The camps included labor and forced labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and prisoner of war camps. As war events progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was also used in concentration camps.
Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were created after the Nazis came to power in order to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The first concentration camp in Germany was established near Dachau in March 1933.
By the beginning of World War II, there were 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In subsequent years, Hitler's Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of the European countries it occupied, turning them into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people.
Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic ones; total extermination of Jews and Gypsies. For this purpose, they were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers and other means of mass extermination of people, crematoria.
(Military encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing House. Moscow. in 8 volumes - 2004. ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)
There were even special death (extermination) camps, where the liquidation of prisoners proceeded at a continuous and accelerated pace. These camps were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor belt was built that turned several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.
Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled every aspect of their lives. Violators of the peace were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, food deprivation and other forms of punishment. Prisoners were classified according to their place of birth and reasons for imprisonment.
Initially, prisoners in the camps were divided into four groups: political opponents of the regime, representatives of the “inferior races,” criminals and “unreliable elements.” The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, were subject to unconditional physical extermination and were kept in separate barracks.
They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, they were sent to the most grueling works. Among the political prisoners were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists and social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, and members of various religious sects. Among the “unreliable” were homosexuals, alarmists, dissatisfied people, etc.
There were also criminals in the concentration camps, whom the administration used as overseers of political prisoners.
All concentration camp prisoners were required to wear distinctive insignia on their clothing, including a serial number and a colored triangle (“Winkel”) on the left side of the chest and right knee. (In Auschwitz, the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm.) All political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals wore a green triangle, “unreliables” wore a black triangle, homosexuals wore a pink triangle, and gypsies wore a brown triangle.
In addition to the classification triangle, Jews also wore yellow, as well as a six-pointed “Star of David”. A Jew who violated racial laws ("racial desecrator") was required to wear a black border around a green or yellow triangle.
Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore the sewn letter “F”, the Poles - “P”, etc.). The letter "K" denoted a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter "A" - a violator of labor discipline (from German Arbeit - "work"). The weak-minded wore the Blid badge - “fool”. Prisoners who participated or were suspected of escaping were required to wear a red and white target on their chest and back.
The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where people were kept in the most difficult conditions and destroyed by various methods and means, is 14,033 points.
Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.
The concentration camp system in Germany was liquidated along with the defeat of Hitlerism, and was condemned in the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity.
Currently, the Federal Republic of Germany has adopted the division of places of forced detention of people during the Second World War into concentration camps and “other places of forced confinement, under conditions equivalent to concentration camps,” in which, as a rule, forced labor was used.
The list of concentration camps includes approximately 1,650 names of concentration camps of the international classification (main and their external commands).
On the territory of Belarus, 21 camps were approved as “other places”, on the territory of Ukraine - 27 camps, on the territory of Lithuania - 9, in Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).
On the territory of the Russian Federation, places of forced detention in the city of Roslavl (camp 130), the village of Uritsky (camp 142) and Gatchina are recognized as “other places”.
List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)
1.Arbeitsdorf (Germany)
2. Auschwitz/Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland)
3. Bergen-Belsen (Germany)
4. Buchenwald (Germany)
5. Warsaw (Poland)
6. Herzogenbusch (Netherlands)
7. Gross-Rosen (Germany)
8. Dachau (Germany)
9. Kauen/Kaunas (Lithuania)
10. Krakow-Plaszczow (Poland)
11. Sachsenhausen (GDR-FRG)
12. Lublin/Majdanek (Poland)
13. Mauthausen (Austria)
14. Mittelbau-Dora (Germany)
15. Natzweiler (France)
16. Neuengamme (Germany)
17. Niederhagen-Wewelsburg (Germany)
18. Ravensbrück (Germany)
19. Riga-Kaiserwald (Latvia)
20. Faifara/Vaivara (Estonia)
21. Flossenburg (Germany)
22. Stutthof (Poland).
Largest Nazi concentration camps
Buchenwald is one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external work teams. The largest: "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld) and "Ordruf" (in Thuringia), where the FAU projectiles were mounted. From 1937 to 1945 About 239 thousand people were prisoners of the camp. In total, 56 thousand prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured in Buchenwald.
The camp was liberated on April 10, 1945 by units of the US 80th Division. In 1958, a memorial complex dedicated to Buchenwald was opened. to the heroes and victims of the concentration camp.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known by the German names Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945. in southern Poland 60 km west of Krakow. The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1 (served as the administrative center of the entire complex), Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau, "death camp"), Auschwitz 3 (a group of approximately 45 small camps set up in factories and mines around general complex).
More than 4 million people died in Auschwitz, among whom were more than 1.2 million Jews, 140 thousand Poles, 20 thousand Gypsies, 10 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. In 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Auschwitz-Brzezinka) was opened in Auschwitz.
Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, created in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had approximately 130 branches and external work teams located in Southern Germany. More than 250 thousand people from 24 countries were prisoners of Dachau; About 70 thousand people were tortured or killed (including about 12 thousand Soviet citizens).
In 1960, a monument to the victims was unveiled in Dachau.
Majdanek - a Nazi concentration camp, was created in the suburbs of the Polish city of Lublin in 1941. It had branches in southeastern Poland: Budzyn (near Krasnik), Plaszow (near Krakow), Trawniki (near Wiepsze), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. In the camp, the Nazis killed about 1.5 million people of various nationalities. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on July 23, 1944. In 1947, a museum and research institute was opened in Majdanek.
