Nikolaus Wachsman - the history of the Nazi concentration camps. Life and death in Nazi concentration camps

Will the world notice even a drop, a fraction of that tragic world in which we lived?

From a letter from Zalman Gradowski dated September 6, 1944, found after liberation, in a flask buried in the territory of the Auschwitz-Brzezinka crematorium

It's not yet noon. The American units of the Allied forces, rapidly advancing through Germany, preparing to crush the last remnants of the Third Reich, were approaching a freight train standing alone on the rails in the area of \u200b\u200bthe huge SS facility near Munich. Coming closer, the soldiers saw something terrible: the cars were filled with corpses, there must be at least 2,000 of them. These are men, women and even children. Emaciated, twisted, mutilated, bloody limbs grappled among themselves among the straw, rags, excrement. Several soldiers, their faces gray with shock, turned away, burst into tears, some vomited. “It made us terribly sick, we just went crazy, the only thing we were capable of was clenching our fists,” one of the officers wrote the next day. The shocked soldiers, as they moved into the SS camp, found groups of prisoners one after another - there were about 32 thousand of them. These 32,000 people, people of various nationalities, nationalities, religious and political beliefs, survived, survived - citizens of almost 30 European countries. Staggering, barely moving, they wandered towards their deliverers. And many lay in overcrowded, dirty and stinking barracks, unable to get out. The eyes of the soldiers stumbled everywhere on the corpses - lifeless bodies lay between the barracks, ditches were littered with them, near the camp crematorium the corpses were stacked like logs. Well, those who are guilty of all this murder have not been here for a long time, they managed to carry off their feet, for the most part these are regular SS officers. Only a handful of scum from the lower ranks of the guard remained in the camp, a couple of hundred at most. Pictures of this horror soon spread all over the world, imprinted in the collective consciousness. To this day, concentration camps such as Dachau are often perceived by the film footage made by the liberators: the same trenches filled with bodies that have become familiar to millions, mountains of corpses and bones, the haggard faces of survivors looking at the cameras. But no matter how strong the impression these films make, they, however, are not able to tell us everything about Dachau. For this camp has a long history and its last, hellish circle ended only under the last salvos of World War II.

The prisoners get up after dark, and so every morning. None of them yet knows that the Second World War will break out the next day, but it will not affect them in any way, everyone will continue to follow the usual camp routine. After an insane crush - to be the first to reach the restroom, then to quickly swallow a ration of bread, then to clean the barracks - typing a step, the prisoners are already on their way to the camp square to line up for roll call. Nearly 4,000 people in striped prison uniforms, short or bare-cropped, stood at attention, fearfully waiting for the start of another exhausting day. With the exception of a group of Czechs, everyone here is German or Austrian, although often the only thing that connects them to each other is the language. Multi-colored triangles on a striped uniform serve here as signs of distinction - political prisoners, asocial elements, criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses or Jews. Behind the prisoners lined up in a row, one-story barracks were also located in rows. Each of the 34 barracks specially built for the detention of prisoners was about 35 meters long. Inside, the floors were polished, the bunks neatly tucked in. Escape is almost impossible: the barracks sector - 200 meters long and 100 wide - is surrounded by a moat and concrete wall, watchtowers with machine gunners and cordoned off with barbed wire, through which a high voltage current is passed. Behind the fences is a huge SS zone with over 220 buildings, including warehouses, workshops, living quarters and even a swimming pool. It is intended for approximately 3 thousand SS guards from the volunteer unit, united common idea- let prisoners through a well-established system of abuse and torture. Deaths are relatively rare here - but in August, four prisoners were gone. It is not enough, of course, to think about building a crematorium, so far the SS men do not have an urgent need for it. While the SS are limited to camps as a means of controlled terror, and not murder - a huge difference from the unbridled bacchanalia of death last days spring of 1945, as well as from the poor first attempts to turn Dachau into a concentration camp in the spring of 1933.

