Female soldiers of the Red Army in German captivity. The rape of Berlin: an unknown history of the war What did the Germans do with the women of the Red Army

Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kiev, were collected for transfer to the POW camp, August 1941:

The uniform of many girls is semi-military-semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniforms and uniform shoes of small sizes. On the left - a dull captured artillery lieutenant, maybe a "stage commander".

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Lieutenant Prince, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in the Red Army.” Numerous facts testify that this order was applied throughout the war.
In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th infantry division, a prisoner of war - a military doctor was shot.
In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them.
After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the Mayak fishing village near Kerch, an unknown girl was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko military uniform. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, fiends, will be dog's death! The girl was shot in the yard.
At the end of August 1942 in the village of Krymskaya Krasnodar Territory a group of sailors was shot, among them there were several girls in military uniform.
In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport with her in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Aleksandrovna, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.
In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.
On January 5, 1943, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured near the Severny farm. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and humiliation, all those captured were shot.

Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (candidate officer, on the right) - escort a captured Soviet girl soldier - to captivity ... or to death?

It seems that the "Hans" do not look evil ... Although - who knows? In war, completely ordinary people often do such outrageous abominations that they would never have done in "another life" ...
The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army, model 1935 - male, and in good "commander" boots in size.

A similar photo, probably summer or early autumn 1941. The convoy is a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, her face, hands were cut, her breasts were cut off ... »
Knowing what awaits them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.
Often captured women were raped before they died. Hans Rudhoff, a soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, testifies that in the winter of 1942, “... Russian nurses lay on the roads. They were shot and thrown on the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written.
In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the yard, where there were nurses from the hospital. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they dragged them into a barn and raped them. However, they were not killed.
Women prisoners of war who ended up in camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drogobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Lyuda. “Captain Stroher, the camp commandant, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Lyuda to a bunk, and in this position Stroher raped her and then shot her.”
In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orlyand gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals - if they were sick with venereal diseases. He carried out the inspection himself. I chose 3 young girls from them, took them to my place to “serve”. German soldiers and officers came for women examined by doctors. Few of these women escaped rape.

A female soldier of the Red Army who was captured while trying to get out of the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941

Judging by their emaciated faces, they had to go through a lot even before being taken prisoner.

Here the "Hans" are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves will quickly experience all the "joys" of captivity !! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already drunk dashingly to the full extent at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity ...

On the left photo (September 1941, again near Kiev -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her hand in captivity; an unprecedented thing, a watch is the optimal camp currency!) Do not look desperate or exhausted. Captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... Is it a staged photo, or was a relatively humane camp commandant really caught, who ensured a tolerable existence?

The camp guards from among the former prisoners of war and camp policemen were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped captives or, under threat of death, forced them to cohabit with them. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 female prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, the former head of the camp guard A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped the prisoners of the women's bloc.
The Millerovo POW camp also contained female prisoners. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible:
“Police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two in a room. During these two hours, he could use her as a thing, abuse, mock, do whatever he pleases.
Once, during the evening verification, the chief of police himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “For those who do not want to go, arrange a “red fireman”. The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl's vagina. Left in this position for half an hour. Shouting was forbidden. Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back the cry, and after such a punishment they could not move for a long time.
The commandant, behind her back they called her a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated mockeries. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning.
We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.

Female doctors of the Red Army, who were taken prisoner, worked in camp infirmaries in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps).

There may also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background you can see part of the body of a car equipped to transport the wounded, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.

Infirmary hut of the POW camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941):

In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely miserable impression. In the conditions of camp life, it was especially difficult for them: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.
In the fall of 1941, K. Kromiadi, a member of the commission for the distribution of labor, who visited the Sedlice camp, talked with the captured women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.”
A group of female health workers taken prisoner in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord".
Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk in Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was forbidden. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with the "condition of a free settlement in Smolensk."

Crimea, summer 1942. Quite young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young soldier girl:

Most likely - not a doctor: her hands are clean, in a recent battle she did not bandage the wounded.

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were taken prisoner: doctors, nurses, nurses. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 female prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. Everyone was lined up in Rovno, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." Those who were separated from the general group were shot. The rest were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the car into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered in a hole in the floor.
On the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and on February 23, 1943, the women were brought to the city of Zoes. Lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed special prestige among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, said in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work at military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which, because of the crowding, it was impossible to sit down or move. It stayed that way for almost a day. And then the rebellious were sent to Ravensbrück. This women's camp was established in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and shorts. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for half a year, but not everyone managed to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden blocks.
The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tiered plank beds with a narrow passage between them. For two prisoners, one cotton blanket was issued. In a separate room lived block - senior barracks. There was a washroom in the corridor.

A group of Soviet women prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):

The prisoners carry all their meager possessions; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them "like a woman" tied their heads with handkerchiefs and took off their heavy boots.

Ibid, Stalag 370, Simferopol:

Prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. In Ravensbrück, 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops were made, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.
The first Soviet female prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.
Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS spread a rumor around the camp that a gang of female murderers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.
Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning for verification, sometimes lasting several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.
Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which the women used mainly to wash their hair, as there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn.
Women whose hair survived began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden scallop they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion.
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, they received a small loaf of bread for five people with an admixture of sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is testified in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, S. Müller:
“... on one of the Sundays in April, we became aware that the Soviet prisoners refused to comply with some order, referring to the fact that, according to Geneva Convention Red Cross should treat them like prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of insolence. The whole first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp. - A. Sh.) and deprived of lunch.
But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?
It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping alignment, walked, as if in a parade, minting a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The whole column moved as a single unit. Suddenly, a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up great country
Rise to the death fight...

I had heard them sing this song under their breath in their barracks before. But here it sounded like a call to fight, like faith in a quick victory.
Then they sang about Moscow.
The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment by marching the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...
It was not possible for the SS to leave Soviet women without lunch. Political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once struck their enemies and fellow campers with their unity and spirit of resistance. Once 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners destined to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to take the women away, the comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up five people and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove the newcomers into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.
In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in the city of Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove the wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who would agree to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia.
Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire.
Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Above your head, be bold!
We don't have long to endure.
The nightingale will fly in the spring ...
And open the door for us to freedom,
Takes the striped dress off her shoulders
And heal deep wounds
Wipe the tears from swollen eyes.
Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
Not long to wait, not long -
And we will be on Russian soil.

The former prisoner Germaine Tillon in her memoirs gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their solidarity was explained by the fact that they had gone through army school even before being captured. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their disobedience, unwillingness to obey the Germans.

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Prisoner of Auschwitz A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Claudia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.
In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and go into the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.
Navigator of the air regiment Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.
Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between male and female prisoners of war was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love was sometimes born that gave new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
So, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “the nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”

Probably one of recent photos Soviet women soldiers who were captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:

Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - "For Courage" (dark edging on the block), the second may have "BZ". There is an opinion that these are female pilots, but - IMHO - it is unlikely: both have "clean" shoulder straps of privates.

In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war hardened. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be subjected to checks by the local Gestapo branch in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.
On the basis of this order, on April 11, 1944, the head of the Security Service and the SD issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. So Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - senior group seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in the city of Genthin. A lot of marriage was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera led the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? ” What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the Motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman vigorously resisted, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
________________________________________ ____________________

Yad Vashem archive. M-33/1190, l. 110.

There. M-37/178, l. 17.

There. M-33/482, l. 16.

There. M-33/60, l. 38.

There. M-33/303, l 115.

There. M-33/309, l. 51.

There. M-33/295, l. 5.

There. M-33/302, l. 32.

P. Rafes. They didn't repent then. From Notes of the Translator of Divisional Intelligence. "Spark". Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.

Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, l. 94-95.

Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - "Spark". M., 1998. No. 6.

Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, l. eleven.

Yad Vashem archive. M-33/230, l. 38.53.94; M-37/1191, l. 26

B. P. Sherman. ... And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists in the city of Baranovichi and its environs on June 27, 1941 - July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.

S. M. Fischer. Memories. Manuscript. Author's archive.

K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.

