This name became a symbol of the brutal attitude of the Nazis towards captured children.
During the three years of the camp’s existence (1941–1944), according to various sources, about one hundred thousand people died in Salaspils, seven thousand of them were children.
The place from which you never return
This camp was built by captured Jews in 1941 on the territory of a former Latvian training ground 18 kilometers from Riga near the village of the same name. According to documents, initially “Salaspils” (German: Kurtenhof) was called an “educational labor” camp, and not a concentration camp.
The area was of impressive size, fenced with barbed wire, and was built up with hastily constructed wooden barracks. Each was designed for 200-300 people, but often there were from 500 to 1000 people in one room.
Initially, Jews deported from Germany to Latvia were doomed to death in the camp, but since 1942, “undesirables” from a variety of countries were sent here: France, Germany, Austria, and the Soviet Union.
The Salaspils camp also became notorious because it was here that the Nazis took blood from innocent children for the needs of the army and abused young prisoners in every possible way.
Full donors for the Reich
New prisoners were brought in regularly. They were forced to strip naked and sent to the so-called bathhouse. It was necessary to walk half a kilometer through the mud, and then wash in ice-cold water. After this, those who arrived were placed in barracks and all their belongings were taken away.
There were no names, surnames, or titles - only serial numbers. Many died almost immediately; those who managed to survive after several days of captivity and torture were “sorted.”
Children were separated from their parents. If the mothers were not given back, the guards took the babies by force. There were terrible screams and screams. Many women went crazy; some of them were placed in the hospital, and some were shot on the spot.
Infants and children under six years of age were sent to a special barracks, where they died of hunger and disease. The Nazis experimented on older prisoners: they injected poisons, performed operations without anesthesia, took blood from children, which was transferred to hospitals for wounded soldiers of the German army. Many children became “full donors” - their blood was taken from them until they died.
Considering that the prisoners were practically not fed: a piece of bread and a gruel made from vegetable waste, the number of child deaths amounted to hundreds per day. The corpses, like garbage, were taken out in huge baskets and burned in the crematorium ovens or dumped in disposal pits.
Covering my tracks
In August 1944, before the arrival of Soviet troops, in an attempt to erase traces of the atrocities, the Nazis burned down many of the barracks. The surviving prisoners were taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, and German prisoners of war were kept on the territory of Salaspils until October 1946.
After the liberation of Riga from the Nazis, the commission to investigate Nazi atrocities discovered 652 children's corpses in the camp. Mass graves and human remains were also found: ribs, hip bones, teeth.
One of the most eerie photographs, clearly illustrating the events of that time, is the “Salaspils Madonna”, the corpse of a woman hugging a dead baby. It was established that they were buried alive.
The truth hurts my eyes
Only in 1967, the Salaspils memorial complex was erected on the site of the camp, which still exists today. Many famous Russian and Latvian sculptors and architects worked on the ensemble, including Ernst Neizvestny. The road to Salaspils begins with a massive concrete slab, the inscription on which reads: “Behind these walls the earth groans.”
Further on a small field rise symbolic figures with “speaking” names: “Unbroken”, “Humiliated”, “Oath”, “Mother”. On both sides of the road there are barracks with iron bars, where people bring flowers, children's toys and sweets, and on the black marble wall, notches measure the days spent by innocents in the “death camp.”
Today, some Latvian historians blasphemously call the Salaspils camp “educational-labor” and “socially useful,” refusing to acknowledge the atrocities that occurred near Riga during the Second World War.
In 2015, an exhibition dedicated to the victims of Salaspils was banned in Latvia. Officials considered that such an event would harm the country's image. As a result, the exhibition “Stolen Childhood. Victims of the Holocaust through the eyes of young prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp Salaspils” was held at the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Paris.
In 2017, a scandal also occurred at the press conference “Salaspils camp, history and memory.” One of the speakers tried to present his original point of view on historical events, but received severe rebuff from the participants. “It hurts to hear how today you are trying to forget about the past. We cannot allow such terrible events to happen again. God forbid you experience something like this,” one of the women who managed to survive in Salaspils addressed the speaker.
Torture is often called various minor troubles that happen to everyone in everyday life. This definition is given to raising disobedient children, standing in line for a long time, doing a lot of laundry, then ironing clothes, and even the process of preparing food. All this, of course, can be very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of debilitation largely depends on the character and inclinations of the person), but still bears little resemblance to the most terrible torture in the history of mankind. The practice of “biased” interrogations and other violent actions against prisoners took place in almost all countries of the world. The time frame is also not defined, but since modern people are psychologically closer to relatively recent events, their attention is drawn to the methods and special equipment invented in the twentieth century, in particular in the German concentration camps of the times. But there were also ancient Eastern and medieval tortures. The fascists were also taught by their colleagues from Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive bodies. So why was everything over people?
Meaning of the term
To begin with, when starting to study any issue or phenomenon, any researcher tries to define it. “To name it correctly is already half to understand” - says
So, torture is the deliberate infliction of suffering. In this case, the nature of the torment does not matter; it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or deprivation of sleep), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both “channels of influence.”
But it is not only the fact of suffering that matters. Senseless torment is called torture. Torture differs from it in its purposefulness. In other words, a person is beaten with a whip or hung on a rack for a reason, but in order to get some result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to admit guilt, divulge hidden information, and sometimes they are simply punished for some misdemeanor or crime. The twentieth century added one more item to the list of possible purposes of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes carried out with the aim of studying the body's reaction to unbearable conditions in order to determine the limits of human capabilities. These experiments were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as inhumane and pseudoscientific, which did not prevent their results from being studied by physiologists from the victorious countries after the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Death or trial
The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that after receiving the result, even the most terrible tortures stopped. There was no point in continuing them. The position of executioner-executor, as a rule, was occupied by a professional who knew about painful techniques and the peculiarities of psychology, if not everything, then a lot, and there was no point in wasting his efforts on senseless bullying. After the victim confessed to a crime, depending on the degree of civilization of society, she could expect immediate death or treatment followed by trial. Legally formalized execution after biased interrogations during the investigation was characteristic of the punitive justice of Germany in the initial Hitler era and for Stalin’s “open trials” (the Shakhty case, the trial of the industrial party, reprisals against Trotskyists, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent suits and shown to the public. Broken morally, people most often obediently repeated everything that the investigators forced them to admit. Torture and executions were rampant. The veracity of the testimony did not matter. Both in Germany and in the USSR in the 1930s, the confession of the accused was considered the “queen of evidence” (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, USSR prosecutor). Brutal torture was used to obtain it.
