What was the name of the death camp in Poland. Why all Nazi extermination camps were located in Poland
In 1940, the Auschwitz-Brzezinka concentration camp, also known under the German name Auschwitz-Birkenau, was established in the small town of Auschwitz, 70 kilometers west of Krakow. Of the many camps built by the Nazis, Auschwitz was the largest and most terrible: two million people died here, of which 85-90% were Jews.
How to get to Auschwitz?
There are regular buses from Krakow to Auschwitz station (1 hour 30 minutes). You can take a local bus from the station to the gate of the camp, and several buses drop off visitors right at the entrance. Shuttle buses leave from the Auschwitz car park every hour to Birkenau. Alternatively, you can take a taxi or walk 3 kilometers.
Martyrs Museum and Birkenau Camp
Most of the buildings of Auschwitz survived on the territory of the Martyrs Museum (daily June-August 8.00-19.00, May and September 8.00-18.00, October-April 8.00-17.00, March and November - mid-December 8.00-16.00, mid-December - February 8.00-15.00; the entrance is free). First, they show a dark film made during the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops in May 1945. Some of the camp barracks are given over to "exhibits" found after the liberation - these are rooms filled with clothes, suitcases, toothbrushes, glasses, shoes and heaps of women's hair.
In other barracks, national memorials are arranged, and the exposition ends with gas chambers and stoves, where the bodies of the victims were burned. The huge Birkenau camp (the same opening hours) is visited less often Auschwitz. Birkenau's gas chambers were damaged but not destroyed by the Germans in their escape in 1945. The victims were taken in closed wagons directly to the gas chambers (the railway line and platforms were preserved in their original form).
In contact with
As you know, the UN chose this date, because it was on January 27, 1945 that Soviet troops liberated the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. Now just 70 years have passed since that day. Auschwitz is located in Poland. Russia and Poland have their own train of historical contradictions. And although both sides, it seems, have already agreed a thousand times to leave in the past everything that belongs to the past, official Warsaw no, no, and it will break through with another anti-Moscals attack. So last week there was a bad incident with the non-invitation of Vladimir Putin to the anniversary events at the Auschwitz Memorial.
This became a reason to turn to the seemingly foreign topic for Russia of pre-war (and war times) Polish-Jewish relations. After all, it is strange that it was Auschwitz that became a pretext for public relations for Warsaw officials. It is the Polish side that is best served with maximum tact when talking about the Holocaust.
Extermination camps
Auschwitz is one of six extermination camps organized by the Germans as part of the program of "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". In addition - Majdanek, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec. Auschwitz is the largest.
Let us emphasize that these are precisely the extermination camps. In this regard, the Nazis had their own gradation. As you can see, they were all located in Poland. Why? Convenience of location in terms of, so to speak, transportation? Yes, of course - especially when it comes to the extermination of Jews from other European countries. It was somehow inconvenient and noticeable for the Nazis to locate an object for conveyor assassination in some Holland. And Poland - well ...
But there was one more circumstance that the Nazis probably took into account - since it was Polish Jewry that should have become the first victim of the “final decision”. The occupation here lasted for more than three years, at that time about 2 million Polish Jews languished in the ghetto. Over the years, it became clear to the Germans: the majority of the local population does not seek to help them, even does not really sympathize.
Not a spoonful of shit
Saying this, we do not open America. Jewish researchers openly write about Polish anti-Semitism, which was clearly manifested precisely in the war years (read at least the multi-page, extremely well-reasoned articles in the "Holocaust Encyclopedia"). And many Poles themselves today painfully admit this fact. The impetus for a new understanding of the topic was the publication in 2000 in Poland itself of facts about the extermination of Jews in the town of Jedwabno near Bialystok. It turned out that there were not Germans, but Polish peasants on July 10, 1941, brutally massacred 1,600 of their Jewish neighbors.
At the same time, as usual, there is a counter-argument for each argument. You can talk about Hardly - but you can recall the Жegota organization, cite the names of the Polish “righteous men” that Poland is proud of: Zofia Kossak, Jan Karski, Irena Sandler, and dozens of others. In general, the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" (those who risked their lives during the war, rescued Jews), the Israeli Institute "Yad Vashem" awarded 6554 Poles. In fact, there were much more of them (new ones constantly pop up, lists are replenished). So every nation has its own good people and its own scoundrels. And that a spoonful of shit spoils a barrel of honey - who can argue?
They are not going to argue. Simply Polish specificity is that here we have to speak not about a spoon. Another question, which was more - shit or honey.
Two nations over the Vistula
Jews have lived in Poland since the 11th century. You cannot say that I am in perfect harmony with the Poles - there were different situations and different periods. But let's not go into hoary antiquity. Let's start with the pre-war period, before 1939.
Of course, on paper, the then Polish authorities declared "European" and "civilized". But if we talk about, so to speak, a vector ... Even before the First World War, among the Polish nationalists, the slogan “Two nations should not be over the Vistula!” Was formulated. All the 1920s – 1930s, the authorities followed him. Genocide, of course, did not suit, but they tried to squeeze out of the country. Economic methods, turning a blind eye to the antics of local fascists, all sorts of restrictions, sometimes demonstrative humiliation. For example, in educational institutions, Jewish students had to either stand or sit on a separate "Jewish" bench. At the same time, for example, Zionism was encouraged - bring down to your Palestine, and the more you get out, the better! Therefore, the mass of the future most prominent Israeli politicians - Sh. Peres, I. Shamir and others - are those who left there as young guys from Poland or its then “eastern territories” (Western Belarus and Ukraine).
But Palestine was under the British "mandate" (control), the British, fearing conflicts with the Arabs, restricted the entry of Jews. Other countries, too, were in no hurry to accept unnecessary emigrants. So there were no special opportunities to leave somewhere. In addition, the Jewish community of Poland was huge (3.3 million people), and the majority of Jews simply humanly could not imagine themselves without Poland, and Poland itself - without them. Well, how can you imagine the pre-war landscape there without the great poet Yu. Tuwim, who said “my fatherland is the Polish language”? Or without the "king of tango" E. Petersburgsky (later in the USSR he will write "Blue Scarf")?
Of the many characteristic facts, we will cite two that seem to be the most revealing.
During the Spanish Civil War, Polish and Jewish volunteers fought alongside the international brigades. But even here, the commanders noted conflicts motivated by anti-Semitism (for understanding - other equally conflicting groups were Serbs and Croats). And after 1939, already in the Soviet camps for Polish prisoners of war, Soviet security officers (judging by the surnames - entirely Russian) observing the contingent in their reports noted the eternal clashes between the Polish prisoners and the Jewish prisoners and the inflamed anti-Semitic moods of the Poles. It would seem that a common fate, a fighting brotherhood - what can bring people closer together? And here you go, how deep it was.
The Bandera brothers
Among the scandals of the past week was the marvelous statement by Polish Foreign Minister G. Schetyna that Auschwitz was "liberated by the Ukrainians." He blurted out - and ran into the indignation of the Poles themselves: Auschwitz is their tragedy, their torment and sacrifice, so who exactly liberated the camp is remembered there. The minister rushed to explain that he was inaccurately expressed (what kind of diplomat are you, if you are inaccurately expressed?), To remind that he is a historian by training, to demonstrate knowledge of the Soviet Ukrainian fronts (probably, he urgently refreshed his memory at home).
But as a historian, Mr. Schetyna should remember why his statement sounded ambiguous.
I was unable to find out the number of Ukrainians who were detained (and died) in Auschwitz. It is clear that there were many of them - first of all, “Soviet” Ukrainians. They are the same martyrs of Auschwitz as the others - and any other words are superfluous here. But at the same time, among the guards of Auschwitz there was a company of Ukrainian collaborators (they and other death camps guarded, they were called "herbalists"; one of them was the notorious Ivan Demyanyuk).
In addition, among the prisoners of Auschwitz, there was one group that stood apart. As you know, at a certain stage of the war, the claims of Ukrainian nationalists to independence angered Hitler - he had his own plans for Ukraine. And the Germans began to arrest their recent allies. So, in the summer of 1942, two brothers of Stepan Bandera, Vasily and Alexander, ended up in Auschwitz. According to the recollections, they arrived here "confident in the SS promised them benefits and privileges" - but only faced those with whom they would not be worth. The Poles-prisoners had their own account for the Ukrainian nationalists - both for the pre-war terrorist attacks and for the massacre of the Polish population in Volyn. And the Polish prisoners simply beat both brothers to death. For which they were shot by the Germans. So when they say that Bandera's brothers died in Auschwitz - yes, it is. The question is, how exactly did you die?
After 1939
How these Polish prisoners of war ended up with us is known: in September 1939, Nazi Germany struck Poland, and Soviet troops occupied Western Ukraine and Belarus. Then in the mass Polish consciousness the legend of the "Zhidokommun" was born - they say, the Jews very happily greeted the "Bolsheviks". In reality, there were not so many such cases. In addition, let us note - just then, in the ranks of the Polish army, fighting the Nazis, many thousands of Jews - soldiers and officers - perished. But after the defeat of Poland, this was immediately forgotten. But they talked about the "Zhidokommuna" at every opportunity.
However, sometimes myths were not required. In the already mentioned Jedwabne, it was enough for the Germans to simply make it clear that they would not interfere with the massacre.