T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944… p. 143.

Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/626, l. 50-52. M-33/627, sheet. 62-63.

N. Lemeshchuk. I didn't bow my head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in the Nazi camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32-33.

There. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security agencies, where they sought her confession of betrayal, committed suicide

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. On Sat. "Witnesses for the Prosecution". L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Locksmith team Ravensbrück. Memoirs of a Prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.

Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.

S. Muller. Locksmith team Ravensbrück ... p. 51-52.

Women of Ravensbrück… p.127.

G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol fortress. Simferopol. 1965, p. 82-83.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.

N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In: In Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk. 1958, p. 84.

A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war ... p. 62.

A. Nikiforova. This shouldn't happen again. M., 1958, p. 6-11.

N. Lemeshchuk. Head not bowed... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Archive Yad Vashem. М-33/438 part II, l. 127.

A. Stream. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener… S. 153.

A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again... p. 106.

A. Stream. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener…. S. 153-154.

On the basis of photographs from German albums, I spoke about the difficult fate of Soviet women prisoners of war last year in a report and a little earlier in a material on prisoners of war in Sevastopol. Behind recent months many noteworthy photographs of prisoners of war were exhibited at the beating auction, which my colleagues caught and posted in the group Stalag 372 Since FB does not provide any sort of categorization or tagging option, I'm going to separate the photos of female POWs into a separate report on my starcom68 blog. Unfortunately, most of the photos cannot be attributed. Some of them are difficult to view and understand.

A group of women prisoners of war at the hospital (?) building. To the right are wounded prisoners of war, healthy prisoners of war in the onboard vehicle. Everyone is watching with interest the German's conversation with the women and some other scene hidden from us in the background.

Captured

Road to captivity. Pay attention to gloves and suitcase

Mixed group of prisoners of war on the march

Captured. In the background is a disguised technique, it is necessary to separately understand whose and what. Characterized by reflex hand gestures straightening hair in front of the camera

Mixed group of prisoners of war. The girl opposite is supposedly holding a medical bag. Ukraine (?)

Collection point for prisoners of war. I would guess that all three of these photos were taken in about the same place.

Captured

Two women prisoners of war in the back of a truck or some kind of pickup

Prisoner of war preparing food

captive

Two women prisoners of war in front of the assembly point

A strange series of photographs taken after the capture of Tallinn. On the heads of the fighters are Swedish steel helmets, which is actually understandable. But what kind of double-breasted overcoats with 6 buttons on women is not clear. Also a legacy of the Estonian army?

In this photo, the overcoat can be clearly seen by those who understand in uniform

A very sad series of photographs, at first glance connected only by the seller. However, it is not. I tried to place these photos in a semblance of chronological order, but not the fact that I did it right. Judging by the long shadows, these photos were taken with a short time interval and in one place.

This photo shows a group of Soviet soldiers surrendering. Some of them are walking across the field, someone has already froze when they see a camera aimed at him. On most belts and helmets. Behind the escort flickers

More happy group a soldier and one woman in a dress. Perhaps this is a staged photo taken along the route and this group of soldiers was doing some work with poles in the background. All of them had their belts removed, as if they were doing household work, and there were no helmets, i.e. they have not given up now. How a civilian woman got there is a mystery.

The landscape in the background is about the same, but the characters are changing. Under the protection of mocking Germans, three men of military age in civilian clothes support a woman wounded in the head in front of the camera in a tunic, a civilian coat and a straw hat. In the background, the Germans are carrying something in a wicker container or some kind of rugs. Note the woman's headband and the men's fully civilian attire.

Captured somewhere under the cliff, the wounded. Judging by the vegetation, we can assume a choice: Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus. Some of the wounded lie on stretchers or mattresses. It was here that the woman from the photo above was moved. Why did I think this photo was taken later? Because most of the wounded look at her with interest, and the bandages on their heads are fresh. The far left prisoner of war has something shining in his buttonholes. On the ground are the remains of packaging from dressing bags.

The woman still attracts the attention of the photographer and he makes a close-up shot, leaning over her. The bandages are fresh, the blood on the left side of the face is wiped off, but on the right side it remains. The sleeve of the coat was stained with clay, some kind of civilian jacket was put under the head. Perhaps, after all, the events had a reverse sequence, but then I cannot explain a number of points.

That's all for now. Any clarifications are welcome.

“I did not immediately decide to publish this chapter from the book “Captivity” on the site. This is one of the most terrible and heroic stories. Low bow to you, women, for everything you endured and, alas, never appreciated by the state, people, researchers. About this it was difficult to write. It is even more difficult to talk with former prisoners. A deep bow to you - the Heroines."

"And there were no such beautiful women on the whole earth..." Job (42:15)

"My tears were my bread day and night... ...my enemies scold me..." Psalter. (41:4:11)

From the first days of the war, tens of thousands of female medical workers were mobilized into the Red Army. Thousands of women volunteered to join the army and militia divisions. Based on the decrees of the State Defense Committee of March 25, April 13 and 23, 1942, mass mobilization of women began. Only at the call of the Komsomol, 550 thousand Soviet women became soldiers. 300,000 were drafted into the Air Defense Forces. Hundreds of thousands - to the military medical and sanitary service, signal troops, road and other units. In May 1942, another GKO decree was adopted - on the mobilization of 25,000 women in the Navy.

Three air regiments were formed from women: two bombers and one fighter, the 1st separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, and the 1st separate women's reserve rifle regiment.

Established in 1942, the Central Women's Sniper School trained 1,300 female snipers.

Ryazan Infantry School. Voroshilov trained women commanders of rifle units. In 1943 alone, 1388 people graduated from it.

During the war years, women served in all branches of the military and represented all military specialties. Women made up 41% of all doctors, 43% of paramedics, 100% of nurses. In total, 800 thousand women served in the Red Army.

However, female medical instructors and nurses in the active army accounted for only 40%, which violates the prevailing notion of a girl under fire rescuing the wounded. In his interview, A. Volkov, who went through the entire war as a medical instructor, refutes the myth that only girls were medical instructors. According to him, the girls were nurses and orderlies in the medical battalions, and mostly men served as medical instructors and orderlies on the front line in the trenches.

“Even frail men were not taken to medical instructor courses. Only hefty ones! The work of a medical instructor is harder than that of a sapper. A medical instructor must crawl at least four times during the night to find the wounded. , so big, almost a kilometer on you! Yes, this is nonsense. We were especially warned: if you drag a wounded man to the rear, you will be shot on the spot for desertion. After all, what is a medical instructor for? A medical instructor must prevent a large loss of blood and apply a bandage. to drag him to the rear, for this, everything is subordinate to the medical instructor. There is always someone to take out of the battlefield. The medical instructor, after all, is subordinate to no one. Only the head of the medical battalion."

Not everything can be agreed with A. Volkov. The female medical instructors saved the wounded, pulling them out on themselves, dragging them behind them, there are many examples of this. Another thing is interesting. The women-front-line soldiers themselves note the discrepancy between the stereotypical screen images and the truth of the war.

For example, a former medical instructor Sofya Dubnyakova says: “I watch films about the war: a nurse is on the front line, she is neat, clean, not in wadded trousers, but in a skirt, she has a pilot on a tuft .... Well, not true! ... Is it We could pull out the wounded like this? .. You don’t really crawl in a skirt when there are only men around. But to tell the truth, skirts were only given to us at the end of the war. At the same time, we also received knitted underwear instead of men's underwear. "

In addition to medical instructors, among whom were women, there were porters in the sanrots - they were only men. They also helped the wounded. However, their main task is to carry the already bandaged wounded from the battlefield.

On August 3, 1941, the People's Commissar of Defense issued Order No. 281 "On the procedure for submitting military orderlies and porters to the government award for good combat work." The work of orderlies and porters was equated to a military feat. The said order stated: "For the removal from the battlefield of 15 wounded with their rifles or light machine guns present to the government award with the medal “For Military Merit” or “For Courage” of each orderly and porter. "For the removal of 25 wounded from the battlefield with their weapons, submit to the Order of the Red Star, for the removal of 40 wounded - to the Order of the Red Banner, for the removal of 80 the wounded - to the Order of Lenin.

