Sisters, mothers, ladies: the theme of violence in women's camp memoirs. Only the gulag executioners know how many “spies for Antarctica” and “residents of Australian intelligence” appeared in the camps after sophisticated, painful torture
They say that death is the same for all people. Not true. Death is different, and in order to be convinced of this, it is enough just to look for a moment, slightly spreading the rows of rusty “thorns” with your hands, into the past of a huge and terrible country called the GULAG. Look in and feel like a victim.
These materials were provided to the author of the book “GULAG” Dantsig Baldaev by a former guard who worked for a long time in the correctional facility system. The peculiarities of our “correctional system” still cause amazement. One gets the feeling that these features originated in those years when most of the country’s population was behind barbed wire.
Women were often brought naked for interrogation to enhance the “psychic impact”
In order to extract the necessary testimony from the arrested person, the GULAG “specialists” had many methods “tested” on “living material”, leaving practically no opportunity for the prisoner to “lay low” and “hide the truth from the investigation.” In particular, those who did not want to “voluntarily confess everything,” during the investigation, could first be “stuck with their muzzle into a corner,” that is, placed facing the wall at attention without a point of support, and kept in this position for several days without food, water and sleep. Those who fainted from loss of strength were beaten, doused with water and returned to their original place. For stronger and “intractable” “enemies of the people”, along with the brutal beatings that were banal in the Gulag, more sophisticated “interrogation methods” were also used, for example, hanging on a rack with a weight or other weight tied to the legs so that the bones of the twisted arms would jump out of them. joints. For the purpose of “mental influence”, women and girls were often brought for interrogation completely naked, while being subjected to a hail of ridicule and insults. If this did not have the desired effect, the victim, to top it all off, was raped “in unison” right in the investigator’s office.
The so-called “St. Andrew’s cross” was very popular among the executioners - a device for the convenience of “working” with the genitals of male prisoners - “tarring” them with a blowtorch, crushing them with a heel, pinching them, etc. Sentenced to torture on the “St. Andrew’s cross” literally in a sense, they were crucified on two beams fastened with the letter “X,” which deprived the victim of any opportunity to resist, giving the “specialists” the opportunity to “work without interference.”
One can truly marvel at the ingenuity and foresight of the Gulag “workers”. In order to ensure “anonymity” and deprive the prisoner of the opportunity to somehow evade blows, during interrogations the victim was stuffed into a narrow and long bag, which was tied and thrown onto the floor. After which they beat the person in the bag until he was half to death with sticks and rawhide belts. They called it among themselves “killing a pig in a poke.” The beating of “family members of an enemy of the people” was also widely used in practice in order to extract testimony against a father, husband, son, or brother. Moreover, the latter were often present when their loved ones were bullied with the “purpose of enhancing the educational impact.” Only God and the executioners of the Gulag know how many “spies for Antarctica” and “residents of Australian intelligence” appeared in the camps after such “joint interrogations.”
One of the tried and tested methods of wresting a “confession” from an “enemy of the people” was the so-called “pischik”. During the interrogation, the Hammermen suddenly put a rubber bag over the victim’s head, blocking his breathing. After several such “fittings,” the victim began to bleed from the nose, mouth, and ears; many, who had a torn heart, died right during interrogation, without having time to really “repent.”
Pressed together in a cramped cell, the prisoners died standing
The anus of each individual “enemy of the people” was of persistent and downright manic-attractive interest to the Gulag specialists. Not limiting themselves to intensified searches for “compromising evidence” in him during numerous “shmons” (to do this, they inserted their fingers into the anus of a bent and splayed prisoner), they often used during interrogations (apparently as a “memory stimulating” means) the so-called “cleansing of the asshole.” ": tightly tied to a bench in the appropriate position, the prisoner began to push metal and wooden pins, "brushes" used to clean rust from metal surfaces, various objects with sharp edges, etc. into the anus. The height of "art" when carrying out such " anal interrogation" was considered the ability to hammer a bottle into the "enemy of the people" ass without breaking it or tearing the stubborn man's rectum. A similar “method” was used in a perversely sadistic form towards women.
One of the most disgusting tortures in the Gulag prisons and pre-trial detention centers was the detention of prisoners in the so-called “settlers” and “glasses”. To do this, up to 40-45 people per ten square meters of area were crammed into a cramped cell without windows or ventilation holes, after which the cell was tightly “sealed” for several days. Pressed against each other in the cramped and stuffy chamber, people experienced incredible torment, many of them died, but remained standing, supported by the living on all sides. Naturally, they were not allowed to go to the toilet when they were kept in the “septic tank”, so people carried out their natural needs right here, often on themselves. So the “enemies of the people” stood, suffocating in a terrible stench, supporting with their shoulders the dead, grinning in the last “smile” of the living right in the face. And above all this, in the pitch darkness, poisonous steam swirled from the evaporation, from which the walls of the chamber were covered with vile mucus
Keeping the prisoner “to condition” in the so-called “glass” was not much better. A “glass” is, as a rule, a narrow, coffin-like iron pencil case embedded in a niche in the wall. Squeezed into a “glass,” the prisoner could neither sit down, much less lie down; often the “glass” was so narrow that it was impossible to even move in it. Those who were especially “persistent” were placed for several days in a “glass”, in which a normal person could not straighten up to his full height, constantly being in a crooked, half-bent position. “Glass” and “settlers” could be either “cold” (located in unheated rooms) or “hot”, on the walls of which central heating radiators, stove chimneys, central heating pipes, etc. were specially placed. Temperature in such “settlements” "Rarely dropped below 45-50 degrees. In addition to “cold” settling tanks, during the construction of some Kolyma camps, the detention of prisoners in so-called “wolf pits” was widely used.
