This small, clean house in Kristiansad, next to the road to Stavanger and the port, was the most terrible place in the entire south of Norway during the war. “Skrekkens hus” - “House of Horror” - that’s what they called it in the city. Since January 1942, the city archive building has been the headquarters of the Gestapo in southern Norway. Those arrested were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, and from here people were sent to concentration camps and executions. Now in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where prisoners were tortured, a museum has been opened that tells about what happened during the war in the state archive building.



The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. Only new lights and doors appeared. In the main corridor there is a main exhibition with archival materials, photographs, and posters.

Thus, a suspended prisoner was beaten with a chain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you want it to be like this?”

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

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

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

Next to the Archive building there is a modest monument to the Norwegian patriots who died at the hands of the Gestapo. In the local cemetery, not far from this place, lie the ashes of Soviet prisoners of war and British pilots shot down by the Germans in the skies over Kristiansand. Every year on May 8th, the flags of the USSR, Great Britain and Norway are raised on flagpoles next to the graves.
In 1997, the Archive building, from which the state archive moved to another location, was decided to be sold into private hands. Local veterans and public organizations came out sharply against it, organized themselves into a special committee and ensured that in 1998, the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, transferred the historical building to the veterans committee. Now here, along with the museum I told you about, there are offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN

Auschwitz prisoners were released four months before the end of World War II. By that time there were few of them left. Almost one and a half million people died, most of them Jews. For several years, the investigation continued, which led to terrible discoveries: people not only died in gas chambers oh, but they also became victims of Dr. Mengele, who used them as guinea pigs.

Auschwitz: the story of a city

A small Polish town in which more than a million innocent people were killed is called Auschwitz all over the world. We call it Auschwitz. Concentration camps, gas chamber experiments, torture, executions - all these words have been associated with the name of the city for more than 70 years.

It will sound quite strange in Russian Ich lebe in Auschwitz - “I live in Auschwitz.” Is it possible to live in Auschwitz? They learned about the experiments on women in the concentration camp after the end of the war. Over the years, new facts have been discovered. One is scarier than the other. The truth about the camp called shocked the whole world. Research continues today. Many books have been written and many films have been made on this topic. Auschwitz has become our symbol of painful, difficult death.

Where did they take place? massacres children and terrible experiments were carried out on women? In Which city do millions of people on earth associate with the phrase “death factory”? Auschwitz.

Experiments on people were carried out in a camp located near the city, which today is home to 40 thousand people. This is a calm town with a good climate. Auschwitz was first mentioned in historical documents in the twelfth century. In the 13th century there were already so many Germans here that their language began to prevail over Polish. In the 17th century, the city was captured by the Swedes. In 1918 it became Polish again. 20 years later, a camp was organized here, on the territory of which crimes took place, the likes of which humanity had never known.

Gas chamber or experiment

In the early forties, the answer to the question of where the Auschwitz concentration camp was located was known only to those who were doomed to death. Unless, of course, you take the SS men into account. Some prisoners, fortunately, survived. Later they talked about what happened within the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Experiments on women and children, which were carried out by a man whose name terrified the prisoners, are a terrible truth that not everyone is ready to listen to.

The gas chamber is a terrible invention of the Nazis. But there are worse things. Krystyna Zywulska is one of the few who managed to leave Auschwitz alive. In her book of memoirs, she mentions an incident: a prisoner sentenced to death by Dr. Mengele does not go, but runs into the gas chamber. Because death from poisonous gas is not as terrible as the torment from the experiments of the same Mengele.

Creators of the "death factory"

So what is Auschwitz? This is a camp that was originally intended for political prisoners. The author of the idea is Erich Bach-Zalewski. This man had the rank of SS Gruppenführer, and during the Second World War he led punitive operations. With him light hand Dozens were sentenced to death. He took an active part in suppressing the uprising that took place in Warsaw in 1944.

