Nazi concentration camp 1941 1944. Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. Reference

GOU SPO "PSKOV MEDICAL SCHOOL"

History Report
Topic: "German concentration camps during the Second World War"

Completed by: student of group 16-B
Petrova Victoria
Lecturer: history teacher
Smirnova E.K.

Pskov. 2012.
Content:

1.Echo of war – concentration camps…………………………………………………………………………………………3

1.1 Male concentration camps (Buchenwald)…………………………………………………………….5

1.2 Women's concentration camps (Ravensbrück)………………………………………………………….…8

1.3 Concentration camp on Majdanek………………………………………………………………………..10

1.4 Children's concentration camps (Salaspils)…………………………………………………………………13

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………..16

References…………………………………………………………………………………………….17

Echoes of war - concentration camps
Concentration camp (abbreviated as concentration camp) is a term denoting a specially equipped center for mass forced confinement and detention of the following categories of citizens of various countries:

Already on the way to the camp, the future prisoner got an idea of what physical and mental torments await him there. The boxcars in which people traveled towards the mysterious destination were deliberately made to look like a concentration camp on a scaled down scale.
Sanitary conditions in the cars were completely absent, they had neither a latrine nor running water. In the middle of each car there was a large tank, and people were forced to discharge their natural needs in front of everyone, in public - men and women, old and young it splashed on the shoulders and on the heads).
Medical experiments and experiments were widely practiced in the camp. Actions studied chemical substances on the human body. The latest pharmaceutical preparations were tested. Prisoners were artificially infected with malaria, hepatitis and other dangerous diseases as an experiment. Nazi doctors were trained to perform surgical operations on healthy people.
If someone fled, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all the prisoners from his block were killed. It was a very effective method of thwarting attempts to escape.

The average prisoner's diet per day takes the following form:
0.800 kg of bread,
0.020" fat,
0.120 "groats or flour products,
0.030" meat or 0.075 fish (or sea animal),
0.027" sugar.
Bread is handed out, the rest of the food is used to prepare hot food, consisting of soup once or twice a day and 200 grams of porridge.
Concentration camps, ghettos, and other places of detention created by the Nazis and their allies were located on the territories of different countries:
Germany - Buchenwald, Halle, Dresden, Dusseldorf, Katbus, Ravensbrück, Schlieben, Spremberg, Essen;
Austria - Amstetten, Mauthausen;
Poland - Krasnik, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Przemysl, Radom;
France - Mulhouse, Nancy, Reims;
Czechoslovakia - Glinsko, Kunta-gora, Natra;
Lithuania - Alytus, Dimitravas, Kaunas;
Estonia - Klooga, Pirkul, Parnu;
Belarus - Baranovichi, Minsk,
as well as in the territory of Latvia and Norway.

Buchenwald concentration camp
In 1933, not far from the town of Weimar, the construction of a new, “hellish” concentration camp, Buchenwald, began. It was originally intended to isolate German anti-fascists.
On the main gates of Buchenwald, the motto was the statement of Cicero - "To each his own."
Immediately outside the gate was a square where prisoners were taken out to line up. To the right of the gate was a punishment cell where the camp guards conducted interrogations. On the opposite side of the gate, there was the most important building - the office. Below the square were the barracks where the prisoners lived.
The crematorium was the most terrible place in the camp, usually prisoners were invited there, under the pretext of an examination by a doctor, when a person undressed, he was shot in the back. In this way, many thousands of prisoners were killed in Buchenwald.
Buchenwald was a men's camp. Learn your serial number in German, the prisoner was due within the first day. From that moment on, a set of numbers replaced the name. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky factory, which was located a couple of kilometers from the camp and produced weapons. The number of guards reached 6000 people.
The camp had 52 main barracks. However, several hundred Polish prisoners were placed in tents during the winter: not a single person survived from the cold. There was also a so-called "small camp" - a quarantine zone. Living conditions in the quarantine camp were inhumane.
As the German troops retreated from the occupied territories, the Gestapo transported imprisoned Poles and citizens of the Soviet Union, Czechs and Dutch, and Hungarian Jews to Buchenwald. Since January 1945, up to 4 thousand people were brought to the "small camp" daily. Meanwhile, in the "small camp" there were only 12 barracks without windows - former stables, 40 by 50 meters in size. Each barrack housed 750 people. Between 50 and 100 of them died daily. Their bodies continued to be taken out for roll call so that the portions intended for them would go to the living.
Relations between the prisoners in the "small camp" were much tougher and more hostile than in the main one. Cases of murder for a piece of bread and cannibalism were seen.
The death of a bunkmate was seen as a celebration, as more space could be taken up before the arrival of new prisoners. The clothes of the deceased were immediately divided, and the already naked body was taken to the crematorium. Infectious diseases were rampant in the camp. Vaccinations given by the medical staff, for example against typhus, often further contributed to the spread of the disease, since the syringes were not changed. The most seriously ill patients were killed by a phenol injection. After getting up at four in the morning, the prisoners, naked to the waist, went to the washbasin, where the plumbing was surrounded by a dense wall and washed without soap and towels. Then those who kept on their feet were driven to work.
Labor in a concentration camp can be described as a means of physical destruction of prisoners. All German concentration camps were enriched by the forced labor of prisoners, so they are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of fascism.
In concentration camps and death camps there was a group of SS doctors who conducted their criminal "medical experiments" on prisoners. These actions, which had nothing to do with science, caused indescribable suffering to the prisoners and often hastened their death. We are talking about a group of doctors who sought to achieve personal success in the field of medicine. Motivated by boundless ambition and sadistic instincts, they did not stop at using people as guinea pigs. People were operated on without anesthesia.
Prisoners were tested for their ability to withstand low atmospheric pressure and low temperatures organism. Some killed prisoners by injecting phenol into the heart. In Buchenwald, they were mainly engaged in the development of an anti-typhoid vaccine, and other experiments were also carried out: experiments on infection with yellow fever, smallpox, paratyphoid, diphtheria.
Karl and Ilse Koch ran the "conveyor of death" in the Buchenwald concentration camp, which destroyed tens of thousands of lives. Karl Koch was appointed commandant of Buchenwald in 1939.
While Koch reveled in power, watching the daily destruction of people, his wife took even greater pleasure in the torment of prisoners. In the camp, they were more afraid of her than the commandant himself. The sadist used to walk around the camp, handing out lashes to anyone she met in striped clothes. Sometimes she took a ferocious shepherd dog with her and was delighted, setting the dog on prisoners with a heavy burden. Not surprisingly, the prisoners called Ilse "the witch of Buchenwald". When it seemed to the exhausted prisoners that there were no more terrible tortures, the sadist invented new atrocities. She used the dressed skin of murdered men to create a variety of household utensils, which she was extremely proud of. Even her SS colleagues felt uncomfortable when Frau Koch showed off lampshades made from human skin.
In 1943 an international camp committee was set up headed by the German communist W. Barthel. By the beginning of April 1945, the organization consisted of 178 groups (3-5 people each), including 56 Soviet groups.
The International Day for the Liberation of Prisoners of Fascism is celebrated on April 11 because it was on this day in 1945 that the prisoners of Buchenwald, having learned about the approach of the allied troops, successfully carried out an armed uprising, disarmed and captured more than 800 SS and guard soldiers, took over the leadership of the camp and only two days later they waited for the arrival of American soldiers. Thus, the prisoners of Buchenwald themselves were saved from extermination, since the Nazi authorities on the eve ordered the physical extermination of all prisoners, tens of thousands of innocent people from 18 European countries.
On April 19, 1945, at a mourning meeting dedicated to the memory of the murdered comrades, Buchenwald prisoners of all nationalities took an oath that is known to the whole world: "... we will stop the fight only when the last fascist criminal appears before the court of the peoples. Destruction of fascism with all its roots is our task."
In 1958, a majestic complex of buildings dedicated to the heroes and victims of Buchenwald was opened in Buchenwald.

