What did the fascists do to women? Denazification and re-education. East, Ancient and Modern

Torture is often called various minor troubles that occur with everyone in everyday life. This definition is awarded to the upbringing of naughty children, long standing in line, a large wash, subsequent ironing and even the process of cooking. All this, of course, can be very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of exhausting to a large extent depends on the character and inclinations of a person), but still little resembles the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind. The practice of interrogation "with bias" and other violent actions against prisoners took place in almost all countries of the world. The time frame is also not determined, but since the relatively recent events are psychologically closer to a modern person, his attention is drawn to the methods and special equipment invented in the twentieth century, in particular in German concentration camps of the times.But there were both ancient Eastern and medieval tortures. The fascists were also taught by their colleagues from the Japanese counterintelligence service, the NKVD and other similar punitive bodies. So why was everything above people?

The meaning of the term

To begin with, starting to study any issue or phenomenon, any researcher tries to give it a definition. "To name it correctly - already half to understand" - reads

So torture is the deliberate infliction of suffering. At the same time, the nature of the torment does not matter, it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or deprivation of the possibility of sleep), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both "channels of influence."

But it's not just the fact of suffering that matters. Pointless torment is called torture. Torture differs from him in purposefulness. In other words, a person is beaten with a whip or hanged on a rack for a reason, but in order to get some result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to confess guilt, disclose hidden information, and sometimes just punish for some kind of misconduct or crime. The twentieth century added another point to the list of possible targets of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes performed with the aim of studying the body's response to unbearable conditions in order to determine the limit of human capabilities. These experiments were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as inhuman and pseudoscientific, which did not prevent the study of their results after the defeat of Nazi Germany by physiologists of the victorious countries.

Death or judgment

The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that after receiving the result, even the most terrible tortures stopped. There was no point in continuing them. The position of the executioner-executor, as a rule, was held by a professional who knows about painful techniques and the peculiarities of psychology, if not all, then a lot, and there was no point in wasting his efforts on senseless bullying. After the victim was confessed to a crime, she could wait, depending on the degree of civilization of the society, immediate death or treatment followed by trial. The legally formalized execution after biased interrogations during the investigation was characteristic of the punitive justice of Germany in the initial Hitler era and of the Stalinist "open trials" (the Shakhty case, the trial of the industrial party, reprisals against the Trotskyists, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent costumes and shown to the public. Morally broken, people most often dutifully repeated everything that the investigators forced them to confess. Torture and executions were put on stream. The veracity of the testimony did not matter. Both in Germany and in the USSR in the 1930s, the confession of the accused was considered “the queen of evidence” (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, USSR prosecutor). Brutal torture was used to obtain it.

Deadly torture of the inquisition

In few areas of its activity (except perhaps in the manufacture of murder weapons), humanity has succeeded so much. It should be noted that in recent centuries there has been even some regression in comparison with ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the reason most often became the external attractiveness of the unfortunate victim. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who actually committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the unambiguous doom of the condemned. Regardless of how long the torture lasted, it ended only in the death of the condemned man. The Iron Maiden, the Bronze Bull, the bonfire, or the sharp-edged pendulum described by Edgar Poe, which was methodically lowered on the victim's chest inch by inch, could have been used as a means of execution. The terrible tortures of the Inquisition were distinguished by their duration and were accompanied by unthinkable moral torment. The preliminary investigation may have been using other ingenious mechanical devices to slowly disintegrate the bones of the fingers and extremities and rupture the muscle ligaments. The most famous weapons are:

A metal expandable pear, used for especially sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;

- "Spanish boot";

Spanish armchair with clamps and brazier for legs and buttocks;

An iron bra (pectoral) worn on the chest while hot;

- "crocodiles" and special forceps for crushing male genitals.

The executioners of the Inquisition also had other torture equipment, which it is better not to know for people with a sensitive psyche.

East, Ancient and Modern

No matter how cunning European inventors of self-mutilating technology may be, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind were invented in the East. The Inquisition used metal tools, which sometimes had a very intricate design, while in Asia they preferred everything natural, natural (today, these means, perhaps, would be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything went into action. Eastern torture and executions had the same goals as European ones, but were technically longer and more sophisticated. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scathism (from the Greek word "scaphium" - trough). The victim was immobilized with fetters, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then smeared the whole body with a sweet composition, and dipped into a swamp. The blood-sucking insects slowly ate the person alive. They did the same in the case of an execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate person was to be burned in the scorching sun, his eyelids were cut off to make him suffer more. There were other types of torture that used elements of the biosystem. For example, bamboo is known to grow rapidly, one meter a day. It is enough just to hang the victim at a short distance above the young growth, and cut off the ends of the stems at an acute angle. The person who is being tried has time to change his mind, confess everything and betray his accomplices. If he shows persistence, he will be slowly and painfully pierced by plants. However, such a choice was not always provided.