The first day of camp is drawing to a close. A cold evening a couple of months after the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor, who paved the way for Germany to Nazi dictatorship. The newly delivered prisoners (they did not even have time to give out a camp uniform) have dinner with bread and sausage, washed down with tea, in the building of the former factory management of the ammunition factory. In a few days, the building was hastily adapted for a makeshift camp, fenced off from the factory wasteland with crumbling buildings, piles of rubble and neglected driveways. There are 100, maybe 120 political prisoners here, mostly local communists from Munich. When they were most recently brought here in open trucks, the guards - 54 strong individuals - announced that all those arrested would be "detained for their own safety." It was not easy for the Germans of that time to understand what this meant. But - be that as it may - so far everything has been quite bearable: the guards are not from Nazi stormtroopers, but friendly-minded police officers: they easily chat with prisoners, distribute cigarettes to them and even sleep in the same building. The next day, prisoner Erwin Kahn wrote a long letter to his wife to tell him that all was well at Dachau. Both food and treatment, although he can't wait to be released. "I wonder how much longer this will go on." A few weeks later, Kahn was killed, shot dead by the SS, who had taken over from the police the security functions of the prisoners. He was one of the first nearly 40 thousand prisoners of Dachau who died there from the spring of 1933 to the spring of 1945.

Three days Dachau, three around the world. In just 12 years, the camp has changed beyond recognition. Prisoners, guards, conditions of stay changed - everything seemed to be completely different. The territory of the camp also looked completely different - in the late 1930s, the old factory buildings were demolished, replacing them with prefabricated panel barracks. Anyone who had been here in the spring of 1933 would not have recognized anything now. So why, after all, Dachau has changed so dramatically since March 1933? Why did it undergo continuous changes until the catastrophic end of World War II? What did this mean for his prisoners? What was known about this camp to people in the wild? The answers to these and other questions must be sought at the heart of the Nazi dictatorship, and one must ask not only about Dachau, but about the concentration camp system as a whole.

On April 27, 1940, the first Auschwitz concentration camp was created, designed for the mass extermination of people.

Concentration camp - places for forced isolation of real or perceived opponents of the state, political regime etc. Unlike prisons, ordinary camps for prisoners of war and refugees, concentration camps were created by special decrees during the war, the aggravation of the political struggle.

In fascist Germany, concentration camps are an instrument of mass state terror and genocide. Although the term "concentration camp" was used to refer to all Nazi camps, there were actually several types of camps, and the concentration camp was just one of them.

Other types of camps included labor and hard labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and POW camps. As the war progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was used in the concentration camps as well.

Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were created after the Nazis came to power in order to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The first concentration camp in Germany was established near Dachau in March 1933.

By the beginning of World War II, 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists were in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In subsequent years, Nazi Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of the European countries it occupied, turned into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people.

Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic; total extermination of Jews, Gypsies. To do this, they were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers and other means of mass extermination of people, crematoria.

(Military Encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing. Moscow. In 8 volumes - 2004. ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)

There were even special death camps (destruction), where the liquidation of prisoners went on at a continuous and accelerated pace. These camps were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that in these camps, people doomed to death had to spend literally a few hours. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor was built, turning several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.

Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of their freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled all aspects of their lives. Violators of the order were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, deprivation of food and other forms of punishment. Prisoners were classified according to their place of birth and reasons for imprisonment.

Initially, prisoners in the camps were divided into four groups: political opponents regime, representatives of "inferior races", criminals and "unreliable elements". The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, was subject to unconditional physical extermination and was kept in separate barracks.

They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, sent to the most exhausting work. Among the political prisoners were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists and social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, members of various religious sects. Among the "unreliable" were homosexuals, alarmists, dissatisfied, etc.

The concentration camps also housed criminals who were used by the administration as overseers of political prisoners.

All prisoners of the concentration camps were required to wear distinctive signs on their clothes, including a serial number and a colored triangle ("winkel") on the left side of the chest and right knee. (In Auschwitz, the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm.) All political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals - green, "unreliable" - black, homosexuals - pink, gypsies - brown.

In addition to the classification triangle, the Jews also wore yellow, as well as a six-pointed "Star of David". A Jew who violated racial laws ("racial defiler") had to wear a black border around a green or yellow triangle.

Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore a sewn letter "F", the Poles - "P", etc.). The letter "K" denoted a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter "A" denoted an intruder labor discipline(from German Arbeit - "work"). The feeble-minded wore the patch Blid - "fool". Prisoners who participated or were suspected of escaping were required to wear a red and white target on their chest and back.

