Romanian captivity. Which German prisoners of war in the USSR lived comfortably

Unfortunately, information about the situation of Soviet prisoners of war in Romania in 1941-44. found very little. Fragmentary information indicates that their total number was approaching 50 thousand people, and that 17 (disputed figure) camps were organized on the territory of the country, both Romanian and German (I suppose in the second case there was a German administration and Romanian guards). Below is an excerpt from the memoirs of S.Z.Yatrupolo, a private of the 1905th regiment, who was captured in the Crimea in 1942, since 1943 was in a prisoner of war camp in Romania and escaped. Despite some inaccuracies (for example, the author calls the governorate of Transnistria created on the Soviet territory occupied by the Romanians a "state", etc.), the memoirs are very interesting regarding the situation of Soviet military personnel in Romanian captivity. Taken from the book: S.Z.Yatrupolo. "Memories of War". Military Literature, 2004.
As an illustration:
1. Help on the Soviet soldiers who died in Romanian captivity for the Allied Control Commission in Romania (1944).
2. Presumably: Soviet prisoners of war in one of the Romanian legeries.

“I don’t remember in what month of the 43rd there was a rumor among the prisoners that the natives of Moldova and the south of Ukraine would be sent to Romania.
These rumors are strange. In the absence of newspapers, radio, prisoners learned about many events from rumors; where they came from, I don't know.
So, this rumor came true, and somewhere, probably at the beginning of spring, a large group of prisoners, which included me, was sent to the Romanian camps.
The fact is that Hitler liked to give gifts to his loyal vassals, and Antonescu, the dictator of Romania, was especially noted. He took possession of Moldova and the southern regions of Ukraine, where he created the state of Transnistria with its capital in Odessa, which lasted hardly two years. And so the transfer of prisoners, and this was a slave labor force, was another gift from Antonescu.
But what a gift it turned out to be for us ... We received neither more nor less - life.
We were loaded into cattle cars and taken to Romania.
Behind was a German concentration camp with a Jesuit inscription on the gate: "To each his own", where Soviet prisoners were kept in unthinkable, inhuman conditions, and they were doomed to a painful death.
The train stopped at Durnesti station. We got out of the cars and could not believe our eyes. We were greeted as guests (!) with speeches, the words of which I did not understand, but I felt goodwill, friendliness. Right there on the platform stood field kitchens with hot porridge, and the priests blessed both us and this porridge. I will not forget this meeting. For the first time since captivity, I squared my shoulders...
And then... What's next? We were built in a column and sent to the camp, behind the "thorn".
In the very first weeks, two of my comrades and I tried to escape from the camp, but these were unprepared attempts, doomed to failure. We naively hoped that if we came to the countryside, then the peasants, oppressed by the "boyars" landowners, would help the Soviet soldiers, i.e. they will give you clothes and food for the first time. This myth dissipated just like the rest. In the very first hut where we arrived, we were handed over to the gendarmes.
Soon a group of prisoners of war, including myself, were sent to work in a German work camp. He stood on the banks of the Danube, near the large Chernavodsky bridge, under which the oil pipeline passed, so he was especially well guarded, anti-aircraft guns hit every plane that appeared in the sky.
A railway line was laid almost to the river itself, wagons with cargo left along it, which came along the Danube on barges.
The commandant of the camp was a German of Polish origin. Haughty, vicious and vindictive, he passed under our nickname "dog krev".
Barges came one after another along the river, most often with coal, we unloaded it from the hold and carried it in baskets to the railway platforms.
I remember such a case. One day my comrades told me that the owner of the barge we were unloading was Greek. (Although when I was captured I called myself a Ukrainian by the name of Buryak, my closest friends knew my true nationality).
Catching the moment when the guard could not see me, I went up to the owner and spoke to him in Greek. Spiros (that was his name) was surprised and treated me very cordially, took me to the cabin, treated me to a cup of coffee (!), fed me and gave me something, most importantly tobacco (this was the best gift for me and my friends) . During the two or three days that this barge was being unloaded, I, observing the utmost caution, communicated with him and his family. Once he offered to take me in the hold to Yugoslavia, where he was going. My heart beat with joy, because the thought of escaping did not leave me. But on reflection, I thanked him, but still rejected this tempting offer, made, of course, from the heart, saying that I did not want to endanger him. It was true, but the main thing was something else. I understood that I needed to run not alone, but as a group, and not to go to the flat part from the Danube, where there was no chance of hiding from the Germans, but to the mountains to the partisans led by Broz Tito (and we knew this)!
