How the Nazis mocked Russian women. The rape of Berlin: the unknown history of the war

Many Soviet women who served in the Red Army were ready to commit suicide in order not to be captured. Violence, bullying, painful executions - such a fate awaited most of the captured nurses, signalmen, scouts. Only a few ended up in prisoner of war camps, but even there their situation was often even worse than that of the men of the Red Army.

During the Great Patriotic War, more than 800 thousand women fought in the ranks of the Red Army. The Germans equated Soviet nurses, scouts, snipers with partisans and did not consider them military personnel. Therefore, the German command did not apply to them even those few international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war that were in force in relation to Soviet male soldiers.

Soviet front-line nurse.
The materials of the Nuremberg trials preserved the order that was in force throughout the war: to shoot all "commissars, who can be recognized by the Soviet star on the sleeve and Russian women in uniform."
The execution most often ended a series of bullying: women were beaten, brutally raped, curses were carved on their bodies. The bodies were often stripped and thrown, without even thinking about burial. Aron Schneier's book contains the testimony of the German soldier Hans Rudhof, who saw dead Soviet nurses in 1942: “They were shot and thrown into the road. They lay naked. "
Svetlana Aleksievich, in her book "The War Does Not Have a Woman's Face", quotes the memoirs of one of the female soldiers. According to her, they always kept two cartridges for themselves in order to shoot themselves, and not be captured. The second cartridge is in case of a misfire. The same participant in the war recalled what happened to the captive nineteen-year-old nurse. When they found her, her chest was cut off and her eyes were gouged out: "They put her on a stake ... Frost, and she is white and white, and her hair is all gray." The deceased girl had letters from home and a children's toy in her backpack.

Famous for his brutality, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Friedrich Eckeln equated women with commissars and Jews. All of them, according to his order, were supposed to be interrogated with partiality and then shot.

Female soldiers in the camps

Those women who managed to avoid being shot were sent to the camps. There they faced almost constant violence. Particularly cruel were the policemen and those male prisoners of war who agreed to work for the Nazis and went over to the camp guards. Women were often given "as a reward" for their service.
In the camps, there were often no basic living conditions. The inmates of the Ravensbrück concentration camp tried to make their existence as easy as possible: they washed their heads with the ersatz coffee given out for breakfast, and secretly sharpened their combs themselves.
According to international law, prisoners of war could not be involved in work at military factories. But this was not applied to women. In 1943, captured Elizaveta Klemm, on behalf of a group of prisoners, tried to protest the decision of the Germans to send Soviet women to factory. In response, the authorities first beat everyone up, and then drove them into a cramped room where it was impossible even to move.

In Ravensbrück, female prisoners of war sewed uniforms for the German troops, worked in the infirmary. In April 1943, the famous "protest march" also took place there: the camp authorities wanted to punish the recalcitrant who referred to the Geneva Convention and demanded that they be treated as captured soldiers. The women were supposed to march through the camp grounds. And they marched. But not doomed, but chasing a step, as in a parade, in a slender column, with the song "Sacred War". The effect of the punishment turned out to be the opposite: they wanted to humiliate the women, but instead received evidence of intransigence and fortitude.
In 1942, a nurse, Elena Zaitseva, was captured near Kharkov. She was pregnant, but hid it from the Germans. She was selected to work at a military plant in the city of Neusen. The working day lasted 12 hours, we spent the night in the workshop on wooden planks. The prisoners were fed with swede and potatoes. Zaitseva worked before giving birth, nuns from a nearby monastery helped to take them. The newborn was given to the nuns, and the mother returned to work. After the end of the war, mother and daughter managed to reunite. But such stories from happy ending Little.

Soviet women in a concentration death camp.
Only in 1944 was a special circular issued by the chief of the security police and SD on the treatment of women prisoners of war. They, like other Soviet prisoners, had to be subjected to a police check. If it turned out that a woman was “politically unreliable,” then the prisoner of war status was removed from her and she was handed over to the security police. All the rest were sent to concentration camps. In fact, this was the first document in which women serving in the Soviet army were equated with male prisoners of war.
After interrogation, the "unreliable" were sent to execution. In 1944, a female major was taken to the Stutthof concentration camp. Even in the crematorium, they continued to mock her until she spat in the face of the German. After that, she was pushed alive into the furnace.

