How the death camp was built in Poland. Majdanek - a German death camp in Poland (18 photos)

Auschwitz is a city that has become a symbol of the mercilessness of the fascist regime; the city where one of the most senseless dramas in human history unfolded; a city where hundreds of thousands of people were brutally murdered. In the concentration camps located here, the Nazis built the most terrible conveyor belts of death, exterminating up to 20 thousand people every day... Today I begin to talk about one of the most terrible places on earth - the concentration camps at Auschwitz. I warn you, the photographs and descriptions left below may leave a heavy mark on the soul. Although I personally believe that every person should touch and let through these terrible pages of our history...

There will be very few of my comments on the photographs in this post - this is too sensitive a topic, on which, it seems to me, I do not have the moral right to express my point of view. I honestly admit that visiting the museum left a heavy scar on my heart that still refuses to heal...

Most of the comments on the photos are based on the guidebook (

The Auschwitz concentration camp was Hitler's largest concentration camp for Poles and prisoners of other nationalities, whom Hitler's fascism doomed to isolation and gradual extermination by famine, hard work, experiments, as well as immediate death as a result of mass and individual executions. Since 1942 the camp became largest center extermination of European Jews. Most of the Jews deported to Auschwitz died in gas chambers immediately after arrival, without registration or identification with camp numbers. That is why it is very difficult to establish the exact number of those killed - historians agree on a figure of about one and a half million people.

But let's return to the history of the camp. In 1939, Auschwitz and its surroundings became part of the Third Reich. The city was renamed Auschwitz. In the same year, the fascist command came up with the idea of ​​creating concentration camp. The deserted pre-war barracks near Auschwitz were chosen as the site for the creation of the first camp. The concentration camp is named Auschwitz I.

The education order dates back to April 1940. Rudolf Hoess is appointed camp commandant. On June 14, 1940, the Gestapo sent the first prisoners to Auschwitz I - 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow.

The gate leading to the camp is with the cynical inscription: “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes you free), through which the prisoners went to work every day and returned ten hours later. In a small square next to the kitchen, the camp orchestra played marches that were supposed to speed up the movement of prisoners and make it easier for the Nazis to count them.

At the time of its founding, the camp consisted of 20 buildings: 14 one-story and 6 two-story. In 1941-1942, with the help of prisoners, one floor was added to all one-story buildings and eight more buildings were built. The total number of multi-story buildings in the camp was 28 (except for the kitchen and utility buildings). The average number of prisoners fluctuated between 13-16 thousand prisoners, and in 1942 reached over 20 thousand. Prisoners were placed in blocks, also using attics and basements for this purpose.

Along with the increase in the number of prisoners, the territorial volume of the camp increased, which gradually turned into a huge plant for exterminating people. Auschwitz I became the base for a whole network of new camps.

In October 1941, after there was no longer enough space for the newly arrived prisoners at Auschwitz I, work began on the construction of another concentration camp, called Auschwitz II (also known as Bireknau and Brzezinka). This camp was destined to become the largest in the system of Nazi death camps. I .

In 1943, in Monowice near Auschwitz, another camp was built on the territory of the IG Ferbenindustrie plant - Auschwitz III. In addition, in 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, which were subordinate to Auschwitz III and were located mainly near metallurgical plants, mines and factories that used prisoners as cheap labor.

Arriving prisoners were taken away from their clothes and all personal items, they were cut, disinfected and washed, and then they were given numbers and registered. Initially, each of the prisoners was photographed in three positions. Since 1943, prisoners began to be tattooed - Auschwitz became the only Nazi camp in which prisoners received tattoos with their number.

Depending on the reasons for their arrest, prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, along with their numbers, were sewn onto their camp clothes. Political prisoners were given a red triangle; Jews wore a six-pointed star consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for their arrest. Black triangles were given to gypsies and those prisoners whom the Nazis considered antisocial elements. Jehovah's Witnesses received purple triangles, homosexuals received pink triangles, and criminals received green triangles.