So, the barge with the handsome Spyros left without me, and I was left with a few packs of tobacco, warm memories and a shadow of doubt whether I did the right thing.
Days followed days. Working on the river, we did not have the opportunity to swim, wash, we were strictly watched.
From hard work, my leg ached, the temperature rose. I was admitted to a "hospital", or rather, a first-aid post with two beds. The main thing is that they washed me well there. And the doctor from the prisoners, a Hungarian Jew, treated me, he had a yellow six-pointed star sewn on his sleeve. He was supervised by a German doctor. The treatment ended suddenly, with the arrival of the camp commandant. "Psya Krev" insisted that I be returned to the barracks, promising, however, to give me an easier job.
Once again I found myself among my comrades in misfortune. During the day we worked, and at night we were locked in a barrack for a hundred people (he was alone in this small camp), where the bunks were three stories high.
The conversations were about peaceful life, about beloved women, about families and others, all sorts of things.
The thought of running away never left me. In conclusion, everyone dreams of freedom, but not everyone is ready to overcome the inertia of a painful, but settled life, to change the passive expectation of liberation into active actions, not everyone is ready for the dangers and risks associated with escape.
There were four of us ready. The most colorful figure in the camp was Andrey - a handsome, cheerful joker, with a mischievous look a little on the roll out of his gray eyes. When in the camp in Vorkuta (where he was serving a term for embezzling a significant amount of state money while working as a conductor on the railway) the admission of volunteers to the army was announced, he went without hesitation. He fought bravely, with passion, but that was how fate turned out - he was surrounded with a unit, captured and again found himself behind barbed wire. He arrived in Romania on the same train as me. I liked his open character, alien to despondency, I guessed in him a good comrade and reliable ally. We settled down on the bunk next to him and began to conspire about escaping.
We immediately decided that we should not gather a large group, no more than four reliable guys. Third, we took Ivan, the same one who was already with me on the run. He ended up in this camp in the summer of 1941, a native of Moldova easily learned the Romanian language, which was very useful in our wanderings. And the fourth - Mitya is the youngest, serious, silent, reliable.
It was necessary to prepare well for the escape, and Nikolai helped us with this. He was a carpenter by profession and belonged to a privileged stratum among the prisoners, which included: a doctor, translator, cook, locksmith and others who made up the camp staff. This group was not engaged in general work and enjoyed relative freedom. They lived in a common barrack, but as if in a separate compartment, which we called "gentry". In his free time, Nikolai made sandals with wooden soles; they were in great demand among German officers as souvenirs.
By the way, in the German camps, prisoners wore wooden clogs, and when the column marched in formation, the roar was incredible.
So, we entrusted our plan to this Nikolai, and although he himself did not join, he fully sympathized with us and provided invaluable assistance in preparing the escape. He got us tongs to cut the "thorn", provided us with clothes and helped us plan our escape.
We were very lucky with provisions: a train with food arrived by rail to be sent to the German officers on the front line, and for several days we reloaded them onto a barge. What was not there! Biscuits, ham, lard, sausage, chocolate, oranges, etc. And although Psya Krev himself supervised the unloading, we still managed to pull off something and put it aside for the campaign. All these products were packed in solid bags, which also went into business - we sewed chic pants out of them. The situation was more complicated with the upper part of the clothes, but even here a way out was found, our ingenuity knew no bounds. We wore jackets made of soldier's cloth with a lining, the camp number was written on the back with oil paint - 6. It was necessary to turn the back so that this number was inside, behind the lining. This was done to us by Nikolai and his friends from the "noble" compartment.
When everything was ready, the four of us, one by one, left the barracks, as if out of necessity. It was a little light outside. We cut the wire and left the camp without interference. The fact is that there was no notorious bucket in the barracks, and it was not locked from the outside. The camp commandant believed that the three rows of barbed wire that covered the camp area and four watchtowers at its corners were a sufficient guarantee against possible escapes. But even here we managed to outwit him. We chose a time when the night sentries left their towers, and the day guards were still fast asleep, like the rest of the camp.
Having gone free, we went to the Danube and hid in the floodplains. After some time, which seemed to us endless, guards with dogs ran past us. They ran very fast, fearing that we had gone far, and we were sitting very close in the reeds and celebrating our first victory ... "

Anton Brainer

The number of Romanian prisoners in the Soviet Union after World War II is not known with accuracy.

