German concentration camps. Auschwitz concentration camp: experiments on women. Josef Mengele. History of Auschwitz. Regression, fantasies and obsessions
This name has become a symbol of the brutal attitude of the Nazis to captured children.
During the three years of the camp existence (1941-1944) in Salaspils, according to various sources, about one hundred thousand people died, seven thousand of them were children.
A place from where they did not return
This camp was built by captured Jews in 1941 on the territory of the former Latvian training ground 18 kilometers from Riga near the village of the same name. According to the documents, initially “Salaspils” (German Kurtenhof) was called “educational-labor”, not a concentration camp.
The impressive size of the area, fenced with barbed wire, was built up with hastily erected wooden barracks. Each was designed for 200-300 people, but often in one room there were from 500 to 1000 people.
Initially, Jews deported from Germany to Latvia were doomed to death in the camp, but since 1942, "unwanted" people from various countries were sent here: France, Germany, Austria, the Soviet Union.
The Salaspils camp also became notorious because it was here that the Nazis took blood from innocent children for the needs of the army and in every possible way mocked juvenile prisoners.
Full donors for the Reich
New prisoners were brought in regularly. They were forced to strip naked and sent to the so-called bathhouse. It was necessary to walk half a kilometer through the mud, and then wash in ice water. After that, the arrivals were placed in barracks, all things were taken away.
There were no names, surnames, titles - only serial numbers. Many died almost immediately, while those who managed to survive after several days of imprisonment and torture were “sorted out”.
Children were separated from their parents. If the mother was not given away, the guards took the babies by force. There were terrible screams and screams. Many women went crazy; some of them were taken to hospital, and some were shot on the spot.
Babies and children under the age of six were sent to a special barrack, where they died of hunger and disease. The Nazis experimented with older prisoners: they injected poisons, performed operations without anesthesia, took blood from children, which was transferred to hospitals for wounded soldiers of the German army. Many children became "full donors" - blood was taken from them until they died.
Considering that the prisoners were practically not fed: a piece of bread and gruel made from vegetable waste, the number of child deaths was estimated at hundreds a day. The corpses, like garbage, were taken out in huge baskets and burned in the ovens of the crematorium or thrown into disposal pits.
Noticing the tracks
In August 1944, before the arrival of Soviet troops, the Nazis burned down many of the barracks in an attempt to eradicate traces of atrocities. The surviving prisoners were taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, and German prisoners of war were kept on the territory of Salaspils until October 1946.
After the liberation of Riga from the Nazis, the commission to investigate the Nazi atrocities found 652 children's corpses on the territory of the camp. Also found were mass graves and human remains: ribs, hip bones, teeth.
One of the most terrifying photographs, clearly illustrating the events of that time, is "Salaspils Madonna", the corpse of a woman who hugs a dead baby. It was established that they were buried alive.
The truth hurts my eyes
Only in 1967, the Salaspils memorial complex was erected on the site of the camp, which still exists today. Many famous Russian and Latvian sculptors and architects worked on the ensemble, including Ernst Unknown... The road to Salaspils begins with a massive concrete slab, the inscription on which reads: “The earth is groaning behind these walls”.
Further, on a small field, there are symbolic figures with “speaking” names: “Unbroken”, “Humiliated”, “Oath”, “Mother”. On both sides of the road there are barracks with iron bars where people bring flowers, children's toys and sweets, and on the black marble wall, serifs mark the days spent by innocents in the death camp.
Today, some Latvian historians blasphemously call the Salaspils camp "educational and labor" and "socially useful", refusing to recognize the atrocities that were happening near Riga during the Second World War.
In 2015, an exhibition dedicated to the victims of Salaspils was banned in Latvia. Officials considered that such an event would harm the country's image. As a result, the exposition “Stolen Childhood. Holocaust Victims Through the Eyes of Juvenile Prisoners of the Nazi Salaspils Concentration Camp ”was held at the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Paris.
In 2017, a scandal also occurred at the press conference "Salaspils Camp, History and Memory". One of the speakers tried to present his original point of view on historical events, but was strongly rebuffed by the participants. “It hurts to hear how you today are trying to forget about the past. We cannot allow such terrible events to happen again. God forbid you to experience something like that, ”one of the women who managed to survive in Salaspils addressed the speaker.
Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were located throughout the country and served different purposes. They occupied hundreds of hectares of land and brought tangible income to the country's economy. Description of the history of the creation and construction of some of the most famous concentration camps of the Third Reich.
By the beginning of World War II, the system of concentration camps in Nazi Germany was already well established. The fascists were not the inventors of this method of dealing with large masses of people. The first concentration camp in the world was established during the Civil War in the United States of America in the town of Andersonville. However, it was precisely after the defeat of Germany and the official courts for the crimes of the Nazis against humanity, when the whole truth of the Reich was revealed, that the world community was stirred up by the information about what was happening behind the thick walls and rows of barbed wire.
In order to retain the power he had so hard won, Hitler had to quickly and effectively suppress any actions against his regime. Therefore, the existing prisons in Germany began to quickly fill up, and soon overflow with political prisoners. These were German citizens who were taken to prison not for extermination, but for suggestion. As a rule, several months of being in unpleasant dungeons were enough to quench the ardor of citizens thirsting for changes in the existing order. After they ceased to pose a threat to the Nazi regime, they were released.
Over time, it turned out that the state had much more enemies than there were prisons. Then a proposal was made to solve the problem. The construction of places of mass concentrated detention of people objectionable to the regime, by the hands of these very people, was economically and politically beneficial to the Third Reich. The first concentration camps appeared on the basis of old abandoned barracks and factory workshops. But by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, they were already erected in any open place convenient for transporting prisoners there.
Buchenwald
The Buchenwald concentration camp was built in the summer of 1937 in the very heart of Germany near the city of Weimar. The project, like others like it, was top secret. Standartenfuehrer Karl Koch, who was appointed commandant here, already had experience in managing camps. Prior to that, he managed to serve in Lichtenburg and Sachsenhausen. Now Koch was tasked with building the largest concentration camp in Germany. It was a great opportunity to write your name in the chronicles of Germany forever. The first concentration camps appeared in 1933. But this Koch had the ability to build from scratch. He felt like a king and a god there.