The scanty striped camp clothing did not protect the prisoners from the cold. Linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even at monthly intervals, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics various diseases, especially typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies.

The hands of the camp clock mercilessly and monotonously measured the life of the prisoner. From the morning to the evening gong, from one bowl of soup to the next, from the first count until the moment when the prisoner's corpse was counted for the last time.

One of the disasters of camp life was the inspections at which the number of prisoners was checked. They lasted for several, and sometimes over ten hours. Camp authorities very often announced penalty checks, during which prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were also cases when they were ordered to hold their hands up for several hours.

Along with executions and gas chambers, grueling labor was an effective means of exterminating prisoners. Prisoners were employed in various sectors of the economy. At first they worked during the construction of the camp: they built new buildings and barracks, roads and drainage ditches. A little later, the industrial enterprises of the Third Reich began to increasingly use the cheap labor of prisoners. The prisoner was ordered to do the work at a run, without a second of rest. The pace of work, the meager portions of food, as well as constant beatings and abuse increased the mortality rate. During the return of prisoners to the camp, the dead or wounded were dragged or carried on wheelbarrows or carts.

The prisoner's daily caloric intake was 1300-1700 calories. For breakfast, the prisoner received about a liter of “coffee” or a decoction of herbs, for lunch - about 1 liter of lean soup, often made from rotten vegetables. Dinner consisted of 300-350 grams of black clay bread and small quantity other additives (for example, 30 g sausage or 30 g margarine or cheese) and a herbal drink or “coffee.”

At Auschwitz I, most prisoners lived in two-story brick buildings. Living conditions throughout the camp's existence were catastrophic. The prisoners brought in by the first trains slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor. Later, hay bedding was introduced. About 200 prisoners slept in a room that barely accommodated 40-50 people. The three-tier bunks installed later did not improve living conditions at all. Most often there were 2 prisoners on one tier of bunks.

The malarial climate of Auschwitz, poor living conditions, hunger, scanty clothing that was not changed for a long time, unwashed and unprotected from the cold, rats and insects led to mass epidemics that sharply reduced the ranks of prisoners. A large number of patients who came to the hospital were not admitted due to overcrowding. In this regard, SS doctors periodically carried out selections both among patients and among prisoners in other buildings. Those who were weakened and had no hope of a quick recovery were sent to death in gas chambers or killed in a hospital by injecting a dose of phenol directly into their hearts.

That is why the prisoners called the hospital “the threshold of the crematorium.” At Auschwitz, prisoners were subjected to numerous criminal experiments carried out by SS doctors. For example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a quick method of biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted criminal sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10 of the main camp. Dr. Josef Mengele, as part of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities.

In addition, various kinds of experiments were carried out in Auschwitz using new drugs and preparations: toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin transplants were carried out... During these experiments, hundreds of prisoners died.

Despite the difficult living conditions, constant terror and danger, the camp prisoners carried out secret underground activities against the Nazis. She took different shapes. Establishing contacts with the Polish population living in the area around the camp made possible the illegal transfer of food and medicine. Information was transmitted from the camp about crimes committed by the SS, lists of names of prisoners, SS men and material evidence of crimes. All parcels were hidden in various objects, often specially intended for this purpose, and correspondence between the camp and the centers of the resistance movement was encrypted.

In the camp, work was carried out to provide assistance to prisoners and explanatory work in the field of international solidarity against Hitlerism. There was also cultural activities, which consisted of organizing discussions and meetings at which prisoners recited best works Russian literature, as well as in the secret conduct of religious services.

Check area - here the SS men checked the number of prisoners.

Public executions were also carried out here on a portable or common gallows.

In July 1943, the SS hanged 12 Polish prisoners on it because they maintained relations with the civilian population and helped 3 comrades escape.

The yard between buildings No. 10 and No. 11 is fenced with a high wall. Wooden shutters placed on the windows in block No. 10 were supposed to make it impossible to observe the executions carried out here. In front of the “Wall of Death,” the SS shot several thousand prisoners, mostly Poles.