150 thousand Soviet women were awarded military orders and medals. 200 - Orders of Glory 2nd and 3rd degree. Four became full cavaliers of the Order of Glory of three degrees. 86 women were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

At all times, the service of women in the army was considered immoral. There are many insulting lies about them, it is enough to recall PZh - a field wife.

Oddly enough, such an attitude towards women was engendered by front-line men. War veteran N.S. Posylayev recalls: “As a rule, women who got to the front soon became mistresses of officers. How else: if a woman is on her own, there will be no end to harassment.

To be continued...

A. Volkov said that when a group of girls arrived in the army, “merchants” immediately followed them: “First, the army headquarters took the youngest and most beautiful, then the headquarters of a lower rank.”

In the autumn of 1943, a medical orderly girl arrived at his company at night. And only one medical instructor is assigned to the company. It turns out that the girl “was molested everywhere, and since she did not yield to anyone, she was sent down below. From the headquarters of the army to the headquarters of the division, then to the headquarters of the regiment, then to the company, and the company commander sent the touchy into the trenches.

Zina Serdyukova, a former foreman of the reconnaissance company of the 6th Guards Cavalry Corps, knew how to deal strictly with soldiers and commanders, but one day the following happened:

“It was winter, the platoon lodged in a rural house, where I had a nook. In the evening I was summoned by the commander of the regiment. Sometimes he himself set the task of sending behind enemy lines. This time he was drunk, the table with the leftover food was not cleared. Without saying anything, he rushed towards me, trying to undress me. I knew how to fight, I'm a scout after all. And then he called the orderly, ordering me to be held. They both tore my clothes off. The landlady, who was quartered, flew into my cries, and only this saved me. I ran through the village, half-dressed, crazy. For some reason, I thought that I would find protection from the commander of the corps, General Sharaburko, he fatherly called me daughter. The adjutant did not let me in, but I rushed to the general, beaten, disheveled. She told incoherently how Colonel M. had tried to rape me. The general reassured me, saying that I would not see Colonel M. again. A month later, my company commander reported that the colonel had died in battle, he was part of a penal battalion. That's what war is, it's not just bombs, tanks, exhausting marches..."

Everything was in life at the front, where "there are four steps to death." However, most veterans with sincere respect remember the girls who fought at the front. Most often, those who sat in the rear, behind the backs of women who had gone to the front as volunteers, were most often slandered.

Former front-line soldiers, despite the difficulties they had to face in the men's team, remember their combat friends with warmth and gratitude.

Rashel Berezina, in the army since 1942 - interpreter-intelligence of military intelligence, ended the war in Vienna as a senior interpreter of the intelligence department of the First Guards Mechanized Corps under the command of Lieutenant General I.N. Russiyanov. She says that they treated her very respectfully, in the intelligence department in her presence they even stopped using foul language.

Maria Fridman, a scout of the 1st NKVD division, who fought in the Nevsky Dubrovka area near Leningrad, recalls that scouts protected her, filled her with sugar and chocolate, which they found in German dugouts. True, sometimes I had to defend myself with a "fist in the teeth."

“If you don’t hit me in the teeth, you’ll be lost! .. In the end, the scouts began to protect me from other people’s suitors:“ If no one, then no one.

When volunteer girls from Leningrad appeared in the regiment, we were dragged every month to the “brood”, as we called it. In the medical battalion they checked if anyone got pregnant ... After one such “brood”, the regiment commander asked me in surprise: “Maruska, for whom are you protecting yourself? They will kill us anyway...” The people were rude, but kind. And fair. I never saw such militant justice as in the trenches.”

The everyday difficulties that Maria Fridman had to face at the front are now remembered with irony.

“The lice have eaten the soldiers. They pull off shirts, pants, but what about a girl? I had to look for an abandoned dugout and there, stripping naked, I tried to get rid of lice. Sometimes they helped me, someone would stand at the door and say: “Don’t poke your head, Maruska crushes lice there!”

A bath day! And go as needed! I somehow retired, climbed under a bush, above the parapet of the trench, the Germans either did not immediately notice, or they let me sit quietly, but when I began to pull on my pants, it whistled from left and right. I fell into the trench, panties at the heels. Oh, they were guffawing in the trenches about how Maruskin blinded the Germans ...

At first, I must admit, this soldier's cackle irritated me, until I realized that they were not laughing at me, but at their own soldier's fate, in blood and lice, laughing in order to survive, not to go crazy. And it was enough for me that after a bloody skirmish someone asked in alarm: “Manka, are you alive?”

M. Fridman fought at the front and behind enemy lines, was wounded three times, was awarded the medal "For Courage", the Order of the Red Star ...

To be continued...

Front-line girls bore all the hardships of front-line life on an equal footing with men, not inferior to them either in courage or in military skill.

The Germans, in whose army women carried only auxiliary service, were extremely surprised by such an active participation of Soviet women in hostilities.

They even tried to play " women's card” in his propaganda, speaking about the inhumanity of the Soviet system, which throws women into the fire of war. An example of this propaganda is a German leaflet that appeared at the front in October 1943: "If a friend was wounded ..."

The Bolsheviks have always surprised the whole world. And in this war, they gave something completely new:

« Woman at the front! Since ancient times, people have been fighting and everyone has always believed that war is a man's business, men should fight, and it never occurred to anyone to involve women in war. True, there were individual cases, such as the notorious "shock girls" at the end of the last war - but these were exceptions and they went down in history as a curiosity or an anecdote.

But no one has thought of the mass involvement of women in the army as fighters, on the front line with weapons in their hands, except for the Bolsheviks.

Every nation seeks to protect its women from danger, to save a woman, because a woman is a mother, the preservation of the nation depends on her. Most of the men may perish, but the women must survive, otherwise the whole nation may perish."

Are the Germans suddenly thinking about the fate of the Russian people, they are concerned about the issue of its preservation. Of course not! It turns out that all this is just a preamble to the most important German thought:

“Therefore, the government of any other country, in the event of excessive losses threatening the continued existence of the nation, would try to withdraw its country from the war, because every national government cherishes its people.” (Highlighted by the Germans. Here is the main idea: we must end the war, and we need a national government. - Aron Schneer).

« The Bolsheviks think otherwise. Georgian Stalin and various Kaganoviches, Berias, Mikoyans and the entire Jewish kahal (well, how to do without anti-Semitism in propaganda! - Aron Schneer), sitting on the people's neck, do not give a damn about the Russian people and all other peoples of Russia and Russia itself. They have one goal - to maintain their power and their skins. Therefore, they need war, war at all costs, war by any means, at the cost of any victims, war to the last man, to the last man and woman. “If a friend was wounded” - for example, both legs or arms were torn off, it doesn’t matter, to hell with him, the “girlfriend” will “know how” to die at the front, drag her there into the meat grinder of war, there’s nothing to be gentle with her. Stalin does not feel sorry for the Russian woman ... "

The Germans, of course, miscalculated, did not take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of thousands of Soviet women, volunteer girls. Of course, there were mobilizations, extraordinary measures in the face of extreme danger, the tragic situation that had developed on the fronts, but it would be wrong not to take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of the youth, born after the revolution and ideologically prepared in the pre-war years for struggle and self-sacrifice.

One of these girls was Yulia Drunina, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who went to the front. A poem she wrote after the war explains why she and thousands of other girls volunteered for the front:

"I left my childhood To a dirty car, To an infantry train, To a sanitary platoon. ... I came from school To damp dugouts. From the Beautiful Lady - To "mother" and "rewind". Because the name is Closer than "Russia", Couldn't find it."

Women fought at the front, thereby asserting their right, equal with men, to defend the Fatherland. The enemy repeatedly praised the participation of Soviet women in battles:

"Russian women ... communists hate any enemy, they are fanatical, dangerous. In 1941, the sanitary battalions defended the last frontiers before Leningrad with grenades and rifles in their hands."