The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where they were kept and destroyed in the most difficult conditions various methods and means people - 14,033 points.

Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.

The system of concentration camps in Germany was liquidated along with the defeat of Hitlerism, condemned in the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity.

Currently, Germany has adopted the division of places of forced detention of people during the Second World War into concentration camps and "other places of forced detention, under conditions equated to concentration camps," in which, as a rule, forced labor was used.

The list of concentration camps includes approximately 1,650 names of concentration camps of the international classification (main and their external teams).

On the territory of Belarus, 21 camps were approved as "other places", on the territory of Ukraine - 27 camps, on the territory of Lithuania - 9, Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).

On the territory of the Russian Federation, places of detention in the city of Roslavl (camp 130), the village of Uritsky (camp 142) and Gatchina are recognized as "other places".

List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)

1.Arbeitsdorf (Germany)
2. Auschwitz/Oswiecim-Birkenau (Poland)
3. Bergen-Belsen (Germany)
4. Buchenwald (Germany)
5. Warsaw (Poland)
6. Herzogenbusch (Netherlands)
7. Gross-Rosen (Germany)
8. Dachau (Germany)
9. Kauen/Kaunas (Lithuania)
10. Krakow-Plaschow (Poland)
11. Sachsenhausen (GDR‑FRG)
12. Lublin/Majdanek (Poland)
13. Mauthausen (Austria)
14. Mittelbau-Dora (Germany)
15. Natzweiler (France)
16. Neuengamme (Germany)
17. Niederhagen-Wewelsburg (Germany)
18. Ravensbrück (Germany)
19. Riga-Kaiserwald (Latvia)
20. Faifara/Vaivara (Estonia)
21. Flossenburg (Germany)
22. Stutthof (Poland).

Major Nazi concentration camps

Buchenwald is one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of the city of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external working teams. The largest ones: "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld) and "Ohrdruf" (in Thuringia), where the FAA projectiles were mounted. From 1937 to 1945 about 239 thousand people were prisoners of the camp. In total, 56 thousand prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured in Buchenwald.

The camp was liberated on April 10, 1945 by units of the 80th US division. In 1958, a memorial complex dedicated to him was opened in Buchenwald. heroes and victims of the concentration camp.

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau), also known by the German names Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945. in southern Poland, 60 km west of Krakow. The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz-1 (served as the administrative center of the entire complex), Auschwitz-2 (also known as Birkenau, "death camp"), Auschwitz-3 (a group of approximately 45 small camps created at factories and mines around general complex).

More than 4 million people died in Auschwitz, including more than 1.2 million Jews, 140 thousand Poles, 20 thousand Gypsies, 10 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. In 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Oswiecim-Brzezinka) was opened in Oswiecim.

Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, established in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had about 130 branches and external work teams located in Southern Germany. More than 250 thousand people from 24 countries were prisoners of Dachau; about 70 thousand people were tortured or killed (including about 12 thousand Soviet citizens).

In 1960, a monument to the dead was unveiled in Dachau.

Majdanek (Majdanek) - a Nazi concentration camp, was created in the suburbs of the Polish city of Lublin in 1941. It had branches in southeastern Poland: Budzyn (near Krasnik), Plaszow (near Krakow), Travniki (near Vepshem), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. in the camp, the Nazis destroyed about 1.5 million people of various nationalities. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on July 23, 1944. In 1947, a museum and research institute was opened in Majdanek.

Treblinka - Nazi concentration camps near the station. Treblinka in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland. In Treblinka I (1941-1944, the so-called labor camp), about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II (1942-1943, an extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the Nazis suppressed an uprising of prisoners, after which the camp was liquidated. The Treblinka I camp was liquidated in July 1944 as Soviet troops.

In 1964, on the site of Treblinka II, a memorial symbolic cemetery for the victims of fascist terror was opened: 17 thousand tombstones made of stones irregular shape, monument-mausoleum.