Viktor Frankl concluded one of his articles on this topic in this way: “If we ask ourselves about the most important experience that the concentration camps gave us, this life in the abyss, then from everything we experienced we can single out the following quintessence: we got to know a person, how, perhaps none of previous generations knew him. What is a man? This is a being who constantly decides what he is. This is a being who invented the gas chambers, but it is also a being who walked into these gas chambers with his head held high and with prayer on their lips.

Concentration camp on Majdanek
The camp was created by order of Himmler in August-September 1941 on the outskirts of Lublin near the cemetery on Lipowa Street. He didn't stay there for long. Due to protests by local authorities in October 1941, the camp had to be moved outside the city. In the same month, the first prisoners arrived there in the amount of five thousand people, they were Soviet prisoners of war.
The mass extermination of people began in the autumn of 1942. Then, for this purpose, the Germans began to use the poisonous gas "Cyclone E". In November of the same year, an action was carried out in the camp under the code name "Erntefes". During it, 18 thousand Jews were destroyed. In September 1943, a crematorium was opened in Majdanek.
The main prisoners of Majdanek were Soviet prisoners of war, who arrived here in large numbers. They were transferred here and from other concentration camps.
It is worth giving some data on the size of the camp. It had an area of 95 hectares. It was originally designed for 50 thousand prisoners, but was subsequently expanded, after which it could take up to 250 thousand people. Majdanek was divided into five sections, one of which was for women. There were many different buildings. The prisoners worked in a factory for the production of uniforms and in factories for the production of weapons.
The camp ceased to exist on July 22, 1944 as a result of the offensive of the Soviet troops. Konstantin Simonov, the famous writer, was one of the first war correspondents to visit the Majdanek camp after the Red Army entered it. In his field notebook, he left the following entries, which cannot leave you indifferent:
"It was an extermination camp.
In the camp office the floor was littered with documents of the murdered of all nationalities...
Around the Barracks of the guards there were neat front gardens, chairs and benches knocked down from birch poles.
Disinfection chamber in which "cyclone" gas was destroyed. Floor, ceiling, concrete walls. Square, 6 by 6 meters, 2 meters in height. Steel hermetic door, the only one. A peephole is mounted in the door so that one can observe the torments of the dying. On the floor of the cell are round, stoppered cans with the inscription "cyclone", under it the inscription "For special use in the eastern regions."
Naked people were placed in a large cell close to each other - an average of 250 people. Having locked the steel door behind them, they coated its edges with clay - for sealant. Through the pipes that went into the chamber, the team in gas masks fell asleep from the boxes "cyclone". After backfilling the "cyclone" and sealing the pipes, the SS officer on duty watched the action through the peephole, as people died from suffocation in agony. The cell was stuffed so that the dead did not fall, they continued to stand.
...Crematorium. In the middle of an empty field is a tall quadrangular stone chimney. A long low brick rectangle adjoins it. Near the remains of the second brick building. The Germans managed to set it on fire.
The cadaverous smell, the smell of burnt meat - all together. The half-burnt remains of the clothes of the last batch of the dead. They say that when the main gas chamber could not cope, some people were poisoned right here, near the crematorium.
Third compartment. The whole floor is littered with half-decayed skeletons, skulls, bones. A mess of bones with scraps of half-burnt meat.
The crematorium is built of bricks of high fire resistance. Five large fireboxes. Hermetic iron doors. There are decayed vertebrae and ashes in the furnaces. Skeletons half-burnt during a fire in front of the stoves. Against three furnaces - the skeletons of men and women, against two - the skeletons of children, 10-12 years old. Six corpses were placed in each furnace. If the sixth did not fit, the team chopped off the part of the body that did not fit.
The crematorium worked like a blast furnace, non-stop, burning an average of 1,400 corpses per day.
...The shoe hut is filled with the shoes of the dead. Shoes to the ceiling. Under its weight, even part of the wall fell out. The worst thing is tens of thousands of pairs of children's shoes. Sandals, shoes, boots from ten-year-olds, from one-year-olds ...
...Camp mode. They were tormented by insomnia, until ten in the evening they were not allowed to enter the barracks after work. If someone died at work and was not immediately found while they are looking for, everyone else waits in the cold, sometimes until one in the morning. In the morning they were raised in the cold at four in the morning and kept until seven, until they went to work. While standing, a dozen die.
... Since the autumn of 1942, prisoners of war who were tortured the most were not allowed to work. Receiving reduced rations, they died of hunger even faster than civilian prisoners. The dead were also taken out of the barracks for morning verification. Many were escorted through the camp directly to the crematorium.
...Gold teeth were pulled out on the way to the crematorium.
... Blood was flowing from the body of the car.
... In the gardens, cabbage and potatoes grow on the ground, fertilized with the ashes of the victims of the crematorium, nothing is wasted.” This is how Konstantin Simonov described what he saw in the concentration camp on Majdanek.
In the entire history of Majdanek, about 1.5 million people of 54 nationalities passed through the camp, but most of them were Jews, Poles and Russians. 360 thousand people were killed in the camp.
Currently, a memorial museum operates on the territory of the Majdanek camp.
Somehow it so happened that, remembering the horrors of the Great Patriotic War, we are talking about killed soldiers, prisoners of war, extermination and humiliation of civilians. But we can single out another category of innocent victims - children. Often these little prisoners, having barely learned to pronounce individual words in their lives and still unsteadily standing on their feet, were kept without proper care and supervision, they were also killed, they were also mocked at, their conditions of detention in the camps were no different from those of adults. …