Soviet women in a column of prisoners of war.
There have been cases when women were released from the camp and transferred to the status of civilian workers. But it is difficult to say what the percentage of those actually released was. Aron Schneer notes that in the cards of many Jewish prisoners of war, the entry "released and sent to the labor exchange" actually meant something completely different. They were formally released, but in fact they were transferred from Stalag to concentration camps, where they were executed.

After captivity

Some women managed to escape from captivity and even return to the unit. But being in captivity changed them irreversibly. Valentina Kostromitina, who served as a medical instructor, recalled her friend Musa, who was in captivity. She "was terribly afraid to go to the landing, because she was in captivity." She never managed to "cross the bridge on the pier and get on the boat." Her friend's stories made such an impression that Kostromitina feared captivity even more than bombing.

A considerable number of Soviet women prisoners of war after the camps could not have children. They were often experimented with and subjected to forced sterilization.
Those who survived to the end of the war were under pressure from their own people: women were often reproached for having survived in captivity. They were expected to commit suicide but not surrender. At the same time, it was not even taken into account that many at the time of captivity did not have any weapons with them.

In development of the topic and in addition to the article Elena Senyavskaya, posted on the website on May 10, 2012, we bring to the attention of our readers a new article by the same author, published in the journal

At the final stage of the Great Patriotic War Having liberated the Soviet territory occupied by the Germans and their satellites and pursuing the retreating enemy, the Red Army crossed the state border of the USSR. From that moment on, her victorious path began through the countries of Europe - both those who languished for six years under fascist occupation, and those who acted in this war as an ally of the Third Reich, and through the territory of Hitlerite Germany itself. In the course of this advance to the West and the inevitable various contacts with the local population, Soviet servicemen, who had never previously been outside their own country, received many new, very contradictory impressions about representatives of other peoples and cultures, from which ethnopsychological stereotypes of their perception of Europeans were later formed. ... Among these impressions, the image of European women occupied the most important place. Mentions, or even detailed stories about them, are found in letters and diaries, on the pages of memoirs of many participants in the war, where lyrical and cynical assessments and intonations often alternate.

The first European country to which the Red Army entered in August 1944 was Romania. In the "Notes on the War" by the front-line poet Boris Slutsky, we find very frank lines: "Sudden, almost knocked into the sea, Constanta is revealed. It almost coincides with the average dream of happiness and after the war. Restaurants. Bathrooms. Beds with clean linen. Reptilian vendors. And - women, smart urban women - girls of Europe - the first tribute we took from the vanquished ... "Then he describes his first impressions of" abroad ": "Where first the dirt from the hands remains, and then the face is washed", feather beds instead of blankets - out of disgust caused by everyday life, immediate generalizations were made ... In Constanta we first met brothels ... Our first enthusiasm for the existence of free love quickly pass away. Not only the fear of infection and the high cost, but also the contempt for the very opportunity to buy a person, affects ... Many were proud of the type: a Romanian husband complains to the commandant's office that our officer did not pay his wife the agreed fifteen hundred lei. Everyone had a distinct consciousness: "It is impossible for us" ... Probably, our soldiers will remember Romania as a country of syphilitics ... ". And he concludes that it was in Romania, this European backwater, that "our soldier most of all felt his elevation over Europe."

Another Soviet officer, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Fyodor Smolnikov, on September 17, 1944, wrote down his impressions of Bucharest in his diary: “Hotel Ambassador, restaurant, ground floor. I see the idle audience walking, they have nothing to do, they wait. They look at me like a rarity. "Russian officer !!!" I am very modestly dressed, more than modest. Let be. We will still be in Budapest. This is as true as the fact that I am in Bucharest. First class restaurant. The audience is dressed up, the most beautiful Romanians climb their eyes defiantly (Hereinafter, it is emphasized by the author of the article)... We will spend the night in a first-class hotel. The metropolitan street is seething. There is no music, the audience is waiting. Capital, damn it! I will not give in to advertising ... "

In Hungary Soviet army faced not only armed resistance, but also with insidious blows in the back from the population, when "they killed drunken and stragglers in the farmsteads" and drowned them in silos. However, "women, not as depraved as Romanians, yielded with shameful ease ... A little love, a little dissipation, and most of all, of course, fear helped." Quoting a Hungarian lawyer, “It’s very good that Russians love children so much. It is very bad that they love women so much, "Boris Slutsky comments:" He did not take into account that Hungarian women also loved Russians, that along with the dark fear that pushed the knees of matrons and mothers of families apart, there was the tenderness of the girls and the desperate tenderness of the soldiers who surrendered themselves to the murderers their husbands. "

