The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many lost loved ones who were killed or tortured. In the article we will look at the Nazi concentration camps and the atrocities that happened on their territories.
What is a concentration camp?
A concentration camp or concentration camp is a special place intended for the detention of persons of the following categories:
- political prisoners (opponents of the dictatorial regime);
- prisoners of war (captured soldiers and civilians).
Nazi concentration camps became notorious for their inhuman cruelty to prisoners and impossible conditions of detention. These places of detention began to appear even before Hitler came to power, and even then they were divided into women's, men's and children's. Mainly Jews and opponents of the Nazi system were kept there.
Life in the camp
Humiliation and abuse for prisoners began from the moment of transportation. People were transported in freight cars, where there was not even running water or a fenced-off latrine. Prisoners had to relieve themselves publicly, in a tank standing in the middle of the carriage.
But this was only the beginning; a lot of abuse and torture were prepared for the concentration camps of fascists who were undesirable to the Nazi regime. Torture of women and children, medical experiments, aimless exhausting work - this is not the whole list.
The conditions of detention can be judged from the prisoners’ letters: “they lived in hellish conditions, ragged, barefoot, hungry... I was constantly and severely beaten, deprived of food and water, tortured...”, “They shot me, flogged me, poisoned me with dogs, drowned me in water, beat me to death.” with sticks and starvation. They were infected with tuberculosis... suffocated by a cyclone. Poisoned with chlorine. They burned..."
The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was then used in the German textile industry. The doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, at whose hands thousands of people died. He studied mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they received organ transplants from each other, blood transfusions, and sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. Performed sex reassignment surgery.
All fascist concentration camps became famous for such abuses; we will look at the names and conditions of detention in the main ones below.
Camp diet
Typically, the daily ration in the camp was as follows:
- bread - 130 gr;
- fat - 20 g;
- meat - 30 g;
- cereal - 120 gr;
- sugar - 27 gr.
Bread was handed out, and the rest of the products were used for cooking, which consisted of soup (issued 1 or 2 times a day) and porridge (150 - 200 grams). It should be noted that such a diet was intended only for working people. Those who, for some reason, remained unemployed received even less. Usually their portion consisted of only half a portion of bread.
List of concentration camps in different countries
Fascist concentration camps were created in the territories of Germany, allied and occupied countries. There are a lot of them, but let’s name the main ones:
- In Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;
- Austria - Mauthausen, Amstetten;
- France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
- Poland - Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
- Lithuania - Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
- Czechoslovakia - Kunta Gora, Natra, Hlinsko;
- Estonia - Pirkul, Pärnu, Klooga;
- Belarus - Minsk, Baranovichi;
- Latvia - Salaspils.
And this is far from full list all concentration camps that were built by Nazi Germany in the pre-war and war years.
Salaspils
Salaspils, one might say, is the most terrible concentration camp fascists, because, in addition to prisoners of war and Jews, children were also kept there. It was located on the territory of occupied Latvia and was the central eastern camp. It was located near Riga and operated from 1941 (September) to 1944 (summer).
Children in this camp were not only kept separately from adults and exterminated en masse, but were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Every day, about half a liter of blood was taken from all children, which led to the rapid death of donors.
Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then their corpses were burned. It was aimed at medical research, during which more than 100,000 people died. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. Torture of children was a routine activity here, carried out according to a schedule with the results carefully recorded.
Experiments on children
Testimony of witnesses and results of investigations revealed the following methods of extermination of people in the Salaspils camp: beating, starvation, arsenic poisoning, injection of dangerous substances (most often to children), surgical operations without painkillers, pumping out blood (only from children), executions, torture, useless heavy labor (carrying stones from place to place), gas chambers, burying alive. In order to save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed only with rifle butts. The atrocities of the Nazis in the concentration camps surpassed everything that humanity had seen in modern times. Such an attitude towards people cannot be justified, because it violates all conceivable and inconceivable moral commandments.
Children did not stay with their mothers for long and were usually quickly taken away and distributed. Thus, children under six years of age were kept in a special barracks where they were infected with measles. But they did not treat it, but aggravated the disease, for example, by bathing, which is why the children died within 3-4 days. The Germans killed more than 3,000 people in one year in this way. The bodies of the dead were partly burned and partly buried on the camp grounds.
The Act of the Nuremberg Trials “on the extermination of children” provided the following numbers: during the excavation of only a fifth of the concentration camp territory, 633 bodies of children aged 5 to 9 years, arranged in layers, were discovered; an area soaked in an oily substance was also found, where the remains of unburned children’s bones (teeth, ribs, joints, etc.) were found.
Salaspils is truly the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because the atrocities described above are not all the tortures that the prisoners were subjected to. Thus, in winter, children brought in were driven barefoot and naked to a barracks for half a kilometer, where they had to wash themselves in icy water. After this, the children were driven in the same way to the next building, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. Moreover, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. Everyone who survived this procedure was also subjected to arsenic poisoning.
Infants were kept separately and given injections, from which the child died in agony within a few days. They gave us coffee and poisoned cereals. About 150 children died from experiments per day. The bodies of the dead were carried out in large baskets and burned, dumped in cesspools, or buried near the camp.
Ravensbrück
If we start listing Nazi women's concentration camps, Ravensbrück will come first. This was the only camp of this type in Germany. It could accommodate thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war it was overcrowded by fifteen thousand. Mostly Russian and Polish women were detained; Jews numbered approximately 15 percent. There were no prescribed instructions regarding torture and torment; the supervisors chose the line of behavior themselves.
Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number. Race was also indicated on clothing. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in post-war years they housed 2-3 refugee families) and housed approximately three hundred prisoners, who were housed on three-story bunks. When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were herded into these cells, all of whom had to sleep on the same bunks. The barracks had several toilets and a washbasin, but there were so few of them that after a few days the floors were littered with excrement. Almost all Nazi concentration camps presented this picture (the photos presented here are only a small part of all the horrors).
But not all women ended up in the concentration camp; a selection was made beforehand. The strong and resilient, fit for work, were left behind, and the rest were destroyed. Prisoners worked at construction sites and sewing workshops.
Gradually, Ravensbrück was equipped with a crematorium, like all Nazi concentration camps. Gas chambers (nicknamed gas chambers by prisoners) appeared towards the end of the war. Ashes from crematoria were sent to nearby fields as fertilizer.
Experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. In a special barracks called the “infirmary,” German scientists tested new drugs, first infecting or crippling experimental subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered from what they had endured until the end of their lives. Experiments were also conducted with the irradiation of women with X-rays, which caused hair loss, skin pigmentation, and death. Excisions of the genital organs were carried out, after which few survived, and even those quickly aged, and at the age of 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out in all Nazi concentration camps; torture of women and children was the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.
At the time of the liberation of the concentration camp by the Allies, five thousand women remained there; the rest were killed or transported to other places of detention. The Soviet troops who arrived in April 1945 adapted the camp barracks to accommodate refugees. Ravensbrück later became a base for Soviet military units.
Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald
Construction of the camp began in 1933, near the town of Weimar. Soon, Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive, becoming the first prisoners, and they completed the construction of the “hellish” concentration camp.
The structure of all structures was strictly thought out. Immediately behind the gate began the “Appelplat” (parallel ground), specially designed for the formation of prisoners. Its capacity was twenty thousand people. Not far from the gate there was a punishment cell for interrogations, and opposite there was an office where the camp fuehrer and the officer on duty - the camp authorities - lived. Deeper down were the barracks for prisoners. All barracks were numbered, there were 52 of them. At the same time, 43 were intended for housing, and workshops were set up in the rest.
The Nazi concentration camps left behind a terrible memory; their names still evoke fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald. The crematorium was considered the most terrible place. People were invited there under the pretext of a medical examination. When the prisoner undressed, he was shot and the body was sent to the oven.
Only men were kept in Buchenwald. Upon arrival at the camp, they were assigned a number German, which had to be learned in the first 24 hours. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky weapons factory, which was located a few kilometers from the camp.
Continuing to describe the Nazi concentration camps, let us turn to the so-called “small camp” of Buchenwald.
Small camp of Buchenwald
The “small camp” was the name given to the quarantine zone. The living conditions here were, even compared to the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiegne camp were brought to this camp; they were mainly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were housed in tents. The closer 1945 got, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the “small camp” included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in Nazi concentration camps was not only specially planned or with scientific purpose, life itself in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks; their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread; those who were not working were no longer entitled to it.
Relations among prisoners were tough; cases of cannibalism and murder for someone else's portion of bread were documented. A common practice was to store the bodies of the dead in barracks in order to receive their rations. The dead man's clothes were divided among his cellmates, and they often fought over them. Due to such conditions, infectious diseases were common in the camp. Vaccinations only worsened the situation, since injection syringes were not changed.
Photos simply cannot convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. The stories of witnesses are not intended for the faint of heart. In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to step far forward - no other country in the world had such a number of experimental people. Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, the inhuman suffering that these innocent people endured.
Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated, organs were removed, and they were sterilized and castrated. They tested how long a person could withstand extreme cold or heat. They were specially infected with diseases and introduced experimental drugs. Thus, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed in Buchenwald. In addition to typhus, prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid.
Since 1939, the camp was run by Karl Koch. His wife, Ilse, was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her love of sadism and inhumane abuse of prisoners. They feared her more than her husband (Karl Koch) and Nazi doctors. She was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". The woman owed this nickname to the fact that she made various decorative things from the skin of killed prisoners, in particular, lampshades, which she was very proud of. Most of all, she liked to use the skin of Russian prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests, as well as the skin of gypsies. Things made of such material seemed to her the most elegant.
The liberation of Buchenwald took place on April 11, 1945, at the hands of the prisoners themselves. Having learned about the approach allied forces, they disarmed the guards, captured the camp leadership and ruled the camp for two days until American soldiers approached.
Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)
When listing Nazi concentration camps, it is impossible to ignore Auschwitz. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died. The exact details of the dead remain unclear. The victims were mainly Jewish prisoners of war, who were exterminated immediately upon arrival in gas chambers.
The concentration camp complex itself was called Auschwitz-Birkenau and was located on the outskirts of the Polish city of Auschwitz, whose name became a household name. The following words were engraved above the camp gate: “Work sets you free.”
This huge complex, built in 1940, consisted of three camps:
- Auschwitz I or the main camp - the administration was located here;
- Auschwitz II or "Birkenau" - was called a death camp;
- Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz.
Initially, the camp was small and intended for political prisoners. But gradually more and more prisoners arrived at the camp, 70% of whom were destroyed immediately. Many tortures in Nazi concentration camps were borrowed from Auschwitz. Thus, the first gas chamber began to function in 1941. The gas used was Cyclone B. The terrible invention was first tested on Soviet and Polish prisoners totaling about nine hundred people.
Auschwitz II began its operation on March 1, 1942. Its territory included four crematoria and two gas chambers. In the same year, medical experiments on sterilization and castration began on women and men.
Small camps gradually formed around Birkenau, where prisoners working in factories and mines were kept. One of these camps gradually grew and became known as Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz. Approximately ten thousand prisoners were held here.
Like any Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz was well guarded. Contacts with outside world were banned, the territory was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and guard posts were set up around the camp at a distance of a kilometer.