Treblinka - Nazi concentration camps near the station. Treblinka in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland. In Treblinka I (1941-1944, so-called labor camp), about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II (1942-1943, extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the fascists suppressed a prisoner uprising, after which the camp was liquidated. Camp Treblinka I was liquidated in July 1944 as Soviet troops approached.
In 1964, on the site of Treblinka II, a memorial symbolic cemetery for victims of fascist terror was opened: 17 thousand tombstones made of irregular stones, a monument-mausoleum.
Ravensbruck - a concentration camp was founded near the city of Fürstenberg in 1938 as an exclusively women's camp, but later a small camp for men and another for girls were created nearby. In 1939-1945. 132 thousand women and several hundred children from 23 European countries passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were killed. On April 30, 1945, the prisoners of Ravensbrück were liberated by soldiers of the Soviet army.
Mauthausen - the concentration camp was created in July 1938, 4 km from Mauthausen (Austria) as a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. Since March 1939 - an independent camp. In 1940 it was merged with the Gusen concentration camp and became known as Mauthausen-Gusen. It had about 50 branches scattered throughout the former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945), it housed about 335 thousand people from 15 countries. According to surviving records alone, more than 122 thousand people were killed in the camp, including more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops.
After the war, on the site of Mauthausen, 12 states, including the Soviet Union, created a memorial museum and erected monuments to those who died in the camp.
It is no coincidence that the Poles are trying to disown Nazi concentration camps; the country has even passed a law on criminal liability for those who dare to call Auschwitz or Treblinka Polish.
I just returned from a long trip to Poland, much of which was related to World War II and the Holocaust.
1 It is very difficult and painful to see and feel with your own eyes what you previously knew only from books and films, to walk the streets of Warsaw and stumble upon the remains of the Jewish ghetto, to measure your steps in the cramped barracks of Auschwitz, where everything is still preserved as before, go into the gas chamber and suffocate from the stuffiness in a drafty stone bag.
2 The Poles inherited a terrible legacy: not only has the country still not been able to fully recover from the consequences of the war, but it was also on this land that most of the ghettos and concentration camps were organized, where 90% of the population of Polish Jews died. Polish land is saturated with Jewish blood, and this will be forever.
3 Stutthof, Chelmno, Ravensbrück, Oranienburg, Gross-Rosen and Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the railway station in Lodz there are terrible names of concentration camps that you have never even heard of. Except for the last one, the only one located in Poland. The rest were in Germany. Where are Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor?
4 Yes, the Poles themselves suffered from the war, their country was occupied and trampled by Germany and the USSR. But these wonderful express trains were prepared specifically for the Jews.
5 Shall we get into the carriage, ladies and gentlemen? Not first class, of course. This is generally a freight car, adapted for transporting livestock.
6 Beginning in 1940, dozens of trainloads of Jews were sent from the occupied territories and Germany to concentration camps. Each train had 40-50 carriages, and each carriage carried 100 people. Up to 10 trains left for Auschwitz alone every day! But they did not get there right away: the receiving station could not cope with the volume of trains and the “freight trains” had to wait for weeks at the sidings. The passengers were not fed; they died of hunger, thirst and disease. The corpses were not removed, and the survivors spent their days waiting for “unloading” in the company of the dead.
7 But these are little flowers compared to what awaited them in the death camp. Immediately upon arrival, the first thing was selection. 70% of those arriving were immediately sent to the gas chambers and crematorium. Those who were physically strong could live a little longer doing the work, but the result was the same. Old people, children and most women were the first to be expended.
8 Reading about Auschwitz is one thing, but every person must go through this concentration camp. Come and experience it for yourself. Maybe then there will be less racism and national intolerance on earth? By the way, every Israeli school organizes trips here so that the younger generation does not forget about what should never happen again.
To say that it’s scary there is to say nothing. And at the same time, millions of tourists swept away the sensations of absolute horror and turned Auschwitz into a tourist attraction.
9 Entrance here is free, but for everything else they will gladly take money from you - for parking and a toilet, and on the territory there is also an ice cream cafe and a souvenir shop (In Birkenau there are even magnets!!!), it is impossible to see how people go to such popsicle place!
10 And a 15-minute drive from the terrible camp, a gigantic amusement park “Energilandia” was built: this is a gigantic complex with attractions, a water park, entertainment shows, shops and restaurants.
11 The park continues to be built and will be even larger. I really want to believe that travel agencies, in pursuit of profit, will not sell tours to a death camp and a water park in one package.
12 Auschwitz itself is a nice little town that was once very Jewish.
13 Today not a single Jew lives here. The old cemetery was destroyed by the Germans and only a few years ago restored by volunteers.
14 Before 1939, more than 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland. By 1945, only 380 thousand remained. In modern Poland there are barely 1000 people. What happened to them? We left. After the war they were just as unwelcome as before it.
I am currently preparing a series of reports from Poland. Tomorrow there will be a continuation, come at 10 am.
And the death camps are not Polish or even German. They are our common ones. Our pain, memory and responsibility to ensure that this never happens again.
In 1940, the Auschwitz-Brzezinka concentration camp, also known by its German name Auschwitz-Birkenau, was established in the small town of Auschwitz, 70 kilometers west of Krakow. Of the many camps built by the Nazis, Auschwitz was the largest and most terrible: two million people died here, of which 85-90% were Jews.
How to get to Auschwitz?
