Correspondent: Camp bed. The Nazis forced female prisoners into prostitution - Archive
I apologize if there are factual errors in today's material.
Instead of a preface:
"- When there were no gas chambers, we shot on Wednesdays and Fridays. Children tried to hide these days. Now the crematorium ovens work day and night and the children no longer hide. The children are used to it.
This is the first eastern subgroup.
How are you, children?
How are you, 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 ration, so the blood didn’t come out.
I'm scheduled to load coal into the crematorium tomorrow.
And I can donate blood.
They don't know what it is?
They forgot.
Eat, children! Eat!
What didn't you take?
Wait, I'll take it.
You might not get it.
Lie down, it doesn't hurt, as if you'll fall asleep. Lie down!
What is it with them?
Why did they lie down?
The kids 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
Josef Mengele and child
Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials
Children of Buchenwald
Mauthausen children display numbers carved into their hands
Treblinka
Two sources. One says that this is Majdanek, the other - Auschwitz
Some critters use this photo as "proof" of the famine in Ukraine. It is not surprising that it is in the Nazi crimes that they draw "inspiration" for their "revelations"
These are the children released in Salaspils
"From the autumn of 1942, masses of women, old people, children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, Latgale were forcibly brought to the Salaspils concentration camp. Children from infancy and up to 12 years old were forcibly taken away from their mothers and kept in 9 barracks, of which the so-called 3 hospitals, 2 for crippled children, and 4 barracks for healthy children.
The permanent contingent of children in Salaspils during 1943 and until 1944 was over 1,000 people. There was a systematic extermination of them by:
A) the organization of a blood factory for the needs of the German army, blood was taken from both adults and healthy children, including babies, until they fainted, after which sick children were taken to the so-called hospital, where they died;
B) gave the children poisoned coffee to drink;
C) children with measles were bathed, from which they died;
D) children were injected with children's, women's and even horse urine. Many children had festering and leaking eyes;
E) all children suffered from diarrhea of a dysentery nature and dystrophy;
E) naked children in the winter were driven to the bathhouse in the snow at a distance of 500-800 meters and kept naked in the barracks for 4 days;
3) crippled and maimed children were taken out 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; more than 6,000 people.
During 1943/44. more than 3,000 people who survived and endured torture were taken out of the concentration camp. For this purpose, a children's market was organized in Riga at 5 Gertrudes Street, where they were sold into slavery at 45 marks per summer.
Some of the children were placed in children's camps organized for this purpose after May 1, 1943 - in Dubulti, Bulduri, Saulkrasti. After that, the German fascists continued to supply the fists of Latvia with Russian children from the aforementioned camps and export them directly to the volosts of the counties of Latvia, they sold them for 45 Reichsmarks during the summer period.
Most of these children who were taken out and given up for education died, because. were easily susceptible to all kinds of diseases after losing blood in the Salaspils camp.
On the eve of the expulsion of the German fascists from Riga, on October 4-6, they loaded babies and toddlers under the age of 4 from the Riga orphanage and the Mayorsky 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 exterminated 289 babies on that ship.
They were hijacked by the Germans to Libava, an orphanage for infants located there. Children from Baldonsky, Grivsky orphanages, nothing is known about their fate yet.
Not stopping before these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 in the shops of Riga sold substandard products, only on children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did the little ones 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 keeping children were policemen and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp Krause and another German Schaefer, who went to children's camps and houses where children were kept for "inspection".
It was also established that in the Dubulti camp, children were put in a punishment cell. For this, the former head of the camp, Benois, resorted to the assistance of the German SS police.
Senior detective of the NKVD captain g / security / Murman /
Children were brought from the eastern lands occupied by the Germans: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine. Children came to Latvia together with their mothers, where they were then forcibly separated. Mothers were used as free labor. Older children were also used in all kinds of auxiliary work.
According to the data of the People's Commissariat of Education of the Latvian SSR, which was investigating the facts of the deportation of the civilian population 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) for kulak farms - 1,564 people.
2) in children's camps - 636 people.
3) taken up by individual citizens - 602 people.
The list was compiled on the basis of data from the card file of the Social Department of the Interior 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 the last days of their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, homes for infants, grabbed children from apartments, herded 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. During mass executions, 17,765 children were killed.
Based on the materials of the investigation for the rest of the cities and districts of the LSSR, the following number of exterminated children was established:
Abren County - 497
Ludza County - 732
Rezekne county and Rezekne - 2045, incl. through Rezekne Prison more than 1,200
Madona County - 373
Daugavpils - 3 960, incl. through Daugavpils prison 2000
Daugavpils County - 1,058
Valmiera county - 315
Jelgava - 697
Ilukst district - 190
Bauska county - 399
Valka County - 22
Cesis county - 32
Jekabpils county - 645
In total - 10 965 people.
