List of Nazi concentration camps. Nazi concentration camps during World War II (with map)

Nazi Germany took a political course towards the mass extermination of civilians, especially Jews. Thus, about a million people were eliminated by “death squads”. Somewhat later, massacres began, and people were deprived of medicine and food. World War II concentration camps were built to systematically kill large numbers of people. Gas chambers, crematoria, and laboratories for conducting medical experiments were built in them.

The first of them were built in 1933, and a year later the SS troops took control of them.

Thus, large concentration camps were created in Germany: Buchenwald, Majdanek, Salaspils, Ravensbrück, Dachau and Auschwitz.

1. Buchenwald (men's camp) - intended to isolate anti-fascists. Outside the camp gates one could see a construction area, a punishment cell for interrogations, an office, barracks (52 main ones) for prisoners, as well as a quarantine zone and a crematorium where people were killed. Here prisoners worked in a weapons factory. Poles, Soviet citizens, Dutch, Czechs, Hungarians and Jews were brought to this place.

The concentration camps of the Second World War had a group of laboratory doctors who performed experiments on prisoners. Thus, it was in Buchenwald that the development of a vaccine against typhus was carried out.

In 1945, camp prisoners carried out an uprising, captured the Nazis and took leadership into their own hands. We can say that they saved themselves, since the order had already been given to exterminate all the prisoners.

2. Majdanek - intended for Soviet prisoners of war. The camp had five sections (one of them was women's). In the disinfection chamber, people were liquidated with gas, after which the corpses were taken to the crematorium, which was located in the third compartment.

In this camp, prisoners worked in a factory that produced uniforms and in a factory that produced weapons.

In 1944, due to the offensive of Soviet troops, it ceased to exist.

3. Concentration camps of the Second World War included the Salaspils children's camp. Here the children were kept in isolation and deprived of care. Experiments were carried out on them; the Nazis organized a so-called children's blood factory.

Today there is a memorial on this site.

4. Ravensbrück - originally intended to house German women, so-called criminals, but later people of different nationalities were kept there.

Medical experiments were conducted in the camp to study sulfonamide drugs. Somewhat later, bone tissue transplantation began here, and the possibility of restoring muscles, nerves and bones was studied.

In 1945, the evacuation of the camp began.

5. World War II concentration camps included Dachau. This camp was intended to contain people who polluted the Aryan nation. Here the prisoners worked at the IG Farbenindustry enterprise.

This camp is considered the most sinister of all known; experiments were carried out on people there, the purpose of which was to study the ability to control human behavior; the effect of malaria on the body was also studied here.

In 1945, the underground organization of the camp organized an uprising and thwarted the plan to liquidate all prisoners.

6. Auschwitz (Auschwitz) - intended to hold political prisoners. The camp had a heel yard, thirteen blocks, each of which had its own purpose, a gas chamber and a crematorium.

In 1943, a resistance group was formed here, which helped prisoners escape.

Thus, the German concentration camps of the Second World War are striking in their cruelty. Over the entire period of their existence, a huge number of people, including children, died in them.

Online conference

Nazi concentration camps during World War II

© Photo: courtesy of the Dachau Memorial

On March 22, 1933, 85 years ago, the first concentration camp began operating in the German city of Dachau. In subsequent years, Nazi Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of occupied European countries, turned into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people. How many people - citizens of the USSR and European countries - European countries - went through camps for various purposes? How did the monstrous death machine function? Who benefits from falsifying history? Who is trying to influence the modern perception of historical events in this way? These and other questions were answered during the online conference by the scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society, Mikhail MYAGKOV.

Answers on questions

How reliable is the information about what happened then?

Mikhail Myagkov:

There are thousands of testimonies of former concentration camp prisoners who were released, victims of Nazism. They testified about what happened in these Nazi concentration camps, how cruel the Nazis were to their prisoners. There are protocols of the trials of the Nazis themselves, after the concentration camps were liberated. And these testimonies are reliable.

I believe that these thousands of testimonies create and show us this terrible picture of the atrocities that the Nazis committed during World War II. We must constantly remember and think about this. After all, what was committed then was a crime against humanity.

Already during the war years, the so-called “Soviet Nuremberg” was going on - trials that took place in Krasnodar and other cities, then in the post-war period, in Kyiv, Novgorod, of Nazi criminals who committed atrocities against prisoners of war, against civilians. And the protocols of these processes are all available and accessible.

Even during the war years, the Extraordinary State Commission began to work to identify and investigate the victims of the Nazi invaders. Her materials are also available and published. I believe that we should know about this, remember, constantly refer to these protocols so as not to forget, so that the memory of the atrocities of the Nazis and the heroic soldiers of our Red Army who liberated these camps is preserved. We must remember the victims so that this never happens again.

What documents remain classified? How many are there?

Mikhail Myagkov:

Basically, of course, the documents are declassified and researchers have access to them. Many documents are available on the Internet. Some of the documents remain that relate to the personal affairs of those people who have not been rehabilitated for war crimes. I believe that this issue will be resolved, people will also be able to see how it all really happened.

According to official and unofficial data, how many people went through camps for various purposes?

Mikhail Myagkov:

There are official figures for everything that went through the concentration camps - and these are not only those that we know - Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka - but also their branches. Auschwitz alone had several dozen branches. According to various sources, 18 or more million people passed through this criminal Nazi system. Of these, 11 million or more people were killed. This is a gigantic number.

Of these, 5 to 6 million are citizens of the Soviet Union, and every fifth is a child. We must not forget this, about the pedantic system created for the destruction of people for the sake of the Nazi racial theory, which was carried out by the Nazis in practice during the Second World War.

Who, when and where created the first concentration camps?

Mikhail Myagkov:

It is known that back in March 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was formed, and in principle, in this camp, where initially political prisoners, members of the German Communist Party were kept, and then persons undesirable, in the opinion of the Nazis, were taken there, this system of keeping people in camps was worked out - attitude towards them, punishment, security.

Then other concentration camps were formed - Oranienbaum, in 1937 Buchenwald, then Ravensbrück, and in total there were more than 14 thousand of them with branches. This is a gigantic system - both on the territory of Germany itself and in the occupied territories of other countries.

Gregory:

Is there evidence that Hitler ordered the mass extermination of Jews?

