Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kiev, were collected for transfer to a prisoner of war camp, August 1941:
The dress code of many girls is semi-military and semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniform sets and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left is a sad captured artillery lieutenant, who could be the “stage commander”.
How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Oberleutnant Prince, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in units of the Red Army.” Numerous facts indicate that this order was applied throughout the war.
In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.
In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from a medical unit and shot them.
After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village “Mayak” not far from Kerch, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, you bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!” The girl was shot in the yard.
At the end of August 1942 in the village of Krymskaya Krasnodar region a group of sailors was shot, among them were several girls in military uniform.
In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was discovered. She had a passport with her in the name of Tatyana Alexandrovna Mikhailova, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.
In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military paramedics Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.
On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them - nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.
Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (officer candidate, right) - are escorting a captured Soviet girl soldier - into captivity... or to death?
It seems that the “Hans” do not look evil... Although - who knows? Completely at war ordinary people They often do such outrageous abominations that they would never have done in “another life”...
The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army model 1935 - men's, and in good "command" boots that fit.
A similar photo, probably from the summer or early autumn of 1941. Convoy - a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:
Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded female lieutenant was dragged naked onto the road, her face and hands were cut, her breasts were cut off... »
Knowing what awaited them if captured, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.
Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. A soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, Hans Rudhof, testifies that in the winter of 1942 “... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written."
In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists burst into the yard in which nurses from the hospital were located. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they were dragged into a barn and raped. However, they did not kill him.
Women prisoners of war who ended up in the camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drohobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Luda. “Captain Stroyer, the camp commandant, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Luda to a bed, and in this position Stroyer raped her and then shot her.”
In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 female doctors, paramedics, and nurses, stripped them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals to see if they were sick.” venereal diseases. External inspection he conducted it himself. He chose 3 young girls from them and took them to “serve” him. German soldiers and officers came for the women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.
Women soldiers of the Red Army who were captured while trying to escape the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941.
Judging by their haggard faces, they had to endure a lot even before being captured.
Here the “Hans” are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves can quickly experience all the “joys” of captivity!! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already had her fill of hardships at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity...
In the left photo (September 1941, again near Kyiv -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her wrist in captivity; an unprecedented thing, watches are the optimal camp currency!) do not look desperate or exhausted. The captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... A staged photo, or did you really get a relatively humane camp commandant who ensured a tolerable existence?
Camp guards from among former prisoners of war and camp police were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped their captives or forced them to cohabit with them under threat of death. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 women prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, the former chief of camp security, A.M. Yarosh, admitted that his subordinates raped prisoners in the women’s block.
Women prisoners were also kept in the Millerovo prisoner of war camp. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German woman from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barracks was terrible:
“The police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl her choice for two hours. The policeman could have taken her to his barracks. They lived two to a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, abuse her, mock her, do whatever he wanted.
Once, during the evening roll call, the police chief himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, the German woman complained to him that these “bastards” are reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “And for those who don’t want to go, arrange a “red fireman.” The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took red hot pepper big size, they turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl’s vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. Screaming was forbidden. Many girls had their lips bitten - they were holding back a scream, and after such punishment they for a long time couldn't move.
The commandant, who was called a cannibal behind her back, enjoyed unlimited rights over captured girls and came up with other sophisticated bullying. For example, “self-punishment”. There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl must strip naked, insert a stake into anus, hold on to the cross with your hands, and put your feet on a stool and hold on like this for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it all over again.
We learned about what was going on in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on a bench for ten minutes. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.”
Women doctors of the Red Army who were captured worked in camp hospitals in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps).
There may also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background you can see part of the body of a car equipped for transporting the wounded, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.
Infirmary barracks of the prisoner of war camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941): 
In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.
Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely pathetic impression. It was especially difficult for them in the conditions of camp life: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.
K. Kromiadi, a member of the labor distribution commission, visited the Sedlice camp in the fall of 1941 and talked with the women prisoners. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.”
A group of female medical workers captured in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was held in Vladimir-Volynsk - Oflag camp No. 365 "Nord".
Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. First, the women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, as the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred captured women to Smolensk to Dulag No. 126. There were few captives in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was prohibited. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with “the condition of free settlement in Smolensk.”
Crimea, summer 1942. Very young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young girl soldier:
Most likely, she is not a doctor: her hands are clean, she did not bandage the wounded in a recent battle.
After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female medical workers were captured: doctors, nurses, and orderlies. First, they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. In Rivne, everyone was lined up, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: “this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan.” Who was separated from general group, shot. Those who remained were loaded back into the wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the carriage into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. We recovered through a hole in the floor.
Along the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and the women were brought to the city of Zoes on February 23, 1943. They lined them up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. A history teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute who pretended to be a Serbian. She enjoyed special authority among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm on behalf of everyone German stated: “We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which it was impossible to sit down or move due to the cramped conditions. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the recalcitrants were sent to Ravensbrück. This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.
The barracks were divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tier bunks with a narrow passage between them. One cotton blanket was given to two prisoners. In a separate room lived the blockhouse - the head of the barracks. In the corridor there was a washroom and toilet.
A convoy of Soviet women prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):
The prisoners carry all their meager belongings; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them tied their heads with scarves “like women” and took off their heavy boots.
Ibid., Stalag 370, Simferopol:
The prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.
The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. First, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given camp striped clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: “SU” - Sowjet Union.
Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS men spread a rumor throughout the camp that a gang of female killers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.
Every day the prisoners got up at 4 am for verification, which sometimes lasted several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.
Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, since warm water did not have. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turns.
Women whose hair had survived began to use combs that they made themselves. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion.”
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, for five people they received a small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.
One of the prisoners, S. Müller, testifies in her memoirs about the impression Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück:
“...one Sunday in April we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to carry out some order, citing the fact that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstraße (the main “street” of the camp - A. Sh.) and were deprived of lunch.
But the women from the Red Army bloc (that’s what we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstraße. And what did we see?
It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, kept in alignment, walked as if in a parade, taking their steps. Their steps, like the beat of a drum, beat rhythmically along Lagerstraße. The entire column moved as one. Suddenly a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to start singing. She counted down: “One, two, three!” And they sang:
Get up, huge country,
Get up for mortal combat...
I had heard them sing this song in a low voice in their barracks before. But here it sounded like a call to fight, like faith in an early victory.
Then they started singing about Moscow.
The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment of humiliated prisoners of war by marching turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility...
The SS failed to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.”
Soviet women prisoners of war more than once amazed their enemies and fellow prisoners with their unity and spirit of resistance. One day, 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners intended to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to pick up the women, their comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up in groups of five and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove those who came into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.”
In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to the concentration camp in Barth to the Heinkel aircraft plant. The girls refused to work there either. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove their wooden stocks. They stood in the cold for many hours, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who agreed to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died from pneumonia.
Constant bullying, hard labor, and hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself at the wire.
And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:
Heads up, Russian girls!
Over your head, be brave!
We don't have long to endure
The nightingale will fly in the spring...
And it will open the doors to freedom for us,
Takes a striped dress off your shoulders
And it will heal deep wounds,
He will wipe the tears from his swollen eyes.
Heads up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
It won't be long to wait, it won't be long -
And we will be on Russian soil.
Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a unique description of the Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “...their cohesion was explained by the fact that they went through army school even before captivity. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebellion, their unwillingness to obey the Germans." 
Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Auschwitz prisoner A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Victorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Klavdiya Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.
In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and transfer to the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.
The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrin camp.
Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any relationship between male and female prisoners of war was prohibited, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love was sometimes born that bestows new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German hospital management did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released to the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
Thus, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the First City Hospital for childbirth on 23.2.42, left with the child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”
Probably one of the last photographs of Soviet women soldiers captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:
Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - “For Courage” (dark edging on the block), the second one may also have “BZ”. There is an opinion that these are pilots, but - IMHO - it is unlikely: both have “clean” shoulder straps of privates.
In 1944, attitudes towards women prisoners of war became harsher. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with general provisions on the verification and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order “On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war.” This document stated that Soviet women held in prisoner-of-war camps should be subject to inspection by the local Gestapo office in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.
Based on this order, the head of the Security Service and SD on April 11, 1944 issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to the concentration camp, such women were subjected to so-called “special treatment” - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - senior group seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in Gentin. The plant produced a lot of defective products, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera was in charge of the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First they brought the men and shot them one by one. Then - a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do that? ” I never found out what she did. She replied that she did it for the Motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: “This is for your homeland.” The Russian woman spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning the corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Fuck her!” The oven door was open and the heat caused the woman's hair to catch fire. Despite the fact that the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. All the prisoners working in the crematorium saw this.” Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
________________________________________ ____________________
Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1190, l. 110.
Right there. M-37/178, l. 17.
Right there. M-33/482, l. 16.
Right there. M-33/60, l. 38.
Right there. M-33/ 303, l 115.
Right there. M-33/ 309, l. 51.
Right there. M-33/295, l. 5.
Right there. M-33/ 302, l. 32.
P. Rafes. They had not yet repented then. From the Notes of a Divisional Intelligence Translator. "Spark." Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.
Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1182, l. 94-95.
Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - “Spark.” M., 1998. No. 6.
Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1182, l. eleven.
Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/230, l. 38.53.94; M-37/1191, l. 26
B. P. Sherman. ...And the earth was horrified. (About atrocities German fascists on the territory of the city of Baranovichi and its environs June 27, 1941 - July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.
S. M. Fischer. Memories. Manuscript. Author's archive.
K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.
T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944... p. 143.
Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/626, l. 50-52. M-33/627, l. 62-63.
N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing your head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in Hitler’s camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32-33.
Right there. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security authorities, where they sought her confession of treason, committed suicide
G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. On Sat. "Witnesses for the prosecution." L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team. Memoirs of prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.
Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.
G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.
S. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team... p. 51-52.
Women of Ravensbrück... p.127.
G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol Fortress. Simferopol.1965, p. 82-83.
G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.
N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In the collection: In the Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk.1958, p. 84.
A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war... p. 62.
A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again. M., 1958, p. 6-11.
N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing your head... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/438 part II, l. 127.
A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener... S. 153.
A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again... p. 106.
A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener…. S. 153-154.
And such atrocities have been committed by the “heroes of Ukraine”!
We read and absorb. This must be conveyed to the consciousness of our children. We need to learn to decently interpret detailed the terrible truth about the atrocities of the Bandera heroes of the Zvaryche-Khoruzhev nation.
Detailed materials about the struggle of the “heroes of the nation” on this land against the civilian population can be easily found in any search engine.
This is our proud history.
"...on the day of the anniversary of the UPA, the Upovites decided to present their “general” with an unusual gift - 5 heads cut off from the Poles. He was pleasantly surprised both by the gift itself and by the resourcefulness of his subordinates.