Concentration camp for children Salaspils
According to the data of the Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Nazi Invaders, the number of exterminated children in the territory of Latvia reaches 35,000. One of the largest burial places for children in Latvia is located in Salaspils - 7,000 children, the other is in the Dreiliņi forest in Riga, where about 2,000 children are buried.
Hitler's leadership exterminated civilians throughout the occupied territory Soviet Union. The masses of ruined children before their painful death were used by barbaric methods as living experimental material for the inhuman experiments of "German medicine". The Germans organized a children's blood factory for the needs of the German army, a slave market was formed, where children were sold into slavery to local owners.
The terrible hour for children and mothers in the concentration camp came when the Nazis, having lined up mothers with children in the middle of the camp, forcibly torn off the babies from the unfortunate mothers. From an eyewitness account: “A tragedy of mothers and children unheard of in the history of mankind took place in Salaspils. Tables were placed in front of the commandant's office, all mothers with children were called, and self-satisfied overfed commandants, who knew no limits in their cruelty, lined up at the table. From the hands of mothers, they snatched children by force. The air was filled with the heart-rending cries of mothers and the cries of children.”
Children, starting from infancy, were kept by the Germans separately and strictly isolated. Children in a separate barrack were in the state of small animals, deprived of even primitive care. Every day, German guards in large baskets carried out the stiff corpses of dead children from the children's barracks. They were dumped into cesspools, burned outside the camp fence, and partially buried in the forest near the camp.
Mass uninterrupted mortality of children was caused by experiments for which juvenile prisoners of Salaspils were used as laboratory animals. German killer doctors gave sick children injections of various liquids, forced them to take various means inside. After all these techniques, the children died.
Children were fed with poisoned porridge, from which they died a painful death. All these experiments were supervised by the German doctor Meisner.
This is how the systematic extermination of children in the concentration camp went:
A) the organization of a blood factory for the needs of the German army, blood was taken from healthy children, including babies, until they fainted, after which sick children were taken to the so-called hospital, where they died;
B) gave the children poisoned coffee to drink;
C) children with measles with a high temperature were bathed in cold water, from which they died;
D) gave children injections of various medical liquids for the experiment. Many children had festering and leaking eyes;
D) naked children winter time driven to the bathhouse in the snow at a distance of 500-800 meters and kept naked in the barracks for 4 days;
E) crippled and maimed children were taken out to be shot.
G) Children were gassed in hermetically sealed vans.
Just before the arrival of the Soviet troops, the Germans buried children who died of hunger and cold. They did it in a hurry, like criminals covering their tracks. Adult prisoners were forced to carry small bodies on stretchers and dump them in pits. Then they were all shot.
Now there is a memorial complex on the site of the concentration camp. “Behind these gates, the earth groans” - this inscription at the entrance of the Salaspils memorial complex, once you see it, you will not forget it.
Many famous people at that time were destroyed in fascist concentration camps
The chairman of the Communist Party of Germany, Ernst Thalmann, was brought by the Gestapo on the night of August 17 to 18, 1944 in Buchenwald and was killed in a crematorium.
On the territory of the camp, Mauthausen was frozen alive by the Nazis - Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops, Professor of the Military Academy of the General Staff, Doctor of Military Sciences, 70-year-old Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev, who was taken prisoner with a severe wound. He withstood all the inhuman tests of the fascist dungeon. He accepted a martyr's death and was faithful to the oath and duty, to the Motherland. First it was watered cold water, then hot, and it was frosty outside! Gradually freezing, turning into a pile of ice, he said with blue lips: “Think about the Motherland, and courage will not leave you.” He felt that the prisoners were seeing him through the cracks of the barracks, and he addressed them.
The name of Mussa Jalil, the wrestling poet, is known to the whole world. The courageous poetry of Moussa does not leave indifferent any person, not a single generation. The short but heroic life of the poet, his work is the personification of courage and selfless service to the people and the Motherland. Seriously wounded, he is captured in the Maobit concentration camp. The nightmare of a fascist concentration camp did not break the poet; at great risk to his life, he creates an underground anti-fascist organization that organized the escapes of prisoners, distributed leaflets and patriotic poems. The poet himself did not have to live to have a nice day Victories: he was brutally quartered on August 25, 1944 in Berlin. His poetry still sounds like an alarm, reminding us that the spirit of a true patriot cannot be broken.
No, we are strong - we will find the way,
Nothing will block our path.
There are many of us going to a bright goal,
We can't get there!
Not afraid of a bloody battle,
We'll go through like a storm.
Let one of us be killed, -
None of us should be a slave!
During the war years, there were about 14 thousand concentration camps in which more than 6 million prisoners were tortured.

Conclusion:
According to the statistics that were kept in our country, during the war years, more than 4.5 million citizens of the USSR were captured by the Nazis (according to German statistics - 5.7 million people).
The reasons for the capture were very different. Apparently, Germany included in this number the so-called displaced persons. It was mainly the civilian population of the occupied territory of the USSR.
The fate of these people was truly tragic. With the filing of Stalin, they were branded "traitors". Having escaped from fascist captivity, they fell into the arms of the Gulag. Their relatives and children were subjected to repressions. Deep fear settled in the souls of these people. Whenever possible, they changed their surnames and took a vow of silence for the rest of their lives. This page of history has been tightly closed. It was neither spoken nor written about. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't know about it.
In 2005, Vladimir Putin, as president of Russia, said at a ceremony for the dead prisoners of concentration camps: “It is impossible to realize that people are capable of such atrocities, and it is impossible to come to terms with the fact that it really happened. We bow our heads before the victims of concentration camps ... and we will make every effort to prevent this from happening again. We will never forget that the Soviet Union paid the most terrible, exorbitant price for victory in this war - 27 million human lives."

Bibliography:

political literature

a great victory

political repression

Fascism and atrocities will forever remain inseparable concepts. Since the introduction of the bloody ax of war by fascist Germany over the world, the innocent blood of a huge number of victims has been shed.

The birth of the first concentration camps

As soon as the Nazis came to power in Germany, the first "death factories" began to be created. A concentration camp is a deliberately equipped center designed for the mass involuntary imprisonment and detention of prisoners of war and political prisoners. The name itself still terrifies many to this day. Concentration camps in Germany were the location of those individuals who were suspected of supporting the anti-fascist movement. The first were located directly in the Third Reich. According to the "Emergency Decree of the Reich President on the Protection of the People and the State", all those who were hostile to the Nazi regime were arrested for an indefinite line.

But as soon as hostilities began, such institutions turned into ones that suppressed and destroyed a huge number of people. German concentration camps during the Great Patriotic War were filled with millions of prisoners: Jews, communists, Poles, gypsies, Soviet citizens and others. Among the many causes of death of millions of people, the main ones were the following:

severe bullying;
illness;
poor conditions of detention;
exhaustion;
heavy physical labor;
inhumane medical experiments.

The development of a cruel system

The total number of correctional labor institutions at that time was about 5 thousand. German concentration camps during the Great Patriotic War had different purpose and capacity. Spreading race theory in 1941 led to the emergence of camps or "death factories", behind the walls of which they methodically killed first Jews, and then people belonging to other "inferior" peoples. Camps were set up in the occupied territories

The first phase of the development of this system is characterized by the construction of camps on the German territory, which had the maximum similarity with the holds. They were intended to contain opponents of the Nazi regime. At that time, there were about 26 thousand prisoners in them, absolutely protected from the outside world. Even in the event of a fire, rescuers had no right to be in the camp.

The second phase is 1936-1938, when the number of those arrested grew rapidly and new places of detention were required. The arrested included the homeless and those who did not want to work. A kind of cleansing of society from asocial elements that disgraced the German nation was carried out. This is the time of the construction of such well-known camps as Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Later, Jews were sent into exile.

The third phase of the development of the system begins almost simultaneously with the Second World War and lasts until the beginning of 1942. The number of prisoners inhabiting concentration camps in Germany during the Great Patriotic War almost doubled thanks to the captured French, Poles, Belgians and representatives of other nations. At this time, the number of prisoners in Germany and Austria is significantly inferior to the number of those who are in the camps built in the conquered territories.

During the fourth and final phase (1942-1945), the persecution of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war intensifies significantly. The number of prisoners is approximately 2.5-3 million.

The Nazis organized "death factories" and other similar institutions of detention in the territories of various countries. The most significant place among them was occupied by German concentration camps, the list of which is as follows:

Buchenwald;
Halle;
Dresden;
Dusseldorf;
Catbus;
Ravensbrück;
Schlieben;
Spremberg;
Dachau;
Essen.

Dachau - the first camp

Among the first in Germany, the Dachau camp was created, located near the camp of the same name. small town near Munich. He was a kind of model for the creation of the future system of Nazi correctional institutions. Dachau is a concentration camp that existed for 12 years. A huge number of German political prisoners, anti-fascists, prisoners of war, clergymen, political and public activists from almost all European countries were serving their sentences in it.

In 1942, a system consisting of 140 additional camps began to be created on the territory of southern Germany. All of them belonged to the Dachau system and contained more than 30 thousand prisoners used in a variety of hard work. Among the prisoners were well-known anti-fascist believers Martin Niemoller, Gabriel V and Nikolai Velimirovich.

Officially, Dachau was not intended to exterminate people. But, despite this, the official number of prisoners who died here is about 41,500 people. But the real number is much higher.