In Riga, dead children were buried at Pokrovsky, Tornyakalns and Ivanovo cemeteries, as well as in the forest near the Salaspils camp.
in the moat
The bodies of two children-prisoners before the funeral. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 04/17/1945
Children behind the wire
Soviet children-prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk
“The girl who is second from the pillar on the right in the photo - Claudia 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 with cold water. I remember the disinfection of the barracks, after which there was a buzzing in the ears and many had nosebleeds, and that steam room, where all our rags were processed with great “dilience”. Once the steam room burned down, depriving many people of their last clothes.
The Finns shot prisoners in front of children, 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 by a miracle. According to available Finnish documents, only seven men were shot for trying to escape or for other crimes. During the conversation, it turned out that the Sobolev family was one of those who were taken out of Zaonezhye. Mother Soboleva and her six children had a hard time. 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, to the 125th barrack. The mother was immediately taken to the hospital. Claudia recalled with horror the disinfection carried out by the Finns. People died in the so-called bath, and then they were doused with cold water. The food was bad, the food was spoiled, the clothes were worthless.
Only at the end of June 1944 were they able to get out from behind 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 prisoners: "There was little food, and it was bad. The baths were terrible. The Finns did not show any pity."
In a Finnish concentration camp
Auschwitz (Auschwitz)
Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka
The photographs of 14-year-old Czeslawa Kwoka, courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, perished during World War II. In December 1942, the Polish Catholic Czesława, originally from Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz with her mother. They both died three months later. In 2005, photographer (and co-prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not realize why she was here and did not understand what she was being told. 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 was crying, but there was nothing she could do. Before being photographed, the girl wiped her tears and blood from her broken lip. To be honest, I felt like I was being beaten, but I couldn't intervene. For me it would be fatal."
The 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 were Jews. For several years, the investigation continued, which led to terrible discoveries: people not only died in gas chambers, but also became victims of Dr. Mengele, who used them as guinea pigs.
Auschwitz: the history of one 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. A concentration camp, experiments on women and children, gas chambers, torture, executions - all these words have been associated with the name of the city for more than 70 years.
It will sound rather 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 is still ongoing today. Many books have been written and many films have been made on the subject. Auschwitz has entered our symbol of a painful, difficult death.
Where did mass murders of children take place and terrible experiments were carried out on women? In Which city do millions of inhabitants on earth associate with the phrase "factory of death"? Auschwitz.
Experiments on people were carried out in a camp located near the city, which today is home to 40,000 people. It is a quiet town with a good climate. Auschwitz is first mentioned in historical documents in the twelfth century. In the XIII 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. After 20 years, a camp was organized here, on the territory of which crimes took place, the likes of which mankind had not yet 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, do not take into account the SS. Some of the prisoners, fortunately, survived. Later they talked about what happened within the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Experiments on women and children, which were conducted by a man whose name terrified the prisoners, is a terrible truth that not everyone is ready to listen to.
The gas chamber is a terrible invention of the Nazis. But there are things even worse. Christina Zhivulskaya is one of the few who managed to get out of Auschwitz alive. In her book of memoirs, she mentions a case: a prisoner, sentenced to death by Dr. Mengel, 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.
The creators of the "factory of death"
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, during the Second World War he led punitive operations. With his light hand, dozens were sentenced to death. He took an active part in the suppression of the uprising that took place in Warsaw in 1944.
The assistants of the SS Gruppenfuehrer found a suitable place in a small Polish town. There were already military barracks here, in addition, the railway communication was well established. In 1940, a man named came here. He will be hanged by 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 set to work with great enthusiasm.
Inhabitants of the concentration camp
This camp did not immediately become a "factory of death". At first, mainly Polish prisoners were sent here. Only a year after the camp was organized, a tradition appeared to display a serial number on the prisoner's hand. More and more Jews were brought in every month. By the end of the existence of Auschwitz, they accounted for 90% of the total number of prisoners. The number of SS men here also grew steadily. 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 Josef Mengele, whose experiments terrified the prisoners for several years.
We will not give the exact number of victims of Auschwitz here. Let's just say that more than two hundred children died in the camp. Most of them were sent to the gas chambers. Some fell into the hand of Josef Mengele. But this man was not the only one who conducted experiments on people. Another so-called doctor is Carl Clauberg.