The SS Gruppenführer's assistants found a suitable location in a small Polish town. There were already military barracks here, and in addition, there was a well-established railway connection. In 1940, a man named He arrived here. He will be hanged near the gas chambers by decision of the Polish court. But this will happen two years after the end of the war. And then, in 1940, Hess liked these places. He took on the new business with great enthusiasm.

Inhabitants of the concentration camp

This camp did not immediately become a “death factory.” At first, mostly Polish prisoners were sent here. Only a year after the organization of the camp, the tradition of writing a serial number on the prisoner’s hand appeared. Every month more and more Jews were brought. By the end of Auschwitz, they made up 90% of the total number of prisoners. The number of SS men here also grew continuously. In total, the concentration camp received about six thousand overseers, punishers and other “specialists.” Many of them were put on trial. Some disappeared without a trace, including Joseph Mengele, whose experiments terrified prisoners for several years.

We will not give the exact number of Auschwitz victims here. Let's just say that more than two hundred children died in the camp. Most of them were sent to gas chambers. Some ended up in the hands of Josef Mengele. But this man was not the only one who conducted experiments on people. Another so-called doctor is Karl Clauberg.

Beginning in 1943, a huge number of prisoners were admitted to the camp. Most of them should have been destroyed. But the organizers of the concentration camp were practical people, and therefore decided to take advantage of the situation and use a certain part of the prisoners as material for research.

Karl Cauberg

This man supervised the experiments carried out on women. His victims were predominantly Jewish and Gypsy women. The experiments included organ removal, testing new drugs, and radiation. What kind of person is Karl Cauberg? Who is he? What kind of family did you grow up in, how was his life? And most importantly, where did the cruelty that goes beyond human understanding come from?

By the beginning of the war, Karl Cauberg was already 41 years old. In the twenties, he served as chief physician at the clinic at the University of Königsberg. Kaulberg was not a hereditary doctor. He was born into a family of artisans. Why he decided to connect his life with medicine is unknown. But there is evidence that he served as an infantryman in the First World War. Then he graduated from the University of Hamburg. Apparently, he was so fascinated by medicine that he abandoned his military career. But Kaulberg was not interested in healing, but in research. In the early forties, he began searching for the most practical way to sterilize women who were not of the Aryan race. To conduct experiments he was transferred to Auschwitz.

Kaulberg's experiments

The experiments consisted of introducing a special solution into the uterus, which led to serious disturbances. After the experiment, the reproductive organs were removed and sent to Berlin for further research. There is no data on exactly how many women became victims of this “scientist”. After the end of the war, he was captured, but soon, just seven years later, oddly enough, he was released under an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war. Returning to Germany, Kaulberg did not suffer from remorse. On the contrary, he was proud of his “achievements in science.” As a result, he began to receive complaints from people who suffered from Nazism. He was arrested again in 1955. He spent even less time in prison this time. He died two years after his arrest.

Joseph Mengele

The prisoners nicknamed this man the “angel of death.” Josef Mengele personally met the trains with new prisoners and carried out the selection. Some were sent to gas chambers. Others go to work. He used others in his experiments. One of the Auschwitz prisoners described this man as follows: “Tall, with a pleasant appearance, he looks like a film actor.” He never raised his voice and spoke politely - and this terrified the prisoners.

From the biography of the Angel of Death

Josef Mengele was the son of a German entrepreneur. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine and anthropology. In the early thirties he joined the Nazi organization, but soon left it for health reasons. In 1932, Mengele joined the SS. During the war he served in the medical forces and even received the Iron Cross for bravery, but was wounded and declared unfit for service. Mengele spent several months in the hospital. After recovery, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he began his scientific activities.

Selection

Selecting victims for experiments was Mengele's favorite pastime. The doctor only needed one glance at the prisoner to determine his state of health. He sent most of the prisoners to gas chambers. And only a few prisoners managed to delay death. It was hard with those whom Mengele saw as “guinea pigs.”