Torture as a method of inquiry

And in and in a later period, various types of torture were used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary government bodies, today called law enforcement. He was included in the set of methods of investigation and inquiry. Since the second half of the 16th century, different types of bodily influence have been practiced in Russia, such as: whip, hanging, rack, cauterization with ticks and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe, too, was not at all distinguished by humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying and even the fear of death did not guarantee clarification of the truth. Moreover, in some cases, the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case with a miller, which the inscription on the pediment of the French palace of justice calls to remember. He took upon himself under torture someone else's guilt, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.

Abolition of torture in different countries

At the end of the 17th century, a gradual departure from torture began and the transition from it to other, more humane methods of inquiry. One of the outcomes of the Enlightenment was the realization that not the cruelty of punishment, but its inevitability, affects the decrease in criminal activity. In Prussia, torture has been abolished since 1754, this country was the first to put its justice at the service of humanism. Further, the process went progressively, different states followed her example in the following sequence:

Note:

*) the legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland changed at different times of the indicated period.

Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.

Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774 by issuing a secret decree. By this, on the one hand, she continued to keep criminals in fear, but, on the other, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. This decision was legally formalized by Alexander I in 1801.

As for England, torture was prohibited there in 1772, but not all, but only a few.

Illegal torture

The legal ban did not mean that they were completely excluded from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class, ready to break the law in the name of his triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and in case of exposure, they were threatened with legal prosecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was required to "work with people" more carefully, leaving no visible traces. In the 19th and 20th centuries, objects were used that were heavy, but with a soft surface, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation manifested itself in the fact that most often these were codes of law), rubber hoses, etc. attention and methods of moral pressure. Some investigators sometimes threatened with harsh punishments, long sentences, and even reprisals against loved ones. This was also torture. The terror experienced by those under investigation prompted them to make confessions, defame themselves and receive undeserved punishment, up to and including most of the police officers doing their duty honestly, examining evidence and collecting testimony for the presentation of a valid accusation. Everything changed after totalitarian and dictatorial regimes came to power in some countries. It happened in the XX century.

After the October Revolution of 1917, the Civil War broke out on the territory of the former Russian Empire, in which both belligerents most often did not consider themselves bound by legislative norms that were binding under the tsar. Torture of prisoners of war in order to obtain information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. During the years of the Red Terror, executions took place most often, but mockery of representatives of the "exploiting class", which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed "gentlemen", took on a mass character. In the twenties, thirties and forties, the organs of the NKVD used prohibited methods of interrogation, depriving the persons under investigation of sleep, food, water, beating and maiming them. This was done with the permission of the management, and sometimes on his direct instructions. The goal was rarely to find out the truth - the repressions were carried out for intimidation, and the task of the investigator was to obtain a signature on the protocol containing a confession of counter-revolutionary activity, as well as a slip of the tongue from other citizens. As a rule, Stalin's "shoulder masters" did not use special torture devices, content with accessible items such as a paperweight (they beat them on the head), or even an ordinary door, which pinched fingers and other protruding parts of the body.

In Nazi Germany

Torture in concentration camps created after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously used in that they represented a strange mixture of Eastern sophistication with European practicality. Initially, these "correctional institutions" were created for delinquent Germans and representatives of national minorities declared hostile (gypsies and Jews). Then came the turn of experiments, which were somewhat scientific in nature, but in cruelty surpassed the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind.
In an attempt to create antidotes and vaccines, Nazi SS doctors injected prisoners with lethal injections, performed operations without anesthesia, including cavities, froze prisoners, extinguished them with heat, and did not allow them to sleep, eat or drink. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the "production" of ideal soldiers who are not afraid of frost, heat and injury, resistant to the effects of toxic substances and disease-causing bacilli. The history of torture during the Second World War forever captured the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, became the personification of inhumanity. They also carried out experiments on lengthening limbs by mechanical stretching, strangling people in thin air, and other experiments that caused excruciating agony, which sometimes lasted for long hours.

