The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many lost loved ones who were killed or tortured. In the article we will look at the Nazi concentration camps and the atrocities that happened on their territories.

What is a concentration camp?

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

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

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

Life in the camp

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

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

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

The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was then used in the German textile industry. The doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, at whose hands thousands of people died. He studied mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they received organ transplants from each other, blood transfusions, and sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. Performed sex reassignment surgery.

All fascist concentration camps became famous for such abuses; we will consider the names and conditions of detention in the main ones below.

Camp diet

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

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

Bread was handed out, and the rest of the products were used for cooking, which consisted of soup (issued 1 or 2 times a day) and porridge (150 - 200 grams). It should be noted that such a diet was intended only for working people. Those who, for some reason, remained unemployed received even less. Usually their portion consisted of only half a portion of bread.

List of concentration camps in different countries

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

• In Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;
• Austria - Mauthausen, Amstetten;
• France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
• Poland - Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
• Lithuania - Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
• Czechoslovakia - Kunta Gora, Natra, Hlinsko;
• Estonia - Pirkul, Pärnu, Klooga;
• Belarus - Minsk, Baranovichi;
• Latvia - Salaspils.

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

Salaspils

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

Children in this camp were not only kept separately from adults and exterminated en masse, but were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Every day, about half a liter of blood was taken from all children, which led to the rapid death of donors.

Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then burned their corpses. It was used for medical research, which killed more than 100,000 people. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. Torture of children was a routine activity here, carried out according to a schedule with the results carefully recorded.

Experiments on children

Testimony of witnesses and results of investigations revealed the following methods of extermination of people in the Salaspils camp: beating, starvation, arsenic poisoning, injection of dangerous substances (most often to children), surgical operations without painkillers, pumping out blood (only from children), executions, torture, useless heavy labor (carrying stones from place to place), gas chambers, burying alive. In order to save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed only with rifle butts. The atrocities of the Nazis in the concentration camps surpassed everything that humanity had seen in modern times. Similar attitude towards people cannot be justified, because it violates all conceivable and inconceivable moral commandments.

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

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

Salaspils is truly the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because the atrocities described above are not all the tortures that the prisoners were subjected to. Thus, in winter, children brought in barefoot and naked were driven half a kilometer to a barracks, where they had to wash themselves in ice water. After this, the children were driven in the same way to the next building, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. Moreover, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. Everyone who survived this procedure was also subjected to arsenic poisoning.

Infants were kept separately and given injections, from which the child died in agony within a few days. They gave us coffee and poisoned cereals. About 150 children died from experiments per day. The bodies of the dead were carried out in large baskets and burned, dumped in cesspools, or buried near the camp.

Ravensbrück

If we start listing Nazi women's concentration camps, Ravensbrück will come first. This was the only camp of this type in Germany. It could accommodate thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war it was overcrowded by fifteen thousand. Mostly Russian and Polish women were detained; Jews numbered approximately 15 percent. There were no prescribed instructions regarding torture and torment; the supervisors chose the line of behavior themselves.

Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number. Race was also indicated on clothing. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in the post-war years, 2-3 refugee families lived in them) there were approximately three hundred prisoners, who were housed on three-story bunks. When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were herded into these cells, all of whom had to sleep on the same bunks. The barracks had several toilets and a washbasin, but there were so few of them that after a few days the floors were littered with excrement. Almost all Nazi concentration camps presented this picture (the photos presented here are only a small fraction of all the horrors).

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

Gradually, Ravensbrück was equipped with a crematorium, like all Nazi concentration camps. Gas chambers (nicknamed gas chambers by prisoners) appeared towards the end of the war. Ashes from crematoria were sent to nearby fields as fertilizer.

Experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. In a special barracks called the "infirmary", German scientists tested new medications, pre-infecting or crippling experimental subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered from what they had endured until the end of their lives. Experiments were also conducted with irradiating women with X-rays, which caused hair loss, skin pigmentation, and death. Excisions of the genital organs were carried out, after which few survived, and even those quickly aged, and at the age of 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out in all Nazi concentration camps; torture of women and children was the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.

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

Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald

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

The structure of all structures was strictly thought out. Immediately behind the gate began the “Appelplat” (parallel ground), specially designed for the formation of prisoners. Its capacity was twenty thousand people. Not far from the gate there was a punishment cell for interrogations, and opposite there was an office where the camp fuehrer and the officer on duty - the camp authorities - lived. Deeper down were the barracks for prisoners. All barracks were numbered, there were 52 of them. At the same time, 43 were intended for housing, and workshops were set up in the rest.

The Nazi concentration camps left behind a terrible memory; their names still evoke fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald. The crematorium was considered the most terrible place. People were invited there under the pretext of a medical examination. When the prisoner undressed, he was shot and the body was sent to the oven.

Only men were kept in Buchenwald. Upon arrival at the camp, they were assigned a number German, which had to be learned in the first 24 hours. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky weapons factory, which was located a few kilometers from the camp.