Such “zeal” embarrassed even seasoned Germans. The General Commissioner of Volyn and Podolia, Obergruppenführer Schöne, asked the “Metropolitan” Polycarp Sikorsky to calm down his “flock” on May 28, 1943: “National bandits (my italics) also manifest their activities in attacks on unarmed Poles. According to our calculations, 15 thousand Poles have been muzzled today! The Yanova Dolina colony does not exist.”
In the “SS Chronicle of the Galicia Rifle Division,” which was kept by its Military Administration, there is the following entry: “03/20/44: there is in Volyn, which is probably already in Galicia, a Ukrainian rebel who boasts that he strangled 300 shower of the Poles. He is considered a hero."
The Poles have published dozens of volumes of such facts of genocide, none of which Bandera’s supporters have refuted. There are no more than a notebook's worth of stories about similar acts of the Home Army. And even that should be supported by substantial evidence.
Moreover, the Poles did not ignore examples of mercy on the part of Ukrainians. For example, in Virka, Kostopol district, Frantiska Dzekanska, while carrying her 5-year-old daughter Jadzia, was mortally wounded by a Bandera bullet. The same bullet grazed the child's leg. For 10 days the child stayed with the murdered mother, eating grains from the spikelets. Saved the girl Ukrainian teacher.
At the same time, he probably knew what such an attitude towards “outsiders” threatened him with. After all, in the same district, Bandera’s men muzzled two Ukrainian children just because they were raised in a Polish family, and three-year-old Stasik Pavlyuk’s head was smashed against the wall, holding him by the legs.
Of course, terrible revenge awaited those Ukrainians who treated the Soviet liberating soldiers without hostility. OUN district guide Ivan Revenyuk (“Proud”) recalled how “at night, from the village of Khmyzovo, a rural girl of about 17 years old, or even younger, was brought into the forest. Her fault was that she, along with other village girls, went to dances when she was in the village military unit Red Army. Kubik (brigade commander of the UPA "Tury" military district) saw the girl and asked Varnak (the conductor of the Kovel district) for permission to personally interrogate her. He demanded that she admit that she “walked” with the soldiers. The girl swore that this did not happen. “I’ll check it now,” Kubik grinned, sharpening a pine stick with a knife. A moment later, he jumped up to the prisoner and began to stick the sharp end between her legs until he drove the pine stake into the girl’s genitals.”
One night, bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovoye and killed over 100 of its residents in an hour and a half. In the Dyagun family, Bandera killed three children. The youngest, four-year-old Vladik, had his arms and legs cut off. The killers found two children in the Makukh family: three-year-old Ivasik and ten-month-old Joseph. The ten-month-old child, seeing the man, was delighted and laughingly stretched out her arms to him, showing her four teeth. But the ruthless bandit slashed the baby’s head with a knife, and cut off the head of his brother Ivasik with an ax.
One night, Bandera’s men brought a whole family from the village of Volkovya to the forest. They mocked unfortunate people for a long time. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead stuffed a live rabbit into it.
“They surpassed even the sadistic German SS men with their atrocities. They torture our people, our peasants... Don’t we know that they cut up small children, smash their heads against stone walls so that their brains fly out of them. Terrible brutal murders are the actions of these rabid wolves,” cried Yaroslav Galan. With similar anger, the atrocities of the Banderaites were denounced by the OUN of Melnik, the UPA of Bulba-Borovets, and the government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic in exile, and the Union of Hetmans-Sovereigns, settled in Canada.
Even if belatedly, some Banderaites still repent of their crimes. So in January 2004, she came to the editorial office of Sovetskaya Luganshchina elderly woman and handed over a package from her friend who recently passed away. The editorial guest explained that with her visit she was fulfilling the last will of a native of the Volyn region, an active Banderist in the past, who towards the end of her life rethought her life and decided with her confession to atone for an irreparable sin, at least a little.
“I, Vdovichenko Nadezhda Timofeevna, a native of Volyn... I and my family ask you to forgive us all posthumously, because when people read this letter, I will no longer be (my friend will carry out my order).
There were five of us parents, we were all inveterate Bandera followers: brother Stepan, sister Anna, me, sisters Olya and Nina. We all wore banderas, slept in our huts during the day, and walked around the villages at night. We were given tasks to strangle those who sheltered Russian prisoners and the prisoners themselves. The men did this, and we women sorted through clothes, took cows and pigs from dead people, slaughtered livestock, processed everything, stewed it and put it in barrels. Once, 84 people were strangled to death in one night in the village of Romanov. Elderly people and old people were strangled, and small children were strangled by the legs - once, they hit their heads on the door - and they were done and ready to go. We felt sorry for our men that they would suffer so much during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night they would go to another village. There were people hiding. If a man was hiding, they were mistaken for women...
The others were removed from Verkhovka: Kovalchuk’s wife Tilimon for a long time did not admit where he was and did not want to open it, but they threatened her and she was forced to open it. They said: “Tell me where your husband is, and we won’t touch you.” She admitted that in a stack of straw, they pulled him out, beat him, beat him until they beat him to death. And the two children, Styopa and Olya, were good children, 14 and 12 years old... The youngest was torn into two parts, but Yunka’s mother no longer needed to be strangled, her heart had broken. Young, healthy guys were taken into the detachments to strangle people. So, from Verkhovka, two Levchuk brothers, Nikolai and Stepan, did not want to strangle them and ran home. We sentenced them to death. When we went to pick them up, the father said: “Take your sons and I’ll go.” Kalina, the wife, also says: “Take your husband and I’ll go.” They were brought out 400 meters away and Nadya asked: “Let Kolya go,” and Kolya said: Nadya, don’t ask, no one asked the Banders for time off and you won’t.” Kolya was killed. They killed Nadya, killed their father, and took Stepan alive, took him to a hut for two weeks in only his underwear - a shirt and pants, beat him with iron ramrods so that he would confess where his family was, but he was firm, did not admit to anything, and on the last evening they beat him , he asked to go to the toilet, one took him, and there was a strong snowstorm, the toilet was made of straw, and Stepan broke through the straw and ran away from our hands. All the data was given to us from Verkhovka by fellow countrymen Pyotr Rimarchuk, Zhabsky and Puch.