There are regular buses from Krakow to Oswiecim station (1 hour 30 minutes). From the station you can take a local bus to the camp gate, and several buses drop off visitors right at the entrance. Shuttle buses leave every hour from the Auschwitz car park to Birkenau. Alternatively, you can take a taxi or walk 3 kilometers.
Martyrs' Museum and Birkenau Camp
Most of the buildings of Auschwitz have been preserved on the territory of the Martyrs' Museum (daily June-August 8.00-19.00, May and September 8.00-18.00, October-April 8.00-17.00, March and November - mid-December 8.00-16.00, mid-December - February 8.00-15.00; the entrance is free). First, they show a dark film filmed during the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops in May 1945. Part of the camp barracks is given over to “exhibits” found after liberation - these are rooms filled with clothes, suitcases, toothbrushes, glasses, shoes and piles of women’s hair.
On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated. He was released by the Ukrainians, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland said Grzegorz Szhetyna, since the operation was carried out by the forces of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Both in Poland itself and in Europe, the historical “discoveries” of the head of the Polish foreign policy department caused a storm of indignation, and he himself was forced to justify himself. However, this is not the first attempt to rewrite the history of World War II.
Hell Factory Statistics
Concentration camps were invented long before Nazi Germany began building them in Europe. However, Hitler became a “revolutionary” in this matter, setting one of the main tasks for the camp administration to be the mass extermination of representatives of “inferior nations” - Jews and Gypsies, as well as prisoners of war. Soon, when Germany began to suffer defeats on the Eastern Front, Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians were also included in the nations to be destroyed as “representatives of the defective Slavs.”
In total, Nazi Germany created more than one and a half thousand camps on its territory and mainly in Eastern Europe, in which 16 million people were detained. 11 million were killed or they died from disease, hunger and overwork. There were more than 60 concentration camps in which more than 10 thousand people were held.
The most terrible among them were the “death camps”, intended exclusively for the mass extermination of people. There are about a dozen of them on the list.
Auschwitz
Auschwitz (in German - Auschwitz), which had three sections, occupied an area of 40 sq. km. This was the largest camp; it claimed the lives, according to various estimates, from 1.5 million to 3 million people. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the figure was 2.8 million. 90% of the victims were Jews. A significant percentage were Poles, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war.
It was a factory, soulless, mechanical, and that made it even more terrible. At the first stage of the camp's existence, prisoners were shot. And in order to increase the “performance” of this infernal machine, they constantly “improved the technology.” Since the executioners could no longer cope with the burial of the ever-increasing number of executed people, a crematorium was built. Moreover, it was built by the prisoners themselves. Then they tested the poison gas and found it “effective.” This is how gas chambers appeared in Auschwitz.
Security and supervisory functions were performed by SS troops. All the “routine work” was transferred to the prisoners themselves, the Sonderkommando: sorting clothes, carrying bodies, maintaining the crematorium. During the most “intense” periods, up to 8 thousand bodies were burned every day in the ovens of Auschwitz.
In this camp, like in all others, torture was practiced. Here the sadists got to work. The doctor was in charge Joseph Mengele, who, unfortunately, the Mossad did not reach, and he died of his own death in Latin America. He conducted medical experiments on prisoners, performing monstrous abdominal operations without anesthesia.
Despite heavy camp security, which included a high-voltage fence and 250 guard dogs, escape attempts were made at Auschwitz. But almost all of them ended in the death of prisoners.
And on October 4, 1944, an uprising occurred. Members of the 12th Sonderkommando, having learned that they were going to be replaced with a new composition, which implied certain death, decided to take desperate actions. Having blown up the crematorium, they killed three SS men, set fire to two buildings and made a hole in the energized fence, having previously caused a short circuit. Up to five thousand people were freed. But soon all the fugitives were caught and taken to the camp for a demonstration execution.
When in mid-January 1945 it became clear that Soviet troops would inevitably come to Auschwitz, able-bodied prisoners, who then numbered 58 thousand people, were driven deep into German territory. Two thirds of them died on the road from exhaustion and disease.
On January 27 at 3 o'clock in the afternoon troops under the command of Marshal entered Auschwitz I.S.Koneva. At that time, there were about 7 thousand prisoners in the camp, among whom were 500 children from 6 to 14 years old. The soldiers, who had seen enough of many atrocities during the war, discovered traces of monstrous, transcendental atrocities in the camp. The scale of the “work done” was amazing. In the warehouses, mountains of men's suits and women's and children's outerwear, several tons of human hair and ground bones, prepared for shipment to Germany, were found.
In 1947, a memorial complex was opened on the territory of the former camp.
Treblinka
An extermination camp established in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland in July 1942. During the year of the camp's existence, about 800 thousand people, mostly Jews, were killed there. Geographically, these were citizens of Poland, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, France and Yugoslavia. Jews were brought in boarded-up freight cars. The rest were mainly invited “to a new place of residence,” and they bought train tickets with their own money.
The “technology” of mass murder here differed from that existing in Auschwitz. People who arrived and did not suspect anything were invited into the gas chambers, which were labeled “Showers.” It was not poisonous gas that was used, but exhaust gases from running tank engines. At first the bodies were buried in the ground. In the spring of 1943, a crematorium was built.
An underground organization operated among the members of the Sonderkommando. On August 2, 1943, she organized an armed uprising, seizing weapons. Some of the guards were killed, several hundred prisoners managed to escape. However, almost all of them were soon found and killed.