Continuing to describe the Nazi concentration camps, let us turn to the so-called “small camp” of Buchenwald.

Small camp of Buchenwald

The “small camp” was the name given to the quarantine zone. The living conditions here were, even compared to the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiegne camp were brought to this camp; they were mainly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were housed in tents. The closer 1945 got, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the “small camp” included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in Nazi concentration camps was not only specially planned or for scientific purposes, life itself in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks; their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread; those who were not working were no longer entitled to it.

Relations among prisoners were tough; cases of cannibalism and murder for someone else's portion of bread were documented. A common practice was to store the bodies of the dead in barracks in order to receive their rations. The dead man's clothes were divided among his cellmates, and they often fought over them. Due to such conditions in the camp there were widespread infectious diseases. Vaccinations only worsened the situation, since injection syringes were not changed.

Photos simply cannot convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. The stories of witnesses are not intended for the faint of heart. In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to step far forward - no other country in the world had such a number of experimental people. Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, the inhuman suffering that these innocent people endured.

Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated, organs were removed, and they were sterilized and castrated. They tested how long a person could withstand extreme cold or heat. They were specially infected with diseases and introduced experimental drugs. Thus, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed in Buchenwald. In addition to typhus, prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid.

Since 1939, the camp was run by Karl Koch. His wife, Ilse, was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her love of sadism and inhumane abuse of prisoners. They feared her more than her husband (Karl Koch) and Nazi doctors. She was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". The woman owed this nickname to the fact that she made various decorative things from the skin of killed prisoners, in particular, lampshades, which she was very proud of. Most of all, she liked to use the skin of Russian prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests, as well as the skin of gypsies. Things made of such material seemed to her the most elegant.

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

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)

When listing Nazi concentration camps, it is impossible to ignore Auschwitz. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died. The exact details of the dead remain unclear. The victims were mainly Jewish prisoners of war, who were exterminated immediately upon arrival in gas chambers.

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

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

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

Initially, the camp was small and intended for political prisoners. But gradually more and more prisoners arrived at the camp, 70% of whom were destroyed immediately. Many tortures in Nazi concentration camps were borrowed from Auschwitz. Thus, the first gas chamber began to function in 1941. The gas used was Cyclone B. The terrible invention was first tested on Soviet and Polish prisoners totaling about nine hundred people.

Auschwitz II began its operation on March 1, 1942. Its territory included four crematoria and two gas chambers. In the same year, medical experiments on sterilization and castration began on women and men.

Small camps gradually formed around Birkenau, where prisoners working in factories and mines were kept. One of these camps gradually grew and became known as Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz. Approximately ten thousand prisoners were held here.

Like any Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz was well guarded. Contacts with the outside world were prohibited, the territory was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and guard posts were set up around the camp at a distance of a kilometer.

Five crematoria operated continuously on the territory of Auschwitz, which, according to experts, had a monthly capacity of approximately 270 thousand corpses.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. By that time, approximately seven thousand prisoners remained alive. Such a small number of survivors is due to the fact that about a year earlier, mass murders in gas chambers (gas chambers) began in the concentration camp.

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

Conclusion

During the entire war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. These were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It’s hard to even imagine what these people went through. But it was not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps that they were destined to endure. Thanks to Stalin, after their liberation, returning home, they received the stigma of “traitors.” The Gulag awaited them at home, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity gave way to another for them. In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences.

Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after release was not advertised and kept silent. But people who have experienced this simply should not be forgotten.

Bone fragments are still found in this land. The crematorium could not cope with the huge number of corpses, although two sets of ovens were built. They burned poorly, leaving fragments of bodies - the ashes were buried in pits around the concentration camp. 72 years have passed, but mushroom pickers in the forest often come across pieces of skulls with eye sockets, bones of arms or legs, crushed fingers - not to mention decayed scraps of striped "robes" of prisoners. The Stutthof concentration camp (fifty kilometers from the city of Gdansk) was founded on September 2, 1939, the day after the outbreak of World War II, and its prisoners were liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945. The main thing that Stutthof became famous for was These were "experiments" by SS doctors who, using humans as guinea pigs, made soap from human fat. A bar of this soap was later used at the Nuremberg trials as an example of Nazi savagery. Now some historians (not only in Poland, but also in other countries) are speaking out: this is “military folklore”, fantasy, this could not have happened.

Soap from prisoners

The Stutt-Hof museum complex receives 100 thousand visitors a year. Barracks, towers for SS machine gunners, a crematorium and a gas chamber are available for viewing: small, for about 30 people. The premises were built in the fall of 1944, before that they “coped” with the usual methods - typhus, exhausting work, hunger. A museum employee, taking me through the barracks, says: on average, the life expectancy of the inhabitants of Stutthof was 3 months. According to archival documents, one of the female prisoners weighed 19 kg before her death. Behind the glass I suddenly see large wooden shoes, as if from a medieval fairy tale. I ask: what is this? It turns out that the guards took away the prisoners’ shoes and in return gave them these “shoes” that abraded their feet to bloody blisters. In winter, prisoners worked in the same “robe”, only a light cape was required - many died from hypothermia. It was believed that 85,000 people died in the camp, but Lately EU historians are re-estimating: the number of prisoner deaths has been reduced to 65,000.