Ravensbruck (Ravensbruck) - a concentration camp was founded near the city of Furstenberg in 1938 as an exclusively female camp, but later a small camp for men and another one for girls were created nearby. In 1939-1945. 132,000 women and several hundred children from 23 European countries passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were destroyed. On April 30, 1945, the prisoners of Ravensbrück were liberated by the soldiers of the Soviet army.

Mauthausen (Mauthausen) - a concentration camp was established in July 1938, 4 km from the city of Mauthausen (Austria) as a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. Since March 1939 - an independent camp. In 1940, it was merged with the Gusen concentration camp and became known as Mauthausen-Gusen. It had about 50 branches scattered throughout the territory of the former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945) there were about 335 thousand people from 15 countries in it. Only according to the surviving records, more than 122 thousand people were killed in the camp, including more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops.

After the war, on the site of Mauthausen, 12 states, incl. Soviet Union, a memorial museum was created, monuments to those who died in the camp were erected.

On the eve of Victory Day, a correspondent of the EAN agency met with a former prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp. About what the prisoner managed to survive in German imprisonment, who helped him survive and whether there was humanity in Nazi Germany, read in our material.

Since the day Yevgeny Morozov, a prisoner of the concentration camp, was released from German captivity, 69 years have passed. All this time, every morning he wakes up with thoughts of the hellish time spent under the supervision of the Nazis, as if he relives these days again and again. The former prisoner of German captivity shared his memories with the correspondent of the EAN agency.

Films shot with eyes

Talking about the war, Yevgeny Ivanovich looks at the wall, at the floor, somewhere into the void, as if he sees through them terrible films shot before his eyes.

“Before the war, our family lived in Ukraine. When the war started, it seemed that she was somewhere. She came to us in 1942. My birthday was June 30, I turned 14, and on July 10 the Germans came to the city,” he recalls.

After this phrase, the old man's eyes become wet, and his eyes become tense and at the same time very sad.

“At that time I was in factory training. They didn’t take me to the war, they took only the elders. There was an installation - to leave nothing to the enemy. And the city was blown up pumping station. Part of the documents about the explosion remained with my father, they had to be transferred to Solikamsk. I decided to go with my father. We were given three carts. I don't know what they were loaded with, but they were very heavy. When the carts were dismantled, the fighters approached us. As it turned out, it was a machine gun company that had withdrawn from the battle. They retreated. The soldiers took the cart from us. the best horses and carried away the wounded. Having got rid of the cargo we did not need, we began to move faster, but we could not break away from the Germans - the Nazis threw pieces of rails and barrels at us from planes. We took the road that led to Stalingrad, but soon the Germans were ahead of us and cut off our path, we had to turn towards Rostov, ”continues Evgeny Ivanovich, and he begins to tremble.

On the road to hell

“We reached the Rostov village of Alekseevka. After it, they had to climb the hill, and then go to the Don for the crossing. But they did not have time - the Germans were there. There was no open road, and we had to wait for the evening. We hid in the garden under currant and gooseberry bushes. Mortars were fired at the area where we were sitting. During the shelling, I, my father and two other workers were sitting in a dilapidated shed, and a German with a light machine gun entered it. He ordered us to get up and leave. And we, like sheep, were driven to the center of the village to the church fence. The German began to line up everyone in columns. They announced that all the youth from Voroshilovgrad and Krasnodon should go home. Father said go. And I went. Later it became clear that the Nazis needed slaves,” said the former prisoner of the concentration camp and fell silent.

It was the most terrible road in his life. He turned out to be barefoot, without documents, food and warm clothes.

“We each had things put into our own bags. I left my bag along the way for the safety of one family of policemen, who retreated along with our troops. It turned out that they left, they took my luggage with them, and I was left with nothing. I wanted to find my father, and I began to try to catch up with the column of prisoners of war, but I could not. I walked for three days behind a barefoot column. After that, I realized that I had to return home, which means that I had to follow the same road that we had done with my father. The Germans put up announcements that you can only move along the central roads. Those who go along the country lanes will be immediately shot. And I went. I go, I see a group of Germans ahead. And they noticed me, calling: "Comm, comm." I went. The Nazis handed me two boxes of machine-gun belts tied with wire. Loaded like a donkey. And I carried the boxes until the evening. We went to the village. We stopped in the yard. The mistress of the house gave me boiled corn and told me that there were no Germans in the neighboring yard. And I, without throwing corn, ran away. I hid in a field with tall wheat and slept through the night. I went further and again met two Germans on the road. Heard a shot. I clearly heard the bullet pass by - I realized that they were shooting at me. I decided to pretend that this did not concern me, although my hamstrings were shaking. After each shot they laughed, but I was sad. When the road led me to a lowland and I stopped seeing the Germans, I only had the strength to sit down and cry., - Yevgeny Ivanovich finished with an effort, and large tears flowed from his moist green-blue eyes.