Deadly torture of the Inquisition
In few areas of its activity (except perhaps in the manufacture of murder weapons) humanity has been so successful. It should be noted that in recent centuries there has even been some regression compared to ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the reason most often became the external attractiveness of the unfortunate victim. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who actually committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the unequivocal doom of the condemned. No matter how long the torment lasted, it only ended in the death of the condemned. The execution weapon could have been the Iron Maiden, the Brazen Bull, a bonfire, or the sharp-edged pendulum described by Edgar Poe, which was methodically lowered onto the victim’s chest inch by inch. The terrible tortures of the Inquisition were prolonged and accompanied by unimaginable moral torment. The preliminary investigation may have involved the use of other ingenious mechanical devices to slowly disintegrate the bones of the fingers and limbs and sever the muscle ligaments. The most famous weapons were:
A metal sliding bulb used for particularly sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;
- “Spanish boot”;
A Spanish chair with clamps and a brazier for the legs and buttocks;
An iron bra (pectoral), worn over the chest while hot;
- “crocodiles” and special forceps for crushing male genitals.
The executioners of the Inquisition also had other torture equipment, which it is better not for people with sensitive psyches to know about.
East, Ancient and Modern
No matter how ingenious the European inventors of self-harm techniques may be, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind were still invented in the East. The Inquisition used metal instruments, which sometimes had a very intricate design, while in Asia they preferred everything natural (today these products would probably be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything was used. Eastern torture and execution had the same goals as European ones, but technically differed in duration and greater sophistication. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scaphism (from the Greek word “scaphium” - trough). The victim was immobilized with shackles, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then the whole body was smeared with a sweet mixture, and lowered into the swamp. The blood-sucking insects slowly ate the man alive. They did the same thing in the case of execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate person was to be burned in the scorching sun, his eyelids were cut off for greater torment. There were other types of torture in which elements of the biosystem were used. For example, it is known that bamboo grows quickly, a meter per day. It is enough to simply hang the victim at a short distance above the young shoots, and cut off the ends of the stems at an acute angle. The person being tortured has time to come to his senses, confess everything and hand over his accomplices. If he persists, he will slowly and painfully be pierced by the plants. This choice was not always provided, however.
Torture as a method of inquiry
Both in and in a later period, various types of torture were used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary government bodies, today called law enforcement. It was part of a set of investigation and inquiry techniques. Since the second half of the 16th century, various types of bodily influence have been practiced in Russia, such as: whipping, hanging, racking, cauterization with pincers and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe was also by no means distinguished by humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying and even the fear of death did not guarantee finding out the truth. Moreover, in some cases the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case with a miller, which the inscription on the pediment of the French Palace of Justice calls for to be remembered. He took upon himself someone else's guilt under torture, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.
Abolition of torture in different countries
At the end of the 17th century, a gradual shift away from the practice of torture and a transition from it to other, more humane methods of inquiry began. One of the results of the Enlightenment was the realization that it is not the severity of punishment, but its inevitability that influences the reduction of criminal activity. In Prussia, torture was abolished in 1754; this country became the first to put its legal proceedings at the service of humanism. Then the process went progressively, different states followed her example in the following sequence:
| STATE | Year of the phatic ban on torture | Year of official ban on torture |
| Denmark | 1776 | 1787 |
| Austria | 1780 | 1789 |
| France | ||
| Netherlands | 1789 | 1789 |
| Sicilian kingdoms | 1789 | 1789 |
| Austrian Netherlands | 1794 | 1794 |
| Venetian Republic | 1800 | 1800 |
| Bavaria | 1806 | 1806 |
| Papal States | 1815 | 1815 |
| Norway | 1819 | 1819 |
| Hanover | 1822 | 1822 |
| Portugal | 1826 | 1826 |
| Greece | 1827 | 1827 |
| Switzerland (*) | 1831-1854 | 1854 |
Note:
*) the legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland changed at different times during this period.
Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.
Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774 by issuing a secret decree. By this, on the one hand, she continued to keep criminals at bay, but, on the other, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. This decision was formalized legally by Alexander I in 1801.
As for England, torture was prohibited there in 1772, but not all, but only some.
Illegal torture
The legislative ban did not mean their complete exclusion from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class who were ready to break the law in the name of its triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and if exposed, they were threatened with legal prosecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was necessary to “work with people” more carefully, without leaving visible traces. In the 19th and 20th centuries, objects that were heavy but had a soft surface were used, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation was manifested in the fact that most often these were codes of laws), rubber hoses, etc. They were not left without attention and methods of moral pressure. Some investigators sometimes threatened severe punishments, long sentences, and even reprisals against loved ones. This was also torture. The horror experienced by those under investigation prompted them to make confessions, incriminate themselves and receive undeserved punishments, until the majority of police officers performed their duty honestly, studying the evidence and collecting testimony to bring a substantiated charge. Everything changed after totalitarian and dictatorial regimes came to power in some countries. This happened in the 20th century.
After the October Revolution of 1917, a Civil War broke out on the territory of the former Russian Empire, in which both warring parties most often did not consider themselves bound by the legislative norms that were mandatory under the Tsar. Torture of prisoners of war in order to obtain information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. During the years of the Red Terror, executions most often took place, but mockery of representatives of the “exploiter class,” which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed “gentlemen,” became widespread. In the twenties, thirties and forties, the NKVD authorities used prohibited methods of interrogation, depriving those under investigation of sleep, food, water, beating and mutilating them. This was done with the permission of management, and sometimes on his direct instructions. The goal was rarely to find out the truth - repressions were carried out to intimidate, and the investigator’s task was to obtain a signature on a protocol containing a confession of counter-revolutionary activities, as well as slander of other citizens. As a rule, Stalin’s “backpack masters” did not use special torture devices, being content with available objects, such as a paperweight (they hit them on the head), or even an ordinary door, which pinched fingers and other protruding parts of the body.
In Nazi Germany
Torture in the concentration camps created after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously used in that it was a strange mixture of Eastern sophistication and European practicality. Initially, these “correctional institutions” were created for guilty Germans and representatives of national minorities declared hostile (Gypsies and Jews). Then came a series of experiments that were somewhat scientific in nature, but in cruelty exceeded the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind.