In the dungeons of building No. 11 there was a camp prison. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the military court, which came to Auschwitz from Katowice and, during a meeting that lasted 2-3 hours, imposed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.

Before execution, everyone had to undress in the washrooms, and if the number of those sentenced to death was too small, the sentence was carried out right there. If the number of those sentenced was sufficient, they were taken out through a small door to be shot at the “Wall of Death.”

The system of punishment that the SS administered in Hitler's concentration camps was part of a well-planned, deliberate extermination of prisoners. A prisoner could be punished for anything: for picking an apple, relieving himself while working, or for pulling out his own tooth to exchange it for bread, even for working too slowly, in the opinion of the SS man.

Prisoners were punished with whips. They were hung by their twisted arms on special poles, placed in the dungeons of a camp prison, forced to perform penalty exercises, stances, or sent to penalty teams.

In September 1941, an attempt was made here to mass exterminate people using the poisonous gas Zyklon B. About 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital died then.

The cells located in the basements housed prisoners and civilians who were suspected of having connections with prisoners or assisting in escapes, prisoners sentenced to starvation for the escape of a cellmate, and those whom the SS considered guilty of violating camp rules or against whom an investigation was underway. .

All the property that the people deported to the camp brought with them was taken away by the SS. It was sorted and stored in huge barracks in Auszewiec II. These warehouses were called “Canada”. I will tell you more about them in the next report.

The property located in the warehouses of the concentration camps was then transported to the Third Reich for the needs of the Wehrmacht.Gold teeth that were removed from the corpses of murdered people were melted down into ingots and sent to the SS Central Sanitary Administration. The ashes of the burned prisoners were used as manure or they were used to fill nearby ponds and river beds.

Items that previously belonged to people who died in gas chambers were used by SS men who were part of the camp staff. For example, they appealed to the commandant with a request to issue strollers, things for babies and other items. Despite the fact that looted property was constantly being transported by trainloads, the warehouses were overcrowded, and the space between them was often filled with piles of unsorted luggage.

As the Soviet Army approached Auschwitz, the most valuable things were urgently removed from warehouses. A few days before the liberation, the SS men set fire to warehouses, erasing traces of the crime. 30 barracks burned down, and in those that remained, after liberation, many thousands of pairs of shoes, clothes, toothbrushes, shaving brushes, glasses, dentures were found...

While liberating the camp at Auschwitz, the Soviet Army discovered about 7 tons of hair packed in bags in warehouses. These were the remains that the camp authorities did not manage to sell and send to the factories of the Third Reich. The analysis showed that they contain traces of hydrogen cyanide, a special toxic component of drugs called “Cyclone B”. German companies, among other products, produced hair tailor's beads from human hair. Rolls of beading found in one of the cities, located in a display case, were submitted for analysis, the results of which showed that it was made from human hair, most likely women's hair.

It is very difficult to imagine the tragic scenes that played out every day in the camp. Former prisoners - artists - tried to convey the atmosphere of those days in their work.

Hard work and hunger led to complete exhaustion of the body. From hunger, prisoners fell ill with dystrophy, which very often ended in death. These photographs were taken after liberation; they show adult prisoners weighing from 23 to 35 kg.

In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp along with their parents. First of all, these were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most Jewish children died in gas chambers immediately after arriving at the camp. A few of them, after careful selection, were sent to a camp where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults. Some of the children, such as twins, were subjected to criminal experiments.

One of the most terrible exhibits is a model of one of the crematoria in the Auschwitz II camp. On average, about 3 thousand people were killed and burned in such a building per day...

And this is the crematorium in Auschwitz I. It was located behind the camp fence.

The largest room in the crematorium was the morgue, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber. Here in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners and Jews from the ghetto organized by the Germans in Upper Silesia were killed.

The second part contains two of the three ovens, reconstructed from preserved original metal elements, in which about 350 bodies were burned during the day. Each retort housed 2-3 corpses at a time.