Starting in 1943, a huge number of prisoners entered the camp. Most had to be 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.
Carl Cauberg
This man supervised the experiments conducted on women. His victims were predominantly Jews and Gypsies. The experiments included the removal of organs, the testing of new drugs, and irradiation. What kind of person is Karl Cauberg? Who is he? In what family did you grow up, 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 according to which, in the First World War, he served as an infantryman. Then he graduated from the University of Hamburg. Apparently, medicine fascinated him so much that he refused a military career. But Kaulberg was not interested in medicine, but in research. In the early forties, he began to search for the most practical way to sterilize women who did not belong to the Aryan race. For experiments, he was transferred to Auschwitz.
Kaulberg's experiments
The experiments consisted in the introduction of a special solution into the uterus, which led to serious violations. 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 according to an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war. Returning to Germany, Kaulberg did not suffer from remorse at all. On the contrary, he was proud of his "achievements in science." As a result, complaints began to come in from people who had 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.
Josef Mengele
The prisoners called this man "the angel of death". Josef Mengele personally met the trains with new prisoners and conducted the selection. Some went to the gas chambers. Others are at work. The third he used in his experiments. One of the prisoners of Auschwitz described this man as follows: "Tall, with a pleasant appearance, like a movie actor." He never raised his voice, he spoke politely - and this terrified the prisoners in particular.
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, for health reasons, left it. In 1932, Mengele joined the SS. During the war he served in the medical troops 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 launched his scientific activities.
Selection
Selecting victims for experiments was Mengele's favorite pastime. The doctor only needed one look at the prisoner in order to determine the state of his health. He sent most of the prisoners to the gas chambers. And only a few captives managed to delay death. It was hard to deal with those in whom Mengele saw "guinea pigs."
Most likely, this person suffered from an extreme form of mental disorder. He even enjoyed the thought that he had a huge number of human lives in his hands. That is why he was always next to the arriving train. Even when it was not required of him. His criminal actions were guided not only by the desire for scientific research, but also by the desire to rule. Just one word of his was enough to send tens or hundreds of people to the gas chambers. Those that were sent to the laboratories became the material for experiments. But what was the purpose of these experiments?
An invincible faith in the Aryan utopia, obvious mental deviations - these are the components of the personality of Josef Mengele. All his experiments were aimed at creating a new tool that could stop the reproduction of representatives of objectionable peoples. Mengele not only equated himself with God, he placed himself above him.
Josef Mengele's experiments
The angel of death dissected babies, castrated boys and men. He performed operations without anesthesia. Experiments on women consisted of high voltage shocks. He conducted these experiments in order to test endurance. Mengele once sterilized several Polish nuns with 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 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." On 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 history of mankind.
We can all agree that the Nazis did terrible things during World War II. The Holocaust was perhaps their most famous crime. But in the concentration camps, terrible and inhuman things happened that most people did not know about. The camp inmates were used as test subjects in many experiments that were very painful and usually resulted in death.
blood clotting experiments
Dr. Sigmund Rascher performed blood clotting experiments on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp. He created a drug, Polygal, which included beets and apple pectin. He believed that these pills could help stop bleeding from battle wounds or during surgical operations.
Each subject was given a tablet of the drug and shot in the neck or chest to test its effectiveness. The limbs were then amputated without anesthesia. Dr. Rascher created a company to produce these pills, which also employed prisoners.
Experiments with sulfa drugs 
In the Ravensbrück concentration camp, the effectiveness of sulfonamides (or sulfanilamide preparations) was tested on prisoners. Subjects were given incisions on the outside of their calves. The doctors then rubbed the mixture of bacteria into the open wounds and stitched them up. To simulate combat situations, glass fragments were also brought into the wounds.
However, this method turned out to be too mild compared to the conditions at the fronts. To simulate gunshot wounds, blood vessels were tied off on both sides to cut off blood circulation. Then the prisoners were given sulfa drugs. Despite the advances made in the scientific and pharmaceutical fields through these experiments, the prisoners experienced terrible pain that led to severe injury or even death.
Freezing and Hypothermia Experiments 
The German armies were ill-prepared for the cold that they faced on the Eastern Front and from which thousands of soldiers died. As a result, Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted experiments in Birkenau, Auschwitz and Dachau to find out two things: the time required for the body temperature to drop and death, and methods for reviving frozen people.