To “raise labor discipline,” the convoy shot every last prisoner in the ranks
The convoys of prisoners who arrived in the North, due to the lack of barracks, were driven into deep pits at night, and during the day, raised up the stairs to the surface, the unfortunates built a new ITL for themselves. At 40-50 degree frosts, such “wolf pits” often became mass graves for the next batch of prisoners. The Gulag “joke,” which the guards called “giving in some steam,” did not improve the health of people exhausted during the stages. To “calm down” those who had just arrived and were outraged by the long wait in the “lokalka” before being admitted to the correctional labor camp, prisoners were suddenly doused from the towers with fire hoses in the frost of 30-40 degrees, after which they were “stood” in the cold for another 4-6 hours. Another “joke” was applied to violators of discipline during work, called in the northern camps “voting in the sun” or “drying your paws.” The prisoner, under pain of immediate execution for “attempting to escape,” was placed in the bitter cold with his hands raised vertically, leaving it like this throughout the long working day. “Vote” was sometimes placed with a “cross”, that is, arms to the side shoulder-width apart, or on one leg, “heron” - at the whim of the convoy.
The torture used against “enemies of the people” in the notorious SLON - Solovetsky special purpose camp was particularly cynical and cruel. Here, in the punishment cell on Mount Sekirnaya, located in the Church of the Ascension, prisoners sentenced to punishment were forced to “ascend”, that is, they were placed on special perch poles located a few meters from the floor, and kept for days on these “seats.” Those who fell from the “perch” from fatigue were subjected to “fun” by the convoy - a brutal beating, followed by being hoisted onto the “perch”, but with a noose around their neck. The person who fell the second time, thus, allegedly “passed on himself” a death sentence. Notorious violators of camp discipline were sentenced to a terrible death - they were lowered from Mount Sekirnaya down the stairs, tied by the hands to the end of a heavy log. This staircase had 365 steps and was called by the prisoners “Annual”, “Thresher” or “Staircase of Death”. The victims - prisoners from "class enemies" - at the end of such a descent along the "Staircase of Death" were a bloody mess.
A striking example of sophisticated sadism is the brutal “no last” rule, introduced and recommended for implementation in some camps of the Stalinist Gulag: in order to “reduce the number of prisoners” and “increase labor discipline,” the convoy was ordered to shoot every prisoner who was the last to join the ranks working teams at the command “Get to work!” The last one, the delayed prisoner, was thus immediately sent “to heaven” when trying to escape, and for the rest, the deadly game of “cat and mouse” was resumed daily
"Sexual" torture and murder in the Gulag
It is unlikely that women, and especially girls, who at different times and for various reasons were imprisoned with the stigma of “enemy of the people,” could even imagine their near future even in their worst dreams. Raped and disgraced during the investigation in cells and offices during “biased interrogations,” upon arrival in the Gulag, the most attractive of them were “distributed” among the authorities, while the rest went into the almost undivided use and possession of the convoy and thieves.
During the stages, young female prisoners, as a rule, natives of the Western and newly annexed Baltic territories, were specially pushed into cars to inveterate prisoners, where they were subjected to sophisticated gang rape throughout the long journey, often before reaching the final destination of the stage. The practice of “putting” an intractable prisoner in a cell with criminals for several days was also practiced during “investigative activities” in order to “encourage the arrested person to give truthful testimony.” In women's zones, newly arrived prisoners at a “tender” age often became the prey of masculine prisoners with pronounced lesbian and other sexual deviations. Raping the so-called “chickens” in such zones with the help of improvised objects” (a mop handle, a stocking tightly stuffed with rags, etc.), inducing them into lesbian cohabitation with the entire barracks became commonplace in the Gulag.
In order to “pacify” and “bring into proper fear” during the stages, on ships transporting women to Kolyma and other remote points of the Gulag, during convoy transfers, it was deliberately allowed to “mix” women’s parties “from the outside” with parties of criminals en route to the next once to the “destination” place. After the mass rape and massacre, the corpses of those who could not bear the horror of the joint convoy were thrown overboard the ship into the sea, written off as having died from disease or killed while trying to escape. In some camps, as a form of punishment, “accidentally coincidental” general “washings” in the bathhouse were also practiced, when a dozen specially selected women washing in the bathhouse were suddenly attacked by a brutal crowd of 100-150 prisoners who burst into the bathhouse premises. The open “sale” of “living goods” to criminals for temporary and permanent use was also widely practiced, after which a previously “written off” prisoner, as a rule, faced an inevitable and terrible death.
In 1927, the first aircraft designed by Yakovlev, the Yak-1, took off in Moscow.
In 1929, old-age pensions were introduced.
In 1929, for the first time in the USSR, pollination of forests with pesticides was carried out from the air.
In 1932, the Military Academy of Chemical Defense opened.
1946 - the first flights on MiG-9 and Yak-15 jet aircraft were carried out in the USSR.
In 1951, the International Olympic Committee decided to admit athletes from the USSR to the Olympics.
In 1959, at the congress of journalists of the Ukrainian SSR, the Union of Journalists of Ukraine was created.
In 1967, an obelisk to the hero city of Kyiv was opened in Kyiv.
In 1975, the deepest mine in the country (1200 meters) was put into operation in Donetsk. Skochinsky.
In 1979, a drama and comedy theater opened in Kyiv.
The Soviet violinist took second place in a foreign international competition and sadly says to the music critic accompanying him:
If I took first place, I would receive a Stradivarius violin!
You have an excellent violin.
Do you understand what a Stradivarius is? This is for me the same as Dzerzhinsky’s Mauser is for you!
***
Why doesn't the USSR launch people to the moon?
They are afraid that they will become defectors.
***
Rabinovich works on the assembly line of a factory that produces baby strollers. His wife persuaded him to steal one part a week to assemble a stroller for his unborn child. Nine months later, Rabinovich sat down to assemble it.
You know, wife, no matter how I assemble it, everything turns out to be a machine gun.
***
Who is your father? - the teacher asks Vovochka.