In 2006, the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland conducted an analysis of the same soap presented at the Nuremberg trials, says the guide Danuta Ochocka. - Contrary to expectations, the results were confirmed - it was indeed made by a Nazi professor Rudolf Spanner from human fat. However, now researchers in Poland claim: there is no exact confirmation that the soap was made specifically from the bodies of Stutthof prisoners. It is possible that the corpses of those who died from natural causes homeless people brought from the streets of Gdańsk. Professor Spanner actually visited Stutthof in different time, but the production of “soap of the dead” was not carried out on an industrial scale.

Gas chamber and crematorium in the Stutthof concentration camp. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Hans Weingartz

"People were skinned"

The Institute of National Remembrance of Poland is the same “glorious” organization that advocates for the demolition of all monuments to Soviet soldiers, and in this case the situation turned out to be tragicomic. Officials specifically ordered an analysis of the soap in order to obtain proof of the “lies of Soviet propaganda” in Nuremberg, but it turned out the opposite. As for industrial scale, Spanner produced up to 100 kg of soap from “human material” in the period 1943-1944. and, according to the testimony of his employees, he repeatedly went to Stutthof for “raw materials.” Polish investigator Tuvya Friedman published a book where he described his impressions of Spanner’s laboratory after the liberation of Gdansk: “We had the feeling that we had been in hell. One room was filled with naked corpses. The other is lined with boards on which skins taken from many people have been stretched. Almost immediately they discovered a furnace in which the Germans were experimenting in making soap using human fat as a raw material. Several bars of this “soap” lay nearby.” A museum employee shows me a hospital used for experiments by SS doctors; relatively healthy prisoners were placed here under the formal pretext of “treatment.” Doctor Carl Clauberg went to Stutthof on short business trips from Auschwitz to sterilize women, and SS Sturmbannführer Karl Wernet from Buchenwald cut out people's tonsils and tongues, replacing them with artificial organs. Wernet was not satisfied with the results - the victims of the experiments were killed in a gas chamber. There are no exhibits in the concentration camp museum about the savage activities of Clauberg, Wernet and Spanner - they “have little documentary evidence.” Although during the Nuremberg trials that same “human soap” from Stutt-Hof was demonstrated and the testimony of dozens of witnesses was voiced.

"Cultural" Nazis

“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we have an entire exhibition dedicated to the liberation of Stutt-Hof by Soviet troops on May 9, 1945,” says Dr. Marcin Owsiński, head of the museum's research department. - It is noted that this was precisely the release of prisoners, and not the replacement of one occupation with another, as is now fashionable to say. People rejoiced at the arrival of the Red Army. Regarding the SS experiments in the concentration camp, I assure you that there is no politics here. We work with documentary evidence, and most of the papers were destroyed by the Germans during the retreat from Stutthof. If they appear, we will immediately make changes to the exhibition.

In the cinema hall of the museum they are showing a film about the entry of the Red Army into Stutthof - archival footage. It is noted that by this time only 200 exhausted prisoners remained in the concentration camp and “then the N-KVD sent some to Siberia.” No confirmation, no names - but a fly in the ointment spoils the barrel of honey: clearly there is a goal - to show that the liberators were not so good. At the crematorium there is a sign in Polish: “We thank the Red Army for our liberation.” She is old, from the old days. Soviet soldiers. They say that the atrocities of the SS doctors have not been confirmed, fewer people died in the camps and, in general, the crimes of the occupiers have been exaggerated. Moreover, this is stated by Poland, where the Nazis destroyed a fifth of the entire population. To be honest, I would like to call “ ambulance”, so that Polish politicians would be taken to a psychiatric hospital.

As a publicist from Warsaw said Maciej Wisniewski: “We will still live to see the time when they will say: the Nazis were a cultured people, they built hospitals and schools in Poland, and the war was started by the Soviet Union.” I wouldn't want to live to see these times. But for some reason it seems to me that they are not far off.

The camps included labor and forced labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and prisoner of war camps. As war events progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was also used in concentration camps.

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, there were 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In subsequent years Hitler's Germany on the territory of the European countries it occupied, it created a gigantic network of concentration camps, turned into places of organized, systematic murder of millions of people.

Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic ones; total extermination of Jews and Gypsies. For this purpose, 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 House. Moscow. in 8 volumes - 2004. ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)

There were even special death (extermination) camps, where the liquidation of prisoners proceeded 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 people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor belt was built that turned several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.

Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled every aspect of their lives. Violators of the peace were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, food deprivation 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 of the regime, representatives of the “inferior races,” criminals and “unreliable elements.” The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, were subject to unconditional physical extermination and were kept in separate barracks.

They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, they were sent to the most grueling works. 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, and members of various religious sects. Among the “unreliable” were homosexuals, alarmists, dissatisfied people, etc.

There were also criminals in the concentration camps, whom the administration used as overseers of political prisoners.

All concentration camp prisoners were required to wear distinctive insignia on their clothing, 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 wore a green triangle, “unreliables” wore a black triangle, homosexuals wore a pink triangle, and gypsies wore a brown triangle.

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

Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore the sewn letter “F”, the Poles - “P”, etc.). The letter "K" denoted a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter "A" - a violator of labor discipline (from German Arbeit - "work"). The weak-minded wore the Blid badge - “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 people were kept in the most difficult conditions and destroyed by various methods and means, is 14,033 points.

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

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

Currently, the Federal Republic of 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 confinement, under conditions equivalent 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 commands).

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, in Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).

On the territory of the Russian Federation, places of forced 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/Auschwitz-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-Plaszczow (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).

Largest Nazi concentration camps

Buchenwald is one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external work teams. The largest: "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld) and "Ordruf" (in Thuringia), where the FAU 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 US 80th Division. In 1958, a memorial complex dedicated to Buchenwald was opened. to the heroes and victims of the concentration camp.

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 set up in 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. Opened in Auschwitz in 1947 State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz-Brzezinka).

Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, created in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had approximately 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 victims was unveiled in Dachau.

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), Trawniki (near Wiepsze), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. In the camp, the Nazis killed 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, so-called labor camp), about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II (1942-1943, extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the fascists suppressed a prisoner uprising, after which the camp was liquidated. Camp Treblinka I was liquidated in July 1944 as Soviet troops approached.

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

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

Mauthausen - the concentration camp was created in July 1938, 4 km from 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 former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945), it housed about 335 thousand people from 15 countries. According to surviving records alone, 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, in place of Mauthausen, 12 states, incl. Soviet Union, a memorial museum was created, and monuments were erected to those who died in the camp.

Concentration camps of the Third Reich (German: Konzentrationslager or KZ) were areas of mass incarceration and extermination of prisoners of war and civilians by the authorities of Nazi Germany for political or racial reasons;

they existed before and during the Second World War in German-controlled territory.

The first concentration camps were forced labor camps and were located in the Third Reich itself. During the war, millions of people were held in the camps, including anti-fascists, Jews, communists, Poles, Soviet and other prisoners of war, homosexuals, gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses and others. Millions of concentration camp prisoners died from cruel abuse, disease, poor living conditions, exhaustion, hard physical labor and inhumane medical experiments. In total there were about five thousand camps of various purposes and capacities.

The history of the camps can be divided into 4 phases:

During the first phase at the beginning of Nazi rule until 1934 Camps began to be built throughout Germany. These camps were more similar to the prisons where opponents of the Nazi regime were imprisoned.

The construction of the camps was managed by several organizations: the SA, police leaders and the elite NSDAP group under the leadership of Himmler, which was originally intended to protect Hitler.
During the first phase, about 26 thousand people were imprisoned. Theodor Eicke was appointed inspector; he supervised the construction and drew up the camp charters. Concentration camps became places outside the law and were inaccessible to outside world. Even in the event of a fire, fire brigades were not allowed to enter the camp.

The second phase began in 1936 and ended in 1938. During this period of time, due to the growing number of prisoners, new camps began to be built. The composition of the prisoners also changed. If before 1936 these were mainly political prisoners, now asocial elements were imprisoned: the homeless and those who did not want to work. Attempts were made to cleanse society of people who “disgraced” the German nation.

During the second phase, the camps of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald were built, which were signals of the outbreak of war and the increasing number of prisoners. After Kristallnacht in November 1938, Jews began to be exiled to camps, which led to the overcrowding of existing camps and the construction of new ones.

Further development of the camp system took place during the third phase from the beginning of World War II and somewhere until mid-1941, early 1942. After a wave of arrests in Nazi Germany, the number of prisoners doubled within a short period of time. With the beginning of the war, prisoners from conquered countries began to be sent to the camps: French, Poles, Belgians, etc. Among these prisoners were big number Jews and Gypsies. Soon the number of prisoners in the camps built on the territories of the conquered states exceeded the number of prisoners in Germany and Austria.

The fourth and final phase began in 1942 and ended in 1945. This phase was accompanied by increased persecution of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war. During this phase, between 2.5 and 3 million people were in camps.

Death camps(German: Vernichtungslager, extermination camps)- institutions for mass extermination of various population groups.

If the first concentration camps of Nazi Germany were created for the purpose of isolating and internment of persons suspected of opposition to the Nazi regime, then later they (the camps) developed into a gigantic machine of suppression and extermination of millions of people different nationalities, enemies or representatives of “lower” groups of the population - in countries that fell under Nazi rule.

