What the Nazis did to the Red Army women. What did the Nazis do with the captured women? List of concentration camps in different countries

German nurses during World War II are most often mentioned in connection with the terrible, inhumane experiments of Nazi doctors. Meanwhile, most German girls and women who underwent medical training saved lives German soldiers and officers on Eastern Front. Their duties were no different from what the Soviet nurses did on the other side of the line of fire.

The famous British historian Williamson Gordon wrote in his book “Women's Auxiliary Services of Germany in the Second World War” that none of the Wehrmacht units officially had nurses on their staff, and all the girls who served in hospitals on the Eastern Front were representatives of the German Red Cross .

Propaganda was actively carried out throughout Nazi Germany: young ladies were encouraged to go to combat areas to help wounded servicemen. Posters, newspapers, and radio broadcasts called for this. To residents of Berlin or Munich, the war was presented with pathos, described as a heroic action, so some girls, out of idealistic and romantic ideas, went to work in front-line hospitals.

Other German women ended up on the Eastern Front because they were qualified nurses. Although the Red Cross is a public international structure with voluntary membership, the fascist leadership strictly controlled the activities of the German branch of this organization.

At work, girls usually wore starched white caps, as well as white aprons with wide shoulder straps and pockets. The rest of the time, nurses wore gray blouses, skirts, tunics or overcoats. Their clothes bore the emblem of the Red Cross.

"I was fascinated by Hitler"

In 2014, Rosemary Bronikowski (married name), who was then 92 years old, admitted in an interview that she decided to go into nursing out of youthful idealism, imbued with the ideas of National Socialism: “I was young and, like a child, fascinated by him (Adolf Hitler - auto.)". She succumbed to fascist agitation, despite the fact that the older members of her family were outraged by the Fuhrer’s policies and did not approve of the war, understanding its true nature.

However, open criticism of Nazi ideology was impossible: “If someone spoke out about ending the war, he could be arrested and killed. Every day Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Education and Propaganda, gave Nazi speeches on the radio, and every person had to listen to him" (Rosemary Bronikowski).

Bronikowski, like many members of her generation, realized the full horror of the war later, having personally experienced the hardships and deprivations. [C-BLOCK]

Rosemary recalled how nurses cleaned soldiers of blood and dirt; they often lacked painkillers, but there were no problems with food: both nurses and patients regularly received sugar, eggs and milk.

Once on the front-line territory, the girls quickly got rid of their illusions. For example, in 2010, 90-year-old Annette Schücking said in an interview that she heard from wounded Wehrmacht soldiers about the mass genocide of Jews in the German-occupied republics of the USSR. The girl, who voluntarily signed up for the Red Cross after graduating from school, ended up in the Zhitomir region in 1941, where she was faced with a harsh reality that was far from the content of the propaganda posters.

How many were there?

At the beginning of World War II, most German doctors were urgently called up to military service. After receiving their diplomas, young specialists were immediately sent to the troops.

According to the report of the Wehrmacht High Command headquarters dated July 6, 1942, 184 German divisions fought on the Eastern Front, of which 136 were infantry military formations, and 19 were tank divisions. If we add to them 53 divisions, staffed by representatives of countries allied to the Nazis (Italians, Romanians, Norwegians, Dutch and others), we get an impressive figure - 237 military formations. [C-BLOCK]

Since the medical service of each division was staffed by 16 doctors, in accordance with the directives of the fascist command, it is easy to calculate that the senior medical staff of the German units alone amounted to about 3 thousand people. And since one military field surgeon or other medical specialist requires the help of 5-7 qualified nurses, at a minimum, we can say that about 17-20 thousand representatives of the German Red Cross served on the Eastern Front. Plus nurses from European countries allied with the Nazis.

Iron Cross for Courage

Working in a military field hospital near the front line is a great risk to your life. No one is immune from artillery strikes and air raids. Some of the nurses received high military awards for displaying personal courage. For example, in 1942, Elfriede Vnuk was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class by the command for not abandoning the wounded, continuing to care for them even during a Soviet air raid. One of the bombs hit the hospital, and the girl herself was seriously injured. However, throughout the war she received several combat wounds. [C-BLOCK]

Countess Melitta Schenck von Stauffenberg also served as a nurse on the Eastern Front. Like many German women, she voluntarily joined the Red Cross. For helping wounded soldiers, the Countess was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class.

The sisters of mercy, risking their lives, saved the lives of Wehrmacht soldiers under a hail of bombings. According to the British writer and historian Williamson Gordon, in just 1941-1945, about 20 German nurses received military awards.

Male orderlies

Perhaps the main difference between the work of the employees of the German Red Cross and their colleagues on the other side of the front was that German women were much less likely to have to pull wounded soldiers from the battlefield. If our injured soldiers were carried out of the line of fire by nurses or healthy military personnel who happened to be nearby, then with the Germans this dangerous work was carried out by male orderlies.

The medical service of each fascist division, according to the staffing table, in addition to 16 doctors, consisted of another 600 soldiers, whose tasks did not include participation in hostilities. They acted as porters, drivers, and also provided first aid to the wounded. Having quickly bandaged the victims, the orderlies took them to hospitals. [C-BLOCK]

Dozens of medical service soldiers were assigned to each company. They carried bags with bandages and medicines; they had bicycles, motorcycles with sidecars, and cars at their disposal.

However, the vaunted German order was often destroyed as a result of the actions of our army, and the girls from the German Red Cross sometimes had to drag the wounded from the battlefield themselves.

German doctor Peter Bamm in his book “The Invisible Flag. Front-line everyday life on the Eastern Front" recalled how one day one of the German hospitals was captured by the Russians for a while, and when it was recaptured, they were surprised to discover that the Red Army soldiers had not touched the wounded soldiers. But all the doctors and nurses were taken prisoner.

Peter Bamm later learned that his colleagues were hastily sent to Soviet hospitals because both sides were experiencing a shortage of qualified specialists, given the huge battle losses suffered by both the Germans and the Russians.

Official information about the fate of female employees of the German Red Cross who ended up in Soviet captivity, Hardly ever. In one or another memoir there are stories about women who were forced to stay in the USSR after the end of the war and who married Russians. [C-BLOCK]

As for the numerous descriptions of the brutal rapes and murders of German nurses committed by soldiers of the Red Army after the capture of Berlin, most of them were invented by propagandists from Germany in order to consolidate in the Western public consciousness image of a Russian barbarian. Although, of course, there have been isolated cases of brutal reprisals against women: people are all different.

It is known that several German nurses captured by the Americans in a hospital in the French city of Cherbourg were handed over to the German authorities after the end of the war. This action was widely reported in US newspapers as evidence of the good treatment of the women prisoners.

