Concentration camps on Polish territory map. Auschwitz

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 like 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, Vilno, Pinsk, Bobruisk...

And also - Grodno, Minsk, Pulawy, Powązki, Lancut, Kovel, Stryi (in the western part of Ukraine), Shchelkovo... Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who found themselves in Polish captivity after Soviet-Polish war 1919-1920.

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. Prisoners for the most part 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 the close cohabitation of sick and healthy people, the 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, i.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 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, Powonzki and the Dombe camp, the cells were so crowded that only the lucky ones slept on planks. 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 marshalling yard 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 the terrible picture that appears before the eyes of everyone who ends up in the camp... Again the same criminal neglect of their duties by all bodies operating in the camp brought shame on our name, on the Polish army, just as happened in Brest-Litovsk... There is unimaginable dirt and disorder in the camp. 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.”

Concentration camp in Strzałkowo, located between Poznan and Warsaw, was considered the worst. He appeared at the turn of 1914-1915 as German camp for prisoners from the fronts of the First World War on the border between Germany and Russian Empire- near the road connecting two border areas - Strzalkovo 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 investigative commission.

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 Strzalkow 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 for free views 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 there soldiers and commanders of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian formations and civilians who sympathized with Soviet power. 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...

In the State Archives Russian Federation there are 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.”

Authorized Russian society Red Cross Stefania Sempolovskaya about the November (1920) inspection in Tuchol: “The patients lie 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 entire 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. The head of the II department also gives a similar number of deaths. General Staff Polish troops (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 population died total number prisoners of war."

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 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”

As you know, the UN chose this particular date because it was on January 27, 1945 that Soviet troops liberated Hitler’s Auschwitz death camp. Now it’s just 70 years since that day. Auschwitz is located in Poland. Russia and Poland have their own trail of historical contradictions. And although both sides have, it seems, already agreed a thousand times to leave in the past everything that belongs to the past, official Warsaw will no doubt break through with another anti-Moscow attack. So last week a bad incident arose with Vladimir Putin not being invited to anniversary events at the Auschwitz Memorial.

This became an occasion to turn to the topic of pre-war (and during the war) Polish-Jewish relations, seemingly foreign to Russia. After all, it is strange that it was Auschwitz that became a reason for PR for Warsaw officials. It is better for the Polish side to observe maximum tact when talking about the Holocaust.

Extermination camps

Auschwitz is one of six extermination camps organized by the Germans as part of the " final decision Jewish question." In addition - Majdanek, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec. Auschwitz is the largest.

Let us emphasize that these are precisely extermination camps. On this score, the Nazis had their own gradation. As you can see, they were all located in Poland. Why? Convenient location in terms of, so to speak, transportation? Yes, absolutely – especially when it comes to the extermination of Jews from other European countries. It was somehow inconvenient and noticeable for the Nazis to locate an object for conveyor killing in some Holland. And Poland - well...

But there was one more circumstance that the Nazis probably took into account - fortunately, it was Polish Jewry that was to become the first victim of the “final solution.” The occupation here had lasted for more than three years; at that time, about 2 million Polish Jews were languishing in the ghetto. Over the years, it became clear to the Germans: the majority of the local population does not want to help them, and is not even particularly sympathetic.

Not a spoonful of shit

In saying this, we are not opening America. Jewish researchers openly write about Polish anti-Semitism, which clearly manifested itself precisely during the war years (read the multi-page, extremely well-reasoned articles in the “Holocaust Encyclopedia”). And many Poles themselves today painfully admit this fact. The impetus for a new understanding of the topic was the publication in 2000 in Poland itself of facts about the extermination of Jews in the town of Jedwabno near Bialystok. It turned out that it was not the Germans there, but Polish peasants who brutally massacred 1,600 of their Jewish neighbors on July 10, 1941.

Moreover, as usually happens, for every argument there is a counter-argument. You can talk about Jedwabno - but you can remember about the organization “Zhegota”, cite the names of Polish “righteous men” of whom Poland is proud: Zofia Kossak, Jan Karski, Irena Sandler, dozens of others. In general, the title “Righteous Among the Nations” (those who during the war, risking their lives, saved Jews) was awarded by the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute to 6,554 Poles. In fact, there were much more of them (new ones are constantly popping up, lists are being replenished). So every nation has its own good people and your scoundrels. And who can argue that a spoonful of crap spoils a barrel of honey?

They are not going to argue. It’s just that the Polish specificity is that we are not talking about a spoon here. Another question is what was more - crap or honey.

Two nations over the Vistula

Jews have lived in Poland since the 11th century. You can’t say that we are in perfect harmony with the Poles – there were different situations and different periods. But let’s not delve into hoary antiquity. Let's start with the pre-war, before 1939, period.

Of course, on paper, the then Polish official authorities declared “Europeanness” and “civilization.” But if we talk about, so to speak, the vector... Even before the First World War, the slogan “Two nations cannot be above the Vistula!” was formulated among Polish nationalists. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the authorities followed him. Of course, they didn’t commit genocide, but they tried to force them out of the country. Economic methods, turning a blind eye to the antics of local fascists, various kinds of restrictions, sometimes demonstrative humiliations. For example, in educational institutions Jewish students had to either stand or sit on a separate “Jewish” bench. At the same time, for example, Zionism was encouraged - go to your Palestine, and the more of you who leave, the better! Therefore, the mass of future prominent Israeli politicians - Sh. Peres, I. Shamir and others - are those who, as young guys, left there from Poland or its then “eastern territories” (Western Belarus and Ukraine).