One of the few surviving participants in the uprising was Samuel Willenberg, who after the war wrote the book “The Treblinka Uprising.” This is what he said in a 2013 interview about his first impression of the death factory:
“I had no idea what was happening in the infirmary. I just entered this wooden building and at the end of the corridor I suddenly saw all this horror. Bored Ukrainian guards with guns sat on a wooden chair. In front of them is a deep hole. It contains the remains of bodies that have not yet been consumed by the fire lit underneath them. Remains of men, women and small children. This picture simply paralyzed me. I heard burning hair crackle and bones burst. There was acrid smoke in my nose, tears were welling up in my eyes... How to describe and express this? There are things that I remember, but they cannot be expressed in words.”
After the brutal suppression of the uprising, the camp was liquidated.
Majdanek
The Majdanek camp, located in Poland, was originally intended to be a “universal” camp. But after the capture of a large number of Red Army soldiers who were surrounded near Kiev, it was decided to repurpose it into a “Russian” camp. With a prison population of up to 250 thousand, construction was carried out by prisoners of war. By December 1941, due to hunger, hard work, and also due to the outbreak of a typhus epidemic, all the prisoners, who at that time numbered about 10 thousand, died.
Subsequently, the camp lost its “national” orientation, and not only prisoners of war, but also Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and representatives of other nations were brought to it for extermination.
The camp, which had an area of 270 hectares, was divided into five sections. One was reserved for women and children. The prisoners were housed in 22 huge barracks. On the territory of the camp there were also industrial premises where prisoners worked. In Majdanek, according to various sources, from 80 thousand to 500 thousand people died.
At Majdanek, as at Auschwitz, poison gas was used in the gas chambers.
Against the background of daily crimes, the operation code-named “Enterfest” (German - harvest festival) stands out. On November 3 and 4, 1943, 43 thousand Jews were shot. At the bottom of a ditch 100 meters long, 6 meters wide and 3 meters deep, the prisoners were packed tightly in one layer. After which they were successively shot in the back of the head. Then the second layer was laid... And so on until the ditch was completely filled.
When the Red Army occupied Majdanek on July 22, 1944, there were several hundred surviving prisoners of various nationalities in the camp.
Sobibor
This camp operated in Poland from May 15, 1942 to October 15, 1943. Killed a quarter of a million people. The extermination of people took place using proven “technology” - gas chambers based on exhaust gases, a crematorium.
The vast majority of prisoners were killed on the first day. And only a few were left to perform various tasks in the workshops in the production area.
Sobibor became the first German camp in which an uprising took place. There was an underground group in the camp, led by a Soviet officer, Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky. Pechersky and his deputy rabbi Leon Feldhendler planned and led the uprising, which began on October 14, 1943.
According to the plan, the prisoners were supposed to secretly, one by one, eliminate the SS personnel of the camp, and then, having taken possession of the weapons located in the camp warehouse, kill the guards. It was only partially successful. 12 SS men and 38, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, Ukrainian guards were killed. But they failed to seize the weapon. Of the 550 prisoners in the work zone, 320 began to break out of the camp, 80 of them died during the escape. The rest managed to escape.
130 prisoners refused to escape; they were all shot the next day.
A massive hunt was organized for the fugitives, which lasted two weeks. It was possible to find 170 people who were immediately shot. Subsequently, another 90 people were handed over to the Nazis by the local population. 53 participants in the uprising lived to see the end of the war.
The leader of the uprising, Alexander Aronovich Pechersky, was able to make his way to Belarus, where, before reuniting with the regular army, he fought as a demolition worker in a partisan detachment. Then, as part of the assault battalion of the 1st Baltic Front, he fought his way to the west, rising to the rank of captain. The war ended for him in August 1944, when Pechersky became disabled as a result of his injury. He died in 1990 in Rostov-on-Don.
Soon after the uprising, the Sobibor camp was liquidated. After the demolition of all buildings, its territory was plowed and sown with potatoes and cabbage.
Photo at the opening of the article: surviving children after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz by Soviet troops, Poland, January 27, 1945 / Photo: TASS
Concentration camps in Poland were 20 years before the German “death factories”
The hell of Polish concentration camps and captivity destroyed tens of thousands of our compatriots. Two decades before Khatyn and Auschwitz.
The military Gulag of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is more than a dozen concentration camps, prisons, marshalling stations, concentration points and various military facilities such as the Brest Fortress (there were four camps here) and Modlin. Strzałkowo (in western Poland between Poznan and Warsaw), Pikulice (in the south, near Przemysl), Dombie (near Krakow), Wadowice (in southern Poland), Tuchole, Shipturno, Bialystok, Baranovichi, Molodechino, Vilna, Pinsk, Bobruisk...
And also - Grodno, Minsk, Pulawy, Powazki, Lancut, Kovel, Stryi (in the western part of Ukraine), Shchelkovo... Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who found themselves in Polish captivity after the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 found a terrible, painful death here .
The attitude of the Polish side towards them was very clearly expressed by the commandant of the camp in Brest, who stated in 1919: “You, Bolsheviks, wanted to take our lands away from us - okay, I’ll give you the land. I have no right to kill you, but I will feed you so much that you yourself will die.” Words did not diverge from deeds. According to the memoirs of one of those who arrived from Polish captivity in March 1920, “We did not receive bread for 13 days, on the 14th day, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but it was very rotten, moldy... The sick were not treated, and they died in dozens...”