...In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member, Motrya. We took her to Verkhovka to old Zhabsky and let’s get a heart from a living person. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand and a heart in the other to check how long the heart would beat in his hand. And when the Russians came, his sons wanted to erect a monument to him, saying he fought for Ukraine.
A Jewish woman was walking with a child, ran away from the ghetto, they stopped her, beat her and buried her in the forest. One of our banderas went after Polish girls. They gave him an order to remove them, and he said that he threw them into the stream. Their mother came running, crying, asking if I saw it, I said no, let’s go look, we go over that stream, my mother and I go there. We were given an order: Jews, Poles, Russian prisoners and those who hide them, to strangle everyone without mercy. The Severin family was strangled, and their daughter was married in another village. She arrived in Romanov, but her parents weren’t there, she started crying and let’s dig up things. The Banderas came, took the clothes, and locked my daughter alive in the same box and buried her. And her two small children remained at home. And if the children had come with their mother, then they too would have been in that box. There was also Kubluk in our village. He was sent to Kotov, Kivertsovsky district, to work. I worked for a week and, well, they cut off Kubluk’s head, and the neighboring guy took his daughter. The Banderas ordered to kill their daughter Sonya, and Vasily said: “We’re going to the forest for firewood.” Let's go, Vasily brought Sonya dead, and told people that the tree had killed her.
Timofey lived in our village. The old, old grandfather, what he said, so it will be, was a prophet from God. When the Germans arrived, they were immediately informed that there was such a person in the village, and the Germans immediately went to the old man so that he would tell him what would happen to them... And he told them: “I won’t tell you anything, because you will kill me.” " The negotiator promised that he would not lay a finger on him. Then the grandfather says to them: “You will reach Moscow, but from there you will run away as best you can.” The Germans did not touch him, but when the old prophet told the Banderas that they would not do anything by strangling the people of Ukraine, the Banderas came and beat him until he was killed.
Now I will describe about my family. Brother Stepan was an inveterate Banderaite, but I didn’t lag behind him, I went everywhere with Banderas, although I was married. When the Russians arrived, arrests began and people were taken out. Our family too. Olya made an agreement at the station, and she was released, but the Banderas came, took her away and strangled her. The father remained with his mother and sister Nina in Russia. The mother is old. Nina flatly refused to go to work for Russia, then her bosses offered her to work as a secretary. But Nina said that she didn’t want to hold a Soviet pen in her hands. They again met her halfway: “If you don’t want to do anything, then sign that you will hand over the Banders, and we will let you go home. Nina, without thinking for a long time, signed her name and was released. Nina had not yet arrived home when the Banderas were already waiting for her, they had gathered a meeting of boys and girls and were judging Nina: look, they say, whoever raises a hand against us, this will happen to everyone. To this day I don’t know where they put her.
All my life I carried a heavy stone in my heart, because I believed in Bandera. I could sell any person if anyone said anything about the Banders. And let them, the accursed, be cursed by both God and people forever and ever. How many innocent people have been hacked to death, and now they want them to be equated with the defenders of Ukraine. And who did they fight with? With their neighbors, damned murderers. How much blood is on their hands, how many boxes with living people are buried. People were taken out, but even now they do not want to return to that Bandera era.
I tearfully beg you, people, forgive me my sins" (newspaper "Sovetskaya Luganshchina", January 2004, No. 1)...".
135 tortures and atrocities applied by OUN-UPA terrorists to civilians
Driving a large, thick nail into the skull of the head.
Ripping off hair and skin from the head (scalping).
A blow to the skull of the head with the butt of an ax.
A blow to the forehead with the butt of an ax.
"Eagle" carved on the forehead.
Driving a bayonet into the temple of the head.
Gouging out one eye.
Knocking out two eyes.
Nose cutting.
Circumcision of one ear.
Cropping both ears.
Piercing children through with stakes.
Punching a sharpened thick wire right through from ear to ear.
Lip cutting.
Tongue cutting.
Throat cutting.
Cutting the throat and pulling out through the hole of the tongue.
Cutting the throat and inserting a piece into the hole.
Knocking out teeth.
Broken jaw.
Tearing the mouth from ear to ear.
Gagging of mouths with tow while transporting still living victims.
Cutting the neck with a knife or sickle.
Vertical chopping of a head with an axe.
Rolling the head back.
Crush the head by placing it in a vice and tightening the screw.
Cutting off the head with a sickle.
Cutting off the head with a scythe.
Chopping off a head with an axe.
An ax blow to the neck.
Application puncture wounds heads.
Cutting and pulling narrow stripes skin from the back.
Inflicting other chopped wounds on the back.
Stabbing with a bayonet in the back.
Broken rib cage bones.
Stabbing with a knife or bayonet in the heart or near the heart.
Causing puncture wounds to the chest with a knife or bayonet.
Cutting off a woman's breast with a sickle.
Cutting off women's breasts and pouring salt on the wounds.
Cutting off the genitals of male victims with a sickle.
Sawing the body in half with a carpenter's saw.