For a while he was silent, again looking somewhere into the void. And, looking at him, I also wanted to cry. He trembled, tears dripping onto his trembling hands.

In hell

After a long journey, 14-year-old Zhenya returned home to his mother and brother, who was 9 years younger. The city was under occupation. All over the streets were hung announcements that all residents of such and such an age should get together. The peers were going to go into the forest to the partisans. Eugene could not do the same - he was afraid to leave his relatives.

“Those whose guys are underground, the Germans threatened to shoot, and I went to school to collect. We were taken prisoner by our own teachers, who now served the Germans, ”says the former prisoner.

The captives were taken to Germany like cattle, upright in closed wagons. There was nowhere to sit. At the station, several overcrowded carriages were uncoupled and people were left locked up without food or water. The captives in them simply died of hunger and thirst. For several days these wagons with live and dead people stood at the station, and then the Germans came. They opened the train and sent all the surviving Russians into captivity, where they drove through the stages for a long time. So Yevgeny Morozov ended up in the German city of Braunschweig in a concentration camp.

“I came to the concentration camp barefoot. There were canvas shoes, but they fell apart. I tried to wrap my legs with some kind of rag, but it didn’t work out - there was no suitable material. It was saved by the fact that the camp was located at a metallurgical plant - during the day either the slag is warm, or some kind of pipe - you lean back and get warm. At 6 in the morning we were already at the checkpoint, we were brought and taken away according to the bill. If at work you are guilty - wait for punishment in the evening. And the punishment depends on the mood of the guard. If they want to frolic, several people will muzzle, make fun of me, but I was a little lucky, ”said Evgeny Ivanovich and smiled sadly.

“I was assigned to a group that works at night and is in the camp during the day. We couldn’t sleep on an empty stomach, and on occasion we always hung around near the kitchen in the hope of grabbing something edible - potato peelings or something else. Several Russian women worked in the kitchen, and they were led by the German Marta. From conversations it was possible to understand that they respect her and treat her well. I just had sores on my legs. She saw my bare legs, gave me potatoes and told me to come to her every day. I brought a bowler hat, and Martha poured food for me from the common bowl, ”recalls the concentration camp prisoner with gratitude.

In addition to potatoes and gruel, the German woman, risking her life, gave the prisoner a double portion of bread.

“At the distribution, she handed me bread in left hand while at this time I was taking the second piece in right hand. Behind Martha stood an armed officer. Very nasty. He left on eastern front hand and Russian organically did not digest. If he noticed, he shot right there. If not for Marta, I probably would not have lasted,” says Evgeny Morozov.

A lot of people in the concentration camp died of starvation. The emaciated bodies were dumped into the trenches behind the barracks. Two of these huge pits were full, and the third was filling up every day. The ditches were as wide as human height and 30 meters long.

Evgeny Ivanovich does not talk about how the Nazis killed prisoners of war. Silent about the fact that in Brauschweig were gas ovens that the corpses were taken into the trenches by the prisoners themselves. Only when he sees photographs of death camps on TV or on the Internet, he says that all this was in captivity.

For all three years, the former prisoner walked barefoot in the rags in which he ended up in a concentration camp. Both legs turned black, wounds and purulent blisters formed.

“There was a doctor in the camp, a healthy man, and two of his assistants - well-fed, cheeky girls. I went into the office, he says, get on the table and raise your hands. I picked it up, one girl grabbed her arms, the second her legs, and the doctor cut the blister without any freezing. I started screaming, swearing, then he picked something else, and I lost consciousness. They let him lie down for a couple of days, and then they drove him to work, ”recalls the prisoner.