The torture of women by the fascists concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them of their reproductive function. Various methods were studied - from simple (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated, which, in the event of the victory of the Reich, had the prospect of mass use (irradiation and exposure to chemicals).

It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when the Soviet and allied troops began to liberate the concentration camps. Even the appearance of the prisoners, more eloquent than any evidence, indicated that their very detention in inhuman conditions was torture.

Current state of affairs

The torture of the fascists has become the standard of rigidity. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity sighed with joy in the hope that this will never happen again. Unfortunately, albeit not on such a scale, torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain some of the terrible signs of the modern world. Developed countries that declare their commitment to rights and freedoms are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories where compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners in secret prisons have been exposed to punitive authorities for many years without any specific charges being brought against them. The methods used by the servicemen of many countries in the course of local and large-scale armed conflicts in relation to prisoners and simply suspected of sympathizing with the enemy sometimes surpass the cruelty and humiliation of people in Nazi concentration camps. In the international investigation of such precedents, too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe a duality of standards, when war crimes of one of the parties are completely or partially hushed up.

Will the era of a new Enlightenment come, when torture will finally be finally and irrevocably recognized as a shame of humanity and will be banned? So far, there is little hope for this ...

This small, clean house in Kristiansad, next to the road to Stavanger and the port, was the scariest place in the whole of southern Norway during the war years. "Skrekkens hus" - "House of Horror" - that was how it was called in the city. Since January 1942, the headquarters of the Gestapo in southern Norway was located in the building of the city archive. The arrested were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, from here people were sent to concentration camps and to be shot. Now in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where the prisoners were tortured, there is a museum that tells about what happened during the war in the building of the state archive.



The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. Only new lights and doors appeared. In the main corridor there is a main exhibition with archival materials, photographs, posters.

Thus, a suspended prisoner was beaten with a chain.

So they tortured with electric stoves. With the special zeal of the executioners, a person's hair on his head could catch fire.

In this device, fingers were pinched, nails were pulled out. The machine is authentic - after the liberation of the city from the Germans, all the equipment of the torture chambers remained in place and was preserved.

Nearby - other devices for interrogation with "addiction".

Several basements have been reconstructed - as it looked then, in this very place. This is a cell where especially dangerous prisoners were kept - members of the Norwegian Resistance who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.

A torture chamber was located in the adjacent room. It reproduces a real scene of torture of a married couple of underground fighters, taken by the Gestapo in 1943 during a communication session with an intelligence center in London. Two Gestapo men torture his wife in front of her husband chained to the wall. In the corner, on an iron beam, another member of the failed underground group is suspended. They say that before interrogations, the Gestapo were pumped up with alcohol and drugs.

Everything was left in the cell as it was then, in 1943. If you turn over that pink stool at the woman's feet, you can see the Gestapo Kristiansand brand.

This is a reconstruction of the interrogation - the Gestapo provocateur (left) presents the arrested radio operator of the underground group (he is sitting on the right, handcuffed) with his radio station in a suitcase. In the center sits the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo, SS Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Kerner - I will tell about him later.

In this showcase, belongings and documents of those Norwegian patriots who were sent to the Grini concentration camp near Oslo - the main transfer point in Norway, from where prisoners were sent to other concentration camps in Europe.

The designation system for different groups of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Jew, political, gypsy, Spanish republican, dangerous criminal, criminal, war criminal, Jehovah's Witness, homosexual. The letter N was written on the badge of a Norwegian political prisoner.

There are school trips to the museum. I stumbled upon one of these - a few local teenagers walking along the corridors with Ture Robstad, a volunteer from local residents who survived the war. It is said that about 10,000 schoolchildren visit the Museum in the Archives a year.

Toure tells the guys about Auschwitz. Two boys from the group were there recently on an excursion.

Soviet prisoner of war in a concentration camp. In his hand is a homemade wooden bird.

In a separate showcase there are things made by the hands of Russian prisoners of war in Norwegian concentration camps. The Russians exchanged these crafts for food from local residents. Our neighbor in Kristiansand had a whole collection of such wooden birds - on the way to school, she often met groups of our prisoners going to work under escort, and gave them her breakfast in exchange for these wooden toys.

Reconstruction of a partisan radio station. Partisans in southern Norway transmitted information to London about the movements of German troops, the deployment of military equipment and ships. In the north, the Norwegians supplied intelligence to the Soviet Northern Sea Fleet.