But Palestine was under the British “mandate” (control), the British, fearing conflicts with the Arabs, restricted the entry of Jews. Other countries were also in no hurry to accept extra emigrants. So there were no special opportunities to leave somewhere. In addition, the Jewish community of Poland was huge (3.3 million people), and most Jews simply humanly could not imagine themselves without Poland, and Poland could not imagine itself without them. Well, how can you imagine the pre-war landscape there without the great poet Y. Tuvim, who said “my fatherland is Polish language"? Or without the “king of tango” E. Petersburgsky (later in the USSR he would write “The Blue Handkerchief”)?

Of the many characteristic facts, we present two that seem the most revealing.

During civil war in Spain, Polish and Jewish volunteers fought side by side in international brigades. But even here, commanders noted conflicts based on anti-Semitism (to understand, other equally conflicting groups were Serbs and Croats). And after 1939, already in the Soviet camps for Polish prisoners of war, the Soviet security officers observing the contingent (judging by their surnames - entirely Russian) noted in their reports the eternal clashes between Polish prisoners and Jewish prisoners and the inflamed anti-Semitic sentiments of the Poles. It would seem that a common destiny, a military brotherhood - what could bring people closer together? But look how deep it sat.

Bandera brothers

Among the scandals of last week was the wonderful statement by Polish Foreign Minister G. Schetyna that Auschwitz was “liberated by the Ukrainians.” He blurted out - and ran into indignation, first of all, from the Poles themselves: Auschwitz is their tragedy, their torment and sacrifices, so they remember who exactly liberated the camp. Mr. Minister rushed to explain that he had expressed himself inaccurately (what kind of diplomat are you if you express yourself inaccurately?), to remind that he is a historian by training, to demonstrate his knowledge of the Soviet Ukrainian fronts (probably, he urgently refreshed his memory at home).

But as a historian, Mr. Schetyna should remember why his statement sounded ambiguous.

I was unable to find out the number of Ukrainians held (and killed) in Auschwitz. It is clear that there were many of them - primarily “Soviet” Ukrainians. They are the same martyrs of Auschwitz as the others - and any other words are unnecessary here. But at the same time, among the guards at Auschwitz there was a company of Ukrainian collaborators (they also guarded other death camps, they were called “herbalniks”; one of these was the notorious Ivan Demjanjuk).

In addition, there was one group that stood out among the prisoners at Auschwitz. As you know, at a certain stage of the war, the claims of Ukrainian nationalists to independence angered Hitler - he had his own plans for Ukraine. And the Germans began to arrest their recent allies. So, in the summer of 1942, Stepan Bandera’s two brothers, Vasily and Alexander, ended up in Auschwitz. According to recollections, they arrived here “confident in the benefits and privileges promised to them by the SS” - but they only encountered those with whom they should not have. The Poles-prisoners had their own account to settle with the Ukrainian nationalists - both for the pre-war terrorist attacks and for the massacre of the Polish population in Volyn. And the Polish prisoners simply beat both brothers to death. Why were they shot by the Germans? So, when they say that Bandera’s brothers died in Auschwitz, yes, that’s true. The question is, how exactly did they die?

After 1939

How these Polish prisoners of war ended up with us is known: in September 1939, Nazi Germany struck Poland, and Soviet troops occupied Western Ukraine and Belarus. Then the legend of the “Jewish commune” was born in the mass Polish consciousness - they say that the Jews very joyfully welcomed the “Bolsheviks”. In reality there were not so many such cases. In addition, we note that just then, many thousands of Jewish soldiers and officers died in the ranks of the Polish army, fighting against the Nazis. But after the defeat of Poland they immediately forgot about it. But they talked about the “liquid commune” at every opportunity.

However, sometimes myths were not required. In the already mentioned Jedwabne, it was enough for the Germans to simply make it clear that they would not interfere with the massacre.

Around Jedwabno

An American historian, a Pole by origin, Professor Jan Tomasz Gross, first spoke about the tragedy in Jedwabne in 2000 - and received a full tub of accusations of “denigration” in his homeland. The decision on how to treat the facts he made public was made at the level of the country’s top leadership and the Polish catholic church. In 2001, the then President of Poland A. Kwasniewski made an official apology “on his own behalf and on behalf of those Poles whose conscience is tormented by this crime.” The story that happened in Jedwabne formed the basis of the film “Spikelets” by V. Pasikowski. The picture caused considerable noise in Poland. Now a similar scandal is going on around the film “Ida” by P. Pawlikowski, where the question of how the Poles behaved towards Jews during the Second World War is also very acutely raised.

Someday they will make a film about how vilely Polish bosses behave towards Russians today.

A few quotes

Barely - this is, let's say, the level of a village, a town. Some of the Jews living in such places immediately found death at the hands of the Nazis, who were often helped by local collaborators, simply informers. (Although we note that there are several villages in Poland where Polish neighbors saved Jewish neighbors. There are quite a lot of cases when Polish peasants hid Jewish children - this is how, for example, the boy Raimund Liebling survived, who later became the famous film director Roman Polanski and directed, in in particular, the famous film “The Pianist” about the tragedy of Polish Jews during the war.) But the bulk of the Jewish population was herded into ghettos created near the cities. The largest are Warsaw (up to 500 thousand people), Lodz, Krakow.

Polish Jews were kept in the ghetto until the “final solution.” Hunger, epidemics, “outlaw” status - the Nazis did everything to ensure that as many of them as possible died. And if we talk specifically about Polish-Jewish relations...

Of course, the Germans did everything to drive a wedge between the two peoples as deeply as possible. At the same time, as the Polish sociologist A. Smolyar noted, anti-Semitism was already sufficiently developed in Poland to associate its outbreak only with the arrival of the Nazis. Therefore, for example, even if, with the help of Polish friends, a Jew managed to escape from the ghetto, there were many who were willing to hand him over. This was done by the “dark blues” (Polish police), who simply wanted to. There were even more “shmaltsovniks” - those who, having discovered a person in hiding, began, under the threat of extradition, to extort from him everything that was of interest: the rest of his money, pitiful valuables, just clothes. A whole business arose. As a result, there are a huge number of cases where a fugitive was forced to return behind barbed wire.