Five crematoria operated continuously on the territory of Auschwitz, which, according to experts, had a monthly capacity of approximately 270 thousand corpses.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. By that time, approximately seven thousand prisoners remained alive. Such a small number of survivors is due to the fact that about a year earlier, mass murders in gas chambers (gas chambers) began in the concentration camp.
Since 1947, on the territory of the former concentration camp A museum and memorial complex began to function, dedicated to the memory of all those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Conclusion
During the entire war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. These were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It’s hard to even imagine what these people went through. But it was not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps that they were destined to endure. Thanks to Stalin, after their liberation, returning home, they received the stigma of “traitors.” The Gulag awaited them at home, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity gave way to another for them. In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences.
Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after release was not advertised and kept silent. But people who have experienced this simply should not be forgotten.
There is not a person in the world today who does not know what a concentration camp is. During the Second World War, these institutions, created to isolate political prisoners, prisoners of war and persons who posed a threat to the state, turned into houses of death and torture. Not many who ended up there managed to survive the harsh conditions; millions were tortured and died. Years after the end of the worst and bloody war In the history of mankind, memories of Nazi concentration camps still cause trembling in the body, horror in the soul and tears in people’s eyes.
What is a concentration camp
Concentration camps are special prisons created during military operations on the territory of the country, in accordance with special legislative documents.
There were few repressed people present in them; the main contingent were representatives of lower races, according to the Nazis: Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and other nations subject to extermination. For this purpose, Nazi concentration camps were equipped with various means with which people were killed in dozens and hundreds.
They were destroyed morally and physically: raped, experimented on, burned alive, poisoned in gas chambers. Why and for what was justified by the ideology of the Nazis. Prisoners were considered unworthy to live in the world of the “chosen ones.” The chronicle of the Holocaust of those times contains descriptions of thousands of incidents confirming the atrocities.
The truth about them became known from books, documentaries, stories of those who managed to become free and get out of there alive.
The institutions built during the war were conceived by the Nazis as places of mass extermination, for which they received their true name - death camps. They were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers, soap factories, crematoria where hundreds of people could be burned a day, and other similar means for murder and torture.
No fewer people died from exhausting work, hunger, cold, punishment for the slightest disobedience and medical experiments.
Living conditions
For many people who passed the “road of death” beyond the walls of concentration camps, there was no turning back. Upon arrival at the place of detention, they were examined and “sorted”: children, old people, disabled people, wounded, mentally retarded and Jews were subjected to immediate destruction. Next, people “suitable” for work were distributed among men’s and women’s barracks.
Most of the buildings were built in haste; they often had no foundation or were converted from barns, stables, and warehouses. They had bunks in them, in the middle of the huge room there was one stove for heating in winter, there were no latrines. But there were rats.
Roll call, carried out at any time of the year, was considered a difficult test. People had to stand for hours in the rain, snow, and hail, and then return to cold, barely heated rooms. It is not surprising that many died from infectious and respiratory diseases and inflammation.
Each registered prisoner had a serial number on his chest (in Auschwitz he was tattooed) and a patch on his camp uniform indicating the “article” under which he was imprisoned in the camp. A similar winkel (colored triangle) was sewn on the left side of the chest and the right knee of the trouser leg.
The colors were distributed as follows:
- red - political prisoner;
- green - convicted of a criminal offense;
- black - dangerous, dissident persons;
- pink - persons with non-traditional sexual orientation;
- brown - gypsies.
Jews, if left alive, wore a yellow winkel and a hexagonal "Star of David". If a prisoner was considered a “racial polluter,” a black border was sewn around the triangle. Persons prone to escape wore a red and white target on their chest and back. The latter faced execution for just one glance towards a gate or wall.
Executions were carried out daily. Prisoners were shot, hanged, and beaten with whips for the slightest disobedience to the guards. Gas chambers, whose operating principle was to simultaneously exterminate several dozen people, operated around the clock in many concentration camps. Prisoners who helped remove the corpses of those strangled were also rarely left alive.
Gas chamber
The prisoners were also mocked morally, erasing their human dignity under conditions in which they ceased to feel like members of society and just people.
What did they feed?
In the early years of the concentration camps, the food provided to political prisoners, traitors and “dangerous elements” was quite high in calories. The Nazis understood that prisoners must have the strength to work, and at that time many sectors of the economy relied on their labor.
The situation changed in 1942-43, when the bulk of the prisoners were Slavs. If the diet of the German repressed was 700 kcal per day, the Poles and Russians did not receive even 500 kcal.
The diet consisted of:
- a liter per day of a herbal drink called “coffee”;
- water soup without fat, the basis of which was vegetables (mostly rotten) - 1 liter;
- bread (stale, moldy);
- sausages (approximately 30 grams);
- fat (margarine, lard, cheese) - 30 grams.
The Germans could count on sweets: jam or preserves, potatoes, cottage cheese and even fresh meat. They received special rations, which included cigarettes, sugar, goulash, dry broth, etc.
Since 1943, when there was a turning point in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet troops liberated European countries from German invaders; concentration camp prisoners were massacred to hide traces of crimes. Since that time, in many camps the already meager rations were cut, and in some institutions they stopped feeding people completely.
The most terrible tortures and experiments in the history of mankind
Concentration camps will forever remain in human history as places where the Gestapo carried out the most terrible tortures and medical experiments.
The task of the latter was considered to be “helping the army”: doctors determined the boundaries of human capabilities, created new types of weapons, drugs that could help the fighters of the Reich.
Almost 70% of the experimental subjects did not survive such executions; almost all turned out to be incapacitated or crippled.