The number of Romanian prisoners in the Soviet Union after World War II is not known with accuracy. Until August 23, 1944, when Romania joined the anti-Hitler coalition, approximately 165,000 Romanian soldiers were missing, most of them in Soviet captivity. After August 23, Soviet troops disarmed and captured approximately 100,000 Romanian soldiers. According to official Soviet sources, which should be considered with great caution, in 1946 there were 50,000 Romanian prisoners in the Soviet camps.

The history of these people, confused in the Soviet expanses, will most likely remain not fully understood. Despite the fact that the Soviet archives have opened their doors, a huge number of documents, some of which have not yet been declassified, complicate the work of the historian. Romanian specialists are trying to recreate the picture of the past as best as possible, one of them being Vitalie Varatek, author of the study "Romanian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union / Documents 1941-1956."

Varatek told us about the difficulties he encountered in the Moscow archives in trying to establish the real number of prisoners.

“Today we don’t even know the exact number of Romanian prisoners of war. In the language of the documents of that time, the term "missing" was used. If these people, when forcing some obstacle, such as a river, fell into the water, no one else knew what was happening to them. One of my colleagues, with whom we worked together on a study, tried to reconstruct the list of those killed in the battle of Gypsy, and he told me that even to this day it is impossible to accurately determine the number of dead, captured and missing. These people are included in the category of missing, despite the fact that no one knows what happened to them. And this is only in the battle on the Prut River. And what happened on the Don, or when crossing the Dnieper, or near Stalingrad? ".

The status of Romanian and other prisoners of war was determined by the Soviet interpretation of international law as it relates to prisoners of war. Vitalie Varatek. “Prisoners of war in the USSR had a peculiar status, which followed in general terms the provisions of the Geneva Convention of 1929. However, there were also differences, given that the Soviet state was a state that was officially ruled by the principle of class struggle, and a different approach was applied to officers. The Soviet Union used its own interpretation of the question of using the labor of prisoners of war. If the Geneva Convention established that the labor of prisoners could not be used in the military industry, or at any military installations, then the Soviet Union did not take this into account. So, too, did Nazi Germany.”

The toughest regime in the camps was the diet. Vitalie Varatek believes that, despite the enormous ideological pressure, Soviet doctors claimed that a regime inappropriate for life was applied to prisoners of war.

“A lot of prisoners died from malnutrition. Russian historians paid a lot of attention to this fact. One researcher from Volgograd, Dr. Sidorov, even published an extensive study on the evolution of POW rations throughout the war. He showed that decisions taken mainly in the second half of 1942 led to the death of many thousands of people. Being in an exceptionally difficult economic situation, and being forced to buy large quantities of grain in the United States, the Soviet state could not afford to provide prisoners of war with a minimum ration. After the number of prisoners of war experienced a great increase, that is, after the battles of Stalingrad and on the Don, in the first months of 1943, a medical examination was even requested. Despite the cruelty of the political leadership, when every citizen trembled in the face of proletarian anger, there were Soviet doctors who said that the officially prescribed food ration could not ensure a normal life. According to their calculations, the number of calories received by prisoners of war could only be enough to survive in conditions of immobility, lying down. What to say about when they were forced to work.”

The life of prisoners of war in Soviet camps was terrible. Despite the gloomy prospects, people continued to hope, and even tried, to do something. Vitalie Varatek.

“I saw the statistics of dead and sick prisoners of war. But there is a more interesting statistic - those who escaped. Along with the names of those who escaped, there are also data on those who were caught and those who were not. 3.2% of those who fled were not caught, and most of those who were not caught were Romanians. I wondered why? An Italian researcher tried to answer this question and refers to the so-called Romanian mafia in the ranks of prisoners of war in the USSR. It is absolutely true that the first large party, more than 30 thousand prisoners of war, consisted of Romanians taken prisoner at Stalingrad. We even found civilian evidence. An elderly woman says that in the morning, when she passed the camp, on her way to school, she stopped near the barbed wire fence and watched how the prisoners of war lined up. The Romanians crossed themselves, and the Germans pointed their fingers at them and chuckled. And then I realized that the Romanians more easily adapted to those harsh conditions, due to their Orthodox character. They found more understanding through this principle.”