In an attempt to create antidotes and vaccines, Nazi SS doctors administered lethal injections to prisoners, performed operations without anesthesia, including abdominal ones, froze prisoners, starved them in the heat, and did not allow them to sleep, eat or drink. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the “production” of ideal soldiers, not afraid of frost, heat and injury, resistant to the effects of toxic substances and pathogenic bacilli. The history of torture during the Second World War forever imprinted the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, became the personification of inhumanity. They also conducted experiments on lengthening limbs by mechanical stretching, suffocating people in rarefied air, and other experiments that caused painful agony, sometimes lasting for long hours.
The torture of women by the Nazis concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them of reproductive function. Various methods were studied - from simple ones (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated ones, which had the prospect of mass application in the event of a Reich victory (irradiation and exposure to chemicals).
It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when Soviet and allied troops began to liberate the concentration camps. Even the appearance of the prisoners spoke more eloquently than any evidence that their very detention in inhuman conditions was torture.
Current state of affairs
The torture of the fascists became the standard of cruelty. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity sighed with joy in the hope that this would never happen again. Unfortunately, although not on such a scale, torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain some of the terrible signs of the modern world. Developed countries, declaring their commitment to rights and freedoms, are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories where compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners of secret prisons have been exposed to punitive forces for many years without specific charges being brought against them. The methods used by military personnel of many countries during local and major armed conflicts in relation to prisoners and those simply suspected of sympathizing with the enemy are sometimes superior in cruelty to the abuse of people in Nazi concentration camps. In international investigations of such precedents, too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe a duality of standards, when war crimes of one of the parties are completely or partially hushed up.
Will the era of a new Enlightenment come when torture will finally be finally and irrevocably recognized as a disgrace to humanity and banned? So far there is little hope for this...
These photographs show the life and martyrdom of Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Some of these photos can be emotionally traumatizing. Therefore, we ask children and mentally unstable people to refrain from viewing these photographs.
Prisoners of the Flossenburg concentration camp after liberation by the 97th Infantry Division of the US Army in May 1945. The emaciated prisoner at the center, a 23-year-old Czech, is suffering from dysentery.
Prisoners of the Ampfing concentration camp after liberation.
View of the Grini concentration camp in Norway.
Soviet prisoners in the Lamsdorf concentration camp (Stalag VIII-B, now the Polish village of Lambinowice.
The bodies of executed SS guards at observation tower "B" of the Dachau concentration camp.
View of the barracks of the Dachau concentration camp.
Soldiers of the 45th American Infantry Division show teenagers from the Hitler Youth the bodies of prisoners in a carriage at the Dachau concentration camp.
View of the Buchenwald barracks after the liberation of the camp.
American generals George Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower at the Ohrdruf concentration camp near the fireplace where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.
Soviet prisoners of war in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war eat in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war near the barbed wire of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
A Soviet prisoner of war near the barracks of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
British prisoners of war on the stage of the theater of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Captured British corporal Eric Evans with three comrades on the territory of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Burnt bodies of prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.
The bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Women from the SS guards of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp unload the corpses of prisoners for burial in a mass grave. They were attracted to this work by the allies who liberated the camp. Around the ditch there is a convoy of English soldiers. As a punishment, former guards are prohibited from wearing gloves to expose them to the risk of contracting typhus.
Six British prisoners on the territory of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners talk with a German officer in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Soviet prisoners of war change clothes in the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Group photo of Allied prisoners (British, Australians and New Zealanders) at the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
An orchestra of Allied prisoners (Australians, British and New Zealanders) on the territory of the Stalag XVIII concentration camp.
Captured Allied soldiers play the game Two Up for cigarettes on the grounds of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.
Two British prisoners near the wall of the barracks of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.
A German soldier guard at the market of the Stalag 383 concentration camp, surrounded by Allied prisoners.
Group photo of Allied prisoners at Stalag 383 concentration camp on Christmas Day 1943.
Barracks of the Vollan concentration camp in the Norwegian city of Trondheim after liberation.
A group of Soviet prisoners of war outside the gates of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.
SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber on vacation in the commandant's quarters of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.
The commandant of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Hauptscharführer Karl Denk (left) and SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber (right) in the commandant's room.
Five liberated prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp at the gate.
Prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad on vacation during a break between working in the field.
Employee of the Falstad concentration camp, SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber
SS non-commissioned officers K. Denk, E. Weber and Luftwaffe sergeant major R. Weber with two women in the commandant's room of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.
An employee of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber, in the kitchen of the commandant's house.
Soviet, Norwegian and Yugoslav prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp on vacation at a logging site.
The head of the women's block of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, Maria Robbe, with policemen at the gates of the camp.
Captured Soviet soldiers in a camp at the beginning of the war.
There is not a person in the world today who does not know what a concentration camp is. During the Second World War, these institutions, created to isolate political prisoners, prisoners of war and persons who posed a threat to the state, turned into houses of death and torture. Not many who ended up there managed to survive the harsh conditions; millions were tortured and died. Years after the end of the most terrible and bloody war in the history of mankind, memories of the Nazi concentration camps still cause trembling in the body, horror in the soul and tears in people’s eyes.
What is a concentration camp
Concentration camps are special prisons created during military operations on the territory of the country, in accordance with special legislative documents.
There were few repressed people present in them; the main contingent were representatives of lower races, according to the Nazis: Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and other nations subject to extermination. For this purpose, Nazi concentration camps were equipped with various means with which people were killed in dozens and hundreds.
They were destroyed morally and physically: raped, experimented on, burned alive, poisoned in gas chambers. Why and for what was justified by the ideology of the Nazis. Prisoners were considered unworthy to live in the world of the “chosen ones.” The chronicle of the Holocaust of those times contains descriptions of thousands of incidents confirming the atrocities.
The truth about them became known from books, documentaries, and stories of those who managed to become free and get out alive.
The institutions built during the war were conceived by the Nazis as places of mass extermination, for which they received their true name - death camps. They were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers, soap factories, crematoria where hundreds of people could be burned a day, and other similar means for murder and torture.
No fewer people died from exhausting work, hunger, cold, punishment for the slightest disobedience and medical experiments.