The bulk of Buchenwald's inhabitants were political prisoners. These were the Germans who were unwilling to support Hitler's rule. Believers were sent there, whose conscience did not allow them to kill and take up arms. Men who refused to serve in the army were considered dangerous opponents of the state. And since they did it out of religious convictions, they outlawed the whole religion. Therefore, all members of such a group were persecuted, regardless of age and gender. Believers who in Germany were called bibelforscher (Bible students) even had their own identification mark on their clothes - a purple triangle.
Like other concentration camps, Buchenwald was supposed to benefit the new Germany. In addition to the usual use of slave labor for such places, experiments were carried out on living people within the walls of this camp. In order to study the development and course of infectious diseases, as well as to find out which vaccines are more effective, groups of prisoners were infected with tuberculosis and typhus. After the investigation, the victims of such medical experiments were sent to the gas chamber as unnecessary waste material.
On April 11, 1945, an organized uprising of prisoners broke out in Buchenwald. It turned out to be successful. Encouraged by the proximity of the Allied army, the prisoners seized the commandant's office and waited for the arrival of the American troops, who arrived on the same day. Five days later, the Americans brought ordinary residents from the city of Weimar so that they could see with their own eyes what horror was happening outside the camp walls. This would allow, if necessary, to use their testimony as eyewitnesses during the trial.
Auschwitz
The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland became the largest death camp in the history of the Third Reich. Initially, it was created, like many others, to resolve local problems - intimidation of opponents, extermination of the local Jewish population. But soon the Auschwitz camp (this is how it was called in the German manner in all official German documents) was chosen for the final solution of the "Jewish question". Due to its convenient geographical location and the presence of a good transport interchange, it was chosen in order to exterminate all Jews from the European countries captured by Hitler.
Concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland
The camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, was tasked with developing an effective method for the extermination of large numbers of people. On September 3, 1941, Soviet prisoners of war (600 people) and 250 Polish prisoners were separated from the prisoners at the disposal of Höss. They were brought into one block and sprayed with the poisonous gas "Cyclone" B "". Within minutes, all 850 people were dead. This was the first test of a gas chamber. In the second branch of Auschwitz, random buildings were no longer used for gas chambers. They built specially designed sealed buildings disguised as shared showers. Thus, the prisoner of the concentration camp sentenced to death did not suspect until the last that he was going to certain death. This prevented panic and attempts at resistance.
So the murder of people in Auschwitz was brought to a production scale. From all over Europe, trains packed with Jews were sent to Poland. After gas treatment, the murdered Jews were sent to the crematorium. However, the pragmatic Germans burned only what they could not use. All personal belongings, including clothing, were seized, sorted and sent to special warehouses. The gold teeth were pulled out from the corpses. Human hair was used to fill mattresses. Soap was made from human fat. And even the ashes of the victims were used as fertilizer.
In addition, the people in the concentration camp were also viewed as material for medical experiments. Physicians worked in Auschwitz who, as a practice, performed a variety of surgical operations on healthy people. The infamous physician Josef Mengele, nicknamed the Angel of Death, conducted his experiments on the twins there. Many of them were children.
Dachau
Dachau is the first concentration camp in Germany. In many ways, he was experimental. The first prisoners of this camp had the opportunity to leave it in just a few months. On condition of complete "re-education". In other words - when they rearranged them to pose a political threat to the Hitlerite regime. In addition, Dachau was the first attempt at a genetic purification of the Aryan race by removing dubious "genetic material" from the public. Moreover, the selection was made not only by physical, but also by moral character. So, prostitutes, homosexuals, vagrants, drug addicts and alcoholics were sent to a concentration camp.
In Munich, there is a legend that Dachau was built near the city as punishment for the fact that in the elections to the Reichstag, all of its inhabitants voted against Hitler. The fact is that the fetid smoke from the chimneys of the crematorium regularly covered the city blocks, spreading with the prevailing wind in this direction. But this is just a local legend, not supported by any documents.
It was in Dachau that work began to improve the methods of influencing the human psyche. Here they invented, tested and improved the methods of torture used during the interrogation. Here, methods of mass suppression of human will were perfected. Will to live and resist. Subsequently, concentration camp inmates throughout Germany and beyond tested the technique originally developed in Dachau. With the passage of time, the conditions of stay in the camp became more stringent. Liberation from prison has long been a thing of the past. For people, they came up with new ways to become useful in the development of the Third Reich.
Many prisoners were given the opportunity to serve as guinea pigs for medical students. Healthy people underwent surgery without the use of anesthesia. Soviet prisoners of war were used as human targets for training young soldiers. After training, the unaccounted for were simply left at the training ground, and sometimes they were still sent to the crematorium alive. It is significant that healthy young men were selected for Dachau. They were used for experiments to determine the limits of endurance of the human body. For example, prisoners were infected with malaria. Some died as a result of the course of the disease itself. However, most died from the treatments themselves.
In Dachau, Dr. Roscher used a pressure chamber to find out how much pressure the human body can withstand. He put people in a camera and simulated a situation in which a pilot could find himself at an ultra-high altitude. They also checked what would happen with a fast forced parachute jump from such a height. People experienced terrible torment. They banged their heads against the wall of the cell and tore at their heads with their fingernails in blood, trying to somehow reduce the terrible pressure. And the doctor at this time meticulously recorded the frequency of respiration and pulse. The few test subjects who survived were immediately sent to the gas chamber. The experiments were classified as classified. It was impossible to allow information leakage.
Although most of the medical research took place in Dachau and Auschwitz, the concentration camp supplying living material for the university in Germany was Sachsenhausen, located near the city of Friedenthal. Due to the use of such material, this institution has earned a reputation as an assassin university.
Majdanek
In official documents, the new camp on the territory of captured Poland was listed as "Dachau 2". But soon it acquired its own name - Majdanek - and even surpassed Dachau, in the image and likeness of which it was created. Concentration camps in Germany were secret facilities. But with regard to Majdanek, the Germans did not stand on ceremony. They wanted the Poles to know what was going on in the camp. It was located right next to the highway in the immediate vicinity of the city of Lublin. The cadaverous smell, carried by the wind, often completely enveloped the city. The residents of Lublin knew about the executions of Soviet prisoners of war that were taking place in the nearest forest. They saw transports packed with people, and knew that gas chambers were prepared for these unfortunates.