The generation of Romanian prisoners of war became a generation of harsh changes imposed on the Romanian society by the communist regime, against the backdrop of the humanitarian crisis of the war. And the losses that Romania suffered in the USSR, and the suffering of its prisoners of war, were never made up.

Romanian soldiers, 1943

Varatek told us about the difficulties he encountered in the Moscow archives in trying to establish the real number of prisoners.

The life of prisoners of war in Soviet camps was terrible. Despite the gloomy prospects, people continued to hope, and even tried, to do something. Vitalie Varatek.

The Germans began to fall into Soviet captivity in droves after the Battle of Stalingrad. In general, the conditions of their stay there could not be called favorable, but there were those who were kept in relative comfort and had a number of privileges.

shock labor

According to the Soviet archives, more than 2.3 million soldiers of the enemy army were taken prisoner. German sources claim that there were almost 3.5 million of them. Many of them did not return to their homeland, unable to endure the harsh life in the camps.

Privates and junior officers were required to work, and their standard of living depended on how they performed their duties. The drummers lived best of all, who received higher salaries and a number of other benefits.

There was a fixed salary rate - 10 rubles, but a prisoner who overfulfilled the norm by 50-100% could receive twice as much. A particularly privileged position was occupied by foremen from among the former Wehrmacht servicemen. Their level of allowance could reach up to 100 rubles. They had the right to keep funds in savings banks, to receive parcels and letters from their homeland.

In addition, the drummers were given free soap. If their clothes wore out, the administration also changed them in a timely manner. From 1947, shops were opened in the camps where workers could buy milk and meat, as well as buffets where they were served hot meals and coffee.

closer to the kitchen

Those prisoners who managed to get into the kitchen also enjoyed preferences. Usually Austrians, Romanians or Czechs were taken there, so the Germans tried to hide their origin. Private Wehrmacht Hans Moeser recalled that those who worked in the kitchen tried to supply the best food to “their own”, tried to give them the best rations, and use good food when cooking.

At the same time, for others, the ration, on the contrary, could be cut. For example, the daily ration of a prisoner from among the rank and file, according to the norm, was 400 grams of bread, 100 grams of cereals, the same amount of fish, as well as 500 grams of potatoes and vegetables. Admitted to the kitchen, he increased the ration of bread and potatoes with vegetables by 200 grams for “his own”, respectively, reducing portions for others by the same amount. Sometimes conflicts arose because of this, and then guards were assigned to the food vendors.

However, in most camps, rations were almost always less than declared and were not issued in full. Due to difficulties with food supply, the daily allowance was often reduced, but no one deliberately starved the Germans. Unlike the Germans, who abused prisoners of war in the death camps.

With comfort

As the captured German pilot Heinrich Einsiedel recalled, staff officers and generals lived best in Russian captivity. The first representatives of the senior command staff of the Wehrmacht were captured in February 1943 - only 32 people, including the commander of the 6th Army, Friedrich Paulus.

The vast majority of generals were kept in fairly comfortable conditions. According to Boris Khavkin, editor of the Russian Academy of Sciences magazine Modern and Contemporary History, the Wehrmacht's senior officers were mostly stationed in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, in the Voikovo sanatorium in the Ivanovo region, in Suzdal and in Dyagtersk in the Sverdlovsk region.

So, in camp No. 48 in Voikovo, by the beginning of 1947, there were 175 German generals. They had spacious rooms at their disposal, where they lived in groups of three. The camp had a landscaped park with flower beds and walking paths, in which they were allowed to walk freely. Nearby there was a garden where the generals could work if they wished. The vegetables grown there then ended up on their table.

In accordance with the “Regulations on Prisoners of War” of 1941, the highest officers in captivity retained the right to wear uniforms and insignia, were provided with good medical care, and had the right to correspond with relatives.

The order of the NKVD of June 5, 1942 established a monetary allowance for generals at 50 rubles per month. On the day they received 600 grams of bread, 125 grams of fish, 25 grams of meat. More than 20 products in total. In addition, the “privileged prisoners” were entitled to 20 cigarettes and three packs of matches every day.

All these small pleasures did not concern those who served in the SS. So, the commander of the 1st Panzer SS division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" Wilhelm Monke was first in Butyrskaya, then in Lefortovo prison, and then was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He served his sentence in the famous Vladimir Central.

important prisoner

Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus was also kept in the Voikovo sanatorium. The warlord's bowel cancer progressed, so he was provided with the best medical care, diet food was prescribed. On holidays, the field marshal was allowed a little beer. In addition, Paulus was engaged in creativity - woodcarving, since there was plenty of material around. It was in captivity that the military leader sat down to write memoirs.