During World War II, the Nazis brought “racially valuable” Poles into Germany who were capable of conceiving “Aryan” children. They were proposed to be considered Germans, and work was carried out with them on integration into German society. The historian Bradley Nichols talks about how the program of “regermanization” of these women was implemented and why it failed in his article published in the journal German History. Lenta.ru introduces readers to the contents of this article.

On May 12, 1942, Polish woman Olga Skibinska sent a letter to SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Dongus, head of the regional SS office for race and settlement, asking for help. A year earlier, the Nazis had taken the girl from her home in Poland to Germany. She worked as a maid in a German family, the owners were unhappy with her and reported to the local SS officer that their ward was returning from walks late, and also “traveled with a friend and a certain young man to Stuttgart.” The officer threatened the girl with a concentration camp, and she was in despair.

The letter looks naive - why would a high-ranking SS man help some Polish woman? But when she went through the registration procedure at the Dongus department, he identified her as a representative of the Nordic race and enrolled her in the re-Germanization program. This program implied the “re-education” of carriers of the so-called “lost German blood,” which was what the family to which it was sent was supposed to do.

Racially valuable

With the help of a program for “racially valuable Polish housewives,” Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler intended to solve a complex of long-standing social and economic problems. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the number of German women willing to work as maids has steadily decreased - Frau preferred less burdensome work with prospects for career growth. The Nazis, concerned that German women would not be able to withstand the pressure of everyday life and would not be able to fulfill their “motherly duties,” put forward several initiatives in the 1930s to motivate girls to homework, but they all failed. German youth showed no interest in this. After the outbreak of war, the Nazi authorities turned to foreign labor.

One thing is a job that requires heavy manual labor, and another is such an intimate sphere as the German family. The head of the NSDAP party office, Martin Bormann, warned that maids from the eastern regions pose a “significant danger” as they are capable of producing “unwanted, racially dirty offspring.” Other Nazis voiced similar concerns. At the same time, they believed that if German women were not helped with housework, this would lead to a decrease in the birth rate and, again, the extinction of the Aryan race.

As a result, they compromised and adopted the re-Germanization program. The experts selected those Poles who, in their opinion, were not Slavs, but descendants of the ancient “German colonists”. These girls were seen not only as labor, but also as an important reproductive resource - they could conceive racially pure children.

Photo: Becker/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The Nazis did not use the usual ethnic and national criteria (such as language, political orientation or religion). They were guided by the physiognomic standards of racial anthropology - that is, what was important for them was not what views and traditions a person adhered to, but what set of genes he supposedly possessed. Experts selected tall, slender and athletic women with blue eyes, blond hair, wide hips and at the same time noticed the behavioral features supposedly inherent to the Aryan woman (compliance, restraint, and so on), following the prescriptions of “racial hygiene”, eugenics.

Nevertheless, the “racially valuable” were viewed with great suspicion, because they were born in a country with an alien culture, which means they were “subjected to ideological indoctrination” and were prejudiced against the Germans.

Future mothers

Constant work was carried out with participants in the re-Germanization program; the state regulated them daily life- this was supposed to help them reforge and become full-fledged members of German society. Information about their behavior and attitude towards the regime was collected by party functionaries, the Gestapo and the SS. The authorities severely limited them in matters of sexuality, reproduction and marriage. Thus, program participants were allowed to marry only ethnic Germans and only after a probationary period of three to five years.

In addition, intensive measures were taken for cultural assimilation. Participants in the program regularly attended meetings of the National Socialist Women's Organization, where they were taught the German language and the Nazi worldview. However, the main task of re-Germanization fell on the shoulders of the owners, those for whom the girls worked. As Rudolf Brandt, Himmler's personal assistant, wrote, "These future purebred mothers must renounce their foreign ethnic identity, which means social advancement for them."

Such ostentatious enthusiasm could not hide the pessimism with which the Reich treated potential new fellow citizens - it was unspokenly believed that one way or another the participant in the program would fail the probationary period.

The program did not operate in all regions of the country. This applied only to the border regions, as well as areas where minorities lived who spoke Slavic languages. Most of the participants in the re-Germanization program were sent to rural families because, according to Otto Hofmann, head of the SS Main Office for Race and Settlement, the girls were “still very impressionable” and “exposed to great danger in the cities.”

Write letters

The girls regularly sent reports about how and what they lived to regional office Office of Race and Settlement. Of course, these documents should be studied with extreme caution - it is clear that the girls tried to meet the standards that were imposed on them and, undoubtedly, often lied.

First of all, the letters indicate that the participants in the program tried to correspond as much as possible to the stereotypical image of a German woman and were imbued with the Nazi ideas that were instilled in them. Most messages end with words about how the girls want to join German society and the signature “Heil Hitler!”

One girl noted that she received cards for food and clothing, “like a real German.” Others wrote that Germany had become a second home for them and that they had German friends. Irena Yasinskaya reported that she “really fell in love with good people", to which the SS men assigned her. “Now I understand that German blood flows in my veins. I love Germany and, if necessary, I will fight for it,” she assured. Many admitted that they felt they belonged to the “master race” and added that their loved ones were the same, in the hope of being reunited with their family.

But no matter how hard these girls tried, their enthusiastic letters were usually interpreted as a desire to improve their financial situation. Although they tried to “be German,” the Reich did not appreciate their efforts, and their owners often treated them cruelly. The girls complained about the lack of clothing and food, although the tables of the families in which they lived were laden with food. Some were locked at home and not allowed outside. There were also frequent cases of physical violence. A certain Casimira Kaczor wrote: “Frau is dissatisfied with my work. She insists that I only smear dirt on things. When I tell her that I’m German, she laughs and says that’s not true.”

The Germans despised the Poles and, moreover, thanks to propaganda, they considered Polish girls to be slutty, not to mention the stereotype of the easy availability of the maid as such, regardless of her ethnicity. The “racially valuable” Poles had no chance of joining German society.

The owners closely monitored the personal lives of their charges. For example, one girl was forbidden to meet young men because she was “no longer Polish, but not yet German.” The mistress of another complained to the police that her maid was unable to re-Germanize because she “has a dark past, is crazy about men and does not behave as a German woman should.”

Far from home and loved ones, many maids plunged into the abyss of depression and madness. Some girls threatened to commit suicide if they were not transferred to another household. Sometimes girls rejected the German identity imposed on them and recognized themselves as Poles. For example, Evgenia Voichik stated in her letter: “I am ready to work better in a factory as a Polish woman and live in a camp than to be a German and a servant.”