Above women
One of the main goals of the SS men was to cleanse the world of non-Aryan nations. To achieve this, experiments were carried out on women in the camps to find the easiest and cheapest method of sterilization.
Representatives of the fairer sex had special chemical solutions infused into their uterus and fallopian tubes, designed to block the functioning of the reproductive system. Most of experimental subjects died after such a procedure, the rest were killed in order to examine the condition of the genital organs during autopsy.
Women were often turned into sex slaves, forced to work in brothels and brothels run by the camps. Most of them left the establishments dead, having not survived not only a huge number of “clients”, but also monstrous abuse of themselves.
over children
The purpose of these experiments was to create a superior race. Thus, children with mental disabilities and genetic diseases were subjected to forced death (euthanasia) so that they would not have the opportunity to further reproduce “inferior” offspring.
Other children were placed in special “nurseries”, where they were raised in home conditions and strict patriotic sentiments. They were periodically exposed to ultraviolet rays to give the hair a lighter shade.
One of the most famous and monstrous experiments Experiments on children are considered to be carried out on twins representing an inferior race. They tried to change the color of their eyes by injecting them with drugs, after which they died from pain or remained blind.
There were attempts to artificially create Siamese twins, that is, sew children together and transplant each other’s body parts into them. There are records of viruses and infections being administered to one of the twins and further study of the condition of both. If one of the couple died, the other was also killed in order to compare the condition of the internal organs and systems.
Children born in the camp were also subject to strict selection, almost 90% of them were killed immediately or sent for experiments. Those who managed to survive were brought up and “Germanized.”
Above men
Representatives of the stronger sex were subjected to the most cruel and terrible torture and experiments. To create and test drugs that improve blood clotting, which were needed by the military at the front, men were inflicted with gunshot wounds, after which observations were made about the speed of bleeding cessation.
The tests included studying the effect of sulfonamides - antimicrobial substances designed to prevent the development of blood poisoning in front conditions. To do this, prisoners were injured in body parts and bacteria, fragments, and earth were injected into the incisions, and then the wounds were stitched up. Another type of experiment is ligation of veins and arteries on both sides of the wound.
Means for recovery after chemical burns. The men were doused with a composition identical to that found in phosphorus bombs or with mustard gas, which was used to poison enemy “criminals” at that time and civilians cities under occupation.
Attempts to create vaccines against malaria and typhus played a major role in drug experiments. The experimental subjects were injected with the infection, and then were given test compounds to neutralize it. Some prisoners were given no immune protection at all, and they died in terrible agony.
To study the human body's ability to resist low temperatures and to recover from significant hypothermia, men were placed in ice baths or driven naked into the cold outside. If after such torture the prisoner had signs of life, he was subjected to a resuscitation procedure, after which few managed to recover.
Basic measures for resurrection: irradiation with ultraviolet lamps, having sex, introducing boiling water into the body, placing in a bath with warm water.
In some concentration camps, attempts were made to convert sea water to drinking water. It was processed in different ways, and then given to prisoners, observing the body's reaction. They also experimented with poisons, adding them to food and drinks.
One of the most terrible experiences is considered to be attempts to regenerate bone and nerve tissue. During the research, joints and bones were broken, their fusion was observed, nerve fibers were removed, and joints were swapped.
Almost 80% of the experiment participants died during the experiments from unbearable pain or blood loss. The rest were killed in order to study the results of the research “from the inside.” Only a few survived such abuses.
List and description of death camps
Concentration camps existed in many countries of the world, including the USSR, and were intended for a narrow circle of prisoners. However, only Nazi ones received the name “death camps” for the atrocities carried out in them after Adolf Hitler came to power and the beginning of the Second World War.
Buchenwald
Located in the surrounding area German city Weimar, this camp, founded in 1937, has become one of the most famous and largest such institutions. It consisted of 66 branches where prisoners worked for the benefit of the Reich.
Over the years of its existence, about 240 thousand people visited its barracks, of which 56 thousand prisoners officially died from murder and torture, among whom were representatives of 18 nations. How many of them there actually were is not known for certain.
Buchenwald was liberated on April 10, 1945. On the site of the camp, a memorial complex was created in memory of its victims and hero-liberators.
Auschwitz
In Germany it is better known as Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a complex that occupied a vast area near Polish Krakow. The concentration camp consisted of 3 main parts: a large administrative complex, the camp itself, where torture and massacres of prisoners were carried out, and a group of 45 small complexes with factories and working areas.
According to official data alone, the victims of Auschwitz were more than 4 million people, representatives of “inferior races”, according to the Nazis.
The “death camp” was liberated on January 27, 1945 by troops Soviet Union. Two years later, the State Museum was opened on the territory of the main complex.
It features displays of things that belonged to prisoners: toys they made from wood, pictures, and other crafts that were exchanged for food with passing civilians. Scenes of interrogation and torture by the Gestapo are stylized, reflecting the violence of the Nazis.
The drawings and inscriptions on the walls of the barracks, made by prisoners doomed to death, remained unchanged. As the Poles themselves say today, Auschwitz is the bloodiest and most terrible point on the map of their homeland.
Sobibor
Another concentration camp on Polish territory, created in May 1942. The prisoners were mainly representatives of the Jewish nation, the number of those killed is about 250 thousand people.
One of the few institutions where a prisoner uprising took place in October 1943, after which it was closed and razed to the ground.
Majdanek
The year the camp was founded is considered to be 1941; it was built in the suburbs of Lublin, Poland. It had 5 branches in the south-eastern part of the country.
Over the years of its existence, about 1.5 million people of different nationalities died in its cells.
The surviving prisoners were released by Soviet soldiers on July 23, 1944, and 2 years later a museum and research institute were opened on its territory.