Mikhail Myagkov:

There is evidence that Rudolf Hess, the commandant of the Auschwitz, Birkenau concentration camp, who was captured as a Nazi criminal, spoke about this - that Hitler told him in the spring of 1941 about the need to begin the mass extermination of the Jewish population. He said this in the summer of 1941, and we know that in January 1942 there was the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, representatives of the party and the government of Nazi Germany participated there, and the question of the total extermination of the Jewish population of Europe was raised. Numbers were given in the millions - 11 million people. This system was put into effect, although even before this there was a massive extermination of the Jewish population.

What gas was used by the Nazis in concentration camps? Is it in production now? If yes, for what purposes?

Mikhail Myagkov:

It is known that this gas was called "Cyclone B", it is based on hydrocyanic acid. It was invented in Germany back in the early 20s. 4 kg of this substance could kill a thousand people. Nazi psychology is quite scary. When Himmler visited concentration camps, as eyewitnesses say, apparently he didn’t like something about the way people were being destroyed; he wanted mass murder. And on his orders, this substance, an asphyxiating gas, has already begun to be used. This happened in Auschwitz, in Sobibor, in other camps. For example, in Sobibor there was, as the prisoners themselves called it, a “bathhouse”, a sealed room for several dozen people, and several outdated tank engines were running, into which asphyxiating gas was supplied through cylinders, killing people. There was a window at the top where a special person observed what was happening to people. This savage psychology of people who destroyed and looked to see if everyone there was destroyed. Then people were burned in the crematorium ovens.

We can look at the example of Auschwitz, the largest death camp, and they began to form in the occupied territory since October 1941. Trains of people came to Auschwitz. A prisoner of the Sobibor concentration camp, who escaped from there, raised an uprising, this is a well-known person, Alexander Aaronovich Pechersky, he even kept records of how many trains came to the Sobibor death camp. According to his notes, 7 trains arrived in 22 days. Each has 30 carriages, each carriage holds 70 people. That is, each echelon consists of more than 2 thousand people. And most people were immediately sent to this gas chamber. There are even more people in Auschwitz. 250 thousand people were killed in Sobibor. In Auschwitz, according to various estimates, from 1.5 to 4 million people.

When people were brought to death camps from all over Europe, they were immediately divided into groups. The majority, more than three-quarters, were sent straight to the gas chamber. If more trains came - it’s scary to even talk about, but it’s necessary to know - people even in the grove that led directly to the gas chambers waited their turn to be destroyed. The Nazis watched them, guarded them, immediately destroyed them in gas chambers, and then burned them in crematoria. At Auschwitz, several lines were built, eight gas chambers, and eight crematorium ovens. The pedantic Nazis really put this into practice. As the Nazis captured after the liberation of the camps testified, the crematorium ovens could admit 8 thousand people strangled by the Nazis per day.

Terrible numbers, we must never forget that the Nazi death machine was working, which destroyed people because they were of a different nationality or thought differently from the Germans, because the Germans, according to racial ideology, are a race of masters. This is not even the Middle Ages, this is something completely unthinkable for the twentieth century - but it happened. We must constantly remind people of these terrible numbers and related stories so that people think about it and never even think about it again.

But we can talk about those terrible crimes that are associated with the extermination of children in concentration camps, in death camps. Or about medical experiments. Many people know about such a terrible person as Mengele, who operated in the Auschwitz camp, conducted medical experiments on people and children in order to test a new medicine - or, on the contrary, a person became infected with some kind of contagious disease, tuberculosis, typhoid.

They had the idea that in order to increase the birth rate among Germans and reduce the birth rate among other nations, experiments were carried out on sterilizing people. It is even impossible to find words about what was done to people in this regard, without anesthesia. As for the children, in the Salaspils camp in the Baltic states and in many other camps, blood was taken from children. Initially, perhaps, these children were selected, fed, and then their blood was simply transfused for the Wehrmacht soldiers. And the children died. How can this be generally assessed, how is it in people’s minds?

Himmler said - yes, you have to be firm, you need firmness. What - this inhumanity, these crimes? For the sake of medical experiments, people were frozen - to find out how long a Wehrmacht soldier could withstand at sub-zero temperatures. Limbs were amputated without anesthesia and the twins were separated. All this with Nazi pedantry, in order to achieve results. But people actually didn’t exist for them, that’s the horror of the situation that was going on in the death camps back then

Konstantin Khabensky is currently working on a film about a prisoner uprising led by Soviet officer Alexander Pechersky in the Sobibor concentration camp. Minister of Culture Medinsky called this story undeservedly forgotten. I really didn’t hear about this either at school or at college. Are there other such heroic examples of the struggle of prisoners in concentration camps?

Mikhail Myagkov:

Yes. A huge number of people were kept in concentration camps. During the war, more than 400 thousand Soviet prisoners of war escaped from the camps. No army in the world knew this. The uprising took place not only in Sobibor, but also in the Buchenwald concentration camp: shortly before the liberation there was an underground group that included many Soviet citizens, including prisoners of war. At Buchenwald there were also labor camps where prisoners made weapons. And they brought in parts of these weapons, specially collected them in order to start an uprising at the right moment. There was an underground committee that included Soviet citizens. I read one of the wartime archival documents, there were pseudonyms for our prisoners of war so that the Nazis would not recognize them. And so, on the eve of liberation, the allied forces started an uprising, and they made a special radio - they put the most primitive transmitter in a bucket, and sent a message to the American command that they had started an uprising, we were fighting, and we were asking for immediate help. And the Americans replied that they would come soon.

As for the Sobibor death camp, this is a unique case in history: the only successful mass escape during the war. Pechersky arrived at the camp in September 1943. He did not stay there long, but managed to contact the underground and lead it, to lead the uprising. There were ideas to run individually, not everyone. But Pechersky insisted that if we run, that’s it. Because those who remain will be shot. Of course, many people will die, but many will survive. A special plan was developed - one by one to call the Nazis, the command staff of the guards of the Sobibor death camp under the pretext that they had sewn or selected some clothes for you. After all, when prisoners arrived at the concentration camp, they were stripped naked and all their belongings were taken away. Call the Nazis under a similar pretext, kill them, take possession of their weapons, then go to the armory and seize it. After all, there were 4 rows of barbed wire, energized, and mined between them - but it was necessary to break through.