The liaison officer Prince Albert of Hohenzollern, who took part in the storming of Sevastopol in July 1942, "admired the Russians and especially women, who, according to him, show amazing courage, dignity and fortitude."

According to the Italian soldier, he and his comrades had to fight near Kharkov against the "Russian women's regiment". Several women were captured by the Italians. However, in accordance with the agreement between the Wehrmacht and the italian army, all captured by the Italians were transferred to the Germans. The latter decided to shoot all the women. According to the Italian, "the women did not expect anything else. They only asked to be allowed to wash themselves in the bathhouse and wash their dirty linen in order to die in a clean state, as it should be according to the old Russian customs. The Germans granted their request. And here they are, having washed and putting on clean shirts, they went to be shot ... "

The fact that the story of the Italian about the participation of the female infantry unit in the battles is not fiction is confirmed by another story. Since both in Soviet scientific and in fiction, there were numerous references only to the exploits of individual women - representatives of all military specialties, and it was never told about the participation in the battles of individual female infantry units, I had to turn to the material published in the Vlasov newspaper Zarya.

To be continued...

The article "Valya Nesterenko - assistant commander of the intelligence platoon" tells about the fate of a Soviet girl taken prisoner. Valya graduated from the Ryazan Infantry School. According to her, about 400 women and girls studied with her:

“Why were they all volunteers? They were considered volunteers. But how did they go! They gathered young people, a representative from the district military registration and enlistment office comes to the meeting and asks: “How, girls, love Soviet power? The answer is "Love". - "So it is necessary to protect!" They write statements. And then try, refuse! And since 1942, mobilizations began at all. Each receives a summons, is in the military registration and enlistment office. Goes to commission. The commission gives a conclusion: fit for military service. They are sent to the unit. Those who are older or have children are mobilized for work. And who is younger and without children - that in the army. There were 200 people in my issue. Some did not want to study, but then they were sent to dig trenches.

In our regiment of three battalions, there were two male and one female. The female was the first battalion - submachine gunners. In the beginning, there were girls from orphanages in it. They were desperate. We occupied with this battalion up to ten settlements, and then most of them were out of order. Requested a refill. Then the remnants of the battalion were withdrawn from the front and a new women's battalion was sent from Serpukhov. A women's division was specially formed there. There were older women and girls in the new battalion. All were mobilized. We studied for three months as submachine gunners. At first, while there were no big fights, they were brave.

Our regiment was advancing on the villages of Zhilino, Savkino, Surovezhki. The women's battalion acted in the middle, and the men's - from the left and right flanks. The women's battalion was to cross the Helm and advance to the edge of the forest. As soon as they climbed the hillock, the artillery began to beat. Girls and women started screaming and crying. They huddled together, so the German artillery put them all in a heap. There were at least 400 people in the battalion, and three girls survived from the entire battalion. What happened - and it's scary to look at ... mountains of female corpses. Is this a woman's business, war?"

In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.

In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them.

After the defeat of the Red Army in the Crimea in May 1942, an unknown girl in a military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko in the fishing village "Mayak" near Kerch. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: "Shoot, you bastards! I'm dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!" The girl was shot in the yard.

At the end of August 1942, a group of sailors was shot in the village of Krymskaya in the Krasnodar Territory, among them there were several girls in military uniform.

In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Alexandrovna, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.

In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.

On January 5, 1943, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured near the Severny farm. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 "a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, her face, hands were cut, her breasts were cut off ..."

Knowing what awaits them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Often captured women were raped before they died. Hans Rudhoff, a soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, testifies that in the winter of 1942 "... Russian nurses lay on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... These dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written ".

In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the yard, where there were nurses from the hospital. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they dragged them into a barn and raped them. However, they were not killed.

Women prisoners of war who ended up in camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drogobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Lyuda. "Captain Stroher, the commandant of the camp, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Luda to a bunk, and in this position Stroher raped her and then shot her."

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orlyand gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and "ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals - if they were sick with venereal diseases. He carried out an external examination himself. Chose 3 of them were young girls, took them to him to "serve". German soldiers and officers came for women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

The Millerovo POW camp also contained female prisoners. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible:

"The policemen often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two in a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, outrage, mock, do whatever he pleases. Once, during the evening verification, the chief of police himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “A for those who do not want to go, arrange a “red firefighter". The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, twisted it and inserted it into the girl's vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. It was forbidden to scream Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back the cry, and after such a punishment they could not move for a long time.The commandant, behind her eyes they called her a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated mockeries. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning. We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.

To be continued...

In the fall of 1941, K. Kromiadi, a member of the commission for the distribution of labor, who visited the Sedlice camp, talked with the captured women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: "...everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves."

A group of female medical workers taken prisoner in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord".

Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk in Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was forbidden. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all the women with "the condition of a free settlement in Smolensk."

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were captured: doctors, nurses, nurses. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 female prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. Everyone was lined up in Rovno, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." Those who were separated from the general group were shot. The rest were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the car into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered in a hole in the floor.

On the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and on February 23, 1943, the women were brought to the city of Zoes. Lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed special prestige among women prisoners of war. EL Klemm, on behalf of everyone, declared in German: "We are prisoners of war and will not work at military factories." In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which, because of the crowding, it was impossible to sit down or move. It stayed that way for almost a day. And then the rebellious were sent to Ravensbrück.

This women's camp was established in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and shorts. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for half a year, but not everyone managed to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden blocks.

The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tiered plank beds with a narrow passage between them. For two prisoners, one cotton blanket was issued. In a separate room lived block - senior barracks. There was a washroom in the hallway.

Prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. In Ravensbrück, 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops were made, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.

The first Soviet female prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.

Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS spread a rumor around the camp that a gang of female murderers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.

Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning for verification, sometimes lasting several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which the women used mainly to wash their hair, as there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn.

Women whose hair survived began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that "Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion."

For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening we received for five people a small loaf of bread with an admixture of sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is testified in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, S. Müller: that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of impudence. All the first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp - the author's note) and deprived of lunch.

But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?

It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping alignment, walked, as if in a parade, minting a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The whole column moved as a single unit. Suddenly, a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up, huge country, Get up for a mortal battle...

Then they sang about Moscow.

The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment by marching the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...

It was not possible for the SS to leave Soviet women without lunch. Political prisoners took care of food for them in advance."

To be continued...

In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in the city of Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove the wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who would agree to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia.

Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire.

Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Keep your head up, Russian girls! Above your head, be bold! We don't have long to endure, A nightingale will fly in in the spring... And open the doors for us to freedom, Take off a striped dress from our shoulders And heal deep wounds, Wipe the tears from swollen eyes. Keep your head up, Russian girls! Be Russian everywhere, everywhere! Not long to wait, not long - And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germain Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: "... their solidarity was explained by the fact that they had gone through an army school even before their capture. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also quite rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - benevolent and attentive. In addition, we liked their disobedience, unwillingness to obey the Germans. "

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Prisoner of Auschwitz A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Claudia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.

In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and move into the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontieva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.

Air regiment navigator Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was taken prisoner and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.

Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between male and female prisoners of war was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love was sometimes born that gave new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.

So, from the documents of the camp infirmary Stalag No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that "who arrived at the 1st City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, the nurse Sindeva Alexandra left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp."

In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war hardened. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be subjected to checks by the local Gestapo branch in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.

On the basis of this order, on April 11, 1944, the head of the Security Service and the SD issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - the eldest of a group of seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in the city of Gentin. A lot of marriage was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera led the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.

In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? ” What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman vigorously resisted, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. "Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remained unknown.

To be continued...

Women who escaped from captivity continued to fight against the enemy. In secret message No. 12 dated July 17, 1942, the chief of the security police of the occupied eastern regions to the imperial minister of security of the XVII military district, in the section "Jews" it is reported that in Uman "a Jewish doctor was arrested, who had previously served in the Red Army and was taken prisoner "After escaping from the prisoner of war camp, she took refuge in an orphanage in Uman under a false name and practiced medicine. She used this opportunity to enter the prisoner of war camp for espionage." Probably, the unknown heroine assisted the prisoners of war.