Naked prisoners were either placed in a barrel of ice water, or driven out into the street in sub-zero temperatures. Most of the victims died. Those who only fainted were subjected to painful resuscitation procedures. To revive the subjects, they were placed under lamps of sunlight, which burned their skin, forced to copulate with women, injected with boiling water or placed in baths of warm water (which turned out to be the most effective method).
Experiments with firebombs 
For three months in 1943 and 1944, Buchenwald prisoners were tested for the effectiveness of pharmaceutical preparations against phosphorus burns caused by incendiary bombs. The test subjects were specially burned with a phosphorus composition from these bombs, which was a very painful procedure. Prisoners were seriously injured during these experiments.
sea water experiments 
Experiments were conducted on Dachau prisoners to find ways to turn sea water into drinking water. The subjects were divided into four groups, whose members went without water, drank sea water, drank sea water treated according to the Burke method, and drank sea water without salt.
Subjects were given food and drink assigned to their group. Prisoners who received some form of seawater eventually suffered from severe diarrhea, convulsions, hallucinations, went insane, and eventually died.
In addition, the subjects were subjected to needle biopsy of the liver or lumbar punctures to collect data. These procedures were painful and in most cases ended in death.
Experiments with poisons 
In Buchenwald, experiments were carried out on the effects of poisons on people. In 1943, poisons were secretly administered to prisoners.
Some died themselves from poisoned food. Others were killed for the sake of an autopsy. A year later, poisoned bullets were fired at the prisoners to speed up data collection. These test subjects experienced terrible torment.
Experiments with sterilization 
As part of the extermination of all non-Aryans, Nazi doctors conducted mass sterilization experiments on prisoners from various concentration camps in search of the least laborious and cheapest method of sterilization.
In one series of experiments, a chemical irritant was injected into the reproductive organs of women to block the fallopian tubes. Some women have died after this procedure. Other women were killed for autopsies.
In a number of other experiments, prisoners were subjected to intense X-ray radiation, which led to severe burns on the abdomen, groin and buttocks. They were also left with incurable ulcers. Some test subjects died.
Bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and bone grafting experiments 
For about a year, experiments were carried out on the prisoners of Ravensbrück to regenerate bones, muscles and nerves. Nerve surgeries included the removal of segments of nerves from the lower limbs.
Bone experiments included breaking and repositioning bones in several places on the lower extremities. Fractures were not allowed to heal properly as doctors needed to study the healing process and also test different healing methods.
Doctors also removed numerous fragments of the tibia from the test subjects to study bone regeneration. Bone grafts included transplanting fragments of the left tibia to the right and vice versa. These experiments caused unbearable pain and severe injuries to the prisoners.
Experiments with typhus 
From the end of 1941 until the beginning of 1945, doctors conducted experiments on the prisoners of Buchenwald and Natzweiler in the interests of the German armed forces. They were testing vaccines for typhus and other diseases.
Approximately 75% of test subjects were injected with trial typhoid vaccines or other chemicals. They were injected with a virus. As a result, more than 90% of them died.
The remaining 25% of the test subjects were injected with the virus without any prior protection. Most of them did not survive. Physicians also conducted experiments related to yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid, and other diseases. Hundreds of prisoners died, and more prisoners suffered unbearable pain as a result.
Twin experiments and genetic experiments 
The purpose of the Holocaust was the elimination of all people of non-Aryan origin. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals and other people who did not meet certain requirements were to be exterminated so that only the "superior" Aryan race remained. Genetic experiments were carried out to provide the Nazi Party with scientific proof of the superiority of the Aryans.
Dr. Josef Mengele (also known as the "Angel of Death") had a strong interest in the twins. He separated them from the rest of the prisoners when they entered Auschwitz. The twins had to donate blood every day. The real purpose of this procedure is unknown.
The experiments with twins were extensive. They were to be carefully examined and every centimeter of their body measured. After that, comparisons were made to determine hereditary traits. Sometimes doctors performed mass blood transfusions from one twin to the other.
Since people of Aryan origin mostly had blue eyes, experiments were carried out to create them with chemical drops or injections into the iris of the eye. These procedures were very painful and led to infections and even blindness.
Injections and lumbar punctures were done without anesthesia. One twin deliberately contracted the disease, and the other did not. If one twin died, the other twin was killed and studied for comparison.
Amputations and removals of organs were also performed without anesthesia. Most of the twins who ended up in the concentration camp died in one way or another, and their autopsies were the last experiments.
Experiments with high altitudes 
From March to August 1942, the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp were used as test subjects in experiments to test human endurance at high altitudes. The results of these experiments were to help the German air force.