Next, we suggest going to virtual tour through a terrible place - the German death camp Majdanek, which was built on Polish territory during the Second World War. Currently, there is a museum on the camp grounds.

From Warsaw to the museum at the site of the “death camp” (outskirts of Lublin) it takes two and a half hours by car. Admission is free, but few people want to visit. Only in the crematorium building, where five ovens turned prisoners into ashes every day, is a school field trip crowded with a Catholic priest. Preparing to celebrate Mass in memory of the Poles martyred in Majdanek, the priest lays a tablecloth on the prepared table, takes out the Bible and candles. Teenagers are clearly not interested here - they joke, smile, and go out to smoke. “Do you know who liberated this camp?” - I ask. There is confusion among young Poles. "English?" – the blonde girl says hesitantly. "No, Americans!" - a thin guy interrupts her. - “It seems there was a landing party here!” “Russians,” the priest says quietly. The schoolchildren are amazed - the news is like thunder among them clear skies. On July 22, 1944, the Red Army was greeted in Lublin with flowers and tears of joy. Now we cannot wait for the liberation of the concentration camps, not even gratitude - just basic respect.

Almost everything has been preserved in Majdanek. Double fencing with barbed wire, SS guard towers and blackened crematorium ovens. On the barracks with the gas chamber there is a sign screwed on - “Washing and disinfection.” Fifty people were brought here at a time, supposedly “to go to the bathhouse” - they were given soap and asked to fold their clothes carefully. Victims entered the cement shower room, the door was locked and gas was leaking from holes in the ceiling. The peephole in the door is amazing - some bastard from the SS calmly watched people die in agony. Rare visitors speak quietly, as if in a cemetery. A girl from Israel cries, burying her face in her boyfriend's shoulder. A museum employee reports: 80,000 people died in the camp. "Like this? – I’m surprised. “After all, at the Nuremberg trials the figure of 300 thousand appeared, a third of them were Poles.” It turns out that after 1991, the number of victims has been constantly decreasing - at first it was decided that 200 thousand people were tortured in Majdanek, and recently they “knocked it down” to eighty: they say, more precisely, they recounted it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten years the Polish authorities begin to claim with such standards that no one died in Majdanek at all, the concentration camp was an exemplary sanatorium-resort where prisoners underwent health procedures, - he is indignant Chief Editor Internet portal Strajk Maciej Wisniewski. - My father, who was a partisan during the war, said: “Yes, the Russians brought us a regime that we did not want. But the main thing is that the gas chambers and ovens stopped working in the SS concentration camps.” In Poland, state propaganda at all levels is trying to silence the merits of Soviet soldiers in saving tens of millions of lives. After all, if it were not for the Red Army, the Majdanek crematorium would continue to smoke every day.

It only takes a minute to walk from the gas chamber - you find yourself in a barracks filled to the brim with old, half-rotten shoes. I look at her for a long time. Expensive shoes of fashionistas (one even made of snakeskin), men's boots, children's boots. There are more of them - but in 2010, one museum barrack burned down for unknown reasons (possibly from arson): 7,000 pairs of shoes were lost in the fire. On November 3, 1943, as part of the so-called “Operation Erntedankfest” (harvest festival), the SS shot 18,400 Jews in Majdanek, including many citizens of the USSR. People were forced to lie down in ditches on top of each other, “in a layer,” and then were shot in the back of the head. 611 people then spent a week sorting the property of the executed, including these very shoes. The sorters were also destroyed - the men were shot, the women were sent to the gas chamber. In the room nearby there is a memorial to nameless prisoners whose identities could not be established: rows of light bulbs shrouded in balls of barbed wire are burning. An audio recording is played - in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, people ask God to save their lives.

The current museum occupies only a quarter of the actual territory of Majdanek: founded on October 1, 1941, it was a concentration camp city with “districts” where women, Jews, and Polish rebels were kept separately. The first inhabitants of the “SS special zone” were 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war; after just a month and a half (!), three quarters of them died from unbearable conditions of detention. The museum's exhibition does not focus on this fact. By January 1942, all the remaining prisoners had died - the camp stood empty until March, when 50,000 new prisoners were brought in. They were destroyed so quickly that one crematorium could not cope with the burning of bodies - a second one had to be built.