Also, behind these walls, a variety of medical experiments on people were carried out. In particular, there were experiments related to the study of the effect of height on the human body and the study of malaria. In addition, new medicines and hemostatic agents were tested on prisoners.

Dachau, an infamous concentration camp, was liberated on April 29, 1945 by the US 7th Army.

"Work makes you free"

This phrase of metal letters, placed above the main entrance to the Nazi, is a symbol of terror and genocide.

In connection with the increase in the number of arrested Poles, it became necessary to create a new place for their detention. In 1940-1941, all residents were evicted from the territory of Auschwitz and the villages adjacent to it. This place was intended to form a camp.

It included:

Auschwitz I;
Auschwitz-Birkenau;
Auschwitz Buna (or Auschwitz III).

Surrounded by the entire camp were towers and barbed wire, located under electric voltage. The forbidden zone was located at a great distance outside the camps and was called the "zone of interest."

Prisoners were brought here on trains from all over Europe. After that, they were divided into 4 groups. The first, consisting mainly of Jews and people unfit for work, were immediately sent to the gas chambers.

Representatives of the second performed various various works at industrial enterprises. In particular, the labor of prisoners was used at the Buna Werke oil refinery, which was engaged in the production of gasoline and synthetic rubber.

A third of the newcomers were those who had congenital physical abnormalities. They were mostly dwarfs and twins. They were sent to the "main" concentration camp for anti-human and sadistic experiments.

The fourth group consisted of specially selected women who served as servants and personal slaves of the SS. They also sorted personal belongings confiscated from arriving prisoners.

The mechanism for the final solution of the Jewish question

Every day there were more than 100 thousand prisoners in the camp, who lived on 170 hectares of land in 300 barracks. Their construction was carried out by the first prisoners. The barracks were wooden and had no foundation. In winter, these rooms were especially cold because they were heated by 2 small stoves.

The crematoria at Auschwitz Birkenau were located at the end of the railroad tracks. They were combined with gas chambers. Each of them had 5 triple furnaces. Other crematoria were smaller and consisted of one eight-muffle oven. They all worked almost around the clock. The break was done only in order to clean the furnaces of human ashes and burnt fuel. All this was taken out to the nearest field and poured into special pits.

Each gas chamber held about 2.5 thousand people, they died within 10-15 minutes. After that, their corpses were transferred to the crematoria. Other prisoners were already prepared to take their place.

A large number of corpses could not always accommodate crematoriums, so in 1944 they began to be burned right on the street.

Some facts from the history of Auschwitz

Auschwitz is a concentration camp whose history includes about 700 escape attempts, half of which ended successfully. But even if someone managed to escape, all his relatives were immediately arrested. They were also sent to camps. Prisoners who lived with the escapee in the same block were killed. In this way, the management of the concentration camp prevented attempts to escape.

The liberation of this "factory of death" took place on January 27, 1945. The 100th Infantry Division of General Fyodor Krasavin occupied the territory of the camp. Only 7,500 people were alive at that time. The Nazis during their retreat killed or took to the Third Reich more than 58,000 prisoners.

Until our time, the exact number of lives taken by Auschwitz is not known. The souls of how many prisoners roam there to this day? Auschwitz is a concentration camp whose history is made up of the lives of 1.1-1.6 million prisoners. It has become a sad symbol of outrageous offenses against humanity.

Guarded Detention Camp for Women

The only huge concentration camp for women in Germany was Ravensbrück. It was designed to hold 30 thousand people, but at the end of the war there were more than 45 thousand prisoners. These included Russian and Polish women. The majority were Jewish. This women's concentration camp was not officially intended for carrying out various abuses of prisoners, but there was also no formal ban on such.

When entering Ravensbrück, women were stripped of everything they had. They were completely stripped, washed, shaved and given work clothes. After that, the prisoners were distributed among the barracks.

Even before entering the camp, the most healthy and efficient women were selected, the rest were destroyed. Those who survived did various jobs related to construction and tailoring workshops.

Closer to the end of the war, a crematorium and a gas chamber were built here. Before that, if necessary, mass or single executions were carried out. human ash sent as fertilizer to the fields surrounding the women's concentration camp or simply poured into the bay.

Elements of humiliation and experiences in Ravesbrück

To the most important elements humiliations included numbering, mutual responsibility and unbearable living conditions. Also a feature of Ravesbrück is the presence of an infirmary designed for experiments on people. Here the Germans tested new drugs by infecting or crippling prisoners. The number of prisoners was rapidly decreasing due to regular purges or selections, during which all women who lost the opportunity to work or had a bad appearance were destroyed.

At the time of liberation, there were approximately 5,000 people in the camp. The rest of the prisoners were either killed or taken to other concentration camps in Nazi Germany. The finally imprisoned women were released in April 1945.

Concentration camp in Salaspils

At first, the Salaspils concentration camp was created in order to contain Jews in it. They were brought there from Latvia and other European countries. The first construction work was carried out by Soviet prisoners of war, who were in Stalag-350, located nearby.

Since at the time of the start of construction, the Nazis practically destroyed all the Jews in the territory of Latvia, the camp turned out to be unclaimed. In this regard, in May 1942, a prison was made in the empty premises of Salaspils. It contained all those who evaded labor service, sympathized Soviet power, and other opponents of the Hitler regime. People were sent here to die a painful death. The camp was not like other similar establishments. There were no gas chambers or crematoria here. Nevertheless, about 10 thousand prisoners were destroyed here.

Children's Salaspils

The Salaspils concentration camp was a place of detention for children who were used here to provide them with the blood of wounded German soldiers. After the blood sampling procedure, most of the juvenile prisoners died very quickly.

The number of small prisoners who died within the walls of Salaspils is more than 3 thousand. These are only those children of concentration camps who are under 5 years old. Some of the bodies were burned, and the rest were buried in the garrison cemetery. Most of the children died due to the merciless pumping of blood.

The fate of people who ended up in concentration camps in Germany during the Great Patriotic War was tragic even after liberation. It would seem, what else could be worse! After the fascist corrective labor institutions, they were captured by the Gulag. Their relatives and children were repressed, and the former prisoners themselves were considered "traitors". They worked only in the most difficult and low-paid jobs. Only a few of them subsequently managed to break out into people.

The German concentration camps are evidence of the terrible and inexorable truth of the deepest decline of humanity.

Concentration camps, places of detention of political opponents ruling classes in capitalist countries. Differ in especially heavy mode. They became especially widespread after the advent of fascist power in Germany (1933). During World War II, the system of concentration camps was widespread in the countries occupied by Nazi Germany and turned into an instrument of mass repression and genocide. Of the 18 million people thrown into concentration camps (Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz, etc.), more than 11 million citizens of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and other countries were killed.

BABIY YAR, a ravine on the northwestern outskirts of Kyiv, where at the end of September 1941 the Nazi invaders shot about 50-70 thousand civilians, mostly Jews. In 1941-1943, the Syrets death camp functioned in the area of Babi Yar, in which communists, Komsomol members, underground workers, Soviet prisoners of war and other Soviet citizens were imprisoned. In total, over 100 thousand people were killed in Babi Yar. A monument was erected at the site of the execution of Soviet prisoners.

BUCHENWALD, concentration camp of Nazi Germany (1937-1945) near the city of Weimar. For 8 years, 239 thousand people passed through Buchenwald. In total, more than 56 thousand people were killed in it. On August 18, 1944, the leader of the German communists, E. Thalmann, was brutally murdered here. Despite the terror, anti-fascist resistance groups arose in Buchenwald. On April 12, 1945, units of the American army entered the territory of Buchenwald. More than 20 thousand prisoners were released, including 900 children. In 1958, a memorial complex was opened on the territory of Buchenwald.