Grigory Chukhrai described such a case in Hungary in his memoirs. Part of it was quartered in one place. The owners of the house, where he and the soldiers settled down, during the feast "relaxed under the influence of Russian vodka and admitted that they were hiding their daughter in the attic." The Soviet officers were indignant: “Who do you take us for? We are not fascists! " “The owners were ashamed, and soon a skinny girl named Mariyka appeared at the table and eagerly began to eat. Then, having got used to it, she began to flirt and even ask us questions ... By the end of dinner, everyone was in a friendly mood and drank to "borotshaz" (friendship). Mariyka understood this toast too bluntly. When we went to bed, she appeared in my room in one undershirt. As a Soviet officer, I immediately realized that a provocation was being prepared. “They expect that I will be seduced by the charms of Mariyka and will make a fuss. But I will not give in to provocation, ”I thought. Yes, and the charms of Mariyka did not appeal to me - I showed her to the door.

The next morning, the hostess, putting food on the table, rattled dishes. “She's nervous. The provocation failed! " - I thought. I shared this thought with our Hungarian translator. He burst out laughing.

This is not a provocation! You have been shown a friendly disposition, and you have neglected it. Now you are not considered a person in this house. You need to move to another apartment!

Why did they hide their daughter in the attic?

They were afraid of violence. It is accepted in our country that a girl, before getting married, with the approval of her parents, can experience intimacy with many men. They say here: they don't buy a cat in a tied sack ... "

Young, physically healthy men had a natural attraction to women. But the lightness of European morals corrupted some of the Soviet fighters, while others, on the contrary, convinced that the relationship should not be reduced to simple physiology. Sergeant Alexander Rodin wrote down his impressions of the visit - out of curiosity! - a brothel in Budapest, where part of it stood for some time after the end of the war: “... After leaving, a disgusting, shameful feeling of lies and falsehood arose, a picture of a woman's obvious, frank pretense did not go out of my head ... It is interesting that such an unpleasant aftertaste from visiting a brothel remained not only with me, a young man, who was also brought up on principles such as “do not give a kiss without love, but also with most of our soldiers, with whom I had to talk ... Around the same days, I had to talk with one a pretty Magyark (she knew Russian from somewhere). When she asked if I liked Budapest, I replied that I liked it, only brothels are embarrassing. "But why?" the girl asked. Because it is unnatural, wild, - I explained: - a woman takes money and after that, immediately begins to "love!" The girl thought for a while, then nodded in agreement and said: "You are right: it is ugly to take money forward" ... "

Poland left other impressions about itself. According to the poet David Samoilov, “... in Poland they kept us strict. It was difficult to escape from the location. And pranks were severely punished. " And he gives the impressions of this country, where the only positive moment was the beauty of Polish women. “I cannot say that we liked Poland very much,” he wrote. - Then in it I did not come across anything noble and chivalrous. On the contrary, everything was philistine, farmer - both concepts and interests. Yes, and in eastern Poland they looked at us wary and semi-hostile, trying to rip off the liberators of what was possible. However, the women were comfortingly beautiful and flirtatious, they captivated us with their mannerisms, cooing speech, where everything suddenly became clear, and they themselves were captivated at times by rude masculine strength or a soldier's uniform. And their pale, emaciated former admirers, gritting their teeth, went into the shadows for a while ... ".

But not all assessments of Polish women looked so romantic. On October 22, 1944, junior lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand wrote in his diary: with beautiful Polish women, proud to the point of disgust ... ... I was told about Polish women: they lured our soldiers and officers into their arms, and when it came to bed, they cut off their penises with a razor, strangled their throats with their hands, and scratched their eyes. Crazy, wild, ugly females! You have to be careful with them and not get carried away by their beauty. And the Poles are beautiful, ugly. " However, there are other moods in his notes. On October 24, he records the following meeting: “Today, beautiful Polish girls turned out to be my companions to one of the villages. They complained about the absence of the guys in Poland. They also called me "Pan", but they were inviolable. I patted one of them gently on the shoulder, in response to her remark about men, and consoled me with the thought of an open road for her to Russia - there are many men there. She hastened to step aside, and to my words she replied that there would be men for her here too. Said goodbye by shaking hands. So we didn’t come to an agreement, but nice girls, even if they’re Pole ”. A month later, on November 22, he wrote down his impressions of the first large Polish city of Minsk-Mazowiecki that he met, and among the description of the architectural beauties and the number of bicycles that amazed him among all categories of the population, he gives a special place to the townspeople: “Noisy idle crowd, women, as one, in white special hats, apparently put on from the wind, which make them look like forty and surprise with their novelty... Men in triangular caps, in hats - fat, neat, empty. How many there are! ... Dyed lips, lined eyebrows, pretentiousness, excessive delicacy ... How unlike the natural life of a human being. It seems that people themselves live and move on purpose only in order to be looked at by others, and everyone will disappear when the last spectator leaves the city ... "