The prisoners of Majdanek settled in the barracks intended for them. It was a whole city with its own districts. Five hundred and sixteen hectares of land fenced with barbed wire. There was even a neighborhood for women. And the chosen women went to the camp brothel, where the SS soldiers could satisfy their needs.
The Majdanek concentration camp began functioning in the fall of 1941. At first, it was planned that only the disaffected from the surrounding area would be gathered here, as was the case with other local camps, which were needed to consolidate the new power and quickly deal with the disaffected. But a powerful stream of Soviet prisoners of war from the Eastern Front made adjustments to the planning of the camp. Now he had to accept thousands of captive men. In addition, this camp was included in the program for the final solution of the Jewish question. So, it had to be prepared for the rapid destruction of large parties of people.
When the Erntefest operation was carried out, during which all Jews remaining in the vicinity were to be exterminated in one fell swoop, the camp leadership decided to shoot them. In advance, not far from the camp, the prisoners were ordered to dig 100-meter ditches six meters wide and three meters deep. On November 3rd, 1943, 18,000 Jews led to these ditches. They were ordered to undress and lie prone on the ground. Moreover, the next row had to lie face down in the back of the previous one. Thus, the result is a living carpet, folded according to the principle of tiles. Eighteen thousand heads were turned towards the executioners.
From the loudspeakers around the perimeter of the camp, lively cheerful music began to play. And then the carnage began. The SS men came close and shot in the back of the head of the lying man. Having finished with the first row, they pushed him into a ditch, and methodically began to shoot the next one. When the ditches were overcrowded, they were only lightly covered with earth. In total, more than 40,000 people were killed in the Lublin region that day. This action was carried out in response to the uprising of the Jews in Sobibor and Treblinka. So the Germans wanted to protect themselves.
Operation Erntefest
During the three years of the existence of the death camp, five commandants were replaced in it. The first was Karl Koch, who was relocated from Buchenwald. The next is Max Kögel, who was previously the commandant of Ravensbrück. After them Hermann Florsted and Martin Weiss served as commandants, and the last was Arthur Liebehenschel, the successor of Rudolf Höss at Auschwitz.
Treblinka
In Treblinka, there were two camps at once, which differed in numbers. Treblinka 1 was positioned as a labor camp, and Treblinka 2 as a death camp. Towards the end of May 1942, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, a camp was built near the village of Treblinka, and by June it was operational. It is the largest extermination camp built during the war, with its own railway. The first victims sent there bought train tickets themselves, not realizing that they were going to their death.
The secrecy label extended not only to the murders of prisoners - the very existence of the concentration camp was a secret for a long time. German aircraft were forbidden to fly over Treblinka, and at a distance of 1 km from it, soldiers were stationed throughout the forest, who, when anyone approached, fired without any warning. Those who brought prisoners here were replaced by camp guards and never went inside, and the 3-meter wall did not allow to become casual witnesses of what was happening behind the fence.
Due to the complete secrecy in Treblinka, the presence of a large number of guards was not required: it was enough for about 100 Wahmans — specially trained collaborators (Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles) and 30 SS men. Gas chambers disguised as showers were attached to the exhaust pipes of heavy tank engines. People who were in the shower died from suffocation rather than from the lethal composition of the gas. However, they also used other methods: the air from the room was completely sucked out and the prisoners died from a lack of oxygen.
After a massive attack by the Red Army on the Volga, Himmler personally came to Treblinka. Before his visit, the victims were buried, but this meant leaving traces behind them. By his order, crematoria were built. Himmler gave the order to unearth the dead and cremate. "Operation 1005" - that was the code name for the elimination of traces of murders. The prisoners themselves were engaged in carrying out the order, and soon despair helped them decide: it is necessary to raise an uprising.
Hard work and gas chambers took the lives of the new arrivals, so that there were approximately 1,000 prisoners permanently in the camp to keep it functioning. In 1943, on August 2, 300 people decided to flee. Many camp buildings were set on fire and manholes were made in the fence, but after the first successful minutes of the uprising, many had to unsuccessfully storm the gates, and not use the original plan. Two-thirds of the rebels were destroyed, and many were found in the forests and shot.
Autumn 1943 marks the complete end of the Treblinka concentration camp. For a long time, looting was widespread on the territory of the former concentration camp: many were looking for valuable things that once belonged to the victims. Treblinka was the second most casualty camp after Auschwitz. In total, from 750 to 925 thousand people were killed here. To preserve the memory of the horrors that the victims of the concentration camp had to endure, a symbolic cemetery and a monument-mausoleum were later built in its place.
Ravensbrück
In German society, the role of women was to be limited to raising children and maintaining a home. They were not supposed to exert any political or social influence. Therefore, when the construction of the concentration camps began, there was no separate complex for women. The only exception was the Ravensbrück concentration camp. It was built in 1939 in northern Germany near the village of Ravensbrück. The concentration camp gets its name from the name of this village. Today it has already become part of the city of Fürstenberg that has spread to its territory.
The Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, photo of which was taken after its liberation, has been little studied in comparison with other large concentration camps of the Third Reich. Since he was in the very heart of the country - just 90 kilometers from Berlin, he was one of the last to be released. Therefore, the Nazis managed to reliably destroy all the documentation. In addition to the photographs taken after the liberation, only eyewitness accounts could tell about what was happening in the camp, of whom not so many survived.
The Ravensbrück concentration camp was built to contain German women. Its first inhabitants were German prostitutes, lesbians, criminals and Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to renounce their faith. Subsequently, prisoners from the countries occupied by the Germans began to be sent here. However, there were very few Jewish women in Ravensbrück. And in March 1942 they were all transferred to Auschwitz.
For all women arriving in Ravensbrück, camp life began the same way. They were stripped naked (the time of the year did not play any role) and inspected. Every woman and girl was subjected to humiliating gynecological examinations. The guards were vigilant that the newcomers did not carry anything with them. Therefore, the procedures were not only morally overwhelming, but also painful. After that, each woman had to go through a bath. Waiting for their turn could last for several hours. And only after the bath did the captives finally receive a camp uniform and a pair of heavy slippers.
The ascent to the camp was signaled at 4 am. The inmates received half a cup of a watery drink that replaced coffee, and after the roll call they were sent to their workplaces. The working day, depending on the season, lasted from 12 to 14 hours. In the middle there was a half-hour break during which the women received bowls of swede broth. Every evening there was another roll call, which could last for several hours. Moreover, in cold and rainy times, the guards often deliberately delayed this procedure.