Dachau, the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany (1933-1945), created near the city of Dachau (Bavaria). During the 2nd World War, members of the anti-fascist resistance movement and prisoners of war from many European countries were kept in Dachau. 250,000 prisoners from 24 countries passed through Dachau, of whom about 70,000 died, including 12,000 Soviet citizens. National and international organizations of prisoners rescued the sick, organized acts of sabotage, maintained contacts with German and foreign groups operating in other cities and camps in Bavaria.

SAXENHAUSEN, a Nazi concentration camp (30 km. North of Berlin), through which about 200 thousand prisoners from 27 countries passed from 1936 to 1945; over 100 thousand were destroyed. Prominent figures of the communist and labor movement were kept in the camp. An international underground anti-fascist organization was created in Sachsenhausen. In connection with the advance of the Soviet Army on Berlin, the Nazis on April 21, 1945 began to evacuate the camp. On May 1, the surviving prisoners of Sachsenhausen on the way to Lübeck were released. Soviet troops. Since 1961, an international memorial museum has been opened on the territory of the former camp.

MAYDANEK, Nazi concentration camp (1941-1944) on the territory of occupied Poland, near the city of Lublin. Had 10 branches. Initially, it was designed for the simultaneous maintenance of 20-50 thousand prisoners, from 1942 - for 250 thousand. In Majdanek, prisoners of war and the civilian population of the occupied European countries were systematically destroyed. In total, it passed through Majdanek, according to Nuremberg Trials, about 1.5 million people. Despite the strict regime, underground resistance groups operated in the camp, one of them was headed by the Soviet general T. Ya. Novikov. D. M. Karbyshev was associated with the underground. On July 24, 1944, the main camp Majdanek was liberated by Soviet troops.

MAUTHAUZEN, Nazi concentration camp (1938-1945) near the city of Mauthausen (Austria). During the existence of the camp, there were about 335 thousand people from 15 countries in it. In total, more than 110 thousand people were tortured in Mauthausen (more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens). In Mauthausen there was a group of prisoners from the Soviet prisoners of war, who were treated with particular cruelty. On the night of February 2-3, 1945, a group of Soviet suicide bombers tried to escape. Of the 419 people, only 10 managed to escape. After the war, a memorial museum was created on the site of Mauthausen. In 1962, a monument to Karbyshev, who was tortured here in February 1945, was erected on the territory of the camp.

SALASPILS, railway Station 17 km. About Riga on the line Riga-Ogre. Here, during the Great Patriotic War, the Nazis created a concentration camp, in which more than 100 thousand people were killed. In 1967, a memorial ensemble was erected on the site of the camp and a museum was opened.

TREBLINKA, a Nazi "death camp" near Treblinka station, in the Warsaw Voivodeship, Poland. In Treblinka 1 (1941-1944, that was the name of the labor camp), about 10 thousand people died. In Treblinka 2 (1942-1943, extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people. In August 1943, in Treblinka 2, the Nazis suppressed an uprising of prisoners. A monument-mausoleum and a symbolic cemetery were created in Treblinka.

I apologize if there are factual errors in today's material.

Instead of a preface:

"- When there were no gas chambers, we shot on Wednesdays and Fridays. Children tried to hide these days. Now the crematorium ovens work day and night and the children no longer hide. The children are used to it.

This is the first eastern subgroup.

How are you, children?

We live well, our health is good. Come.

I don’t need to go to the gas station, I can still give blood.

The rats ate my ration, so the blood didn’t come out.

I'm scheduled to load coal into the crematorium tomorrow.

And I can donate blood.

They don't know what it is?

They forgot.

Eat, kids! Eat!

What didn't you take?

Wait, I'll take it.

You might not get it.

Lie down, it doesn't hurt, as if you'll fall asleep. Lie down!

What is it with them?

Why did they lie down?

The kids probably thought they were given poison..."

A group of Soviet prisoners of war behind barbed wire

Majdanek. Poland

The girl is a prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac

KZ Mauthausen, jugendliche

Children of Buchenwald

Josef Mengele and child

Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials

Children of Buchenwald

Mauthausen children display numbers carved into their hands

Treblinka

Two sources. One says that this is Majdanek, the other - Auschwitz

Some critters use this photo as "proof" of the famine in Ukraine. It is not surprising that it is in the Nazi crimes that they draw "inspiration" for their "revelations"

These are the children released in Salaspils

“Since the autumn of 1942, masses of women, old people, children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, Latgale were forcibly brought to the Salaspils concentration camp. 3 hospitals, 2 for crippled children, and 4 barracks for healthy children.

The permanent contingent of children in Salaspils during 1943 and until 1944 was over 1,000 people. There was a systematic extermination of them by:

A) the organization of a blood factory for the needs of the German army, blood was taken from both adults and healthy children, including babies, until they fainted, after which sick children were taken to the so-called hospital, where they died;

B) gave the children poisoned coffee to drink;

C) children with measles were bathed, from which they died;

D) children were injected with children's, women's and even horse urine. Many children had festering and leaking eyes;

E) all children suffered from diarrhea of a dysentery nature and dystrophy;

E) naked children in the winter were driven to the bathhouse in the snow at a distance of 500-800 meters and kept naked in the barracks for 4 days;

3) crippled and maimed children were taken out to be shot.

Mortality among children from the above causes averaged 300-400 per month during 1943/44. to the month of June.

According to preliminary data, over 500 children were exterminated in the Salaspils concentration camp in 1942; more than 6,000 people.

During 1943/44. more than 3,000 people who survived and endured torture were taken out of the concentration camp. For this purpose, a children's market was organized in Riga at 5 Gertrudes Street, where they were sold into slavery at 45 marks per summer.

Some of the children were placed in children's camps organized for this purpose after May 1, 1943 - in Dubulti, Bulduri, Saulkrasti. After that, the German fascists continued to supply the kulaks of Latvia with Russian children from the aforementioned camps and export them directly to the volosts of the counties of Latvia, they sold them for 45 Reichsmarks during the summer period.

Most of these children who were taken out and given up for education died, because. were easily susceptible to all kinds of diseases after losing blood in the Salaspils camp.

On the eve of the expulsion of the German fascists from Riga, on October 4-6, they loaded infants and babies under the age of 4 from the Riga orphanage and the Majorsky orphanage, where the children of the executed parents were kept, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, prisons and partly from the Salaspils camp and exterminated 289 babies on that ship.

They were hijacked by the Germans to Libava, an orphanage for infants located there. Children from Baldonsky, Grivsky orphanages, nothing is known about their fate yet.

Not stopping before these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 in the shops of Riga sold substandard products, only on children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did the little ones die in droves. More than 400 children died in the Riga Children's Hospital alone in 9 months of 1944, including 71 children in September.

In these orphanages, the methods of raising and keeping children were policemen and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp Krause and another German Schaefer, who went to children's camps and houses where children were kept for "inspection".

It was also established that in the Dubulti camp, children were put in a punishment cell. For this, the former head of the camp, Benois, resorted to the assistance of the German SS police.

Senior detective of the NKVD captain g / security / Murman /

Children were brought from the eastern lands occupied by the Germans: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine. Children came to Latvia together with their mothers, where they were then forcibly separated. Mothers used as freebies work force. Older children were also used in all kinds of auxiliary work.

According to the People's Commissariat of Education of the Latvian SSR, which investigated the facts of the deportation of the civilian population into German slavery, as of April 3, 1945, it is known that 2,802 children were distributed from the Salaspils concentration camp during the German occupation:

1) for kulak farms - 1,564 people.

2) in children's camps - 636 people.