“The third battalion of the Volkssturm was formed in the camp. Berlin was surrounded by Soviet troops. On April 25, a historic meeting with the Americans took place on the Elbe, which we learned about the very next day.
From that day on, the committee decided to organize night duty in blocks. The SS men, anticipating their end, were preparing to break into the camp with machine guns. They no longer had any other means of destroying the camp - everything was swallowed up by the front.
In the premises where the SS guards were located, there was a general booze all night long. Wild cries, cries and songs were heard from there until the morning.
The Committee became aware that they had not had any connection with Himmler for a long time and were trying to decide their own fate. Most of the SS leadership was very determined.
But not all of them thought the same way. After the release, it was said that the deputy commandant of Gusen, SS Hauptsturmführer Jan Beck, in the midst of another drunken orgy, stood at the gate of the gate and announced that the rest would enter the camp only through his corpse.
It was so or not - it's hard to say now, but the little that we knew about Beck - he himself sat under Hitler - allowed us to believe this.

Gusen concentration camp, also known as Mauthausen-Gusen. Austria.

As a result, the committee made a rather passive and not the best decision - in the event of a threat of mass execution, there was no other alternative for us than to throw the whole world at machine guns. Some will have to die while others will survive. Otherwise, everyone will die.
An organized uprising in Gusen could not be carried out. The Committee was well aware of this: the Polish Officers' League never coordinated its actions with a small international committee, but more often did the opposite, precisely in the strict narrow national interests.
All this threatened at the last moment with civil strife. The Polish League was simply afraid of the uprising of the prisoners and would never have allowed it. This was confirmed by subsequent events.
In addition, the Poles worked on the maintenance of the SS barracks and in other camp life services and knew well where the weapons were stored.
Then they vigilantly watched so that no one in the camp, except for the Poles, could get a weapon every day and hour "X". This was the tragedy of Goosen.
In Mauthausen, the nationalist Poles were opposed by a more united international brotherhood, and there were more supporters of the new people's Poland.

The main goal of the Gusen I, II and III concentration camps was "destruction through labor". Karl Chmielewski, SS Hauptsturmführer (he is on the right in the picture) was distinguished by the greatest cruelty. At one time he was commandant of the Herzogenbusch concentration camp.
After the war, he went into hiding for a long time. In 1961, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 282 people. In 1979 he was released for health reasons. Died in 1991.

Everything was different with us, and therefore every night until morning we stood at the wide open windows - each on his own block - without moving, sensitively listening to all sorts of sounds from the gate, waiting for everything.
We caught every drunken yell, every random command, every clapping, crackling, clinking of broken bottles, single shots. At any moment we are ready to throw ourselves at machine guns - we have no choice! The whole camp did not sleep. Everyone expected any, but - denouement.
The SS did not waste time: at night they drank, and during the day they covered up the traces of their criminal activities. Feverishly they burned documents, "Books of the Dead" ("Totenbucher"), correspondence, reports, card index sheets, command orders, instructions and various brochures.

Soviet prisoners of war. Goosen, October 1941

Finally, on May 2, on the day of the final fall of Berlin, our fate was decided: the leadership of Mauthausen transferred the protection of the camps to other structures, and the SS men were to go to the front against the Red Army.
On the Enns River, the SS division "Dead Head", or rather what was left of it, was still trying to hold the defense. On the night of May 2-3, the SS left the camp.
So, on May 2, officer Kern from the Vienna security police became the new commandant of Mauthausen, and at the same time Gusen, and paramilitary police units of the firefighters of Vienna began to guard the camps.
They turned out to be mobilized elderly people dressed in blue uniforms, and it immediately became clear to us that these "warriors" were not going to shoot at us.

The central gate (entrance) in the Gusen concentration camp.

In connection with the changed situation, the committee also made a new decision: we got in touch with each of these peace-loving elders and concluded a gentlemen's agreement with them - we undertake to sit quietly in the camp until the arrival of the allied or Soviet troops, so that they, our guards, served quietly.
In return for this, they promised to fulfill our request so that not a single "mouse" would disappear from the camp, to which they immediately agreed.
There were still many SS accomplices in the camp, and they did not have to run away from the camp - they were awaited by the court. By the way, the third battalion of the Volkeshturm, dressed in a yellow uniform, was not sent to the front in a hurry, and he got stuck in the camp. The "volunteers" themselves did not rush to the front, but even in the camp they felt uncomfortable.