In Ravensbrück, medical experiments were also carried out. They studied the course of gangrene and how to deal with it. The fact is that the field of receiving gunshot wounds, many soldiers on the battlefield developed this complication, which was fraught with many deaths. The doctors were faced with the task of finding a quick and effective treatment. On experimental women, sulfonamide preparations (streptocide belong to them) were tested. It happened as follows - on the upper thigh - where the emaciated women still had muscles - they made a deep incision (of course, without the use of any anesthesia). Bacteria were injected into the open wound, and in order to make it easier to monitor the development of the lesion in the tissues, part of the nearby flesh was cut off. To more accurately simulate the field conditions, metal shavings, glass shards and wood particles were also injected into the wounds.
Women's concentration camps
Although among the German concentration camps only Ravensbrück was a women's camp (however, there were also several thousand men in a separate unit), in this system there were places reserved exclusively for women. Heinrich Himmler, who was responsible for the functioning of the camps, was very sensitive to his brainchild. He frequently inspected various camps, making changes in them, in his opinion, and constantly tried to improve the functioning and output of these large suppliers of labor and materials, which are so necessary for the German economy. After learning about the incentive system that was introduced in the Soviet labor camps, Himmler decided to use it to improve work efficiency. Along with cash incentives, dietary supplements, and camp vouchers, Himmler felt that sexual gratification could be a special privilege. Thus, brothels for prisoners appeared in ten concentration camps.
Women selected from the prisoners worked in them. They agreed to this, trying to save their lives. It was easier to survive in the brothel. Prostitutes were entitled to the best food, they received the necessary medical care and they were not sent to physically unbearable jobs. A visit to a prostitute, although it was a privilege, remained paid. The man had to pay two Reichsmarks (the cost of a pack of cigarettes). The "session" lasted strictly 15 minutes, strictly in the missionary position. Records preserved in the Buchenwald documents show that in just the first six months of operation, concentration camp brothels brought Germany 19,000 Reichsmarks.
“To know in order to remember. Remember, so as not to repeat "- this capacious phrase perfectly reflects the meaning of writing this article, the meaning of reading it by you. Each of us needs to remember the brutal cruelty that a person is capable of when an idea stands above human life.
Creation of concentration camps
In the history of the creation of concentration camps, we can distinguish the following main periods:
- Before 1934... This phase was the beginning of the Nazi rule, when the need arose to isolate and repress the opponents of the Nazi regime. The camps were more like prisons. They immediately became the place where the law did not work, and no organization had the opportunity to get inside. So, for example, in the event of a fire, fire brigades were not allowed to enter the territory.
- 1936 —1938 During this period, new camps were built: the previous ones were no longer enough, because now not only political prisoners got there, but also citizens declared a disgrace of the German nation (parasites and homeless people). Then the number of prisoners increased sharply due to the outbreak of the war and the first exile of the Jews, which took place after Kristallnacht (November 1938).
- 1939-1942 Prisoners from the occupied countries - France, Poland, Belgium - were sent to the camps.
- 1942 —1945 During this period, the persecution of Jews intensified, and Soviet prisoners of war were also in the hands of the Nazis. Thus,
The Nazis needed new places for the organized murder of millions of people.
Victims of concentration camps
Representatives of the "lower races"- Jews and Gypsies, who were kept in separate barracks and were subjected to complete physical extermination, they were starved and sent to the most exhausting jobs.
Political opponents of the regime... Among them were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists, social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, members of various religious sects.
Criminals whom the administration often used as overseers for political prisoners.
"Unreliable elements", which were considered homosexuals, alarmists, etc.
Decals
The duty of each prisoner was to wear a distinctive sign on his clothes, a serial number and a triangle on his chest and right knee. Political prisoners were marked with a red triangle, criminals - green, "unreliable" - black, homosexuals - pink, gypsies - brown, Jews - yellow, plus they had to wear the six-pointed Star of David. Defiler Jews (those who violated racial laws) wore a black border around a green or yellow triangle.
Foreigners were marked with a sewn capital beech name of the country: for the French - the letter "F", for the Poles - "P", etc.
The letter "A" (from the word "Arbeit") was sewn for violators of labor discipline, the letter "K" (from the word "Kriegsverbrecher") - for war criminals, the word "Blid" (fool) - for those lagging behind in mental development. A red and white target on the chest and back was required for prisoners who participated in the escape.
Buchenwald
Buchenwald is considered one of the largest concentration camps built in Germany. On July 15, 1937, the first prisoners arrived here - Jews, Gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, opponents of the Nazi regime. For moral suppression, a phrase was engraved on the gate, increasing the cruelty of the situation in which the prisoners found themselves: "To each his own."
In the period 1937-1945. more than 250 thousand people were imprisoned in Buchenwald. In the main part of the concentration camp and in 136 branches, the prisoners were mercilessly exploited. 56 thousand people died: they were killed, died of hunger, typhus, dysentery, died in the course of medical experiments (to test new vaccines, prisoners were infected with typhus and tuberculosis, poisoned with poison). In 1941. Soviet prisoners of war get here. In the entire history of Buchenwald's existence, 8 thousand prisoners from the USSR were shot.
Despite the harsh conditions, the prisoners managed to create several resistance groups, the strongest of which was a group of Soviet prisoners of war. The prisoners, risking their lives every day, had been preparing an uprising for several years. The capture was supposed to happen at the time of the arrival of the Soviet or American army. However, they had to do it earlier. In 1945. Nazi leaders, who were already aware of the sad outcome of the war for them, proceeded to the complete extermination of prisoners in order to hide the evidence of such a large-scale crime. April 11, 1945 the prisoners started an armed uprising. After 30 minutes, two hundred SS men were captured, by the end of the day Buchenwald was completely under the control of the rebels! Only two days later, American troops arrived there. More than 20 thousand prisoners were released, including 900 children.
In 1958. a memorial complex was opened on the territory of Buchenwald.
Auschwitz is a complex of German concentration camps and death camps. In the period 1941-1945. 1 million 400 thousand people were killed there. (According to some historians, this figure reaches 4 million). Of these, 15 thousand are Soviet prisoners of war. It is impossible to establish the exact number of victims, since many documents were deliberately destroyed.