3) taken up by individual citizens - 602 people.

The list was compiled on the basis of data from the card file of the Social Department of the Interior of the Latvian General Directorate "Ostland". Based on the same file, it was revealed that children were forced to work from the age of five.

AT last days During their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, homes for infants, grabbed children from apartments, herded them to the port of Riga, where they loaded them like cattle into the coal mines of steamships.

Through mass executions in the vicinity of Riga alone, the Germans killed about 10,000 children, whose corpses were burned. During mass executions, 17,765 children were killed.

Based on the materials of the investigation for the rest of the cities and districts of the LSSR, the following number of exterminated children was established:

Abren County - 497
Ludza County - 732
Rezekne county and Rezekne - 2045, incl. through Rezekne Prison more than 1,200
Madona County - 373
Daugavpils - 3 960, incl. through Daugavpils prison 2000
Daugavpils County - 1,058
Valmiera county - 315
Jelgava - 697
Ilukst district - 190
Bauska county - 399
Valka County - 22
Cesis county - 32
Jekabpils county - 645
In total - 10 965 people.

In Riga, dead children were buried at Pokrovsky, Tornyakalns and Ivanovo cemeteries, as well as in the forest near the Salaspils camp.

in the moat

The bodies of two children-prisoners before the funeral. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 04/17/1945

Children behind the wire

Soviet children-prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk

“The girl who is second from the pillar on the right in the photo - Claudia Nyuppieva - published her memoirs many years later.

“I remember how people fainted from the heat in the so-called bathhouse, and then they were doused with cold water. I remember the disinfection of the barracks, after which there was a buzzing in the ears and many had nosebleeds, and that steam room, where all our rags were treated with great “dilience”. Once the steam room burned down, depriving many people of their last clothes.

The Finns shot prisoners in front of children, administered corporal punishment to women, children and the elderly, regardless of age. She also said that the Finns shot young guys before leaving Petrozavodsk and that her sister was saved by a miracle. According to available Finnish documents, only seven men were shot for trying to escape or for other crimes. During the conversation, it turned out that the Sobolev family was one of those who were taken out of Zaonezhye. Mother Soboleva and her six children had a hard time. Claudia said that their cow was taken away from them, they were deprived of the right to receive food for a month, then, in the summer of 1942, they were transported on a barge to Petrozavodsk and assigned to concentration camp number 6, to the 125th barrack. The mother was immediately taken to the hospital. Claudia recalled with horror the disinfection carried out by the Finns. People died in the so-called bath, and then they were doused with cold water. The food was bad, the food was spoiled, the clothes were worthless.

Only at the end of June 1944 were they able to get out from behind the barbed wire of the camp. There were six Sobolev sisters: 16-year-old Maria, 14-year-old Antonina, 12-year-old Raisa, nine-year-old Claudia, six-year-old Evgenia and very little Zoya, she was not yet three years old.

Worker Ivan Morekhodov spoke about the attitude of the Finns towards prisoners: "There was little food, and it was bad. The baths were terrible. The Finns did not show any pity."

In a Finnish concentration camp

Auschwitz (Auschwitz)

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka

The photographs of 14-year-old Czeslava Kwoka, courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, perished during World War II. In December 1942, the Polish Catholic Czesława, originally from Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz with her mother. They both died three months later. In 2005, photographer (and co-prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not realize why she was here and did not understand what she was being told. And then the kapo (prison guard) took a stick and hit her in the face. This German woman simply took out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful, young and innocent creature. She was crying, but there was nothing she could do. Before being photographed, the girl wiped her tears and blood from her broken lip. To be honest, I felt like I was being beaten, but I couldn't intervene. For me it would be fatal."

January 27, 2015, 15:30

On January 27, the world marks 70 years since the Soviet army liberated the Nazi concentration camp "Auschwitz-Birkenau" (Auschwitz), where from 1941 to 1945, according to official figures, 1.4 million people died, of which about 1.1 million were Jews. The photographs below, published by the Photochronograph publication, show the life and martyrdom of the prisoners of Auschwitz and other concentration death camps created in the territory controlled by Nazi Germany.

Some of these photos can be traumatic. Therefore, we ask children and people with unstable mentality to refrain from viewing these photos.

Sending Slovak Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Arrival of the echelon with new prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Arrival of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prisoners are centrally assembled on the platform.

Arrival of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The first stage of selection. It was necessary to divide the prisoners into two columns separating men from women and children.

Arrival of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The guards form a column of prisoners.

Rabbis in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Railway tracks leading to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Registration photographs of children-prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Prisoners of the Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp at the construction of a chemical plant of the German concern I.G. Farbenindustrie AG

The liberation by Soviet soldiers of the surviving prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Soviet soldiers examine children's clothes found in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

A group of children released from the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz). In total, about 7,500 people, including children, were released in the camp. The Germans managed to take about 50 thousand prisoners from Auschwitz to other camps before the Red Army units approached.

Released children, prisoners of the Auschwitz (Auschwitz) concentration camp, show camp numbers tattooed on their arms.

Liberated children from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Portrait of prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp after it was liberated by Soviet troops.

Aerial photography of the northwestern part of the Auschwitz concentration camp with the main objects of the camp marked: the railway station and the Auschwitz I camp.

Liberated prisoners of the Austrian concentration camp in the American military hospital.

Clothes of prisoners concentration camp, abandoned after liberation in April 1945.

American soldiers inspect the site of the mass execution of 250 Polish and French prisoners at a concentration camp near Leipzig on April 19, 1945.

A Ukrainian girl released from a concentration camp in Salzburg, Austria, cooks food on a small stove.

Prisoners of the Flossenburg death camp after being liberated by the US 97th Infantry Division in May 1945. The emaciated prisoner in the center - a 23-year-old Czech - is ill with dysentery. The Flossenburg camp was located in Bavaria near the city of the same name on the border with the Czech Republic. It was created in May 1938. During the existence of the camp, about 96 thousand prisoners passed through it, of which more than 30 thousand died in the camp.

Ampfing concentration camp prisoners after their release.

View of the concentration camp at Grini in Norway.

Soviet prisoners in the Lamsdorf concentration camp (Stalag VIII-B, now the Polish village of Lambinovice).

The bodies of the executed SS guards at the observation tower "B" of the Dachau concentration camp.

Dachau is one of the first concentration camps in Germany. Founded by the Nazis in March 1933. The camp was located in southern Germany, 16 kilometers northwest of Munich. The number of prisoners held at Dachau from 1933 to 1945 exceeds 188,000. The death toll in the main camp and subcamps from January 1940 to May 1945 was at least 28,000.

View of the barracks of the Dachau concentration camp.

Soldiers of the US 45th Infantry Division show the bodies of prisoners in a wagon at the Dachau concentration camp to teenagers from the Hitler Youth.

View of the Buchenwald barracks after the liberation of the camp.

American generals George Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower in the Ohrdruf concentration camp at the fire, where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.

Soviet prisoners of war in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

The Stalag XVIIIA prisoner of war camp was located near the town of Wolfsberg (Austria). The camp contained approximately 30 thousand people: 10 thousand British and 20 thousand Soviet prisoners. Soviet prisoners were isolated in a separate area and did not intersect with other prisoners. In the English part of the ethnic English, there were only half, about 40 percent - Australians, the rest - Canadians, New Zealanders (including 320 Maori aborigines) and other natives of the colonies. Of the other nations in the camp were the French, downed American pilots. A feature of the camp was the liberal attitude of the administration to the presence of cameras in the British (this did not apply to the Soviets). Thanks to this, an impressive archive of photographs of life in the camp, made from the inside, that is, by the people who were in it, has come down to the present time.