Salaspils
The camp, known as Kurtengorf, was built in October 1941 in Latvia, near Riga. It had several branches, the most famous being Ponar. The main prisoners were children on whom medical experiments were carried out.
IN last years prisoners were used as blood donors for wounded German soldiers. The camp was burned down in August 1944 by the Germans, who were forced by the advance of Soviet troops to evacuate the remaining prisoners to other institutions.
Ravensbrück
Built in 1938 near Fürstenberg. Before the start of the war of 1941-1945, it was exclusively for women; it consisted mainly of partisans. After 1941 it was completed, after which it received a men's barracks and a children's barracks for young girls.
Over the years of “work”, the number of his captives amounted to more than 132 thousand representatives of the fairer sex of different ages, of which almost 93 thousand died. The release of prisoners took place on April 30, 1945 by Soviet troops.
Mauthausen
Austrian concentration camp, built in July 1938. At first it was one of the large branches of Dachau, the first such institution in Germany, located near Munich. But since 1939 it functioned independently.
In 1940, it merged with the Gusen death camp, after which it became one of the largest concentration settlements in Nazi Germany.
During the war years there were about 335 thousand natives of 15 European countries, 122 thousand of whom were brutally tortured and killed. The prisoners were released by the Americans, who entered the camp on May 5, 1945. A few years later, 12 states created a memorial museum here and erected monuments to the victims of Nazism.
Irma Grese - Nazi overseer
The horrors of the concentration camps imprinted in the memory of people and the annals of history the names of individuals who can hardly be called human. One of them is considered to be Irma Grese, a young and beautiful German woman whose actions do not fit into the nature of human actions.
Today, many historians and psychiatrists are trying to explain her phenomenon by the suicide of her mother or the propaganda of fascism and Nazism characteristic of that time, but it is impossible or difficult to find a justification for her actions.
Already at the age of 15, the young girl was part of the Hitler Youth movement, a German youth organization whose main principle was racial purity. At the age of 20 in 1942, having changed several professions, Irma became a member of one of the SS auxiliary units. Her first place of work was the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was later replaced by Auschwitz, where she acted as second in command after the commandant.
The abuse of the “Blonde Devil,” as Grese was called by the prisoners, was felt by thousands of captive women and men. This “Beautiful Monster” destroyed people not only physically, but also morally. She beat a prisoner to death with a braided whip, which she carried with her, and enjoyed shooting prisoners. One of the favorite pastimes of the “Angel of Death” was setting dogs on captives, who were first starved for several days.
Irma Grese's last place of service was Bergen-Belsen, where, after its liberation, she was captured by the British military. The tribunal lasted 2 months, the verdict was clear: “Guilty, subject to death by hanging.”
An iron core, or perhaps ostentatious bravado, was present in the woman even on the last night of her life - she sang songs until the morning and laughed loudly, which, according to psychologists, hid the fear and hysteria of the upcoming death - too easy and simple for her.
Josef Mengele - experiments on humans
The name of this man still causes horror among people, since it was he who came up with the most painful and terrible experiments on the human body and psyche.
According to official data alone, tens of thousands of prisoners became its victims. He personally sorted the victims upon arrival at the camp, then they were subjected to a thorough medical examination and terrible experiments.
The “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” managed to avoid a fair trial and imprisonment during the liberation of European countries from the Nazis. For a long time he lived in Latin America, carefully hiding from his pursuers and avoiding capture.
This doctor is responsible for the anatomical dissection of living newborns and castration of boys without the use of anesthesia, experiments on twins, and dwarfs. There is evidence of women being tortured and sterilized using X-rays. They were assessed for endurance human body when exposed to electric current.
Unfortunately for many prisoners of war, Josef Mengele still managed to avoid fair punishment. After 35 years of living under false names and constantly running away from his pursuers, he drowned in the ocean, losing control of his body as a result of a stroke. The worst thing is that until the end of his life he was firmly convinced that “in his entire life he had never personally harmed anyone.”
Concentration camps were present in many countries around the world. Most famous for Soviet people became the Gulag, created in the first years of the Bolsheviks coming to power. In total, there were more than a hundred of them and, according to the NKVD, in 1922 alone they housed more than 60 thousand “dissidents” and “dangerous to the authorities” prisoners.
But only the Nazis made the word “concentration camp” go down in history as a place where people were massively tortured and exterminated. A place of abuse and humiliation committed by people against humanity.
We can all agree that the Nazis did terrible things during World War II. The Holocaust was perhaps their most famous crime. But terrible and inhuman things happened in the concentration camps that most people did not know about. Prisoners of the camps were used as test subjects in a variety of experiments, which were very painful and usually resulted in death.Experiments with blood clotting
Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted 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 tablets could help stop bleeding from battle wounds or during surgery.
Each test subject was given a tablet of this drug and shot in the neck or chest to test its effectiveness. Then the prisoners' limbs were amputated without anesthesia. Dr. Rusher 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 sulfonamide drugs) was tested on prisoners. Subjects were given incisions on the outside of their calves. Doctors then rubbed a mixture of bacteria into the open wounds and stitched them up. To simulate combat situations, glass shards were also inserted into the wounds.
However, this method turned out to be too soft compared to the conditions at the fronts. To simulate gunshot wounds, blood vessels were ligated on both sides to stop blood circulation. The prisoners were then given sulfa drugs. Despite the advances made in the scientific and pharmaceutical fields due to these experiments, prisoners suffered terrible pain, which led to severe injury or even death.
Freezing and hypothermia experiments
The German armies were ill-prepared for the cold they faced on the Eastern Front, 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 body temperature to drop and death, and methods for reviving frozen people.