Not only Polish city dwellers, but also villagers left a strong, albeit contradictory, impression of themselves. “The vitality of the Poles, who survived the horrors of war and the German occupation, was striking,” recalled Alexander Rodin. - Sunday afternoon in a Polish village. Beautiful, elegant, in silk dresses and stockings, Polka women, who on weekdays are ordinary peasant women, rake dung, barefoot, tirelessly work on the farm. Older women also look fresh and youthful. Although there are black frames around the eyes ..."He further cites his diary entry dated November 5, 1944:" Sunday, the inhabitants are all dressed up. They are going to visit each other. Men in felt hats, ties, jumpers. Women in silk dresses, bright, unworn stockings. Pink-cheeked girls - "panenki". Beautifully curled blonde hairstyles ... The soldiers in the corner of the hut are also animated. But whoever is sensitive will notice that this is a painful revival. Everyone laughs loudly to show that they are not bothered by this, that it does not even bother them at all and is not enviable at all. Are we worse than them? The devil knows what happiness it is - a peaceful life! After all, I have not seen her at all in civilian life! " His fellow soldier Sergeant Nikolai Nesterov wrote in his diary on the same day: “Today is a day off, the Poles, nicely dressed, gather in one hut and sit in pairs. Even somehow it becomes uncomfortable. Wouldn't I be able to sit like this? .. "

Galina Yartseva, a serviceman, is much more ruthless in her assessment of the "European morals" reminiscent of "a feast during the plague". On February 24, 1945, she wrote to a friend from the front: “… If there was an opportunity, it would be possible to send wonderful parcels of their trophy things. There is something. It would be ours stripped and undressed. What cities I saw, what men and women. And looking at them, you are possessed by such evil, such hatred! They walk, love, live, and you go and set them free. They laugh at the Russians - "Schwein!" Yes Yes! Bastards ... I do not like anyone except the USSR, except for those peoples who live with us. I don’t believe in any friendship with Poles and other Lithuanians ... ”.

In Austria, where Soviet troops broke into in the spring of 1945, they faced a “general surrender”: “Whole villages were covered with white rags. Elderly women raised their hands up when they met a man in a Red Army uniform. " It was here, according to B. Slutsky, that the soldiers "got hold of the blond women." At the same time, “the Austrians did not turn out to be overly stubborn. The overwhelming majority of peasant girls married "spoiled". The holiday soldiers felt like Christ in their bosom. In Vienna, our guide, a bank official, marveled at the persistence and impatience of the Russians. He believed that gallantry is enough to get everything you want from the wreath. " That is, it was not only a matter of fear, but also of certain peculiarities of the national mentality and traditional behavior.

And finally Germany. And the women of the enemy - mothers, wives, daughters, sisters of those who, from 1941 to 1944, sneered at the civilian population in the occupied territory of the USSR. How did the Soviet servicemen see them? The appearance of German women walking in a crowd of refugees is described in the diary of Vladimir Bogomolov: “Women - old and young - in hats, in headscarves with a turban and just a canopy, like our women, in smart coats with fur collars and in ragged clothes of an incomprehensible cut ... Many women wear dark glasses so as not to squint from the bright May sun and thus protect their face from wrinkles.... "Lev Kopelev recalled a meeting in Allenstein with evacuated Berliners:" There are two women on the sidewalk. Intricate hats, one even with a veil. Good-quality coats, and they themselves are sleek, sleek. " And he cited the soldiers' comments addressed to them: "chickens", "turkeys", "that would be so smooth ..."