Comrade Stalin!
Who's your mother?
Soviet Motherland!
And who do you want to become?
An orphan!
***
The hammer thrower has just set an all-Union record and is showing off in front of the crowd surrounding him:
If they had given me a sickle, I would have thrown it in the wrong place!
***
The famous Russian singer Vertinsky, who left during the reign of the Tsar, returns to the Soviet Union. He gets out of the carriage with two suitcases, puts them down, kisses the ground, looks around:
I don’t recognize you, Rus'!
Then he looks around - there are no suitcases!
I recognize you, Rus'!
***
Are there professional thieves in the USSR?
No. People steal themselves.
For her own life, she had to fight rats, hunger, thieves and bosses.
At some point, the Gulag camps became almost the most intelligent place in the USSR. Scientists, writers, actors, officials, the top of the army and many others were imprisoned for espionage and treason. They had to scratch out their own lives, literally and figuratively. And the women...Many here remained women.
"I dreamed of becoming a children's writer"
Evgenia Fedorova dreamed of becoming a children's writer, so at the age of 18 she entered the Bryusov Literary Institute in Moscow. Everything was fine in her personal life: in 1929 she got married and a couple of years later gave birth to two sons.
By 1932, it seemed that this dream was beginning to come true. Evgenia published several children's books and worked as a freelance correspondent. A supportive husband in everything, children, a favorite pastime - well, what else seems to be needed for happiness.
In 1934, she went to work at Artek to collect material. However, things didn’t work out there: “Excessively vigilant Komsomol members called me a class alien and a creep,” Fedorova herself later recalled. Evgenia was expelled from the camp.
Denunciation of a friend
She went to a tour guide course - the classes took place in the Caucasus in the village of Krasnaya Polyana, where Evgenia met Yura - young, bright, handsome. All the girls in the course were thrilled by his reports. And he turned his attention to Zhenya.
From the very first day we liked each other and began to spend a lot of time together,” writes Evgenia. Even the family faded into the background: “Of course, my children and my family created problems in my relationship with Yura. Although by that time I was already planning to separate from my husband, Mac.”
Her delight when it turned out that the young people were “accidentally” sent together to Krasnaya Polyana as tour guides knew no bounds. Summer together, romance and a lot of poetry. Whether there was something more, Evgenia correctly remains silent. So the summer passed. Ahead was a return to Moscow, a search for work. A dear friend left a little earlier, and Evgenia continued to work.
Shortly before leaving Krasnaya Polyana, she was called on an urgent matter - she was pulled straight from the excursion.
Then there was a search (they turned over several photographs - oh well), and an order to take only the most necessary things with us.
So I didn’t take anything except an empty backpack, which I rather out of habit threw over my shoulder, stuffing a thin volume of Selvinsky’s “Pacific Poems” into it.
Evgenia Fedorova
Accompanied by an officer, the woman went to the Sochi NKVD department. There, as the author would write years later, she met the only person working in law enforcement.
When Evgenia was brought in for interrogation, he gave her a chance to escape, leaving her documents and other interrogation forms on the table. He risked his position, freedom and life. After all, the arrested person had every chance to be released with documents. But the hint was not understood, she wrote a letter to the management of the camp site asking her to transfer all her things to her mother. And then... Moscow, transfer and the Gulag. During interrogations from the investigator, she learned that she had been arrested following a denunciation... by Yura.
"During"
Collage © L!FE. Photo © Gulag Barashevo // Gulag Virtual Museum
She went to prison at the age of 29, in 1935. They were closed under Article 58 (“Counter-revolutionary activities”). In her memoirs, “On the Gulag Islands,” she wrote that if she had gotten there a year later, she would not have survived.
Everyone who was arrested in such cases in 1937 was shot, they wrote later in the preface to the book.
Until the last moment there remained hope that he would be able to prove his innocence. Even after hearing the verdict in 1936, I expected that everything would soon become clear.
When I was in the Butyrka transit facility, it seemed to me that I could prove something to someone, convince someone, make them understand themselves. I received eight years of camps
Evgenia Fedorova
War with the Hurricanes
Prisoners on political charges were sent to Butyrka transit prison. And from there - to various camps. The first point where the writer was sent was a camp in Pindushi (Republic of Karelia).
In 1934, I took tourists here on excursions. The camp was surrounded on three sides by barbed wire, and Lake Onega was blue on the fourth,” she recalls.
They shared cells with thieves and sometimes murderers.
In the barracks we lived together with the urks, but they were a minority, and generally behaved peacefully and decently. At first they only “ripped off” (robbed) the new ones. Near me in the camp lived a cheerful, fat and always disheveled laugher. She told me without any malice: “But I’ll take the watch away anyway.” The next morning I lost my watch,” recalls Evgenia.
It was impossible to prove anything to the lessons. Moreover, the prison authorities did not help in this matter. To all attempts to appeal to common sense, there was only one answer: “If you’re not caught, you’re not a thief.”
"They're children"
Collage © L!FE. Still from the film "Freeze, Die, Resurrect!" / © Kinopoisk
Evgenia was sent to work as a copyist in a design bureau. She was given six juvenile prisoners who showed at least some desire to learn.
Bribes from them are smooth because they are young. We are put in a reinforced security convoy for not going to work - they are not there. Our bread ration is cut to 200–300 grams for failure to meet the quota. Youngsters always get their 500
Evgenia Fedorova
The behavior of the “kids” was appropriate. They could raid a kiosk located on the territory of the camp, or break out windows somewhere “for fun.”
The students approached the work with curiosity, which, however, quickly gave way to anger.
At first they liked to hold brand new compasses in their hands; they were flattered by the company of those arrested under Article 58. But soon the kids got tired of it. When the flies ate mascara diluted with sugar water, they completely lost their temper. Near the drawings there was a three-story mat, and tracing paper was torn into small pieces. Miraculously, they managed to save the drawings,” recalls Evgeniya.