In general, the plan was a success; 11-12 SS men were killed and their weapons were seized. The armory was not captured, but more than 400 prisoners began to break through the main gate. The Nazis killed many, but more than three hundred escaped. The Nazis then organized a whole hunt for them, catching these people. By the way, the local Polish population, as we now know, handed over these former prisoners to the Nazi guards. The group that went with Pechersky managed to break through the Bug, reach Belarus, to the Belarusian partisans, and he then fought in a partisan detachment, and then directly in the Red Army. In 2016, he was awarded the Order of Courage by decree of President Vladimir Putin.

I wanted to emphasize by this that there was resistance. And the escape from Sobibor was a struggle not even to stay alive, but to take revenge on the Nazis for what they were doing to our people, to the prisoners. And if you die, then die with dignity, in battle. Pechersky, who wrote books and articles after this, emphasized this - that when a group of Soviet Jewish prisoners of war arrived, they raised an uprising, formalized it, organized it, and it was successful.

Let me add how inhumane this system was. After all, the Nazis calculated not only the destruction of people, but also the income from this or that death camp. These Jesuit calculations showed that the income from one prisoner for Germany was equal to 1630 marks, together with the costs of his destruction. They even considered this. Before death, everything was taken from people - glasses, wallets, jewelry. It all went to the income of the Reich. The Nazis' income from Reich operations amounted to 178 million marks. Where how? What Jesuit mind could think of counting the income from the destruction of people?

It is known that when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, more than a million suits were found there - women's, men's, a huge number of glasses, rings, shoes that were not burned, children's shoes that remained from the extermination of children. All this was presented as evidence of what the Nazis did during the Second World War, what they did with prisoners.

Some time ago, the Russian Military Historical Society made an exhibition “Remember, the world was liberated by a Soviet soldier.” The first part is about the crimes of the Nazi regime, about Nazi concentration camps. There we showed what the Soviet soldiers saw when they liberated these camps. And we must clearly understand that it was thanks to the Red Army that the Nazi regime collapsed. It is unknown how many more people would have been killed. We liberated Nazi death camps - Majdanek, Auschwitz, and many others. And when we showed at this exhibition what Soviet soldiers saw, and then others - and the people who saw these children's shoes were simply shocked. This is impossible for a normal person to bear. This is really something scary.

The Nazis used everything - they shaved off their hair, they went into tailoring. They sold suits in Germany and took away gold teeth. This system worked in the twentieth century, after all those works that talked about humanism, enlightenment, and a new era. This is where we have slipped in the twentieth century.

Many prominent figures who experienced all this warned about this - we must always remember this. Today in our world there are also sprouts of neo-Nazism, and they need to be suppressed in the bud so that they do not blossom and what happened in Germany in 1933-1945 never happens again.

Mikhail Myagkov:

People who live today, especially the younger generation - it’s one thing when you read about it in a book, a textbook, or saw it in a photograph - it’s another thing when you saw this camp and looked at it. But there are museums and memorials where they show the gas chamber and the crematorium. A person who saw this with his own eyes will not say a single word that could justify this gigantic machine of destruction. Of course, this needs to be shown, excursions conducted there on a scientific basis. They must be conducted by specially trained guides. It is known that after the liberation of the concentration camps, the Allies took the Germans themselves to these camps.

Many Germans, ordinary burghers, thought that the army was fighting, everything was fine. The burghers get a lot from the war, some things come. Yes, the war is hard, but it gave a lot of income to the Germans. And what actually happened - many knew about it, but preferred to think that it did not concern them. They were rubbed in the face - look what the regime you served, which you blessed and considered the best and most worthy, did. You lived comfortably under this regime.

And today, Germans, Austrians, and all Europeans need to be constantly reminded of what the Nazi regime was and what it led to. It is very important.

There is a plan for further memorialization of the Sobibor death camp museum. Initially, an international group was created there, which included Israel, Slovakia, Poland, and Russia. Now Poland has literally thrown Russia out of this project. This is very strange and very painful, bitter. Because our citizens were also kept there. Pechersky was there, who started the uprising. We have documents, we are ready to participate in financing the updated museum exhibition of the Sobibor camp. No, the Poles believe - they have the Institute of National Remembrance, which now actually has prosecutorial functions - that Russia should not participate in this. They have a special attitude towards Russia, now they are pushing it out of history, trying to clean up their history. We, of course, strongly protest against this state of affairs. We can't let this continue.

Who benefits from falsifying history? Who is trying to influence the modern perception of historical events in this way?

Mikhail Myagkov:

The falsification of history has happened before and is happening today. This is a process that undermines not only the foundations of the post-war world, where, thanks to our people and the Red Army, we achieved our Great Victory. Such attempts at falsification also undermine the results and results of the Nuremberg war trials, where the main Nazi war criminals were released, and those trials that took place over people who collaborated with the Nazis in the 50-70s. There, Nazism and the SS organization were condemned as an inhumane regime.

Today, certain neo-Nazi or right-wing parties in the same Europe, in Ukraine in particular, are raising their heads. When they say that perhaps this did not happen, it was not at all like that, and they try to justify the Nazi regime - these parties raise their heads. The falsification that there was supposedly no liberation mission of the Red Army creates the ground for the blossoming of the germs of Nazism. Against this background, various radical groups emerge. They are pursuing policies to ensure that the seeds of Nazism grow. This is racial hatred, hatred based on nationality - that is, a return to what happened in Nazi Germany.

When today in Poland they say that the Red Army is not a liberator, according to the position of the Institute of National Remembrance, the Poles fought against the Germans, and they had underground groups, the Home Army, they opposed the Red Army, which was not a liberator, but a new occupier . It is not enough to say that during the liberation of Poland the Red Army lost 600 thousand people. We liberated concentration camps, death camps. We gave the Polish people statehood. Whether Poles would speak, write, or read in Polish is a very big question. If not for our people, not for the Red Army, which liberated them. And how much we helped them in the post-war period, or even during the war, with food, in Warsaw we installed roads, infrastructure, and cleared mines. What army, which has traveled the roads of war and suffered insane losses, could carry out this noble mission of liberation, helping people, often tearing them away from themselves?