Causing puncture wounds to the abdomen with a knife or bayonet.
Piercing a pregnant woman's stomach with a bayonet.
Cutting open the abdomen and pulling out the intestines of adults.
Cutting the abdomen of a woman with an advanced pregnancy and inserting, for example, a live cat instead of the removed fetus and suturing the abdomen.
Cutting open the abdomen and pouring boiling water inside.
Cutting open the belly and putting stones inside it, as well as throwing it into the river.
Cutting open a pregnant woman's belly and pouring broken glass inside.
Pulling out veins from groin to feet.
Placing a hot iron into the groin - vagina.
Insertion into the vagina pine cones top side forward.
Inserting a sharpened stake into the vagina and pushing it all the way down to the throat.
Cutting a woman's front torso with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the insides outside.
Hanging victims by their entrails.
Inserting a glass bottle into the vagina and breaking it.
Inserting a glass bottle into the anus and breaking it.
Cutting open the belly and pouring inside the feed, the so-called feed meal, for hungry pigs, who tore out this feed along with the intestines and other entrails.
Chopping off one hand with an ax.
Chopping off both hands with an axe.
Piercing the palm with a knife.
Cutting off fingers with a knife.
Cutting off the palm.
Cauterization inside palms on a hot stove in a coal kitchen.
Chopping off the heel.
Chopping off the foot above the heel bone.
Breaking arm bones in several places with a blunt instrument.
Breaking leg bones with a blunt instrument in several places.
Sawing the body, lined with boards on both sides, in half with a carpenter's saw.
Sawing the body in half with a special saw.
Sawing off both legs with a saw.
Sprinkling tied legs hot coal.
Nailing your hands to the table and your feet to the floor.
Nailing hands and feet to a cross in a church.
Hitting the back of the head with an ax to victims who had previously been laid on the floor.
Hitting the entire body with an ax.
Chopping an entire body into pieces with an ax.
Breaking alive legs and arms in the so-called strap.
Nailing the tongue to the table with a knife small child, which later hung on it.
Cutting a child into pieces with a knife and throwing them around.
Ripping the belly of children.
Nailing a small child to a table with a bayonet.
Hanging a male child by his genitals from a doorknob.
Knocking out a child's leg joints.
Knocking out the joints of a child's hands.
Suffocation of a child by throwing various rags over him.
Throwing small children alive into a deep well.
Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
Breaking a baby's head by picking him up by the legs and hitting him against a wall or stove.
Hanging a monk by his feet near the pulpit in a church.
Placing a child on a stake.
Hanging a woman upside down from a tree and mocking her - cutting off her breasts and tongue, cutting her stomach, gouging out her eyes, and cutting off pieces of her body with knives.
Nailing a small child to a door.
Hanging from a tree with your head up.
Hanging from a tree upside down.
Hanging from a tree with your feet up and scorching your head from below with the fire of a fire lit under your head.
Throwing down from a cliff.
Drowning in the river.
Drowning by throwing into a deep well.
Drowning in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
Piercing with a pitchfork, and then roasting pieces of the body over a fire.
Throwing an adult into the flames of a fire in a forest clearing, around which Ukrainian girls sang and danced to the sounds of an accordion.
Driving a stake through the stomach and strengthening it in the ground.
Tying a man to a tree and shooting him at a target.
Taking them out into the cold naked or in underwear.
Strangulation with a twisted, soapy rope tied around the neck - a lasso.
Dragging a body along the street with a rope tied around the neck.
Tying a woman's legs to two trees, as well as her arms above her head, and cutting her stomach from the crotch to the chest.
Torso tearing with chains.
Dragging along the ground tied to a cart.
Dragging along the ground a mother with three children, tied to a cart drawn by a horse, in such a way that one leg of the mother is tied with a chain to the cart, and to the other leg of the mother is one leg of the oldest child, and to the other leg of the oldest child is tied youngest child, and the leg of the youngest child is tied to the other leg of the youngest child.
Piercing the body through the barrel of a carbine.
Confining the victim with barbed wire.
Two victims being tied together with barbed wire.
Dragging several victims together with barbed wire.
Periodically tightening the torso with barbed wire and watering the victim every few hours cold water in order to come to one’s senses and feel pain and suffering.
Burying the victim in a standing position in the ground up to his neck and leaving him in that position.
Burying alive up to the neck in the ground and later cutting off the head with a scythe.
Ripping the torso in half with the help of horses.
Tearing the torso in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and then freeing them.
Throwing adults into the flames of a burning building.
Setting fire to a victim previously doused with kerosene.
Laying sheaves of straw around the victim and setting them on fire, thus making the torch of Nero.
Sticking a knife into the back and leaving it in the victim's body.
Impaling a baby on a pitchfork and throwing him into the flames of a fire.
Cutting off the skin from the face with blades.
Driving oak stakes between the ribs.
Hanging on barbed wire.
Ripping off the skin from the body and filling the wound with ink, as well as dousing it with boiling water.
Attaching the torso to a support and throwing knives at it.
Binding is the shackling of hands with barbed wire.
Inflicting fatal blows with a shovel.
Nailing hands to the threshold of a home.
Dragging a body along the ground by legs tied with a rope.
Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kiev, were collected for transfer to a prisoner of war camp, August 1941:
The dress code of many girls is semi-military and semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniform sets and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left is a sad captive artillery lieutenant, perhaps the “stage commander.”
How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Oberleutnant Prinz, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in units of the Red Army.” (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/1190, l. 110). Numerous facts indicate that this order was applied throughout the war.