Around Jedwabno
For the first time, an American historian, a Pole by origin, Professor Jan Tomasz Gross spoke about the tragedy in Jedwabne in 2000 - and received a full tub of accusations of "defamation" in his homeland. The decision on how to relate to the facts made public by him was made at the level of the country's top leadership and the Polish Catholic Church. In 2001, the then President of Poland A. Kwasniewski made an official apology "on his own behalf and on behalf of those Poles whose conscience is tormented by this crime." The story that happened in Jedwabne formed the basis for the film "Spikelets" by V. Pasikovsky. The picture caused a lot of noise in Poland. Now a similar scandal is going on around the film "Ida" by P. Pawlikowski, where the question of how the Poles behaved towards Jews during the Second World War is also very acutely raised.
Someday they will also put on a film about how meanly Polish bosses behave today in relation to Russians.
Several quotes
Hardly - this is, let's say, the level of a village, a town. Some of the Jews living in such places immediately found death at the hands of the Nazis, who were often helped by local collaborators, simply informers. (Although note that there are several villages in Poland where Polish neighbors rescued Jewish neighbors. There are quite a few cases when Polish peasants hid Jewish children - for example, the boy Raimund Liebling, who later became the famous film director Roman Polanski, survived. in particular, the famous film "The Pianist" about the tragedy of Polish Jews during the war.) But the bulk of the Jewish population was driven into the ghettos created in the cities. The largest are Warsaw (up to 500 thousand people), Lodz, Krakow.
In the ghetto, Polish Jews were held until the "final decision". Hunger, epidemics, the situation "outside the law" - the Nazis did everything to kill as many of them as possible. And if we talk specifically about Polish-Jewish relations ...
Of course, the Germans did everything to drive a wedge as deep as possible between the two peoples. At the same time, as noted by the Polish sociologist A. Smolar, anti-Semitism was already sufficiently developed in Poland to associate its outbreak only with the arrival of the Nazis. Therefore, for example, even if with the help of Polish friends some Jew managed to escape from the ghetto, there were many willing to betray him. This was done by the "dark blue" (Polish police), just willing. There were even more "schmaltsovniki" - those who, having discovered the hiding person, began, under threat of extradition, to extort from him everything that was of interest: remnants of money, pitiful valuables, just clothes. A whole business has sprung up. As a result, there are a great many cases when a fugitive was forced to return behind barbed wire.
Here are two quotes that need no comment. They recreate the atmosphere of those years the best.
From the diary of the historian E. Ringelblum (kept a secret archive of the Warsaw ghetto, then hid with the Polish Wolski family in a cache bunker, but was betrayed by their neighbor and shot): “Statements that the entire population of Poland is happy about the extermination of Jews are far from the truth ( ...) Thousands of idealists, both among the intelligentsia and in the working class, selflessly help Jews at the risk of their lives. "
From a report from Warsaw to London to the “Polish government in exile” by the chief commandant (commander) of the underground AK (Home Army) General S. Rovetsky - “Groth”: “I report that all the government's statements (...) regarding Jews are producing the most terrible thing in the country impression and facilitate the conduct of propaganda against the government. Please accept as a fact that the overwhelming majority of the population is anti-Semitic. (…) The only difference is how to deal with Jews. Almost nobody approves of German methods. However, even (there is a list of underground socialist organizations. - Author) accept the postulate of emigration as a solution to the Jewish problem. "
Auschwitz and its victims
Auschwitz (the German name for Auschwitz) was a terrible place for prisoners of all categories and nationalities. But he became a death camp after the Nazi "Wannsee Conference" (01.20.1942), at which, in accordance with the instructions of the top leadership of the Reich, a program and methods for the "final solution of the Jewish question" were developed.
No casualties were kept in the camp. Today, the most reliable figures are the figures of the Polish historians F. Peiper and D. Cech: 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, of which 1.1 million were Jews. Over 1 million Jews, 75 thousand Poles (according to other calculations, up to 90 thousand), more than 20 thousand Gypsies, about 15 thousand Soviet prisoners of war, over 10 thousand prisoners of other nationalities died here.
It should be understood that Auschwitz was a huge complex (total area - more than 40 sq. Km) of several dozen subcamps, there were several factories, a number of other industries, many different services. As a death camp, Auschwitz was simultaneously a place of detention for a dozen categories of prisoners - from political prisoners and members of the Resistance movement from different countries to German and Austrian criminals, homosexuals, members of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect. Nationalities are very different (more than 30 in total), there were even Persians and Chinese.
A separate page is devoted to the terrible experiments of Nazi doctors carried out in Auschwitz (the most famous is Dr. I. Mengele).
When people speak of Auschwitz as an extermination camp, they mean, first of all, one of the objects - Auschwitz-2, deployed in the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau) evicted by the Germans. It was located separately. It was here that the gas chambers and crematoria were located; its own railway line was built here, along which trains with Jews from all over Europe arrived. Further - unloading, "selection" (those who could still work were selected; such were destroyed later), for the rest - escorting to the gas chambers, undressing and ...
Above we have given the statistics of the destroyed. Again, this is a scary place for everyone. But other categories of prisoners had at least a theoretical chance of survival. And the Jews (and Gypsies - there are simply fewer of them, and the Gypsy tragedy remains, as it were, in the shadows) were brought here to death.
By the residual principle
General "Grotto" sent his report in September 1941. Then messages were sent to London about how the Jewish question was finally resolved in Poland by the Germans. What was the reaction of the émigré government? How did the underground formations subordinate to him in Poland - the same AK - react to the extermination of Jews?
In a nutshell ... You know, there is such an expression - "on the residual principle." Probably fits. It cannot be said that the émigré government did nothing: there were statements, declarations. But it is clear that the problems of the Poles worried him much more. And the situation with the Polish underground is even tougher. “On the ground” on many issues that they wanted to hear from London, they heard what they didn’t want - they didn’t hear. Here too. In reality, everything depended on specific people. Sometimes it came up against some objective circumstances. For example, there is a long-standing dispute about the extent to which the Home Army helped the prisoners of the Warsaw ghetto during their famous uprising (April-May 1943). It cannot be said that nothing was done. To say that a lot has been done is also impossible. The "Akovtsy" later explained: the ghetto revolted, because it was already doomed to destruction, the Jews had no choice. And we had the task of waiting "at the foot" of the order for our own performance (indeed, the Polish Warsaw Uprising took place more than a year later, August - October 1944) - well, we will share scarce stocks of weapons from underground warehouses, before the deadline to speak ?
The "field" commanders of the AK in the forests, with the rarest exception, were generally completely anti-Semitic - and they did not accept fugitives from the ghetto, and often simply shot them. No, there were many Jews in the ranks of the Polish partisans - but they fought, as a rule, in the units of the Communist Guard of the People.
Here it is necessary to recall the activities of the underground organization "Zhegota" ("Council for Aid to Jews"). It was a voluntary association of decent people who could not sit idly by seeing that someone was in trouble. The account of those whom they helped in one way or another goes into the thousands - although the saviors often paid for their activities with their lives, ended up in concentration camps. But interesting words sounded in the Zhegota manifesto: “We are Catholics. (…) Our feelings for Jews have not changed. We continue to view them as Poland's economic, political and ideological enemies. (…) However, while they are being killed, we must help them. " In "Zhegote" were such people as, for example, Irena Sandler, who saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto. It is unlikely that she looked at these children as enemies. Rather, the author of the manifesto, the writer Zofia Kossak, who led the organization, simply chose the words and arguments that would convince other compatriots "not to be Pilates."
Silence of the allies
We are not writing a detailed study on the Holocaust in Poland, we just recall some characteristic moments. And among the many vivid plots, there is an absolutely amazing story. This is the fate of the Polish intelligence officer Jan Karski. He was the liaison between the underground in Poland and the London government, witnessed the destruction of Polish Jewry and was the first to report what was happening to London. When he realized that the reaction to his reports was purely declarative, he began to knock on all doors himself. He reached the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Britain E. Eden, and even achieved a meeting with US President Roosevelt. In different offices I heard about the same thing: "You are telling too incredible things ...", "We are doing everything in our power, do not demand more ...", "What can we do?"
But in fact, something could be done. For example, at the end of 1944, stop the death machine in Auschwitz. After all, the Allies knew about what was happening there - both from the Polish underground and from two Jewish prisoners who fled from the concentration camp (R. Vrbla and A. Wetzler). And all that was required was to bomb Auschwitz 2 (Brzezinka), the place where the gas chambers and crematoria were located. After all, the camp was bombed, and four times. A total of 327 aircraft dropped 3,394 bombs on industrial sites in Auschwitz. And not a single one on the nearby Brzezinka! She was not interested in the Allied aviation. There are still no clear explanations for this fact.
And since there are none, bad versions come to mind. Maybe the emigrant Polish government didn’t ask for such a blow? Because "two nations will not be over the Vistula"?
Ctrl Enter
Spotted Osh S bku Highlight text and press Ctrl + Enter
In Russia, fundraising has begun to erect a monument to the Red Army soldiers who died in Polish concentration camps. The collection of money is carried out by the Russian Military Historical Society, which published the following message on its website:
“More than 1.2 thousand Red Army prisoners of war who died in concentration camps during the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1921 in the vicinity of Krakow were buried at the site of the military graves of the memorial Krakow city cemetery. Most of them are unknown. It is our descendants' duty to bring back the memory of them ”.