I will give two quotes that do not need comment. They recreate the atmosphere of those years best of all.

From the diary of the historian E. Ringelblum (he kept a secret archive of the Warsaw ghetto, then hid with the Polish Volski family in a cache bunker, but was betrayed by their neighbor and shot): “Statements that the entire population of Poland joyfully accepts the extermination of the Jews are far from the truth ( ...) Thousands of idealists, both among the intelligentsia and the working class, selflessly help Jews at the risk of their lives.”

From a report from Warsaw to London to the “Polish Government in Exile” by the chief commandant (commander) of the underground AK (Home Army), General S. Rowecki-“Grot”: “I report that all the statements of the government (...) regarding the Jews are producing the most terrible things in the country impression and facilitate propaganda against the government. Please accept as a fact that the overwhelming majority of the population is anti-Semitic. (…) The only difference is how to treat the Jews. Almost no one approves of German methods. However, even (the following is a list of underground socialist organizations - author) they accept the postulate of emigration as a solution to the Jewish problem."

Auschwitz and its victims

Auschwitz (German name Auschwitz) was a terrible place for prisoners of all categories and nationalities. But it became a death camp after the Nazi “Wansee Conference” (01/20/1942), at which, in pursuance of the instructions of the top leadership of the Reich, a program and methods for the “final solution of the Jewish question” were developed.

There was no record of victims in the camp. Today, the figures of Polish historians F. Peiper and D. Cech are considered the most reliable: 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, of which 1.1 million were Jews. Over 1 million Jews, 75 thousand Poles (according to other calculations, up to 90 thousand), more than 20 thousand Gypsies, about 15 thousand Soviet prisoners of war, over 10 thousand prisoners of other nationalities died here.

You need to understand that Auschwitz was a huge complex (total area more than 40 sq. km) of several dozen subcamps, there were several factories, a number of other industries, and many different services. Being a death camp, Auschwitz was also a place of detention for a good dozen categories of prisoners - from political prisoners and members of the resistance movement from different countries to German and Austrian criminals, homosexuals, members of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect. There were a variety of nationalities (more than 30 in total), there were even Persians and Chinese.

A separate page is about the terrible experiments carried out in Auschwitz by Nazi doctors (the most famous is Dr. I. Mengele).

When they talk about Auschwitz as an extermination camp, they primarily mean one of the facilities - Auschwitz-2, deployed in the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau) evicted by the Germans. It was located separately. It was here that gas chambers and crematoria were located, and there was a railway line through which trains with Jews from all over Europe arrived. Next - unloading, “selection” (those who could still work were selected; these were destroyed later), for the rest - escort to the gas chambers, undressing and...

Above we have given the statistics of those destroyed. Let's repeat: this is a scary place for everyone. But other categories of prisoners had at least a theoretical chance of survival. But Jews (and Gypsies - they are simply outnumbered, and the Gypsy tragedy remains, as it were, in the shadows) were brought here precisely to die.

According to the residual principle

General “Grot” sent his report in September 1941. Then messages came to London about how exactly the Germans were finally deciding in Poland Jewish question. What was the reaction of the exile government? How did the underground formations subordinate to him in Poland - the same AK - react to the extermination of Jews?

In a nutshell... You know, there is such an expression - “according to the residual principle.” Probably fits. It is impossible to say that the exile government did nothing: there were statements and declarations. But it is clear that the problems of the Poles worried him much more. And the situation with the Polish underground is even tougher. “On the ground” on many issues, what they wanted to hear from London, they heard, and what they didn’t want, they didn’t hear. Here too. In reality, everything depended on specific people. Sometimes it came down to some objective circumstances. For example, there is a long-standing dispute about the extent to which the Home Army helped prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto during their famous uprising (April-May 1943). It is impossible to say that nothing was done. It is also impossible to say that a lot has been done. The “Akovites” later explained: the ghetto rebelled because it was already doomed to destruction; the Jews had no choice. And we had the task of waiting “at hand” for the order for our own action (indeed, the Polish Warsaw Uprising took place more than a year later, August - October 1944) - well, we will share the scarce supplies of weapons from underground warehouses, and perform before the deadline ?

The “field” commanders of the AK in the forests, with rare exceptions, were completely anti-Semitic - and they did not accept fugitives from the ghetto, and often simply shot them. No, there were many Jews in the ranks of the Polish partisans - but they fought, as a rule, in the detachments of the communist Ludovo Guard.

Here it is necessary to recall the activities of the underground organization “Zhegota” (“Council for Assistance to Jews”). It was a voluntary association decent people who couldn't sit idly by seeing someone in trouble. The number of those whom they helped in one way or another goes into the thousands - although the saviors often paid for their activities with their lives and ended up in concentration camps. But interesting words were heard in the Žegota manifesto: “We are Catholics. (...) Our feelings towards Jews have not changed. We continue to view them as economic, political and ideological enemies of Poland. (...) However, while they are being killed, we must help them.” Żegota included people such as, for example, Irena Sandler, who saved 2.5 thousand children from the Warsaw ghetto. It is unlikely that she looked at these children as enemies. Rather, the author of the manifesto, the writer Zofia Kossak, who led the organization, simply selected those words and arguments that would convince other compatriots “not to be Pilates.”

Allied silence

We are not writing a detailed study on the Holocaust in Poland, we are simply recalling some characteristic moments. And among the many bright stories, there is a story that is absolutely amazing. This is the fate of the Polish intelligence officer Jan Karski. He was a liaison between the underground in Poland and the London government, witnessed the destruction of Polish Jewry and was the first to report what was happening to London. When he realized that the reaction to his reports was purely declarative, he began to knock on all doors himself. He reached the British Foreign Minister Eden Eden, and even achieved a meeting with US President Roosevelt. In different offices I heard about the same thing: “You are telling too incredible things...”, “We are doing everything we can, don’t ask for more...”, “What can we do?”