- In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war - a military doctor - was shot (Yad Vashem Archives. M-37/178, l. 17.).
- In the town of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from a medical unit and shot them (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/482, l. 16.).
- After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village “Mayak” not far from Kerch, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, you bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!” The girl was shot in the yard (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/60, l. 38.).
- At the end of August 1942, in the village of Krymskaya, Krasnodar Territory, a group of sailors was shot, among them were several girls in military uniform (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/303, l 115.).
- In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was discovered. She had a passport with her in the name of Tatyana Alexandrovna Mikhailova, 1923. Born in the village of Novo-Romanovka (Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/309, l. 51.).
- In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military paramedics Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/295, l. 5.).
- On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/302, l. 32.).
It seems that the “Hans” do not look evil... Although - who knows? In war, completely ordinary people often do such outrageous abominations that they would never do in “another life”... The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army model 1935 - male, and in good “command staff” boots that fit.
A similar photo, probably from the summer or early autumn of 1941. Convoy - a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:
Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded female lieutenant was dragged naked onto the road, her face and hands were cut, her breasts were cut off... » (P. Rafes. Then they had not yet repented. From the Notes of a divisional intelligence translator. “Ogonyok.” Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.)
Knowing what awaited them if captured, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.
Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. A soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, Hans Rudhof, testifies that in the winter of 1942 “... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written" (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/1182, l. 94–95.).
In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists burst into the yard in which nurses from the hospital were located. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they were dragged into a barn and raped. However, they didn’t kill (Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov Nightmare. - “Ogonyok”. M., 1998. No. 6.).
Women prisoners of war who ended up in the camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drohobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Luda. “Captain Stroyer, the camp commandant, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Luda to a bed, and in this position Stroyer raped her and then shot her.” (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/1182, l. 11.).
In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 female doctors, paramedics, and nurses, stripped them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals to see if they were suffering from venereal diseases. He conducted the external inspection himself. He chose 3 young girls from them and took them to “serve” him. German soldiers and officers came for the women examined by doctors. Few of these women escaped rape (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/230, l. 38,53,94; M-37/1191, l. 26.).
Women soldiers of the Red Army who were captured while trying to escape the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941:
Judging by their haggard faces, they had to endure a lot even before being captured.
Here the “Hans” are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves can quickly experience all the “joys” of captivity! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already had her fill of hard times at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity...
In the right photograph (September 1941, again near Kyiv -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her wrist in captivity; an unprecedented thing, watches are the optimal camp currency!) do not look desperate or exhausted. The captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... A staged photo, or did you really get a relatively humane camp commandant who ensured a tolerable existence?
Camp guards from among former prisoners of war and camp police were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped their captives or forced them to cohabit with them under threat of death. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 women prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, the former chief of camp security A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped prisoners of the women's block (P. Sherman. ...And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists on the territory of the city of Baranovichi and its environs June 27, 1941– July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, pp. 8–9.).
Women prisoners were also kept in the Millerovo prisoner of war camp. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German woman from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barracks was terrible: “The police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl her choice for two hours. The policeman could have taken her to his barracks. They lived two to a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, abuse her, mock her, do whatever he wanted.
Once, during the evening roll call, the police chief himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, the German woman complained to him that these “bastards” are reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “And for those who don’t want to go, organize a “red fireman.” The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl’s vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. Screaming was forbidden. Many girls had their lips bitten - they were holding back a cry, and after such punishment they could not move for a long time.
The commandant, who was called a cannibal behind her back, enjoyed unlimited rights over captured girls and came up with other sophisticated bullying. For example, “self-punishment”. There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl must undress naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the crosspiece with her hands, and place her feet on a stool and hold on like this for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it all over again.
We learned about what was going on in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on a bench for ten minutes. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.” (S. M. Fisher. Memoirs. Manuscript. Author’s archive.).
Women doctors of the Red Army who were captured in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps) worked in camp hospitals:
There may also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background you can see part of the body of a car equipped for transporting the wounded, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.
Infirmary barracks of the prisoner of war camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941):
In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.
Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely pathetic impression. It was especially difficult for them in the conditions of camp life: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.
K. Kromiadi, a member of the labor distribution commission, visited the Sedlice camp in the fall of 1941 and talked with the women prisoners. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.” (K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.).
A group of female medical workers captured in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Oflag camp No. 365 "Nord" (T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941–1944... p. 143.).
Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. First, the women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, as the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred captured women to Smolensk to Dulag No. 126. There were few captives in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was prohibited. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with “the condition of free settlement in Smolensk” (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/626, l. 50–52. M-33/627, l. 62–63.).
Crimea, summer 1942. Very young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young girl soldier:
Most likely, she is not a doctor: her hands are clean, she did not bandage the wounded in a recent battle.
After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were captured: doctors, nurses, and orderlies. (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in Hitler’s camps) Kyiv, 1978, pp. 32–33.). First, they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. In Rivne, everyone was lined up, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: “this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan.” Those who were separated from the general group were shot. Those who remained were loaded back into the wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the carriage into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered through a hole in the floor (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author, October 9, 1992.).
Along the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and the women were brought to the city of Zoes on February 23, 1943. They lined them up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. A history teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute who pretended to be a Serbian. She enjoyed special authority among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, stated in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which it was impossible to sit down or move due to the cramped conditions. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the disobedient ones were sent to Ravensbrück (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author, October 9, 1992. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security authorities, where they sought her confession of treason, committed suicide). This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear – shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.