From a report on a visit to the camps in Brest-Litovsk by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the presence of a doctor of the French military mission in October 1919: “A sickening smell emanates from the guardhouses, as well as from the former stables in which prisoners of war are housed. The prisoners are chillingly huddling around a makeshift stove where several logs are burning - the only way to warm themselves. At night, sheltering from the first cold weather, they lie in close rows in groups of 300 people in poorly lit and poorly ventilated barracks, on planks, without mattresses or blankets. The prisoners are mostly dressed in rags... Complaints. They are the same and boil down to the following: we are starving, we are freezing, when will we be freed? It should be noted, however, as an exception that proves the rule: the Bolsheviks assured one of us that they would prefer their present fate to the fate of soldiers in the war. Conclusions. This summer, due to overcrowding of premises unsuitable for habitation; close cohabitation of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom died immediately; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; swelling, hunger during the three months of stay in Brest - the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis... Two severe epidemics devastated this camp in August and September - dysentery and typhus. The consequences were aggravated by close living together of sick and healthy, lack of medical care, food and clothing... The mortality record was set in early August, when 180 people died from dysentery in one day... Between July 27 and September 4, t .e. In 34 days, 770 Ukrainian prisoners of war and internees died in the Brest camp. It should be recalled that the number of prisoners imprisoned in the fortress gradually reached, if there is no mistake, 10,000 people in August, and on October 10 it was 3,861 people.”
This is how the Soviets came to Poland in 1920
Later, “due to unsuitable conditions,” the camp in the Brest Fortress was closed. However, in other camps the situation was often even worse. In particular, a member of the League of Nations commission, Professor Thorwald Madsen, who visited the “ordinary” Polish camp for captured Red Army soldiers in Wadowice at the end of November 1920, called it “one of the most terrible things he saw in his life.” In this camp, as former prisoner Kozerovsky recalled, prisoners were “beaten around the clock.” An eyewitness recalls: “Long rods were always lying at the ready... I was spotted with two soldiers who had been caught in a neighboring village... Suspicious people were often transferred to a special punishment barracks, and almost no one came out from there. They fed “once a day a decoction of dried vegetables and a kilogram of bread for 8 people.” There were cases when starving Red Army soldiers ate carrion, garbage and even hay. In the Shchelkovo camp, “prisoners of war are forced to carry their own excrement on themselves instead of horses. They carry both plows and harrows” AVP RF.F.0384.Op.8.D.18921.P.210.L.54-59.
Conditions in transit and in prisons, where political prisoners were also kept, were not the best. The head of the distribution station in Pulawy, Major Khlebowski, very eloquently described the situation of the Red Army soldiers: “obnoxious prisoners in order to spread unrest and ferments in Poland” constantly eat potato peelings from the dung heap. In just 6 months of the autumn-winter period of 1920-1921, 900 prisoners of war out of 1,100 died in Pulawy. The deputy head of the front sanitary service, Major Hakbeil, most eloquently said about what the Polish concentration camp at the collection station in the Belarusian Molodechino was like: “The prisoner camp at collection station for prisoners - it was a real dungeon. No one cared about these unfortunate people, so it is not surprising that a person unwashed, unclothed, poorly fed and placed in inappropriate conditions as a result of infection was doomed only to death.” In Bobruisk “there were up to 1,600 captured Red Army soldiers (as well as Belarusian peasants of the Bobruisk district sentenced to death - Author), most of whom were completely naked”...
According to the testimony of the Soviet writer, an employee of the Cheka in the 20s, Nikolai Ravich, who was arrested by the Poles in 1919 and visited the prisons of Minsk, Grodno, Powązki and the Dombe camp, the cells were so crowded that only the lucky ones slept on bunks. In the Minsk prison there were lice everywhere in the cell, and it was especially cold because outer clothing had been taken away. “In addition to an ounce of bread (50 grams), hot water was provided in the morning and evening, and at 12 o’clock the same water, seasoned with flour and salt.” The transit point in Powązki “was filled with Russian prisoners of war, most of whom were cripples with artificial arms and legs.” The German revolution, writes Ravich, freed them from the camps and they spontaneously went through Poland to their homeland. But in Poland they were detained by special barriers and driven into camps, and some were forced into forced labor.”
And such a “reception” awaited them in captivity...
Most of the Polish concentration camps were built in a very short period of time, some were built by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. They were completely unsuited for long-term detention of prisoners. For example, the camp in Dąba near Krakow was an entire city with numerous streets and squares. Instead of houses there are barracks with loose wooden walls, many without wooden floors. All this is surrounded by rows of barbed wire. Conditions of detention of prisoners in winter: “most of them without shoes - completely barefoot... There are almost no beds and bunks... There is no straw or hay at all. They sleep on the ground or boards. There are very few blankets.” From a letter from the chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation at peace negotiations with Poland, Adolf Joffe, to the chairman of the Polish delegation, Jan Dombski, dated January 9, 1921: “In Domb, most of the prisoners are barefoot, and in the camp at the headquarters of the 18th division, most do not have any clothes.”