As the historian Nikolai Maliszewski writes, a scandal erupted in Poland after that. The Polish side is outraged: it sees in this an attempt by Russia to "distort history" and "divert attention from Katyn." The stupidity and wretchedness of such reasoning is obvious, because in fact the Poles have remained faithful to their "best traditions" - to portray themselves as an "eternal victim" by either Russian or German aggressors, while completely ignoring their own crimes. And they really have something to hide!
Here is an article by the same Nikolai Malishevsky, who knows the history of the Polish Gulag very well. I think that the Poles have absolutely nothing to object to the facts given in this material ...
The Red Army men found themselves near Warsaw as a result not of an offensive on Europe, as the Polish propagandists lie, but as a result of a counterattack by the Red Army. This counterattack was a response to the attempt of the Polish blitzkrieg in the spring of 1920 with the aim of securing Vilno, Kiev, Minsk, Smolensk and (if possible) Moscow, where Pilsudski dreamed of writing on the Kremlin walls with his own hand: "Speaking Russian is prohibited!"
Unfortunately, in the countries of the former USSR, the topic of mass deaths in Polish concentration camps of tens of thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Balts, Jews, and Germans has not yet been sufficiently covered.
As a result of the war started by Poland against Soviet Russia, the Poles captured over 150 thousand Red Army men. In total, together with political prisoners and internees, more than 200 thousand Red Army men, civilians, White Guards, fighters of anti-Bolshevik and nationalist (Ukrainian and Belarusian) formations turned out to be in Polish captivity and concentration camps ...
Planned genocide
The military GULAG of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is more than a dozen concentration camps, prisons, marshalling yards, concentration points and various military facilities like the Brest Fortress (there were four camps here) and Modlin. Stshalkovo (in western Poland between Poznan and Warsaw), Pikulice (in the south, not far from Przemysl), Domba (near Krakow), Wadowice (in southern Poland), Tuchola, Shiptyurno, Bialystok, Baranovichi, Molodechino, Vilno, Pinsk, Bobruisk ...
And also - Grodno, Minsk, Pulawy, Powonzki, Lancut, Kovel, Stryi (in the western part of Ukraine), Shchelkovo ... Here tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers found a terrible, painful death, who were in Polish captivity after the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 ...
The attitude of the Polish side towards them was very clearly expressed by the commandant of the camp in Brest, who declared in 1919: “You Bolsheviks wanted to take our lands away from us - well, I will give you the land. I have no right to kill you, but I will feed you so that you yourself will die. " Words did not diverge from deeds. According to the memoirs of one of those who arrived from the Polish captivity in March 1920, "For 13 days we did not receive bread, on day 14, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but very rotten, moldy ... The patients were not treated, and they died in dozens ...".
From a report on a visit to the camps in Brest-Litovsk by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the presence of a doctor from the French military mission in October 1919:
“A nauseating smell emanates from the guard rooms, as well as from the former stables where the prisoners of war are housed. The prisoners huddle chilly around a makeshift stove, where a few logs are burning - the only way to heat. At night, hiding from the first cold weather, they are packed in tight rows in groups of 300 people in poorly lit and poorly ventilated barracks, on boards, without mattresses and blankets. The prisoners are mostly dressed in rags ... Complaints. They are the same and boil down to the following: we are starving, are we freezing, when are we released? ...Conclusions. This summer due to overcrowding of premises that are not suitable for living; joint close living of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom died immediately; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; edema, hunger for three months in Brest - the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis ... Two strong epidemics devastated this camp in August and September - dysentery and typhus. The consequences were aggravated by the close cohabitation of the sick and the healthy, lack of medical care, food and clothing ... The mortality record was set in early August, when 180 people died of dysentery in one day ... In the period from July 27 to September 4, t .e. in 34 days, 770 Ukrainian prisoners of war and internees died in the Brest camp. It should be recalled that the number of prisoners imprisoned in the fortress in August gradually reached, if there is no mistake, 10,000 people, and on October 10 it was 3,861 people. "
Later, "due to unsuitable conditions", the camp in the Brest Fortress was closed. However, in other camps, the situation was often even worse. In particular, Professor Thorvald Madsen, a member of the League of Nations commission, who visited the "ordinary" Polish camp for Red Army prisoners in Wadowice at the end of November 1920, called it "one of the most terrible things that he saw in life." In this camp, as former prisoner Kozerovsky recalled, the prisoners were "beaten around the clock." An eyewitness recalls: “Long rods were always at the ready ... in my presence they spotted two soldiers caught in a neighboring village ... The suspicious were often transferred to a special penalty barrack, and almost no one left there. They were fed once a day with a decoction of dried vegetables and a kilogram of bread for 8 people. There were cases when the starving Red Army soldiers ate carrion, garbage and even hay. In the Shchelkovo camp, prisoners of war are forced to carry their own feces instead of horses. They carry both plows and harrows "(WUA RF.F.0384.Op.8.D.18921.P.210.L.54-59).
Conditions were not the best in transit and in prisons, where political prisoners were also kept. Major Khlebovsky, the head of the distribution station in Pulawy, described the situation of the Red Army soldiers in a very eloquent manner: "Intolerable prisoners in order to spread riots and enzymes in Poland are constantly eating potato peels from a manure heap." In just 6 months of the autumn-winter period of 1920-1921, 900 out of 1100 prisoners of war died in Pulawy. The deputy chief of the front sanitary service, Major Hackbeil, spoke most eloquently about what the Polish concentration camp at the assembly station in the Belarusian Molodechno was like: “The prisoner camp at the assembly station for prisoners was a real torture chamber. Nobody cared about these unfortunates, so it is not surprising that a person unwashed, undressed, poorly fed and placed in inappropriate conditions as a result of infection was doomed only to death. In Bobruisk “There were up to 1600 prisoners of the Red Army (as well as the Belarusian peasants of the Bobruisk district, sentenced to death. - Auth.), most of which are completely naked»...
According to the testimony of the Soviet writer, an employee of the Cheka in the 1920s, Nikolai Ravich, who was arrested by the Poles in 1919 and who was in the prisons of Minsk, Grodno, Powonzki and the Domba camp, the cells were so crowded that only the lucky ones slept on bunks. In the Minsk prison, lice were everywhere in the cell, and the cold was especially felt, since the outer clothing was taken away. "In addition to an eighth of bread (50 grams), hot water was used in the morning and evening, at 12 o'clock the same water, seasoned with flour and salt."The transit point in Powazki "Was beaten by Russian prisoners of war, most of whom were crippled with artificial arms and legs." The German revolution, writes Ravich, freed them from the camps and they spontaneously went through Poland to their homeland. But in Poland they were detained by special barriers and driven into camps, and some to forced labor.
The Poles themselves were terrified
Most of the Polish concentration camps were built in a very short period of time, some were built by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. For long-term detention of prisoners, they were completely unsuitable. For example, the camp in Domba near Krakow was a whole city with numerous streets and squares. Instead of houses, there are barracks with loose wooden walls, many without wooden floors. All this is surrounded by rows of barbed wire. Conditions of detention of prisoners in winter: “The majority without shoes are completely barefoot ... There are almost no beds or bunks ... There is no straw or hay at all. Sleep on the ground or planks. There are very few blankets. " From a letter from the chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks with Poland, Adolf Joffe, to the chairman of the Polish delegation, Jan Dombsky, dated January 9, 1921: "In Domba, most of the prisoners are barefoot, and in the camp at the headquarters of the 18th division, most of them have no clothes."
The situation in Bialystok is evidenced by the letters preserved in the Central Military Archive by the military doctor and the head of the sanitary department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Zdzislav Gordynski-Yukhnovich. In December 1919, in despair, he reported to the chief physician of the Polish Army about his visit to the marshalling yard in Bialystok:
“I visited the prisoner camp in Bialystok and now, under the first impression, I dared to turn to Mr. General as the chief physician of the Polish troops with a description of the terrible picture that appears before the eyes of everyone who ends up in the camp ... Again the same criminal neglect of their duties all the bodies operating in the camp have brought shame on our name, on the Polish army, just as it happened in Brest-Litovsk ... In the camp, unimaginable filth and disorder reign. At the door of the barracks, heaps of human waste are trampled and spread throughout the camp by thousands of feet. Patients are so weak that they are unable to walk to latrines. Those, in turn, are in such a state that it is impossible to approach the seats, since the entire floor is covered with a thick layer of human excrement. The barracks are overcrowded, the healthy are full of the sick. According to my data, there are no healthy people among the 1,400 prisoners. Covered in rags, they huddle together, trying to keep warm. The stench reigns from patients with dysentery and gangrene, legs swollen from hunger. Two especially gravely ill lay in their own feces, which flowed from their torn pants. They did not have the strength to move to a dry place. What a terrible picture. "
Former prisoner of the Polish camp in Bialystok Andrei Matskevich later recalled that a prisoner who was lucky received a day "A small portion of black bread weighing about ½ pound (200 grams), one shard of soup that looks more like slop, and boiling water."