The test subjects were placed in a low pressure chamber, which created atmospheric conditions at altitudes up to 21,000 meters. Most of the test subjects died, and the survivors suffered from various injuries from being at high altitudes.
Experiments with malaria 
Over the course of more than three years, more than 1,000 Dachau prisoners were used in a series of experiments related to the search for a cure for malaria. Healthy prisoners were infected by mosquitoes or extracts from these mosquitoes.
Prisoners who contracted malaria were then treated with various drugs to test their effectiveness. Many prisoners died. The surviving prisoners suffered greatly and were mostly disabled for the rest of their lives.
Lyudmila's mother - Natasha - on the very first day of the occupation was taken by the Germans to Kretinga to an open-air concentration camp. A few days later, all the wives of officers with children, including her, were transferred to a stationary concentration camp, in the town of Dimitravas. It was a terrible place - daily executions and executions. Natalia was saved by the fact that she spoke a little Lithuanian, the Germans were more loyal to the Lithuanians.
When Natasha went into labor, the women persuaded the senior guard to allow them to bring and heat water for the woman in labor. Natalya grabbed a bundle with diapers from home, fortunately they didn’t take it away. On August 21, a little daughter, Lyudochka, was born. The next day, Natasha, along with all the women, was taken to work, and the newborn baby remained in the camp with other children. The little ones screamed from hunger all day, and the older children, crying with pity, nursed them as best they could.
Many years later, Maya Avershina, who was then about 10 years old, will tell how she nursed little Lyudochka Uyutova, crying with her. Soon the children born in the camp began to die of hunger. Then the women refused to go to work. They were herded with their children into a punishment cell bunker, where there was knee-deep water and rats swam. A day later, they were released and the nursing mothers were allowed to take turns staying in the barracks to feed their children, and each fed two children - her own and another child, otherwise it was impossible.
In the winter of 1941, when the field work ended, the Germans began to sell prisoners with children to farmers so as not to feed them for free. Lyudochka's mother was bought by a wealthy owner, but she ran away from him at night undressed, taking only diapers. She ran away to a familiar simple peasant from Prishmonchay, Ignas Kaunas. When she appeared late at night with a screaming bundle in her hands on the threshold of his poor house, Ignas, after listening, simply said: “Go to bed, daughter. We'll come up with something. Thank God that you speak Lithuanian.” Ignas himself had seven children at that time, at that moment they were fast asleep. In the morning, Ignas bought Natalya and her daughter for five marks and a piece of lard.
Two months later, the Germans again gathered all the sold prisoners in the camp, field work began.
By the winter of 1942, Ignas again bought Natalia and the baby. Lyudochka's condition was terrible, even Ignas could not stand it, he began to cry. The girl did not grow nails, had no hair, there were terrible abscesses on her head, and she could hardly hold on to her thin neck. Everything was from the fact that they took blood from the kids for the German pilots who were in the hospital in Palanga. The smaller the child, the more valuable the blood was. Sometimes all the blood was taken from small donors to the drop, and the child himself was thrown into the ditch along with the executed. And if it were not for the help of ordinary Lithuanians, Lyudochka would not have survived - Lucy, as Ignas Kaunas called her, with her mother. Secretly at night, the Lithuanians threw bundles of food to the prisoners, risking their own lives. Many children-prisoners through a secret hole left the camp at night to ask for food from the farmers and returned to the camp the same way, where their hungry brothers and sisters were waiting for them.
In the spring of 1943, Ignas, having learned that the prisoners were going to be taken to Germany, tried to save little Lyudochka-Lucita and her mother from theft, but failed. He was only able to pass on the road a small bundle with breadcrumbs and lard. They were transported in boxcars without windows. Because of the cramped conditions, women rode standing up, holding their children in their arms. Everyone was numb from hunger and fatigue, the children no longer screamed. When the train stopped, Natalya could not move, her arms and legs were convulsively numb. The guard climbed into the car and began to push the women out - they fell, not letting go of the children. When they began to unhook their hands, it turned out that many children died on the road. Everyone was lifted up and sent on open platforms to Lublin, to the large Majdanek concentration camp. And they miraculously survived. Every morning, every second, then every tenth was put out of action. Day and night the chimneys of the crematorium above Majdanek smoked.
And again - loading into wagons. We were sent to Krakow, to Bzezhinka. Here they were shaved again, doused with a caustic liquid, and after a shower with cold water, they were sent to a long wooden hut, fenced with barbed wire. They didn’t give food to children, but they took blood from these emaciated, almost skeletons. The children were on the verge of death.