Women prisoners of war, risking their lives, repeatedly saved their Jewish friends. In Dulag No. 160, Khorol, about 60 thousand prisoners were kept in a quarry on the territory of a brick factory. There was also a group of girls-prisoners of war. Of these, seven or eight remained alive by the spring of 1942. In the summer of 1942 they were all shot for harboring a Jewish woman.

In the autumn of 1942, in the Georgievsk camp, along with other prisoners, there were several hundred female prisoners of war. Once the Germans took the identified Jews to be shot. Among the doomed was Tsilya Gedaleva. At the last minute, the German officer in charge of the massacre suddenly said: "Medchen raus! - The girl - get out!" And Tsilya returned to the women's barracks. Girlfriends gave Tsilya a new name - Fatima, and in the future, according to all documents, she passed as a Tatar.

Military doctor III rank Emma Lvovna Khotina from September 9 to 20 was surrounded in the Bryansk forests. Was taken prisoner. During the next stage, she fled from the village of Kokarevka to the city of Trubchevsk. Hiding under a false name, often changing apartments. She was helped by her comrades - Russian doctors who worked in the camp infirmary in Trubchevsk. They established contact with the partisans. And when on February 2, 1942, the partisans attacked Trubchevsk, 17 doctors, paramedics and nurses left with them. E. L. Khotina became the head of the sanitary service of the partisan association of the Zhytomyr region.

Sarah Zemelman - military paramedic, lieutenant of the medical service, worked in the mobile field hospital No. 75 of the South-Western Front. September 21, 1941 near Poltava, wounded in the leg, was taken prisoner along with the hospital. The head of the hospital, Vasilenko, handed Sarah documents in the name of Alexandra Mikhailovskaya, the murdered paramedic. There were no traitors among the hospital staff who were captured. Three months later, Sarah managed to escape from the camp. For a month she wandered through the forests and villages, until not far from Krivoy Rog, in the village of Veseli Terny, she was sheltered by the family of the paramedic-veterinarian Ivan Lebedchenko. For over a year, Sarah lived in the basement of the house. January 13, 1943 Merry Terny were liberated by the Red Army. Sarah went to the draft board and asked to go to the front, but she was placed in the filtration camp No. 258. They were called in for interrogations only at night. The investigators asked how she, a Jewess, survived in Nazi captivity? And only a meeting in the same camp with colleagues in the hospital - a radiologist and a chief surgeon - helped her.

S. Zemelman was sent to the medical battalion of the 3rd Pomor Division of the 1st Polish Army. She ended the war on the outskirts of Berlin on May 2, 1945. She was awarded three Orders of the Red Star, the Order Patriotic War 1st degree, awarded the Polish Order of the Silver Cross of Merit.

Unfortunately, after being released from the camps, the prisoners faced injustice, suspicion and contempt for them, who had gone through the hell of the German camps.

Grunya Grigoryeva recalls that the Red Army soldiers who liberated Ravensbrück on April 30, 1945, “... looked at the girls-prisoners of war as traitors. This shocked us. We did not expect such a meeting. Ours preferred French women more, Poles - foreigners.

After the end of the war, women prisoners of war went through all the torment and humiliation during SMERSH checks in filtration camps. Alexandra Ivanovna Max, one of 15 Soviet women liberated in the Neuhammer camp, tells how a Soviet officer in a repatriation camp chastised them: “Shame on you, you surrendered, you ...” And I argue with him: “Ah what were we supposed to do?" And he says: "You should have shot yourself, but not surrendered!" And I say: "Where did we have pistols?" - "Well, you could, you should have hanged yourself, killed yourself. But don't surrender."

Many front-line soldiers knew what awaited the former prisoners at home. One of the released women, N.A. Kurlyak, recalls: “We, 5 girls, were left to work in a Soviet military unit. We kept asking: “Send me home.” We were dissuaded, begged: “Stay a little longer, they will look at you with contempt "But we didn't believe."

And already a few years after the war, a female doctor, a former prisoner, writes in a private letter: "... sometimes I am very sorry that I survived, because I always carry this dark spot of captivity. Still, many do not know what kind of "life" it was, if you can call it life. Many do not believe that we honestly endured the burdens of captivity there and remained honest citizens of the Soviet state. "

Staying in fascist captivity irreparably affected the health of many women. For most of them, while still in the camp, natural female processes stopped and many never recovered.

Some, transferred from POW camps to concentration camps, were subjected to sterilization. “I didn’t have children after being sterilized in the camp. And so I remained like a cripple ... Many of our girls did not have children. So some husbands left because they wanted to have children. And my husband didn’t leave me as I am, he says, we will live like that. And we still live with him. "

The only surviving diary of an Ostarbeiter girl from the USSR was published in the “Edition of Elena Shubina”. A young woman from Kursk, Alexandra Mikhaleva, was driven away by the Germans to work in 1942, where she stayed until the end of the war and all this time wrote down what happened to her.

An excerpt from the diary of an Ostarbeiter girl

1942

June 5

At 6 o'clock the train started from the Kursk station. It included Russian young people going to Germany to work. We're riding in a freight car, 43 girls. Got to know many. Our best travel companions. Vera is a smart, reasonable, good girl in all respects, Zina. We all sleep side by side on straw.

June 7

At 10 o'clock we arrived in Minsk, got some soup and, after eating, went to bed. For each pasture, a German soldier is assigned - a brigadier. It is interesting how the Belarusians looked at us, looking out of the cars. It was Sunday. The residents were all dressed up in festive costumes. Many older women wept as they looked at us.

June 8

We drove all night and early in the morning we were already in Poland.

Polish Jews work at Polish stations. Young boys and girls, marked with yellow stars in front and behind.

Russian prisoners are working everywhere, and we are going farther and farther from our homeland. It's already the 3rd day. We received only about 1 kg of bread, we drank tea once.

It is now 10 o'clock in the morning, the train stops in Baranovichi. Here we ate, this time a good soup. We drive through fields and forests for many hours in a row. Finally, at half past five, we arrived in the Polish city of Volkovysk, a nice, small town badly destroyed by German bombs.

My [cousin] Gali's nose bled from the long drive, she was crying.

the 9th of June

At 5 o'clock in the morning we arrived in Bialystok. Here we've been through medical commission. Previously, our heads were examined in front of her, they were smeared with some kind of ointment and then bathed. Then they gave the soup to eat and, having seated again in freight cars, only without straw, they drove on. At night, the carriage was especially crowded. Without straw it turned out to be very difficult to sleep.

I woke up at dawn, the train was approaching the capital of Poland - Warsaw. A huge city divided by a river into western and eastern parts. Lots of factories and plants. The industrial areas have been heavily bombed.

June 11

We are approaching the German border. Small towns and villages flash by. The fields are neatly marked, cleanly processed.

At 5 pm we arrived in the German city of Halle. We stood at the station for a long time. Then we were led through the streets of the city to a bathhouse. We walked in a long column of three people in a row. Many of us were rural - poorly, shabby, clumsily dressed. Luxuriously dressed German women with bizarre hairdos walked through the streets and proudly held their beautiful swollen heads high.

The streets are paved and lined with large brick buildings. Everything is gray and gloomy, gloomy and strict, like the inhabitants themselves. No loud laughter, no friendly smile was met here. In general, the population looks at us as a burden - probably, the radio said that we came to them voluntarily - to escape from hunger.

In fact, only the 1st echelon left our region voluntarily. The rest - and our echelon was the 5th in a row - were sent by force, according to subpoenas.

After the bath, we walked for a long time through the streets of the city with suitcases, village streets with bags, and finally came to a provincial area, to wooden houses built for us, though clean, with bunks for sleeping. I really wanted to eat. We ate, even when we were on the road, at 12 noon we drank coffee with bread and after that we got nothing more, went to bed hungry.