How did the Germans behave when they met Soviet troops? In the report of the deputy. Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. begin to gradually take to the streets, almost all of them have white armbands on their sleeves. When meeting with our servicemen, many women raise their hands up, cry and tremble with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all the same as their fascist propaganda painted them, this fear quickly passes, more and more and more population takes to the streets and offers his services, trying in every possible way to emphasize his loyalty to the Red Army. "

The greatest impression on the winners was made by the humility and prudence of the German women. In this regard, it is worth citing the story of N.A. Orlov, a mortarman, who was shocked by the behavior of German women in 1945: “Nobody in the minbat killed civilian Germans. Our special officer was a "Germanophile". If this happened, the reaction of the punitive authorities to such an excess would be quick. About violence against German women. It seems to me that some, talking about such a phenomenon, "exaggerate" a little. I remember an example of a different kind. We went into some German city, settled in houses. "Frau", 45 years old, appears and asks "the commandant's hera." They brought her to Marchenko. She claims to be in charge of the quarter, and has gathered 20 German women to sexually (!!!) serve Russian soldiers. Marchenko understood the German language, and to the deputy political officer Dolgoborodov, who was standing next to me, I translated the meaning of what the German woman said. The reaction of our officers was angry and abusive. The German woman was driven away, along with her ready-to-serve "detachment". In general, German obedience stunned us. Expected from the Germans guerrilla warfare, sabotage. But for this nation, order - Ordnung - is above all. If you are a winner, then they are "on their hind legs", and deliberately and not under duress. This is such a psychology ... ".

A similar case is cited by David Samoilov in his military notes: “In Arendsfeld, where we have just settled down, a small crowd of women with children appeared. They were led by a huge mustachioed German woman of about fifty - Frau Friedrich. She stated that she was a representative of the civilian population and asked to register the remaining residents. We replied that this could be done as soon as the commandant's office appeared.

It's impossible, ”said Frau Friedrich. “There are women and children here. They need to be registered.

The civilian population with screams and tears confirmed her words.

Not knowing what to do, I suggested that they take the basement of the house where we were accommodated. And they, calmed down, went down to the basement and began to be accommodated there, awaiting the authorities.

Herr Commissioner, Frau Friedrich told me complacently (I wore a leather jacket). “We understand that soldiers have small needs. They are ready, - continued Frau Friedrich, - to provide them with several younger women for ...

I did not continue the conversation with Frau Friedrich. "

After talking with the inhabitants of Berlin on May 2, 1945, Vladimir Bogomolov wrote in his diary: “We enter one of the surviving houses. Everything is quiet, dead. We knock, please open. You can hear them whispering in the corridor, talking dully and excitedly. Finally the door opens. The women without age, huddled in a close group, bow down in fear, low and obsequiously. German women are afraid of us, they were told that Soviet soldiers, especially Asians, will rape and kill them ... Fear and hatred on their faces. But sometimes it seems that they like to be defeated - their behavior is so helpful, their smiles are so sweet and their words are sweet. These days, there are stories about how our soldier entered a German apartment, asked for a drink, and the German woman, as soon as she saw him, lay down on the sofa and took off her tights. "

“All German women are depraved. They have nothing against sleeping with them " , - this opinion existed in Soviet troops and was supported not only by many illustrative examples, but also their unpleasant consequences, which were soon discovered by military doctors.

The directive of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00343 / Ш of April 15, 1945 read: “During the stay of the troops on the enemy's territory, the incidence of venereal diseases among military personnel has sharply increased. A study of the reasons for this situation shows that venereal diseases are widespread among Germans. Before the retreat, as well as now, in the territory we occupied, the Germans took the path of artificial infection with syphilis and gonorrhea of ​​German women in order to create large foci for the spread of venereal diseases among the soldiers of the Red Army».

On April 26, 1945, the Military Council of the 47th Army reported that “... In March, the number of venereal diseases among military personnel increased in comparison with February of this year. four times. ... The female part of the German population in the surveyed areas is affected by 8-15%. There are cases when the enemy specifically leaves German women sick with venereal diseases to infect military personnel. "

To implement the Decree of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 056 dated April 18, 1945 on the prevention of venereal diseases in the troops of the 33rd Army, a leaflet was issued with the following content:

“Comrades, servicemen!

You are being seduced by German women, whose husbands have gone around all the brothels of Europe, infected themselves and infected their German women.

Before you are those German women who were deliberately abandoned by the enemies in order to spread venereal diseases and thereby incapacitate the soldiers of the Red Army.

We must understand that our victory over the enemy is close and that soon you will be able to return to your families.

What kind of eyes will the one who brings a contagious disease look into the eyes of his loved ones?

Can we, soldiers of the heroic Red Army, be a source of infectious diseases in our country? NO! For the moral character of a Red Army soldier must be as pure as the image of his Motherland and family! "

Even in the memoirs of Lev Kopelev, who angrily describes the facts of violence and looting of Soviet servicemen in East Prussia, there are lines reflecting the other side of the "relationship" with the local population: they sell a loaf of bread and wives and daughters. " The squeamish tone in which Kopelev conveys these "stories" implies their unreliability. However, they are confirmed by many sources.