“Death camps” and “death factories” have been appearing in Nazi Germany since 1941, according to the racial theory of “inferior peoples.” These camps were established on the territory of Eastern Europe, mainly in Poland, as well as in the Baltic countries, Belarus, and other occupied territories, in the so-called General Governments.

Used by the Nazis to kill Jews, Gypsies and prisoners of other nationalities, the death camps were built according to special designs, with the estimated power to destroy a given number of people. The camps had special facilities for massacres.

The killing of people in death camps was put on an assembly line. The death camps intended for the mass murder of Jews and Gypsies were Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, as well as Majdanek and Auschwitz (which were also concentration camps) in Poland. In Germany itself, the Buchenwald and Dachau camps operated.

Death camps also include Jasenovac (a system of camps for Serbs and Jews) in Croatia and Maly Trostenets in Belarus.

Victims, as a rule, were transported to the camps in trains, and then destroyed in gas chambers.

A typical sequence of actions carried out in Auschwitz and Majdanek on civilians of Jewish and Gypsy nationalities immediately after arrival (on the way, people died in the cars from thirst, suffocation): selection for immediate destruction at the exit from the cars; immediate sending of those selected for destruction to gas chambers. First of all, women, children, old people and the disabled were selected. Those who remained faced a number tattoo, hard labor, and hunger. Those who fell ill or simply weakened from hunger were immediately sent to the gas chambers.

In Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, only those who helped remove corpses from the gas chambers and burn them, as well as sort the belongings of the dead, and those who served as camp guards were temporarily left alive. All others were subject to immediate destruction.

The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where people were kept in the most difficult conditions and destroyed by various methods and means - 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 concentration camp system in Germany was liquidated along with the defeat of Hitlerism, and was condemned in the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity.

Currently, in Germany it is customary to divide places of forced detention of people during the Second World War into concentration camps and “other places of forced confinement, under conditions equivalent 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 commands).

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, in Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).

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

Enlarge map
List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)
1. Arbeitsdorf (Germany)
2. Auschwitz/Auschwitz-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-Plaszczow (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).

There are known examples of heroic resistance of people doomed to death. Jews from the Szydlick ghetto, who rebelled in November 1942 in the Treblinka camp, were killed by camp guards; at the end of 1942, Jews from the Grodno ghetto offered armed resistance in the same camp. In August 1943, prisoners broke into weapons depots Treblinka and attacked the camp guards; 150 rebels managed to escape, but were captured and killed.

In October 1943, prisoners of the Sobibor camp rebelled; Of the 400 people who broke through the barriers, 60 managed to escape and join the Soviet partisans.

In October 1944, members of the Jewish Sonderkommando (those who transferred bodies from the gas chambers to the crematoria) in Auschwitz, having learned of the Germans' intention to liquidate them, blew up the crematorium. Almost all the rebels died.

Sources: website specially for the site, author of SNA, 06/19/11. based on materials
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Concentration camps of Nazi Germany were located throughout the country and served different purposes. They occupied hundreds of hectares of land and brought significant income to the country's economy. Description of the history of the creation and construction of some of the most famous concentration camps of the Third Reich.

By the beginning of World War II, the concentration camp system in Nazi Germany was already well established. The Nazis were not the inventors of this method of fighting large masses of people. The first concentration camp in the world was created during Civil War in the United States of America in the town of Andersonville. However, it was precisely after the defeat of Germany and the official trials for Nazi crimes against humanity, when the whole truth of the Reich was revealed, that the world community was stirred up by the revealed information about what was happening behind thick walls and rows of barbed wire.

In order to retain his hard-won power, Hitler had to quickly and effectively suppress any protests against his regime. Therefore, the prisons available in Germany began to quickly fill up and soon become overcrowded with political prisoners. These were German citizens who were transported to prison not for extermination, but for indoctrination. As a rule, a few months of staying in unpleasant dungeons was enough to quench the ardor of citizens yearning for changes in the existing order. Once they ceased to pose a threat to the Nazi regime, they were released.

Over time, it turned out that the state had significantly more enemies than there were prisons. Then a proposal was made to solve the problem that had arisen. The construction of places for mass concentrated detention of people disliked by the regime, by the hands of these very people, was economically and politically beneficial to the Third Reich. The first concentration camps appeared on the basis of old abandoned barracks and factory workshops. But by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War they were already erected in any open place convenient for transporting prisoners there.

Buchenwald

The Buchenwald concentration camp was built in the summer of 1937 in the heart of Germany near the city of Weimar. The project, like others like it, was strictly secret. Standartenführer Karl Koch, who was appointed commandant here, already had experience in managing camps. Before that, he managed to serve in Lichtenburg and Sachsenhausen. Now Koch received the task of building the largest concentration camp in Germany. This was a great opportunity to forever write your name in the chronicles of Germany. The first concentration camps appeared back in 1933. But this Koch had the opportunity to build from scratch. He felt like a king and a god there.