The situation in Bialystok is evidenced by letters preserved in the Central Military Archive from a military medic and the head of the sanitary department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Zdzislaw Gordynski-Yukhnovich. In December 1919, he reported in despair to the chief doctor of the Polish Army about his visit to the marshalling station in Bialystok: “I visited the prisoner camp in Bialystok and now, under the first impression, I dared to turn to Mr. General as the chief doctor of the Polish troops with a description of that terrible picture , which appears before the eyes of everyone who ends up in the camp... Once again, the same criminal neglect of their duties by all authorities operating in the camp brought shame on our name, on the Polish army, just as happened in Brest-Litovsk... In The camp is in unimaginable dirt and disorder. At the doors of the barracks there are piles of human waste, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The patients are so weakened that they are unable to reach the latrines. Those, in turn, are in such a state that it is impossible to get closer to the seats, since the entire floor is covered with a thick layer of human feces. The barracks are overcrowded, and there are many sick people among the healthy. According to my data, among the 1,400 prisoners there are no healthy people at all. Covered in rags, they hug each other, trying to keep warm. The stench reigns, emanating from patients with dysentery and gangrene, legs swollen from hunger. Two particularly seriously ill patients lay in their own excrement, leaking from their torn pants. They did not have the strength to move to a dry place. What a terrible picture.” A former prisoner of the Polish camp in Bialystok, Andrei Matskevich, later recalled that a prisoner who was lucky received a day “a small portion of black bread weighing about 1/2 pound (200 grams), one shard of soup, which looked more like slop, and boiling water.”
The concentration camp at Strzałkowo, located between Poznań and Warsaw, was considered the worst. It appeared at the turn of 1914-1915 as a German camp for prisoners from the fronts of the First World War on the border between Germany and the Russian Empire - near the road connecting two border areas - Strzalkowo on the Prussian side and Sluptsy on the Russian side. After the end of World War I, it was decided to liquidate the camp. However, instead it passed from the Germans to the Poles and began to be used as a concentration camp for Red Army prisoners of war. As soon as the camp became Polish (from May 12, 1919), the mortality rate of prisoners of war in it increased more than 16 times during the year. On July 11, 1919, by order of the Ministry of Defense of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was given the name “prisoner of war camp No. 1 near Strzałkowo” (Obóz Jeniecki Nr 1 pod Strzałkowem).
One could only dream of such a dinner...
After the conclusion of the Riga Peace Treaty, the concentration camp in Strzalkowo was also used to hold internees, including Russian White Guards, military personnel of the so-called Ukrainian People's Army and the formations of the Belarusian “father”-ataman Stanislav Bulak-Bulakhovich. What happened in this concentration camp is evidenced not only by documents, but also by publications in the press of that time.
In particular, the New Courier of January 4, 1921 described in a then sensational article the shocking fate of a detachment of several hundred Latvians. These soldiers, led by their commanders, deserted from the Red Army and went over to the Polish side in order to return to their homeland. They were received very cordially by the Polish military. Before they were sent to the camp, they were given a certificate that they voluntarily went over to the side of the Poles. The robbery began already on the way to the camp. The Latvians were stripped of all their clothes, with the exception of underwear. And those who managed to hide at least part of their belongings had everything taken away from them in Strzałkowo. They were left in rags, without shoes. But this is a small thing compared to the systematic abuse to which they were subjected in the concentration camp. It all started with 50 blows with barbed wire whips, while the Latvians were told that they were Jewish mercenaries and would not leave the camp alive. More than 10 people died from blood poisoning. After this, the prisoners were left for three days without food, forbidden to go out for water on pain of death. Two were shot without any reason. Most likely, the threat would have been carried out, and not a single Latvian would have left the camp alive if its commanders - Captain Wagner and Lieutenant Malinovsky - had not been arrested and put on trial by the commission of inquiry.
During the investigation, among other things, it turned out that walking around the camp, accompanied by corporals with wire whips and beating prisoners, was Malinovsky’s favorite pastime. If the beaten person moaned or asked for mercy, he was shot. For the murder of a prisoner, Malinovsky rewarded the sentries with 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks. The Polish authorities tried to quickly hush up the scandal and the matter.
In November 1919, the military authorities reported to the Polish Sejm commission that the largest Polish prisoner camp No. 1 in Strzałkow was “very well equipped.” In reality, at that time the roofs of the camp barracks were full of holes, and they were not equipped with bunks. It was probably believed that this was good for the Bolsheviks. Red Cross spokeswoman Stefania Sempolowska wrote from the camp: “The Communist barracks were so crowded that the squashed prisoners were unable to lie down and stood propping each other up.” The situation in Strzałkow did not change in October 1920: “Clothes and shoes are very scanty, most walk barefoot... There are no beds - they sleep on straw... Due to lack of food, prisoners, busy peeling potatoes, secretly eat them raw.”
The report of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation states: “Keeping prisoners in their underwear, the Poles treated them not as people of an equal race, but as slaves. The beating of prisoners was practiced at every step...” Eyewitnesses say: “Every day, those arrested are driven out into the street and, instead of walking, are forced to run, ordered to fall into the mud... If a prisoner refuses to fall or, having fallen, cannot rise, exhausted, he is beaten with blows from rifle butts.”
The victory of the Poles and their inspirer Jozef Pilsudski
As the largest of the camps, Strzałkowo was designed for 25 thousand prisoners. In reality, the number of prisoners sometimes exceeded 37 thousand. The numbers changed quickly as people died like flies in the cold. Russian and Polish compilers of the collection “Red Army Men in Polish Captivity in 1919-1922.” Sat. documents and materials” claim that “in Strzałkowo in 1919-1920. About 8 thousand prisoners died." At the same time, the RCP(b) committee, which operated clandestinely in the Strzalkowo camp, stated in its report to the Soviet Commission on Prisoners of War Affairs in April 1921 that: “in the last epidemic of typhoid and dysentery, 300 people each died. per day... the serial number of the list of those buried has exceeded the 12th thousand...". Such a statement about the enormous mortality rate in Strzałkowo is not the only one.