The concentration camp at Strzalkowo, located between Poznan and Warsaw, was considered the worst. It appeared at the turn of 1914-1915 as a German camp for prisoners from the fronts of the First World War on the border between Germany and the Russian Empire - near the road connecting two border areas - Stshalkovo on the Prussian side and Slupsy on the Russian side. After the end of World War I, it was decided to liquidate the camp. However, instead, it passed from the Germans to the Poles and began to be used as a concentration camp for Red Army prisoners of war. As soon as the camp became Polish (from May 12, 1919), the death rate of prisoners of war in it increased more than 16 times during the year. On July 11, 1919, by order of the Ministry of Defense of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was named “Prisoner of War Camp No. 1 near Strzałkowo” (Obóz Jeniecki Nr 1 pod Strzałkowem).
After the conclusion of the Riga Peace Treaty, the concentration camp in Stshalkovo was also used to contain internees, including Russian White Guards, servicemen of the so-called Ukrainian People's Army and the formations of the Belarusian "batka" ataman Stanislav Bulak-Bulakhovich. What was happening in this concentration camp is evidenced not only by documents, but also by publications of the then press.
In particular, the "New Courier" dated January 4, 1921, described in a sensational article at that time the shocking fate of a detachment of several hundred Latvians. These soldiers, led by their commanders, deserted from the Red Army and went over to the Polish side in order to return to their homeland. They were welcomed by the Polish military. Before they were sent to the camp, they were given a certificate that they voluntarily went over to the side of the Poles. The robbery began on the way to the camp. All clothes were removed from the Latvians, except for underwear. And those who managed to hide at least part of their belongings were taken away in Stshalkovo. They were left in rags, without shoes. But this is a trifle compared to the systematic bullying that they were subjected to in the concentration camp. It all began with 50 blows with barbed wire whips, while the Latvians were told that they were Jewish mercenaries and would not leave the camp alive. More than 10 people have died from blood poisoning. After that, the prisoners were left without food for three days, forbidding to go out for water on pain of death. Two were shot without any reason. Most likely, the threat would have been carried out, and none of the Latvians would have left the camp alive, if its chiefs - Captain Wagner and Lieutenant Malinovsky - had not been arrested and brought to justice by the commission of inquiry.
In the course of the investigation, among other things, it turned out that walking around the camp, accompanied by corporals with whips made of wire, and beating prisoners were Malinovsky's favorite pastimes. If the beaten groaned or begged for mercy, he was shot. For the murder of a prisoner, Malinovsky encouraged the sentries with 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish stamps. The Polish authorities tried to quickly hush up the scandal and the case ...
In November 1919, the military authorities reported to the Polish Sejm Commission that the largest Polish prisoner camp No. 1 in Strzalkow was "very well equipped." In reality, at that time the roofs of the camp barracks were full of holes, and bunks were not equipped in them. Probably, it was believed that this was good for the Bolsheviks. Red Cross spokeswoman Stefania Sempolovska wrote from the camp: "The communist barrack was so overcrowded that the crushed prisoners were unable to lie down and stood propping up one another." The situation in Strzhalkov did not change in October 1920: "Clothes and footwear are very scarce, most of them go barefoot ... There are no beds - they sleep on straw ... Due to lack of food, the prisoners who are busy peeling potatoes stealthily eat them raw."
The report of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation states: “Keeping prisoners in their underwear, the Poles treated them not as people of equal race, but as slaves. Beating of war / prisoners was practiced at every step ... ".Eyewitnesses say: “Every day the arrested are driven out into the street and instead of walking they are chased at a run, ordered to fall into the mud ... If the prisoner refuses to fall or, having fallen, cannot get up, exhausted, he is beaten with butts.”
Polish Russophobes spared neither red nor white
As the largest of the camps, Stshalkovo was designed for 25 thousand prisoners. In reality, the number of prisoners sometimes exceeded 37 thousand. The numbers changed rapidly as people died like flies in the cold. Russian and Polish compilers of the collection “Red Army Men in Polish Captivity in 1919-1922. Sat. documents and materials "claim that “In Stshalkovo in 1919-1920. about 8 thousand prisoners died ”.At the same time, the Committee of the RCP (b), which operated clandestinely in the Stshalkovo camp, in its report to the Soviet Commission on Prisoners of War Affairs in April 1921, argued that: “In the last epidemic of typhus and dysentery, 300 people perished. per day ... the serial number of the list of the buried exceeded 12 thousand ... ".Such a statement about the huge mortality rate in Stshalkovo is not the only one.
Despite claims by Polish historians that the situation in Polish concentration camps had once again improved by 1921, documents show otherwise. The minutes of the meeting of the Mixed (Polish-Russian-Ukrainian) Commission on Repatriation of July 28, 1921 noted that in Strzhalkov "The command, as if in revenge after the first arrival of our delegation, sharply intensified its repressions ... The Red Army men are beaten and tortured for any reason and for no reason ... the beatings took the form of an epidemic."In November 1921, when, according to Polish historians, "the situation in the camps has improved radically," RUD officials described the living quarters for prisoners in Strzalkow as follows: “Most of the barracks are underground, damp, dark, cold, with broken glass, broken floors and a thin roof. The holes in the roofs allow you to freely admire the starry sky. Those placed in them get wet and chilly day and night ... There is no lighting. "
The fact that the Polish authorities did not consider “Russian Bolshevik prisoners” to be people is also evidenced by the following fact: in the largest Polish prisoner of war camp in Strzhalkovo, for 3 (three) years they could not resolve the issue of sending prisoners of war to their natural needs at night. There were no toilets in the barracks, and the camp administration, on pain of execution, forbade people to leave the barracks after 6 pm. Therefore the prisoners "They were forced to send their natural needs to the bowlers, from which they then have to eat."
The second largest Polish concentration camp, located in the area of \u200b\u200bthe city of Tuchola (Tucheln, Tuchola, Tucholi, Tuchol, Tuchola, Tuchol), can rightfully challenge Strzhalkovo's title of the most terrible. Or, at least, the most disastrous for people. It was built by the Germans during the First World War in 1914. Initially, the camp contained mainly Russians, later they were joined by Romanian, French, English and Italian prisoners of war. Since 1919, the camp began to be used by the Poles to concentrate soldiers and commanders of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian formations and civilians who sympathized with the Soviet government. In December 1920, a representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Natalia Kreits-Wielezińska, wrote: “The camp in Tucholi is the so-called. dugouts, which are entered by steps going down. On both sides there are bunks on which the prisoners sleep. Senniki, straw, blankets are missing. No heat due to irregular fuel supply. Lack of linen, clothes in all departments. Most tragic are the conditions of new arrivals, who are transported in unheated wagons, without appropriate clothing, cold, hungry and tired ... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker die.
From a letter from a White Guard: “... The internees are housed in barracks and dugouts. Those are absolutely not adapted for winter time. The barracks are made of thick corrugated iron, covered from the inside with thin wooden panels, which burst in many places. The door and partly the windows are very poorly fitted, they are blowing desperately ... The internees are not even given bedding under the pretext of "malnutrition of the horses." We think with extreme anxiety about the coming winter "(Letter from Tuchola, October 22, 1921).
The State Archives of the Russian Federation contains the memoirs of Lieutenant Kalikin, who passed through the concentration camp in Tucholi. The lieutenant, who was fortunate enough to survive, writes: “Even in Thorn, all sorts of horrors were told about Tuchol, but the reality exceeded all expectations. Imagine a sandy plain near the river, fenced off by two rows of barbed wire, inside which dilapidated dugouts are located in regular rows. There were no trees, no grass, only sand. Not far from the main gate are corrugated iron barracks. When you pass them at night, there is a strange, soul-crushing sound, as if someone is quietly sobbing. During the day from the sun in the barracks it is unbearably hot, at night it is cold ... When our army was interned, the Polish minister Sapieha was asked what would become of it. "It will be dealt with as the honor and dignity of Poland demands," he replied proudly. Was Tuchol really necessary for this "honor"? So, we arrived in Tuchol and settled in the iron barracks. Colds set in, and the stoves were not heated for lack of firewood. A year later, 50% of the women who were here and 40% of the men contracted mainly tuberculosis. Many of them have died. Most of my friends died, and there were some who hanged themselves.
Red Army soldier Valuev, said that at the end of August 1920, he was with other prisoners: “We were sent to the Tucholi camp. There lay the wounded, not bandaged for whole weeks, worms wound up on their wounds. Many of the wounded died, 30-35 people were buried every day. The wounded lay in cold barracks without food or medicine. "
In frosty November 1920, the Tuchola hospital resembled a conveyor belt of death: “Hospital buildings are huge barracks, in most cases iron, like hangars. All buildings are dilapidated and damaged, in the walls there are holes through which you can stick your hand ... The cold is usually terrible. They say that during the night frosts, the walls are covered with ice. The sick lie on terrible beds ... All on dirty mattresses without bedding, only ¼ has some blankets, all covered with dirty rags or a blanket made of paper. "
Stefania Sempolovskaya, Commissioner of the Russian Red Cross Society, on November (1920) inspection in Tuchol: “The patients are lying on terrible beds, without bedding, only a fourth of them have blankets. Injured people complain of a terrible cold, which not only interferes with wound healing, but, according to doctors, increases pain during healing. Medical personnel complain about the complete lack of dressings, cotton wool and bandages. I saw bandages drying in the forest. In the camp, typhus and dysentery are widespread, which has spread to the prisoners working in the area. The number of patients in the camp is so great that one of the barracks in the communist ward has been turned into an infirmary. On November 16, more than seventy patients lay there. Much of it is on earth. "
The mortality rate from wounds, diseases and frostbite was such that, according to the conclusion of the American representatives, after 5-6 months no one should have remained in the camp. Stefania Sempolovskaya, authorized by the Russian Red Cross Society, estimated the mortality rate among prisoners in a similar way: "... Tuchola: The mortality rate in the camp is so great that according to the calculations I made with one of the officers, with the mortality rate in October (1920), the entire camp would have died out in 4-5 months."