Living conditions
For many people who passed the “road of death” beyond the walls of concentration camps, there was no turning back. Upon arrival at the place of detention, they were examined and “sorted”: children, old people, disabled people, wounded, mentally retarded and Jews were subjected to immediate destruction. Next, people “suitable” for work were distributed among men’s and women’s barracks.
Most of the buildings were built in haste; often they did not have a foundation or were converted from barns, stables, and warehouses. They had bunks in them, in the middle of the huge room there was one stove for heating in winter, there were no latrines. But there were rats.
Roll call, carried out at any time of the year, was considered a difficult test. People had to stand for hours in the rain, snow, and hail, and then return to cold, barely heated rooms. It is not surprising that many died from infectious and respiratory diseases and inflammation.
Each registered prisoner had a serial number on his chest (in Auschwitz he was tattooed) and a patch on his camp uniform indicating the “article” under which he was imprisoned in the camp. A similar winkel (colored triangle) was sewn on the left side of the chest and the right knee of the trouser leg.
The colors were distributed as follows:
- red - political prisoner;
- green - convicted of a criminal offense;
- black - dangerous, dissident persons;
- pink - persons with non-traditional sexual orientation;
- brown - gypsies.
Jews, if left alive, wore a yellow winkel and a hexagonal "Star of David". If a prisoner was considered a “racial polluter,” a black border was sewn around the triangle. Persons prone to escape wore a red and white target on their chest and back. The latter faced execution for just one glance towards a gate or wall.
Executions were carried out daily. Prisoners were shot, hanged, and beaten with whips for the slightest disobedience to the guards. Gas chambers, whose operating principle was to simultaneously exterminate several dozen people, operated around the clock in many concentration camps. Prisoners who helped remove the corpses of those strangled were also rarely left alive.
Gas chamber
The prisoners were also mocked morally, erasing their human dignity under conditions in which they ceased to feel like members of society and just people.
What did they feed?
In the early years of the concentration camps, the food provided to political prisoners, traitors and “dangerous elements” was quite high in calories. The Nazis understood that prisoners must have the strength to work, and at that time many sectors of the economy relied on their labor.
The situation changed in 1942-43, when the bulk of the prisoners were Slavs. If the diet of the German repressed was 700 kcal per day, the Poles and Russians did not receive even 500 kcal.
The diet consisted of:
- a liter per day of a herbal drink called “coffee”;
- water soup without fat, the basis of which was vegetables (mostly rotten) - 1 liter;
- bread (stale, moldy);
- sausages (approximately 30 grams);
- fat (margarine, lard, cheese) - 30 grams.
The Germans could count on sweets: jam or preserves, potatoes, cottage cheese and even fresh meat. They received special rations, which included cigarettes, sugar, goulash, dry broth, etc.
Beginning in 1943, when there was a turning point in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet troops liberated European countries from German invaders, concentration camp prisoners were massacred to hide traces of crimes. Since that time, in many camps the already meager rations were cut, and in some institutions they stopped feeding people completely.
The most terrible tortures and experiments in human history
Concentration camps will forever remain in human history as places where the Gestapo carried out the most terrible tortures and medical experiments.
The task of the latter was considered to be “helping the army”: doctors determined the boundaries of human capabilities, created new types of weapons, drugs that could help the fighters of the Reich.
Almost 70% of the experimental subjects did not survive such executions; almost all turned out to be incapacitated or crippled.
Above women
One of the main goals of the SS men was to cleanse the world of non-Aryan nations. To achieve this, experiments were carried out on women in the camps to find the easiest and cheapest method of sterilization.
Representatives of the fairer sex had special chemical solutions infused into their uterus and fallopian tubes, designed to block the functioning of the reproductive system. Most of the experimental subjects died after such a procedure, the rest were killed in order to examine the condition of the genital organs during autopsy.
Women were often turned into sex slaves, forced to work in brothels and brothels run by the camps. Most of them left the establishments dead, having not survived not only a huge number of “clients”, but also monstrous abuse of themselves.
Over children
The purpose of these experiments was to create a superior race. Thus, children with mental disabilities and genetic diseases were subjected to forced death (euthanasia) so that they would not have the opportunity to further reproduce “inferior” offspring.
Other children were placed in special “nurseries”, where they were raised in home conditions and strict patriotic sentiments. They were periodically exposed to ultraviolet rays to give the hair a lighter shade.
Some of the most famous and monstrous experiments on children are those carried out on twins, representing an inferior race. They tried to change the color of their eyes by injecting them with drugs, after which they died from pain or remained blind.
There were attempts to artificially create Siamese twins, that is, sew children together and transplant each other's body parts into them. There are records of viruses and infections being administered to one of the twins and further study of the condition of both. If one of the couple died, the other was also killed in order to compare the condition of the internal organs and systems.
Children born in the camp were also subject to strict selection, almost 90% of them were killed immediately or sent for experiments. Those who managed to survive were brought up and “Germanized.”
Above men
Representatives of the stronger sex were subjected to the most cruel and terrible tortures and experiments. To create and test drugs that improve blood clotting, which were needed by the military at the front, men were inflicted with gunshot wounds, after which observations were made about the speed of bleeding cessation.
The tests included studying the effect of sulfonamides - antimicrobial substances designed to prevent the development of blood poisoning in front conditions. To do this, prisoners were injured in body parts and bacteria, fragments, and earth were injected into the incisions, and then the wounds were stitched up. Another type of experiment is ligation of veins and arteries on both sides of the wound.
Means for recovery from chemical burns were created and tested. The men were doused with a composition identical to that found in phosphorus bombs or mustard gas, which was used to poison enemy “criminals” and the civilian population of cities during the occupation at that time.
Attempts to create vaccines against malaria and typhus played a major role in drug experiments. The experimental subjects were injected with the infection, and then were given test compounds to neutralize it. Some prisoners were given no immune protection at all, and they died in terrible agony.
To study the human body's ability to withstand low temperatures and recover from significant hypothermia, men were placed in ice baths or driven naked into the cold outside. If after such torture the prisoner had signs of life, he was subjected to a resuscitation procedure, after which few managed to recover.
Basic measures for resurrection: irradiation with ultraviolet lamps, having sex, introducing boiling water into the body, placing in a bath with warm water.
In some concentration camps, attempts were made to turn sea water into drinking water. It was processed in different ways, and then given to prisoners, observing the body's reaction. They also experimented with poisons, adding them to food and drinks.