The main part of the inhabitants of Buchenwald were political prisoners. These were Germans who did not want to support Hitler's rule. Believers whose conscience did not allow them to kill or take up arms were sent there. Men who refused to serve in the army were considered dangerous opponents of the state. And since they did this out of religious convictions, they outlawed the entire religion. Therefore, all members of such a group were persecuted, regardless of age and gender. The believers, who in Germany were called Biebelforscher (Bible students), even had their own identification mark on their clothes - a purple triangle.

Like other concentration camps, Buchenwald was supposed to benefit the new Germany. In addition to the usual use of slave labor for such places, experiments were carried out on living people within the walls of this camp. In order to study the development and course of infectious diseases, as well as to find out which vaccines are more effective, groups of prisoners were infected with tuberculosis and typhoid. After the study, victims of such medical experiments were sent to the gas chamber as waste material.

On April 11, 1945, an organized prisoner uprising took place in Buchenwald. It turned out to be successful. Encouraged by the proximity of the Allied army, the prisoners captured the commandant's office and waited for the arrival of American troops, who arrived on the same day. Five days later, the Americans brought ordinary residents from the city of Weimar so that they could see with their own eyes what horror was happening outside the walls of the camp. This would make it possible, if necessary, to use their testimony as eyewitnesses during legal proceedings.

Auschwitz

The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland became the largest death camp in the history of the Third Reich. Initially, it was created, like many others, to resolve local problems - intimidate opponents, exterminate the local Jewish population. But soon the Auschwitz camp (that’s what it was called in the German manner in all official German documents) was chosen for the final decision “ Jewish question" Thanks to convenient geographical location and the presence of good transport links, he was chosen to exterminate all Jews from European countries captured by Hitler.

Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland

The camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, was tasked with developing an effective method for exterminating large numbers of people. On September 3, 1941, Soviet prisoners of war (600 people) and 250 Polish prisoners were separated from the prisoners at Höss’s disposal. They were brought into one block and poisonous gas “Zyklon B” was sprayed there. Within minutes, all 850 people were dead. This was the first test of a gas chamber. In the second section of Auschwitz, random buildings were no longer used for gas chambers. Specially designed hermetically sealed buildings were built there, disguised as communal showers. Thus, the concentration camp prisoner sentenced to death did not suspect until the very end that he was going to certain death. This prevented panic and attempts at resistance.

Thus, the killing of people in Auschwitz was brought to industrial scale. Trains packed with Jews were sent from all over Europe to Poland. After being gassed, the murdered Jews were sent to a crematorium. However, the pragmatic Germans burned only what they could not use. All personal belongings, including clothing, were confiscated, sorted and sent to special warehouses. Gold teeth were pulled out from corpses. Human hair was used to fill mattresses. Soap was made from human fat. And even the ashes of the victims were used as fertilizer.

In addition, people in the concentration camp were also considered as material for medical experiments. Doctors worked in Auschwitz, who carried out various surgical operations on healthy people. The notorious doctor Joseph Mengele, nicknamed the Angel of Death, conducted his experiments on twins there. Many of them were children.

Dachau

Dachau is the first concentration camp in Germany. In many ways it was experimental. The first prisoners of this camp had the opportunity to leave it in just a few months. Subject to complete “re-education”. In other words, when they ceased to pose a political threat to the Hitler regime. In addition, Dachau was the first attempt at genetic purification of the Aryan race by removing questionable "genetic material" from the public. Moreover, the selection was based not only on physical, but also on moral appearance. Thus, prostitutes, homosexuals, tramps, drug addicts and alcoholics were sent to concentration camps.

There is a legend in Munich that Dachau was built near the city as punishment for the fact that all its residents voted against Hitler in the elections to the Reichstag. The fact is that the fetid smoke from the crematorium chimneys regularly covered city blocks, spreading with the prevailing wind in this direction. But this is just a local legend, not supported by any documents.

It was in Dachau that work began to improve methods of influencing the human psyche. Here they invented, tested and improved methods of torture used during interrogation. Here methods of mass suppression of human will were honed. The will to live and resist. Subsequently, prisoners in concentration camps throughout Germany and beyond experienced the technique originally developed in Dachau. Over time, the conditions in the camp became more stringent. Releases from prison are long gone. People kept coming up with new ways to become useful in the development of the Third Reich.

Many prisoners had the opportunity to serve as guinea pigs for medical students. Healthy people underwent surgery without anesthesia. Soviet prisoners of war were used as human targets to train young soldiers. After classes, those who were not killed were simply left at the training ground, and sometimes they were sent to the crematorium while still alive. It is significant that healthy young men were selected for Dachau. Experiments were carried out on them to determine the endurance limits of the human body. For example, prisoners were infected with malaria. Some died as a result of the disease itself. However, the majority died from the treatment methods themselves.