The Russian émigré press, published in Poland and, to put it mildly, did not feel sympathy for the Bolsheviks, directly wrote about Tucholi as a "death camp" for the Red Army. In particular, the émigré newspaper "Svoboda", published in Warsaw and completely dependent on the Polish authorities, reported in October 1921 that at that time, a total of 22 thousand people died in the Tuchola camp. A similar figure of the dead is given by the head of the II Department of the General Staff of the Polish Army (military intelligence and counterintelligence), Lieutenant Colonel Ignacy Matuszewski.
In his report of February 1, 1922 to the cabinet of the Minister of War of Poland, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Ignacy Matuszewski states: “From the materials at the disposal of the II Department ... it should be concluded that these facts of escapes from the camps are not limited only to Stshalkov, but also occur in all other camps, both for communists and for interned whites. These escapes are caused by the conditions in which the communists and internees find themselves (lack of fuel, linen and clothing, poor nutrition, and long waiting times to leave for Russia). Particularly famous was the camp in Tucholi, which the internees call the "death camp" (about 22,000 Red Army prisoners died in this camp. "
Analyzing the content of the document signed by Matushevsky, Russian researchers, first of all, emphasize that he “It was not a personal message of a private person, but an official response to the order of the Minister of War of Poland No. 65/22 dated January 12, 1922 with a categorical instruction to the head of the II Department of the General Staff:“ ... provide an explanation under what conditions the 33 communists escaped from the camp prisoners of Stshalkovo and who is responsible for this.Such orders are usually given to special services when it is required to establish with absolute certainty the true picture of what happened. It was not by chance that the minister instructed Matushevsky to investigate the circumstances of the escape of the communists from Stshalkovo. The chief of the II Department of the General Staff in 1920-1923 was the most informed person in Poland on the real state of affairs in the prisoner of war and internment camps. The officers of the II department subordinate to him, were engaged not only in "sorting" the arriving prisoners of war, but also controlled the political situation in the camps. The real state of affairs in the camp in Tucholi Matushevsky was simply obliged to know because of his official position.
Therefore, there can be no doubt that long before writing his letter of February 1, 1922, Matushevsky had at his disposal exhaustive, documented and verified information about the death of 22 thousand Red Army prisoners in the Tucholi camp. Otherwise, you have to be a political suicide in order to inform the country's leadership of unverified facts of this level on your own initiative, especially on the issue at the center of a high-profile diplomatic scandal! After all, at that time in Poland passions had not yet cooled down after the famous note of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR Georgy Chicherin of September 9, 1921, in which he, in the harshest terms, accused the Polish authorities of the death of 60,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
In addition to Matushevsky's report, the reports of the Russian émigré press about the huge number of deaths in Tucholi are actually confirmed by reports from hospital services. In particular, regarding “A clear picture of the deaths of Russian prisoners of war can be observed in the“ death camp ”in Tucholi, in which there were official statistics, but even then only during certain periods of the prisoners' stay there. According to this, although not complete statistics, since the opening of the infirmary in February 1921 (and the winter months of 1920-1921 were the most difficult for prisoners of war) and until May 11 of the same year, there were 6491 epidemic diseases in the camp, and 17294 non-epidemic diseases. - 23785 diseases. The number of prisoners in the camp during this period did not exceed 10-11 thousand, so more than half of the prisoners who were there had had epidemic diseases, and each of the prisoners had to be ill at least twice in 3 months. Officially, 2561 deaths were registered during this period, i.e. in 3 months at least 25% of the total number of prisoners of war died. "
Mortality in Tucholi in the worst months of 1920/1921 (November, December, January and February), according to Russian researchers, “One can only guess. It must be assumed that it was in no way less than 2000 people a month. "When assessing the mortality rate in Tuchola, it should also be remembered that the representative of the Polish Red Cross Society Kreutz-Velezynska, in her report on her visit to the camp in December 1920, noted that: “The most tragic conditions for new arrivals, who are transported in unheated wagons, without appropriate clothing, cold, hungry and tired ... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker die.”The mortality rate in such echelons reached 40%. Those who died in echelons, although they were considered sent to the camp and were buried in the camp burial grounds, were not officially recorded anywhere in the general camp statistics. Their number could be taken into account only by officers of the II Department, who supervised the reception and "sorting" of prisoners of war. Also, apparently, the mortality rate of newly arrived prisoners of war who died in quarantine was not reflected in the final camp reporting.
In this context, not only the above-cited testimony of the head of the 2nd department of the Polish General Staff, Matuszewski, about deaths in a concentration camp, but also the recollections of local residents of Tuchola is of particular interest. According to them, back in the 1930s, there were many sites here, "On which the earth collapsed underfoot, and human remains protruded from it"…
... The military GULAG of the second Rzecz Pospolita existed for a relatively short time - about three years. But during this time he managed to destroy tens of thousands of human lives. The Polish side so far admits the death of "16-18 thousand". According to Russian and Ukrainian scientists, researchers and politicians, in reality this figure could be about five times higher ...
Nikolay Malishevsky, "The Eye of the Planet"
The Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors. (And if the Germans acted more like ants - doing routine work, then the Poles killed with passion and pleasure - arctus)
The Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors.
It is known that in Poland history has long been a character actively acting on the political scene. Therefore, bringing “historical skeletons” onto this stage has always been a favorite pastime of those Polish politicians who do not have solid political baggage and, therefore, prefer to engage in historical speculation.
The situation in this regard received a new impetus when, after winning the parliamentary elections in October 2015, the party of the ardent Russophobe Yaroslav Kachinsky “Law and Justice” (“PiS”) returned to power. Andrzej Duda, a protege of this party, became the President of Poland. The new president already on February 2, 2016 at a meeting of the National Development Council formulated a conceptual approach to Warsaw's foreign policy: “The historical policy of the Polish state should be an element of our position in the international arena. It must be offensive. "
An example of such "offensiveness" is the recent bill approved by the Polish government. It provides for imprisonment for up to three years for the phrase "Polish concentration camp" or "Polish death camps" in relation to the Nazi camps that operated in occupied Poland during World War II. The author of the bill, the Polish Minister of Justice, explained the need for its adoption by the fact that such a law would more effectively protect the "historical truth" and "the good name of Poland."
In this regard, a little history. The phrase "Polish death camp" came into use largely with the "light hand" of Jan Karski, an active participant in the Polish anti-Nazi resistance. In 1944 he published an article in Colliers Weekly (Collier Weekly) entitled “The Polish Death Camp”.
In it, Karsky described how he, disguised as a German soldier, secretly visited the ghetto in Izbitsa Lubelskaya, from which prisoners of Jews, Gypsies, and others were sent to the Nazi extermination camps Belzec and Sobibor. Thanks to Karsky's article and then his book Courier from Poland: Story of a Secret State, the world first learned about the Nazi massacre of Jews in Poland.
Note that for 70 years after World War II, the phrase "Polish death camp" was generally understood as a Nazi death camp located in Poland.
The problems began when US President Barack Obama in May 2012, posthumously awarding Y. Karski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in his speech mentioned the “Polish death camp”. Poland was outraged and demanded an explanation and apology, as such a phrase allegedly cast a shadow on Polish history. Pope Francis' visit to Poland in July 2016 added fuel to the fire. Then in Krakow, Francis met with the only woman born and survived in the Nazi camp Auschwitz (Auschwitz). In his speech, the Pope called her birthplace “the Polish concentration camp of Auschwitz”. This reservation was replicated by the Vatican Catholic portal "IlSismografo". Poland rebelled again. These are the well-known origins of the above-mentioned Polish bill.
However, the point here is not only in the aforementioned unfortunate reservations of world leaders about the Nazi camps.
The Polish authorities, in addition, it is imperative to block any memories that in Poland in 1919 - 1922. there was a network of concentration camps for Red Army prisoners of war captured during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919 - 1920.
It is known that according to the conditions of the existence of prisoners of war in them, these camps were the forerunners of the Nazi concentration camps of death.
However, the Polish side does not want to admit this documented fact and reacts very painfully when statements or articles appear in the Russian media that mention Polish concentration camps. Thus, an article by Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, Associate Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Perm) entitled "Indifferent and Patient", caused a sharply negative reaction from the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation (05.02.2015.Lenta.ru https://lenta.ru/articles/2015 / 02/04 / poland /).
In this article, the Russian historian, analyzing the uneasy Polish-Russian relations, called the Polish POW camps concentration camps, and also called the Nazi death camp Auschwitz Auschwitz. He thereby allegedly cast a shadow not only on the Polish city of Auschwitz, but also on Polish history. The reaction of the Polish authorities, as always, was not long in coming.
Deputy Polish Ambassador to the Russian Federation Yaroslav Ksionzek in a letter to the editorial office of "Lenta.ru" stated that the Polish side categorically objects to the use of the definition "Polish concentration camps", because it in no way corresponds to the historical truth. In Poland during the period 1918 - 1939. such camps allegedly did not exist.