Failure

Himmler was aware of the situation. As early as the summer of 1940, Hofmann noted that the Germans were making virtually no effort to integrate “racially valuable” Poles into society. Walter Dongus repeatedly sent reminders to departments that these girls should be treated as Germans. The police talked to the maids' mistresses, but, having promised to behave differently, they did not change. Many party functionaries openly sabotaged SS initiatives.

By the winter of 1942, the program for the re-Germanization of “racially valuable” girls had not achieved any of its goals. The number of such maids did not exceed 7,000. By February 1943, none of them had acquired German citizenship, and their employers continued to treat them as second-class citizens. Nevertheless, Himmler did not abandon the project - until the summer of 1944, the “correct” Poles continued to be imported to Germany.

The only surviving diary of a female Ostarbeiter from the USSR was published in the “Editorial Office of Elena Shubina”. Young Kursk woman Alexandra Mikhaleva was taken by the Germans to work in 1942, where she stayed until the end of the war and all this time she wrote down what happened to her.

Excerpt from the diary of a female ostarbeiter

1942

June 5

At 6 o'clock the train left the Kursk station. It included Russian young people going to Germany to work. We are traveling in a freight car, 43 girls. We met many people. Our best travel companions. Vera is a smart, sensible, good girl in all respects, Zina. We all sleep side by side on straw.

June 7

At 10 o'clock we arrived in Minsk, received soup and, after eating, went to bed. For each pasture, a German soldier - a brigadier - is assigned. It’s interesting how the Belarusians looked at us as we looked out of the carriages. It was Sunday. The residents stood all dressed up in festive costumes. Many elderly women cried looking at us.

June 8

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

Polish Jews work at Polish stations. Young boys and girls, marked with yellow stars on the front and back.

Russian prisoners are working everywhere, and we are moving further and further from our homeland. This is already the 3rd day. We only received about 1 kg of bread and drank tea once.

It is now 10 o'clock in the morning, the train is in Baranovichi. We ate here, this time good soup. We drive through fields and forests for many hours in a row. Finally, at half past 5, we arrived in the Polish city of Volkovysk - a nice, small town, badly destroyed by German bombs.

My [cousin] Galya’s nose started bleeding from the long drive and she was crying.

the 9th of June

At 5 o'clock in the morning we arrived in Bialystok. Here we passed a medical examination. Before her, they examined our heads, coated them with some kind of ointment, and then bathed them. Then they gave us soup to eat and, putting us back into the freight cars, only without straw, we drove on. At night the carriage was especially crowded. It turned out to be very difficult to sleep without straw.

I woke up at dawn, the train was approaching the capital of Poland - Warsaw. A huge city, divided by a river into western and eastern parts. There are many factories and factories. Industrial areas have been heavily damaged by bombing.

June 11

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

At 5 pm we arrived in the German city of Halle. We stood at the station for a long time. Then we were taken through the city streets to the bathhouse. We walked in a long column of three people in a row. Many of us were villagers - poorly, shabby, clumsily dressed. Chicly dressed German women with fancy hairstyles walked along the streets and proudly held their beautiful capped heads high.

The streets are paved, completely lined with large brick buildings. Everyone is gray and gloomy, gloomy and stern, just like the residents themselves. There was no loud laughter or friendly smile here. In general, the population looks at us as a burden - probably the radio said that we came to them voluntarily - to escape hunger.

In fact, only the 1st echelon left our region voluntarily. The rest - and our echelon was the 5th - were sent by force, on summons.

After the bath, we walked for a long time along the city streets with suitcases, villagers with bags, and finally came to a remote area, to wooden houses, albeit clean ones, built for us with bunks for sleeping. I really wanted to eat. We ate while we were on the road, at 12 o’clock in the afternoon we drank coffee and bread and after that we didn’t get anything else, we went to bed hungry.

12 June

We woke up early. My sides hurt - it was hard to sleep on the plank bunks. Having lined up everyone, they gave each three a loaf of bread. It was very cold and cloudy. The sky is cold, gray, inhospitable. We stand in the yard and eat bread.

Soon we are taken to the commission - already the 3rd in a row. The commission is not strict, they don’t stop for a long time - they quickly throw them aside as suitable. We returned to the barracks. I'm really hungry.

Cold and wet, we did not immediately enter the barracks, because the bosses came to take away the labor. They examined us and talked. They began to count down. We were very worried - we were afraid that we would be separated. Our group was almost all urban. One batch was taken to the fields. We, a group of 70 people, were taken by the factory chief and another factory owner. First our host - an old man with thin lips and blue, albeit good-natured, cunning eyes - everyone liked him.

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

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

The German girl began to talk with the German in an excited voice. Then the German took everything German photos from a Russian girl, explaining that a German soldier should not give cards and that if the police see a soldier’s card on a Russian girl, the soldier will “have his head cut off.”

In fact, this was not the case. The soldier turned out to be the groom of this German girl. We understood this from her conversation with the German.

So, in one carriage, German and Russian girls met - rivals in love.

We drove on. There were two transfers. At one of them we were divided. One owner took 25 people, the other - 45. Galya, Yulia, and our best traveling companions ended up with the latter. And our neighbors, two sisters - Galya and Zoya - to the first.

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

It was 10 pm. We went out onto the platform. The village girls could not immediately line up in a row of three. They were confused. And the townsfolk also behaved in a disrespectful manner, resulting in chaos. The owner was angry. He hit one of the village girls in the face. He got angry and shouted at us like we were a flock of sheep. Soon we were all seated in a large freight car - dirty and dark - and, closing the doors, we were driven further.

After driving a little, we got out of the carriage and went to the plant. With what a heavy, heartbreaking feeling we crossed the threshold of the plant. The noise of cars was heard. We were taken to the workers' canteen - simple tables, no luxury. They handed out a small piece of sandwich and strong coffee. Then they took us to the barracks. We liked the barracks after the road and the first barracks.

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

June 13

Early in the morning, a German woman, our boss, woke us up. Having washed and made the beds, we went in a group led by a policeman to the dining room. We drank iced coffee and a sandwich.

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

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

They brought fear and horror to us. Apparently they were held as prisoners. They talked a lot about their life in Ukraine. They are all so friendly and sincere.

We are not working today yet. People come to our room all the time from other rooms, looking at us - new arrivals. Then we all wrote letters home. It was very annoying that there was no opportunity to write freely. The letters were placed in an envelope and left open for inspection. Moreover, it was completely forbidden to write to your home address. It was necessary to write to the commandant's office or to a German soldier.