"Feast" on rotten potatoes
For the prisoners of the camps, rotten potatoes were a real white bull. All year, starting in the fall, women were sent to the vegetable storehouse to sort out potatoes. The rotten ones were sent to the kitchen, the good ones were poured back into the bins. And so on day after day, until spring came and the potatoes ran out,” notes the writer.
In 1937 the stage came.
In the evening we were called using forms with our things and sent to the transfer. Most of the prisoners were representatives of the intelligentsia
Evgenia Fedorova
Everyone was united by Article 58 and its various points. The worst one is 58-1 - treason. It entailed 10 years in camps, which were sometimes replaced by execution. Article 58-6 - espionage, 58-8 - terrorism. Although for the most part the number 19 was above the deeds, which meant “intention.”
Fedorova and the others were sent to “Vodorasdel”, camp “Yuzhny”, in the Urals, in Solikamsk. From the barge on which the prisoners were delivered, it was a walk of 18–20 kilometers to the camp itself. At the same time, the guards did not allow us to go around along the side of the road, where it was more or less dry. We walked along the road knee-deep in mud and water.
But finally we are at the camp. A small hut-hut is the only women's barracks. 34 people live here on solid bunks - the entire female population of the camp. In proportion to the growing heat, a horde of bedbugs multiplied, driving us out of the barracks,” the woman recalls.
The mash was cooked in a broth made from crushed bones. This powder floated in the soup, resembling insoluble gravel in appearance. I brought a bucket and distributed the brew into bowls. They ate slowly and silently. Because when they started talking, the hunger came to life again
Evgenia Fedorova
There was a real war with rats. They seemed to sense when the prisoners were going to eat and arrived shortly before that.
Shouting: “Fuck you, you damned ones!” - it was useless. To drive them away completely, you had to stomp your feet and throw something at them,” writes Evgeniya.
First parcels
Collage © L!FE. Photo © Wikimedia Commons
In the fall of 1937, the first parcels arrived. They were given out in a shack near the detention center. The bosses took everything they liked and gave the rest to us. A pack of Urkagans swooped down on the owner of the treasured box of food and took everything away - this was not the first lesson the Gulag prisoners learned.
Soon the 58th began to go after the parcel with their pack to fight off the raiders. Evgenia was sent oranges, halva and crackers. Other prisoners under the same article and “comrades” from the barrack helped bring him to the barracks. The “gift of fate” had to be shared with everyone.
Go knock
“You’re still young, you’ll ruin your whole life, but we’ll help if you don’t work with us,” she heard from the camp authorities in the fall of 1937.
There was no point in denying it anyway. After the "Watershed" the worst conditions, it seems, could only send you straight to hell. But he was also at the disposal of the authorities of the main administration of camps and places of detention.
In the end, I said “yes” with the firm intention of running. I was sent to “Pudozhstroy” (Karelia) to find out whether former state saboteurs were engaged in their sabotage activities within the camp. It was a test,” writes the author.
Near Onega there was Mount Pudozh, where valuable and rare ores were discovered. But they were not melted in blast furnaces. And so the prisoners - metallurgists, electricians, chemists - created an experimental installation of rotating electric furnaces, where titanium and vanadium, which made up the ore, were melted.
The conditions here were, by the standards of the Gulag camps, simply fabulous. There were four of us living in a room. There was even a dining room - something like a modern wardroom on a ship.
Soon the authorities called me on the carpet and began asking about certain people. Evgenia honestly said that she had been discovered: informers in the camp were identified instantly. A couple more weeks of unsuccessful attempts and... shipment.
Imprisoned for cannibalism
The new, or rather the next, place was “Shveiprom”, which is not far from the city of Kem in Karelia. The working day lasted 12 hours. Two or three five-minute breaks and one 20-minute break for lunch.
There were quite a lot of Ukrainian women. They were imprisoned for cannibalism during the famine in the 1930s
Evgenia Fedorova
They were transported from Solovki. As the writer recalls, all the women went to work in silence with sleep-deprived faces. It seemed with unseeing eyes.
Collage © L!FE. Still from the film Gulag Vorkuta / © Kinopoisk
Even before dawn we heard explosions. No one announced it officially, but we all knew that war with Germany had begun
Evgenia Fedorova
The men rushed with statements asking to be taken to the front. Women - in the hope of becoming nurses, orderlies - whatever. No one was taken to the front, but everyone was ordered to get ready for the transfer.
Solikamsk The men all worked in the logging area, and there were only two women's barracks. In one there are several logging crews and employees of the financial department, accountants, kitchen, laundry, and infirmary staff. In the second, lived Urkagan women who never worked, but served the male population of the camp, writes the author.
Hospital. Liberty
In 1943, Evgenia was admitted to a hospital in Moshevo (Perm region). At some point, the woman suffered from sepsis. While we were sorting out the documents, I was almost cured myself. But since there is a piece of paper, you have to take it.
Gradually, I learned from the doctors the basics of the profession; they even began to let tuberculosis patients go on night shifts, for whom no one had any illusions of recovery.
If it happened that additional rations arrived, the surgeons tried to divide it among those who had a chance to live. They almost fought, proving that their patient was worthy
Evgenia Fedorova
In the summer of 1944 - with things to go out. They gave me enough money for the journey and sent me to the labor army hospital in the Bondyuzhinsky district of the Urals.
It’s so strange to go somewhere without an escort behind you. For the first time in nine years. Without a single document in my pocket, but I am free. Free.
"Will"
Collage © L!FE. Photo © Wikimedia Commons
The hospital where Fedorova was assigned stood on the Timsher River. The patients were prisoners of the local camp, most of whom came to the hospital as their last refuge. Many had dystrophy.