The towers above the camp darkened with time, the wood became coal black. 73 years ago, two SS guards stood on each one, watching Majdanek - often, in despair, the prisoners themselves walked into the bullets just to end their torment. The ashes of thousands of prisoners were buried in a huge mausoleum built next to the crematorium - the Red Army soldiers who liberated Majdanek discovered boxes of ashes, which the guards prepared for disposal. The crematorium ovens are smoked by fire; it is impossible to clean them from the remains of hundreds of thousands of people soaked into the metal. One of the prisoners who ended up in Majdanek at the age of six (!), a native of the Vitebsk region, Alexander Petrov, told - Jewish children preschool age they were burned alive in these ovens. Survivors in the camp testify that the Germans did not show much hatred towards them. They boringly tried to kill as much as possible more people, doing your job. Of all the trees in the camp, only one survived. On the rest, the prisoners, dying of terrible hunger, ate the bark and chewed off the roots.

Looking at this camp even now makes me feel uneasy. And people lived there for almost 3 years. In the photo - Majdanek itself, the gas chamber, barracks, crematorium.

Just hearing this name alone brings a lump to your throat. Auschwitz on long years remains in people's minds as an example of genocide that resulted in the death of an incredible number of people. Every year hundreds of thousands of people come to Auschwitz, a city whose name is inextricably associated with the notorious Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz to learn its history and honor the memory of those killed.

The Auschwitz concentration camp became one of the most effective elements of this conveyor belt of death. An excursion here and to the neighboring Birkenau camp leaves an unforgettable impression.

Auschwitz

Open: daily 8.00-19.00, admission free, www.auschwitz.org.pl

Above the camp gate are written the words: "Arbeit Macht Frei" (“Work will set you free”). The camp authorities, fleeing from the advancing Soviet army, tried to destroy evidence of the genocide, but did not have time, so about 30 camp blocks were preserved, some of them became part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.

Up to 200,000 people could be held in the camp every day. There were 300 prison barracks, 5 huge gas chambers, each of which could accommodate 2,000 people, and a crematorium. It is impossible to forget this terrible place.

Auschwitz was originally a barracks Polish army. Jews from countries such as Norway, Greece, etc., were herded onto freight trains, where there was no water, no food, no toilets and almost no air to breathe, and were taken to concentration camps in Poland. The first 728 “prisoners of war,” most Poles and all from the city of Tarnow, were brought here in June 1940. Then whole streams of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war were sent to the camps. They turned into slaves; some died of starvation, others were executed, and many were sent to gas chambers, where mass murder was carried out using the poisonous gas "Cyclone-B".

Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the retreating Nazis, so many buildings that bear witness to the atrocities that took place have been preserved. The ten surviving barracks housed State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (Tel.: 33 844 8100; www.auschwitz.org.pl; admission free; 08.00-19.00 June-August, 08.00-18.00 May and September, 08.00-17.00 April and October, 08.00-16.00 March and November, 08.00-15.00 December - February).In 2007, UNESCO, when adding the complex to the World Heritage List, gave it the name “Auschwitz-Birkenau - Nazi German Concentration Camp” (1940-45)”, to focus attention on Poland’s non-involvement in its creation and functioning.

Every half hour, a 15-minute film is shown in the visitor center cinema located at the entrance to the camp. documentary (ticket for adults/discount 3.50/2.50zt) about the liberation of the camp Soviet troops January 27, 1945 It is shown in English, German and French during the whole day. Check the information desk for the schedule as soon as you arrive. The film is not recommended for viewing by children under 14 years of age. Documentary footage filmed after the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945 will provide a useful introduction to those trying to comprehend what they are about to see. The visitor center also has a cafeteria, bookstores, and a currency exchange office. (kantor) and a storage room.