The mood was very heavy. Many, remembering their relatives, burst into tears. There were neither words nor deeds to console her, to calm her frayed nerves and worried heart.

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

June 14. Sunday

Nobody is working. The weather is rainy and cold. We feel cold, we want to sleep, we feel tired and lazy.

In general, no matter how long we have been here, and whoever arrived here before, we have never seen good, warm, sunny weather here. By evening the rain stopped, but it was still cold. We sat under the window. The windows were all open, and girls were sitting in them; young guys were walking along the street behind the partition - Ukrainians, Croats and representatives of other nationalities who had worked in German factories for a long time. They stopped and talked with the girls. Many people wanted to go out for a walk and run. But it was strictly forbidden to go beyond the fence.

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

The guys stood and listened to us. Suddenly 3 German soldiers approached. One of them, coming close to one of the guys, asked him something, swung a strong blow at his face. It hit someone else too. The rest quickly dispersed.

The girls, frightened, ran away. In the evening, having gathered in one room, we decided to have fun. They sang dance songs and the girls danced. It was fun. One girl cried through her laughter, unnoticed by herself. Croatian girls, who were in a better position here than other nations, because the Ungar army fought together with the Germans against Russia, ran up to the windows to our songs. And our brothers and fathers were their enemies.

June 15

First day of work at the factory.

We were each placed next to the car and told to closely monitor the progress of the work. The German worker to whom I was assigned looked at me, smiled and continued to work quickly, pressing the screws and turning the wheel. I looked with blank eyes, trying to make my face smarter. I couldn’t even take a closer look at where it began, where it was leading, and I stood, deafened by the noise, watching how it moved with all its parts, like a living machine.

Our barracks worked this week from 3 o'clock in the afternoon until one in the morning with two breaks of half an hour. The girls, each standing by their car, blinked, smiled and showed with signs that they supposedly couldn’t understand anything.

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

There was a break at 7 o'clock. Then we approached the cars again. Little by little, though often faltering, I was able to do something. At 12 o'clock at night they began to finish.

My “teacher” began to clean and wipe down the car. I tried to help him. In the dark night we walked to the barracks, illuminated by a policeman's lantern.

22nd of June. Monday

This is my second week working at a factory that makes weapons. We help the Germans in their fight against our fathers and brothers. Galya and I worked in the revolver shop, on the machine. In this workshop, only Russian girls were behind this essentially male work. German girls and women worked in other workshops, in easier sedentary jobs. These patriots of their “victorious homeland” came to the factory with pride and pleasure: in silks, crepe de Chine, richly but tastelessly dressed, all with identical, curled hairstyles, most of them bow-legged and figureless.

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

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

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

June 24

I feel broken. I can't get used to hard work. Do not get enough sleep. They wake you up with a merciless scream right at the deepest, sweetest time of sleep, at 3 am. The body is aching, arms ache, legs ache, the head is heavy, the eyes are sticking together, everything is spinning, there is a noise in the ears. Having difficulty getting out of bed, hastily getting dressed, eating a small piece of loaf, we all go to work in the barracks.

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

We are making some part for a revolver. The main course of the work was mechanically memorized, but no one understood anything. Weak hands can barely hold the planing lever, hot shavings burn your hands, fly into your face, and you cut your hands from inexperience. Rejectors - old men - sit at long tables. They look at the young Russian girls, who have not yet completely faded, with insensitive, stupid faces. They examine the strong bodies, beautiful legs, and breasts of Russian girls from head to toe. From time to time they eat bread, thickly spread with butter, and drink something from flasks, irritating our appetite. Every now and then the chief foreman walks through the workshop with a stone face. He stands at each machine for a long time, strictly monitoring the work.

June 26

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

The alarm lasted 10 minutes. At 3 o'clock they got me back to work. It’s so disgusting to stand at the machine, you’re just counting the time until the break. The girls, in order to get the humps, leave and hide in the restroom in 15 minutes. before the bell. Then, when they receive the bread, there is a fight over these large pieces, the German woman - a fat, curvy lady - calls the policeman for help, because a crowd of hungry young girls has pinned her against the wall.

After eating this bread, we went back to the machines and stood there from 7 to 11, eagerly awaiting lunch. An unpleasant feeling comes over me when I watch how everyone, with hot eyes, red and sweaty faces, knocking each other down, runs to the filled plates and greedily swallows the hot soup. The spoons are sparkling, everyone is rushing to get more. German workers, foremen, women workers often stand at the door and watch how, forgetting shame and pride, all the girls, unlike themselves, angrily scolding each other, impudently climb for more. The policeman shouts, calls us pigs and explains all this disgrace by the lack of culture and piggishness of the Russian people.

Today at 11 o'clock they gave us potatoes with sauce, thin and sour. Moreover, they give the potatoes in their jackets, and you come across a lot of rotten potatoes. Some have more, some have less, some are bolder, reaching out for more. At 7 pm there was again potatoes with sour cottage cheese. Before we even had time to finish the potatoes, a German girl who was handing out potatoes came up to our table and asked Galya and Yulia to dance - once she saw the girls dancing in the tent and now she asked: the policeman, they say, wants to watch. I wasn’t in the mood, we hadn’t finished all the potatoes yet, but the German woman begged so much that Gala and Yulia had to dance in the dining room without finishing the potatoes.

June 28

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

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

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

The German woman screamed at us and pushed 2 girls in the back. Everyone ran to their rooms. Then the German woman walked from room to room and warned that if we behaved like this, she would call the police and the instigators would be arrested. In the evening, when we were still lying in bed, three soldiers entered the room with the boss, who recommended our room as the worst. We didn't know why they came. They saw the three of us lying on the same bed and said something about our hairstyles and other compliments. The boss ran up to us and, all red with anger, screamed and pulled the blanket and even slapped Vera on the ass. In general, our “cool ladies” did not take us into account, shouted at us, hit us in the face.

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

July 11

How hard work is for me. The car doesn't listen. My hands are cut, swollen, and aching in pain. Only men work at such machines, and even then not all of them. We don't understand the car at all. Mechanically remembering the main steps of the work, we do some things for anti-aircraft guns. Standing behind the car, I always remember my father. How he honestly worked in the printing house behind his machine. I visited him, he was happy and explained his work to me.

It’s been 7 months since I’ve seen him, haven’t heard his affectionate, playful words.

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

The war has been going on for a year now. At first, everyone was afraid of death; I remember how everyone was terribly afraid of an air raid raid, when the enemy plane could not be seen or heard. Gradually we got used to all surprises, became indifferent, but terribly nervous, greedy, and angry. That's when people really don't live, but vegetate. We - young people - have suffered a difficult fate. We - hundreds and thousands of young Russian people - are slaves. We were forcibly torn away from our mothers and from our native, welcoming nest, transferred to a foreign country, plunged to the bottom of endless discontent, darkness, sleep.