Soviet prisoners of war eating in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war near the barbed wire of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war at the barracks of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

British prisoners of war on the stage of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp theater.

Captured British corporal Eric Evans with three comrades on the territory of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Burnt bodies of prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp. Ohrdruf concentration camp was established in November 1944. During the war years, about 11,700 people died in the camp. Ohrdruf was the first concentration camp to be liberated by the US Army.

Bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald is one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, located near Weimar in Thuringia. From July 1937 to April 1945, about 250 thousand people were imprisoned in the camp. The number of victims of the camp is estimated at about 56 thousand prisoners.

Women from the SS guards of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp unload the corpses of prisoners for burial in a mass grave. They were attracted to these works by the allies who liberated the camp. Around the moat is a convoy of English soldiers. Former guards are banned from wearing gloves as a punishment to put them at risk of contracting typhus.

Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp located in the province of Hanover (now the territory of Lower Saxony), a mile from the village of Belsen and a few miles southwest of the city of Bergen. There were no gas chambers in the camp. But in 1943-1945, about 50 thousand prisoners died here, more than 35 thousand of them - from typhus a few months before the camp was liberated. The total number of victims is about 70 thousand prisoners.

Six British prisoners in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners are talking to a German officer in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war change clothes in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Group photo of allied prisoners (British, Australians and New Zealanders) in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Band of captured allies (Australians, British and New Zealanders) on the territory of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Captured Allied soldiers play Two Up for cigarettes in the Stalag 383 concentration camp.

Two British prisoners at the wall of the barracks of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.

A German soldier-escort at the Stalag 383 concentration camp market, surrounded by captured allies.

A group photo of allied prisoners in the Stalag 383 concentration camp on Christmas Day 1943.

The barracks of the Vollan concentration camp in the Norwegian city of Trondheim after liberation.

A group of Soviet prisoners of war outside the gates of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation. Falstad is a Nazi concentration camp in Norway, located in the village of Ekne near Levanger. Created in September 1941. The number of dead prisoners - more than 200 people.

SS-Oberscharführer Erich Weber on vacation in the commandant's quarters of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.

Commandant of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Hauptscharführer Karl Denk (left) and SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber (right) in the commandant's room.

Five released prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp at the gate.

Prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) on vacation during a break between work in the field.

SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber, an employee of the Falstad concentration camp.

SS non-commissioned officers K. Denk, E. Weber and Luftwaffe sergeant R. Weber with two women in the commandant's office of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.

An employee of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad SS Obersturmführer Erich Weber in the kitchen of the commandant's house.

Soviet, Norwegian and Yugoslav prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp on vacation at the logging site.

The head of the women's block of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) Maria Robbe (Maria Robbe) with the police at the gates of the camp.

A group of Soviet prisoners of war on the territory of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.

Seven guards of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad at the main gate.

Panorama of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) after the liberation.

Black French prisoners in the Frontstalag 155 camp in the village of Lonvik.

Black French prisoners do laundry at the Frontstalag 155 camp in the village of Lonvik.

Members of the Warsaw Uprising from the Home Army in the barracks of a concentration camp near the German village of Oberlangen.

The body of a shot SS guard in a canal near the Dachau concentration camp.

Two American soldiers and a former prisoner fish the body of a shot SS guard from a canal near the Dachau concentration camp.

A column of prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) passes in the courtyard of the main building.

An emaciated Hungarian prisoner released from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

A liberated prisoner of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who fell ill with typhus in one of the camp barracks.

Prisoners demonstrate the process of destroying corpses in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp.

Red Army prisoners who died of hunger and cold. The POW camp was located in the village of Bolshaya Rossoshka near Stalingrad.

Body of Ohrdruf concentration camp guard killed by prisoners or American soldiers.

Prisoners in the barracks of the Ebensee concentration camp.

Irma Grese and Josef Kramer in the prison yard of the German city of Celle. The head of the labor service of the women's unit of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp - Irma Grese (Irma Grese) and his commandant SS Hauptsturmführer (captain) Josef Kramer under British escort in the courtyard of the prison in Celle, Germany.

Girl prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac.

Soviet prisoners of war while carrying building elements for the barracks of the camp "Stalag 304" Zeithain.

Surrendered SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker (Heinrich Wicker, later shot by American soldiers) at the car with the bodies of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp. In the photo, second from the left is Victor Mairer, a representative of the Red Cross.

A man in civilian clothes stands near the bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
In the background, Christmas wreaths hang near the windows.

Released from captivity, the British and Americans are on the territory of the prisoner of war camp Dulag-Luft in Wetzlar, Germany.

Released prisoners from the Nordhausen death camp sit on the porch.

Prisoners of the concentration camp Gardelegen (Gardelegen), killed by guards shortly before the liberation of the camp.

In the back of the trailer - the corpses of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp, prepared for burning in the crematorium.

American generals (from right to left) Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton watch a demonstration of one of the torture methods at the Gotha concentration camp.

Mountains of clothes of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp.

A released seven-year-old prisoner of the Buchenwald concentration camp in line before being sent to Switzerland.

Prisoners of the concentration camp Sachsenhausen (Sachsenhausen) on the line.

The Sachsenhausen camp was located near the city of Oranienburg in Germany. Created in July 1936. Number of prisoners in different years reached 60 thousand people. On the territory of Sachsenhausen, according to some sources, more than 100 thousand prisoners died in various ways.

A Soviet prisoner of war released from the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.

Soviet prisoners of war in a barracks after their release from the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.

A Soviet prisoner of war leaves a barrack at the Saltfjellet concentration camp in Norway.

Women liberated by the Red Army from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, located 90 kilometers north of Berlin. Ravensbrück is a concentration camp of the Third Reich, located in northeastern Germany, 90 kilometers north of Berlin. It existed from May 1939 until the end of April 1945. The largest Nazi concentration camp for women. The number of registered prisoners for the entire period of its existence amounted to more than 130 thousand people. According to official figures, 90 thousand prisoners died here.

German officers and civilians walk past a group of Soviet prisoners during an inspection of a concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war in the camp in the ranks during verification.

Captured Soviet soldiers in the camp at the beginning of the war.

Captured Red Army soldiers enter the camp barracks.

Four Polish prisoners of the Oberlangen concentration camp (Oberlangen, Stalag VI C) after their liberation. Women were among the capitulated Warsaw insurgents.

The orchestra of prisoners of the Yanovsky concentration camp performs the "Tango of Death". On the eve of the liberation of Lvov by the Red Army, the Germans lined up a circle of 40 people from the orchestra. The camp guards surrounded the musicians in a tight ring and ordered them to play. First, the conductor of the Mund orchestra was executed, then, by order of the commandant, each orchestra member went to the center of the circle, laid his instrument on the ground and stripped naked, after which he was shot in the head.

The Ustaše execute prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp. Jasenovac is a system of death camps established by the Ustaše (Croatian Nazis) in August 1941. It was located on the territory of the Independent Croatian State, which collaborated with Nazi Germany, 60 kilometers from Zagreb. There is no consensus on the number of victims of Jasenovac. While the official Yugoslav authorities during the existence of this state supported the version of 840 thousand victims, according to the estimates of the Croatian historian Vladimir Zheryavich, their number was 83 thousand, the Serbian historian Bogoljub Kochovich - 70 thousand. The Jasenovac Memorial Museum contains information about 75,159 victims, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum speaks of 56-97 thousand victims.

Soviet child prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk. During the occupation of Soviet Karelia by the Finns, six concentration camps were created in Petrozavodsk to contain local Russian-speaking residents. Camp No. 6 was located in the area of the Transshipment Exchange, it held 7,000 people.