This falsification undermines the common historical memory, including in Poland itself. It is known that the army of two hundred thousand Polish troops fought shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army. She liberated her state, and then they entered Berlin together. That is, the Poles are beginning to forget about their fields. Why are they trying to clear the space - so that a student in a Polish school does not know anything about the liberation mission. Monuments are being demolished so that they do not remind of the liberation mission. A platform is being created where anything can be instilled - first of all, Russophobia and the attitude towards Russia as a hostile state. Create a barrier or springboard for the streams of hatred that will pour into Russia. This is the purpose of such falsifications that are spreading today in the West, in Poland. They are often introduced based on current development trends - Russia needs to be encircled, sanctions must be continued, bases must be planted around its borders. To do this, you need to clear your history. This is being done by throwing Russia out of the Sobibor project, demolishing monuments to the leaders of the Red Army, various newspaper articles, textbooks - everything is done in order to present us as enemies. And pour as much dirt as you like on our history.

Tell me, why don’t we, Russia, use similar topics to once again remind all residents of the former USSR about our common sacrifices? The USSR was a single interethnic country, and now everyone has gone to their national apartments. Is this right? Why is there so little support for this topic in the former USSR?

Mikhail Myagkov:

The theme of Nazi concentration camps? I have now mentioned the projects of the Russian Military Historical Society, in particular the exhibition “Remember, the world was liberated by a Soviet soldier.” We had an exhibition "Myths about War", which also touched upon the problem of the liberation mission, the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The author of the idea of ​​​​creating a film about Sobibor is the Minister of Culture, President of the Russian Historical Society Vladimir Medinsky. The director and leading actor is Khabensky. I think that this will be a very interesting film, important in terms of making people aware of what was happening. He keeps you in suspense. It's really a big picture.

We publish books and albums dedicated to this topic, and we conduct international activities to ensure that this memory is not forgotten. Our venues host conferences, speakers include people who went through these concentration camps, and those who study the history of Nazism and the Holocaust. This is constantly conveyed to the general public. We will continue this activity.

In terms of working with young people, activities should become more intense, you are right. Young people are extremely receptive. What we lay down now will stay with them for life. The interactive exhibitions we are talking about should be presented not only in the regions of Russia, but also in Europe, translated into the languages ​​of those countries where these exhibitions travel. The exhibition “Remember, the world was liberated by Soviet soldiers” was in Switzerland, Poland, and other European countries. We need as many Europeans as possible to watch these exhibitions and know why Europe is thriving today. If it weren't for the Red Army, none of this would have happened. It is unknown how much longer the Nazi regime would have lasted. Europe would be completely different, it would be deprived of its humanistic roots.

A couple of days ago I was shocked by the message about the “accountant of Auschwitz”, who died IN A HOSPITAL (!), having lived to the age of 96, and at the same time was sentenced only in 2015 to only 4 years in prison for complicity in the murder of 300 thousand (!) prisoners . How can one comment on such a manifestation of the vaunted Western democracy?

Mikhail Myagkov:

Unfortunately, I have to admit. There are figures that trials were held in the USSR against Nazi collaborators involved in the mass extermination of people. In 1945-1947 alone, 11 thousand people were convicted. Thousands were convicted in subsequent years. The trials took place in cities from the Far East to the West. Where these people were found, trials took place there. Compare with West Germany, where just over 6 thousand people were convicted before the 80s.

Today, the German government clearly advocates that such crimes have no statute of limitations. But the numbers speak for themselves. It was the Soviet Union that consistently pursued the policy that punishment for collaborating with the Nazis should be inevitable. It is known that Sobibor security guard Ivan Demjanjuk was also convicted quite recently. He got, I think, 5 years and died. A question for those judicial bodies that pass such sentences.

Of course, no matter what happens, any person involved in these terrible crimes should know that there will be punishment. What he did then will never be forgotten.

The opinions of conference participants may not coincide with the position of the editors

Instead of a preface:

"When there were no gas chambers, we shot on Wednesdays and Fridays. The children tried to hide on 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 doing, children?

How are you living, 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 rations, so I didn’t bleed.

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

And I can donate blood.

They don't know what it is?

They forgot.

Eat, children! Eat!

Why didn't you take it?

Wait, I'll take it.

Maybe you won't get it.

Lie down, it doesn't hurt, it's like falling asleep. Get down!

What's wrong with them?

Why did they lie down?

The children 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

Joseph Mengele and child

Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials

Children of Buchenwald

Mauthausen children show numbers etched into their hands

Treblinka

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

Some creatures use this photo as “proof” of hunger in Ukraine. It is not surprising that it is from Nazi crimes that they draw “inspiration” for their “revelations”

These are the children released in Salaspils

“Since the fall of 1942, masses of women, old people, and children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, Latgale were forcibly brought to the Salaspils concentration camp. Children from infancy to 12 years old were forcibly taken away from their mothers and kept in 9 barracks of which the so-called 3 sick leaves, 2 for crippled children and 4 barracks for healthy children.

The permanent population of children in Salaspils was more than 1,000 people during 1943 and 1944. Their systematic extermination took place there by:

A) organizing 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 the sick children were taken to the so-called hospital, where they died;

B) gave children poisoned coffee;

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

D) they injected children with child, female and even horse urine. Many children's eyes festered and leaked;

D) all children suffered from dysenteric diarrhea and dystrophy;

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

3) children who were crippled or injured were taken away 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, and in 1943/44. more than 6,000 people.

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

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

Most of these children who were taken out and given away to be raised 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 toddlers under the age of 4 from the Riga orphanage and the Major orphanage, where the children of executed parents, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, and prisons, were loaded onto the ship "Menden" and partly from the Salaspils camp and exterminated 289 small children on that ship.

They were driven away by the Germans to Libau, an orphanage for infants located there. Children from Baldonsky and Grivsky orphanages; nothing is known about their fate yet.

Not stopping at these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 sold low-quality products in Riga stores only using children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did small children 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 maintaining children were police and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp, Krause, and another German, Schaefer, who went to the children's camps and houses where the children were kept for “inspection.”

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

Senior NKVD operative officer, security captain /Murman/

Children were brought from the eastern lands occupied by the Germans: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine. Children ended up in Latvia with their mothers, where they were then forcibly separated. Mothers were used as free labor. Older children were also used in various kinds of auxiliary work.

According to the People's Commissariat of Education of the LSSR, which investigated the facts of the abduction of civilians 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) on kulak farms - 1,564 people.

2) to children's camps - 636 people.