Vladimir Gelfand described in his diary his courtship with a German girl (the entry was made six months after the end of the war, on October 26, 1945, but still very characteristic): “I wanted to enjoy the caresses of pretty Margot to my heart's content - kisses and hugs were not enough. I expected more, but did not dare to demand and insist. The girl's mother was pleased with me. Still would! I brought sweets and butter, sausage, expensive German cigarettes to the altar of trust and affection from my relatives. Already half of these products are enough to have a complete basis and the right to do anything with the daughter in front of the mother, and she will not say anything against it. For food products today are more expensive even than life, and even such a young and sweet sensual woman, like the gentle beauty Margot. "

Interesting diary entries were left by the Australian war correspondent Osmar White, who in 1944-1945. was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army under the command of George Paton. Here is what he wrote in Berlin in May 1945, just a few days after the end of the assault: “I walked through the night cabaret, starting with the Femina near Potsdammerplatz. It was a warm and humid evening. The air was filled with the smell of sewers and rotting corpses. Femina's façade was covered in futuristic nude pictures and advertisements in four languages. The ballroom and restaurant were filled with Russian, British and American officers escorting (or hunting down) the women. A bottle of wine cost $ 25, a horse meat and potato hamburger $ 10, a pack of American cigarettes a mind-boggling $ 20. The cheeks of the Berlin women were rouged, and their lips were painted in such a way that it seemed that Hitler had won the war. Many women wore silk stockings. The lady-hostess of the evening opened the concert in German, Russian, English and French... This provoked a taunt from the captain of the Russian artillery, who was sitting next to me. He leaned over to me and said in decent English: “Such a quick transition from national to international! RAF bombs are great professors, aren't they? "

The general impression of European women that Soviet servicemen have is sleek and smart (in comparison with their war-worn compatriots in the half-starved rear, in the lands liberated from the occupation, and with front-line friends dressed in washed tunics), available, selfish, loose or cowardly submissive. The exceptions were Yugoslav and Bulgarian women. The harsh and ascetic Yugoslav partisans were perceived as comrades in and were considered inviolable. And given the severity of morals in Yugoslav army, “The partisan girls probably looked at the PW [field wives] as being of a special, nasty sort”. Boris Slutsky recalled about Bulgarians as follows: “... After Ukrainian complacency, after Romanian debauchery, the severe inaccessibility of Bulgarian women amazed our people. Almost no one boasted of victories. It was the only country where officers were often accompanied on a walk by men, almost never by women. Later, the Bulgarians were proud when they were told that the Russians were going to return to Bulgaria for brides - the only ones in the world who remained clean and untouched. "

Czech beauties, who joyfully greeted Soviet soldiers-liberators, left a pleasant impression. Embarrassed tankers from combat vehicles covered with oil and dust, decorated with wreaths and flowers, said among themselves: “... Something tank bride, to clean it up. And their girls, you know, they put on. Good people... I have not seen such a sincere people for a long time ... ”The friendliness and hospitality of the Czechs was sincere. “… - If it were possible, I would kiss all the soldiers and officers of the Red Army for liberating my Prague, - to the general friendly and approving laughter, said ... a worker of the Prague tram”, - this is how he described the atmosphere in the liberated Czech capital and the mood of local residents May 11, 1945 Boris Polevoy.

But in other countries, through which the army of victors passed, the female part of the population did not command respect. “In Europe, women gave up, changed before anyone else ... - wrote B. Slutsky. - I was always shocked, confused, disoriented by the lightness, shameful lightness of love relationships. Decent women, of course, disinterested, were like prostitutes - hasty availability, a desire to avoid intermediate stages, no interest in the motives pushing a man to get closer to them. Like people who learned three obscene words from the entire vocabulary of love lyrics, they reduced the whole thing to a few body movements, causing resentment and contempt among the most yellow-eyed of our officers ... Restraining motives were not ethics at all, but the fear of infection, fear of publicity, of pregnancy. , - and added that under the conditions of conquest, "general depravity covered and hid a special female depravity, made her invisible and shameful."

However, among the motives that contributed to the spread of "international love", despite all the prohibitions and harsh orders of the Soviet command, there were several more: female curiosity for "exotic" lovers and the unprecedented generosity of Russians to the object of their sympathy, which favorably distinguished them from tight-fisted European men.