Naked prisoners were either placed in a barrel of ice water or forced outside in sub-zero temperatures. Most of the victims died. Those who had just lost consciousness were subjected to painful revival procedures. To revive the test subjects, they were placed under lamps. sunlight, which burned their skin, forced them to copulate with women, injected boiling water inside them or placed them in baths with warm water (which turned out to be the most effective method).
Experiments with incendiary bombs
During three months In 1943 and 1944, the effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs against phosphorus burns caused by incendiary bombs was tested on Buchenwald prisoners. The test subjects were specially burned with the phosphorus composition from these bombs, which was a very painful procedure. Prisoners suffered serious injuries during these experiments.
Experiments with sea water
Experiments were carried out on prisoners at Dachau to find ways to turn sea water into drinking water. The subjects were divided into four groups, the members of which 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 seawater of one kind or another eventually began to suffer from severe diarrhea, convulsions, hallucinations, went crazy and eventually died.
In addition, subjects underwent liver needle biopsies or lumbar punctures to collect data. These procedures were painful and in most cases resulted in death.
Experiments with poisons
At Buchenwald, experiments were conducted on the effects of poisons on people. In 1943, prisoners were secretly injected with poisons.
Some died themselves from poisoned food. Others were killed for the sake of dissection. A year later, prisoners were shot with bullets filled with poison to speed up the collection of data. These test subjects experienced terrible torture.
Experiments with sterilization
As part of the extermination of all non-Aryans, Nazi doctors conducted mass sterilization experiments on prisoners of various concentration camps in search of the least labor-intensive and cheapest method of sterilization.
In one series of experiments, a chemical irritant was injected into women's reproductive organs 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 exposed to strong x-rays, which resulted in severe burns on the abdomen, groin and buttocks. They were also left with incurable ulcers. Some test subjects died.
Experiments on bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation
For about a year, experiments were carried out on prisoners in Ravensbrück to regenerate bones, muscles and nerves. Nerve surgeries involved removing segments of nerves from the lower extremities.
Experiments with bones involved breaking and setting bones in several places on the lower limbs. The fractures were not allowed to heal properly because doctors needed to study the healing process as well as test different healing methods.
Doctors also removed many fragments of the tibia from test subjects to study bone tissue regeneration. Bone transplants included transplanting fragments of the left tibia onto the right and vice versa. These experiments caused unbearable pain and severe injuries to the prisoners.
Experiments with typhus
From the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1945, doctors carried out experiments on prisoners of Buchenwald and Natzweiler in the interests of German armed forces. They tested vaccines against typhus and other diseases.
Approximately 75% of test subjects were injected with trial typhus vaccines or other chemicals. They were injected with the virus. As a result, more than 90% of them died.
The remaining 25% of experimental subjects were injected with the virus without any prior protection. Most of them did not survive. Doctors also conducted experiments related to yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid, and other diseases. Hundreds of prisoners died, and many more suffered unbearable pain as a result.
Twin experiments and genetic experiments
The goal 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 Nazi Party scientific evidence of the superiority of the Aryans.
Dr. Josef Mengele (also known as the "Angel of Death") was greatly interested in twins. He separated them from the rest of the prisoners upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Every day the twins had to donate blood. The actual purpose of this procedure is unknown.
Experiments with twins were extensive. They had to be carefully examined and every inch of their body measured. Comparisons were then made to determine hereditary traits. Sometimes doctors performed massive blood transfusions from one twin to the other.
Since people of Aryan origin mostly had blue eyes, experiments were done with chemical drops or injections into the iris to create them. These procedures were very painful and led to infections and even blindness.
Injections and lumbar punctures were done without anesthesia. One twin was specifically infected with the disease, and the other was not. If one twin died, the other twin was killed and studied for comparison.
Amputations and organ removals were also performed without anesthesia. Most twins who ended up in concentration camps died in one way or another, and their autopsies were the last experiments.
Experiments with high altitudes
From March to August 1942, 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 supposed to help the German air force.
The test subjects were placed in a low-pressure chamber in which atmospheric conditions were created at altitudes of 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
Bone fragments are still found in this land. The crematorium could not cope with the huge number of corpses, although two sets of ovens were built. They burned poorly, leaving fragments of bodies - the ashes were buried in pits around the concentration camp. 72 years have passed, but mushroom pickers in the forest often come across pieces of skulls with eye sockets, bones of arms or legs, crushed fingers - not to mention decayed scraps of striped "robes" of prisoners. The Stutthof concentration camp (fifty kilometers from the city of Gdansk) was founded on September 2, 1939, the day after the outbreak of World War II, and its prisoners were liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945. The main thing that Stutthof became famous for was These were "experiments" by SS doctors who, using humans as guinea pigs, made soap from human fat. A bar of this soap was later used at the Nuremberg trials as an example of Nazi savagery. Now some historians (not only in Poland, but also in other countries) are speaking out: this is “military folklore”, fantasy, this could not have happened.
Soap from prisoners
The Stutt-Hof museum complex receives 100 thousand visitors a year. Barracks, towers for SS machine gunners, a crematorium and a gas chamber are available for viewing: small, for about 30 people. The premises were built in the fall of 1944, before that they “coped” with the usual methods - typhus, exhausting work, hunger. A museum employee, taking me through the barracks, says: on average, the life expectancy of the inhabitants of Stutthof was 3 months. As evidenced archival documents, one of the female prisoners weighed 19 kg before her death. Behind the glass I suddenly see large wooden shoes, as if from a medieval fairy tale. I ask: what is this? It turns out that the guards took away the prisoners’ shoes and in return gave them these “shoes” that abraded their feet to the point of bloody blisters. In winter, prisoners worked in the same “robe”, only a light cape was required - many died from hypothermia. It was believed that 85,000 people died in the camp, but Lately EU historians are re-estimating: the number of prisoner deaths has been reduced to 65,000.