Even before arriving at this center of violence and cruelty, people were subjected to physical and mental oppression. They were taken to the concentration camp by trains, where the presence of toilets was not provided, and there were no stops. The unbearable smell could be heard even away from the train. People were not given food or water - no wonder that thousands of people died on the way. The survivors still had to experience all the horrors of being in a real human hell: separation from loved ones, torture, brutal medical experiments and, of course, death.
Upon arrival, the prisoners were divided into two groups: those who were immediately destroyed (children, the disabled, the elderly, the wounded) and those who could be exploited before the destruction. The latter were kept in unbearable conditions: they slept next to rodents, lice, bedbugs on the straw that lay on the concrete floor (later it was replaced by thin mattresses with straw, and later three-tiered bunks were invented). In a space that could accommodate 40 people, 200 people lived. The prisoners had almost no access to water, they washed very rarely, which is why various infectious diseases flourished in the barracks. The prisoners' diet was more than meager: a slice of bread, some acorns, a glass of water for breakfast, beetroot and potato peel soup for lunch, a slice of bread for dinner. In order not to die, the captives had to eat grass and roots, which often entailed poisoning and death.
The morning began with roll calls, where the prisoners had to stand for several hours and hope that they would not be recognized as unfit for work, because in this case they were immediately destroyed. 
Thus, a continuous conveyor of labor was established, which fully satisfied the interests of the Nazis. Only now the phrase “Arbit macht frei” carved on the gate (with German “work leads to freedom”) was completely meaningless - work here led only to inevitable death.
But this fate was not the most terrible. The hardest of all had those who fell under the knife of the so-called doctors who practiced chilling medical experiments. It should be noted that the operations were carried out without painkillers, the wounds were not treated, which, of course, led to painful death. The value of human life - child or adult - was zero, meaningless and heavy suffering was not taken into account. Studied the effects of chemicals on the human body. The latest pharmaceuticals have been tested. The prisoners were artificially infected with malaria, hepatitis and other dangerous diseases as an experiment. Castration of men and sterilization of women, especially young women, were often carried out, accompanied by the removal of the ovaries (mainly Jewish and gypsy women fell under these terrible experiments). Such painful operations were carried out to realize one of the main goals of the Nazis - to stop childbearing among the peoples objectionable to the Nazi regime.
The key figures in the course of this humiliation of the human body were the leaders of the experiments Karl Kauberg and Joseph Mengel.The latter, from the memories of the survivors, was a polite and courteous man, which further terrified the prisoners.
Silaspils
"The child's cry was choked
And melted away like an echo
Woe with mournful silence
Floats over the Earth
Over you and me.
On a granite slab
Put your candy ...
He was like you were a child
Like you, he loved them,
Salaspils killed him. "
An excerpt from the song "Silaspils"
They say there are no children in war. The Silaspils camp located on the outskirts of Riga is a confirmation of this sad saying. The mass destruction of not only adults, but also children, their use as a donor, torture - something that you and I cannot imagine has become a harsh reality within the walls of this truly terrible place.
After getting into "Silaspils" the babies were almost immediately separated from their mothers. These were excruciating scenes, full of despair and pain of distraught mothers - it was obvious to everyone that they were seeing each other for the last time. The women clung tightly to their children, shouted, fought, some turned gray in front of their eyes ...
Then what is happening is difficult to describe in words - so mercilessly dealt with both adults and children. They were beaten, starved, tortured, shot, poisoned, killed in gas chambers,
performed surgical operations without anesthesia, injected hazardous substances. Blood was pumped out of children's veins, then used for wounded SS officers. The number of donor children reaches 12 thousand. It should be noted that 1.5 liters of blood were taken from the child every day - it is not surprising that the death of a small donor came pretty soon.
To save ammunition, the camp charter ordered the destruction of children with rifle butts. Children under 6 years old were placed in a separate barrack, infected with measles, and then they did what is absolutely impossible with this disease - they bathed. The disease progressed, after which they died within two to three days. So, in one year, about 3 thousand people were killed.
Sometimes the children were sold to the owners of the farms for the price of 9-15 marks. The weakest, not suitable for labor use, and as a result of this, not bought, were simply shot.
The children were kept in terrible conditions. From the memoirs of a boy who miraculously survived: “Children in the orphanage went to bed very early, hoping to forget themselves in their sleep from eternal hunger and disease. There were so many lice and fleas that even now, remembering those horrors, the hair stands on end. Every evening I undressed my sister and took off with handfuls of these creatures, but there were a lot of them in all the seams and stitches of the clothes. "
Now on that place, soaked in children's blood, there is a memorial complex that reminded us of those terrible events.
Dachau
Camp Dachau - one of the first concentration camps in Germany - was founded in 1933. in Dachau, located near Munich. Dachau hostages were more than 250 thousand. people, tortured or killed about 70 thousand. people (12 thousand were Soviet citizens). It should be noted that this camp mainly needed healthy and young victims aged 20-45, but there were other age groups as well.
Initially, the camp was created to "re-educate" the opposition of the Nazi regime. Soon it turned into a platform for working off punishments, cruel experiments, protected from prying eyes. One of the directions of medical experiments was the creation of a superwarrior (this was Hitler's idea long before the outbreak of World War II), therefore, special attention was paid to researching the capabilities of the human body.
It is hard to imagine what kind of torment the prisoners of Dachau had to go through when they fell into the hands of K. Schilling and Z. Rascher. The first infected with malaria and then treated, most of which were unsuccessful, leading to death. Freezing people was another passion of his. They were left in the cold for tens of hours, doused with cold water or immersed in it. Naturally, all this was carried out without anesthesia - it was considered too expensive. True, sometimes narcotic drugs were still used as an anesthetic. However, this was not done out of humane considerations, but in order to preserve the secrecy of the process: the subjects shouted too loudly.
Also, unthinkable experiments were carried out to "reheat" frozen bodies through intercourse using captured women.
Dr. Ruscher specialized in simulating extreme conditions and establishing human endurance. He put the prisoners in a pressure chamber, changed the pressure and loads. As a rule, the unfortunate died from torture, the survivors went crazy.
In addition, the situation of a person entering the sea was modeled. People were placed in a special cell and given only salt water for 5 days.
To help you understand how cynical the doctors' attitude towards the prisoners in the Dachau camp was, try to imagine the following. The skin was removed from the corpses to make saddles and items of clothing from them. The corpses were boiled, skeletons were removed and used as models, visual aids. For such a mockery of human bodies, whole blocks with the necessary settings were created.