For us, nothing is clear, everything is incomprehensible, everything is unknown. We must work and forget about our human feelings. Forget about books, theaters, cinema, forget about the love feelings of young hearts. And as soon as possible, get out of the habit of feeling hunger, cold, and putting up with humiliation and bullying from the “winners.”

We seem to have gotten used to it, at least it’s noticeable from the outside. Everyone works, whether they want it or not, they don’t pay attention to ridicule, on the contrary, they excite these ridicule even more with their somehow especially bad behavior that attracts attention to themselves.

For example: young girls swear and even often fight among themselves in the dining room, showing themselves unashamedly uncultured and ill-mannered.

"I didn’t immediately decide to publish this chapter from the book “Captive” on the website. This is one of the most terrible and heroic stories. A low bow to you, women, for everything you have suffered and, alas, never appreciated by the state, people, and researchers. This was difficult to write about. It is even more difficult to talk to former prisoners. Low bow to you - Heroines."

“And there were no such beautiful women in all the earth...” Job (42:15)

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

From the first days of the war, tens of thousands of female medical workers were mobilized into the Red Army. Thousands of women voluntarily joined the army and militia divisions. Based on the resolutions of the State Defense Committee of March 25, April 13 and 23, 1942, the mass mobilization of women began. Only at the call of the Komsomol, 550 thousand became warriors. Soviet women. 300 thousand were drafted into the air defense forces. Hundreds of thousands go to the military medical and sanitary services, communications troops, road and other units. In May 1942, another GKO resolution was adopted - on the mobilization of 25 thousand women in the Navy.

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

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

Ryazan Infantry School named after. Voroshilov trained female commanders of rifle units. In 1943 alone, 1,388 people graduated from it.

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

However, female medical instructors and nurses in the active army made up only 40%, which violates the prevailing ideas about a girl under fire saving the wounded. In his interview, A. Volkov, who served as a medical instructor throughout the war, refutes the myth that only girls were medical instructors. According to him, the girls were nurses and orderlies in medical battalions, and mostly men served as medical instructors and orderlies on the front line in the trenches.

“They didn’t even take frail men for the medical instructor courses. Only the big ones! The work of a medical instructor is harder than that of a sapper. A medical instructor must crawl his trenches at least four times a night to find the wounded. It’s written in movies and books: she’s so weak, she was dragging a wounded man , so big, almost a kilometer long! Yes, this is nonsense. We were especially warned: if you drag a wounded man to the rear, you will be shot on the spot for desertion. After all, what is a medical instructor for? drag him to the rear, for this the medical instructor is subordinate to everyone. There is always someone to take him out of the battlefield. The medical instructor is subordinate to no one. Only the chief of the medical battalion.”

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

For example, former medical instructor Sofya Dubnyakova says: “I watch films about the war: a nurse on the front line, she walks neatly, cleanly, not in padded trousers, but in a skirt, she has a cap on her crest... Well, that’s not true!... Isn’t it true? We could pull out a wounded man like this?.. It’s not like you’re crawling around in a skirt when there are only men around. But to tell the truth, they only gave us skirts at the end of the war. It was then that we received underwear instead of men’s underwear.”

In addition to the medical instructors, among whom there were women, there were porter nurses in the medical units - these were only men. They also provided assistance to the wounded. However, their main task is to carry the already bandaged wounded from the battlefield.

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

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

At all times, women's service in the army was considered immoral. There are many offensive lies about them; just remember PPZh - field wife.

Oddly enough, men at the front gave rise to such an attitude towards women. War veteran N.S. Posylaev recalls: “As a rule, women who went to the front soon became the mistresses of officers. How could it be otherwise: if a woman is on her own, there will be no end to the harassment. It’s a different matter with someone else...”

To be continued...

A. Volkov said that when a group of girls arrived in the army, “merchants” immediately came for them: “First, the youngest and most beautiful were taken by the army headquarters, then by lower-ranking headquarters.”

In the fall of 1943, a girl medical instructor arrived in his company at night. And there is only one medical instructor per company. It turns out that the girl “was pestered everywhere, and since she did not yield to anyone, everyone sent her lower. From army headquarters to division headquarters, then to regimental headquarters, then to the company, and the company commander sent the untouchable to the trenches.”

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

“It was winter, the platoon was quartered in a rural house, and I had a nook there. In the evening the regiment commander called me. Sometimes he himself set the task of sending them behind enemy lines. This time he was drunk, the table with the remains of food was not cleared. Without saying anything, he rushed towards me, trying to undress me. I knew how to fight, I’m a scout after all. And then he called the orderly, ordering him to hold me. The two of them tore my clothes off. In response to my screams, the landlady where I was staying flew in, and that was the only thing that saved me. I ran through the village, half-naked, crazy. For some reason, I believed that I would find protection from the corps commander, General Sharaburko, he called me his daughter like a father. The adjutant did not let me in, but I burst into the general’s room, beaten and disheveled. She told me incoherently how Colonel M. tried to rape me. The general reassured me, saying that I would not see Colonel M. again. A month later, my company commander reported that the colonel had died in battle; he was part of a penal battalion. This is what war is, it’s not just bombs, tanks, grueling marches...”

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

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

Rachelle Berezina, in the army since 1942 - a translator-intelligence officer for military intelligence, ended the war in Vienna as a senior translator in the intelligence department of the First Guards Mechanized Corps under the command of Lieutenant General I.N. Russiyanov. She says that they treated her very respectfully; the intelligence department even stopped swearing in her presence.

Maria Friedman, an intelligence officer of the 1st NKVD division, who fought in the Nevskaya Dubrovka area near Leningrad, recalls that the intelligence officers protected her and filled her with sugar and chocolate, which they found in German dugouts. True, sometimes I had to defend myself with a “fist in the teeth.”

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

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

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

“The lice infested the soldiers. They take off their shirts and pants, but what does it feel like for the girl? I had to look for an abandoned dugout and there, stripping naked, I tried to cleanse myself of lice. Sometimes they helped me, someone would stand at the door and say: “Don’t poke your nose in, Maruska is squashing lice there!”

And bath day! And go when needed! Somehow I found myself alone, climbed under a bush, above the parapet of the trench. The Germans either didn’t notice right away or let me sit quietly, but when I started pulling on my panties, there was a whistling sound from left and right. I fell into the trench, my pants at my heels. Oh, they were laughing in the trenches about how Maruska’s ass blinded the Germans...