In 2006, the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland conducted an analysis of the same soap presented at the Nuremberg trials, says the guide Danuta Ochocka. - Contrary to expectations, the results were confirmed - it was indeed made by a Nazi professor Rudolf Spanner from human fat. However, now researchers in Poland claim: there is no exact confirmation that the soap was made specifically from the bodies of Stutthof prisoners. It is possible that the corpses of homeless people who died of natural causes, brought from the streets of Gdansk, were used for production. Professor Spanner actually visited Stutthof in different time, but the production of “soap of the dead” was not carried out on an industrial scale.
Gas chamber and crematorium in the Stutthof concentration camp. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Hans Weingartz
"People were skinned"
The Institute of National Remembrance of Poland is the same “glorious” organization that advocates for the demolition of all monuments to Soviet soldiers, and in this case the situation turned out to be tragicomic. Officials specifically ordered an analysis of the soap in order to obtain proof of the “lies of Soviet propaganda” in Nuremberg, but it turned out the opposite. As for industrial scale, Spanner produced up to 100 kg of soap from “human material” in the period 1943-1944. and, according to the testimony of his employees, he repeatedly went to Stutthof for “raw materials.” Polish investigator Tuvya Friedman published a book where he described his impressions of Spanner’s laboratory after the liberation of Gdansk: “We had the feeling that we had been in hell. One room was filled with naked corpses. The other is lined with boards on which skins taken from many people have been stretched. Almost immediately they discovered a furnace in which the Germans were experimenting in making soap using human fat as a raw material. Several bars of this “soap” lay nearby.” A museum employee shows me a hospital used for experiments by SS doctors; relatively healthy prisoners were placed here under the formal pretext of “treatment.” Doctor Carl Clauberg went to Stutthof on short business trips from Auschwitz to sterilize women, and SS Sturmbannführer Karl Wernet from Buchenwald cut out people's tonsils and tongues, replacing them with artificial organs. Wernet was not satisfied with the results - the victims of the experiments were killed in a gas chamber. There are no exhibits in the concentration camp museum about the savage activities of Clauberg, Wernet and Spanner - they “have little documentary evidence.” Although during the Nuremberg trials that same “human soap” from Stutt-Hof was demonstrated and the testimony of dozens of witnesses was voiced.
"Cultural" Nazis
“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we have an entire exhibition dedicated to the liberation of Stutt-Hof by Soviet troops on May 9, 1945,” says Dr. Marcin Owsiński, head of the museum's research department. - It is noted that this was precisely the release of prisoners, and not the replacement of one occupation with another, as is now fashionable to say. People rejoiced at the arrival of the Red Army. Regarding the SS experiments in the concentration camp, I assure you that there is no politics here. We work with documentary evidence, and most of the papers were destroyed by the Germans during the retreat from Stutthof. If they appear, we will immediately make changes to the exhibition.
In the cinema hall of the museum they are showing a film about the entry of the Red Army into Stutthof - archival footage. It is noted that by this time only 200 exhausted prisoners remained in the concentration camp and “then the N-KVD sent some to Siberia.” No confirmation, no names - but a fly in the ointment spoils the barrel of honey: clearly there is a goal - to show that the liberators were not so good. At the crematorium there is a sign in Polish: “We thank the Red Army for our liberation.” She is old, from the old days. Soviet soldiers, including my great-grandfather (buried in Polish soil), saved Poland from dozens of “death factories” like Stutt Hof, which entangled the country in a deadly network of ovens and gas chambers, but now they are trying to downplay the significance of their victories. They say that the atrocities of the SS doctors have not been confirmed, fewer people died in the camps and, in general, the crimes of the occupiers have been exaggerated. Moreover, this is stated by Poland, where the Nazis destroyed a fifth of the entire population. To be honest, I would like to call " ambulance”, so that Polish politicians would be taken to a psychiatric hospital.
As a publicist from Warsaw said Maciej Wisniewski: “We will still live to see the time when they will say: the Nazis were a cultured people, they built hospitals and schools in Poland, and the war was started by the Soviet Union.” I wouldn't want to live to see these times. But for some reason it seems to me that they are not far off.These photographs show the life and martyrdom of Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Some of these photos can be emotionally traumatizing. Therefore, we ask children and mentally unstable people to refrain from viewing these photographs.
Liberated prisoners of an Austrian concentration camp in an American military hospital.
Clothes of concentration camp prisoners abandoned after liberation in April 1945/
American soldiers inspect the site of the mass execution of 250 Polish and French prisoners at a concentration camp near Leipzig on April 19, 1945.
A Ukrainian girl released from a concentration camp in Salzburg (Austria) cooks food on a small stove.
Prisoners of the Flossenburg concentration camp after liberation by the 97th Infantry Division of the US Army in May 1945. The emaciated prisoner in the center - a 23-year-old Czech - is sick with dysentery.
Prisoners of the Ampfing concentration camp after liberation.
View of the Grini concentration camp in Norway.
Soviet prisoners in the Lamsdorf concentration camp (Stalag VIII-B, now the Polish village of Lambinowice.
The bodies of executed SS guards at observation tower "B" of the Dachau concentration camp.
View of the barracks of the Dachau concentration camp.
Soldiers of the 45th American Infantry Division show teenagers from the Hitler Youth the bodies of prisoners in a carriage at the Dachau concentration camp.
View of the Buchenwald barracks after the liberation of the camp.
American generals George Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower at the Ohrdruf concentration camp near the fireplace where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.