In Dachau, Dr. Roscher used a pressure chamber to find out what pressure he could withstand human body. He placed people in a chamber and simulated the situation in which a pilot might find himself at an extremely high altitude. They also checked what would happen during a fast forced parachute jump from such a height. People experienced terrible torment. They banged their heads against the wall of the cell and tore their heads bloody with their nails, trying to somehow reduce the terrible pressure. And the doctor at this time meticulously recorded the frequency of breathing and pulse. The few subjects who survived were immediately sent to the gas chamber. The experiments were classified as secret. Information could not be leaked.

Although most medical research took place in Dachau and Auschwitz, the concentration camp that supplied living material to the university in Germany was Sachsenhausen, located near the city of Friedenthal. Due to the use of such material, this institution has earned a reputation as a university of murderers.

Majdanek

In official documents, the new camp on the territory of occupied Poland was listed as “Dachau 2”. But soon it acquired its own name - Majdanek - and even surpassed Dachau, in whose image and likeness it was created. Concentration camps in Germany were secret facilities. But the Germans did not stand on ceremony regarding Majdanek. They wanted the Poles to know what was happening in the camp. It was located right next to the highway in close proximity to the city of Lublin. The cadaverous smell carried by the wind often completely enveloped the city. The residents of Lublin knew about the executions of Soviet prisoners of war taking place in the nearby forest. They saw transports filled with people and knew that these unfortunates were destined for gas chambers.

Majdanek's prisoners were settled in the barracks designated for them. It was a whole city with its own districts. Five hundred and sixteen hectares of land, fenced with barbed wire. There was even a district for women. And selected women went to the camp brothel, where SS soldiers could satisfy their needs.

The Majdanek concentration camp began operating in the fall of 1941. At first it was planned that only dissatisfied people from the surrounding area would be gathered here, as was the case with other local camps that were needed to strengthen new government and quickly deal with the dissatisfied. But a powerful flow of Soviet prisoners of war from Eastern Front made adjustments to camp planning. Now he had to accept thousands of captured men. In addition, this camp was included in the program for the final solution to the Jewish question. This means that it had to be prepared for the quick destruction of large parties of people.

When Operation Erntefest was carried out, during which all the Jews remaining in the vicinity were to be destroyed in one fell swoop, the camp leadership decided to shoot them. In advance, not far from the camp, the prisoners were ordered to dig hundred-meter ditches six meters wide and three meters deep. On November 3, 1943, 18,000 Jews were led to these ditches. They were ordered to undress and lie face down on the ground. Moreover, the next row had to lie facing the back of the previous one. Thus, the result was a living carpet, folded according to the principle of tiles. Eighteen thousand heads were turned towards the executioners.

Brisk, cheerful music began to play from loudspeakers around the entire perimeter of the camp. And then the massacre began. The SS men came close and shot the lying man in the back of the head. Having finished with the first row, they pushed him into the ditch, and began to methodically shoot the next one. When the ditches were full, they were only lightly covered with earth. In total, more than 40,000 people were killed in the Lublin region that day. This action was carried out in response to the Jewish uprising in Sobibor and Treblinka. This is how the Germans wanted to protect themselves.

Operation Erntefest

During the three years of the death camp’s existence, it had five commandants. The first was Karl Koch, who was transferred to a new location from Buchenwald. Next is Max Kögel, who was previously the commandant of Ravensbrück. After them, Hermann Florsted, Martin Weiss served as commandants, and the last was Arthur Liebehenschel, the successor of Rudolf Höss in Auschwitz.

Treblinka

In Treblinka there were two camps at once, which differed in numbers. Treblinka 1 was positioned as a labor camp, and Treblinka 2 as a death camp. At the end of May 1942, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, a camp was built near the village of Treblinka, and by June it began to operate. This is the largest death camp built during the war, with its own railway. The first victims sent there bought train tickets themselves, not realizing that they were going to their death.

The classification of secrecy extended not only to the murder of prisoners - the very existence of the concentration camp was a secret for a long time. German planes were prohibited from flying over Treblinka, and at a distance of 1 km from it, soldiers were stationed throughout the forest, who, when anyone approached, shot without any warning. Those who brought prisoners here were replaced by camp guards and never went inside, and a 3-meter wall did not allow them to become random witnesses to what was happening behind the fence.

Due to complete secrecy, the presence of a large number of guards was not required in Treblinka: approximately 100 wachmans—specially trained collaborators (Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles) and 30 SS men—were sufficient. Gas chambers disguised as showers were attached to the exhaust pipes of heavy tank engines. People in the shower died from suffocation rather than from the deadly composition of the gas. However, they also used other methods: the air from the room was completely sucked out and the prisoners died from lack of oxygen.

After the massive Red Army attack on the Volga, Himmler personally came to Treblinka. Before his visit, victims were buried, but this meant leaving traces behind. By his order, crematoria were built. Himmler gave the order to dig up those already killed and cremate them. “Operation 1005” was the code name for eliminating traces of the murders. The prisoners themselves were engaged in carrying out the order, and soon despair helped them decide: they needed to start an uprising.