Despite claims by Polish historians that the situation in Polish concentration camps had once again improved by 1921, documents indicate otherwise. The minutes of the meeting of the Mixed (Polish-Russian-Ukrainian) Commission on Repatriation dated July 28, 1921 noted that in Strzalkow “the command, as if in retaliation after the first arrival of our delegation, sharply intensified its repressions... Red Army soldiers are beaten and tortured for any reason and for no reason... the beatings took the form of an epidemic.” In November 1921, when, according to Polish historians, “the situation in the camps had radically improved,” RUD employees described the living quarters for prisoners in Strzalkow: “Most of the barracks are underground, damp, dark, cold, with broken glass, broken floors and thin roof. Openings in the roofs allow you to freely admire the starry sky. Those placed in them get wet and cold day and night... There is no lighting.”
The fact that the Polish authorities did not consider “Russian Bolshevik prisoners” to be people is also evidenced by the following fact: in the largest Polish prisoner of war camp in Strzałkowo, for 3 (three) years they were unable to resolve the issue of prisoners of war taking care of their natural needs at night. There were no toilets in the barracks, and the camp administration, under pain of execution, forbade leaving the barracks after 6 pm. Therefore, the prisoners “were forced to send their natural needs into the pots, from which they then had to eat.”
The second largest Polish concentration camp, located in the area of the city of Tuchola (Tucheln, Tuchola, Tuchola, Tuchol, Tuchola, Tuchol), can rightfully challenge Strzałkowo for the title of the most terrible. Or, at least, the most disastrous for people. It was built by the Germans during the First World War, in 1914. Initially, the camp held mainly Russians, later they were joined by Romanian, French, English and Italian prisoners of war. Since 1919, the camp began to be used by the Poles to concentrate soldiers and commanders of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian formations and civilians who sympathized with the Soviet regime. In December 1920, a representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Natalia Krejc-Welezhinska, wrote: “The camp in Tuchola is the so-called. dugouts, which are entered by steps going down. On both sides there are bunks on which the prisoners sleep. There are no hay fields, straw, or blankets. No heat due to irregular fuel supply. Lack of linen and clothing in all departments. The most tragic are the conditions of the new arrivals, who are transported in unheated carriages, without appropriate clothing, cold, hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker ones die.”
From a letter from a White Guard: “...The internees are housed in barracks and dugouts. They are completely unsuited for winter. The barracks were made of thick corrugated iron, covered on the inside with thin wooden panels, which were torn in many places. The door and partly the windows are fitted very poorly, there is a desperate draft from them... The internees are not even given bedding under the pretext of “malnutrition of the horses.” We think with extreme anxiety about the coming winter” (Letter from Tukholi, October 22, 1921).
Camp in Tukholi then and now...
The State Archive of the Russian Federation contains memoirs of Lieutenant Kalikin, who passed through the concentration camp in Tukholi. The lieutenant who was lucky enough to survive writes: “Even in Thorn, all sorts of horrors were told about Tuchol, but the reality exceeded all expectations. Imagine a sandy plain not far from the river, fenced with two rows of barbed wire, inside which dilapidated dugouts are located in regular rows. Not a tree, not a blade of grass anywhere, just sand. Not far from the main gate are corrugated iron barracks. When you pass by them at night, you hear some strange, soul-aching sound, as if someone is quietly sobbing. During the day the sun in the barracks is unbearably hot, at night it is cold... When our army was interned, the Polish minister Sapieha was asked what would happen to it. “She will be dealt with as required by the honor and dignity of Poland,” he answered proudly. Was Tuchol really necessary for this “honor”? So, we arrived in Tukhol and settled in iron barracks. The cold weather set in, but the stoves were not lit for lack of firewood. A year later, 50% of the women and 40% of the men who were here fell ill, mainly from tuberculosis. Many of them died. Most of my friends died, and there were also people who hanged themselves.”
Red Army soldier Valuev said that at the end of August 1920 he and other prisoners: “They were sent to the Tukholi camp. The wounded lay there, unbandaged for weeks, and their wounds were full of worms. Many of the wounded died; 30-35 people were buried every day. The wounded lay in cold barracks without food or medicine.”
In the frosty November of 1920, the Tuchola hospital resembled a conveyor belt of death: “The hospital buildings are huge barracks, in most cases iron, like hangars. All the buildings are dilapidated and damaged, there are holes in the walls through which you can stick your hand... The cold is usually terrible. They say that during frosty nights the walls become covered with ice. The patients lie on terrible beds... All are on dirty mattresses without bed linen, only 1/4 have some blankets, all are covered with dirty rags or a paper blanket.”
Representative of the Russian Red Cross Society Stefania Sempolovskaya about the November (1920) inspection in Tuchol: “The patients are lying in terrible beds, without bed linen, only a fourth of them have blankets. The wounded complain of terrible cold, which not only interferes with the healing of wounds, but, according to doctors, increases the pain during healing. Sanitary personnel complain about the complete lack of dressings, cotton wool and bandages. I saw bandages drying in the forest. Typhus and dysentery were widespread in the camp and spread to prisoners working in the area. The number of sick people in the camp is so great that one of the barracks in the communist section has been turned into an infirmary. On November 16, more than seventy patients lay there. A significant part is on the ground."