The barracks were divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tier bunks with a narrow passage between them. One cotton blanket was given to two prisoners. In a separate room lived the blockhouse - the head of the barracks. In the corridor there was a washroom and toilet (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. In the collection “Witnesses for the Prosecution”. L. 1990, p. 158; Sh. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team. Memoirs of a prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.).
A convoy of Soviet women prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):
The prisoners carry all their meager belongings; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them tied their heads with scarves “like women” and took off their heavy boots.
Ibid., Stalag 370, Simferopol:
The prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women. (Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, pp. 43, 50.).
The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. First, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: “SU” - Sowjet Union.
Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS men spread a rumor throughout the camp that a gang of female killers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.
Every day the prisoners got up at 4 am for verification, which sometimes lasted several hours. Then they worked for 12–13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.
Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, since there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turns. .
Women whose hair had survived began to use combs that they made themselves. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal comb they gave a whole portion.” (Voices. Memoirs of prisoners of Hitler’s camps. M., 1994, p. 164.).
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2–3 boiled potatoes. In the evening they received for five a small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel (G.S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.).
One of the prisoners, S. Müller, testifies in her memoirs about the impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück: “...on one Sunday in April we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to carry out some order, citing the fact that, according to According to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstraße (the main “street” of the camp) and were deprived of lunch.
But the women from the Red Army bloc (that’s what we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstraße. And what did we see?
It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, kept in alignment, walked as if in a parade, taking their steps. Their steps, like the beat of a drum, beat rhythmically along Lagerstraße. The entire column moved as one. Suddenly a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to start singing. She counted down: “One, two, three!” And they sang:
Get up, huge country,
Get up for mortal combat...
Then they started singing about Moscow.
The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment of humiliated prisoners of war by marching turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility...
The SS failed to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.” (S. Müller. Ravensbrück locksmith team... pp. 51–52.).
Soviet women prisoners of war more than once amazed their enemies and fellow prisoners with their unity and spirit of resistance. One day, 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners intended to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to pick up the women, their comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up in groups of five and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove those who came into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.” (Women of Ravensbrück... p.127.).
In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to the concentration camp in Barth to the Heinkel aircraft plant. The girls refused to work there either. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove their wooden stocks. They stood in the cold for many hours, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who agreed to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died from pneumonia (G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol Fortress. Simferopol. 1965, pp. 82–83.).
Constant bullying, hard labor, and hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself onto the wire (G.S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.).
And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by an unknown author (N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In the collection: In Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk. 1958, p. 84.):
Heads up, Russian girls!
Over your head, be brave!
We don't have long to endure
The nightingale will fly in the spring...
And it will open the doors to freedom for us,
Takes a striped dress off your shoulders
And heal deep wounds,
He will wipe the tears from his swollen eyes.
Heads up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
It won't be long to wait, it won't be long -
And we will be on Russian soil.
Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a unique description of the Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their cohesion was explained by the fact that they went through army school even before captivity. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebellion, their unwillingness to obey the Germans." (Voices, pp. 74–5.).
Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Auschwitz prisoner A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Klavdiya Sokolova were kept in the women's camp (A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war... p. 62.).
In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and transfer to the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya (A. Nikiforova. This should not happen again. M., 1958, pp. 6–11.).
The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.).
Despite the death that reigned in captivity, despite the fact that any relationship between male and female prisoners of war was prohibited, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love sometimes arose, giving new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German hospital management did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released to the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
Thus, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the First City Hospital for childbirth on 23.2.42, left with the child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.” (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/438 part II, l. 127.).
Probably one of the last photographs of Soviet women soldiers captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:
Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - “For courage” (dark edging on the block), the second one may also have “BZ”. There is an opinion that these are pilots, but it is unlikely: both have “clean” shoulder straps of privates.
In 1944, attitudes towards women prisoners of war became harsher. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order “On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war.” This document stated that Soviet women held in prisoner-of-war camps should be subject to inspection by the local Gestapo office in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener... S. 153.).
Based on this order, the head of the Security Service and SD on April 11, 1944 issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to the concentration camp, such women were subjected to so-called “special treatment” - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya, the eldest of a group of seven hundred girl prisoners of war who worked at a military plant in the city of Gentin, died. The plant produced a lot of defective products, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera was in charge of the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944 (A. Nikiforova. This should not happen again... p. 106.).
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First they brought the men and shot them one by one. Then - a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do that? » I never found out what she did. She replied that she did it for the Motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: “This is for your homeland.” The Russian woman spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning the corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Fuck her!” The oven door was open and the heat caused the woman's hair to catch fire. Despite the fact that the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. All the prisoners who worked in the crematorium saw this.” (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener.... S. 153–154.). Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
Many Soviet women who served in the Red Army were ready to commit suicide to avoid being captured. Violence, bullying, painful executions - such a fate awaited most captured nurses, signalmen, intelligence officers. Only a few ended up in prisoner of war camps, but even there their situation was often even worse than that of the male Red Army soldiers.
During the Great Patriotic War, more than 800 thousand women fought in the ranks of the Red Army. The Germans equated Soviet nurses, intelligence officers, and snipers with partisans and did not consider them military personnel. Therefore, the German command did not apply to them even those few international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war that applied to Soviet male soldiers.
Soviet frontline nurse.
The materials of the Nuremberg trials preserved the order that was in effect throughout the war: to shoot all “commissars who can be identified by the Soviet star on their sleeve and Russian women in uniform.”