3) taken into care by individual citizens - 602 people.

The list is compiled on the basis of data from the card index of the Social Department of Internal Affairs 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.

In the last days of their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, into the homes of infants, into apartments, grabbed children, drove them to the port of Riga, where they were loaded 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. 17,765 children were killed in mass shootings.

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

Abrensky district - 497
Ludza County - 732
Rezekne County and Rezekne - 2,045, incl. through Rezekne prison more than 1,200
Madona County - 373
Daugavpils - 3,960, incl. through Daugavpils prison 2,000
Daugavpils district - 1,058
Valmiera County - 315
Jelgava - 697
Ilukstsky district - 190
Bauska County - 399
Valka County - 22
Cesis County - 32
Jekabpils County - 645
Total - 10,965 people.

In Riga, dead children were buried in the Pokrovskoye, Tornakalnskoye and Ivanovskoye cemeteries, as well as in the forest near the Salaspils camp."

In the ditch

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

Children behind the wire

Soviet child prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk

“The girl who is second from the post on the right in the photo - Klavdia 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 noise in the ears and many had nosebleeds, and that steam room where all our rags were processed with great “diligence.” One day the steam room burned down, depriving many people of their last clothes.”

The Finns shot prisoners in front of children and 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 simply by a miracle. According to available Finnish documents, only seven men were shot for attempting to escape or other crimes. During the conversation, it turned out that the Sobolev family was one of those who were taken from Zaonezhye. It was difficult for Soboleva’s mother and her six children. 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, in the 125th barrack. The mother was immediately taken to the hospital. Claudia recalled with horror the disinfection carried out by the Finns. People burned out in the so-called bathhouse, and then they were doused with cold water. The food was bad, the food was spoiled, the clothes were unusable.

Only at the end of June 1944 were they able to leave 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 the prisoners: “There was little food, and it was bad. The baths were terrible. The Finns showed no pity.”

In a Finnish concentration camp

Auschwitz (Auschwitz)

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka

The photographs of 14-year-old Czeslawa Kwoka, on loan from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died from repression during World War II. In December 1942, Polish Catholic Czeslawa, originally from the town of Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz along with her mother. Three months later they both died. In 2005, photographer (and fellow prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not understand why she was here and did not understand what was being said to her. 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 cried, but could not do anything. Before being photographed, the girl wiped tears and blood from her broken lip. Frankly, I felt as if I had been beaten, but I could not intervene. It would have ended fatally for me."

Auschwitz. These children no longer face anything except nightmares at night and memories that cannot be escaped...

Rescued children

Children in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. Presumably after release

The Ravensbrück concentration camp was built, starting in November 1938, by SS forces and prisoners transferred from Sachsenhausen, in the Prussian village of Ravensbrück, near the Mecklenburg climatic resort of Fürstenberg. It was the only large concentration camp on German territory, which was designated as a so-called "guarded detention camp for women." Children of "non-Aryan" peoples had their heads shaved bald. In April 1945, the prisoners were liberated by the troops of the Second Belorussian Front.

The liberated children of Buchenwald leave the camp gates. 04/17/1945

Unfortunately, this video can only be viewed on YouTube, but you must do it...

And further.

There are idiots who claim that the first concentration camps were invented by the Bolsheviks, and the Nazis simply adopted this idea and “improved” it. I wonder what they would say about this photo:

4-year-old Lizzie van Zijl, who died of starvation and typhoid fever in the British concentration camp Bloemfontein on May 9, 1901.

The Great Patriotic War left an indelible mark on the history and destinies of people. Many lost loved ones who were killed or tortured. In the article we will look at the Nazi concentration camps and the atrocities that happened on their territories.

What is a concentration camp?

A concentration camp or concentration camp is a special place intended for the detention of persons of the following categories:

• political prisoners (opponents of the dictatorial regime);
• prisoners of war (captured soldiers and civilians).

Nazi concentration camps became notorious for their inhuman cruelty to prisoners and impossible conditions of detention. These places of detention began to appear even before Hitler came to power, and even then they were divided into women's, men's and children's. Mainly Jews and opponents of the Nazi system were kept there.

Life in the camp

Humiliation and abuse for prisoners began from the moment of transportation. People were transported in freight cars, where there was not even running water or a fenced-off latrine. Prisoners had to relieve themselves publicly, in a tank standing in the middle of the carriage.

But this was only the beginning; a lot of abuse and torture were prepared for the concentration camps of fascists who were undesirable to the Nazi regime. Torture of women and children, medical experiments, aimless exhausting work - this is not the whole list.

The conditions of detention can be judged from the prisoners’ letters: “they lived in hellish conditions, ragged, barefoot, hungry... I was constantly and severely beaten, deprived of food and water, tortured...”, “They shot me, flogged me, poisoned me with dogs, drowned me in water, beat me to death.” with sticks and starvation. They were infected with tuberculosis... suffocated by a cyclone. Poisoned with chlorine. They burned..."

The corpses were skinned and hair cut off - all this was then used in the German textile industry. The doctor Mengele became famous for his horrific experiments on prisoners, at whose hands thousands of people died. He investigated mental and physical exhaustion of the body. He conducted experiments on twins, during which they received organ transplants from each other, blood transfusions, and sisters were forced to give birth to children from their own brothers. Had sex reassignment surgery.

All fascist concentration camps became famous for such abuses; we will look at the names and conditions of detention in the main ones below.

Camp diet

Typically, the daily ration in the camp was as follows:

• bread - 130 gr;
• fat - 20 g;
• meat - 30 g;
• cereal - 120 gr;
• sugar - 27 gr.

Bread was handed out, and the rest of the products were used for cooking, which consisted of soup (issued 1 or 2 times a day) and porridge (150 - 200 grams). It should be noted that such a diet was intended only for working people. Those who, for some reason, remained unemployed received even less. Usually their portion consisted of only half a portion of bread.

List of concentration camps in different countries

Fascist concentration camps were created in the territories of Germany, allied and occupied countries. There are a lot of them, but let’s name the main ones:

• In Germany - Halle, Buchenwald, Cottbus, Dusseldorf, Schlieben, Ravensbrück, Esse, Spremberg;
• Austria - Mauthausen, Amstetten;
• France - Nancy, Reims, Mulhouse;
• Poland - Majdanek, Krasnik, Radom, Auschwitz, Przemysl;
• Lithuania - Dimitravas, Alytus, Kaunas;
• Czechoslovakia - Kunta Gora, Natra, Hlinsko;
• Estonia - Pirkul, Pärnu, Klooga;
• Belarus - Minsk, Baranovichi;
• Latvia - Salaspils.