But in fact, something could be done. For example, already at the end of 1944, stopping the death machine in Auschwitz. After all, the Allies knew about what was happening there - both from the Polish underground and from two Jewish prisoners who escaped from the concentration camp (R. Vrbla and A. Wetzler). And all that was required was to bomb Auschwitz 2 (Brzezinka) - the place where the gas chambers and crematoria were located. The camp was bombed, four times. A total of 327 aircraft dropped 3,394 bombs on Auschwitz industrial sites. And not a single one for nearby Brzezinka! Allied aviation was not interested in it. There are still no clear explanations for this fact.

And since they are not there, bad versions creep into your head. Maybe the émigré Polish government didn’t really ask for such a blow? Because “two nations cannot be above the Vistula”?

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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 they were built in Europe. fascist Germany. 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, whom, 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 by new line-up, which implied certain death, they 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.

Among the members of the Sonderkommando there was underground organization. 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 get into 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

Poland must answer for its crimes

. *"For 500 years Poland has been causing constant headaches for Europe. It’s time to finally put an end to this topic" -
F.D. Roosevelt, 1945 .

So, Russia the day before witnessed with its own eyes a humiliating act of repentance for unproven, falsified and refuted (and, therefore, de jure non-existent) sins.

Now we need:
1. Repent before the Swedes - for Poltava;
2. Before the Germans - for Lake Peipsi;
3. Before the French - for Borodino;
4. Before the Mongols - Tatars - beyond the Kulikovo field;
And also before the Finns, Turks and Japanese... we must repent before everyone. To do this, it will be necessary to create a State Federal Agency for Repentance - there is a lot of work...

But, as for WHO we repented to this time, it is absolutely necessary to understand what political role played
during these five hundred years mentioned by Roosevelt - Poland.
And this role, it must be said frankly, was unenviable, although the Polish rulers themselves were never particularly embarrassed about this. Numerous historians have repeatedly described this feature of the mentality of the Polish elite as exceptional greed and corruption.

Poland as a state has always behaved this way.
During the period of troubles and during the war between Russia and Swedes, during Suvorov’s campaigns and Napoleonic wars(the Poles, together with the French, entered Moscow in 1812), the year before, in the past, and now in the present century.
How can you not remember what else? Frederick the Great in the 18th century named Poland "prostitute of Europe ".
And it seems that it sounds insulting, and it’s already the 21st century, but you can’t erase the word from the song... and the Germans for their Friedrich
(as well as the Americans for their Roosevelt, and the British for their Churchill) - the Poles are not offended.
But the Russians, come on - they fight in hysterics, kick their legs in accusatory ecstasy …
But today I’m not talking about repentance that happened the day before. Today is about something else.
******
About Polish death camps

(this way, and not otherwise), since they reflect in the clearest and most concentrated form the entire essence of interwar Poland.

Let's start with the fact that after the departure of the German army (meaning after the First World War), Poland "inherited" a large number of Russian prisoners of war ( about 30,000 people, but this figure is inaccurate, since no one specifically dealt with this issue, especially since the delegation of the Russian Red Cross sent to solve this problem was highly humanely shot by the Poles), captured by the Kaiser’s army during the First World War, whom the new government was in no hurry to release.

Then, during the outbreak of hostilities between Poland and Soviet Russia new prisoners appeared, captured by the Polish army.
In November 1919, in Polish camps there were 40,000 prisoners of war
(they were placed in camps
Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Dombe, Grodno, Kovel, Lancut, Pikulicy, Strzalkovo, Szczyperno, Stry, Wadowice),
of which, according to a Polish historian from the University of Torun. Nicolaus Copernicus, Dr. Zbigniew Karpus,
by February 1920, 20,667 people remained.

Karpus himself explains this by saying that some of the captured Galicians were allegedly released before the attack on Kyiv as part of the agreement Pilsudski and Petliura
(with the immediate mobilization of these to strengthen the Petliura army), but since only two Petliura “divisions” operated in the Polish army and, according to the Ukrainian historian Savchenko, one of them had only 2300 fighters, the other - 2000. Thus, loss of 15,000 people cannot be explained in any way based on Karpus’s statement.

One can, of course, attribute them to the high mortality rate during the typhus pandemic that then swept across Russia and Eastern Europe, but this is also the wrong decision, since the Polish leadership itself made its own active efforts to reduce the number of prisoners.
Thus, a survivor of the camp in Brest-Litovsk recalled:
"The commandant addressed us with a speech: “You Bolsheviks wanted to take our lands away from us - okay, I’ll give you the land.
I don’t have the right to kill you, but I will feed you so much that you yourself will die.”
For 13 days we did not receive bread, on the 14th day, it was at the end of August (1919), we received about 4 pounds of bread, but very rotten, moldy... The sick were not treated, and they died in dozens... In September 1919, 180 died people per day."
...add: The Germans in the concentration camps fed the Jews as best they could and treated them (!). Meticulous barn books were kept about this by the pedantic Germans. Hitler turned to his “masters” with a request to allocate funds for the maintenance of their fellow tribesmen. But the “owners” refused.
Otherwise, after the war there would have been no reason to put a collar around the neck of the German people!
Unparalleled Jesuit gesheft. In Jewish...

So, in just one winter 1919/1920 gg. the Poles died in their camps 15,000 people(and this is based on Polish data, which, as happens in such cases, to put it mildly, suffers from some incompleteness).
And at the end of February 1920, these camps received an influx of new contingents. These were not Red Army soldiers,
but quite the opposite - whites: a detachment of General Bredov crossed the Polish border (20,000 bayonets and 7,000 refugees),
forced out of the Odessa region by the Red Army.
It would seem that both the Whites and Pilsudski had a common enemy, but Bredow’s people were not at all welcome in Poland and, moreover,
They saw them as “centuries-old oppressors of the Polish people.”