Attempts to regenerate bone and nerve tissue are considered one of the most terrible experiences. During the research, joints and bones were broken, their fusion was observed, nerve fibers were removed, and joints were swapped.
Almost 80% of the experiment participants died during the experiments from unbearable pain or blood loss. The rest were killed in order to study the results of the research “from the inside.” Only a few survived such abuses.
List and description of death camps
Concentration camps existed in many countries of the world, including the USSR, and were intended for a narrow circle of prisoners. However, only Nazi ones received the name “death camps” for the atrocities carried out in them after Adolf Hitler came to power and the beginning of the Second World War.
Buchenwald
Located in the vicinity of the German city of Weimar, this camp, founded in 1937, has become one of the most famous and largest of its kind. It consisted of 66 branches where prisoners worked for the benefit of the Reich.
Over the years of its existence, about 240 thousand people visited its barracks, of which 56 thousand prisoners officially died from murder and torture, among whom were representatives of 18 nations. How many of them there actually were is not known for certain.
Buchenwald was liberated on April 10, 1945. On the site of the camp, a memorial complex was created in memory of its victims and hero-liberators.
Auschwitz
In Germany it is better known as Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a complex that occupied a vast area near Polish Krakow. The concentration camp consisted of 3 main parts: a large administrative complex, the camp itself, where torture and massacres of prisoners were carried out, and a group of 45 small complexes with factories and working areas.
According to official data alone, the victims of Auschwitz were more than 4 million people, representatives of “inferior races”, according to the Nazis.
The “death camp” was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the troops of the Soviet Union. Two years later, the State Museum was opened on the territory of the main complex.
It features displays of things that belonged to prisoners: toys they made from wood, pictures, and other crafts that were exchanged for food with passing civilians. Scenes of interrogation and torture by the Gestapo are stylized, reflecting the violence of the Nazis.
The drawings and inscriptions on the walls of the barracks, made by prisoners doomed to death, remained unchanged. As the Poles themselves say today, Auschwitz is the bloodiest and most terrible point on the map of their homeland.
Sobibor
Another concentration camp on Polish territory, created in May 1942. The prisoners were mainly representatives of the Jewish nation, the number of those killed is about 250 thousand people.
One of the few institutions where a prisoner uprising took place in October 1943, after which it was closed and razed to the ground.
Majdanek
The year the camp was founded is considered to be 1941; it was built in the suburbs of Lublin, Poland. It had 5 branches in the south-eastern part of the country.
Over the years of its existence, about 1.5 million people of different nationalities died in its cells.
The surviving prisoners were released by Soviet soldiers on July 23, 1944, and 2 years later a museum and research institute were opened on its territory.
Salaspils
The camp, known as Kurtengorf, was built in October 1941 in Latvia, near Riga. It had several branches, the most famous being Ponar. The main prisoners were children on whom medical experiments were carried out.
In recent years, prisoners were used as blood donors for wounded German soldiers. The camp was burned down in August 1944 by the Germans, who were forced by the advance of Soviet troops to evacuate the remaining prisoners to other institutions.
Ravensbrück
Built in 1938 near Fürstenberg. Before the start of the war of 1941-1945, it was exclusively for women; it consisted mainly of partisans. After 1941 it was completed, after which it received a men's barracks and a children's barracks for young girls.
Over the years of “work”, the number of his captives amounted to more than 132 thousand representatives of the fairer sex of different ages, of which almost 93 thousand died. The release of prisoners took place on April 30, 1945 by Soviet troops.
Mauthausen
Austrian concentration camp, built in July 1938. At first it was one of the large branches of Dachau, the first such institution in Germany, located near Munich. But since 1939 it functioned independently.
In 1940, it merged with the Gusen death camp, after which it became one of the largest concentration settlements in Nazi Germany.
During the war years, there were about 335 thousand natives of 15 European countries, 122 thousand of whom were brutally tortured and killed. The prisoners were released by the Americans, who entered the camp on May 5, 1945. A few years later, 12 states created a memorial museum here and erected monuments to the victims of Nazism.
Irma Grese - Nazi overseer
The horrors of the concentration camps imprinted in the memory of people and the annals of history the names of individuals who can hardly be called human. One of them is considered to be Irma Grese, a young and beautiful German woman whose actions do not fit into the nature of human actions.
Today, many historians and psychiatrists are trying to explain her phenomenon by the suicide of her mother or the propaganda of fascism and Nazism characteristic of that time, but it is impossible or difficult to find a justification for her actions.
Already at the age of 15, the young girl was part of the Hitler Youth movement, a German youth organization whose main principle was racial purity. At the age of 20 in 1942, having changed several professions, Irma became a member of one of the SS auxiliary units. Her first place of work was the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was later replaced by Auschwitz, where she acted as second in command after the commandant.
The abuse of the “Blonde Devil,” as Grese was called by the prisoners, was felt by thousands of captive women and men. This “Beautiful Monster” destroyed people not only physically, but also morally. She beat a prisoner to death with a braided whip, which she carried with her, and enjoyed shooting prisoners. One of the favorite pastimes of the “Angel of Death” was setting dogs on captives, who were first starved for several days.
Irma Grese's last place of service was Bergen-Belsen, where, after its liberation, she was captured by the British military. The tribunal lasted 2 months, the verdict was clear: “Guilty, subject to death by hanging.”
An iron core, or perhaps ostentatious bravado, was present in the woman even on the last night of her life - she sang songs until the morning and laughed loudly, which, according to psychologists, hid the fear and hysteria of the upcoming death - too easy and simple for her.
Josef Mengele - experiments on humans
The name of this man still causes horror among people, since he was the one who came up with the most painful and terrible experiments on the human body and psyche.
According to official data alone, tens of thousands of prisoners became its victims. He personally sorted the victims upon arrival at the camp, then they were subjected to a thorough medical examination and terrible experiments.
The “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” managed to avoid a fair trial and imprisonment during the liberation of European countries from the Nazis. For a long time he lived in Latin America, carefully hiding from his pursuers and avoiding capture.
On the conscience of this doctor is the anatomical dissection of living newborns and castration of boys without the use of anesthesia, experiments on twins and dwarfs. There is evidence of women being tortured and sterilized using X-rays. They assessed the endurance of the human body when exposed to electric current.