"Germany is a nation of creators."
The Norwegian patriots had to work in conditions of the strongest pressure on the local population of Goebbels' propaganda. The Germans set themselves the task of the earliest possible Nazification of the country. The Quisling government made efforts for this in the field of education, culture, sports. Even before the war began, the Nazi party of Quisling (Nasjonal Samling) instilled in the Norwegians that the main threat to their security was the military power of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that the 1940 Finnish campaign contributed to the intimidation of the Norwegians about the Soviet aggression in the North. Since coming to power, Quisling only intensified his propaganda with the help of the Goebbels department. The Nazis in Norway convinced the population that only a strong Germany could protect the Norwegians from the Bolsheviks.

Several posters distributed by the Nazis in Norway. "Norges nye nabo" - "New Norwegian Neighbor", 1940 Note the fashionable and nowadays method of "inverting" the Latin letters to imitate the Cyrillic alphabet.

"Do you want it to be like this?"

The propaganda of the "new Norway" emphasized in every possible way the kinship of the "Nordic" peoples, their rallying in the struggle against British imperialism and the "wild Bolshevik hordes." The Norwegian patriots responded by using the symbol of King Haakon and his image in their struggle. The king's motto "Alt for Norge" was ridiculed in every possible way by the Nazis, who inspired the Norwegians that military difficulties were temporary and Vidkun Quisling was the new leader of the nation.

Two walls in the dark corridors of the museum are given over to the materials of the criminal case against which seven main Gestapo men were tried in Kristiansand. There have never been such cases in Norwegian judicial practice - the Norwegians tried Germans, citizens of another state, accused of crimes on the territory of Norway. The trial was attended by three hundred witnesses, about a dozen lawyers, the Norwegian and foreign press. The Gestapo were tried for torture and mockery of those arrested, there was a separate episode about the execution without trial and investigation of 30 Russians and 1 Polish prisoner of war. On June 16, 1947, all were sentenced to death, which was first and temporarily included in the Norwegian Criminal Code immediately after the end of the war.

Rudolf Kerner is the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo. Former shoemaker teacher. A notorious sadist, in Germany he had a criminal past. He sent several hundred members of the Norwegian Resistance to concentration camps, is guilty of the death of an organization of Soviet prisoners of war discovered by the Gestapo in one of the concentration camps in southern Norway. He was, like the rest of his accomplices, sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1953 under an amnesty announced by the Norwegian government. He left for Germany, where his tracks were lost.

Near the building of the Archives there is a modest monument to Norwegian patriots who died at the hands of the Gestapo. The local cemetery, not far from this place, rests the ashes of Soviet prisoners of war and British pilots shot down by the Germans in the skies over Kristiansand. Every year on May 8, the flags of the USSR, Great Britain and Norway are raised on flagpoles next to the graves.
In 1997, the Archive building, from which the State Archives moved to another location, it was decided to sell it to private hands. Local veterans and community organizations came out sharply against, organized themselves into a special committee and got the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, to transfer the historic building to the veterans committee in 1998. Now here, along with the museum I told you about, are the offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, UN

My friends, recently in my blog I introduced you to how occupied France lived ( ). And here's a kind of sequel. The war is over. Europe was cleared of fascism. And the shame of peaceful coexistence with the occupiers of the overwhelming part of the population, the French and other civilized Europeans decided to wash away with a cruel reprisal against ... their women.

________________________________________ _______________________

After the liberation of the territories of European states occupied by Germany, thousands of women who had personal relationships with German soldiers and officers were subjected to humiliating and cruel executions at the hands of their fellow citizens.

1. The French most actively persecuted their compatriots. The liberated France took out anger from defeat, long years of occupation, split of the country on these girls.

2. In the course of the campaign to identify and punish the collaborators, called "L" épuration sauvage ", about 30 thousand girls suspected of having links with the Germans were subjected to public humiliation.

3. Often times, personal scores were settled in this way, and many of the most active participants tried to save themselves in this way, diverting attention from their cooperation with the occupation authorities.

4. An eyewitness of those events: "An open truck was slowly driving past us, to the accompaniment of abuse and threats. There were about a dozen women in the back, all with their heads shaved and bowed low in shame." The footage of the chronicle is the personification of these words.

5. Often they did not stop at shaving their heads; they drew a swastika with paint on their face or burned a brand on their forehead.