Junior lieutenant Daniil Zlatkin at the very end of the war ended up in Denmark, on the island of Bornholm. In his interview, he said that the interest of Russian men and European women to each other was mutual: “We did not see women, but we had to ... And when we arrived in Denmark ... it is free, please. They wanted to check, test, try a Russian person, what it is, how it is, and it seemed to work better than the Danes. Why? We were disinterested and kind ... I gave a box of chocolates half a table, I gave 100 roses to an unknown woman ... for her birthday ... "

At the same time, few people thought about a serious relationship, about marriage, in view of the fact that the Soviet leadership clearly outlined its position on this issue. In the Decree of the Military Council of the 4th Ukrainian front of April 12, 1945 it said: “1. Explain to all officers and all personnel of the front troops that marriage with foreign women is illegal and strictly prohibited. 2. On all cases of marriage of military personnel with foreign women, as well as on the connections of our people with hostile elements of foreign states, report immediately on command in order to bring those responsible to account for the loss of vigilance and violation of Soviet laws. " The directive of the head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Belorussian Front of April 14, 1945 read: “According to the head of the Main Directorate of Human Resources of the NCO, the Center continues to receive applications from officers of the active army with a request to authorize marriages with women of foreign states (Polish, Bulgarian, Czech and etc.). Such facts should be seen as dulling vigilance and dulling patriotic feelings. Therefore, it is necessary in political and educational work to pay attention to a deep explanation of the inadmissibility of such acts on the part of the officers of the Red Army. Explain to all the officers who do not understand the futility of such marriages, the inexpediency of marrying foreign women, up to a direct prohibition, and not allow a single case. "

And women did not indulge themselves with illusions about the intentions of their gentlemen. “At the beginning of 1945, even the stupidest Hungarian peasant women did not believe our promises. The European women were already aware that we were forbidden to marry foreign women, and they suspected that there was a similar order for a joint appearance in a restaurant, cinema, etc. This did not prevent them from loving our ladies' men, but it gave this love a purely "owed" [carnal] character, "wrote B. Slutsky.

On the whole, it should be admitted that the image of European women that was formed among the soldiers of the Red Army in 1944-1945, with rare exceptions, turned out to be very far from the suffering figure with his hands chained, looking with hope from the Soviet poster "Europe will be free!" ...

Notes (edit)
Slutsky B. War Notes. Poems and ballads. SPb., 2000.S. 174.
In the same place. S. 46-48.
In the same place. S. 46-48.
Smolnikov F.M. We are at war! The diary of a front-line soldier. Letters from the front. M., 2000.S. 228-229.
Slutsky B. Decree. Op. S. 110, 107.
In the same place. P. 177.
Chukhrai G. My war. M .: Algorithm, 2001.S. 258-259.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000.S. 127.
Samoilov D. People of one option. From military notes // Aurora. 1990. No. 2.P. 67.
In the same place. S. 70-71.
Gelfand V.N. Diaries 1941-1946. http://militera.lib.ru/db/gelfand_vn/05.html
In the same place.
In the same place.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000.S. 110.
In the same place. S. 122-123.
In the same place. P. 123.
Central archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. F. 372. Op. 6570. D; 76.L. 86.
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In the same place. S. 127-128.
Bogomolov V.O. Germany Berlin. Spring 1945 // Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did I dream about you? .. M .: The magazine "Our contemporary", No. 10-12, 2005, No. 1, 2006. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03. html
Kopelev L. Keep forever. In 2 books. Book 1: Parts 1-4. M .: Terra, 2004. Ch. 11.http: //lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (hereinafter - RGASPI). F. 17. Op. 125.D. 321.L. 10-12.
From an interview with N.A. Orlov on the site "I remember". http://www.iremember.ru/minometchiki/orlov-naum-aronovich/stranitsa-6.html
Samoilov D. Decree. Op. P. 88.
Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did I dream about you? .. // Our contemporary. 2005. No. 10-12; 2006. No. 1. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03.html
From the Political report on bringing to the personnel the directives of Comrade Stalin No. 11072 dated April 20, 1945 at 185 rifle division... April 26, 1945 Quoted. Quoted from: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. Op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
Cit. on: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. Op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
In the same place.
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State Archives Russian Federation... F. p-9401. Op. 2.D. 96.L.203.
Kopelev L. Decree. Op. Ch. 12.http: //lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Gelfand V.N. Decree. Op.
White Osmar. Conquerors "Road: An Eyewitness Account of Germany 1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003. XVII, 221 pp. Http://www.argo.net.au/andre/osmarwhite.html
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Polevoy B. Liberation of Prague // From the Soviet Information Bureau ... Journalism and sketches of the war years. 1941-1945. T. 2. 1943-1945. Moscow: APN Publishing House, 1982.S. 439.
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In the same place. P. 180.
From an interview with D.F. Zlatkin on June 16, 1997 // Personal archive.
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The article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Humanitarian science foundation, project No. 11-01-00363а.