However, Polish diplomats, refuting Russian historians and publicists, once again got into a puddle. I had to face critical assessments of my article “The Lie and Truth of Katyn”, published in the newspaper “Spetsnaz of Russia” (No. 4, 2012). The critic then was Grzegorz Telesnicki, I Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation. In his letter to the editors of Spetsnaz of Russia, he categorically argued that the Poles did not participate in the Nazi exhumation of the Katyn burials in 1943.
Meanwhile, it is well known and documented that the specialists of the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross participated in the Nazi exhumation in Katyn from April to June 1943, performing, according to the Minister of Nazi Propaganda and the main falsifier of the Katyn crime J. Goebbels, the role of “objective” witnesses. The statement of Mr. J. Ksenzhik about the absence of concentration camps in Poland, which is easily refuted by documents, is just as false.
Polish forerunners of Auschwitz-Birkenau
To begin with, I will conduct a small educational program for Polish diplomats. Let me remind you that in the period 2000-2004. Russian and Polish historians, in accordance with the Agreement between Rosarkhiv and the General Directorate of State Archives of Poland, signed on December 4, 2000, prepared a collection of documents and materials "Red Army Men in Polish Captivity in 1919-1922" (hereinafter the collection "Red Army men ...").
This 912-page collection was published in Russia with a circulation of 1 thousand copies. (M .; SPb.: Summer Garden, 2004). It contains 338 historical documents that reveal a very unpleasant situation that reigned in Polish prisoner of war camps, including concentration camps. Apparently, for this reason, the Polish side not only did not publish this collection in Polish, but also took measures to buy up part of the Russian edition.
So, in the collection "Red Army men ..." document No. 72 is presented, called "Temporary instruction for concentration camps of prisoners of war, approved by the High Command of the Polish Army."
I will cite a small quote from this document: “... Following the orders of the Supreme Command No. 2800 / III of 18.IV.1920, No. 17000 / IV of 18.IV.1920, No. 16019 / II, as well as 6675 / San. temporary instructions for concentration camps are issued ... Camps for Bolshevik prisoners, which are to be created by order of the High Command of the Polish Army No. 17000 / IV in Zvyagel and Ploskirov, and then Zhitomir, Korosten and Bar, are called "Concentration camp for prisoners of war No. ...".
So, Panova, a question arises. How, having passed the law on the inadmissibility of naming Polish concentration camps, will you deal with those Polish historians who dare to refer to the above-mentioned "Temporary Instruction ..."? But I will leave this question for the consideration of Polish lawyers and return to the Polish prisoner of war camps, including those called concentration camps.
Acquaintance with the documents contained in the collection "Red Army men ..." allows us to confidently assert that the point is not in the name, but in the essence of the Polish prisoner of war camps. They created such inhuman conditions for the detention of Red Army prisoners of war that they can rightfully be considered as the forerunners of Nazi concentration camps.
This is evidenced by the absolute majority of documents posted in the collection "Red Army men ...".
To substantiate my conclusion, I will allow myself to refer to the testimonies of former prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau Ota Kraus (no. 73046) and Erich Kulka (no. 73043). They passed the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau and were well aware of the order established in these camps. Therefore, in the title of this chapter, I used the name "Auschwitz-Birkenau", since it was precisely this name that was used by O. Kraus and E. Kulka in their book "Death Factory" (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1960).
The atrocities of the guards and the living conditions of Red Army prisoners of war in Polish camps are very reminiscent of the atrocities of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For those in doubt, I will quote a few quotes from the book "Factory of Death".
O. Kraus and E. Kulka wrote that
“They didn't live in Birkenau, but huddled in wooden barracks 40 meters long and 9 meters wide. The barracks had no windows, were poorly lit and ventilated ... In total, the barracks housed 250 people. There were no washrooms or toilets in the barracks. The prisoners were forbidden to leave the barrack at night, so at the end of the barrack there were two tubs for sewage ... ”.
“Exhaustion, illness and death of prisoners were caused by insufficient and bad food, and more often by real hunger ... There were no dishes for food in the camp ... The prisoner received less than 300 grams of bread. The prisoners were given bread in the evening, and they immediately ate it. In the morning they received half a liter of a black liquid called coffee, or tea, and a tiny portion of sugar. At lunch, the prisoner received less than a liter of stew, which should have contained 150 g of potatoes, 150 g of turnips, 20 g of flour, 5 g of butter, 15 g of bones. In fact, it was impossible to find such modest doses of food in the soup ... With poor nutrition and hard work, a strong and healthy beginner could only survive for three months ... ".
The mortality rate was increased by the punishment system applied in the camp. The guilt was different, but, as a rule, the commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp without any analysis of the case “... announced the sentence to the guilty prisoners. Most often, twenty lashes were prescribed ... Soon bloody scraps of shabby clothes flew in different directions ... ". The punished person had to count the number of blows. If he got lost, the execution would start over.
“For whole groups of prisoners ... usually a punishment was applied that was called 'sports'. Prisoners were forced to quickly fall to the ground and jump up, crawl and squat ... Transfer to a prison block was a common measure for certain offenses. And being in this block meant certain death ... In the blocks, prisoners slept without mattresses, right on bare boards ... Along the walls and in the middle of the infirmary block, bunks with mattresses soaked in human secretions were installed ... Patients lay next to dying and already dead prisoners. "
Below I will give similar examples from Polish camps. Surprisingly, the Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors. So, we open the collection "Red Army men ...". Here is document No. 164, entitled "Report on the results of the inspection of the camps in Domba and Stshalkovo" (October 1919).
“Inspection of the Dombey camp ... Wooden buildings. The walls are loose, some buildings have no wooden floor, the chambers are large ... Most of the prisoners without shoes are completely barefoot. There are almost no beds and bunks ... No straw, no hay. They sleep on the ground or boards ... No linen, no clothes; cold, hunger, dirt and all this threatens with enormous mortality ... ".
“Report on the inspection of the Stshalkovo camp. ... The state of health of the prisoners is appalling, the hygienic conditions of the camp are disgusting. Most of the buildings are dugouts with perforated roofs, an earthen floor, boardwalk is very rare, the windows are filled with boards instead of glass ... Many barracks are overcrowded. So, on October 19 this year. the barrack for communist prisoners was so crowded that it was difficult to see anything when entering it in the midst of the fog. The prisoners were so crowded that they could not lie down, but were forced to stand, leaning against one another ... ”.
It has been documented that in many Polish camps, including Stshalkovo, the Polish authorities did not bother to resolve the issue of sending prisoners of war of their natural needs at night. There were no toilets and buckets in the barracks, and the camp administration, on pain of being shot, prohibited people from leaving the barracks after 6 pm. Each of us can imagine such a situation ...
It was mentioned in document No. 333 "Note of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation to the chairman of the Polish delegation protesting against the conditions of detention of prisoners in Strzhalkovo" (December 29, 1921) and in document No. 334 "Note of the RSFSR Plenipotentiary Mission in Warsaw of the Polish Foreign Ministry on the abuse of Soviet prisoners of war in the Stshalkovo camp "(January 5, 1922).
It should be noted that beating of prisoners of war was common in both Nazi and Polish camps. Thus, in the aforementioned document No. 334, it was noted that in the Stshalkovo camp “up to the present day there have been desecrations of the prisoners. Beatings of prisoners of war are a constant phenomenon ... ”. It turns out that cruel beatings of prisoners of war in the Stshalkovo camp were practiced from 1919 to 1922.
This is confirmed by document No. 44 "The attitude of the Polish Ministry of Military Affairs to the Supreme Command of the VP regarding an article from the newspaper" Courier novy "about the bullying of Latvians who deserted from the Red Army with an accompanying note from the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland to the Supreme Command (January 16, 1920). It says that the Latvians, upon arrival at the Stshalkovo camp (apparently in the fall of 1919), were first robbed, leaving them in their underwear, and then each of them received 50 blows with a barbed wire rod. More than ten Latvians died from blood poisoning, and two were shot without trial.
Responsible for this barbarism were the head of the camp, Captain Wagner, and his assistant, Lieutenant Malinovsky, who was distinguished by sophisticated cruelty.
This is described in document No. 314 "Letter of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation to the Polish delegation of PRUSK with a request to take action on the application of Red Army prisoners of war in relation to the former commandant of the camp in Stshalkovo" (03 September 1921).
The statement of the Red Army men said that
“Lieutenant Malinovsky always walked around the camp, accompanied by several corporals, who had in their hands plaits-lashes made of wire and ordered those who did not like him to lie down in the ditch, and the corporals beat as ordered. If the beaten groaned or asked for mercy, then. Malinovsky would take out his revolver and shoot ... If the sentries would shoot prisoners. Malinowski gave them 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks as a reward ... More than once it was possible to observe how the group was headed by. Malinovskiy climbed onto machine-gun towers and fired at defenseless people from there ... ”.
Polish journalists learned about the situation in the camp, and in 1921 Lieutenant Malinowski was "put on trial", and soon Captain Wagner was arrested. However, there are no reports about the punishments they have suffered. Probably, the case was let down on the "brakes", since Malinovsky and Wagner were charged not with murders, but with "abuse of office" ?! Accordingly, the system of beatings in the Stshalkovo camp, and not only in it, remained the same until the camps were closed in 1922.