The labor soldiers at the logging site slowly but surely died, turning into goons unable to hold an ax in their hands. Wild living conditions in barracks that freeze through in winter, unusable clothing. This led to a starvation ration of 200 grams of bread and inevitable dystrophy, recalls Evgeniya.
Of the 10 barracks, only one was intended for those who had a chance of survival. Of the rest, none of them returned to the camp or to work.
Soon Evgenia’s mother arrived with her youngest son Vyacheslav. The eldest was 16 years old at that time; he did not go to the Urals to visit his mother-prisoner. In addition, he was preparing to enter the current MIPT without reporting his “parental background.”
Already a former prisoner received a passport without the right to reside in a hundred-kilometer zone of large cities, but even having at least some document was a joy. The family moved to Borovsk, near Solikamsk. And everything seemed to start to get better. Five years passed like this.
"To Siberia. Forever"
I was arrested for the second time at the end of March 1949,” the woman recalls.
The long-awaited rehabilitation occurred only in 1957. By that time, the sons had been kicked out of MIPT because of their mother’s dark past. Evgenia moved with her mother to Moscow and got a room in a communal apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Two years later I began working on my memoirs.
My sons and I managed to leave for America
Evgenia Fedorova
The author is silent about how he managed to escape from the Land of the Soviets. She lived in New York, New Jersey, published children's books, and traveled a lot. She died in Boston in 1995.
Alena Shapovalova
Only recently, researchers have established that in a dozen European concentration camps, the Nazis forced female prisoners to engage in prostitution in special brothels, writes Vladimir Ginda in the section Archive in issue 31 of the magazine Correspondent dated August 9, 2013.
Torment and death or prostitution - the Nazis faced this choice with European and Slavic women who found themselves in concentration camps. Of those several hundred girls who chose the second option, the administration staffed brothels in ten camps - not only those where prisoners were used as labor, but also others aimed at mass extermination.
In Soviet and modern European historiography, this topic did not actually exist; only a couple of American scientists - Wendy Gertjensen and Jessica Hughes - raised some aspects of the problem in their scientific works.
At the beginning of the 21st century, German cultural scientist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sexual conveyors
At the beginning of the 21st century, German cultural scientist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sexual conveyors operating in the horrific conditions of German concentration camps and death factories.
The result of nine years of research was a book published by Sommer in 2009 Brothel in a concentration camp, which shocked European readers. Based on this work, the exhibition Sex Work in Concentration Camps was organized in Berlin.
Bed motivation
“Legalized sex” appeared in Nazi concentration camps in 1942. The SS men organized houses of tolerance in ten institutions, among which were mainly so-called labor camps - in the Austrian Mauthausen and its branch Gusen, the German Flossenburg, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen and Dora-Mittelbau. In addition, the institution of forced prostitutes was also introduced in three death camps intended for the destruction of prisoners: in the Polish Auschwitz-Auschwitz and its “companion” Monowitz, as well as in the German Dachau.
The idea of creating camp brothels belonged to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The researchers' findings suggest that he was impressed by the system of incentives used in Soviet forced labor camps to increase prisoners' productivity.
Imperial War Museum
One of his barracks in Ravensbrück, the largest women's concentration camp in Nazi Germany
Himmler decided to adopt experience, simultaneously adding to the list of “incentives” something that was not in the Soviet system - “incentive” prostitution. The SS chief was confident that the right to visit a brothel, along with receiving other bonuses - cigarettes, cash or camp vouchers, an improved diet - could force prisoners to work harder and better.
In fact, the right to visit such institutions was predominantly held by camp guards from among the prisoners. And there is a logical explanation for this: most of the male prisoners were exhausted, so they did not even think about any sexual attraction.
Hughes points out that the proportion of male prisoners who used the services of brothels was extremely small. In Buchenwald, according to her data, where about 12.5 thousand people were kept in September 1943, 0.77% of prisoners visited the public barracks in three months. A similar situation was in Dachau, where as of September 1944, 0.75% of the 22 thousand prisoners who were there used the services of prostitutes.
Heavy share
Up to two hundred sex slaves worked in brothels at the same time. The largest number of women, two dozen, were kept in a brothel in Auschwitz.
Only female prisoners, usually attractive, aged 17 to 35, became brothel workers. About 60-70% of them were of German origin, from among those whom the Reich authorities called “anti-social elements.” Some were engaged in prostitution before entering the concentration camps, so they agreed to similar work, but behind barbed wire, without problems, and even passed on their skills to inexperienced colleagues.
The SS recruited approximately a third of the sex slaves from prisoners of other nationalities - Polish, Ukrainian or Belarusian. Jewish women were not allowed to do such work, and Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit brothels.
These workers wore special insignia - black triangles sewn onto the sleeves of their robes.
The SS recruited approximately a third of the sex slaves from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belarusians
Some of the girls voluntarily agreed to “work.” Thus, one former employee of the medical unit of Ravensbrück - the largest women's concentration camp of the Third Reich, where up to 130 thousand people were kept - recalled: some women voluntarily went to a brothel because they were promised release after six months of work.
Spaniard Lola Casadel, a member of the Resistance movement who ended up in the same camp in 1944, told how the head of their barracks announced: “Whoever wants to work in a brothel, come to me. And keep in mind: if there are no volunteers, we will have to resort to force.”
The threat was not empty: as Sheina Epstein, a Jew from the Kaunas ghetto, recalled, in the camp the inhabitants of the women’s barracks lived in constant fear of the guards, who regularly raped the prisoners. The raids were carried out at night: drunken men walked along the bunks with flashlights, choosing the most beautiful victim.
“Their joy knew no bounds when they discovered that the girl was a virgin. Then they laughed loudly and called their colleagues,” Epstein said.
Having lost honor, and even the will to fight, some girls went to brothels, realizing that this was their last hope for survival.
“The most important thing is that we managed to escape from [the camps] Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück,” said Liselotte B., a former prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, about her “bed career.” “The main thing was to somehow survive.”