Most likely, this person suffered from an extreme form of mental disorder. He even enjoyed the thought that he had a huge amount of human lives. That is why he was always next to the arriving train. Even when this was not required of him. His criminal actions were guided not only by the desire for scientific research, but also a thirst to manage. Just one word from him was enough to send tens or hundreds of people to the gas chambers. Those that were sent to laboratories became material for experiments. But what was the purpose of these experiments?

An invincible belief in the Aryan utopia, obvious mental deviations - these are the components of the personality of Joseph Mengele. All his experiments were aimed at creating a new means that could stop the reproduction of representatives of unwanted peoples. Mengele not only equated himself with God, he placed himself above him.

Joseph Mengele's experiments

The Angel of Death dissected babies and castrated boys and men. He performed the operations without anesthesia. Experiments on women involved high-voltage electric shocks. He conducted these experiments to test endurance. Mengele once sterilized several Polish nuns using X-rays. But the main passion of the “Doctor of Death” was experiments on twins and people with physical defects.

To each his own

On the gates of Auschwitz it was written: Arbeit macht frei, which means “work sets you free.” The words Jedem das Seine were also present here. Translated into Russian - “To each his own.” At the gates of Auschwitz, at the entrance to the camp in which more than a million people died, a saying of the ancient Greek sages appeared. The principle of justice was used by the SS as the motto of the most cruel idea in the entire history of mankind.

O. Kazarinov "Unknown faces of war". Chapter 5. Violence begets violence (continued)

Forensic psychologists have long established that rape, as a rule, is explained not by a desire to obtain sexual satisfaction, but by a thirst for power, a desire to emphasize one’s superiority over a weaker person through humiliation, and a feeling of revenge.

What if not war contributes to the manifestation of all these base feelings?

On September 7, 1941, at a rally in Moscow, an appeal was adopted by Soviet women, which said: “It is impossible to convey in words what the fascist villains are doing to women in the areas of the Soviet country they temporarily captured. There is no limit to their sadism. These vile cowards are driving women, children and old people ahead of them in order to hide from the fire of the Red Army. They rip open the bellies of the victims they rape, cut out their breasts, crush them with cars, tear them apart with tanks..."

What state can a woman be in when she is subjected to violence, defenseless, depressed by the feeling of her own defilement, shame?

A stupor arises in the mind from the murders happening around. Thoughts are paralyzed. Shock. Alien uniforms, alien speech, alien smells. They are not even perceived as male rapists. These are some monstrous creatures from another world.

And they mercilessly destroy all the concepts of chastity, decency, and modesty that have been brought up over the years. They get to what has always been hidden from prying eyes, the exposure of which has always been considered indecent, what they whispered about in the gateways, that they trust only the most beloved people and doctors...

Helplessness, despair, humiliation, fear, disgust, pain - everything is intertwined in one ball, tearing from the inside, destroying human dignity. This tangle breaks the will, burns the soul, kills the personality. They drink away life... They tear off clothes... And there is no way to resist this. THIS will still happen.

I think thousands and thousands of women cursed at such moments the nature by whose will they were born women.

Let us turn to documents that are more revealing than any literary description. Documents collected only for 1941.

“...This happened in the apartment of a young teacher, Elena K. In broad daylight, a group of drunken German officers burst in here. At this time, the teacher was teaching three girls, her students. Having locked the door, the bandits ordered Elena K. to undress. The young woman resolutely refused to comply with this impudent demand. Then the Nazis tore off her clothes and raped her in front of the children. The girls tried to protect the teacher, but the scoundrels also brutally abused them. The teacher's five-year-old son remained in the room. Not daring to scream, the child looked at what was happening with his eyes wide open in horror. A fascist officer approached him and cut him in two with a blow from his saber.”