And this is not a complete list of all concentration camps that were built by Nazi Germany in the pre-war and war years.

Salaspils

Salaspils, one might say, is the most terrible concentration camp of the Nazis, because, in addition to prisoners of war and Jews, children were also kept there. It was located on the territory of occupied Latvia and was the central eastern camp. It was located near Riga and operated from 1941 (September) to 1944 (summer).

Children in this camp were not only kept separately from adults and exterminated en masse, but were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Every day, about half a liter of blood was taken from all children, which led to the rapid death of donors.

Salaspils was not like Auschwitz or Majdanek (extermination camps), where people were herded into gas chambers and then their corpses were burned. It was used for medical research, which killed more than 100,000 people. Salaspils was not like other Nazi concentration camps. Torture of children was a routine activity here, carried out according to a schedule with the results carefully recorded.

Experiments on children

Testimony of witnesses and results of investigations revealed the following methods of extermination of people in the Salaspils camp: beating, starvation, arsenic poisoning, injection of dangerous substances (most often to children), surgical operations without painkillers, pumping out blood (only from children), executions, torture, useless heavy labor (carrying stones from place to place), gas chambers, burying alive. In order to save ammunition, the camp charter prescribed that children should be killed only with rifle butts. The atrocities of the Nazis in the concentration camps surpassed everything that humanity had seen in modern times. Such an attitude towards people cannot be justified, because it violates all conceivable and inconceivable moral commandments.

Children did not stay with their mothers for long and were usually quickly taken away and distributed. Thus, children under six years of age were kept in a special barracks where they were infected with measles. But they did not treat it, but aggravated the disease, for example, by bathing, which is why the children died within 3-4 days. The Germans killed more than 3,000 people in one year in this way. The bodies of the dead were partly burned and partly buried on the camp grounds.

The Act of the Nuremberg Trials “on the extermination of children” provided the following numbers: during the excavation of only a fifth of the concentration camp territory, 633 bodies of children aged 5 to 9 years, arranged in layers, were discovered; an area soaked in an oily substance was also found, where the remains of unburned children’s bones (teeth, ribs, joints, etc.) were found.

Salaspils is truly the most terrible Nazi concentration camp, because the atrocities described above are not all the tortures that the prisoners were subjected to. Thus, in winter, children brought in were driven barefoot and naked to a barracks for half a kilometer, where they had to wash themselves in icy water. After this, the children were driven in the same way to the next building, where they were kept in the cold for 5-6 days. Moreover, the age of the eldest child did not even reach 12 years. Everyone who survived this procedure was also subjected to arsenic poisoning.

Infants were kept separately and given injections, from which the child died in agony within a few days. They gave us coffee and poisoned cereals. About 150 children died from experiments per day. The bodies of the dead were carried out in large baskets and burned, dumped in cesspools, or buried near the camp.

Ravensbrück

If we start listing Nazi women's concentration camps, Ravensbrück will come first. This was the only camp of this type in Germany. It could accommodate thirty thousand prisoners, but by the end of the war it was overcrowded by fifteen thousand. Mostly Russian and Polish women were detained; Jews numbered approximately 15 percent. There were no prescribed instructions regarding torture and torment; the supervisors chose the line of behavior themselves.

Arriving women were undressed, shaved, washed, given a robe and assigned a number. Race was also indicated on clothing. People turned into impersonal cattle. In small barracks (in the post-war years, 2-3 refugee families lived in them) there were approximately three hundred prisoners, who were housed on three-story bunks. When the camp was overcrowded, up to a thousand people were herded into these cells, all of whom had to sleep on the same bunks. The barracks had several toilets and a washbasin, but there were so few of them that after a few days the floors were littered with excrement. Almost all Nazi concentration camps presented this picture (the photos presented here are only a small fraction of all the horrors).

But not all women ended up in the concentration camp; a selection was made beforehand. The strong and resilient, fit for work, were left behind, and the rest were destroyed. Prisoners worked at construction sites and sewing workshops.

Gradually, Ravensbrück was equipped with a crematorium, like all Nazi concentration camps. Gas chambers (nicknamed gas chambers by prisoners) appeared towards the end of the war. Ashes from crematoria were sent to nearby fields as fertilizer.

Experiments were also carried out in Ravensbrück. In a special barracks called the “infirmary,” German scientists tested new drugs, first infecting or crippling experimental subjects. There were few survivors, but even those suffered from what they had endured until the end of their lives. Experiments were also conducted with the irradiation of women with X-rays, which caused hair loss, skin pigmentation, and death. Excisions of the genital organs were carried out, after which few survived, and even those quickly aged, and at the age of 18 they looked like old women. Similar experiments were carried out in all Nazi concentration camps; torture of women and children was the main crime of Nazi Germany against humanity.

At the time of the liberation of the concentration camp by the Allies, five thousand women remained there; the rest were killed or transported to other places of detention. The Soviet troops who arrived in April 1945 adapted the camp barracks to accommodate refugees. Ravensbrück later became a base for Soviet military units.

Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald

Construction of the camp began in 1933, near the town of Weimar. Soon, Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive, becoming the first prisoners, and they completed the construction of the “hellish” concentration camp.

The structure of all structures was strictly thought out. Immediately behind the gate began the “Appelplat” (parallel ground), specially designed for the formation of prisoners. Its capacity was twenty thousand people. Not far from the gate there was a punishment cell for interrogations, and opposite there was an office where the camp fuehrer and the officer on duty - the camp authorities - lived. Deeper down were the barracks for prisoners. All barracks were numbered, there were 52 of them. At the same time, 43 were intended for housing, and workshops were set up in the rest.

The Nazi concentration camps left behind a terrible memory; their names still evoke fear and shock in many, but the most terrifying of them is Buchenwald. The crematorium was considered the most terrible place. People were invited there under the pretext of a medical examination. When the prisoner undressed, he was shot and the body was sent to the oven.

Only men were kept in Buchenwald. Upon arrival at the camp, they were assigned a number in German, which they had to learn within the first 24 hours. The prisoners worked at the Gustlovsky weapons factory, which was located a few kilometers from the camp.