12 June

Woke up early. The sides hurt - it was hard to sleep on plank beds. Having built everyone, they handed each three a loaf of bread. It was very cold and overcast. The sky is cold, grey, inhospitable. We stand in the yard and crush bread.

Soon they take us to the commission - already the 3rd in a row. The commission is not strict, they do not stop for a long time - they quickly throw them aside as suitable. We returned to the barracks. Terribly hungry.

Frozen and wet, we did not immediately enter the barracks, because the bosses came to take the workforce. They looked at us and talked. They began to count. We were very worried - we were afraid that we would be separated. In our group were almost all urban. One batch was taken to the fields. We, a group of 70 people, were taken by the factory chief and another manufacturer. At first, our host - an old man with thin lips and blue, really good-natured, sly eyes - was liked by everyone.

Our hosts took us to the station - very beautiful, well-lit, large. We had to go to another city. We boarded the passenger train, still hungry and tired from the long walk.

An interesting incident happened on the train. There were two girls in the car with us. They began to show us photographs, including photographs of German soldiers. In the carriage, talking animatedly and eating a biscuit, sat a German girl in a railway suit. When one of the German photographs was in my hands, this girl jumped up and, taking the card from my hands, glanced quickly, and blushed greatly. Then I read what was written reverse side cards and in a changed voice asked whose card, from whom. And since the Russian girl did not know what these questions led to, and, in addition, she was confused, she answered: my friend.

The German girl began to talk to the German in an excited voice. Then the German took away all the German photos from the Russian girl, explaining that a German soldier should not give cards and that if the police saw a soldier's card from a Russian girl, then the soldier would be "cut off his head."

Actually, it wasn't. The soldier turned out to be the fiance of this German girl. We understood this from her conversation with the German.

So in the same car came together German and Russian girls - rivals in love.

We drove on. There were two transfers. On one of them we were divided. One owner took 25 people for himself, the other - 45. Galya, Yulia and our best fellow travelers got to the last one. And our neighbors, two sisters - Galya and Zoya - to the first.

It was very embarrassing. We asked to join them to us, but they did not even listen to us.

It was 10 pm. We went out to the platform. The village girls could not immediately line up in a row of three. They were confused. Yes, and the city, too, did not behave cheekily, it turned out turmoil. The owner was angry. He hit one of the village girls in the face. He got angry and yelled at us like a flock of sheep. Soon we were all put into a large freight car - dirty and dark - and, having closed the doors, we were taken further.

After driving a little, we got out of the car and went to the factory. With what a heavy, heartbreaking feeling we crossed the threshold of the plant. There was the sound of cars. We were taken to a working dining room - simple tables, no luxury. They handed out a small piece of sandwich and strong coffee. Then they took me to the barracks. We liked the barracks after the road and the first barracks.

There were 12 girls in one room. There were 5 sleeping bunks in the room. There are 2 girls on each bed - upstairs and downstairs. After settling in, we went to bed.

June 13

Early in the morning we were awakened by a German woman - our boss. Having washed and cleaned the beds, we went in a group with a policeman at the head to the dining room. We drank cold coffee with a sandwich.

At 12 o'clock they ate soup without bread. It was bitter to watch how Russians, Ukrainians and other workers greedily ate the soup and, knocking each other down, climbed to the German cook for more.

At 4 o'clock, young girls who had arrived at this factory earlier came to us. They began to talk about the local order.

They brought fear and terror to us. Apparently they were being held captive. They talked a lot about their life in Ukraine. They are all so friendly and kind.

We are not working today. All the time they come to our room from other rooms, to look at us - newcomers. Then we all wrote letters home. It was very annoying that it was not possible to write freely. The letters were placed in an envelope and left open for inspection. Moreover, it was completely impossible to write to the home address. It was necessary to write to the commandant's office or to a German soldier.

The mood was very heavy. Many, remembering their relatives, wept. There were no words, no deeds to console, to soothe shattered nerves and a worried heart.

Will we ever return home now? What is our future? What is the outcome of this damned war, which made almost the whole world suffer. True, many live even better than before the war. These are people who are indifferent to the external environment. They don't care who wins - Russia or Hitler. They know how to live in prosperity and contentment under one or the other government. Especially during this war, people who did not participate in it at all became so rich and fat that they did not feel the suffering of others, did not notice the hunger and tears of others.

June 14th. Sunday

Nobody works. The weather is rainy and cold. We are chilly, we want to sleep, some kind of fatigue, laziness.

In general, how long we have been here, and whoever arrived here before, has not yet seen good, warm, sunny weather here. By evening the rain had stopped, but it was still cold. We were sitting under the window. The windows were all open, and girls were sitting in them, young guys were walking along the street behind the partition - Ukrainians, Croats and representatives of other nationalities who had worked in German factories for a long time. They stopped and talked to the girls. Many wanted to go out for a walk, run. But it was strictly forbidden to go beyond the fence.

Ukrainian girls, who quickly fell in love with us, vied with each other to invite us to their rooms. Having joined one of the groups of girls, we sang a Ukrainian song.

The guys stood and listened to us. Suddenly 3 German soldiers approached. One of them, coming close to one of the guys, asking him something, swung it in the face with a strong blow. Got another one too. The rest dispersed quickly.

The girls, frightened, fled. In the evening, having gathered in one room, we decided to have fun. Dance songs were sung, girls danced. It was fun. One girl was crying through laughter. To our songs, Croatian girls ran up to the windows, who were in a better position here than other nations, because the Ungar military fought together with the Germans against Russia. And our brothers and fathers were their enemies.

June 15

First day at the factory.

We were each placed at the car and ordered to closely monitor the progress of the work. The German worker, to whom I was assigned, looked at me, smiled and continued to work quickly, pressing the cogs, turning the wheel. I looked with uncomprehending eyes, trying to make my physiognomy smarter. I couldn’t even get a closer look at where it starts, what it leads to, and stood, deafened by the noise, watching how the machine moves with all its parts, like a living one.

Our hut worked this week from 3 pm to 1 am with two breaks of half an hour. The girls, each standing by their car, blinked, smiled and showed signs that they could not understand anything.

Looking closer, I saw both the beginning and the end. The worker made me do the easiest part I could. Then he suggested even further, I tried, I was in a hurry, but I forgot what followed, and I got lost.

There was a break at 7 o'clock. Then we went back to the cars. Little by little, although often straying, I was able to do something. At 12 o'clock at night they began to finish.

My "teacher" began to clean, wipe the car. I tried to help him. On a dark night we walked towards the barracks, lit by a policeman's lantern.

22nd of June. Monday

This is the second week I've been working at a factory that makes weapons. We help the Germans in their struggle against our fathers and brothers. I worked with Galya in the revolving shop, on the machine. In this workshop, only Russian girls were behind this, in essence, male work. German girls and women worked in other workshops, in lighter sedentary work. These patriots of their “victorious motherland” came to the factory with pride and pleasure: in silks, crepe de chines, richly but tastelessly dressed, all with the same, twisted hairstyles, most of them were bow-legged, shapeless.

Today is the anniversary of the war between Germany and Russia. A year since the German troops crossed the Russian border. It's been almost 8 months since the Germans captured my hometown of Kursk, and I don't see my own, beloved father.

Yesterday was Sunday, they took us for a walk. We walked 4 people in a row with a German matron. The town is wonderful, just a corner of paradise, surrounded by mountains, lush from continuous forests. Houses - clean, beautifully built, with balconies decorated with flowers - were almost invisible among the forests. Very nice, cozy in this place Walterhausen.

Already the 2nd day we all feel hungry. Especially on Sunday. At 10 in the morning they gave 50 g of bread with coffee, at 12 for two they gave out a plate of potatoes, rotten and smelly, and a ladle of gravy, and the “feeding” ended at 7 in the evening with a piece of bread and butter.

June 24

I feel broken. Can't get used to hard work. Do not get enough sleep. They raise with a merciless cry right at the strongest, sweetest time of sleep, at 3 am. The body, as if bruised, aches, the hands hurt, the legs hurt, the head is heavy, the eyes stick together, everything is spinning, it makes noise in the ears. With difficulty getting out of bed, having hastily dressed, having eaten a small piece of a loaf, we all go to work in the barracks.