6. There were also cases of lynching, when girls were simply shot, many, unable to bear the shame, committed suicide.

7. They were found “nationally unworthy” and many received from six months to one year in prison with a subsequent demotion for another year. The people called this last year “the year of national shame”. A similar thing happened in other liberated European countries.

8. But one more aspect was shyly silent for decades - children born to German military personnel. They were twice rejected - born out of wedlock, the fruit of a bond with the enemy.

9. According to various estimates, in the same France were born more than 200 thousand so-called "children of the occupation", but oddly enough, the same French treated them most loyally, limiting themselves only to the ban on German names and the study of the German language. Although there were cases of attacks from children and adults, many mothers refused, and they were brought up in orphanages.

10. In one of the stories of Somerset Maugham - "Unconquered", created in 1944, the main character kills her child, born of a German soldier. This is not fiction - such cases also characterized that time.

11. Founder of the French-German Association for Children of the Occupation "Hearts Without Borders", which now has about 300 members, a Frenchman, the son of a German soldier: “We founded this association because society violated our rights. The reason is that we were Franco-German children, conceived during the Second World War. We have united in order to jointly search for our parents, help each other and carry out work to preserve historical memory. Why now? Previously, it was impossible to do this: the topic remained a taboo. "

12. By the way, in today's Germany there is a legal norm according to which the children of German soldiers born to French mothers have the right to German citizenship ...

13. In Norway, there were about 15 thousand such girls, and five thousand, who gave birth to children from the Germans, were sentenced to one and a half years of forced labor, and almost all of the children, at the suggestion of the government, were declared mentally disabled and sent to homes for the mentally ill, where they were kept up to 60s.

14. The Norwegian Union of Children of War would later declare that "Nazi caviar" and "idiots", as these children were called, were used to test medicines.

15. Only in 2005 will the Norwegian parliament officially apologize to these innocent victims and approve compensation for the experience in the amount of 3,000 euros. This amount could be increased if the victim provided documentary evidence that they faced hatred, fear and mistrust because of their origin.

1) Irma Grese - (October 7, 1923 - December 13, 1945) - warden of the Nazi death camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
Among Irma's nicknames were "Blonde Devil", "Angel of Death", "Beautiful Monster". She used emotional and physical methods to torture prisoners, beat women to death, and enjoyed arbitrary shooting of prisoners. She starved her dogs to set them on victims later, and personally selected hundreds of people to be sent to the gas chambers. Grese wore heavy boots, with her always, in addition to a pistol, a woven whip.

In the western post-war press, the possible sexual deviations of Irma Grese, her numerous connections with the SS guards, with the commandant of Bergen-Belsen Joseph Kramer ("Belsen Beast") were constantly discussed.
On April 17, 1945, she was taken prisoner by the British. The Belsen trial, initiated by the British military tribunal, lasted from 17 September to 17 November 1945. Together with Irma Grese, during this trial, the cases of other camp workers were considered - the commandant Joseph Kramer, the warden Juanna Bormann, the nurse Elisabeth Volkenrath. Irma Grese was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.
On the last night before her execution, Grese laughed and sang along with her colleague Elisabeth Volkenrath. Even when a noose was thrown around Irma Grese's neck, her face remained calm. Her last word was "Faster", addressed to the English executioner.

2) Ilse Koch - (September 22, 1906 - September 1, 1967) - German NSDAP activist, wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps. Best known by her pseudonym "Frau Lampshade" She received the nickname "Buchenwald Witch" for the cruel torture of prisoners in the camp. Koch was also accused of making souvenirs from human skin (however, no reliable evidence of this was presented in the post-war trial of Ilse Koch).

On June 30, 1945, Koch was arrested by American troops and in 1947 she was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, several years later, American General Lucius Clay, the military commandant of the American occupation zone in Germany, released her, considering the charges of ordering executions and making souvenirs from human skin insufficiently proven.

This decision caused a public outcry, so in 1951 Ilse Koch was arrested in West Germany. A German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.

On September 1, 1967, Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in a cell in the Bavarian prison of Eibach.

3) Louise Danz - b. December 11, 1917 - the overseer of the women's concentration camps. She was sentenced to life in prison, but later released.

She started working in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, then she was transferred to Majdanek. Danz later served at Auschwitz and Malchow.
The inmates subsequently reported that they were mistreated by Danz. She beat them, confiscated clothes issued for the winter. In Malchow, where Danz held the position of senior warden, she starved the prisoners without giving out food for 3 days. On April 2, 1945, she killed a minor girl.
Danz was arrested on June 1, 1945 in Lyutzow. At the trial of the Supreme National Tribunal, which lasted from November 24, 1947 to December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1956 for health reasons (!!!). In 1996, charges were brought against her for the aforementioned murder of a child, but it was dropped after doctors said it would be too difficult for Danz to endure a second imprisonment. She lives in Germany. She is now 94 years old.

