:

Alexey Kotov

I apologize if you encounter factual errors in today's material.

Instead of a preface:

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

This is the first eastern subgroup.

How are you, children?

How are you living, children?

We live well, our health is good. Come.

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

The rats ate my rations, so I didn’t bleed.

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

And I can donate blood.

They don't know what it is?

They forgot.

Eat, children! Eat!

Why didn't you take it?

Wait, I'll take it.

Maybe you won't get it.

Lie down, it doesn't hurt, it's like falling asleep. Get down!

What's wrong with them?

Why did they lie down?

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

A group of Soviet prisoners of war behind barbed wire

Majdanek. Poland

The girl is a prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac

KZ Mauthausen, jugendliche

Children of Buchenwald

Joseph Mengele and child

Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials

Children of Buchenwald

Mauthausen children show numbers etched into their hands

Treblinka

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

Some creatures use this photo as “proof” of hunger in Ukraine. It is not surprising that it is from Nazi crimes that they draw “inspiration” for their “revelations”

These are the children released in Salaspils

“Since the fall of 1942, masses of women, old people, and children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, Latgale were forcibly brought to the Salaspils concentration camp. Children from infancy to 12 years old were forcibly taken away from their mothers and kept in 9 barracks, of which the so-called 3 sick leaves, 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:

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

B) gave children poisoned coffee;

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

D) they injected children with child, female and even horse urine. Many children's eyes festered and leaked;

D) all children suffered from dysenteric diarrhea and dystrophy;

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

3) children who were crippled or injured were taken away to be shot.

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

According to preliminary data, over 500 children were exterminated in the Salaspils concentration camp in 1942, 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 that German fascists continued to supply the kulaks of Latvia with slaves, Russian children from the above-mentioned camps and exported directly to the volosts of the counties of Latvia, sold 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 German fascists from Riga, on October 4-6, they loaded infants and small children under 4 years of age from Riga onto the ship "Menden". orphanage and the Mayor's orphanage, where the children of executed parents were kept, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, prisons and partly from the Salaspils camp, and 289 small children were exterminated on that ship.

They were hijacked by the Germans to Libau, located there Orphanage infants. 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 various kinds 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 from the Salaspils concentration camp during German occupation 2,802 children were distributed:

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 based on card index data Social Department 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 and houses infants, children were taken into apartments, driven to the port of Riga, where they were loaded like cattle into the coal mines of steamships.

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

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

Abrensky district - 497
Ludza County - 732
Rezekne County and Rezekne - 2,045, incl. through Rezekne prison more than 1,200
Madona County - 373
Daugavpils - 3,960, incl. through Daugavpils prison 2,000
Daugavpils district - 1,058
Valmiera County - 315
Jelgava - 697
Ilukstsky district - 190
Bauska County - 399
Valka County - 22
Cesis County - 32
Jekabpils County - 645
Total - 10,965 people.

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

In the ditch

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

Children behind the wire

Soviet child prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk

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

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

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

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

Worker Ivan Morekhodov spoke about the attitude of the Finns towards the prisoners: “There was little food, and it was bad. The baths were terrible. The Finns showed no pity.”

In a Finnish concentration camp

Auschwitz (Auschwitz)

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kwoka, provided State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died from repression during World War II. In December 1942, a Polish Catholic woman, Czeslawa, originally from the town of Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz along with her mother. Three months later they both died. In 2005, photographer (and fellow prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not understand why she was here and did not understand what was being said to her. And then the kapo (prison guard) took a stick and hit her in the face. This German woman simply took out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful, young and innocent creature. She cried, but could not do anything. Before being photographed, the girl wiped tears and blood from her broken lip. Frankly, I felt as if I had been beaten, but I could not intervene. It would have ended fatally for me."

During the occupation of the territory of the USSR, the Nazis constantly resorted to various types of torture. All torture was permitted at the state level. The law also constantly increased repression against representatives of the non-Aryan nation - torture had an ideological basis.

Prisoners of war and partisans, as well as women, were subjected to the most brutal torture. An example of the inhuman torture of women by the Nazis is the actions that the Germans used against the captured underground worker Anela Chulitskaya.

The Nazis locked this girl in a cell every morning, where she was subjected to monstrous beatings. The rest of the prisoners heard her screams, which tore their souls apart. They carried Anel out when she lost consciousness and threw her like garbage into a common cell. The other captive women tried to ease her pain with compresses. Anel told prisoners that they hung her from the ceiling, cut out pieces of her skin and muscles, beat her, raped her, broke her bones and injected water under her skin.

In the end, Anel Chulitskaya was killed, last time her body was seen mutilated almost beyond recognition, her hands were cut off. Her body for a long time hung on one of the walls of the corridor as a reminder and warning.

The Germans resorted to torture even for singing in cells. So Tamara Rusova was beaten for singing songs in Russian.

Quite often, not only the Gestapo and the military resorted to torture. Women prisoners were also tortured german women. There is information that talks about Tanya and Olga Karpinsky, who were mutilated beyond recognition by a certain Frau Boss.

Fascist torture was varied, and each of them was more inhumane than the other. Often women were not allowed to sleep for several days, even a week. They were deprived of water, the women suffered from dehydration, and the Germans forced them to drink very salt water.

Women were very often underground, and the struggle against such actions was severely punished by the fascists. They always tried to suppress the underground as quickly as possible and for this they resorted to such cruel measures. Women also worked in the rear of the Germans, obtaining various information.

Most of the torture was carried out by Gestapo soldiers (the police of the Third Reich), as well as SS soldiers (elite soldiers subordinate to Adolf Hitler personally). In addition, the so-called “policemen” - collaborators who controlled order in the settlements - resorted to torture.

Women suffered more than men, as they succumbed to constant sexual harassment and numerous rapes. Often the rapes were gang rapes. After such abuse, girls were often killed so as not to leave traces. In addition, they were gassed and forced to bury corpses.

As a conclusion, we can say that fascist torture affected not only prisoners of war and men in general. The Nazis were the most cruel towards women. Many Nazi German soldiers frequently raped the female population of the occupied territories. The soldiers were looking for a way to “have fun.” Moreover, no one could stop the Nazis from doing this.