Like the Nazis, the Polish authorities used famine as an effective means of exterminating captured Red Army soldiers. Thus, document No. 168 "Telegram of the Modlin fortified area to the POWs section of the High Command of the Polish Army about the mass illness of prisoners of war in the Modlin camp" (dated October 28, 1920) states that an epidemic is raging among the prisoners of war of the concentration station of prisoners and internees gastric diseases, 58 people died. "The main causes of the disease are the eating of various damp cleanings by the prisoners and the complete absence of shoes and clothes." Note that this is not an isolated case of starvation deaths of prisoners of war, which is described in the documents of the collection "Red Army men ...".
A general assessment of the situation prevailing in the Polish prisoner of war camps was given in document No. 310 "Minutes of the 11th meeting of the Mixed (Russian, Ukrainian and Polish delegations) commission on repatriation on the situation of captured Red Army soldiers" (July 28, 1921) It was noted there, that “the RUD (Russian-Ukrainian delegation) could never allow the prisoners to be treated so inhumanely and with such cruelty ... RUD does not recall that continuous nightmare and horror of beatings, mutilations and continuous physical extermination, which was carried out to Russian prisoners of war Red Army, especially communists, in the first days and months of captivity….
In the same protocol it was noted that “The Polish command of the camps, as if in revenge after the first arrival of our delegation, sharply increased their repression ... The Red Army men are beaten and tortured for any reason and for no reason ... the beatings took the form of an epidemic ... When the camp command considers it possible to provide more human conditions for the existence of prisoners of war, then prohibitions come from the Center. "
A similar assessment was given in document No. 318 "From a note of the NKID of the RSFSR to the extraordinary and plenipotentiary chargé d'affaires of the Polish Republic T. Fillipovich on the situation and death of prisoners of war in Polish camps" (September 9, 1921).
It said: “The responsibility of the Polish Government remains entirely the indescribable horrors that are still happening with impunity in places like the Strzhalkovo camp. Suffice it to point out that 60,000 out of 130,000 Russian prisoners of war in Poland died within two years. ”
According to the calculations of the Russian military historian M.V. Filimoshin, the number of those killed and died in Polish captivity of the Red Army is 82,500 people (Filimoshin. Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal, No. 2. 2001). This figure seems to be quite reasonable. I believe that the above suggests that Polish concentration camps and POW camps can rightfully be considered the forerunners of Nazi concentration camps.
I refer distrustful and inquisitive readers to my research “Antikatyn, or Red Army Men in Polish Captivity”, presented in my books “The Secret of Katyn” (Moscow: Algorithm, 2007) and “Katyn. Modern history of the issue ”(Moscow: Algorithm, 2012). It gives a more comprehensive picture of what was happening in the Polish camps.
Violence over dissent
It is impossible to complete the topic of Polish concentration camps without mentioning two camps: the Belarusian "Birch-Kartuzskaya" and the Ukrainian "Biala Podlaska". They were created in 1934 by the decision of the Polish dictator Józef Pilsudski, as a means of reprisals against Belarusians and Ukrainians who protested against the Polish occupation regime of 1920-1939. Although they were not called concentration camps, in some ways they surpassed the Nazi concentration camps.
But first, about how many Belarusians and Ukrainians accepted the Polish regime established in the territories of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine captured by the Poles in 1920. This is what the newspaper Rzeczpospolita wrote in 1925. “... If there are no changes for several years, then we will have there (in the Eastern Cresce) a general armed uprising. If we do not drown it in blood, it will tear off several provinces from us ... There is a gallows for the uprising and nothing else. Horror must fall on all the local (Belarusian) population from top to bottom, from which blood will freeze in its veins ”.
In the same year, the well-known Polish publicist Adolf Nevchinsky in the pages of the newspaper "Slovo" stated that one should talk with the Belarusians in the language of "gallows and only gallows ... this would be the most correct solution of the national question in Western Belarus."
Feeling public support, Polish sadists in Bereza-Kartuzskaya and Biala Podlaska did not stand on ceremony with the recalcitrant Belarusians and Ukrainians. If the Nazis created concentration camps as monstrous factories of mass extermination of people, then in Poland such camps were used as a means of intimidating the disobedient. How else to explain the monstrous tortures that Belarusians and Ukrainians were subjected to. I will give examples.
In Bereza-Kartuzskaya, 40 people were packed into small cells with a cement floor. To prevent the prisoners from sitting down, the floor was constantly watered. In the cell, they were forbidden even to talk. They tried to turn people into dumb cattle. A regime of silence for prisoners was also in effect in the hospital. They beat me for moans, for gnashing of teeth from unbearable pain.
The leadership of Bereza-Kartuzskaya cynically called it "the most sporting camp in Europe." It was forbidden to walk here - only by running. Everything was done on the whistle. Even a dream was on such a command. Half an hour on the left side, then the whistle, and immediately roll over to the right. Those who hesitated or did not hear the whistle in a dream were immediately tortured. Before such a "sleep", several buckets of water with bleach were poured into the rooms where the prisoners slept, for "prevention". The Nazis did not manage to think of this.
The conditions in the punishment cell were even more dire. The offenders were kept there from 5 to 14 days. To intensify the suffering, several buckets of feces were poured onto the floor of the punishment cell. The parasha in the punishment cell has not been cleaned for months. The room was swarming with worms. In addition, the camp practiced such group punishment as cleaning camp toilets with glasses or mugs.
The commandant of Beryoza-Kartuzskaya, Jozef Kamal-Kurgan, in response to statements that the prisoners could not stand the conditions of torture and preferred death, calmly stated: "The more they take a break here, the better it will be in my Poland."
I believe that the above is enough to imagine what the Polish camps for the recalcitrant are, and the story about the Biala Podlaska camp will be redundant.
In conclusion, I will add that the use of feces for torture was a favorite means of Polish gendarmes, apparently suffering from unsatisfied sadomasochistic inclinations. There are known facts when the employees of the Polish defensives forced the arrested to clean the toilets with their hands, and then, not allowing them to wash their hands, they gave lunch rations. Those who refused, they wrung their hands. Sergei Osipovich Pritytsky, a Belarusian fighter against the Polish occupation regime in the 1930s, recalled how Polish police officers poured slurry into his nose.
Such an unpleasant truth about the "skeleton in the Polish closet" called "concentration camps" forced me to tell the Panova from Warsaw and the Polish Embassy in the Russian Federation.
P.S. Panove, please keep in mind. I am not a polonophobe. I watch Polish films with pleasure, listen to Polish pop music and regret that I did not master the Polish language in my time. But I “hate it” when Polish Russophobes impudently misinterpret the history of Polish-Russian relations with the tacit consent of official Russia.
Auschwitz is a city that has become a symbol of the ruthlessness of the fascist regime; the city where one of the most meaningless dramas in human history took place; a city where hundreds of thousands of people were brutally killed. In the concentration camps located here, the Nazis built the most terrible conveyors of death, destroying up to 20 thousand people every day ... Today I begin to talk about one of the most terrible places on earth - the concentration camps in Auschwitz. I warn you, the photos and descriptions below can leave a heavy mark on the soul. Although personally I believe that everyone should touch and let these terrible pages of our history pass through themselves ...
There will be very few of my comments on the photographs in this post - this is a too delicate topic, to express my point of view on which, it seems to me, I have no moral right. I honestly admit that visiting the museum left a heavy scar on my heart, which still does not want to heal ...
Most of the photo comments are based on the travel guide (
The Auschwitz concentration camp was the largest Nazi concentration camp for Poles and prisoners of other nationalities, whom Hitler's fascism condemned to isolation and gradual destruction by hunger, hard work, experiments, as well as to immediate death as a result of mass and individual executions. Since 1942, the camp has become the largest extermination center for European Jews. Most of the Jews deported to Auschwitz perished in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival, without registration or identification with camp numbers. That is why it is very difficult to establish the exact number of those killed - historians agree on a figure of about one and a half million people.
But back to the history of the camp. In 1939, Auschwitz and its surroundings became part of the Third Reich. The city was renamed Auschwitz. In the same year, the fascist command had the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a concentration camp. The empty pre-war barracks near Auschwitz were chosen as the site for the creation of the first camp. The concentration camp is named Auschwitz-I.
The education order is dated April 1940. Rudolf Höss is appointed commandant of the camp. On June 14, 1940, the Gestapo sent the first prisoners to Auschwitz I - 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow.
A gate with a cynical inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (Labor makes free) leads to the camp, through which prisoners went to work every day and returned ten hours later. In a small square next to the kitchen, the camp band played marches that were supposed to speed up the movement of the prisoners and make it easier for the Nazis to recount them.
At the time of its foundation, the camp consisted of 20 buildings: 14 one-story and 6 two-story. In 1941-1942, by the forces of prisoners, one floor was added on all one-story buildings and eight more buildings were built. The total number of multi-storey buildings in the camp was 28 (except for the kitchen and utility buildings). The average number of prisoners ranged from 13-16 thousand prisoners, and in 1942 it reached over 20 thousand. The prisoners were placed in blocks, using also attics and basements for this purpose.
Along with the increase in the number of prisoners, the territorial volume of the camp increased, which gradually turned into a huge plant for the extermination of people. Auschwitz I became the base for a whole network of new camps.