It is still dark outside, the early morning dawn is barely breaking. Very cold. The cold covers the bodies that have not cooled down from the bed. Everyone's faces are yellow, their eyes are red, sleepy. You can hardly stand at work and look forward to a break. At 7 o'clock they give bread and butter. You greedily swallow this bread, which seems so delicious. Then you go back to the shop. You start working.

Making some part for a revolver. The main course of work was memorized mechanically, but no one understood anything. Weakened hands barely hold the planing lever, hot shavings burn the hands, fly into the face, cut the hands from inexperience. At long tables sit rejecters - old men. They look with insensitive, dull faces at young Russian girls, not yet completely faded. They examine from head to toe strong bodies, beautiful legs, breasts of Russian girls. From time to time they eat bread, thickly buttered, and drink something from flasks, irritating our appetite. Every now and then the chief master with a stone face passes through the shop. He stands at each machine for a long time, strictly monitors the work.

June 26

At night they woke us up, saying that there was an air raid alert. They made me get dressed and go to the shelter. The German watchman shouted and swore, driving everyone into the shelter. I didn't feel any fear - I had already seen and heard bombings so many times. I wanted to sleep, I was terribly cold.

The alarm lasted 10 minutes. At 3 o'clock they got back to work. It's so disgusting to stand at the barre, you just count the time until the break. The girls, in order to get humpbacks, leave, hide in the restroom, in 15 minutes. before the call. Then, when they receive bread, there is a fight for these big pieces, a German woman - a fat, lush lady - calls for help from a policeman, because a crowd of hungry young girls pinned her to the wall.

Having eaten this bread, they again went to the machines and stood from 7 to 11, looking forward to dinner. bad feeling seizes me when you sometimes watch how everyone, with flushed eyes, reddened and sweaty faces, knocking each other down, runs to the poured plates and greedily swallows hot soup. Spoons are sparkling, everyone is rushing to get more. German workers, craftsmen, female workers often stand at the door and watch how, forgetting shame and pride, all the girls, who are not like themselves, scolding each other angrily, impudently climb for more. The policeman shouts, calls us pigs and explains all this disgrace by the uncivilized and disgusting Russian people.

Today at 11 p.m. they gave potatoes with sauce, liquid and sour. Moreover, they give potatoes in their uniforms, and there are a lot of rotten potatoes. Who has more, who has less, who is bolder, climbs for more. At 7 pm there was again potatoes with sour curd. Before we had time to finish eating potatoes, a German girl came up to our table, distributing potatoes, and asked Galya and Yulia to dance - once she saw the girls dancing in a tent and now she asked: the policeman, they say, wants to watch. There was no mood, they had not finished all the potatoes yet, but the German asked so much that Galya and Yulia had to dance in the dining room without finishing the potatoes.

June 28

Day off. During this week we were so overtired, and the weather was cloudy and cold, that we spent the whole day in bed, going only once to the dining room. We lie in bed, we want to eat. All sorts of delicious foods come to mind, we remember how we ate at home, at festive dinners, but we want to eat more and more.

We are looking forward to 7, when we should give two thin pieces of loaf, lightly spread. All the girls agreed to protest, that is, to refuse this bread, after which you remain hungry, you even feel hunger even more. But as soon as the German woman began handing out pieces neatly wrapped in paper, everyone quickly ran for bread, they could not stand it.

Having eaten this bread in an instant, we decided to go and tell the German woman that we were hungry. Vera and I opened the doors to each room and called the girls for more. A large crowd had gathered. A German woman came out to the noise and asked what had happened. One of the girls said that we were hungry and that Herr said that on Sunday we should be given 4 pieces of bread instead of 2.

The German woman screamed at us and pushed 2 girls in the back. Everyone ran to the rooms. Then the German woman went from room to room and warned that if we behave like this, she will call the policeman and the instigators will be arrested. In the evening, while we were still in bed, three soldiers came into the room with a superior, who described our room as the worst. We didn't know why they came. They saw how the three of us were lying on the same bed and said something about our hairstyles and other compliments. The boss ran up to us and, all red with anger, screamed and pulled the blanket and even slapped Vera on the ass. In general, our "cool ladies" did not consider us, shouted at us, hit us in the face.

There is always cursing, screaming, fighting in the dining room. They argue about who ate less and who ate more. Everyone tries to come to the dining room first. They climb, crushing each other. The policeman is unable to contain this crowd, strong from hunger.

July 11

What a hard job for me. The machine is not listening. Hands are cut, swollen, aching with pain. Only men work behind such machines, and even then not all. We don't understand the car at all. Having mechanically memorized the main steps of the work, we make some things for anti-aircraft guns. Standing behind the car, I always remember my father. How he honestly worked in the printing house behind his machine. I visited him, he was happy, he explained his work to me.

For the 7th month now, I have not seen him, I have not heard his affectionate, playful words.

Germany! It was your leaders, led by Hitler, who turned everything upside down. It is you who play on the human nerves of the whole world. How much blood and tears have been shed. People have become like animals.

The war has been going on for a year now. At first, everyone was afraid of death, I remember how everyone was terribly afraid of air raids when they could not see or hear an enemy aircraft. Gradually they got used to all the surprises, became indifferent, but terribly nervous, greedy, angry. That's when people really do not live, but vegetate. We - young people - had a hard fate. We - hundreds and thousands of young Russian people - are slaves. We were forcibly torn away from our mothers and from our native, friendly nest were transferred to a foreign country, plunged to the bottom of unrestrained discontent, darkness, sleep.

Nothing is clear to us, everything is incomprehensible, everything is unknown. We must work, but forget about our human feelings. Forget about books, theaters, movies, forget about the love feelings of young hearts. And as soon as possible, get used to feeling hunger, cold, get used to humiliation, bullying from the "winners".

We seem to be used to it, at least it is noticeable from the outside. Everyone works, whether they want to or not, they don’t pay attention to ridicule, on the contrary, they excite these ridicule even more with their somehow especially bad, attention-grabbing behavior.

For example: young girls swear and even often fight among themselves in the dining room, show themselves without hesitation as uncultured, ill-mannered.

Only recently, researchers found that in a dozen European concentration camps, the Nazis forced female prisoners to engage in prostitution in special brothels, writes Vladimir Ginda in the column Archive in issue 31 of the magazine Correspondent dated August 9, 2013.

Torment and death or prostitution - before such a choice, the Nazis put Europeans and Slavs who ended up in concentration camps. Of the few hundred girls who chose the second option, the administration staffed brothels in ten camps - not only in those where prisoners were used as labor, but also in others aimed at mass destruction.

In Soviet and modern European historiography, this topic did not actually exist, only a couple of American scientists - Wendy Gertjensen and Jessica Hughes - raised some aspects of the problem in their scientific works.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the German culturologist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sexual conveyors.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the German culturologist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about the sexual conveyors that operated in the horrendous conditions of German concentration camps and death factories.

The result of nine years of research was the book published by Sommer in 2009 Brothel in a concentration camp which shocked European readers. On the basis of this work, an exhibition was organized in Berlin, Sex Work in Concentration Camps.

Bed motivation

“Legalized sex” appeared in Nazi concentration camps in 1942. The SS men organized brothels in ten institutions, among which were mainly the so-called labor camps - in the Austrian Mauthausen and its branch Gusen, the German Flossenburg, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen and Dora-Mittelbau. In addition, the institute of forced prostitutes was also introduced in three death camps intended for the extermination of prisoners: in the Polish Auschwitz-Auschwitz and its “satellite” Monowitz, as well as in the German Dachau.

The idea of creating camp brothels belonged to the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The researchers' data suggests that he was impressed by the incentive system used in Soviet forced labor camps to increase inmate productivity.

Imperial War Museum
One of his barracks in Ravensbrück, Nazi Germany's largest women's concentration camp

Himmler decided to adopt the experience, along the way adding to the list of “incentives” something that was not in the Soviet system - “encouraging” prostitution. The SS chief was convinced that the right to visit a brothel, along with other bonuses - cigarettes, cash or camp vouchers, improved rations - could make the prisoners work harder and better.