From the testimony of Lydia N., Rostov:

“Yesterday I heard a strong knock on the door. When I approached the door, they hit it with rifle butts, trying to break it down. 5 German soldiers burst into the apartment. They kicked my father, mother and little brother out of the apartment. Then I found my brother's body on staircase. A German soldier threw him from the third floor of our house, as eyewitnesses told me. His head was broken. Mother and father were shot at the entrance to our house. I myself have been subjected to gang violence. I was unconscious. When I woke up, I heard the hysterical screams of women in the neighboring apartments. That evening all the apartments in our building were desecrated by the Germans. They raped all the women." Terrible document! The fear this woman experienced is involuntarily conveyed in a few meager lines. Blows of rifle butts on the door. Five monsters. Fear for oneself, for relatives taken away in an unknown direction: “Why? So they don't see what's going to happen? Arrested? Killed? Doomed to vile torture that leaves you unconscious. A multiply amplified nightmare from the “hysterical screams of women in neighboring apartments,” as if the whole house was groaning. Unreality…

Statement from a resident of the village of Novo-Ivanovka, Maria Tarantseva: “Having broken into my house, four German soldiers brutally raped my daughters Vera and Pelageya.”

“On the very first evening in the city of Luga, the Nazis caught 8 girls on the streets and raped them.”

“To the mountains. Tikhvin Leningrad region 15-year-old M. Kolodetskaya, having been wounded by shrapnel, was brought to the hospital (formerly a monastery), where wounded German soldiers were located. Despite being wounded, Kolodetskaya was raped by a group of German soldiers, which was the cause of her death.”

Every time you shudder when you think about what is hidden behind the dry text of the document. The girl is bleeding, she is in pain from her wound. Why did this war start? And finally, the hospital. The smell of iodine, bandages. People. Even if they are non-Russian. They will help her. After all, people are treated in hospitals. And suddenly, instead, there is a new pain, a cry, an animal melancholy, leading to madness... And consciousness slowly fades away. Forever.

“In the Belarusian town of Shatsk, the Nazis gathered all the young girls, raped them, and then drove them naked into the square and forced them to dance. Those who resisted were shot on the spot by the fascist monsters. Such violence and abuse by the invaders was a widespread mass phenomenon.”

“On the very first day in the village of Basmanovo, Smolensk region, fascist monsters drove into the field more than 200 schoolchildren and schoolgirls who had come to the village to harvest the harvest, surrounded them and shot them. They took the schoolgirls to their rear “for the gentlemen officers.” I struggle and cannot imagine these girls who came to the village as a noisy group of classmates, with their teenage love and experiences, with the carefreeness and cheerfulness inherent in this age. Girls who then immediately, instantly, saw the bloody corpses of their boys and, without having time to comprehend, refusing to believe in what had happened, found themselves in a hell created by adults.

“On the very first day of the Germans’ arrival in Krasnaya Polyana, two fascists came to Alexandra Yakovlevna (Demyanova). They saw Demyanova’s daughter, 14-year-old Nyura, in the room, a frail and weak girl. A German officer grabbed the teenager and raped her in front of her mother. On December 10, a doctor at a local gynecological hospital, having examined the girl, stated that this Hitler bandit had infected her with syphilis. In the next apartment, the fascist beasts raped another 14-year-old girl, Tonya I.

On December 9, 1941, the body of a Finnish officer was found in Krasnaya Polyana. A collection of women's buttons was found in his pocket - 37 pieces, counting rape. And in Krasnaya Polyana he raped Margarita K. and also tore a button off her blouse.”

Killed soldiers were often found with “trophies” in the form of buttons, stockings, and locks of women’s hair. They found photographs depicting scenes of violence, letters and diaries in which they described their “exploits.”

“In their letters, the Nazis share their adventures with cynical frankness and bragging. Corporal Felix Capdels sends a letter to his friend: “Having rummaged through the chests and organized a good dinner, we began to have fun. The girl turned out to be angry, but we organized her too. It doesn’t matter that the whole department...”

Corporal Georg Pfahler writes without hesitation to his mother (!) in Sappenfeld: “We stayed in a small town for three days... You can imagine how much we ate in three days. And how many chests and closets were rummaged through, how many little young ladies were spoiled... Our life is now fun, not like in the trenches...”