4) Jenny-Wanda Barkmann - (May 30, 1922 - July 4, 1946) From 1940 to December 1943 she worked as a model. In January 1944, she became a warden at the small concentration camp of Stutthof, where she became famous for brutally beating female prisoners, some of whom she beat to death. She also participated in the selection of women and children to the gas chambers. She was so cruel but also very beautiful that the female prisoners called her "The Beautiful Ghost."

Jenny fled the camp in 1945 when Soviet troops began to approach the camp. But she was caught and arrested in May 1945 while trying to leave the station in Gdansk. She is said to have flirted with the police guarding her and was not particularly worried about her fate. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was found guilty, after which she was given the last word. She stated, "Life is indeed great pleasure, and pleasure is usually short-lived."

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was publicly hanged at Biskupska Horka near Gdansk on July 4, 1946. She was only 24 years old. Her body was burned and her ashes were publicly washed away in the restroom of the house where she was born.

5) Hertha Gertrude Bote - (January 8, 1921 - March 16, 2000) - overseer of women's concentration camps. She was arrested on war crimes charges but later released.

In 1942 she received an invitation to work as a warden at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After four weeks of preliminary training, Bothe was sent to Stutthof, a concentration camp near the city of Gdansk. In it, Bothe received the nickname "Stutthof Sadist" due to the mistreatment of female prisoners.

In July 1944, she was sent by Gerda Steinhoff to the Bromberg-Ost concentration camp. From January 21, 1945, Bote was a warden during the death march of prisoners, which passed from central Poland to the Bergen-Belsen camp. The march ended on February 20-26, 1945. In Bergen-Belsen, Bothe led a group of women, consisting of 60 people and engaged in the production of wood.

After the liberation of the camp, she was arrested. At the Belsen court she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Released earlier than the specified deadline on December 22, 1951. She died on March 16, 2000 in Huntsville, USA.

6) Maria Mandel (1912-1948) - Nazi war criminal. Occupying in the period 1942-1944 the post of the head of the women's camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, she is directly responsible for the death of about 500 thousand female prisoners.

Colleagues described Mandel as "extremely intelligent and dedicated" person. The Auschwitz prisoners among themselves called her a monster. Mandel personally selected the prisoners, and sent them by the thousands to the gas chambers. There are cases when Mandel personally took several prisoners under her protection for a while, and when they bored her, she entered them on the lists for destruction. Also, it was Mandel who came up with the idea and creation of a women's camp orchestra, which greeted the newly arrived prisoners with cheerful music at the gate. According to the recollections of the survivors, Mandel was a music lover and treated well the musicians from the orchestra, personally came to them in the barracks with a request to play something.

In 1944, Mandel was transferred to the post of head of the Muldorf concentration camp, one of the parts of the Dachau concentration camp, where she served until the end of the war with Germany. In May 1945, she fled to the mountains near her hometown, Münzkirchen. On August 10, 1945, Mandel was arrested by American troops. In November 1946, she was handed over to the Polish authorities as a war criminal at their request. Mandel was one of the main persons involved in the trial of the workers of Auschwitz, which took place in November-December 1947. The court sentenced her to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on January 24, 1948 in a Krakow prison.

7) Hildegard Neumann (May 4, 1919, Czechoslovakia -?) - senior warden in the Ravensbrück and Theresienstadt concentration camps.

Hildegard Neumann began her service at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in October 1944, immediately becoming the chief warden. Due to her good work, she was transferred to the Theresienstadt concentration camp as the leader of all camp wardens. The beauty Hildegard, according to the prisoners, was cruel and merciless towards them.
She supervised 10 to 30 female police officers and over 20,000 female Jewish prisoners. Neumann also facilitated the deportation of more than 40,000 women and children from Theresienstadt to the death camps Auschwitz (Auschwitz) and Bergen-Belsen, where most of them were killed. Researchers estimate that more than 100,000 Jews were deported from the Theresienstadt camp and were killed or died in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, another 55,000 died in Theresienstadt itself.
Neumann left the camp in May 1945 and was not prosecuted for war crimes. The subsequent fate of Hildegard Neumann is unknown.