The execution most often completed a series of abuses: women were beaten, brutally raped, and curses were carved into their bodies. Bodies were often stripped and abandoned without even thinking about burial. Aron Schneer's book provides evidence German soldier Hans Rudhoff, who saw dead Soviet nurses in 1942: “They were shot and thrown onto the road. They were lying naked."
Svetlana Alexievich in her book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” quotes the memoirs of one of the female soldiers. According to her, they always kept two cartridges for themselves so that they could shoot themselves and not be captured. The second cartridge is in case of misfire. The same war participant recalled what happened to the captured nineteen-year-old nurse. When they found her, her breast was cut off and her eyes were gouged out: “They put her on a stake... It’s frosty, and she’s white and white, and her hair is all gray.” The deceased girl had letters from home and a children's toy in her backpack.
Known for his cruelty, SS Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln equated women with commissars and Jews. All of them, according to his orders, were to be interrogated with passion and then shot.
Women soldiers in the camps
Those women who managed to avoid execution were sent to camps. Almost constant violence awaited them there. Particularly cruel were the policemen and those male prisoners of war who agreed to work for the Nazis and became camp guards. Women were often given to them as a “reward” for their service.
The camps often lacked basic living conditions. The prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp tried to make their existence as easy as possible: they washed their hair with the ersatz coffee provided for breakfast, and secretly sharpened their own combs.
According to the norms international law, prisoners of war could not be recruited to work in military factories. But this was not applied to women. In 1943, Elizaveta Klemm, who was captured, tried on behalf of a group of prisoners to protest the Germans’ decision to send Soviet women to the factory. In response to this, the authorities first beat everyone, and then drove them into a cramped room where it was impossible to even move.
In Ravensbrück, female prisoners of war sewed uniforms for German troops and worked in the infirmary. In April 1943, the famous “protest march” took place there: the camp authorities wanted to punish the recalcitrants who referred to the Geneva Convention and demanded that they be treated as captured military personnel. Women had to march around the camp. And they marched. But not doomedly, but taking a step, as if in a parade, in a slender column, with the song “Holy War”. The effect of the punishment was the opposite: they wanted to humiliate the women, but instead they received evidence of inflexibility and fortitude.
In 1942, nurse Elena Zaitseva was captured near Kharkov. She was pregnant, but hid it from the Germans. She was selected to work at a military factory in the city of Neusen. The working day lasted 12 hours; we spent the night in the workshop on wooden planks. The prisoners were fed rutabaga and potatoes. Zaitseva worked until she gave birth; nuns from a nearby monastery helped deliver them. The newborn was given to the nuns, and the mother returned to work. After the end of the war, mother and daughter were able to reunite. But there are few such stories with a happy ending.
Soviet women in a concentration death camp.
Only in 1944 was a special circular issued by the Chief of the Security Police and SD on the treatment of female prisoners of war. They, like other Soviet prisoners, were to be subjected to police checks. If it turned out that a woman was “politically unreliable,” then her prisoner of war status was removed and she was handed over to the security police. All the rest were sent to concentration camps. In fact, this was the first document in which women who served in Soviet army, were treated like male prisoners of war.
The “unreliable” ones were sent to execution after interrogation. In 1944, a female major was taken to the Stutthof concentration camp. Even in the crematorium they continued to mock her until she spat in the German’s face. After that, she was pushed alive into the firebox.
Soviet women in a column of prisoners of war.
There were cases when women were released from the camp and transferred to the status of civilian workers. But it is difficult to say what the percentage of those actually released was. Aron Schneer notes that on the cards of many Jewish prisoners of war, the entry “released and sent to the labor exchange” actually meant something completely different. They were formally released, but in reality they were transferred from Stalags to concentration camps, where they were executed.
After captivity
Some women managed to escape from captivity and even return to the unit. But being in captivity irreversibly changed them. Valentina Kostromitina, who served as a medical instructor, recalled her friend Musa, who was captured. She was “terribly afraid to go on the landing because she was in captivity.” She never managed to “cross the bridge on the pier and board the boat.” The friend’s stories made such an impression that Kostromitina was afraid of captivity even more than of bombing.
A considerable number of Soviet women prisoners of war could not have children after the camps. They were often experimented on and subjected to forced sterilization.
Those who survived to the end of the war found themselves under pressure from their own people: women were often reproached for surviving captivity. They were expected to commit suicide but not give up. At the same time, it was not even taken into account that many did not have any weapons with them at the time of captivity.
Second World War rolled through humanity like a skating rink. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the warring parties did truly monstrous things, justifying everything by war.
Of course, the Nazis were especially distinguished in this regard, and this does not even take into account the Holocaust. There are many documented and outright fictional stories about what German soldiers did.
One senior German officer recalled the briefings they received. It is interesting that there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”
Most did just that, but among the dead they often find the bodies of women in the uniform of the Red Army - soldiers, nurses or orderlies, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.
Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had the Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And despite everything, they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.
But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a bloody mess. The Nazis did much the same with female partisans. Before execution, they could be stripped naked and kept in the cold for a long time.
Of course, the captives were constantly raped. And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to enter into intimate relations with captives, then ordinary privates had more liberty in this matter. And if the girl did not die after the whole company had used her, then she was simply shot.
The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and one of senior officials camp took her to his place as a servant. Although this did not save much from rape.
In this regard, the most cruel place was camp No. 337. There, prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were put into barracks at a time, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were exterminated in Stalag every day.
Women were subjected to the same torture as men, if not much worse. In terms of torture, the Spanish Inquisition could envy the Nazis. Very often, girls were abused by other women, for example the wives of commandants, just for fun. The nickname of the commandant of Stalag No. 337 was “cannibal.”
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