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

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

To be continued...

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

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

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

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

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

But no one has yet thought of the massive involvement of women in the army as fighters, on the front line with weapons in hand, except the Bolsheviks.

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

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

“Therefore, the government of any other country, in the event of excessive losses that threaten the continued existence of the nation, would try to take its country out of the war, because every national government cherishes its people.” (Emphasis by the Germans. This turns out to be the main idea: we need to end the war, and we need a national government. - Aron Schneer).

« The Bolsheviks think differently. The Georgian Stalin and the various Kaganovichs, Berias, Mikoyans and the entire Jewish kagal (how can you do without anti-Semitism in propaganda! - Aron Schneer), sitting on the people’s neck, don’t give a damn about the Russian people and all the other peoples of Russia and Russia itself. They have one goal - to preserve their power and their skins. Therefore, they need war, war at all costs, war by any means, at the cost of any sacrifice, war to the last man, to the last man and woman. “If a friend was wounded” - for example, both legs or arms were torn off, it doesn’t matter, to hell with him, “the girlfriend” will also “manage” to die at the front, drag her too into the meat grinder of war, there is no need to be gentle with her. Stalin does not feel sorry for the Russian woman..."

The Germans, of course, miscalculated and did not take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of thousands of Soviet women and girl volunteers. Of course, there were mobilizations, emergency measures in conditions of extreme danger, the tragic situation that developed at the fronts, but it would be wrong not to take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of young people born after the revolution and ideologically prepared in the pre-war years for struggle and self-sacrifice.

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

“I left my childhood Into a dirty heated vehicle, Into an infantry echelon, Into a medical platoon. ... I came from school Into damp dugouts. From a Beautiful Lady - Into “mother” and “rewind”. Because the name is Closer than “Russia”, I couldn't find it."

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

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

Liaison officer Prince Albert of Hohenzollern, who took part in the assault on Sevastopol in July 1942, “admired the Russians and especially the women, who, he said, showed amazing courage, dignity and fortitude.”

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

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

To be continued...

The article “Valya Nesterenko - deputy platoon commander of reconnaissance” tells about the fate of a captured Soviet girl. Valya graduated from the Ryazan Infantry School. According to her, about 400 women and girls studied with her:

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

In our regiment of three battalions there were two men's and one women's. The first battalion was female - machine gunners. In the beginning, there were girls from orphanages. They were desperate. With this battalion we occupied up to ten settlements, and then most of them fell out of action. Requested a refill. Then the remnants of the battalion were withdrawn from the front and a new women's battalion was sent from Serpukhov. A women's division was specially formed there. The new battalion included older women and girls. Everyone got involved in mobilization. We trained for three months to become machine gunners. At first, while there were no big battles, they were brave.

Our regiment advanced on the villages of Zhilino, Savkino, and Surovezhki. The women's battalion operated in the middle, and the men's on the left and right flanks. The women's battalion had to cross Chelm and advance to the edge of the forest. As soon as we climbed the hill, the artillery began to fire. The girls and women started screaming and crying. They huddled together, and the German artillery put them all in a heap. There were at least 400 people in the battalion, and three girls remained alive from the entire battalion. What happened was scary to watch... mountains of female corpses. Is war a woman’s business?”

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Oberleutnant Prince, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in units of the Red Army.” Numerous facts indicate that this order was applied throughout the war.

In August 1941, by order of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th infantry division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.

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

After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village "Mayak" not far from Kerch, an unknown girl was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko. military uniform. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis and shouted: “Shoot, you bastards! I’m dying for Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will come dog death!" The girl was shot in the yard.

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

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

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

On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.

Knowing what awaited them if captured, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. Soldier from the 11th tank division Hans Rudhof testifies that in the winter of 1942, "... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They were lying naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written."

In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists burst into the yard in which nurses from the hospital were located. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they were dragged into a barn and raped. However, they did not kill him.

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

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 female doctors, paramedics, and nurses, stripped them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals to see if they were suffering from venereal diseases. He carried out the external examination himself. He chose of which 3 were young girls, he took them to “serve.” German soldiers and officers came to look after the women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

"The policemen often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two to a room. For these two hours, he could use her as a thing, abuse, mock, do whatever he wants. One day, during an evening check, the police chief himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, the German woman complained to him that these “bastards” are reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “A. For those who don’t want to go, arrange a “red fireman.” The girl was stripped naked, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl’s vagina. They left her in this position for up to half an hour. Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back their screams, and after such punishment they could not move for a long time. The commandant, behind her back, was called a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated abuses. For example, “self-punishment”. There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl must undress naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the crosspiece with her hands, and put her feet on a stool and hold on like this for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it all over again. We learned about what was going on in the women’s camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on a bench for ten minutes. The policemen also boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman."

To be continued...

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely pathetic impression. It was especially difficult for them in the conditions of camp life: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.

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

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

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

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female medical workers were captured: doctors, nurses, and orderlies. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. In Rivne, everyone was lined up, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: “this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan.” Those who were separated from the general group were shot. Those who remained were loaded back into the wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the carriage into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. We recovered through a hole in the floor.

This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.

The prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.

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

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

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

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, since warm water did not have. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turns.

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

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

One of the prisoners, S. Müller, testifies in her memoirs about the impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück: “...on one Sunday in April we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to carry out some order, citing the fact that that according to Geneva Convention They should be treated as prisoners of war by the Red Cross. For the camp authorities this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstraße (the main “street” of the camp – author’s note) and were deprived of lunch.

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

It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, kept in alignment, walked as if in a parade, taking a measured step. Their steps, like the beat of a drum, beat rhythmically along Lagerstraße. The entire column moved as one. Suddenly a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to start singing. She counted down: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up, huge country, get up for mortal combat...

Then they started singing about Moscow.

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

The SS failed to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance."

To be continued...

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once amazed their enemies and fellow prisoners with their unity and spirit of resistance. One day, 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners intended to be sent to Majdanek, in gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to pick up the women, their comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up in groups of five and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove those who came into the block, threatening to shoot them, and they began a hunger strike.”

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

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

And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Heads up, Russian girls! Over your head, be brave! We don't have long to endure, A nightingale will fly in in the spring... And will open the doors to freedom, Will take off the striped dress from our shoulders And heal deep wounds, Will wipe the tears from our swollen eyes. Heads up, Russian girls! Be Russian everywhere, everywhere! It won't be long to wait, not long - And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a unique description of the Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their cohesion was explained by the fact that they went through army school even before captivity. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also quite They were rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them who were friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebellion and unwillingness to obey the Germans.”