The last day of Mauthausen and Gusen has come - May 5, 1945! He was sunny and bright. In the morning, everyone felt that something was about to happen today.
Artillery cannonade rumbled not far away, but only in the east. In the west, American troops advanced without a fight. Whose troops will liberate the camp? This is not indifferent to many: some of us were waiting for the Americans, others for the Russians.
By noon, everyone who could climbed onto the roofs of the blocks and lay there, hoping to be the first to see their liberators. Kostya and I were on the roof of Unit 29.
There were no conversations. Everyone lay silent. We weren't the only ones waiting. The Poles were waiting, the "greens", kapos, blocs who remained in the camp were waiting, the "fighters" of the Volkesturm were waiting, the guards were waiting - everyone was waiting.

Austria. Liberation.

Who practically could survive in a concentration camp? The general opinion of eyewitnesses and participants in the events described above is as follows:
1. Individual prisoners from among the Germans and Austrians could survive, who were lucky enough to survive one or two months of camp existence and during this time achieve any privileged positions among the camp personnel or get into a working team under a roof, which gave chances for survival.
2. The one who himself directly participated in the destruction of prisoners, being involved in the camp administration within the framework of self-government, could survive.
3. Those prisoners could survive whose professional suitability turned out to be necessary: those who spoke various languages, knew typing, draftsmen, doctors, orderlies, artists, watchmakers, carpenters, locksmiths, mechanics, construction workers and others. They were involved in various work to service the SS and economic services of the camp.

4. Of the prisoners of non-German nationality in the period 1940-1942, only a few had a chance to survive this time: either they were very good specialists, or they were especially beautiful and young.
Then they got work under a roof and there they hid during the working day from constant surveillance by the SS men and kapos. Basically in those years it could only be Poles and Spaniards.
5. As a matter of national solidarity, the surviving Poles and Spaniards, in every opportunity, contributed to the improvement of the situation of their compatriots, and thereby expanded the circle of prisoners who would later be able to survive the camp.
6. Some Russian prisoners had a chance, who, starting from 1943, were actively helped by the Austrian and German communists, involving them in daily activities along the line of anti-fascist resistance in the camp. If any of us survived, it is only thanks to these wonderful comrades who risked their lives to help us.
7. Finally, here should be included those prisoners who arrived in Guzen shortly before the liberation. They survived because the camp was liberated. This category made up the most significant percentage of those released.
These are participants in the Warsaw Uprising, Yugoslav partisans evacuated from Auschwitz, who were lucky to get to Guzen alive, and many others.

Austria. Liberation.

From the personal observations of many former prisoners who were lucky enough to be released, the following conclusions arise:

1. The most enduring to the moral and physical difficulties of existence in a concentration camp were Russians, Poles and Spaniards. They have a highly developed national soldering.
They always tried to encourage and support each other. They knew where and who their enemy was, and they never compromised with the enemy. I'm talking about the majority, whose position in life was firm, unshakable.
In addition, the Russians and the Spaniards together represented a single whole in their political convictions. The difficulties of the physical plane - the climate - the Spaniards compensated for with steadfast moral qualities acquired during the fierce battle with fascism in 1936-1939.
The Poles were spoiled by the officer league, which divided them into the privileged class and the common people - in the conditions of a concentration camp, this was not the best decision. Many Poles were helped by parcels from home, despite being stolen by the camp authorities.

Austria. Liberation.

2. Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks turned out to be somewhat weaker. The Greeks and Italians lived in the camp for a short time due to the harsh, according to their concepts, climate. Guzen is located at the latitude of Dnepropetrovsk - for us Russians, this is the south. The French and Belgians endured the camp conditions hard and died from furunculosis and general dystrophy.
3. It is more difficult to judge the Germans. The "Greens" were still Aryans, and no one ever destroyed them on purpose. It was more difficult for the "Red" Germans, the Nazis destroyed them, but this is their land, their language, fellow countrymen, relatives could be nearby - virtually everyone who lived until 1943 had hope for survival, and before that they lived not much better than and the rest.
Most of our commanders and political workers, communists and Komsomol members served as an example of high morale, no matter how this statement cuts the ear today - you can’t throw words out of the song!
A lonely, bewildered person could not survive in the most difficult conditions of a Nazi concentration camp. Those who knew how to live in a team, obey it and participate in the common struggle survived camp conditions better than others.