Soviet prisoners of war in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war eat in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war near the barbed wire of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
A Soviet prisoner of war near the barracks of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
British prisoners of war on the stage of the theater of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Captured British corporal Eric Evans with three comrades on the territory of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Burnt bodies of prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.
The bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Women from the SS guards of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp unload the corpses of prisoners. Women from the SS guards of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp unload the corpses of prisoners for burial in mass grave. They were attracted to this work by the allies who liberated the camp. Around the ditch is a convoy of English soldiers. As a punishment, former guards are prohibited from wearing gloves to expose them to the risk of contracting typhus.
Six British prisoners on the territory of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners talk with a German officer in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war change clothes in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Group photo of Allied prisoners (British, Australians and New Zealanders) at the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
An orchestra of Allied prisoners (Australians, British and New Zealanders) on the territory of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Captured Allied soldiers play the game Two Up for cigarettes on the grounds of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.
Two British prisoners near the wall of the barracks of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.
A German soldier guard at the market of the Stalag 383 concentration camp, surrounded by Allied prisoners.
Group photo of Allied prisoners at Stalag 383 concentration camp on Christmas Day 1943.
Barracks of the Vollan concentration camp in the Norwegian city of Trondheim after liberation.
A group of Soviet prisoners of war outside the gates of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.
SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber on vacation in the commandant's quarters of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.
The commandant of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Hauptscharführer Karl Denk (left) and SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber (right) in the commandant's room.
Five liberated prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp at the gate.
Prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad on vacation during a break between working in the field.
Employee of the Falstad concentration camp, SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber
SS non-commissioned officers K. Denk, E. Weber and Luftwaffe sergeant major R. Weber with two women in the commandant's room of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.
An employee of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber, in the kitchen of the commandant's house.
Soviet, Norwegian and Yugoslav prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp on vacation at a logging site.
The head of the women's block of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, Maria Robbe, with policemen at the gates of the camp.
A group of Soviet prisoners of war on the territory of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.
Seven guards of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) at the main gate.
Panorama of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.
Black French prisoners in the Frontstalag 155 camp in the village of Lonvik.
Black French prisoners wash clothes in the Frontstalag 155 camp in the village of Lonvik.
Participants of the Warsaw Uprising from the Home Army in a concentration camp barracks near the German village of Oberlangen.
The body of a shot SS guard in a canal near the Dachau concentration camp 
A column of prisoners from the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad passes in the courtyard of the main building.
Liberated children, prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz) show camp numbers tattooed on their arms.
Train tracks leading to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
An exhausted Hungarian prisoner freed from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
A released prisoner of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who fell ill with typhus in one of the camp barracks.
A group of children liberated from the Auschwitz concentration camp. In total, about 7,500 people were liberated from the camp, including children. The Germans managed to transport about 50 thousand prisoners from Auschwitz to other camps before the approach of the Red Army.
Prisoners demonstrate the process of destroying corpses in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp.
Captured Red Army soldiers who died from hunger and cold. The prisoner of war camp was located in the village of Bolshaya Rossoshka near Stalingrad.
The body of a guard at the Ohrdruf concentration camp, killed by prisoners or American soldiers.
Prisoners in a barracks at the Ebensee concentration camp.
Irma Grese and Josef Kramer in the courtyard of a prison in the German city of Celle. The head of the labor service of the women's block of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp - Irma Grese and his commandant SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Josef Kramer under British escort in the courtyard of the prison in Celle, Germany.
A girl prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac.
Soviet prisoners of war carrying building elements for the barracks of the Stalag 304 Zeithain camp.
Surrendered SS Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker (later shot by American soldiers) near the carriage with the bodies of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp. In the photo, second from left is Red Cross representative Victor Myrer.
A man in civilian clothes stands near the bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
In the background, Christmas wreaths hang near the windows.
The British and Americans released from captivity stand on the territory of the Dulag-Luft prisoner of war camp in Wetzlar, Germany.
Liberated prisoners of the Nordhausen death camp sit on the porch.
Prisoners of the Gardelegen concentration camp, killed by guards shortly before the liberation of the camp.
The corpses of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp, prepared for burning in the crematorium, in the back of a trailer.
Aerial photography of the northwestern part of the Auschwitz concentration camp with the main objects of the camp marked: railroad station and the Auschwitz I camp.
American generals (from right to left) Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton watch a demonstration of one of the methods of torture at the Gotha concentration camp.
Mountains of clothes of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp.
A released seven-year-old prisoner of the Buchenwald concentration camp in line before being sent to Switzerland.
Prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in formation.
Soviet prisoner of war liberated from the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.
Soviet prisoners of war in a barracks after liberation from the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.
A Soviet prisoner of war leaves a barracks in the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.
Women liberated by the Red Army from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, located 90 km north of Berlin.
German officers and civilians walk past a group of Soviet prisoners during an inspection of a concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war in the camp in formation during verification.
Captured Soviet soldiers in a camp at the beginning of the war.
Captured Red Army soldiers enter the camp barracks.
Four Polish prisoners of the Oberlangen concentration camp (Oberlangen, Stalag VI C) after liberation. Women were among the Warsaw rebels who capitulated.
The orchestra of prisoners of the Janowska concentration camp performs the Tango of Death. On the eve of the liberation of Lviv by units of the Red Army, the Germans lined up a circle of 40 people from the orchestra. The camp guard surrounded the musicians in a tight ring and ordered them to play. First, the orchestra conductor Mund was executed, then, by order of the commandant, each orchestra member went to the center of the circle, put his instrument on the ground and stripped naked, after which he was shot in the head.
Two American soldiers and a former prisoner retrieve the body of a shot SS guard from a canal near the Dachau concentration camp.
The Ustasha execute prisoners in the Jasenovac concentration camp.
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