(those. and these Russians were accused, but of crimes of tsarist oppression! )
Therefore, the arriving whites were thrown into the already existing camps - Dombe, Pikulitsy and Strzalkovo, where their situation was not much different from the position of the Red Army soldiers:
they received the bread with lumps of salt the size of nuts, pieces of rope and just dirt, so they had to beg
food from the local population and switch to pasture, cooking food over fires, and everything that could be found in the camps, including mattresses, was used for firewood.

After the Soviet-Polish war entered its active phase in the spring of 1920, a new flow of prisoners poured into the camps.
According to daily reports from the II Department of the Polish General Staff to the Polish military attache in Vienna from January 1 to November 25, 1920, 146,813 people were taken prisoner, and this does not count those who were recorded as “many prisoners,” “a significant number,”
"two divisional headquarters."
Their situation was no better than described above.
According to the data of the II Department of the Polish General Staff, published in 1921 in Boris Savinkov’s newspaper Svoboda, 22,000 people died in the Tuchola (Tukhol) camp alone from the fall of 1920 to the spring of 1921.

I emphasize: - This is data from the Polish General Staff, published a long time ago and recognized as a fact a long time ago!

In contrast to the supposed “evidence”, but in fact - falsifications, on the basis of which the well-known repentance took place the day before, about which a State Duma deputy angrily, but factually and convincingly spoke with an open letter to the President Victor Ilyukhin.

But prisoners died not only in Tuchola: the representative of the Soviet side A. Ioffe, having examined the camp in Strzalkowo,
reported on December 14, 1920 to the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin, that according to the calculations of the representative of the Russian Red Cross in Poland, Stefania Sempolowska, confirmed by the Polish official authorities, the mortality rate there is so high that if it does not decrease, the prisoners of war will die out within six months.

Well, the fact that the situation of prisoners in Polish camps is monstrous was agreed upon by such different, and often simply antagonistic in their political convictions, parties as representatives of the joint Soviet-Polish commission, representatives of the Polish and Russian Red Cross, the French military mission in Paris, emigrant press ("Freedom" by Savinkov, the Parisian "Common Cause", the Berlin "Rul") and international organizations(including
American Christian Youth Union and American Relief Administration (ARA)).

After the signing of the Treaty of Riga, Poland transferred Soviet side 75,699 prisoners of war(according to the mobilization department of the Red Army Headquarters); before 25.000 decided to stay in Poland.
Total: 40,000 in November 1919, plus 150,000 captured in 1920 (rounded up due to vague reports about a “significant number” of prisoners) and minus 4,300 Petliurists and 25,000 “defectors” give at least 85,000 died in Polish captivity!!

This is the result of the activities of the Polish death camps (and this does not take into account the people of General Bredov who died of starvation!) -
almost 20 times more than the “4,421 executed in Katyn”, for which we (but not the Germans who shot them!!) have been forced to repent and beat our heads on the paving stones until exhaustion since the times of the spotted perestroika.

And Russia has long been designated as the main and only culprit for all sins by the Poles.
By the way, to inflate one of the main reproaches of Russia Poland diligently cultivates the myth of “two golden decades” Polish history in the 20-30s of the last century. And that, they say, the bad Hitler, and then the bad Stalin, destroyed this whole pristine, immaculate idyll.

It's time to dispel this myth.

So the first one is over World War. Taking advantage of the post-war weakness of its neighbors, who were also torn apart by civil wars and conflicts, Poland immediately seized territory from them beyond the borders determined by the Entente.

I grabbed it from almost everyone and didn’t forget anyone. For example, it seized the Vilna region along with the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, from bourgeois Lithuania. And when the Entente demanded that this region be returned to Lithuania, the Poles declared that the Polish troops that had captured the Vilna region had rebelled and did not want to leave, and the Polish government, well, was unable to do anything with these troops!

For a whole year they tried to persuade their troops to leave Lithuania, they tried to persuade them, but they were never able to persuade them.
AND Entente in 1923 year agreed with this Polish position. For this reason, Lithuania, of course, did not establish diplomatic relations with Poland.

Poland also seized a piece of territory assigned by the Entente to Czechoslovakia, seized the territories of Germany that were not due to it, but especially profited from the RSFSR, torn apart by the civil war.

Ukraine and Belarus were cut off a little by half. Before concluding a non-aggression pact with Poland, Ukraine even moved its capital to Kharkov, since Kyiv was almost a border city.

That is, at that time when Hitler had not even written his “Mein Kamf” with theses about the need to expand its territories, Poland was already actively
SH A K A L I L A.
Naturally, for this, all of Poland’s neighbors, to put it mildly, disliked Poland and, to be honest, the USSR also did not like it.
And not so much for the capture and enslavement of peoples of the same blood, but for the fact that Poland, having declared itself a bulwark of the West against Bolshevism, contained on its territory gangs that invaded the USSR and killed Soviet people, and then ran back.

So, Poland, in relation to all its neighbors, immediately after the First World War behaved like an aggressor state, to be honest, like a racketeer, like a highway bandit. Or, if you want, a jackal at the same time.

But the USSR, weakened to the limit by the world and civil wars, was more important than anyone to have peaceful neighbors on its borders. Therefore, he sought friendship even with such a gangster Poland.
As a result, the more the USSR “crept” under Poland, the more it tried to establish friendly relations with it, the more impudently the Poles behaved.