In the diary of the killed chief corporal there is the following entry: “October 12. Today I took part in clearing the camp of suspicious people. 82 were shot. Among them was beautiful woman. We, me and Karl, took her to the operating room, she bit and howled. 40 minutes later she was shot. Memory - a few minutes of pleasure."

With the prisoners who did not have time to get rid of such documents compromising them, the conversation was short: they were taken aside and - a bullet in the back of the head.

Woman in military uniform aroused special hatred among enemies. She is not only a woman - she is also a soldier fighting with you! And if captured male soldiers were broken morally and physically by barbaric torture, then female soldiers were broken by rape. (They also resorted to him during interrogations. The Germans raped the girls from the Young Guard, and threw one naked onto a hot stove.)

The medical workers who fell into their hands were raped without exception.

“Two kilometers south of the village of Akimovka (Melitopol region), the Germans attacked a car in which there were two wounded Red Army soldiers and a female paramedic accompanying them. They dragged the woman into the sunflowers, raped her, and then shot her. These animals twisted the arms of the wounded Red Army soldiers and also shot them...”

“In the village of Voronki, in Ukraine, the Germans housed 40 wounded Red Army soldiers, prisoners of war and nurses in a former hospital. The nurses were raped and shot, and guards were placed near the wounded...”

“In Krasnaya Polyana, wounded soldiers and a wounded nurse were not given water for 4 days and food for 7 days, and then they were given salt water to drink. The nurse began to agonize. The Nazis raped the dying girl in front of the wounded Red Army soldiers.”

The twisted logic of war requires the rapist to exercise FULL power. This means that humiliating the victim alone is not enough. And then unimaginable abuses are committed against the victim, and in conclusion, her life is taken away, as a manifestation of the HIGHEST power. Otherwise, what good, she will think that she gave you pleasure! And you may look weak in her eyes if you can’t control your sexual desire. Hence the sadistic treatment and murder.

“Hitler’s robbers in one village captured a fifteen-year-old girl and brutally raped her. Sixteen animals tormented this girl. She resisted, she called for her mother, she screamed. They gouged out her eyes and threw her, torn to pieces, spit on the street... It was in the Belarusian town of Chernin.”

“In the city of Lvov, 32 workers of a Lvov garment factory were raped and then killed by German stormtroopers. Drunken German soldiers dragged Lviv girls and young women into Kosciuszko Park and brutally raped them. Old priest V.L. Pomaznev, who with a cross in his hands tried to prevent violence against girls, was beaten by the Nazis, tore off his cassock, burned his beard and stabbed him with a bayonet.”

“The streets of the village of K., where the Germans were rampaging for some time, were covered with the corpses of women, old people, and children. The surviving village residents told the Red Army soldiers that the Nazis herded all the girls into the hospital building and raped them. Then they locked the doors and set the building on fire.”

“In the Begomlsky district, the wife of a Soviet worker was raped and then put on a bayonet.”

“In Dnepropetrovsk, on Bolshaya Bazarnaya Street, drunken soldiers detained three women. Having tied them to poles, the Germans savagely abused them and then killed them.”

“In the village of Milutino, the Germans arrested 24 collective farmers and took them to a neighboring village. Among those arrested was thirteen-year-old Anastasia Davydova. Throwing the peasants into a dark barn, the Nazis began to torture them, demanding information about the partisans. Everyone was silent. Then the Germans took the girl out of the barn and asked in which direction the collective farm cattle had been driven away. The young patriot refused to answer. The fascist scoundrels raped the girl and then shot her.”

“The Germans broke into us! Two 16-year-old girls were dragged by their officers to the cemetery and violated. Then they ordered the soldiers to hang them from trees. The soldiers carried out the order and hung them upside down. There, soldiers violated 9 elderly women.” (Collective farmer Petrova from the Plowman collective farm.)