Unfortunately for many prisoners of war, Josef Mengele still managed to avoid fair punishment. After 35 years of living under false names and constantly running away from his pursuers, he drowned in the ocean, losing control of his body as a result of a stroke. The worst thing is that until the end of his life he was firmly convinced that “in his entire life he had never personally harmed anyone.”
Concentration camps were present in many countries around the world. The most famous for the Soviet people was the Gulag, created in the first years of the Bolsheviks coming to power. In total, there were more than a hundred of them and, according to the NKVD, in 1922 alone they housed more than 60 thousand “dissidents” and “dangerous to the authorities” prisoners.
But only the Nazis made the word “concentration camp” go down in history as a place where people were massively tortured and exterminated. A place of abuse and humiliation committed by people against humanity.
Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors. ( And if the Germans acted more like ants - doing routine work, then the Poles killed with passion and pleasure -)
It is known that in Poland history has long been a character active on the political scene. Therefore, bringing “historical skeletons” to this stage has always been a favorite activity of those Polish politicians who do not have solid political baggage and, for this reason, prefer to engage in historical speculation.
The situation in this regard received a new impetus when, after winning the parliamentary elections in October 2015, the party of the ardent Russophobe Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Law and Justice (PiS), returned to power. The protege of this party, Andrzej Duda, became the President of Poland. Already on February 2, 2016, at a meeting of the National Development Council, the new president formulated a conceptual approach to Warsaw’s foreign policy: “The historical policy of the Polish state should be an element of our position in the international arena. It must be offensive."
An example of such “offensiveness” was the recent bill approved by the Polish government. It provides for imprisonment of up to three years for the phrases “Polish concentration camp” or “Polish death camps,” in reference to the Nazi camps that operated in occupied Poland during World War II. The author of the bill, the Polish Minister of Justice, explained the need for its adoption by the fact that such a law would more effectively protect the “historical truth” and “the good name of Poland.”
In this regard, a little history. The phrase “Polish death camp” came into use largely with the “light hand” of Jan Karski, an active participant in the Polish anti-Nazi resistance. In 1944, he published an article in Colliers Weekly entitled “The Polish Death Camp.”
In it, Karski told how he, disguised as a German soldier, secretly visited the ghetto in Izbica Lubelska, from which prisoners Jews, Gypsies and others were sent to the Nazi extermination camps “Belzec” and “Sobibor”. Thanks to Karski’s article, and then the book he wrote, “Courier from Poland: Story of a Secret State,” the world first learned about the Nazis’ mass extermination of Jews in Poland.
I note that for 70 years after World War II, the phrase “Polish death camp” was generally understood as a Nazi death camp located on Polish territory.
The problems began when US President Barack Obama in May 2012, posthumously awarding J. Karski the Presidential Medal of Freedom, mentioned the “Polish death camp” in his speech. Poland was outraged and demanded an explanation and apology,since such a phrase allegedly cast a shadow on Polish history. Pope Francis' visit to Poland in July 2016 added fuel to the fire. Then, in Krakow, Francis met with the only woman born and survivor of the Nazi camp Auschwitz (Auschwitz). In his speech, the Pope called her birthplace "the Polish concentration camp Auschwitz." This clause was replicated by the Vatican Catholic portal “IlSismografo”. Poland was again indignant. These are the known origins of the above-mentioned Polish bill.
However, the point here is not only the above-mentioned unfortunate reservations of world leaders regarding the Nazi camps.
The Polish authorities, in addition, urgently need to block any memories that in Poland in 1919 - 1922. There was a network of concentration camps for Red Army prisoners of war captured during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919 - 1920.
It is known that due to the conditions of existence of prisoners of war in them, these camps were the forerunners of the Nazi concentration death camps.
However, the Polish side does not want to recognize this documented fact and reacts very painfully when statements or articles appear in the Russian media that mention Polish concentration camps. Thus, the article caused a sharply negative reaction from the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky Associate Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Perm) entitled “ Indifferent and patient"(05.02.2015.Lenta.ru https://lenta.ru/articles/2015/02/04/poland/).
In this article, the Russian historian, analyzing the difficult Polish-Russian relations, called Polish prisoner of war camps concentration camps, and also called the Nazi death camp Auschwitz Auschwitz. He thereby allegedly cast a shadow not only on the Polish city of Auschwitz, but also on Polish history. The reaction of the Polish authorities, as always, was immediate.
The Deputy Polish Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Jaroslaw Ksionzek, in a letter to the editor of Lenta.ru, stated that the Polish side categorically objects to the use of the definition of “Polish concentration camps”, because it in no way corresponds to historical truth. In Poland from 1918 to 1939. such camps allegedly did not exist.
However, Polish diplomats, refuting Russian historians and publicists, once again got into a puddle. I had to face critical assessments of my article “The Lies and Truth of Katyn”, published in the newspaper “Spetsnaz Rossii” (No. 4, 2012). The critic then was Grzegorz Telesnicki, First Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation. In his letter to the editors of Spetsnaz Rossii, he categorically asserted that the Poles did not participate in the Nazi exhumation of Katyn graves in 1943.
Meanwhile, it is well known and documented that specialists from the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross participated in the Nazi exhumation in Katyn from April to June 1943, fulfilling, in the words of the Minister of Nazi Propaganda and the main falsifier of the Katyn crime J. Goebbels, the role of “objective” witnesses. Equally false is the statement of Mr. J. Książyk about the absence of concentration camps in Poland, which is easily refuted by documentation.
Polish forerunners of Auschwitz-Birkenau
To begin with, I will conduct a small educational program for Polish diplomats. Let me remind you that in the period 2000-2004. Russian and Polish historians, in accordance with the Agreement between the Russian Archives and the General Directorate of State Archives of Poland, signed on December 4, 2000, prepared a collection of documents and materials “ Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity in 1919-1922"(hereinafter referred to as the collection "Red Army Soldiers...").
This 912-page collection was published in Russia in a circulation of 1 thousand copies. (M.; St. Petersburg: Summer Garden, 2004). It contains 338 historical documents revealing the very unpleasant situation that prevailed in Polish prisoner of war camps, including concentration camps. Apparently, for this reason, the Polish side not only did not publish this collection in Polish, but also took measures to buy up part of the Russian circulation.
So, in the collection “Red Army Soldiers...” document No. 72 is presented, called “Temporary instructions for concentration camps for prisoners of war, approved by the Supreme Command of the Polish Army.”