The mortality rate from wounds, disease and frostbite was such that, according to the conclusion of American representatives, after 5-6 months there should have been no one left in the camp. Stefania Sempolovskaya, commissioner of the Russian Red Cross Society, assessed the mortality rate among prisoners in a similar way: “...Tukholya: The mortality rate in the camp is so high that, according to calculations made by me with one of the officers, with the mortality rate that was in October (1920), the whole camp would have died out in 4-5 months.”
Tombstones of Soviet prisoners of war in dirt and oblivion
The emigrant Russian press, published in Poland and, to put it mildly, had no sympathy for the Bolsheviks, directly wrote about Tukholi as a “death camp” for Red Army soldiers. In particular, the emigrant newspaper Svoboda, published in Warsaw and completely dependent on the Polish authorities, reported in October 1921 that at that time a total of 22 thousand people had died in the Tuchol camp. A similar figure of deaths is given by the head of the II Department of the General Staff of the Polish Army (military intelligence and counterintelligence), Lieutenant Colonel Ignacy Matuszewski.
In his report dated February 1, 1922 to the office of the Minister of War of Poland, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Ignacy Matuszewski states: “From the materials available to the II Department ... it should be concluded that these facts of escapes from camps are not limited only to Strzałkow, but also occur in all other camps, both for communists and for white internment. These escapes were caused by the conditions in which the communists and internees were (lack of fuel, linen and clothing, poor food, and long waits to leave for Russia). The camp in Tukholi became especially famous, which internees call the “death camp” (about 22,000 captured Red Army soldiers died in this camp."
Analyzing the contents of the document signed by Matuszewski, Russian researchers, first of all, emphasize that it “was not a personal message from a private person, but an official response to the order of the Polish Minister of War No. 65/22 of January 12, 1922, with a categorical instruction to the head of the II Department of the General Staff : “...to provide an explanation under what conditions the escape of 33 communists from the Strzalkowo prisoner camp took place and who is responsible for this.” Such orders are usually given to special services when it is necessary to establish with absolute certainty the true picture of what happened. It was no coincidence that the minister instructed Matuszewski to investigate the circumstances of the escape of communists from Strzałkowo. The head of the II Department of the General Staff in 1920-1923 was the most informed person in Poland on the real state of affairs in the prisoner of war and internment camps. The officers of the II Department subordinate to him were not only involved in “sorting” arriving prisoners of war, but also controlled the political situation in the camps. Due to his official position, Matushevsky was simply obliged to know the real state of affairs in the camp in Tukholi. Therefore, there can be no doubt that long before writing his letter of February 1, 1922, Matuszewski had comprehensive, documented and verified information about the death of 22 thousand captured Red Army soldiers in the Tucholi camp. Otherwise, you have to be a political suicide to, on your own initiative, report unverified facts of this level to the country's leadership, especially on an issue that is at the center of a high-profile diplomatic scandal! Indeed, at that time in Poland passions had not yet had time to cool down after the famous note of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR Georgy Chicherin dated September 9, 1921, in which he, in the harshest terms, accused the Polish authorities of the deaths of 60,000 Soviet prisoners of war.”
In addition to Matuszewski’s report, reports in the Russian émigré press about the huge number of deaths in Tukholi are actually confirmed by reports from hospital services. In particular, a relatively “clear picture regarding the death of Russian prisoners of war can be observed in the “death camp” in Tukholi, in which there were official statistics, but only for certain periods of the prisoners’ stay there. According to these, although not complete, statistics, from the opening of the infirmary in February 1921 (and the most difficult winter months for prisoners of war were the winter months of 1920-1921) and until May 11 of the same year, there were 6,491 epidemic diseases in the camp, 17,294 non-epidemic ones. In total - 23785 diseases. The number of prisoners in the camp during this period did not exceed 10-11 thousand, so more than half of the prisoners there suffered from epidemic diseases, and each of the prisoners had to get sick at least twice in 3 months. Officially, 2,561 deaths were registered during this period, i.e. in 3 months, at least 25% of the total number of prisoners of war died.”
A modern monument on the site of a Polish concentration camp for Soviet
According to Russian researchers, the mortality rate in Tukholi during the most terrible months of 1920/1921 (November, December, January and February) “can only be guessed at. We must assume that it was no less than 2,000 people per month.” When assessing the mortality rate in Tuchola, it must also be remembered that the representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Krejc-Wieleżyńska, in her report on visiting the camp in December 1920, noted that: “The most tragic of all are the conditions of the new arrivals, who are transported in unheated carriages, without appropriate clothing, cold , hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker ones die.” The mortality rate in such echelons reached 40%. Those who died on the trains, although they were considered sent to the camp and were buried in camp burial grounds, were not officially recorded anywhere in general camp statistics. Their number could only be taken into account by the officers of the II Department, who supervised the reception and “sorting” of prisoners of war. Also, apparently, the mortality rate of newly arrived prisoners of war who died in quarantine was not reflected in the final camp reports.
In this context, of particular interest is not only the above-cited testimony of the head of the II Department of the Polish General Staff, Matuszewski, about mortality in the concentration camp, but also the recollections of local residents of Tucholy. According to them, back in the 1930s there were many areas here “where the ground collapsed under your feet, and human remains protruded from it”...
...The military Gulag of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lasted relatively short time - about three years. But during this time he managed to destroy tens of thousands of human lives. The Polish side still admits the death of “16-18 thousand”. According to Russian and Ukrainian scientists, researchers and politicians, in reality this figure may be about five times higher...
Nikolay MALISHEVSKY, “Eye of the Planet”