In October 1941, after there was no more room for the newly staying prisoners in Auschwitz I, work began on the construction of another concentration camp, called Auschwitz II (also known as Bireknau and Brzezinka). This camp was destined to become the largest in the system of Nazi death camps. I .
In 1943, another camp, Auschwitz III, was built in Monowitz near Auschwitz on the premises of the IG Ferbenindustrie plant. In addition, in 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, which were subordinate to Auschwitz III and were located mainly near metallurgical plants, mines and factories using prisoners as cheap labor.
Clothes and all personal items were taken from the prisoners who arrived, they were cut, disinfected and washed, and then they were given numbers and registered. Initially, each of the prisoners was photographed in three positions. In 1943, prisoners began to be tattooed - Auschwitz became the only Nazi camp in which prisoners were tattooed with their number.
Depending on the reasons for the arrest, the prisoners received triangles of different colors, which were sewn onto the camp clothes together with the numbers. Political prisoners were entitled to a red triangle, Jews wore a six-pointed star, consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for the arrest. Gypsies and those prisoners whom the Nazis considered antisocial elements received black triangles. Purple triangles were sewn on to Jehovah's Witnesses, pink ones to homosexuals, and green ones to criminals.
The scarce striped clothing of the camp did not protect the prisoners from the cold. The linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even at monthly intervals, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics of various diseases, especially typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies.
The hands of the camp clock ruthlessly and monotonously measured the prisoner's life time. From morning to evening gong, from one bowl of soup to the next, from the first check to the moment when the prisoner's corpse was counted for the last time.
One of the scourges of camp life was verification, which was used to check the number of prisoners. They lasted several, and sometimes more than ten hours. The camp authorities very often announced penalty checks, during which prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were also cases when they were ordered to keep their hands raised up for several hours.
Along with executions and gas chambers, exhausting work was an effective means of exterminating prisoners. The prisoners were employed in various sectors of the economy. At first, they worked during the construction of the camp: they built new buildings and barracks, roads and drainage ditches. A little later, industrial enterprises of the Third Reich began to use the cheap labor of prisoners more and more often. The prisoner was ordered to do the work at a run, without a second of rest. The pace of work, scanty portions of food, as well as constant beatings and bullying increased mortality. During the return of the prisoners to the camp, the killed or wounded were dragged or carried in wheelbarrows or carts.
The daily ration of the prisoner was 1300-1700 calories. For breakfast the prisoner received about a liter of "coffee" or a decoction of herbs, for lunch - about 1 liter of lean soup, often made from rotten vegetables. Dinner consisted of 300-350 grams of black clay bread and a small amount of other additives (eg 30 g. Sausage or 30 g. Margarine or cheese) and a herbal drink or "coffee".
In Auschwitz I, most of the inmates lived in two-story brick buildings. Housing conditions at all times of the camp were catastrophic. The inmates, brought in by the first echelons, slept on straw strewn across the concrete floor. Later, hay bedding was introduced. The room, which barely accommodated 40-50 people, slept about 200 prisoners. The three-tiered bunks installed later did not at all improve living conditions. More often than not, 2 prisoners lay on one tier of the bunks.
The malarial climate of Auschwitz, poor living conditions, hunger, scanty clothes that were not removable for a long time, unwashed and unprotected from the cold, rats and insects led to massive epidemics that dramatically reduced the number of prisoners. A large number of patients who went to the hospital were not admitted due to overcrowding. In this regard, SS doctors periodically carried out selection both among patients and among prisoners in other buildings. Weakened, and not promising a quick recovery, they were sent to death in gas chambers or killed in the hospital, injecting them directly into the heart of a dose of phenol.
That is why the inmates called the hospital "the vestibule of the crematorium." In Auschwitz, prisoners were subjected to numerous criminal experiments by SS doctors. For example, Professor Karl Klauberg, in order to develop a quick method of biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted criminal sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10 of the main camp. Dr. Josef Mengele, within the framework of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twins and children with disabilities.
In addition, various experiments were carried out in Auschwitz with the use of new drugs and drugs: toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin grafts were carried out ... During these experiments, hundreds of prisoners and prisoners died.
Despite the difficult living conditions, constant terror and danger, the prisoners of the camp conducted secret underground activities against the Nazis. It took many forms. Establishing contacts with the Polish population living in the vicinity of the camp made possible the illegal transfer of food and medicine. From the camp information was transmitted about the crimes committed by the SS, surname lists of prisoners, SS men and material evidence of crimes. All parcels were hidden in various items, often specially designed for this purpose, and the correspondence between the camp and the centers of the resistance movement was encrypted.
In the camp, work was carried out to provide assistance to prisoners and explanatory work in the field of international solidarity against Hitlerism. Cultural activities were also carried out, which consisted in organizing discussions and meetings at which prisoners recited the best works of Russian literature, as well as in secretly conducting divine services.
Verification area - here the SS members checked the number of prisoners.
Here, public executions were carried out on a portable or common gallows.
In July 1943, the SS men hanged 12 Polish prisoners on it for maintaining relations with the civilian population and helping 3 comrades escape.
The yard between buildings No. 10 and No. 11 is fenced with a high wall. Wooden shutters on the windows in block 10 were supposed to make it impossible to observe the executions taking place here. Before the "Wall of Death", the SS men shot several thousand prisoners, mostly Poles.
There was a camp prison in the undergrounds of building 11. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the court-martial, which came to Auschwitz from Katowice and, during the session, which lasted 2-3 hours, passed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.
Before execution, everyone had to undress in the washrooms, and if the number of those sentenced to death was too small, the sentence was carried out right there. If the number of those sentenced was sufficient, they were taken through a small door to be shot to the “Wall of Death”.
The SS system of punishment in Hitler's concentration camps was part of a well-planned, deliberate extermination of prisoners. The prisoner could be punished for everything: for picking an apple, relieving himself while working, or for pulling out his own tooth in order to exchange it for bread, even for too slow, according to the SS man, work.
The prisoners were punished with lashes. They were hanged by twisted arms on special poles, placed in the dungeons of a camp prison, forced to perform penalty exercises, racks, or sent to penalty teams.
In September 1941, an attempt was made here to massacre people with the help of the poisonous gas "Cyclone B". Then about 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital died.
Cells located in the basements housed prisoners and civilians who were suspected of having connections with prisoners or assisting in escapes, prisoners sentenced to starvation for the escape of a cellmate, and those whom the SS considered guilty of violating camp rules or against whom an investigation was conducted ...
All the property that the people deported to the camp brought with them was taken away by the SS. It was sorted and piled up in the huge barracks in Auszivets II. These warehouses were called "Canada". I will tell you more about them in the next report.
The property located in the warehouses of concentration camps was then exported to the Third Reich for the needs of the Wehrmacht. The gold teeth that were removed from the corpses of the killed people were melted into ingots and sent to the Central Sanitary Directorate of the SS. The ashes of the burnt prisoners were used as manure or were covered with nearby ponds and river beds.
Items that previously belonged to people who died in the gas chambers were used by SS men who were part of the camp staff. For example, they turned to the commandant with a request to issue baby carriages, things for babies and other items. Despite the fact that the looted property was constantly taken out by whole trains, the warehouses were overflowing, and the space between them was often filled with piles of unsorted luggage.
Elms as the Soviet Army approached Auschwitz, the most valuable things were urgently removed from the warehouses. A few days before the liberation, the SS men set fire to the warehouses, erasing the traces of the crime. Thirty barracks burned down, and in those that remained, many thousands of pairs of shoes, clothes, toothbrushes, shaving brushes, glasses, prostheses were found after liberation ...
While liberating the camp in Auschwitz, the Soviet Army found about 7 tons of hair in the warehouses, packed in bags. These were the remnants that the camp authorities did not manage to sell and send to the factories of the Third Reich. The analysis showed that they have traces of hydrogen cyanide, a special toxic component of drugs called "Cyclone B". From human hair, German firms, among other products, produced a tailor's hair band. Found in one of the cities, rolls of bead, which are in a showcase, were given for analysis, the results of which showed that it was made of human hair, most likely female.
It is very difficult to imagine the tragic scenes that were played out in the camp every day. Former prisoners - artists - tried to convey the atmosphere of those days in their work.
Hard work and hunger led to the complete exhaustion of the body. From hunger, the prisoners fell ill with dystrophy, which very often ended in death. These photographs were taken after release; they show adult prisoners weighing from 23 to 35 kg.
In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp with their parents. First of all, these were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most Jewish children died in the gas chambers immediately after arriving at the camp. Few of them, after careful selection, were sent to the camp, where they obeyed the same strict rules as adults. Some of the children, such as twins, were subjected to criminal experiments.
One of the scariest exhibits is a model of one of the crematoria in the Auschwitz II camp. On average, about 3 thousand people were killed and burned in such a building per day ...
And this is the crematorium in Auschwitz I. It was located behind the camp fence.
The largest room in the crematorium was the morgue, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber. Here in 1941 and 1942 Soviet prisoners and Jews from the ghettos organized by the Germans in Upper Silesia were killed.
The second part contains two of the three furnaces reconstructed from the preserved original metal elements, in which about 350 bodies were burned during the day. Each retort simultaneously contained 2-3 corpses.