“We were standing in the village of Bolshoye Pankratovo. It was on Monday the 21st, at four o'clock in the morning. The fascist officer walked through the village, entered all the houses, took money and things from the peasants, and threatened that he would shoot all the residents. Then we came to the house at the hospital. There was a doctor and a girl there. He told the girl: “Follow me to the commandant’s office, I have to check your documents.” I saw how she hid her passport on her chest. He took her into the garden near the hospital and raped her there. Then the girl rushed into the field, she screamed, it was clear that she had lost her mind. He caught up with her and soon showed me his passport covered in blood...”

“The Nazis broke into the sanatorium of the People's Commissariat of Health in Augustow. (...) The German fascists raped all the women who were in this sanatorium. And then the mutilated, beaten sufferers were shot.”

It has been repeatedly noted in historical literature that “during the investigation of war crimes, many documents and evidence were discovered about the rape of young pregnant women, whose throats were then cut and their breasts pierced with bayonets. Obviously hatred female breast in the blood of the Germans."

I will provide several such documents and evidence.

“In the village of Semenovskoye, Kalinin Region, the Germans raped 25-year-old Olga Tikhonova, the wife of a Red Army soldier, the mother of three children, who was in the last stage of pregnancy, and tied her hands with twine. After the rape, the Germans cut her throat, pierced both breasts and sadistically drilled them.”

“In Belarus, near the city of Borisov, 75 women and girls who fled when German troops approached fell into the hands of the Nazis. The Germans raped and then brutally killed 36 women and girls. 16-year-old girl L.I. Melchukova, on the orders of the German officer Hummer, was taken into the forest by soldiers, where she was raped. After some time, other women, also taken into the forest, saw that there were boards near the trees, and the dying Melchukova was pinned to the boards with bayonets, in front of whom the Germans, in front of other women, in particular V.I. Alperenko and V.M. Bereznikova, they cut off her breasts..."

(With all my rich imagination, I cannot imagine what kind of inhuman scream that accompanied the torment of women must have stood over this Belarusian town, over this forest. It seems that you will hear this even in the distance, and you will not be able to stand it, you will cover your ears with both hands and run away , because you know that it is PEOPLE SCREAMING.)

“In the village of Zh., on the road, we saw the mutilated, naked corpse of old man Timofey Vasilyevich Globa. He is all striped with ramrods and riddled with bullets. Not far away in the garden lay a murdered naked girl. Her eyes were gouged out, her right breast was cut off, and there was a bayonet stuck in her left. This is the daughter of old man Globa - Galya.

When the Nazis burst into the village, the girl was hiding in the garden, where she spent three days. By the morning of the fourth day, Galya decided to make her way to the hut, hoping to get something to eat. Here I overtook her German officer. The sick Globa ran out to his daughter’s scream and hit the rapist with a crutch. Two more bandit officers jumped out of the hut, called the soldiers, and grabbed Galya and her father. The girl was stripped, raped and brutally abused, and her father was kept so that he could see everything. They gouged out her eyes, cut off her right breast, and inserted a bayonet into her left. Then they stripped Timofey Globa, laid him on his daughter’s body (!) and beat him with ramrods. And when he, having gathered his remaining strength, tried to escape, they caught him on the road, shot him and bayoneted him.”

It was considered some kind of special “daring” to rape and torture women in front of people close to them: husbands, parents, children. Maybe the audience was necessary to demonstrate their “strength” in front of them and emphasize their humiliating helplessness?

“Everywhere, brutalized German bandits break into houses, rape women and girls in front of their relatives and their children, mock the raped and brutally deal with their victims right there.”

“The collective farmer Ivan Gavrilovich Terekhin walked through the village of Puchki with his wife Polina Borisovna. Several German soldiers grabbed Polina, dragged her aside, threw her into the snow and, in front of her husband’s eyes, began to rape her one by one. The woman screamed and resisted with all her might.

Then the fascist rapist shot her at point-blank range. Polina Terekhova began to writhe in agony. Her husband escaped from the hands of the rapists and rushed to the dying woman. But the Germans caught up with him and put 6 bullets in his back.”