The ruling circles of Poland, naturally, have repeatedly made demands for the provision of colonies to Poland.
Let us remember that it was Polish diplomacy that voluntarily took upon itself the defense of the interests of Hitler’s Germany in the League of Nations, which Germany defiantly left in 1933!
From the rostrum of the League of Nations, Polish diplomats justified Hitler's brazen violations of the Versailles and Locarno treaties: the introduction of universal conscription in Germany, the abolition of military restrictions, the entry of Hitler's troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, and so on.

The elite of Poland then really set themselves the goal of having Poland within its borders 1772, providing, respectively, the seizure of Ukraine and the creation of Poland from “sea to sea”, i.e. from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
The Polish elite was not embarrassed by the fact that already at that time there were only about 60% of Poles in Poland, nor was it stopped by the fact that nowhere in Ukraine were crowds of Ukrainians walking around with posters “We want to join Poland!”
Well, the nobility of Ukraine wanted it, and that’s it!

And within Poland, Polish racism was established, and in its meanest form - unofficial.
The Germans were much more honest in this regard: they openly declared that Aryans are everything, and non-Aryans are nothing.
Rough, but straight!

In Poland, there was officially equality of all peoples. But look how things actually stood
with the national question.
Summary of the national composition of Polish army officers who were in the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps of the USSR,
and it was not gendarmes or police officers who were kept there, but simple army and naval officers.
The sample is very large - 8394 people. Let's compare the percentage of different nationalities among officers
with the percentage of these nationalities in the population of pre-war Poland.

Nationality Percentage composition
Population Officers
Poles 60.0 97.4
Ukrainians 21.0 0.1
Jews 9.0 1.9
Belarusians 6.0 0.3
Germans 3.0 0.1
Others 1.0 0.2
So, what comments can there be on this table?

And therefore, in the Poland of that time, the non-Polish population was subjected to discriminatory segregation primarily on the basis of nationality in almost all spheres of life.

And is it worth it, in the end, to be surprised at such memories of the captured Polish officer Henryk Gorzechowski about the time when in September 1939. soviet soldiers They escorted him in a column of other prisoners to the camp:
“Then they drove us on foot to Rivne. I remember now: when we walked through the city, in many places, mainly on Jewish shops, narrow red flags hung.
It was clearly visible that these were Polish flags, from which the top part. Jewish and Ukrainian women threw filth at us, shouting: “The end of your Polish state!”

It got to the point that in Bursztyn, Polish officers, sent by the corps to school and guarded by a small guard, asked to increase the number of soldiers guarding them as captives in order to avoid possible reprisals against them by the population.
You also can’t imagine it on purpose - being captured by the enemy to escape from your own citizens.

Well, where there is forced segregation, concentration camps for “white blacks” and other untermensch should automatically and immediately appear. Of course, they immediately appeared in Poland.
As an example: in June 1934 in the city of Bereza-Kartuzskaya (now the city of Bereza, Brest region, Belarus) in the buildings of former barracks Russian army a concentration camp was created for opponents of the ruling regime - just 15 months after the appearance of Dachau in Germany (and three years earlier than the opening of Buchenwald).
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Poland concentration camp

The isolation camp (later called the “isolation camp”) consisted of three main buildings, one of which remained behind the outer fence (it housed the camp commandant, his assistants and their families).
The second building contained a guardhouse, police barracks, a bakery, and warehouses for food, weapons and ammunition.
The third building housed prisoners. The first floor was converted into a kitchen and dining room.
There were cells on the second and third floors, separated along their entire length by a corridor. In addition to these premises, on the territory of the camp there were warehouses, a bathhouse, a room for storing fuel and lubricants and a punishment cell - eight damp stone bags in a cellar in the middle of a field.
The camp was fenced with a high plank fence, and barbed wire was stretched over the fence. At each corner of the fence there were guard towers with machine guns. From the outside, the camp was guarded by a patrol that did not have an exact movement schedule.
The building in which the prisoners were kept had additional barbed wire fencing. In addition, the camp yard was divided into separate sections using wire fences.

By order of the Polesie voivode Vaclav Kostek-Bernacki dated July 2, 1934, it was prohibited:
- be close to the camp, that is, cross the line marked by the wire fence in front of the concentration camp fence;
- take photographs of the camp and the persons contained in it;
- have any form of contact with prisoners.
Violators were subject to a fine of up to 500 zlotys or imprisonment for up to 14 days, or both.
On July 12, 1934, the Polesie voivode toughened the punishment for contacting and helping prisoners - now the perpetrators themselves could be imprisoned in a concentration camp, as persons posing a threat to public safety and order. This fate, for example, befell Dr. Zelinsky and his son, who in July 1934 photographed the premises of the concentration camp.

The concentration camp was specially located in a fairly remote place - away from unpleasant foreign correspondents and League of Nations officials. Entry into the town itself without special permission was prohibited; permission to enter was given only by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Warsaw. The police, “precipitators” and various agents monitored the roads to prevent strangers from appearing, and local residents were obliged to report them to the nearest police station; Every passerby had their documents checked.

The first commandant of the concentration camp (until December 1934) was Boleslav Greffner. Greffner characterized the camp practice: " From Bereza you can go to your own funeral or to a mental hospital."

According to the decree, the concentration camp was created for people opposed to the existing regime. At first, more than half of the prisoners were Ukrainian nationalists, members of the National Democratic Party and communists, members Communist Party Poland, right-wing Polish extremists from "ONR" (Polish: Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny - National Radical Camp - Polish nationalist organization).
Over time, people who committed economic crimes, mostly Jews, also began to end up in the camp.

Unmarried police officers aged 25 to 35 served in the camp. Since the organization of the concentration camp, the police contingent was about 60 people. At the end of 1937, due to the increase in the number of prisoners, their number increased to 162, and in April 1939 there were 126 people alone among the rank and file.
At the same time, the camp commandant constantly sent reports to the Polesie Voivodeship with requests to increase the number of police officers to the full strength of the infantry company, that is, to 141 privates. Later their number exceeded this figure.

The concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzskaya was supervised by the Polesie voivode Kostek-Bernacki, who was the highest representative of the Polish government in this territory. He often came to the camp and not only got acquainted with the general conditions that existed there, but also delved into the small details of the treatment of prisoners and gave orders to tighten conditions. The relations developing in Bereza were also known to the central political bodies.
This is evidenced by the presence in the camp of the director of the political department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Kovetsky, who threatened those released from the camp with repeated imprisonment if they talked about what they experienced in Bereza.

But the prisoners in Bereza-Kartuzskaya had a lot to endure. Let's start with arriving at the camp - this is how he describes it
Stepan Ivanovich Burak, member of the Communist Party of Western Belarus since 1934, who was in the camp from April 1937 to March 1938 and in September 1939. (camp number - 1079):
- “The distance from the camp gate to the barracks is about 150-200 meters. If two prisoners were handcuffed with the same handcuffs, then these received much more blows than those who were handcuffed alone.
Those who arrived were given a number, which each had to sew on the back and right sleeve.
In a cell where 30 people were imprisoned, the same numbers were attached across the top of the bunks.
The new arrival was placed in a single isolated room, where he was beaten for six to seven days in a row. In this case, the prisoner had to stand facing the wall and not move, not fall to the floor without a command.

This was done in order to immediately stun the prisoner, exhaust him, and demoralize him. And indeed: whoever was unstable in character, weak in health, he could falter and sign a declaration of renunciation of his beliefs.
When the newcomers were left half-dead on the floor, the “old men” tried to support them with these words:
“Comrades, take heart. You need to endure no more than seven days. Then it will be easier, you will remain human.”

Prisoners remember the camp order this way: “The prisoner’s surname was abolished, he appeared only under a number. The special policeman appointed for the “training” first of all forced him to repeat the words:
- “Mr. Commandant, prisoner such and such asks you to humbly go there.” If the prisoner made a mistake, he received sticks.

For failure to comply with orders, the commandant (as the guards are called here) has the right to punish the arrested person physically (with a baton). If the order is not carried out when repeated, the arrested person is subject to punishment in a punishment cell for seven days, and if, after taking these measures, the arrested person still does not comply with the same order, then the commandant has the right to shoot “from armor” (from a firearm) or “kill him with a bagnet” (stab with a bayonet) "...

.and what, in fact, is the difference between a typical Nazi concentration camp and a typical Polish one?! Nothing!
However, let's continue with the quote:
- “No conversation was allowed between the prisoners, nothing could be conveyed even with a glance. Any movement was only on the command “Run, march.” For the slightest violation - beating with rubber truncheons until you were half to death.
In the dining room, whoever received the food first, in a hurry, could somehow consume it, and whoever received the last had to throw the food into the ditch, because very little time was given, the command sounded to finish dinner and run to the washbasin to wash the pots. The entire cell, 20-30 people, was allowed into the restroom at once for five minutes, and since there were only 4 glasses, people fell straight onto the floor. The police hit them on the head with batons and pushed them into the feces, and then forced them to remove the feces from the floor of the restroom with their bare hands.

It was forbidden to receive food parcels in the camp. If anyone received parcels, the guards threw them out to the pigs. You could only get a needle, thread and some clothes."

The original idea of ​​the camp's founders was to carry out a brief but very intense physical and psychological terror in order to frighten the prisoner for the rest of his life and wean him from opposing
Great Poland.
Therefore, if someone decided to publicly (through newspapers) repent and renounce their previous beliefs, then they were released early - the camp had done its job.

But other measures were applied to the “unrepentant” - in 1934, the Prime Minister of Poland Kozlovsky stated that persons who were not corrected by a one-time three-month sentence could be detained in the camp for a long period, therefore, although formally the term of imprisonment was set at three months, the camp administration and judges often extended this period for the next three months, and those isolated in Bereza no one knows by whose decision, usually secretly, they never knew the end of their isolation.
This same methodology - extrajudicial imprisonment in a concentration camp for an unlimited period and unlimited abuse of prisoners - was also used in those years in Nazi concentration camps, and in our time in numerous secret US prisons around the world, including in the territory of independent and democratic Poland.

In addition, for the same reasons, the concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzskaya did not carry out any production functions
(except for a little self-care) - the prison labor used there was intended solely for suppression and exhaustion. Prisoners also testify to this:
- “The work often consisted of putting so many stones on the stretcher that it was difficult to lift, and forcing them to carry it from one place to another and back. If with a loaded stretcher you had to walk at a fast pace, then with an empty one you had to run. At a measured pace It was forbidden to walk here at all.
Often prisoners were harnessed to a cart, filled with sand and forced to specified place or for road construction. Every day several people went with barrels to fetch water. One prisoner was harnessed to the shafts of a gig with a barrel, the other was pushing from behind.
The Ukrainian Kazachuk and I were harnessed to a harrow. The harrow was a large wooden one with iron teeth, on which two large stones were placed. We harrowed the rye sown in the potato field. We were harnessed like horses to a harness and belted across our chests.
We thought they would do a short test on us. It turned out that we harrowed the entire first day. Our arms and legs were shaking, and then we began to fall. A policeman who was following the harrow, armed with a machine gun and a rubber truncheon, began beating us.”

In the history of “landings” at Bereza-Kartuzskaya, three stages can be distinguished:
1. Summer 1934 - 1935- A period of mass arrests, isolation of political figures of various political forces.
2. 1935-1936 - reducing the number of arrests; liberation from the concentration camp of all members of the National Democratic Party and OUN members (the latter - in connection with the emerging rapprochement of the OUN and the Polish authorities, who saw in it a possible ally in future war against the USSR).
3. From spring 1936 to autumn 1939- a massive influx of prisoners in connection with the “restoration of order” in preparation for war (in June 1939, the state-political department informed the Ministry of the Interior: “The work is currently in full swing, after its completion it will be possible to house and thousand people"), and from the summer of 1939 Polish Germans joined this flow.