Continuing to describe the Nazi concentration camps, let us turn to the so-called “small camp” of Buchenwald.

Small camp of Buchenwald

The “small camp” was the name given to the quarantine zone. The living conditions here were, even compared to the main camp, simply hellish. In 1944, when German troops began to retreat, prisoners from Auschwitz and the Compiegne camp were brought to this camp; they were mainly Soviet citizens, Poles and Czechs, and later Jews. There was not enough space for everyone, so some of the prisoners (six thousand people) were housed in tents. The closer 1945 got, the more prisoners were transported. Meanwhile, the “small camp” included 12 barracks measuring 40 x 50 meters. Torture in Nazi concentration camps was not only specially planned or for scientific purposes, life itself in such a place was torture. 750 people lived in the barracks; their daily ration consisted of a small piece of bread; those who were not working were no longer entitled to it.

Relations among prisoners were tough; cases of cannibalism and murder for someone else's portion of bread were documented. A common practice was to store the bodies of the dead in barracks in order to receive their rations. The dead man's clothes were divided among his cellmates, and they often fought over them. Due to such conditions, infectious diseases were common in the camp. Vaccinations only worsened the situation, since injection syringes were not changed.

Photos simply cannot convey all the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camp. The stories of witnesses are not intended for the faint of heart. In each camp, not excluding Buchenwald, there were medical groups of doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners. It should be noted that the data they obtained allowed German medicine to step far forward - no other country in the world had such a number of experimental people. Another question is whether it was worth the millions of tortured children and women, the inhuman suffering that these innocent people endured.

Prisoners were irradiated, healthy limbs were amputated, organs were removed, and they were sterilized and castrated. They tested how long a person could withstand extreme cold or heat. They were specially infected with diseases and introduced experimental drugs. Thus, an anti-typhoid vaccine was developed in Buchenwald. In addition to typhus, prisoners were infected with smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, and paratyphoid.

Since 1939, the camp was run by Karl Koch. His wife, Ilse, was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her love of sadism and inhumane abuse of prisoners. They feared her more than her husband (Karl Koch) and Nazi doctors. She was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". The woman owed this nickname to the fact that she made various decorative things from the skin of killed prisoners, in particular, lampshades, which she was very proud of. Most of all, she liked to use the skin of Russian prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests, as well as the skin of gypsies. Things made from such material seemed to her the most elegant.

The liberation of Buchenwald took place on April 11, 1945, at the hands of the prisoners themselves. Having learned about the approach of the allied troops, they disarmed the guards, captured the camp leadership and controlled the camp for two days until the American soldiers approached.

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau)

When listing Nazi concentration camps, it is impossible to ignore Auschwitz. It was one of the largest concentration camps, in which, according to various sources, from one and a half to four million people died. The exact details of the dead remain unclear. The victims were mainly Jewish prisoners of war, who were exterminated immediately upon arrival in gas chambers.

The concentration camp complex itself was called Auschwitz-Birkenau and was located on the outskirts of the Polish city of Auschwitz, whose name became a household name. The following words were engraved above the camp gate: “Work sets you free.”

This huge complex, built in 1940, consisted of three camps:

• Auschwitz I or the main camp - the administration was located here;
• Auschwitz II or "Birkenau" - was called a death camp;
• Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz.

Initially, the camp was small and intended for political prisoners. But gradually more and more prisoners arrived at the camp, 70% of whom were destroyed immediately. Many tortures in Nazi concentration camps were borrowed from Auschwitz. Thus, the first gas chamber began to function in 1941. The gas used was Cyclone B. The terrible invention was first tested on Soviet and Polish prisoners totaling about nine hundred people.

Auschwitz II began its operation on March 1, 1942. Its territory included four crematoria and two gas chambers. In the same year, medical experiments on sterilization and castration began on women and men.

Small camps gradually formed around Birkenau, where prisoners working in factories and mines were kept. One of these camps gradually grew and became known as Auschwitz III or Buna Monowitz. Approximately ten thousand prisoners were held here.

Like any Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz was well guarded. Contacts with the outside world were prohibited, the territory was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and guard posts were set up around the camp at a distance of a kilometer.

Five crematoria operated continuously on the territory of Auschwitz, which, according to experts, had a monthly capacity of approximately 270 thousand corpses.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. By that time, approximately seven thousand prisoners remained alive. Such a small number of survivors is due to the fact that about a year earlier, mass murders in gas chambers (gas chambers) began in the concentration camp.

Since 1947, a museum and memorial complex dedicated to the memory of all those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany began to function on the territory of the former concentration camp.

Conclusion

During the entire war, according to statistics, approximately four and a half million Soviet citizens were captured. These were mostly civilians from the occupied territories. It’s hard to even imagine what these people went through. But it was not only the bullying of the Nazis in the concentration camps that they were destined to endure. Thanks to Stalin, after liberation, returning home, they received the stigma of “traitors.” The Gulag awaited them at home, and their families were subjected to serious repression. One captivity gave way to another for them. In fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, they changed their last names and tried in every possible way to hide their experiences.

Until recently, information about the fate of prisoners after release was not advertised and kept silent. But people who have experienced this simply should not be forgotten.

Nazi concentration camps

during the Second World War. Reference

On April 27, 1940, the first Auschwitz concentration camp was created, intended for the mass extermination of people.

Concentration camp - a place for the forced isolation of real or perceived opponents of the state, political regime, etc. Unlike prisons, ordinary camps for prisoners of war and refugees, concentration camps were created by special decrees during the war, the aggravation of political struggle.

In Nazi Germany, concentration camps were an instrument of mass state terror and genocide. Although the term "concentration camp" was used to refer to all Nazi camps, there were actually several types of camps, and the concentration camp was just one of them.

Other types of camps included labor and forced labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and prisoner of war camps. As war events progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was also used in concentration camps.

Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were created after the Nazis came to power in order to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The first concentration camp in Germany was established near Dachau in March 1933.

By the beginning of World War II, there were 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In subsequent years, Hitler's Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of the European countries it occupied, turning them into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people.

Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic ones; total extermination of Jews and Gypsies. For this purpose, they were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers and other means of mass extermination of people, crematoria.