Dachau was liberated by American troops in April 1945.
Majdanek
This death camp is located near the Polish city of Lublin. Its prisoners were mainly prisoners of war transferred from other concentration camps.
According to official statistics, the victims of Majdanek were 1 million 500 thousand prisoners, of whom 300 thousand died. However, at present, the exposition of the State Museum of Majdanek provides completely different data: the number of prisoners has decreased to 150 thousand, killed - 80 thousand.
The mass extermination of people in the camp began in the fall of 1942. At the same time, a brutal action was carried out
with the cynical name "Erntefes", which is translated from him. means "harvest festival". All the Jews were herded into one place and ordered to lie along the ditch according to the tile principle, then the SS men shot the unfortunates with a shot in the back of the head. After the layer of people was killed, the SS men again forced the Jews into the ditch and fired - and so on until the three-meter trench was filled with corpses. The massacre was accompanied by loud music, which was quite in the spirit of the SS.
From the story of a former concentration camp prisoner who, while still a boy, fell into the walls of Majdanek:
“The Germans loved both cleanliness and order. Daisies bloomed around the camp. And in exactly the same way - neat and tidy - the Germans destroyed us. "
"When we were fed in our barracks, they gave us rotten gruel - all the food bowls were covered with a thick layer of human saliva - the children licked these bowls several times."
“The Germans began to take children away from the Jews, supposedly in a bathhouse. But parents are hard to deceive. They knew that children were taken in order to burn them alive in the crematorium. There was a loud shouting and crying over the camp. Shots were heard, dogs barking. Until now, my heart is breaking from our complete helplessness and defenselessness. Many Jewish mothers were doused with water - they fainted. The Germans took the children away, and for a long time over the camp there was a heavy smell of burnt hair, bones, and a human body. The children were burned alive. "
« During the day, grandfather Petya was at work. They worked with a pickaxe - they mined limestone. In the evening they were driven. We saw how they were lined up and forced to lie down on the table in turn. They were beaten with sticks. Then they were forced to run a long distance. Those who fell during the run were shot by the Nazis on the spot. And so every evening. For what they were beaten, what they were guilty of, we did not know. "
“And the day of parting has come. They drove the column with my mother. Now mom is already at the checkpoint, now - on the highway behind the checkpoint - mom leaves. I see everything - she waves me her yellow handkerchief. My heart was breaking. I shouted at the whole Majdanek camp. To somehow calm me down, a young German woman in military uniform took me in her arms and began to calm me down. I kept screaming. I beat her with my little, childish feet. The German woman felt sorry for me and only stroked my head with her hand. Of course, the heart of any woman, be it a German, will tremble. "
Treblinka
Treblinka - two concentration camps (Treblinka 1 - "labor camp" and Treblinka 2 - "death camp") in occupied Poland, near the village of Treblinka. In the first camp, about 10 thousand were killed. people, in the second - about 800 thousand. 99.5% of those killed were Jews from Poland, about 2 thousand were Roma.
From the memoirs of Samuel Willenberg:
“In the pit there were the remains of bodies that had not yet been devoured by the fire lit under them. Remains of men, women and small children. This picture just paralyzed me. I heard burning hair and bones breaking. There was acrid smoke in my nose, tears welling up in my eyes ... How to describe and express this? There are things that I remember, but they cannot be expressed in words. "
“Once I came across something familiar. Children's brown coat with bright green trim on the sleeves. Exactly with such a green cloth, my mother put on the coat of my younger sister Tamara. It was hard to make a mistake. Nearby was a skirt with flowers - my older sister Itta's. They both disappeared somewhere in Czestochowa before they took us away. I kept hoping that they were saved. Then I realized that no. I remember how I held these things and pursed my lips in helplessness and hatred. Then I wiped my face. It was dry. I couldn't even cry anymore. "
Treblinka II was liquidated in the summer of 1943, Treblinka I in July 1944 when the Soviet troops approached.
Ravensbrück
Camp "Ravensbrück" was founded near the city of Fürstenberg in 1938. 132 thousand women and several hundred children of more than 40 nationalities passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were killed.
Monument to women and children who died in the Ravensbrück camp
This is what one of the prisoners of Blanca Rothschild recalls about her arrival at the camp.
On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated. He was released by the Ukrainians, as told by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland Grzegorz Schetyna, since the operation was carried out by the forces of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Both in Poland and in Europe, the historical "discoveries" of the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry caused a storm of indignation, and he himself had to make excuses. However, this is not the first attempt to rewrite the history of the Second World War.
Infernal factories statistics
Concentration camps were invented long before Nazi Germany began to build them in Europe. However, Hitler became a "revolutionary" in this matter, setting one of the main tasks for the administration of the camps to massacre the representatives of the "inferior nations" - Jews and Gypsies, as well as prisoners of war. Soon, when Germany began to suffer defeats on the Eastern Front, Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians were numbered among the nations to be destroyed as “representatives of the flawed Slavs”.
In total, Nazi Germany created more than 1,500 camps on its own territory, and mainly in Eastern Europe, in which 16 million people were kept. 11 million were killed or they died from disease, hunger and backbreaking work. There were more than 60 concentration camps in which more than 10 thousand people were held.
The worst among them were the "death camps" designed exclusively for the mass extermination of people. There are a dozen of them on the list.
Auschwitz
Auschwitz (in German - Auschwitz), which had three departments, occupied an area of 40 square kilometers. It was the largest camp; according to various estimates, from 1.5 million to 3 million people died. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, a figure of 2.8 million was named. 90% of the victims were Jews. A significant percentage were Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.
It was a factory, soulless, mechanistic, and therefore even more terrible. At the first stage of the camp's existence, prisoners were shot. And in order to increase the "productivity" of this infernal machine, the technology was constantly "improved". Since the executioners could no longer cope with the burial of the constantly increasing number of those executed, a crematorium was built. Moreover, it was built by the prisoners themselves. Then the poison gas was tested and found to be "effective." This is how gas chambers appeared in Auschwitz.
Security and surveillance functions were performed by the SS troops. All the same "routine work" was transferred to the prisoners themselves, the Sonderkommando: sorting clothes, carrying bodies, maintaining the crematorium. In the most "tense" periods, up to 8 thousand bodies were burned in the ovens of Auschwitz every day.