At the end of the war, the Nazis tried to destroy the camp during their flight, but about 30 barracks survived, as well as guard towers and barbed wire. You can freely walk between barracks and enter those that are open. In one of them, glass cases contain piles of shoes, crooked glasses, piles of human hair and suitcases with the names and addresses of prisoners who were told they were simply being relocated to another city. Photographs of prisoners are hung in the corridors, some of which are decorated with flowers brought by surviving relatives. Next to block No. 11, the so-called “death block,” there is an execution wall, where prisoners were shot. Here the Nazis conducted their first experiments using the Zyklon-B. The barrack next door is dedicated to the “Trials of the Jewish People.” At the end of the exposition historical documents and photographs, to the piercing, sad melody of “Merciful God,” the names of people killed in concentration camps are listed.

General information is provided in Polish, English and Hebrew, but to better understand everything, purchase the small guide to Auschwitz-Birkenau (translated into 15 languages), available at the visitor center. From May to October, visitors arriving between 10.00 and 15.00 can explore the museum only as part of a guided tour. English-language excursions (price for adults/discounted 39/30zl, 3.5 hours) start daily at 10.00, 11.00, 13.00, 15.00, and they can also organize a tour for you if there is a group of ten people. Excursions in other languages, including Russian, must be booked in advance.

Auschwitz can be easily reached from Krakow. If you want to stay nearby, the Center for Dialogue and Prayer is 700 meters from the complex (Centrum Dialogu i Modlitwy w Oswiecimiu; Tel.: 33 843 1000; www. centrum-dialogu.oswiecim.pl; Kolbego street (ul. Kolbego), 1; camping place 25zl, single/double room 104/208zl). It is cozy and quiet, the price includes breakfast, and you can also be offered full board. Most rooms have private bathrooms.

Birkenau

Admission to Birkenau is free, open from 08.00-19.00 June - August; 08.00-18.00 May and September; 08.00-17.00 April and October; 08.00-16.00 March and November; 08.00-15.00 December - February.

Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, is located 3 km from Auschwitz. A short inscription in Birkenau reads: “Let this place be forever a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis exterminated about one and a half million men, women and children, mostly Jews, from different countries Europe".

Birkenau was built in 1941, when Hitler moved from isolating political prisoners to a program of mass extermination. Three hundred long barracks on an area of ​​175 hectares served as storage for the most brutal machine of Hitler’s “solution” Jewish question. Approximately 3/4 of the Jews brought to Birkenau were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.

Indeed, Birkenau was the epitome of a death camp: it had its own railway station for transporting prisoners, four huge gas chambers, each of which could kill 2,000 people at once, and a crematorium equipped with elevators for loading the ovens with the bodies of prisoners.

Visitors are given the opportunity to climb to the second floor of the main guard tower at the entrance, which offers views of the entire huge camp. Seemingly endless rows of barracks, towers and barbed wire - all this could accommodate up to 200 thousand prisoners at a time. At the back of the camp, behind a terrible pond where the ashes of the murdered people were poured, there is an unusual monument to the victims of the Holocaust with an inscription in 20 languages ​​of those prisoners who were killed in Auschwitz and Birkenau.

While retreating, the Germans, although they destroyed most structures, just look at the area fenced with barbed wire to understand the scale of the crimes committed by the Nazis. A viewing platform at the entrance to the camp will allow you to look around a large area. In some ways, Birkenau is even more shocking than Auschwitz, and there are generally fewer tourists here. It is not necessary to visit the memorial as part of a tour group.

Road there and back

Typically, a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau takes place as a day trip from Krakow.

There are 12 daily flights from Krakow Main Station to Auschwitz (13zt, 1.5 hours) Even more trains depart from the Krakow-Plaszow station. More convenient way transportation consists of hourly bus services departing from the bus station to Auschwitz (11zt, 1.5 hours) who are either passing by the museum or it is their final stop. Bus schedule going to reverse direction, see the information board at the Birkenau Visitor Center. From a stop near the street. Pavia near Galeria Krakowska, numerous minibuses go in this direction.