(Military Encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing House. Moscow. In 8 volumes - 2004 ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)

There were even special death (extermination) camps, where the liquidation of prisoners proceeded at a continuous and accelerated pace. These camps were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor belt was built that turned several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.

Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled every aspect of their lives. Violators of the peace were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, food deprivation and other forms of punishment. Prisoners were classified according to their place of birth and reasons for imprisonment.

Initially, prisoners in the camps were divided into four groups: political opponents of the regime, representatives of the “inferior races,” criminals and “unreliable elements.” The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, were subject to unconditional physical extermination and were kept in separate barracks.

They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, they were sent to the most grueling works. Among the political prisoners were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists and social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, and members of various religious sects. Among the “unreliable” were homosexuals, alarmists, dissatisfied people, etc.

There were also criminals in the concentration camps, whom the administration used as overseers of political prisoners.

All concentration camp prisoners were required to wear distinctive insignia on their clothing, including a serial number and a colored triangle (“Winkel”) on the left side of the chest and right knee. (In Auschwitz, the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm.) All political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals – green, “unreliable” – black, homosexuals – pink, gypsies – brown.

In addition to the classification triangle, Jews also wore yellow, as well as a six-pointed “Star of David”. A Jew who violated racial laws ("racial desecrator") was required to wear a black border around a green or yellow triangle.

Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore the sewn letter “F”, the Poles - “P”, etc.). The letter "K" denoted a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter "A" - a violator of labor discipline (from German Arbeit - "work"). The weak-minded wore the Blid badge - “fool”. Prisoners who participated or were suspected of escaping were required to wear a red and white target on their chest and back.

The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where people were kept in the most difficult conditions and destroyed by various methods and means, is 14,033 points.

Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.

The concentration camp system in Germany was liquidated along with the defeat of Hitlerism, and was condemned in the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity.

Currently, the Federal Republic of Germany has adopted the division of places of forced detention of people during the Second World War into concentration camps and “other places of forced confinement, under conditions equivalent to concentration camps,” in which, as a rule, forced labor was used.

The list of concentration camps includes approximately 1,650 names of concentration camps of the international classification (main and their external commands).

On the territory of Belarus, 21 camps were approved as “other places”, on the territory of Ukraine - 27 camps, on the territory of Lithuania - 9, in Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).

On the territory of the Russian Federation, places of forced detention in the city of Roslavl (camp 130), the village of Uritsky (camp 142) and Gatchina are recognized as “other places”.

List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)

1. Arbeitsdorf (Germany)

2. Auschwitz/Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland)

3. Bergen-Belsen (Germany)

4. Buchenwald (Germany)

5. Warsaw (Poland)

6. Herzogenbusch (Netherlands)

7. Gross-Rosen (Germany)

8. Dachau (Germany)

9. Kauen/Kaunas (Lithuania)

10. Krakow-Plaszczow (Poland)

11. Sachsenhausen (GDR-FRG)

12. Lublin/Majdanek (Poland)

13. Mauthausen (Austria)

14. Mittelbau-Dora (Germany)

15. Natzweiler (France)

16. Neuengamme (Germany)

17. Niederhagen-Wewelsburg (Germany)

18. Ravensbrück (Germany)

19. Riga-Kaiserwald (Latvia)

20. Faifara/Vaivara (Estonia)

21. Flossenburg (Germany)

22. Stutthof (Poland).

Largest Nazi concentration camps

Buchenwald (Buchenwald) - one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external work teams. The largest: "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld) and "Ordruf" (in Thuringia), where the FAU projectiles were mounted. From 1937 to 1945 About 239 thousand people were prisoners of the camp. In total, 56 thousand prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured in Buchenwald.

The camp was liberated on April 10, 1945 by units of the US 80th Division. In 1958, a memorial complex dedicated to the heroes and victims of the concentration camp was opened in Buchenwald.

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau), also known by the German names Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945. in southern Poland 60 km west of Krakow. The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1 (served as the administrative center of the entire complex), Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau, "death camp"), Auschwitz 3 (a group of approximately 45 small camps set up in factories and mines around general complex).

More than 4 million people died in Auschwitz, including more than 1.2 million Jews, 140 thousand Poles, 20 thousand Gypsies, 10 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. In 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Auschwitz-Brzezinka) was opened in Auschwitz.

Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, created in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had approximately 130 branches and external work teams located in Southern Germany. More than 250 thousand people from 24 countries were prisoners of Dachau; About 70 thousand people were tortured or killed (including about 12 thousand Soviet citizens).

In 1960, a monument to the victims was unveiled in Dachau.

Majdanek (Majdanek) - a Nazi concentration camp, was created in the suburbs of the Polish city of Lublin in 1941. It had branches in southeastern Poland: Budzyn (near Krasnik), Plaszow (near Krakow), Trawniki (near Wiepsz), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. In the camp, the Nazis killed about 1.5 million people of various nationalities. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on July 23, 1944. In 1947, a museum and research institute was opened in Majdanek.

Treblinka (Treblinka) - Nazi concentration camps near the station. Treblinka in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland. In Treblinka I (1941-1944, so-called labor camp), about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II (1942-1943, extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the fascists suppressed a prisoner uprising, after which the camp was liquidated. Camp Treblinka I was liquidated in July 1944 as Soviet troops approached.

In 1964, on the site of Treblinka II, a memorial symbolic cemetery for victims of fascist terror was opened: 17 thousand tombstones made of irregular stones, a monument-mausoleum.

Ravensbrück (Ravensbruck) - the concentration camp was founded near the city of Fürstenberg in 1938 as an exclusively female camp, but later a small camp for men and another for girls were created nearby. In 1939-1945. 132 thousand women and several hundred children from 23 European countries passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were killed. On April 30, 1945, the prisoners of Ravensbrück were liberated by soldiers of the Soviet army.

Mauthausen (Mauthausen) - the concentration camp was created in July 1938, 4 km from the city of Mauthausen (Austria) as a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. Since March 1939 it has been an independent camp. In 1940 it was merged with the Gusen concentration camp and became known as Mauthausen-Gusen. It had about 50 branches scattered throughout the former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945), it housed about 335 thousand people from 15 countries. According to surviving records alone, more than 122 thousand people were killed in the camp, including more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops.

After the war, on the site of Mauthausen, 12 states, including the Soviet Union, created a memorial museum and erected monuments to those who died in the camp.