Let me give a short quote from this document: “... Following the orders of the High Command No. 2800/III of 18.IV.1920, No. 17000/IV of 18.IV.1920, No. 16019/II, as well as 6675/San. temporary instructions for concentration camps are issued... The camps for Bolshevik prisoners, which should be created by order of the Supreme Command of the Polish Army No. 17000/IV in Zvyagel and Ploskirov, and then Zhitomir, Korosten and Bar, are called “Concentration camp for prisoners of war No....».
So, gentlemen, a question arises. How, having adopted a law on the inadmissibility of calling Polish concentration camps, will you deal with those Polish historians who allow themselves to refer to the above-mentioned “Temporary Instructions...”? But I will leave this issue for consideration by Polish lawyers and return to Polish prisoner of war camps, including those called concentration camps.
Familiarization with the documents contained in the collection “Red Army Soldiers...” allows us to confidently assert that the point is not in the name, but in the essence of the Polish prisoner of war camps. They created such inhuman conditions for keeping Red Army prisoners of war that they can rightfully be considered as the forerunners of Nazi concentration camps.
This is evidenced by the absolute majority of documents placed in the collection “Red Army Men...”.
To substantiate my conclusion, I will allow myself to refer to the testimony of former prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau Ota Krausa(No. 73046) and Erich Kulka(No. 73043). They went through the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau and were well aware of the rules established in these camps. Therefore, in the title of this chapter I used the name “Auschwitz-Birkenau”, since it was this name that was used by O. Kraus and E. Kulka in their book “The Death Factory” (M.: Gospolitizdat, 1960).
The guard atrocities and living conditions of Red Army prisoners of war in Polish camps are very reminiscent of the Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For those who doubt, I will give a few quotes from the book “Factory of Death”.
O. Kraus and E. Kulka wrote that
- “They didn’t live in Birkenau, but huddled in wooden barracks 40 meters long and 9 meters wide. The barracks had no windows, were poorly lit and ventilated... In total, the barracks housed 250 people. There were no washrooms or toilets in the barracks. Prisoners were forbidden to leave the barracks at night, so at the end of the barracks there were two tubs for sewage...”
- “Exhaustion, illness and death of prisoners were caused by insufficient and poor nutrition, and more often by real hunger... There were no utensils for food in the camp... The prisoner received less than 300 grams of bread. Bread was given to the prisoners in the evening, and they ate it immediately. The next morning they received half a liter of a black liquid called coffee or tea and a tiny portion of sugar. For lunch, the prisoner received less than a liter of stew, which should have contained 150 g of potatoes, 150 g of turnips, 20 g of flour, 5 g of butter, 15 g of bones. In fact, it was impossible to find such modest doses of food in the stew... With poor nutrition and hard work, a strong and healthy beginner could only last for three months...”
« For entire groups of prisoners... usually a punishment was applied, which was called "sport". Prisoners were forced to quickly fall to the ground and jump up, crawl on their bellies and squat... Transfer to a prison block was a common measure for certain offenses. And staying in this block meant certain death... In the blocks, prisoners slept without mattresses, right on bare boards... Along the walls and in the middle of the block-infirmary, bunks with mattresses soaked in human waste were installed... The sick lay next to the dying and already dead prisoners».
Below I will give similar examples from Polish camps. Surprisingly, the Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors. So, let’s open the collection “Red Army Men...”. Here is document No. 164, called “ Report on the results of the inspection of the camps in Dąba and Strzałkowo"(October 1919).
- “Inspection of the Dombe camp... The buildings are wooden. The walls are not solid, some buildings do not have wooden floors, the chambers are large... Most of the prisoners without shoes are completely barefoot. There are almost no beds or bunks... There is no straw or hay. They sleep on the ground or boards... No linen or clothes; cold, hunger, dirt and all this threatens with enormous mortality...".
- “Report on the inspection of the Strzalkowo camp. ...The state of health of the prisoners is appalling, the hygienic conditions of the camp are disgusting. Most of the buildings are dugouts with holes in the roofs, earthen floors, planks are very rare, the windows are boarded up instead of glass... Many barracks are overcrowded. So, on October 19 this year. The barracks for captured communists were so crowded that entering it in the midst of the fog it was difficult to see anything. The prisoners were so crowded that they could not lie down, but were forced to stand, leaning on one another...".
It was mentioned in document No. 333 “ Note from the Russian-Ukrainian delegation to the chairman of the Polish delegation protesting against the conditions of detention of prisoners in Strzałkowo" (December 29, 1921) and in document No. 334 " Note from the Plenipotentiary Mission of the RSFSR in Warsaw to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland regarding the abuse of Soviet prisoners of war in the Strzałkowo camp"(January 5, 1922).
It should be noted that in both Nazi and Polish camps, the beating of prisoners of war was commonplace. Thus, in the above-mentioned document No. 334 it was noted that in the Strzałkowo camp “ To this day, violations of the personalities of prisoners occur. The beating of prisoners of war is a constant phenomenon..." It turns out that brutal beatings of prisoners of war in the Strzalkowo camp were practiced from 1919 to 1922.
This is confirmed by document No. 44 “ Attitude of the Ministry of War of Poland to the Supreme Command of the Eastern Military District regarding an article from the newspaper “Courier Nowy” regarding the abuse of Latvians who deserted from the Red Army with a transmittal note from the Ministry of War of Poland to the High Command"(January 16, 1920). It says that upon arrival at the Strzalkovo camp (apparently in the fall of 1919), the Latvians were first robbed, leaving them in their underwear, and then each of them received 50 blows with a barbed wire rod. More than ten Latvians died from blood poisoning, and two were shot without trial.
Those responsible for this barbarity were the head of the camp, Captain Wagner and his assistant lieutenant Malinovsky, characterized by sophisticated cruelty.
This is described in document No. 314 “ Letter from the Russian-Ukrainian delegation to the Polish delegation of the PRUSK with a request to take action on the application of Red Army prisoners of war regarding the former commandant of the camp in Strzałkowo"(September 03, 1921).
The Red Army statement said that
- “Lieutenant Malinovsky always walked around the camp, accompanied by several corporals who had wire lashes in their hands and ordered whoever he didn’t like to lie down in a ditch, and the corporals beat him as much as was ordered. If the beaten one moaned or begged for mercy, it was time. Malinovsky took out his revolver and shot... If the sentries shot the prisoners then. Malinowski gave them 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks as a reward... Repeatedly it was possible to observe how a group led by por. Malinovsky climbed onto machine gun towers and from there fired at defenseless people...”