“On the Apnas farm, drunken German soldiers raped a 16-year-old girl and threw her into a well. They also threw her mother there, who tried to stop the rapists.”

Vasily Vishnichenko from the village of Generalskoye testified: “German soldiers grabbed me and took me to headquarters. At that time one of the fascists dragged my wife into the cellar. When I returned, I saw that my wife was lying in the cellar, her dress was torn and she was already dead. The villains raped her and killed her with one bullet in the head and another in the heart.”

When it comes to talking about wars and the horrific conditions in which captives had to live, it is often exclusively men that are meant. Meanwhile, around the world, women often found themselves in the camps of warring parties. Many of them went crazy out of despair and were ready to commit suicide, since their situation was sometimes even worse than that of the male captives.

Women soldiers of the Red Army in German captivity

During the Great Patriotic War V Soviet army Many women served, and during the first battles this came as a big surprise to the Germans. They took prisoners, and then discovered that among them it was not only men. Ordinary German soldiers were not entirely clear what to do with women in uniform, so they strictly adhered to the orders of the Third Reich: the enemy is not worthy of the honor of appearing before a fair military court and can only be shot.

The women who miraculously survived were subjected to abuse, brutal torture and violence. They were beaten to death, raped repeatedly, had obscene inscriptions carved into their bodies and faces, or had parts of their bodies cut off and left to bleed to death.

There were women prisoners of war in every German concentration camp. Over time, confinement in separate barracks and a ban on communication with men became mandatory. Throughout the imprisonment, minimum sanitary conditions were lacking. ABOUT clean water and fresh linen could not even be dreamed of. Food was provided once a day, and sometimes with long intervals.

How do they survive captivity of the Islamic State?

The cruelty of militants fighting for the Islamist groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State (banned in Russia) knows no bounds. Jihadists kidnap people, torture them in sophisticated ways, and extremely rarely agree to exchange the freedom of captives for ransom. Everyone who did not voluntarily join them is considered enemies. Women and children are no exception.

On the contrary, when building a fair society of “true Islam,” jihadists pay increased attention to the issue of interaction with women. According to Sharia law, they are obliged to devote all their time to their family: raising children, taking care of the household, and carrying out their husband’s orders. Accordingly, if women think differently, Islamists do not hesitate to impose their rules by force.

Anyone who professed another religion before the arrival of IS is automatically recognized as traitors. And they treat them accordingly: they are taken into slavery, bought and sold, forced to do hard and dirty work. The rape and mutilation of enslaved women has long been recognized by theologians " Islamic State"one of the Sharia laws.

The lives of the unfortunate captives have no value. They are used as human shields, forced to dig trenches and shelters under crossfire, and sent into crowded areas as suicide bombers.

Germans in Eisenhower's death camps

Seeing their husbands off to World War II, German women had no idea what it would mean for them in the event of defeat. Immediately after Victory Day, millions of Germans were captured: both military personnel and civilians. And if those who ended up with the British-Canadian troops were relatively lucky - most of them were sent to restoration work or released, then those who ended up in Eisenhower’s camps had to endure real atrocities.

Women who never took part in hostilities were kept in equal conditions with men. These were one of the largest prisoner of war camps: tens of thousands of people were herded into groups and held for months right in the open air, fencing the area with barbed wire.

The prisoners had no shelters. They were not given warm clothing or basic hygiene products. In order to somehow protect themselves from heavy rains and frosts, many dug holes and tried to build improvised huts from tree branches. However, this was not what was truly terrible. Both women and men in Eisenhower's camps were essentially starved to death. The American general personally signed an order stating that this category of prisoners does not fall under the Geneva Convention.

The American army reserves had a huge supply of food, but this did not stop the prevailing enemy from cutting the prisoners' rations in half, and after a while - reducing the portions by another third. People were so hungry that they ate grass and drank their own urine. The mortality rate in Eisenhower's death camps was more than 30%, and the bulk of them were women, pregnant girls and children.