In this camp, as in everyone else, torture was practiced. Here the sadists got down to business. The doctor was in charge Joseph Mengele, which, unfortunately, did not reach the Mossad, and he died a natural death in Latin America. He set up medical experiments on prisoners, conducting monstrous abdominal surgeries without anesthesia.
Despite the heavily guarded camp, which included a high voltage fence and 250 guard dogs, escape attempts were made at Auschwitz. But almost all of them ended in the death of prisoners.
And on October 4, 1944, an uprising took place. The members of the 12th Sonderkommando, having learned that they were going to be replaced with a new composition, which implied certain death, decided on desperate actions. Having blown up the crematorium, they killed three SS men, set fire to two lore and punched a breach in the energized fence, having previously arranged a short circuit. Up to half a thousand people were at large. But soon all the fugitives were caught and taken to the camp for a demonstration execution.
When in mid-January 1945 it became clear that Soviet troops would inevitably come to Auschwitz, able-bodied prisoners, who then numbered 58 thousand people, were driven deep into German territory. Two thirds of them died on the way from exhaustion and disease.
On January 27, at 3 pm, troops under the command of Marshal entered Auschwitz I. S. Koneva... In the camp at that time there were about 7 thousand prisoners, among whom there were 500 children from 6 to 14 years old. The soldiers, who had had time to look at many atrocities in the war, found traces of monstrous, transcendental atrocities in the camp. The scale of the "work done" was striking. In the warehouses were found mountains of men's suits and outerwear for women and children, several tons of human hair and ground bones, prepared for shipment to Germany.
In 1947, a memorial complex was opened on the territory of the former camp.
Treblinka
Death camp established in Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland in July 1942. During the year of the camp's existence, about 800 thousand people, mostly Jews, were killed in it. Geographically, they were citizens of Poland, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, USSR, Czechoslovakia, France and Yugoslavia. Jews were brought in boarded up freight cars. The rest were mostly invited “to a new place of residence,” and they bought train tickets with their own money.
The "technology" of mass murder here was different from that at Auschwitz. Arriving and unsuspecting people were invited to the gas chambers, on which were written "Showers". Not poison gas was used, but exhaust gases from working tank engines. First, the bodies were buried in the ground. In the spring of 1943, the crematorium was built.
There was an underground organization among the members of the Sonderkommando. On August 2, 1943, she organized an armed uprising, seizing weapons. Part of the guards was killed, several hundred prisoners managed to escape. However, almost all of them were soon found and killed.
One of the few surviving participants in the uprising was Samuel Willenberg, who wrote the book "The Treblinka Uprising" after the war. Here's what he said in a 2013 interview about his first impression of the Death Factory:
“I had no idea what was happening in the infirmary. I just entered this wooden building and at the end of the corridor I suddenly saw all this horror. Bored Ukrainian guards with guns sat on a wooden chair. In front of them is a deep hole. It contains the remains of bodies that have not yet been devoured by the fire lit under them. Remains of men, women and small children. This picture just paralyzed me. I heard burning hair and bones breaking. There was acrid smoke in my nose, tears welling up in my eyes ... How to describe and express this? There are things that I remember, but they cannot be expressed in words. "
After the brutal suppression of the uprising, the camp was liquidated.
Majdanek
The Majdanek camp located in Poland was originally intended to become a "universal" camp. But after the capture of a large number of Red Army soldiers, who were encircled near Kiev, it was decided to re-profile it into a "Russian" camp. With the number of prisoners up to 250 thousand. Prisoners of war were engaged in construction. By December 1941, due to hunger, hard work, and also because of the outbreak of typhus, all the prisoners died, of which there were about 10 thousand at that time.
Subsequently, the camp lost its "national" orientation, and not only prisoners of war, but also Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and representatives of other nations began to be brought into it for the extermination.
The 270-hectare camp was divided into five sections. One was reserved for women and children. The prisoners were housed in 22 huge barracks. On the territory of the camp there were also industrial premises where prisoners worked. In Majdanek, according to various sources, from 80 thousand to 500 thousand people died.
In Majdanek, as in Auschwitz, poison gas was used in the gas chambers.
Against the background of daily crimes, the operation with the code name "Enterfest" (German - harvest festival) stands out. On November 3 and 4, 1943, 43 thousand Jews were shot. At the bottom of the ditch 100 meters long, 6 meters wide and 3 meters deep, the prisoners were tightly packed in one layer. Then they were successively killed by a shot in the back of the head. Then the second layer was laid ... And so on until the ditch was completely filled.
When the Red Army occupied Majdanek on July 22, 1944, there were several hundred surviving prisoners of various nationalities in the camp.
Sobibor
This camp operated in Poland from May 15, 1942 to October 15, 1943. Killed a quarter of a million people. The extermination of people took place according to a well-established "technology" - gas chambers based on exhaust gases, a crematorium.
The overwhelming majority of the prisoners were killed on the first day. And only a few were left to perform various works in the workshops in the production area.
Sobibor became the first German camp in which an uprising took place. An underground group operated in the camp, led by a Soviet officer, lieutenant Alexander Pechersky... Pechersky and his deputy rabbi Leon Feldhendler planned and led an uprising that began on October 14, 1943.
According to the plan, the prisoners were to secretly, one by one, eliminate the SS personnel of the camp, and then, taking possession of the weapons that were in the camp warehouse, interrupt the guards. It was only partially successful. 12 SS men were killed and 38, according to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Ukrainian guards. But they failed to take possession of the weapon. Of the 550 prisoners in the working zone, 320 began to break out of the camp, 80 of them died in the escape. The rest managed to escape.
130 prisoners refused to flee, all of them were shot the next day.
A massive hunt was organized for the fugitives, which lasted two weeks. It was possible to find 170 people who were immediately shot. Subsequently, another 90 people were extradited to the Nazis by the local population. 53 participants of the uprising survived until the end of the war.
The leader of the uprising, Alexander Aronovich Pechersky, was able to get into Belarus, where, before reuniting with the regular army, he fought as a demolitionist in a partisan detachment. Then, as part of the assault battalion of the 1st Baltic Front, he fought to the west, reaching the rank of captain. The war ended for him in August 1944, when Pechersky became disabled as a result of his injury. He died in 1990 in Rostov-on-Don.