In this festive, victorious May, reviewing my archival photographs, I wondered what the younger generation knows about this terrible war? Well, there was a war, well, we fought with the Germans. Hitler attacked us and we defeated him. Yes, this is an extraordinary feeling of our just Victory! But we must not forget the bitterness of loss that our people experienced. We must not forget, over the years, those atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. And I decided to publish some of the terrible photographs that I keep, testifying to the crimes of fascism. Let your children and grandchildren see them and understand how much was a terrible war, for the victory in which their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not spare their lives. That hatred of the Nazis, which raised our soldiers under lead fire to attack. And why the Great Victory is joy with tears in their eyes.

The tortured children 1942 Stalingrad

The shooting of Soviet citizens by the Nazis

Executioners


Maria Bruskina, 17 years old. Volodya Shcherbatsevich, 16 years old. The girl is still alive.


The corpses of prisoners "Russen-camp" No. 344 in Lamsdorf


Concentration camp for the civilian population "Ozarichi" - Byelorussian SSR, 1944. A girl over the body of a murdered mother.

It is striking with what cynicism the fascists took these photographs.

Nazis at work, bitches are kissing.


SS officer Eichelsdorfer, commandant of the Kaufering 4 concentration camp, standing near the corpses of prisoners killed in his camp.

Einsatzgruppa executes Jews in Dubossary on September 14, 1941

The shooting of the victim ... the woman is shooting ...

For the slightest suspicion - execution by hanging. Kiev, 1941

Shot mother and children.

In the Krasnodar Territory, the atrocities of the Nazis were terrifying. In Yeisk, the SS Sonderkommando 10-A, only on October 9-10, 1942, killed 214 children. gas chambers "more than 13 thousand Krasnodar residents.

The "new order" of the occupiers

During the retreat, the Nazis drove away the population. Those who could not walk were shot.

Slain prisoners

Soviet prisoner of war whom German monsters poured water on in the cold until he was covered with ice.

Prison yard in Rostov after the departure of the Germans


The Rostov pioneer-hero Vitya Cherevichkin killed by the Nazis with a dove in his hands.


MURDER OF A WOMAN WITH A CHILD. Ukrainian SSR, 1942

Few people know that the Krasnodar Territory has its own Khatyn, this is the village of Mikhizeeva Polyana in the Mostovsky district. 75 children died in Khatyn, in the Kuban village 116. Now in its place there are 7 Orthodox crosses and this frame of a crib, all that remains of the working village ...

On November 13, 1942, a detachment of fascists armed to the teeth, together with policemen, entered Mikhizeeva Polyana. Civilians were unceremoniously driven out of their huts and courtyards.
They were divided into seven groups. The men in each group were forced to dig a trench. Then they put the whole group along it and shot them with machine guns and machine guns. The doomed stood in silence, holding hands tightly, their eyes raised to the sky. Fascists and policemen approached those lying on the ground. Single shots rang out. Shots fired at those who still showed signs of life. Then came the turn of the second, third ... seventh group. The Nazis were in a hurry: it was getting dark - it was necessary to cope before dark.

One woman was expecting a baby and, out of astonished horror, prematurely gave birth to a baby right under the bullets. The German shot the mother, and the child was counterfeited with a bayonet, pierced and thrown aside. Another mother, dying, did not want to give up her child. Then the fascist non-human tore him out of the woman's hands, took him by the legs and hit his head on a tree. Noticing the traces, the fascists burned down the village.

For a whole week, the Nazis forbade residents of other villages to approach the place of massacre. They did not suspect that there were witnesses of their terrible atrocities, they did not know that severe but just punishment would overtake the executioners. Miraculously, several people survived, who told about the brutal fascist massacre.

Tatyana Onishchenko with her daughter in her arms, mortally wounded by fragments of a German bomb - Moscow region

Marauders remove things from the killed

Soviet prisoners of war. Camp Mauthausen, 1944.

Massacre of the captive commander of the Soviet Army


Fascists with a flamethrower. August 1944


German cavalry. 16.07.1941.


Crematorium in a concentration camp.


Residents hanged by the Germans in the town of Staraya Russa.


By order of the Soviet command, an excursion was organized for residents of nearby German cities around the Flossenburg concentration camp

Blessed memory of those killed on the battlefield, tortured in fascist dungeons, innocent children killed, civilians who died of hunger and disease. "Victory Day is a holiday with tears in their eyes."