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

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

The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.

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

Thus, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the First City Hospital for childbirth on 23.2.42, left with the child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”

In 1944, attitudes towards women prisoners of war became harsher. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with general provisions on the verification and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order “On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war.” This document stated that Soviet women held in prisoner-of-war camps should be subject to inspection by the local Gestapo office in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If a police investigation reveals that women prisoners of war are politically unreliable, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.

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

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

To be continued...

The women who escaped from captivity continued to fight against the enemy. In secret message No. 12 of July 17, 1942, the chief of the security police of the occupied eastern regions The Imperial Minister of Security of the XVII Military District in the section “Jews” is informed that in Uman “a Jewish doctor was arrested, who previously served in the Red Army and was taken prisoner. After escaping from a prisoner of war camp, she took refuge in an orphanage in Uman under a false name and was studying medical practice. She used this opportunity to gain access to the prisoner of war camp for espionage purposes." Probably, the unknown heroine provided assistance to the prisoners of war.

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

In the fall of 1942, in the Georgievsk camp, along with other prisoners, there were several hundred girls prisoners of war. One day, the Germans led identified Jews to execution. Among the doomed was Tsilya Gedaleva. IN last minute The German officer in charge of the reprisal suddenly said: “Mädchen raus! - The girl is out!” And Tsilya returned to the women’s barracks. Tsila's friends gave her a new name - Fatima, and in the future, according to all documents, she passed as a Tatar.

Military doctor of the 3rd rank Emma Lvovna Khotina was surrounded in the Bryansk forests from September 9 to 20. She was captured. During the next stage, she fled from the village of Kokarevka to the city of Trubchevsk. She hid under someone else's name, often changing apartments. She was helped by her comrades - Russian doctors who worked in the camp infirmary in Trubchevsk. They established contact with the partisans. And when the partisans attacked Trubchevsk on February 2, 1942, 17 doctors, paramedics and nurses left with them. E. L. Khotina became the head of the sanitary service of the partisan association of the Zhitomir region.

Sarah Zemelman - military paramedic, medical service lieutenant, worked in mobile field hospital No. 75 of the Southwestern Front. On September 21, 1941, near Poltava, wounded in the leg, she was captured along with the hospital. The head of the hospital, Vasilenko, handed Sarah documents addressed to Alexandra Mikhailovskaya, the murdered paramedic. There were no traitors among the hospital employees who were captured. Three months later, Sarah managed to escape from the camp. She wandered through forests and villages for a month until, not far from Krivoy Rog, in the village of Vesyye Terny, she was sheltered by the family of veterinarian Ivan Lebedchenko. For more than a year, Sarah lived in the basement of the house. On January 13, 1943, Vesely Terny was liberated by the Red Army. Sarah went to the military registration and enlistment office and asked to go to the front, but she was placed in filtration camp No. 258. They called in for interrogations only at night. Investigators asked how she, a Jew, survived fascist captivity? And only a meeting in the same camp with her hospital colleagues - a radiologist and the chief surgeon - helped her.

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

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

Grunya Grigorieva recalls that the Red Army soldiers who liberated Ravensbrück on April 30, 1945, looked at the girls prisoners of war “... as traitors. This shocked us. We did not expect such a meeting. Ours gave more preference to French women, Polish women - to foreign women.”

After the end of the war, female prisoners of war went through all the torment and humiliation during SMERSH inspections in filtration camps. Alexandra Ivanovna Max, one of the 15 Soviet women liberated at the Neuhammer camp, tells how Soviet officer in the camp for repatriates, he scolded them: “Shame on you, you surrendered into captivity, you...” And I argued with him: “What should we have done?” And he says: “You should have shot yourself and not surrendered!” And I say: “Where were our pistols?” - “Well, you could, should have hanged yourself, killed yourself. But do not surrender.”

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

And a few years after the war, a female doctor, a former prisoner, writes in a private letter: “... sometimes I am very sorry that I remained alive, because I always carry this dark stain of captivity. Still, many people don’t know “What kind of “life” was it, if you can call it life. Many do not believe that we honestly endured the hardships of captivity and remained honest citizens of the Soviet state.”

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

Some, transferred from prisoner of war camps to concentration camps, were sterilized. “I did not have children after sterilization in the camp. And so I remained, as it were, crippled... Many of our girls did not have children. So some were abandoned by their husbands because they wanted to have children. But my husband did not abandon me, as is, He says that’s how we’ll live. And we still live with him.”

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

The dress code of many girls is semi-military and semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniform sets and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left is a sad captive artillery lieutenant, perhaps the “stage commander.”

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Oberleutnant Prince, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in units of the Red Army.” (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/1190, l. 110). Numerous facts indicate that this order was applied throughout the war.

In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war - a military doctor - was shot (Yad Vashem Archives. M-37/178, l. 17.).

In the town of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from a medical unit and shot them (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/482, l. 16.).

After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village “Mayak” not far from Kerch, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, you bastards! I’m dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!” The girl was shot in the yard (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/60, l. 38.).

At the end of August 1942, in the village of Krymskaya, Krasnodar Territory, a group of sailors was shot, among them were several girls in military uniform (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/303, l 115.).

In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was discovered. She had a passport with her in the name of Tatyana Alexandrovna Mikhailova, 1923. Born in the village of Novo-Romanovka (Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/309, l. 51.).

In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military paramedics Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/295, l. 5.).

On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/302, l. 32.).

Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (candidate officer, on the right; seems to be armed with a captured Soviet Tokarev self-loading rifle) - accompany a captured Soviet girl soldier - into captivity... or to death?

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

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

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded female lieutenant was dragged naked onto the road, her face and hands were cut, her breasts were cut off... » (P. Rafes. Then they had not yet repented. From the Notes of a divisional intelligence translator. “Ogonyok.” Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.)

Knowing what awaited them if captured, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. A soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, Hans Rudhof, testifies that in the winter of 1942 “... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written" (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/1182, l. 94–95.).

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 female doctors, paramedics, and nurses, stripped them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals to see if they were suffering from venereal diseases. He conducted the external inspection himself. He chose 3 young girls from them and took them to “serve” him. German soldiers and officers came for the women examined by doctors. Few of these women escaped rape (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/230, l. 38,53,94; M-37/1191, l. 26.).

Women soldiers of the Red Army who were captured while trying to escape the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941:

Judging by their haggard faces, they had to endure a lot even before being captured.

Here the “Hans” are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves can quickly experience all the “joys” of captivity! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already had her fill of hard times at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity...