With Aryan meticulousness
After the initial selection, the workers were brought to special barracks in the concentration camps where they were planned to be used. To bring the emaciated prisoners into a more or less decent appearance, they were placed in the infirmary. There, medical workers in SS uniforms gave them calcium injections, they took disinfectant baths, ate and even sunbathed under quartz lamps.
There was no sympathy in all this, only calculation: the bodies were being prepared for hard work. As soon as the rehabilitation cycle ended, the girls became part of the sex conveyor belt. Work was daily, rest was only if there was no light or water, if an air raid warning was announced or during the broadcast of speeches by German leader Adolf Hitler on the radio.
The conveyor worked like clockwork and strictly according to schedule. For example, in Buchenwald, prostitutes got up at 7:00 and took care of themselves until 19:00: they had breakfast, did exercises, underwent daily medical examinations, washed and cleaned, and had lunch. By camp standards, there was so much food that prostitutes even exchanged food for clothes and other things. Everything ended with dinner, and at seven in the evening the two-hour work began. The camp prostitutes could not go out to see her only if they had “these days” or fell ill.
AP
Women and children in one of the barracks of the Bergen-Belsen camp, liberated by the British
The procedure for providing intimate services, starting from the selection of men, was as detailed as possible. The only people who could get a woman were the so-called camp functionaries - internees, those involved in internal security, and prison guards.
Moreover, at first the doors of the brothels were opened exclusively to the Germans or representatives of the peoples living on the territory of the Reich, as well as to the Spaniards and Czechs. Later, the circle of visitors was expanded - only Jews, Soviet prisoners of war and ordinary internees were excluded. For example, logs of visits to a brothel in Mauthausen, which were meticulously kept by representatives of the administration, show that 60% of the clients were criminals.
Men who wanted to indulge in carnal pleasures first had to get permission from the camp leadership. Afterwards, they bought an entrance ticket for two Reichsmarks - this is slightly less than the cost of 20 cigarettes sold in the canteen. Of this amount, a quarter went to the woman herself, and only if she was German.
In the camp brothel, clients first of all found themselves in a waiting room, where their data was verified. They then underwent a medical examination and received prophylactic injections. Next, the visitor was given the number of the room where he should go. There the intercourse took place. Only the “missionary position” was allowed. Conversations were not encouraged.
This is how Magdalena Walter, one of the “concubines” kept there, describes the work of the brothel in Buchenwald: “We had one bathroom with a toilet, where the women went to wash themselves before the next visitor arrived. Immediately after washing, the client appeared. Everything worked like a conveyor belt; men were not allowed to stay in the room for more than 15 minutes.”
During the evening, the prostitute, according to surviving documents, received 6-15 people.
Body to work
Legalized prostitution was beneficial to the authorities. So, in Buchenwald alone, in the first six months of operation, the brothel earned 14-19 thousand Reichsmarks. The money went to the account of the German Economic Policy Directorate.
The Germans used women not only as objects of sexual pleasure, but also as scientific material. The inhabitants of the brothels carefully monitored their hygiene, because any venereal disease could cost them their lives: infected prostitutes in the camps were not treated, but experiments were performed on them.
Imperial War Museum
Liberated prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen camp
Reich scientists did this, fulfilling the will of Hitler: even before the war, he called syphilis one of the most dangerous diseases in Europe, capable of leading to disaster. The Fuhrer believed that only those nations would be saved who would find a way to quickly cure the disease. In order to obtain a miracle cure, the SS turned infected women into living laboratories. However, they did not remain alive for long - intensive experiments quickly led the prisoners to a painful death.
Researchers have found a number of cases where even healthy prostitutes were given over to sadistic doctors.
Pregnant women were not spared in the camps. In some places they were immediately killed, in some places they were artificially aborted, and after five weeks they were sent back into service. Moreover, abortions were performed at different times and in different ways - and this also became part of the research. Some prisoners were allowed to give birth, but only then to experimentally determine how long a baby could live without food.
Despicable prisoners
According to former Buchenwald prisoner Dutchman Albert van Dyck, camp prostitutes were despised by other prisoners, not paying attention to the fact that they were forced to go “on panel” by cruel conditions of detention and an attempt to save their lives. And the work of the brothel dwellers itself was akin to repeated daily rape.
Some of the women, even finding themselves in a brothel, tried to defend their honor. For example, Walter came to Buchenwald as a virgin and, finding herself in the role of a prostitute, tried to defend herself from her first client with scissors. The attempt failed, and according to accounting records, the former virgin satisfied six men that same day. Walter endured this because she knew that otherwise she would face a gas chamber, a crematorium, or a barracks for cruel experiments.
Not everyone had the strength to survive the violence. Some of the inhabitants of the camp brothels, according to researchers, committed suicide, and some lost their minds. Some survived, but remained captive to psychological problems for the rest of their lives. Physical liberation did not relieve them of the burden of the past, and after the war, camp prostitutes were forced to hide their history. Therefore, scientists have collected little documented evidence of life in these brothels.
“It’s one thing to say ‘I worked as a carpenter’ or ‘I built roads’ and quite another to say ‘I was forced to work as a prostitute,’” says Insa Eschebach, director of the Ravensbrück former camp memorial.
This material was published in No. 31 of the Korrespondent magazine dated August 9, 2013. Reproduction of Korrespondent magazine publications in full is prohibited. The rules for using materials from the Korrespondent magazine published on the Korrespondent.net website can be found .
The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many lost loved ones who were killed or tortured. In the article we will look at the Nazi concentration camps and the atrocities that happened on their territories.
What is a concentration camp?
A concentration camp or concentration camp is a special place intended for the detention of persons of the following categories:
- political prisoners (opponents of the dictatorial regime);
- prisoners of war (captured soldiers and civilians).