A Jewish woman with her daughter after being released from a German labor camp.

The corpses of Soviet citizens found on the territory of the Nazi concentration camp in Darnitsa. Kyiv area, November 1943.

General Eisenhower and other American officers look at the executed prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

The dead prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

Representatives of the prosecutor's office of the Estonian SSR at the bodies of the dead prisoners of the Klooga concentration camp. The Klooga concentration camp was located in Harju County, Keila Volost (35 kilometers from Tallinn).

Soviet child next to the murdered mother. Concentration camp for the civilian population "Ozarichi". Belarus, the town of Ozarichi, Domanovichsky district, Polesye region.

Soldiers from the 157th US Infantry Regiment shoot SS guards from the German concentration camp Dachau.

Concentration camp inmate Webbelin burst into tears when he learned that he was not included in the first group of prisoners sent to the hospital after release.

Residents of the German city of Weimar in the Buchenwald concentration camp near the bodies of dead prisoners. The Americans brought into the camp the inhabitants of Weimar, located near Buchenwald, most of whom declared that they knew nothing about this camp.

Unknown guard of the Buchenwald concentration camp, beaten and hanged by prisoners.

The guards of the Buchenwald concentration camp beaten by prisoners in a punishment cell on their knees.

An unknown guard of the Buchenwald concentration camp beaten by prisoners.

Soldiers of the medical service of the 20th Corps of the Third US Army at the trailer with the corpses of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The bodies of prisoners who died in the train on the way to the Dachau concentration camp.

Liberated prisoners in one of the barracks of the Ebensee camp, two days after the arrival of the advance elements of the US 80th Infantry Division.

One of the emaciated prisoners of the Ebensee camp basks in the sun. The Ebensee concentration camp was located 40 kilometers from Salzburg (Austria). The camp existed from November 1943 to May 6, 1945. For 18 months, thousands of prisoners passed through it, many of whom died here. The names of 7113 dead in conditions of inhuman detention are known. The total number of victims is more than 8200 people.

Released from the Eselheide camp, Soviet prisoners of war rock an American soldier in their arms.
About 30,000 Soviet prisoners of war died in Ezelheide Camp No. 326; in April 1945, the Red Army soldiers who survived in captivity were liberated by units of the 9th US Army.

French Jews in the Drancy transit camp, before their onward transfer to German concentration camps.

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp guards load the corpses of dead prisoners onto a truck escorted by British soldiers.

Odilo Globocnik (far right) visits the Sobibor extermination camp, which operated from May 15, 1942 to October 15, 1943. About 250,000 Jews were killed here.

The corpse of a prisoner of the Dachau concentration camp, found by Allied soldiers in a railway car near the camp.

Human remains in the Stutthof concentration camp crematorium oven. Location: near Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland).

Hungarian actress Livia Nador liberated from the Gusen concentration camp by soldiers of the US 11th Panzer Division near Linz, Austria.

A German boy walks along a dirt road, on the side of which lie the corpses of hundreds of prisoners who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

Arrest of commandant of the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen Josef Kramer by British troops. Subsequently, he was sentenced to death and hanged on December 13 in the Hameln prison.

Children behind barbed wire in the Buchenwald concentration camp after its release.

Soviet prisoners of war being disinfected in the German POW camp Zeithain.

Prisoners during the roll call in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Polish Jews are waiting for execution under the protection of German soldiers in a ravine. Presumably from the Belzec or Sobibor camp.

A surviving Buchenwald prisoner drinks water in front of the concentration camp barracks.

British soldiers inspect the crematorium oven at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The released children-prisoners of Buchenwald come out of the gates of the camp.

German prisoners of war are being escorted through the Majdanek concentration camp. In front of the prisoners, the remains of the prisoners of the death camp lie on the ground, and the crematorium ovens are also visible. The Majdanek death camp was located on the outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin. In total, about 150 thousand prisoners visited here, about 80 thousand were killed, of which 60 thousand were Jews. The mass extermination of people in gas chambers in the camp began in 1942. Carbon monoxide was first used as a poison gas ( carbon monoxide), and since April 1942, Cyclone B. Majdanek has been one of the two death camps of the Third Reich where this gas was used (the second is Auschwitz).

Soviet prisoners of war in the Zeithain camp are disinfected before being sent to Belgium.

Mauthausen prisoners look at an SS officer.

Death march from the Dachau concentration camp.

Forced labor prisoners. Quarry "Weiner Graben" in the concentration camp Mauthausen, Austria.

Representatives of the prosecutor's office of the Estonian SSR at the bodies of the dead prisoners of the Klooga concentration camp.

The arrested commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Joseph Kramer, in shackles and guarded by an English escort. Nicknamed "Belsen beast", Kramer was convicted by an English court for war crimes and in December 1945 hanged in the prison of Hameln.

Bones of the killed prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp (Lublin, Poland).

The furnace of the Majdanek concentration camp crematorium (Lublin, Poland). On the left, Lieutenant A.A. Guyvik.

Lieutenant A.A. Guivik holds the remains of prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp in his hands.

A column of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp on the march in the suburbs of Munich.

A young man released from the Mauthausen camp.

The corpse of a prisoner of the Leipzig-Tekla concentration camp on barbed wire.

The remains of prisoners in the crematorium of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar.

One of the 150 victims among the prisoners who died in the concentration camp in Gardelegen.

In April 1945, in the Gardelegen concentration camp, the SS drove about 1,100 prisoners into a barn and set it on fire. Some of the victims tried to escape but were shot dead by the guards.

Meeting of the Americans - the liberators of the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Residents of the city of Ludwigslust pass by the bodies of prisoners of the same name concentration camp for prisoners of war. The bodies of the victims were found by members of the US 82nd Airborne Division. The bodies were found in pits in the camp yard and indoor areas. By order of the Americans, the civilian population of the area was obliged to come to the camp to get acquainted with the results of the Nazi crimes.

Dora-Mittelbau work camps killed by the Nazis. Dora-Mittelbau (other names: Dora, Nordhausen) - a Nazi concentration camp, was formed on August 28, 1943, 5 kilometers from the city of Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany, as a division of the already existing Buchenwald camp. For 18 months of existence, 60 thousand prisoners of 21 nationalities passed through the camp, approximately 20 thousand died in custody.

American generals Patton, Bradley, Eisenhower in the Ohrdruf concentration camp at the fire, where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.

Soviet prisoners of war liberated by the Americans from a camp near the French town of Sarguemines, bordering Germany.

On the victim's arm is a deep burn from phosphorus. The experiment was to set fire to a mixture of phosphorus and rubber on the skin of a living person.

Liberated prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Liberated prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

A Soviet prisoner of war, after the complete liberation of the Buchenwald camp by American troops, points to a former guard who brutally beat the prisoners.

SS soldiers lined up on the parade ground of the Plaszow concentration camp.

Former guard of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp F. Herzog disassembles a pile of corpses of prisoners.

Soviet prisoners of war liberated by the Americans from the camp in Eselheide.

A pile of corpses of prisoners in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp.

A pile of corpses of prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The bodies of prisoners of the Lambach concentration camp in the forest before burial.

A French prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp on the floor of a barrack among dead comrades.

Soldiers from the American 42nd Infantry Division at the car with the bodies of the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp.

Ebensee concentration camp prisoners.

The corpses of prisoners in the courtyard of the Dora-Mittelbau camp.

Prisoners of the German concentration camp Webbelin waiting for medical help.

A prisoner from the Dora-Mittelbau (Nordhausen) camp shows an American soldier the camp crematorium.