Hard labor and gas chambers took the lives of the new arrivals, so that approximately 1,000 prisoners remained in the camp at all times to maintain its functioning. In 1943, on August 2, 300 people decided to flee. Many camp buildings were set on fire and holes were made in the fence, but after the first successful minutes of the uprising, many had to unsuccessfully storm the gates rather than use the original plan. Two-thirds of the rebels were destroyed, and many were found in the forests and shot.

The autumn of 1943 marks the complete end of the Treblinka concentration camp. For a long time, looting was widespread on the territory of the former concentration camp: many were looking for valuables that once belonged to the victims. Treblinka turned out to be the second camp after Auschwitz in terms of the largest number of victims. In total, from 750 to 925 thousand people were killed here. To preserve the memory of the horrors that the victims of the concentration camp had to endure, a symbolic cemetery and mausoleum monument were later built in its place.

Ravensbrück

In German society, the role of women was limited to raising children and maintaining hearth and home. They were not supposed to have any political or social influence. Therefore, when the construction of concentration camps began, a separate complex for women was not provided. The only exception was the Ravensbrück concentration camp. It was built in 1939 in northern Germany near the village of Ravensbrück. The concentration camp took its name from the name of this village. Today it has already become part of the city of Fürstenberg, which has spread to its territory.

The women's concentration camp Ravensbrück, photos of which were taken after its liberation, has been little studied in comparison with other large concentration camps of the Third Reich. Since he was located in the very heart of the country - only 90 kilometers from Berlin, he was one of the last to be released. Therefore, the Nazis managed to reliably destroy all documentation. Apart from the photographs taken after the liberation, only the stories of eyewitnesses, of whom not many were left alive, could tell about what was happening in the camp.

The Ravensbrück concentration camp was built to house German women. Its first inhabitants were German prostitutes, lesbians, criminals and Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to renounce their faith. Subsequently, prisoners from German-occupied countries were also sent here. However, there were very few Jewish women in Ravensbrück. And in March 1942 they were all transferred to Auschwitz.

For all women arriving in Ravensbrück, camp life began the same way. They were stripped naked (the time of year did not play any role) and searched. Every woman and girl was subjected to a humiliating gynecological examination. The guards were vigilant to ensure that new arrivals did not bring anything with them. Therefore, the procedures were not only morally overwhelming, but also painful. After this, each woman had to undergo a bath. The wait for your turn could last several hours. And only after the bath did the captives finally receive a camp robe and a pair of heavy slippers.

The start of the camp was signaled at 4 am. The prisoners received half a cup of a watery drink that replaced coffee, and after roll call they were sent to their work places. The working day, depending on the time of year, lasted from 12 to 14 hours. In the middle there was a half-hour break during which the women received a plate of rutabaga broth. Every evening there was another roll call, which could last several hours. Moreover, in cold and rainy times, guards often deliberately delayed this procedure.

Medical experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. Here they studied the course of gangrene and ways to combat it. The fact is that after receiving gunshot wounds, many soldiers on the battlefield developed this complication, which was fraught with many deaths. Doctors were faced with the task of finding a quick and effective treatment. Sulfonamide preparations (including streptocide) were tested on experimental women. This happened in the following way - on the upper part of the thigh - where emaciated women still had muscles - a deep incision was made (of course, without the use of any anesthesia). Bacteria were injected into the open wound, and in order to more conveniently monitor the development of lesions in the tissues, part of the nearby flesh was cut off. To more accurately simulate field conditions, metal shavings, glass shards, and wood particles were also injected into the wounds.

Women's concentration camps

Although among the German concentration camps only Ravensbrück was a women's camp (however, several thousand men were held there in a separate section), in this system there were places reserved exclusively for women. Heinrich Himmler, who was responsible for the functioning of the camps, was very sensitive to his brainchild. He frequently inspected the various camps, making changes that he felt were needed, and constantly tried to improve the functioning and productivity of these large suppliers of labor and material so necessary to the German economy. Having learned about the system of incentives that were introduced in Soviet labor camps, Himmler decided to use it to improve work efficiency. Along with monetary incentives, dietary supplements and the issuance of camp vouchers, Himmler considered that the satisfaction of sexual desires could also be a special privilege. Thus, brothels for prisoners appeared in ten concentration camps.

Women selected from prisoners worked in them. They agreed to this, trying to save their lives. It was easier to survive in a brothel. Prostitutes were entitled to better food, they received the necessary medical care and were not sent to physically backbreaking work. Visiting a prostitute, although a privilege, remained paid. The man had to pay two Reichsmarks (the cost of a pack of cigarettes). The “session” lasted strictly 15 minutes, strictly in the missionary position. Reports preserved in the Buchenwald documents show that in just the first six months of operation, brothels from concentration camps brought Germany 19 thousand Reichsmarks.