Soon after the uprising, the Sobibor camp was liquidated. After the demolition of all buildings, its territory was plowed up and sown with potatoes and cabbage.
A snapshot in the opening article: surviving children after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz by Soviet troops, Poland, January 27, 1945 / Photo: TASS
Click on the photo to enlarge
The prisoner leaves Dora - Mittelbau (known names: Dora, Nordhausen) - a Nazi concentration camp, formed on August 28, 1943, near the city of Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany, as a subdivision of the already existing Buchenwald camp. The main purpose of the camp was to organize the underground production of weapons at the Mittelwerk plant, including V-2 missiles. During 18 months of its existence, 60,000 prisoners of 21 nationalities passed through the camp, approximately 20,000 died in custody. Many of them died while laying the tunnel leading to the plant. On April 11, 1945, US 3rd Panzer Division liberated Camp Dora-Mittelbau.
Allied soldiers inspect the stoves in the 's-Hertogenbosch camp
The kilns were used to cremate victims of the 'Hertogenbosch concentration camp in the Netherlands. After liberation by Canadian forces in November 1944, the camp was used to detain the Nazis
A surviving concentration camp inmate cries near the charred corpse of a friend who was burned by flamethrower guards while trying to escape
Prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp in the last days of the war
Camp Mauthausen was built in one of the most beautiful and picturesque places in the Danube Valley on the outskirts of the old Upper Austrian town of Mauthausen in 1938, when it became a "branch" of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau, located near the Bavarian capital - Munich.
The first 2 thousand Soviet prisoners of war entered Mauthausen on October 22, 1941.
All in all, in a concentration camp - not far from the "favorite city of the Fuhrer, which he wanted to turn into the capital of the world" - Linz - more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens, 30 thousand Poles were executed, died from beatings and hunger, as well as from backbreaking work in the quarries , several thousand Jews, Italians, Hungarians, Albanians, Serbs and Croats.
Children in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp
The Ravensbrück concentration camp was built, starting in November 1938, by the SS forces and prisoners transferred from Sachsenhausen, in the Prussian village of Ravensbrück, near the Mecklenburg climatic resort of Fürstenberg. It was the only large concentration camp on German territory that was designated as the so-called "guarded detention camp for women". Children of "non-Aryan" peoples were shaved baldly. In April 1945, the prisoners were liberated by the troops of the Second Belorussian Front.
Russian concentration camp prisoner Dora - Mittelbau points to a Nazi. On April 11, 1945, the US 3rd Panzer Division liberated the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp.
The arrest of Joseph Kramer, commandant of the Nazi concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen. Nicknamed the "Belsen Beast" by the prisoners of the camp, he was one of the Nazi war criminals personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Joseph was arrested by British troops in April 1945.
A prisoner at the Bergen-Belsen camp during his liberation.
Concentration camp near Celle, Hanover. At first it was a small camp for political opponents of the Nazi regime. Later it was significantly expanded. Although Belsen was not formally a "death camp", it was not equipped with gas chambers, thousands of prisoners died there from starvation and exhaustion. In April 1945 Belsen was liberated by the allied forces. At the time of liberation, over 35 thousand corpses were found in the camp, and about 30 thousand people remained alive.
Walk outside the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the boots of German soldiers
Prisoners in Bergen-Belsen after liberation in April 1945. Many suffered from typhoid and dysentery. The average life expectancy of inmates was about nine months.
Buchenwald prisoners during the liberation
Buchenwald is a German fascist concentration camp. Created in 1937 in the vicinity of Weimar. It was originally called Ettersberg. For 8 years, about 239 thousand people. were prisoners of Buchenwald. At first, these were German anti-fascists, later, during World War II, representatives of many other nationalities. Many prisoners died already during the construction of the camp, which was carried out without the use of mechanisms. The prisoners were also mercilessly exploited by the owners of large industrial firms, whose factories were located in the Buchenwald area. A particularly large number of prisoners perished in the Buchenwald branch, Dora, where the Fau shells were made underground. Inhuman conditions of existence, hunger, backbreaking work, beatings led to mass mortality. About 10 thousand prisoners were executed, including almost 8.5 thousand Soviet prisoners of war. In total, 56,000 prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured to death in Byelorussia. On August 18, 1944, the leader of the German working class, Ernst Thalmann, was brutally killed by the Nazis in Byelorussia. Since the founding of the camp, an underground anti-fascist organization headed by communists began to form in it. In 1943 an international camp committee was created, headed by the German communist W. Barthel. By the beginning of April 1945, the organization consisted of 178 groups (3-5 people each), including 56 Soviet groups. On April 11, 1945, amid the defeat of the fascist German troops in World War II, the prisoners of Byelorussia, led by an international political center, raised an uprising, as a result of which the camp was liquidated by the insurgents.
Buchenwald Prisoner Tattoos
Allied forces discovered the bodies of burned Buchenwald prisoners in April 1945
Forced travel of Weimar citizens to Buchenwald in April 1945
The citizens of neighboring Weimar were forced to personally verify the atrocities committed in the Bkuchenwald concentration camp
Germans during a forced trip to Buchenwald, after liberation in April 1945
A German woman looks at the bodies of those killed in Buchenwald during a forced trip in April 1945. After the liberation of the concentration camp by the generals of the American headquarters, George Smith Patton said that the Germans of nearby cities were obliged to see the atrocities of the Nazis.
Allied troops with German civilian forces prepared graves for the dead prisoners of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in April 1945
Prisoners of the Dachau Concentration Camp, one of the first death camps in Germany, welcome the liberators with joy - 42nd US Army Division, April 29, 1945
Burial at Nordhausen
A newly released prisoner prepares his mother's body for burial near the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, April 1945
Portrait of a prisoner of the Dachau concentration camp, April 1945
Prisoners leaving Auschwitz in February 1945
Auschwitz, or rather Auschwitz-Birkenau, is the largest Nazi concentration camp and death camp, the central link in the mechanism created by Hitlerite Germany for the destruction of unwanted individuals and groups, mainly European Jews. It was founded by order of G. Himmler at the end of April 1940 in the outskirts of Zasole, a small provincial town of Auschwitz (Poland), 60 km south-west of Krakow and 30 km south-east of Katowice (near the confluence of the Vistula and Sola rivers).
Prisoners celebrate the liberation of Buchenwald