The Nazis treated the prisoners inhumanly.

“The stomachs of all the prisoners were upset. Just think about what you need to go to the toilet - as you have not had time. In the morning, some poor fellow ran there and did not reach the toilet - he relieved himself on the way. The police were not too lazy to raise three barracks - they lined it up, gave a lecture, and then forced them to carry it to the toilet with their bare hands, ”said Yevgeny Ivanovich.

The Germans changed their attitude towards Russian prisoners of war after the battle for Stalingrad.

“They began to ask us about how we lived, what our fathers worked for. In a word, they understood that Russians are people too,” summed up the former prisoner.

Quiet victory

The news of the victory in the Braunschweig concentration camp came quietly, it was not as loud as it is shown in films. There were no loud cries of “Victory, victory!” There was no music and joyful soldiers. The Canadian and British military came to free the prisoners.

“We went into the barracks, giggled and left. That's all, ”recalls Evgeny Ivanovich.

After being released from captivity, many of Morozov's comrades were captured again, this time by the Soviets. It was impossible to prove that you were captured by chance, that you did not give up and did not retreat. But Yevgeny Ivanovich was lucky again - he was drafted into the army, and he returned to Russia already in the status of a soldier. But even in the army, and for many years after that, the former prisoner had to prove that he was just as Russian, that he was not to blame for anything.

“Every day dad remembers something from his military life, Marta, his comrades from the camp. Probably, for him they are still the closest relatives, ”says the daughter of Evgeny Morozov.

Photo: wikimedia.org, theglobaldispatch.com,telegraph.co.uk, pixabay.com

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

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

The place from which they did not return

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

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

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

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

Full donors for the Reich

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

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

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

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

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

Covering up traces

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

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

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

The truth pricks the eyes

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

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

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

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

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

Millions of people became victims of World War II. Not all of them died from military operations. Many have lost their lives in prison. From our article you can learn about special military prisons - concentration camps.

concept

Initially concentration camps specially created places for the isolated detention of the civilian population of the enemy country during hostilities (internment) were called. For the first time this type of restriction of freedom was used by the Spaniards against the Cubans (1895).

The concept of "concentration camp" became widespread and acquired a negative connotation after the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War ( South Africa, 1899-1902).

The British set up dozens of such places of detention with unbearable conditions that led to the death of at least 17,000 people.

In the modern sense of the concentration camp - special places detention of prisoners of war, political criminals and all objectionable ruling regime people (including national and sexual minorities).

In Russia, the largest was the system of forced labor camps of the Main Directorate of Camps (Gulag) created in 1930.

Nazi concentration camps

Germany recognized the existence of 1634 camps different type(labor, transit, death). Researchers believe that in fact there were at least 14 thousand of them. The list of large official German concentration camps of the Second World War (created directly in the country and in the occupied territories) is completely limited to 22 names. They are distinguished high level mortality of prisoners not only from starvation, disease, hard work but also as a result of medical experiments, torture, violence, blood transfusions, massacres.

The most famous of them:

Dachau : the first Nazi concentration camp (1933). Before the war, it was a labor camp for political prisoners and "lower" strata of society, threatening the purity of the Aryan race; known for holding terrible medical experiments over the prisoners;
Sachsenhausen : at least 100 thousand prisoners died; used in the training of guards;
Buchenwald : one of the largest; execution of prisoners of war, medical examiners;
Auschwitz (Poland) : massacres of Soviet prisoners of war, Jews; for the first time, a poisonous substance for future gas chambers was tested; about 1.5 million killed;
Majdanek (Poland) : massacres in gas chambers; large-scale execution of Jews (about 18 thousand);
Ravensbrück : women's concentration camp;
Jasenovac (Croatia) : massacres of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies;
Maly Trostenets (Belarus) : executions and burning of Soviet prisoners of war, Jews.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, there were 4 special death camps (Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka), specially created to kill certain groups of people (mainly Jews, gypsies).

Rice. 2. First death camp Chełmno.

On April 11, 1945, the US Army reached Buchenwald. By this time, the prisoners, who managed to receive a radio message about the approaching liberation troops, raised an uprising and achieved control over the camp. This date is officially declared the Day of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camp Prisoners.