Nazi concentration camps became notorious for their inhuman cruelty to prisoners and impossible conditions of detention. These places of detention began to appear even before Hitler came to power, and even then they were divided into women's, men's and children's. Mainly Jews and opponents of the Nazi system were kept there.
Life in the camp
Humiliation and abuse for prisoners began from the moment of transportation. People were transported in freight cars, where there was not even running water or a fenced-off latrine. Prisoners had to relieve themselves publicly, in a tank standing in the middle of the carriage.
But this was only the beginning; a lot of abuse and torture were prepared for the concentration camps of fascists who were undesirable to the Nazi regime. Torture of women and children, medical experiments, aimless exhausting work - this is not the whole list.
The conditions of detention can be judged from the prisoners’ letters: “they lived in hellish conditions, ragged, barefoot, hungry... I was constantly and severely beaten, deprived of food and water, tortured...”, “They shot me, flogged me, poisoned me with dogs, drowned me in water, beat me to death.” with sticks and starvation. They were infected with tuberculosis... suffocated by a cyclone. Poisoned with chlorine. They burned..."
The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was then used in the German textile industry. The doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, at whose hands thousands of people died. He studied mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they received organ transplants from each other, blood transfusions, and sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. Performed sex reassignment surgery.
All fascist concentration camps became famous for such abuses; we will look at the names and conditions of detention in the main ones below.
Camp diet
Typically, the daily ration in the camp was as follows:
- bread - 130 gr;
- fat - 20 g;
- meat - 30 g;
- cereal - 120 gr;
- sugar - 27 gr.
Bread was handed out, and the rest of the products were used for cooking, which consisted of soup (issued 1 or 2 times a day) and porridge (150 - 200 grams). It should be noted that such a diet was intended only for working people. Those who, for some reason, remained unemployed received even less. Usually their portion consisted of only half a portion of bread.
List of concentration camps in different countries
Fascist concentration camps were created in the territories of Germany, allied and occupied countries. There are a lot of them, but let’s name the main ones:
- In Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;
- Austria - Mauthausen, Amstetten;
- France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
- Poland - Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
- Lithuania - Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
- Czechoslovakia - Kunta Gora, Natra, Hlinsko;
- Estonia - Pirkul, Pärnu, Klooga;
- Belarus - Minsk, Baranovichi;
- Latvia - Salaspils.
And this is not a complete list of all concentration camps that were built by Nazi Germany in the pre-war and war years.
Salaspils
Salaspils, one might say, is the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because in addition to prisoners of war and Jews, children were also kept there. It was located on the territory of occupied Latvia and was the central eastern camp. It was located near Riga and operated from 1941 (September) to 1944 (summer).
Children in this camp were not only kept separately from adults and exterminated en masse, but were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Every day, about half a liter of blood was taken from all children, which led to the rapid death of donors.
Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then their corpses were burned. It was used for medical research, which killed more than 100,000 people. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. Torture of children was a routine activity here, carried out according to a schedule with the results carefully recorded.
Experiments on children
Testimony of witnesses and results of investigations revealed the following methods of extermination of people in the Salaspils camp: beating, starvation, arsenic poisoning, injection of dangerous substances (most often to children), surgical operations without painkillers, pumping out blood (only from children), executions, torture, useless heavy labor (carrying stones from place to place), gas chambers, burying alive. In order to save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed only with rifle butts. The atrocities of the Nazis in the concentration camps surpassed everything that humanity had seen in modern times. Such an attitude towards people cannot be justified, because it violates all conceivable and inconceivable moral commandments.
Children did not stay with their mothers for long and were usually quickly taken away and distributed. Thus, children under six years of age were kept in a special barracks where they were infected with measles. But they did not treat it, but aggravated the disease, for example, by bathing, which is why the children died within 3-4 days. The Germans killed more than 3,000 people in one year in this way. The bodies of the dead were partly burned and partly buried on the camp grounds.
The Act of the Nuremberg Trials “on the extermination of children” provided the following numbers: during the excavation of only a fifth of the concentration camp territory, 633 bodies of children aged 5 to 9 years, arranged in layers, were discovered; an area soaked in an oily substance was also found, where the remains of unburned children’s bones (teeth, ribs, joints, etc.) were found.
Salaspils is truly the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because the atrocities described above are not all the tortures that the prisoners were subjected to. Thus, in winter, children brought in were driven barefoot and naked to a barracks for half a kilometer, where they had to wash themselves in icy water. After this, the children were driven in the same way to the next building, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. Moreover, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. Everyone who survived this procedure was also subjected to arsenic poisoning.
Infants were kept separately and given injections, from which the child died in agony within a few days. They gave us coffee and poisoned cereals. About 150 children died from experiments per day. The bodies of the dead were carried out in large baskets and burned, dumped in cesspools, or buried near the camp.
Ravensbrück
If we start listing Nazi women's concentration camps, Ravensbrück will come first. This was the only camp of this type in Germany. It could accommodate thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war it was overcrowded by fifteen thousand. Mostly Russian and Polish women were detained; Jews numbered approximately 15 percent. There were no prescribed instructions regarding torture and torment; the supervisors chose the line of behavior themselves.
Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number. Race was also indicated on clothing. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in the post-war years, 2-3 refugee families lived in them) there were approximately three hundred prisoners, who were housed on three-story bunks. When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were herded into these cells, all of whom had to sleep on the same bunks. The barracks had several toilets and a washbasin, but there were so few of them that after a few days the floors were littered with excrement. Almost all Nazi concentration camps presented this picture (the photos presented here are only a small fraction of all the horrors).
But not all women ended up in the concentration camp; a selection was made beforehand. The strong and resilient, fit for work, were left behind, and the rest were destroyed. Prisoners worked at construction sites and sewing workshops.
Gradually, Ravensbrück was equipped with a crematorium, like all Nazi concentration camps. Gas chambers (nicknamed gas chambers by prisoners) appeared towards the end of the war. Ashes from crematoria were sent to nearby fields as fertilizer.
Experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. In a special barracks called the “infirmary,” German scientists tested new drugs, first infecting or crippling experimental subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered from what they had endured until the end of their lives. Experiments were also conducted with irradiating women with X-rays, which caused hair loss, skin pigmentation, and death. Excisions of the genital organs were carried out, after which few survived, and even those quickly aged, and at the age of 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out in all Nazi concentration camps; torture of women and children was the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.
At the time of the liberation of the concentration camp by the Allies, five thousand women remained there; the rest were killed or transported to other places of detention. The Soviet troops who arrived in April 1945 adapted the camp barracks to accommodate refugees. Ravensbrück later became a base for Soviet military units.
Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald
Construction of the camp began in 1933, near the town of Weimar. Soon, Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive, becoming the first prisoners, and they completed the construction of the “hellish” concentration camp.
The structure of all structures was strictly thought out. Immediately behind the gate began the “Appelplat” (parallel ground), specially designed for the formation of prisoners. Its capacity was twenty thousand people. Not far from the gate there was a punishment cell for interrogations, and opposite there was an office where the camp fuehrer and the officer on duty - the camp authorities - lived. Deeper down were the barracks for prisoners. All barracks were numbered, there were 52 of them. At the same time, 43 were intended for housing, and workshops were set up in the rest.
The Nazi concentration camps left behind a terrible memory; their names still evoke fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald. The crematorium was considered the most terrible place. People were invited there under the pretext of a medical examination. When the prisoner undressed, he was shot and the body was sent to the oven.
Only men were kept in Buchenwald. Upon arrival at the camp, they were assigned a number in German, which they had to learn within the first 24 hours. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky weapons factory, which was located a few kilometers from the camp.
Continuing to describe the Nazi concentration camps, let us turn to the so-called “small camp” of Buchenwald.
Small camp of Buchenwald
The “small camp” was the name given to the quarantine zone. The living conditions here were, even compared to the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiegne camp were brought to this camp; they were mainly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were housed in tents. The closer 1945 got, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the “small camp” included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in Nazi concentration camps was not only specially planned or for scientific purposes, life itself in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks; their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread; those who were not working were no longer entitled to it.
Relations among prisoners were tough; cases of cannibalism and murder for someone else's portion of bread were documented. A common practice was to store the bodies of the dead in barracks in order to receive their rations. The dead man's clothes were divided among his cellmates, and they often fought over them. Due to such conditions, infectious diseases were common in the camp. Vaccinations only worsened the situation, since injection syringes were not changed.
Photos simply cannot convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. The stories of witnesses are not intended for the faint of heart. In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to step far forward - no other country in the world had such a number of experimental people. Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, the inhuman suffering that these innocent people endured.
Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated, organs were removed, and they were sterilized and castrated. They tested how long a person could withstand extreme cold or heat. They were specially infected with diseases and introduced experimental drugs. Thus, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed in Buchenwald. In addition to typhus, prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid.
Since 1939, the camp was run by Karl Koch. His wife, Ilse, was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her love of sadism and inhumane abuse of prisoners. They feared her more than her husband (Karl Koch) and Nazi doctors. She was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". The woman owed this nickname to the fact that she made various decorative things from the skin of killed prisoners, in particular, lampshades, which she was very proud of. Most of all, she liked to use the skin of Russian prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests, as well as the skin of gypsies. Things made of such material seemed to her the most elegant.
The liberation of Buchenwald took place on April 11, 1945, at the hands of the prisoners themselves. Having learned about the approach of the allied troops, they disarmed the guards, captured the camp leadership and controlled the camp for two days until American soldiers approached.
Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)
When listing Nazi concentration camps, it is impossible to ignore Auschwitz. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died. The exact details of the dead remain unclear. The victims were mainly Jewish prisoners of war, who were exterminated immediately upon arrival in gas chambers.
The concentration camp complex itself was called Auschwitz-Birkenau and was located on the outskirts of the Polish city of Auschwitz, whose name became a household name. The following words were engraved above the camp gate: “Work sets you free.”
This huge complex, built in 1940, consisted of three camps:
- Auschwitz I or the main camp - the administration was located here;
- Auschwitz II or "Birkenau" - was called a death camp;
- Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz.
Initially, the camp was small and intended for political prisoners. But gradually more and more prisoners arrived at the camp, 70% of whom were destroyed immediately. Many tortures in Nazi concentration camps were borrowed from Auschwitz. Thus, the first gas chamber began to function in 1941. The gas used was Cyclone B. The terrible invention was first tested on Soviet and Polish prisoners totaling about nine hundred people.
Auschwitz II began its operation on March 1, 1942. Its territory included four crematoria and two gas chambers. In the same year, medical experiments on sterilization and castration began on women and men.
Small camps gradually formed around Birkenau, where prisoners working in factories and mines were kept. One of these camps gradually grew and became known as Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz. Approximately ten thousand prisoners were held here.
Like any Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz was well guarded. Contacts with the outside world were prohibited, the territory was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and guard posts were set up around the camp at a distance of a kilometer.
Five crematoria operated continuously on the territory of Auschwitz, which, according to experts, had a monthly capacity of approximately 270 thousand corpses.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. By that time, approximately seven thousand prisoners remained alive. Such a small number of survivors is due to the fact that about a year earlier, mass murders in gas chambers (gas chambers) began in the concentration camp.
Since 1947, a museum and memorial complex dedicated to the memory of all those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany began to function on the territory of the former concentration camp.
Conclusion
During the entire war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. These were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It’s hard to even imagine what these people went through. But it was not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps that they were destined to endure. Thanks to Stalin, after their liberation, returning home, they received the stigma of “traitors.” The Gulag awaited them at home, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity gave way to another for them. In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences.
Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after release was not advertised and kept silent. But people who have experienced this simply should not be forgotten.