From April 15 to October 31, from 11.30 to 16.30, buses run between Auschwitz and Birkenau every half hour. (from May to September traffic stops at 17.30, from June to August - at 18.30). You can also walk the 3 km between camps or take a taxi. There are buses from Auschwitz to the local railway station (movement interval 30-40 minutes). Many Krakow travel agencies organize excursions to Auschwitz and Birkenau (from 90zt to 120zt per person). Find out in advance how much time you will be given to stay at museums, as some of them have a very busy schedule and you may not have time to see everything that interests you.

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, fascist Germany created both on its territory and mainly in Eastern Europe more than one and a half thousand camps in which 16 million people were kept. 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 being captured large number 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

August 28th, 2017

Whether the Nazis took experience in dealing with prisoners from the Poles, or from someone else, the Poles in any case were a couple of decades ahead of them.

***

Today Poles are destroying monuments Soviet soldiers who saved their grandfathers from the Nazi gas chamber. In such a situation, keep silent about the Red Army soldiers who perished in Polish death camps and other people from the territory of the former Russian Empire unacceptable, says member of the Zinoviev Club, doctor historical sciences Oleg Nazarov.

In October 1920 it ended Soviet-Polish war. One of the consequences of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth War was the mass death of Soviet prisoners of war and other immigrants from the territory of the former Russian Empire in Polish camps.
Cynical statements of the provocateur Schetyna

If the question of who was responsible for the execution of Poles in Katyn and Medny still causes heated debate among historians, and they are still far from being resolved, then the Polish side is definitely to blame for the deaths of 60 to 83.5 thousand Red Army soldiers (according to various estimates).

Official Warsaw, being unable to refute the mass death of people in the camps and dungeons of Poland, firstly, tries in every possible way to downplay the number of victims, and secondly, shifts responsibility for the tragedy from the Polish military and officials to objective circumstances. Although there was no famine or crop failure in Poland in those years.

• At the same time, Warsaw reacts extremely nervously to any proposals to perpetuate the memory of people who died in the camps of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The initiative of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) to begin collecting funds for the opening of a monument to fallen prisoners of war in Krakow aroused the anger of Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna. He called it a provocation aimed at splitting Polish society.

The Polish camp system arose immediately after its appearance on political map Europe of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth- long before the emergence of Stalin's Gulag and the Nazis' rise to power in Germany.

The “islands” of the Polish, figuratively speaking, “Gulag” were camps in Dąba, Wadowice, Lancut, Strzałkowo, Szczyperno, Tuchola, Brest-Litovsk, Pikulica, Aleksandrów-Kujawski, Kalisz, Płock, Łuków, Siedlce, Zduńska-Wola, Doroguska, Piotrkow, Ostrov-Lomzynski and other places.

When Russian historians and publicists call the places of detention of captured Red Army soldiers “Polish death camps,” this causes protests in Warsaw.

To figure out who is right here, let's turn to the collection of documents " Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity in 1919 - 1922. "

• When you look at the documents, the word “inhumane” catches your eye. It is often found when describing the situation in which Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Tatars, Latvians and other prisoners of war were located.As stated in one of the documents, in a country that called itself a bastion of Christian civilization, the prisoners were treated "not as people of an equal race, but as slaves. The beating of prisoners of war was practiced at every turn."

• “The prisoners are in a casemate, quite damp; when asked about food, they answered that they were getting everything they were supposed to and had no complaints. But the hospital doctors unanimously stated that all the prisoners gave the impression of being extremely hungry, since they rake raw potatoes straight out of the ground and eat them, and collect in garbage dumps and eat all kinds of waste, such as bones, cabbage leaves, etc."

• In total, in 1919 - 1921. in the Polish death camps, this very death in agony was met, according to various estimates, from 60 to 83.5 thousand Red Army soldiers. And this is not counting those wounded whom the God-fearing Polish soldiers, after praying, left to die in the field.

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