In the autumn of 1943, the entire barracks were urgently taken to Germany, to a camp on the banks of the Oder, not far from Berlin. Again - hunger, executions. Even the smallest children did not dare to make noise, laugh, or ask for food. The kids tried to hide away from the eyes of the German warden, who, mockingly, ate cakes in front of them. The duty of the French or Belgian women was a holiday: they did not kick out the kids when the older children washed the barracks, they did not hand out cuffs and did not allow the older children to take away food from the younger ones, which was encouraged by the Germans. The camp commandant demanded cleanliness (for violating execution!), and this saved the prisoners from infectious diseases. The food was scarce, but clean, they only drank boiled water.
There was no crematorium in the camp, but there was a “revir”, from where they no longer returned. Parcels were sent to the French and Belgians, and almost everything edible from them at night was secretly thrown over the wire to the children, who were donors here too. Doctors from Revere also tested medicines on small prisoners that were embedded in chocolates. Little Ludochka survived because she almost always managed to hide the candy behind her cheek so that she could spit it out later. The baby knew what pain in the stomach was after such sweets. Many children died as a result of the experiments carried out on them. If a child fell ill, he was sent to the “revir”, from where he never returned. And the kids knew it. There was a case when Lyudochka's eye was injured, and the three-year-old girl was even afraid to cry, so that no one would find out and send her to the “revir”. Luckily, a Belgian was on duty, and she helped the baby. When the mother was driven home from work, the girl, lying on the bunk with a bloody bandage, put her finger to her blue lips: “Quiet, be quiet!” How many tears did Natalya shed at night, looking at her daughter!
Day after day went like this - mothers from dawn to dusk at hard work, children - under shouts and slaps on the back of the head, “walked” along the parade ground in any weather in wooden shoes and torn clothes. When it started to freeze completely, the warder "regretted", forcing her to stomp with her sick little legs on the slushy snow.
We walked silently to the barracks when we were allowed to go. Children did not know toys or games. The only entertainment was a game of "KAPO", where the older children commanded in German, and the little ones carried out these commands, receiving cuffs from them as well. The children's nervous system was completely shattered. They also had to attend public executions. Once, in the autumn of 1944, women found in a field, in a ditch, a young wounded Russian radio operator, almost a boy. In the crowd of prisoners, they managed to lead him to the camp, rendered all possible assistance. But someone betrayed the boy and the next morning they dragged him to the commandant's office. The next day, a platform was built on the parade ground, everyone was rounded up, even children. The bloodied boy was dragged out of the punishment cell and quartered in front of the prisoners. According to Lyudmila's mother, he did not scream, did not moan, he only managed to shout out: “Women! Brace yourself! Ours will be here soon! And that's it... Little Ludochka's hairs on her head stood on end. Here, even from fear, it was impossible to scream. And she was only three years old.
But there were also small pleasures. On New Year's Eve, the French, secretly of course, made a Christmas tree for children from the branches of some shrub, decorated with paper chains. The kids received a handful of pumpkin seeds as gifts.
In the spring, when mothers came from the field, they brought either nettles or sorrel in their bosoms and almost cried, watching how greedily and hastily, the children, hungry for the winter, eat this “delicacy”. There was another case. On a spring day, the camp was cleaned up. The children basked in the sun. Suddenly Lyudochka's attention was attracted by a bright flower - a dandelion, which grew between rows of barbed wire - in the "dead zone". The girl stretched her slender hand towards the flower through the wire. Everyone so gasped! An evil sentry walked along the fence. Here it is already very close ... The silence was deathly, the prisoners were afraid even to breathe. Unexpectedly, the sentry stopped, picked a flower, put it in his hand, and, laughing, went on. For a moment, the mother's consciousness even became dim from fear. And the daughter admired the sunny flower for a long time, which almost cost her her life.
April 1945 announced itself with the rumble of our Katyushas firing across the Oder at the enemy. The French transmitted through their channels that the Soviet troops would soon cross the Oder. When the Katyushas were in action, the guards hid in the shelter.
Freedom came from the side of the highway: a column of Soviet tanks was moving towards the camp. The gates were knocked down, the tankers got out of the combat vehicles. They were kissed, shedding tears of joy. The tankers, seeing the exhausted children, undertook to feed them. And if the military doctor had not arrived in time, trouble could have happened - the guys could have died from the abundant soldier's food. They were gradually soldered with broth and sweet tea. They left a nurse in the camp, and they themselves went further - to Berlin. For another two weeks, the prisoners were in the camp. Then everyone was transported to Berlin, and from there on their own, through Czechoslovakia and Poland - home.