Austria. Liberation.

Let's go back to May 5, 1945. By 13.30 most of the prisoners had gathered on the appell square. By this time, those who were on the roofs had already noticed an American armored car approaching the camp.
The liberation of the camp happened in an unusually simple, completely prosaic and purely American way: an armored car drove into the square, either a soldier or another lower rank jumped out of it, shouted: "You are free!" made an appropriate gesture with his right hand and left.
True, the soldiers did one good deed, ordering the blue uniforms of our symbolic guards to go down, throw their carbines into the ditch and go home, which they willingly did.
In a couple of minutes, none of them were there anymore - the old men appeared so agile that it was only a pleasure!

Austria. Liberation.

Major Ivan Antonovich Golubev addressed us with a solemn speech. He congratulated everyone on their liberation, who lived to see this bright day, said that fascism is tenacious and will be on our way more than once.
We all yelled joyfully in response to Golubev's greeting when one of our people broke the latest news: the Poles aimed a machine gun at the camp, closed the exit from the camp, setting up their armed posts around Guzen.
As it turned out later, they quickly managed to pick up the carbines thrown by the guards into the ditch, but they also had other weapons.
Our euphoria ended instantly - the age-old question arose: "What to do?" Having lined up in a marching column led by Major Golubev, we resolutely moved to the appell square and stopped there at a decent distance from the gate.

Golubev, taking two or three people with him, went to the Poles to clarify the situation: it was necessary to get in touch - there was nothing else left.
Ivan Antonovich was gone for a long time. Finally the truce returned. We closely surrounded them, joyfully noting to ourselves that they were not excited and kept calm. "Everything is all right," we thought, and Golubev, without haste, began to tell:
- The Poles received us quite friendly and explained the situation as follows. As long as the buzz continues in the camp, it is better to keep the gate closed, at least for today.
The machine gun was set up "for the bulldozer", so that people would not fool around in joy and - you never know what anyone wants, but it will not take long to deploy it.
We consulted with the French and Spaniards and made a joint decision - tomorrow everyone who wants to leave the camp in an organized column. The French, Belgians and Spaniards have already announced this.
We also offer you Russians to come with us to Linz: the Americans said that you would all be handed over for repatriation. The Soviets do not let anyone through the demarcation line to their side, since the Vlasovites were the first to rush, posing as former prisoners.

Memorial to the victims of the Gusen concentration camp.

After the national anthems and rallies were played on the appell square, groups of young Russian and Polish prisoners who arrived with the last transports from other concentration camps, supported by many of Gusen's "old-timers", suddenly began a targeted revenge action.
For many of us who did not participate in this action, it was both unexpected, and disgusting, and terrible. Everything that the prisoners had accumulated during their stay in the camp spilled out, and people lost all control over themselves.
A wave of terrible lynching swept through the camp, falling mainly on the German and Austrian criminal camp personnel - against all who served the SS, against kapos and blocs.
They were dragged out from where they hid and literally torn to pieces. At the same time, part of the prisoners who spoke German also suffered, as well as the "fighters" of the third battalion of the Volkssturm, who were stuck in the camp.
They feverishly threw off their yellow uniforms and even tried to hide in cesspools, sewage and other similar places, but they were found everywhere and killed in the most ruthless way.

Memorial to the victims of the Gusen concentration camp.

Groups of former prisoners, barely able to stand on their own feet, brutally carried out lynching. It came to monstrous scenes, when everyone tried to reach at least one of the victim's intestines and pull it out of the womb, after which he himself fell from exhaustion.
God forbid to see what was happening in Guzen: it was not for nothing that the Polish officers installed a machine gun on the gate. By evening, it became known that in Guzen-2, where there was no such machine gun, the Russians, along with the Germans, cut down some of the Poles who had guilty before them in other concentration camps.
Until night, the Poles cut in Guzen-2 were taken and carried to Guzen-1 for revir. More practical people, at the same time, did something completely different: they broke blocks, made fires, dragged potatoes from underground piles and boiled them ... " - from the memoirs of a sergeant of the 150th rifle division D.K. Levinsky.

Former prisoners of the Gusen concentration camp and soldiers of the 11th US Armored Division at the body of the murdered guard.