September 18, 1939 g. due to the appearance in the vicinity of Brest German troops the concentration camp guards fled, and the prisoners dispersed (having carried out lynchings over the unwary guards - and after everything described, they are very easy to understand).
The concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzska was not the only weapon of Pilsudski and his associates in the fight against political opponents. In 1931, military courts were officially introduced in the country.
In the same year, 16,000 people were arrested for political reasons, and in the next year - 48,000.
And for this atrocity, Poland must also bear responsibility before all the peoples who suffered from the bloody Polish regime.
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Patriotism in Polish is anti-Russian!

what convenient terms the enemies of humanity have given us: Nazism, nationalism, patriotism... - a play on words, by manipulating which, you can accuse entire peoples of something that they do not even suspect about themselves, you can pit them against each other,
and destroy!
Anti-Russian attacks in Poland are not only popular today, but anti-Russianism in modern Poland is practically necessary condition"Polish patriotism". Russia is now viewed by the Poles as a barbaric Asian country, for which nothing good is recognized. Look through the Polish central publications: political newspapers that consider themselves liberal, in fact, turn out to be extremely chauvinistic towards Russia.

And leading Polish politicians not only do nothing to stop this wave of Russophobia, but, on the contrary, they themselves actively participate in it. And all the “repentances” of the Russian authorities only strengthen the Polish imperious arrogance and arrogance. It seems that if the entire Russian parliament crawls to the Polish border on its knees, then Polish politicians will be dissatisfied: “You’re not bowing so low, you idiot! There’s not enough remorse on their faces!”

It is Poland that must repent!

But on the eve we should not have repented, but remembered the Red Army soldiers and simply Russian soldiers who were tortured, abused, executed, and also deliberately killed by hunger and disease in Polish captivity in 1921-1922.
Why the day before?
Yes, because the official date of commemoration of the soldiers brutally exterminated by Poland in 1921-1922 has not yet been established, and the only date that can be considered significant is December 4, 2000, when a bilateral agreement appeared between Russia and Poland, when the Russian State The Military Archive and the Polish General Directorate of State Archives made an attempt to find the truth based on a detailed study of the archives, which, unfortunately, was only partially successful, since the Polish side is trying in every possible way to avoid disclosing reliable information and avoid responsibility for this crime.

But okay, if it’s not December 4, let there be another date. But let it be! We must remember our compatriots who were brutally tortured in Polish death camps and constantly remind arrogant Poles about their monstrous crime (real, not imaginary). And Poland must repent of this crime - genocide. Officially repent!
And when will Russia demand repentance from the Poles for the genocide of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and other peoples?...

Executions 1921 - 54 Let's compare the number of prisoners

That is, for the entire period from 1921 to 1954 (for 33 years) sentenced to death penalty 642,980 people. These data were published a long time ago and have not been refuted by anyone.

It turns out - order 20 thousand executed per year. Is it a lot or a little?

First, let's take into account that in reality, Stalin came to power de facto in 1928 (1927 -?) (Lenin died in 1924, and for three or four years Trotsky and others squabbled for power).
That is, six or seven years of these statistics on the fact of repression (including against the Russian Orthodox Church - since this is the work of the Trotskyists) must be deleted from Stalin’s account - and these are not such small numbers in the conditions of the civil war, when here, then there are whites, greens and others, as well as nationalists of all stripes (the Basmachi rode in Central Asia across the sands and mountains almost until the mid-30s) they shot in the back of the new government.

And if you remember the Kronstadt uprising (21, repressively suppressed), Antonov’s and others, then from 21 to 28 a lot of things will happen. Only this, excuse me, has nothing to do with Stalin.
These are Trotsky, Tukhachevsky and others.
But all the same, from the camp of the liberals one immediately hears the familiar annoying (but essentially idiotic) howl about the notorious “tear of a child” and about the tyrant Stalin.
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In order to understand whether Stalin was really that cruel, let’s first compare these figures with today’s democratic Russia, in terms of population, which is one and a half to two times smaller than the USSR (at different times).

Reference: Number of prisoners in the USSR (at the end of the year), thousand people.
Year / ITL / ITC and prisons / Total
1935 / 725 / 240 / 965
1936 / 839 / 457 / 1296
1937 / 821 / 375 / 1196
1938 / 996 / 885 / 1881

And this despite the fact that the population of the USSR in 1938 was approximately 190 million people.
In total, in the “bloody” year of 1937, there were 629 prisoners per 100 thousand population.
Are these numbers big or small? To answer this question, you need to compare it with something.

According to the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, as of March 1, 2007, 883.5 thousand people were in custody in Russia, or 655 per 100 thousand population. This is less than in the US (710).
However, it should be taken into account that only prisoners of the GUIN institutions of the Ministry of Justice are included in official statistics. But they hold only 90% of all prisoners.

That's how it is... it turns out that in today's democratic Russia There are MORE prisoners per capita than in the “bloody-tyrannical” 1937!
By the way, liberals love to talk about the fact that all the achievements of Stalin’s five-year plans were entirely created by the forced slave labor of Gulag prisoners. But in democratic Russia today the same number are in prisons and camps. So, where are today’s “miracles” built by “democratic prisoners”?

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. 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.

In other barracks there are national memorials, and the exhibition ends with gas chambers and ovens where the bodies of the victims were burned. The huge Birkenau camp (same opening hours) is visited less frequently than Auschwitz. Birkenau's gas chambers were damaged but not destroyed by the Germans when they fled in 1945. The victims were transported in closed carriages directly to the gas chambers (the railway line and platforms were preserved as they were).

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