In the right photo (September 1941, again near Kyiv -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her wrist in captivity; an unprecedented thing, watches are the optimal camp currency!) do not look desperate or exhausted. The captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... A staged photo, or did you really get a relatively humane camp commandant who ensured a tolerable existence?

Camp guards from among former prisoners of war and camp police were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped their captives or forced them to cohabit with them under threat of death. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 women prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, the former chief of camp security A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped prisoners of the women's block (P. Sherman. ...And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists on the territory of the city of Baranovichi and its environs June 27, 1941– July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, pp. 8–9.).

Women prisoners were also kept in the Millerovo prisoner of war camp. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German woman from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barracks was terrible: “The police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl her choice for two hours. The policeman could have taken her to his barracks. They lived two to a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, abuse her, mock her, do whatever he wanted.

Once, during the evening roll call, the police chief himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, the German woman complained to him that these “bastards” are reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “And for those who don’t want to go, organize a “red fireman.” The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl’s vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. Screaming was forbidden. Many girls had their lips bitten - they were holding back a cry, and after such punishment they could not move for a long time.

The commandant, who was called a cannibal behind her back, enjoyed unlimited rights over captured girls and came up with other sophisticated bullying. For example, “self-punishment.” There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl must undress naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the crosspiece with her hands, and put her feet on a stool and hold on like this for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it all over again.

We learned about what was going on in the women’s camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on a bench for ten minutes. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.” (S. M. Fisher. Memoirs. Manuscript. Author’s archive.).

Women doctors of the Red Army who were captured in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps) worked in camp hospitals:

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

Infirmary barracks of the prisoner of war camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941):

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

K. Kromiadi, a member of the labor distribution commission, visited the Sedlice camp in the fall of 1941 and talked with the women prisoners. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.” (K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.).

A group of female medical workers captured in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Oflag camp No. 365 "Nord" (T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941–1944... p. 143.).

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

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

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female medical workers were captured: doctors, nurses, and orderlies (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in Hitler’s camps) Kyiv, 1978, pp. 32–33.). At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. In Rivne, everyone was lined up, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: “this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan.” Those who were separated from the general group were shot. Those who remained were loaded back into the wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the carriage into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered through a hole in the floor (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author, October 9, 1992.).

Along the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and the women were brought to the city of Zoes on February 23, 1943. They lined them up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. A history teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute who pretended to be a Serbian. She enjoyed special authority among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, stated in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which it was impossible to sit down or move due to the cramped conditions. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the disobedient ones were sent to Ravensbrück (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author, October 9, 1992. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security agencies, where they sought her confession of treason, committed suicide). This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear – shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.

The barracks were divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tier bunks with a narrow passage between them. One cotton blanket was given to two prisoners. In a separate room lived the blockhouse - the senior barracks. In the corridor there was a washroom and toilet (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. In the collection “Witnesses for the Prosecution”. L. 1990, p. 158; Sh. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team. Memoirs of a prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.).

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

The prisoners carry all their meager belongings; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them tied their heads with scarves “like women” and took off their heavy boots.

Ibid., Stalag 370, Simferopol:

The prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women. (Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, pp. 43, 50.).

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

Every day the prisoners got up at 4 am for verification, which sometimes lasted several hours. Then they worked for 12–13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, since there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turns. .

Women whose hair had survived began to use combs that they made themselves. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal comb they gave a whole portion.” (Voices. Memoirs of prisoners of Hitler’s camps. M., 1994, p. 164.).

For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2–3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, for five people we received a small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel (G.S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.).

One of the prisoners, S. Müller, testifies in her memoirs about the impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück: “...on one Sunday in April we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to carry out some order, citing the fact that, according to According to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstraße (the main “street” of the camp) and were deprived of lunch.

Get up, huge country,
Get up for mortal combat...

Then they started singing about Moscow.

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

The SS failed to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.” (S. Müller. Ravensbrück locksmith team... pp. 51–52.).

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once amazed their enemies and fellow prisoners with their unity and spirit of resistance. One day, 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners intended to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to pick up the women, their comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up in groups of five and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove those who came into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.” (Women of Ravensbrück... p.127.).

Constant bullying, hard labor, and hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself onto the wire (G.S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.).

And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by an unknown author (N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In the collection: In Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk. 1958, p. 84.):

Heads up, Russian girls!
Over your head, be brave!
We don't have long to endure
The nightingale will fly in the spring...
And it will open the doors to freedom for us,
Takes a striped dress off your shoulders
And heal deep wounds,
He will wipe the tears from his swollen eyes.
Heads up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
It won't be long to wait, it won't be long -
And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a unique description of the Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their cohesion was explained by the fact that they went through army school even before captivity. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebellion, their unwillingness to obey the Germans." (Voices, pp. 74–5.).

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Auschwitz prisoner A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Klavdiya Sokolova were kept in the women's camp (A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war... p. 62.).

The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.).

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

Probably one of latest photos Soviet women soldiers captured by Germans, 1943 or 1944:

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

In 1944, attitudes towards women prisoners of war became harsher. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order “On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war.” This document stated that Soviet women held in prisoner-of-war camps should be subject to inspection by the local Gestapo office in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener... S. 153.).

Based on this order, the head of the Security Service and SD on April 11, 1944 issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to the concentration camp, such women were subjected to so-called “special treatment” - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya, the eldest of a group of seven hundred girl prisoners of war who worked at a military plant in the city of Gentin, died. The plant produced a lot of defective products, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera was in charge of the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944 (A. Nikiforova. This should not happen again... p. 106.).

In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First they brought the men and shot them one by one. Then - a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do that? » I never found out what she did. She replied that she did it for the Motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: “This is for your homeland.” The Russian woman spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning the corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Fuck her!” The oven door was open and the heat caused the woman's hair to catch fire. Despite the fact that the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. All the prisoners working in the crematorium saw this.” (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener.... S. 153–154.). Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.

What the Nazis did to the Red Army women. What did the Nazis do with the captured women? List of concentration camps in different countries

Racially valuable

Future mothers

Write letters

Failure

1942

June 5

June 7

June 8

the 9th of June

June 11

12 June

June 13

June 14. Sunday

June 15

22nd of June. Monday

June 24

June 26

June 28

July 11

Similar articles

Dreams of space and attempts at writing

Robert Cialdini - psychology of influence

Declension of adjectives in the German language presentation for a lesson in the German language (grade 7) on the topic Lessons on German exercises declension of adjectives

Presentation on the topic “nanotechnology in our lives” Nanoparticles and their research

How to get higher education as an external student Studying as an external student at a university

Adapted books in German

Subscribe to news