The peasants gave carts from village to village, as the weakened children could not walk. And here is Brest! Women, crying with joy, kissed their native land. Then, after “filtering”, women with children were put into ambulances and rolled along their native side.
In mid-July 1945, Lyudochka and her mother got off at the Obsharonka station. It was necessary to get 25 kilometers to the native village of Berezovka. The boys helped out - they told their sister Natalia about the return of their relatives from a foreign land. The news quickly spread. My sister almost drove the horse as she hurried to the station. Towards them was a crowd of old villagers and children. Ludochka, seeing them, said to her mother in Lithuanian: “Either they took me to the revir or to the gas ... Let's say that we are Belgians. They don’t know us here, just don’t speak Russian.” And I didn’t understand why my aunt cried when her mother explained the word “to the gas” to that one.
Two villages came running to look at them, returning, one might say, from the other world. Natalya's mother, Lyudochka's grandmother, mourned her daughter for four years, believing that she would never see her alive again. And Lyudochka walked around and quietly asked her cousins: “Are you a Pole or a Russian?” And for the rest of her life she remembered a handful of ripe cherries, handed to her by the hand of a five-year-old cousin. For a long time she had to get used to a peaceful life. She quickly learned Russian, forgetting Lithuanian, German and others. Only for a very long time, for many years, she screamed in her sleep and trembled for a long time when she heard guttural German speech in the cinema or on the radio.
The joy of returning was overshadowed by a new misfortune, it was not in vain that Natalia's mother-in-law lamented sadly. Natalya's husband, Mikhail Uyutov, who was seriously wounded in the first minutes of the battle at the frontier post and later rescued during the liberation of Lithuania, received an official answer to an inquiry about the fate of his wife that she and her newborn daughter were shot in the summer of 1941. He married a second time and was expecting a child. The "organs" were not mistaken. Natalia was indeed considered to have been shot. When the police were looking for her - the political instructor's wife, the Lithuanian Igaas Kaunas managed to convince the Germans from the commandant's office that "she was shot that week along with her daughter." Thus, Natalya, the political instructor's wife, "disappeared". Great was the grief of Mikhail Uyutov when he learned about the return of his first family, in one night he turned gray from such a twist of fate. But Lyudochkin's mother did not cross the road to his second family. She began to lift her daughter to her feet alone. Her sisters helped her, and especially her mother-in-law. She took care of her sick granddaughter.
Years have passed. Lyudmila brilliantly graduated from school. But, when she applied for admission to the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow University, they were returned to her. The war “caught up” with her years later. The place of birth could not be changed - the doors of universities were closed for her. She hid from her mother that she was summoned to the "authorities" for a conversation and told to say that she could not study for health reasons.
Lyudmila went to work as a flower master at the Kuibyshev haberdashery factory, and then, in 1961, she went to work at the plant named after. Maslennikov.
Fight for life: the survival of children in concentration camps krezova wrote on May 18th, 2015
The Second World War claimed the lives of millions of people. The Nazis did not spare anyone: women, old people, children... Such a terrible and hopeless famine in besieged Leningrad. Constant Fear. For yourself, for loved ones, for the future, which may not be. Never. What the witnesses and participants in the bloody meat grinder, arranged by the Third Reich, experienced, is not given to anyone to survive and never again.
Many children ended up with adults in concentration camps, where they were the most vulnerable to the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. How did they survive? What were the conditions? This is their story.
Children's camp Salaspils -
Who saw, will not forget.
There are no more terrible graves in the world,
There used to be a camp here.
Salaspils death camp.
A child's cry choked
And melted like an echo
Woe to mournful silence
Floats over the earth
Over you and over me.
On granite slab
Put down your candy...
He was like you were a child
Like you, he loved them
Salaspils killed him.
Children were taken away with their parents - some to concentration camps, some to forced labor in the Baltic states, Poland, Germany or Austria. The Nazis drove thousands of children to concentration camps. Separated from their parents, experiencing all the horrors of concentration camps, most of them died in gas chambers. These were Jewish children, children of executed partisans, children of murdered Soviet party and state workers.
But, for example, the anti-fascists of the Buchenwald concentration camp managed to place many children in a separate barrack. The solidarity of adults protected children from the most terrible bullying, perpetrated by SS bandits, and from being sent for liquidation. Thanks to this, 904 children were able to survive in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Fascism has no age limit. Terrible experiments were put on everyone, everyone was shot and burned in a gas furnace. There was a separate concentration camp for donor children. Children were taken blood for Nazi soldiers. Most of the guys died due to exhaustion or lack of blood. It is impossible to establish the exact number of children killed.