Captured by Somali terrorists

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries, because there has been a civil war on its territory for almost two decades. Most of this state is under the control of the Islamist group Al-Shabaab. Kidnapping of women, especially foreigners, has long been commonplace here.

Girls are taken captive for ransom or used as “bait” in ambushes. The attitude towards captives is appropriate: they live in cramped rooms or pits, more like coffins, are forced to endure endless beatings and exist in a half-starved state. It often happens that women are gang raped. The only chance to free yourself is to wait for help from the authorities. Even if the terrorists agree to the exchange, there is a real risk of ending up in prison for transferring funds.

Many captives see renunciation of their own religion and adoption of Islam as a way to save their lives. This, in particular, happens because the kidnappers often talk about the commandments of the Koran, which prohibit one Muslim from killing or raping another. However, in reality, even after accepting Islam, the hostages are not treated better. But to all the already standard bullying is added the requirement to pray five times a day.

Many years after the war it became known.

Instead of a preface:

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

- This is the first eastern subgroup.

- How are you, children?

- How do you live, children?

- We live well, our health is good. Come.

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

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

- I am assigned to load coal into the crematorium tomorrow.

- And I can donate blood.

- And I...

Take it.

- They don't know what it is?

- They forgot.

- Eat, children! Eat!

- Why didn’t you take it?

- Wait, I'll take it.

- You might not get it.

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

- What's wrong with them?

- Why did they lie down?

“The children probably thought they were given poison...”

A group of Soviet prisoners of war behind barbed wire

Majdanek. Poland

The girl is a prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac

KZ Mauthausen, jugendliche

Children of Buchenwald

Joseph Mengele and child

Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials

Children of Buchenwald

Mauthausen children show numbers etched into their hands

Treblinka

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

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

These are the children released in Salaspils

“Since the fall of 1942, masses of women, old people, and children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, Latgale were forcibly brought to the Salaspils concentration camp. Children from infancy to 12 years old were forcibly taken away from their mothers and kept in 9 barracks, of which the so-called 3 sick leaves, 2 for crippled children and 4 barracks for healthy children.

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

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

B) gave children poisoned coffee;

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

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

D) all children suffered from dysenteric diarrhea and dystrophy;

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most of these children who were taken out and given away to be raised died because... were easily susceptible to all kinds of diseases after losing blood in the Salaspils camp.

On the eve of the expulsion of German fascists from Riga, on October 4-6, they loaded infants and small children under 4 years of age from Riga onto the ship "Menden". orphanage and the Mayor's orphanage, where the children of executed parents were kept, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, prisons and partly from the Salaspils camp, and 289 small children were exterminated on that ship.

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

Not stopping at these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 sold low-quality products in Riga stores only using children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did small children die in droves? More than 400 children died in the Riga Children's Hospital alone in 9 months of 1944, including 71 children in September.

In these orphanages, the methods of raising and maintaining children were police and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp, Krause, and another German, Schaefer, who went to the children's camps and houses where the children were kept for “inspection.”

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

Senior NKVD operative officer, security captain /Murman/

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

According to the People's Commissariat of Education of the LSSR, which investigated the facts of the abduction of civilians into German slavery, as of April 3, 1945, it is known that 2,802 children were distributed from the Salaspils concentration camp during the German occupation:

1) on kulak farms - 1,564 people.

2) to children's camps - 636 people.

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

The list is compiled on the basis of data from the card index of the Social Department of Internal Affairs of the Latvian General Directorate “Ostland”. Based on the same file, it was revealed that children were forced to work from the age of five.

IN last days During their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, into the homes of infants, into apartments, grabbed children, drove them to the port of Riga, where they loaded them like cattle into the coal mines of steamships.

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

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

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

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

In the ditch

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

Children behind the wire

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a Finnish concentration camp

Auschwitz (Auschwitz)

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka

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