Like the Nazis, the Polish authorities used starvation as an effective means of exterminating captured Red Army soldiers. Thus, in document No. 168 “Telegram from the fortified region of Modlin to the section of prisoners of the High Command of the Polish Army about the mass disease of prisoners of war in the Modlin camp” (dated October 28, 1920) it is reported that an epidemic is raging among prisoners of war at the concentration station of prisoners and internees in Modlin stomach diseases, 58 people died.
“The main causes of the disease are the prisoners eating various raw peelings and their complete lack of shoes and clothing" I note that this is not an isolated case of starvation deaths of prisoners of war, which is described in the documents of the collection “Red Army Soldiers...”.A general assessment of the situation prevailing in Polish prisoner of war camps was given in document No. 310 “ Minutes of the 11th meeting of the Mixed (Russian, Ukrainian and Polish delegations) repatriation commission on the situation of captured Red Army soldiers"(July 28, 1921) It was noted that "
RUD (Russian-Ukrainian delegation) could never allow prisoners to be treated so inhumanely and with such cruelty... RUD does not remember the sheer nightmare and horror of beatings, mutilations and complete physical extermination that was carried out on Russian prisoners of war of the Red Army, especially communists, in the first days and months of captivity... .The same protocol noted that “The Polish camp command, as if in retaliation after the first visit 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... When the camp command considers it possible to provide more humane conditions for the existence of prisoners of war, then prohibitions come from the Center».
A similar assessment is given in document No. 318 “ From a note from the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR to the Charge d'Affaires Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Polish Republic T. Fillipovich on the situation and death of prisoners of war in Polish camps"(September 9, 1921).
It said: "
According to the calculations of the Russian military historian M.V. Filimoshin, the number of Red Army soldiers who died and died in Polish captivity is 82,500 people (Filimoshin. Military History Magazine, No. 2. 2001). This figure seems quite reasonable. I believe that the above allows us to assert that Polish concentration camps and prisoner of war camps can rightfully be considered the forerunners of Nazi concentration camps.
I refer distrustful and inquisitive readers to my research " Antikatyn, or Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity”, presented in my books “The Secret of Katyn” (M.: Algorithm, 2007) and “Katyn. Modern history of the issue" (M.: Algorithm, 2012). It gives a more comprehensive picture of what was happening in the Polish camps.
Violence due to dissent
It is impossible to complete the topic of Polish concentration camps without mentioning two camps: the Belarusian " Birch-Kartuzskaya" and Ukrainian " Bialy Podlaski" They were created in 1934 by decision of the Polish dictator Jozef Piłsudski, as a means of reprisal against Belarusians and Ukrainians who protested against the Polish occupation regime of 1920-1939. Although they were not called concentration camps, in some ways they surpassed the Nazi concentration camps.
But first
about how many Belarusians and Ukrainians accepted the Polish regime established in the territories of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine captured by the Poles in 1920 . This is what the newspaper Rzeczpospolita wrote in 1925.« ...If there are no changes within several years, then we will have a general armed uprising there (in the eastern cresses). If we don’t drown it in blood, it will tear several provinces away from us... There is a gallows for an uprising and nothing more. Horror must fall on the entire local (Belarusian) population from top to bottom, from which the blood in their veins will freeze » .In the same year, the famous Polish publicist Adolf Nevchinsky on the pages of the newspaper “Slovo” stated that
with Belarusians it is necessary to conduct a conversation in the language of “gallows and only gallows... this will be the most correct resolution of the national question in Western Belarus».Feeling public support, Polish sadists in Bereza-Kartuzska and Biała Podlaska did not stand on ceremony with the rebellious Belarusians and Ukrainians. If the Nazis created concentration camps as monstrous factories for the mass extermination of people, then in Poland such camps were used as a means of intimidating the disobedient. How else can one explain the monstrous tortures to which Belarusians and Ukrainians were subjected? I will give examples.
In Bereza-Kartuzskaya, 40 people were crammed into small cells with a cement floor. To prevent prisoners from sitting down, the floor was constantly watered. They were forbidden to even talk in the cell. They tried to turn people into dumb cattle. A regime of silence for prisoners was also in force in the hospital. They beat me for moaning, for grinding teeth from unbearable pain.
The management of Bereza-Kartuzskaya cynically called it “the most athletic camp in Europe.” It was forbidden to walk here - only run. Everything was done on the whistle. Even the dream was on such a command. Half an hour on your left side, then the whistle, and immediately turn over to your right. Anyone who hesitated or did not hear the whistle in a dream was immediately subjected to torture. Before such a “sleep”, several buckets of water with bleach were poured into the rooms where the prisoners slept, for “prevention”. The Nazis failed to think of this.
The conditions in the punishment cell were even more terrible.The offenders were kept there from 5 to 14 days. To increase the suffering, several buckets of feces were poured onto the floor of the punishment cell.. The pit in the punishment cell had not been cleaned for months. The room was infested with worms. In addition, the camp practiced group punishment such as cleaning camp toilets with glasses or mugs.
Commandant of Bereza-Kartuzskaya Jozef Kamal-Kurgansky in response to statements that prisoners could not stand the torture conditions and preferred death, calmly stated: “ The more of them rest here, the better it will be to live in my Poland.».
I believe that the above is enough to imagine what Polish camps for the rebellious are, and the story about the Biala Podlaska camp will be redundant.
In conclusion I will add that
the use of feces for torture was a favorite means of Polish gendarmes, apparently suffering from unsatisfied sadomasochistic tendencies. There are known facts when employees of the Polish defense forces forced prisoners to clean toilets with their hands, and then, without allowing them to wash their hands, they gave them lunch rations. Those who refused had their hands broken. Sergey Osipovich Pritytsky, a Belarusian fighter against the Polish occupation regime in the 1930s, recalled how Polish police poured slurry into his nose.This is the unpleasant truth about the “skeleton in the Polish closet” called “concentration camps” that forced me to tell the gentlemen from Warsaw and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation.
P.S. Panova, please keep this in mind. I am not a Polonophobe. I enjoy watching Polish films, listening to Polish pop music, and I regret that I did not master the Polish language at one time. But I “hate it” when Polish Russophobes brazenly distort the history of Polish-Russian relations with the tacit consent of official Russia.
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