The first child prisoners ended up in fascist camps already in 1939. These were the children of gypsies, who, together with their mothers, arrived by transport from the Austrian land of Burgenland. Jewish mothers were also thrown into the camp with their children. After the start of the Second World War, mothers with children arrived from countries that had been occupied by the Nazis - first from Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia, then from Holland, Belgium, France and Yugoslavia. Often the mother died and the child was left alone. To get rid of children deprived of their mothers, they were sent by transport to Bernburg or Auschwitz. There they were exterminated in gas chambers.
Very often, SS gangs, when capturing a village, killed most of the people on the spot, and the children were sent to "orphanages", where they were destroyed anyway.
What I found on one site dedicated to the events of the Second World War:
“Children were forbidden to cry, but they forgot how to laugh. There were no clothes or shoes for children. Prisoners’ clothes were too big for them, but they were not allowed to remake them. lost, for which there was also a punishment.
If an orphaned little creature became attached to some prisoner, she considered herself his camp mother - she took care of him, raised him and protected him. Their relationship was no less cordial than between mother and child. And if a child was sent to die in a gas chamber, then the despair of his camp mother, who saved his life with her sacrifices and hardships, knew no bounds. After all, many women and mothers were supported precisely by the consciousness that they should take care of the child. And when they were deprived of a child, they were deprived of the meaning of life.
All the women of the block felt responsible for the children. During the day, when relatives and camp mothers were at work, the children were looked after by the duty officers. And the children willingly helped them. How great was the joy of the child when he was allowed to "help" bring the bread! Toys for children were forbidden. But how little a child needs to play! His toys were buttons, pebbles, empty matchboxes, colored string, spools of thread. A planed piece of wood was especially expensive. But all the toys had to be hidden, the child could only play in secret, otherwise the matron would take away even these primitive toys.
In their games, children imitate the world of adults. Today they play "daughter-mother", "kindergarten", "school". The children of the war also played, but their games were what they saw in the terrible world of adults around them: selection for gas chambers or standing on an apple, death. As soon as they were warned that the warden was coming, they hid the toys in their pockets and ran to their corner.
School-age children were secretly taught to read, write, and do arithmetic. Of course, there were no textbooks, but the prisoners found a way out even here. Letters and numbers were cut out of cardboard or wrapping paper, which was thrown away during the delivery of parcels, and notebooks were sewn together. Deprived of any communication with the outside world, the children had no idea about the simplest things. The training required a lot of patience. Using cut out pictures from illustrated magazines, which occasionally got into the camp with new arrivals and were taken from them upon admission, they explained to them what a tram, city, mountains or sea is. The children were intelligent and studied with great interest."
Teenagers had the hardest time. They remembered peaceful times, happy life in the family.... Girls at the age of 12 were taken to work in production, where they died of tuberculosis and exhaustion. Boys were taken away before the age of twelve.
Here is the recollection of one of the prisoners of Auschwitz, who had to work in the Sonderkommando: “In broad daylight, six hundred Jewish boys aged from twelve to eighteen were brought to our square. They were wearing long, very thin prison robes and shoes with wooden soles. The head of the camp ordered them to undress. The children noticed smoke coming from the chimney and immediately realized that they were going to be killed. In horror, they began to run around the square and tear their hair out of hopelessness. Many were crying and calling for help.
Finally, overwhelmed by fear, they undressed. Naked and barefoot, they clung to each other to avoid the blows of the guards. One daredevil approached the head of the camp who was standing nearby and asked to save his life - he was ready to do any hard work. His answer was a blow to the head with a club.
Some boys ran up to the Jews from the Sonderkommando, threw themselves on their necks, begged for salvation. Others fled naked in all directions in search of a way out. The chief called another SS guard armed with a club.
The sonorous boyish voices grew louder and louder until they merged into one terrible howl, which, probably, was heard far away. We stood literally paralyzed by these cries and sobs. And on the faces of the SS men wandered self-satisfied smiles. With an air of victory, without showing the slightest sign of compassion, they drove the boys into the bunker with terrible blows of clubs.
Many children were still running around the square in a desperate attempt to escape. The SS men, handing out blows to the right and left, chased after them until they forced the last boy into the bunker. You should have seen their joy! Don't they have children of their own?"
Children without childhood. Unfortunate victims of a disastrous war. Remember these boys and girls, they also gave us life and future, like all the victims of the Second World War. Just remember.