In fact, the right to visit such establishments was predominantly held by camp guards from among the prisoners. And there is a logical explanation for this: most of the male prisoners were exhausted, so they did not think about any sexual attraction.

Hughes points out that the proportion of male prisoners who used the services of brothels was extremely small. In Buchenwald, according to her data, where about 12.5 thousand people were kept in September 1943, 0.77% of prisoners visited the public barracks in three months. A similar situation was in Dachau, where, as of September 1944, 0.75% of the 22 thousand prisoners who were there used the services of prostitutes.

heavy share

At the same time, up to two hundred sex slaves worked in brothels. Most of the women, two dozen, were kept in a brothel in Auschwitz.

Brothel workers were exclusively female prisoners, usually attractive, between the ages of 17 and 35. About 60-70% of them were of German origin, from among those whom the Reich authorities called "anti-social elements." Some were engaged in prostitution before entering the concentration camps, so they agreed to similar work, but already behind barbed wire, without any problems and even passed on their skills to inexperienced colleagues.

Approximately a third of the sex slaves the SS recruited from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belarusians. Jewish women were not allowed to do such work, and Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit brothels.

These workers wore special insignia - black triangles sewn on the sleeves of their robes.

Approximately a third of the sex slaves the SS recruited from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belarusians

Some of the girls voluntarily agreed to “work”. So, one former employee of the Ravensbrück medical unit - the largest female concentration camp in the Third Reich, where up to 130 thousand people were kept - recalled: some women voluntarily went to a brothel, because they were promised release after six months of work.

Spaniard Lola Casadel, a member of the Resistance movement, who ended up in the same camp in 1944, told how the headman of their barracks announced: “Whoever wants to work in a brothel, come to me. And remember: if there are no volunteers, we will have to resort to force.”

The threat was not empty: as Sheina Epshtein, a Jewish woman from the Kaunas ghetto, recalled, in the camp the inhabitants of the women's barracks lived in constant fear of the guards, who regularly raped the prisoners. The raids were made at night: drunken men walked along the bunks with flashlights, choosing the most beautiful victim.

“Their joy knew no bounds when they discovered that the girl was a virgin. Then they laughed out loud and called their colleagues,” Epstein said.

Having lost honor, and even the will to fight, some girls went to brothels, realizing that this was their last hope for survival.

“The most important thing is that we managed to break out of [the camps] Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück,” Liselotte B., a former prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, said about her “bed career”. “The main thing was to somehow survive.”

With Aryan meticulousness

After the initial selection, the workers were brought to special barracks in those concentration camps where they were planned to be used. To bring the emaciated prisoners into a more or less decent appearance, they were placed in the infirmary. There, paramedics in SS uniform gave them calcium injections, they took disinfectant baths, ate, and even sunbathed under quartz lamps.

There was no sympathy in all this, but only calculation: the bodies were prepared for hard work. As soon as the rehabilitation cycle ended, the girls became part of the sex assembly line. Work was daily, rest - only if there was no light or water, if an air raid alert was announced, or during the broadcast of speeches by the German leader Adolf Hitler on the radio.

The conveyor worked like clockwork and strictly on schedule. For example, in Buchenwald, prostitutes got up at 7:00 and took care of themselves until 19:00: they had breakfast, did exercises, underwent daily medical examinations, washed and cleaned, and dined. By camp standards, there was so much food that prostitutes even exchanged food for clothes and other things. Everything ended with dinner, and from seven in the evening the two-hour work began. Camp prostitutes could not go out to see her only if they had “these days” or they fell ill.

AP
Women and children in one of the barracks of the Bergen-Belsen camp, liberated by the British

The very procedure for providing intimate services, starting from the selection of men, was as detailed as possible. Mostly the so-called camp functionaries could get a woman - internees who were engaged in internal security and guards from among the prisoners.

Moreover, at first the doors of brothels were opened exclusively to the Germans or representatives of the peoples living on the territory of the Reich, as well as to the Spaniards and Czechs. Later, the circle of visitors was expanded - only Jews, Soviet prisoners of war and ordinary internees were excluded from it. For example, visit logs of a brothel in Mauthausen, meticulously kept by administration officials, show that 60% of the clients were criminals.

Men who wanted to indulge in carnal pleasures first had to get permission from the camp leadership. After that, they bought an entrance ticket for two Reichsmarks - this is slightly less than the cost of 20 cigarettes sold in the dining room. Of this amount, a quarter went to the woman herself, and only if she was German.

In the camp brothel, clients, first of all, found themselves in the waiting room, where their data was verified. Then they underwent a medical examination and received prophylactic injections. Next, the visitor was told the number of the room where he should go. There the intercourse took place. Only the “missionary position” was allowed. Conversations were not welcome.

Here is how one of the “concubines” kept there, Magdalena Walter, describes the work of a brothel in Buchenwald: “We had one bathroom with a toilet, where women went to wash themselves before the next visitor arrived. Immediately after washing, the client appeared. Everything worked like a conveyor; men were not allowed to stay in the room for more than 15 minutes.”

During the evening, the prostitute, according to the surviving documents, took 6-15 people.

body in action

Legalized prostitution was beneficial to the authorities. So, in Buchenwald alone, in the first six months of operation, the brothel earned 14-19 thousand Reichsmarks. The money went to the account of the German Economic Policy Department.

The Germans used women not only as an object of sexual pleasure, but also as scientific material. The inhabitants of the brothels carefully monitored hygiene, because any venereal disease could cost them their lives: infected prostitutes in the camps were not treated, but experiments were performed on them.

Imperial War Museum
Liberated prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen camp

The scientists of the Reich did this, fulfilling the will of Hitler: even before the war, he called syphilis one of the most dangerous diseases in Europe, capable of leading to disaster. The Fuhrer believed that only those peoples who would find a way to quickly cure the disease would be saved. For the sake of obtaining a miracle cure, the SS men turned infected women into living laboratories. However, they did not remain alive for long - intensive experiments quickly led the prisoners to a painful death.

Researchers have found a number of cases where even healthy prostitutes were given to be torn to pieces by sadistic doctors.

Pregnant women were not spared in the camps either. In some places they were immediately killed, in some places they were artificially interrupted, and after five weeks they were again sent “into service”. Moreover, abortions were performed at different times and different ways- and this also became part of the research. Some prisoners were allowed to give birth, but only in order to experimentally determine how long a baby could live without food.

Despicable Prisoners

According to the former prisoner of Buchenwald, Dutchman Albert van Dijk, other prisoners despised the camp prostitutes, not paying attention to the fact that they were forced to go “on the panel” by cruel conditions of detention and an attempt to save their lives. And the very work of the inhabitants of brothels was akin to daily repeated rape.

Some of the women, even being in a brothel, tried to defend their honor. For example, Walter came to Buchenwald as a virgin and, being in the role of a prostitute, tried to protect herself from the first client with scissors. The attempt failed, and, according to the records, on the same day, the former virgin satisfied six men. Walter endured this because she knew that otherwise she would face a gas chamber, a crematorium or a barracks for cruel experiments.

Not everyone was strong enough to survive the violence. Some of the inhabitants of the camp brothels, according to researchers, took their own lives, some lost their minds. Some survived, but remained a prisoner of psychological problems for life. Physical liberation did not relieve them of the burden of the past, and after the war, camp prostitutes were forced to hide their history. Therefore, scientists have collected little documented evidence of life in these brothels.

"It's one thing to say 'I worked as a carpenter' or 'I built roads' and quite another to say 'I was forced to work as a prostitute,'" says Inza Eshebach, director of the memorial at the former Ravensbrück camp.

This material was published in issue 31 of the Korrespondent magazine dated August 9, 2013. Reprinting of publications of the Korrespondent magazine in full is prohibited. The rules for using the materials of the Korrespondent magazine published on the Korrespondent.net website can be found .