Used in the design soviet poster 1944 "Europe will be free!" Artist V. Koretsky

The second World War walked through humanity like a roller. Millions of dead and many more mutilated lives and destinies. All the warring parties did truly monstrous things, justifying everything with war.

Of course, the Nazis especially distinguished themselves in this regard, and this does not even take into account the Holocaust. There are many, both documented and frankly fictional stories about what the German soldiers got up to.

One of the high-ranking German officers recalled the briefings they received. Interestingly, there was only one order regarding female military personnel: “Shoot”.

Most did so, but the bodies of women in Red Army uniforms - soldiers, nurses or nurses - are often found among the dead, with traces of cruel torture left on their bodies.

Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had the Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And in spite of everything they dragged her out onto the road, stripped her and shot her.

But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her whole body was turned into a solid bloody mess. The Nazis did much the same with female partisans. Before being executed, they could be stripped naked and kept in the cold for a long time.

Of course, the captives were constantly raped. And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to enter into an intimate relationship with the captives, then the ordinary rank and file had more freedom in this matter. And if the girl did not die after the whole company used her, then she was simply shot.

The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and someone from the higher ranks of the camp took her to him as a servant. Although this did not save much from rape.

In this regard, the most cruel place was camp No. 337. There prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, a hundred people were put in barracks at once, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were killed in the Stalag every day.

Women were tortured in the same way as men, or even much worse. In terms of torture, the Spanish Inquisition could have envied the Nazis. Very often, girls were bullied by other women, for example the wives of the commandants, just for fun. The nickname of the commandant of Stalag No. 337 was "the cannibal".

"I did not immediately dare to publish this chapter from the book" Captivity "on the site. This is one of the most terrible and heroic stories. Low bow to you, women, for everything transferred and, alas, not appreciated by the state, people, researchers. it was difficult to write. It is even more difficult to talk with former prisoners. Low bow to you - Heroines. "

"And there were no such beautiful women in the whole earth ..." Job. (42:15)

"My tears were bread for me day and night ... ... my enemies swear at me ... " Psalter. (41: 4: 11)

From the first days of the war, tens of thousands of female medical workers were mobilized into the Red Army. Thousands of women volunteered to join the army and militia divisions. On the basis of the GKO decrees of March 25, April 13 and 23, 1942, a mass mobilization of women began. Only at the call of the Komsomol, 550 thousand Soviet women became soldiers. 300 thousand - drafted into the air defense forces. Hundreds of thousands - in the military medical and sanitary service, signal troops, road and other units. In May 1942, another GKO decree was adopted - on the mobilization of 25 thousand women in the Navy.

Three air regiments were formed from women: two bomber and one fighter, the 1st separate female volunteer rifle brigade, the 1st separate female reserve rifle regiment.

The Central Women's Sniper School, established in 1942, trained 1,300 female snipers.

Ryazan Infantry School named after Voroshilov trained female commanders of rifle units. In 1943 alone, 1,388 people graduated from it.

During the war, women served in all branches of the military and represented all military specialties. Women accounted for 41% of all doctors, 43% of paramedics, 100% of nurses. In total, 800 thousand women served in the Red Army.

However, only 40% of women-sanitary instructors and nurses in the active army constituted, which violates the prevailing idea of ​​a girl under fire saving the wounded. In his interview, A. Volkov, who went through the whole war as a medical instructor, refutes the myth that only girls were medical instructors. According to him, the girls were nurses and orderlies in the medical battalions, and medical instructors and orderlies on the front line in the trenches were mostly men.

"They didn't even take sick men to the courses of medical instructors. Only hefty ones! The work of a medical instructor is harder than that of a sapper. A medical instructor must crawl his trenches at least four times a night in order to find the wounded. This is in the movies, books they write: she is so weak, dragging the wounded We were especially warned: if you drag a wounded man to the rear, he will be shot on the spot for desertion. After all, what is a medical instructor for? to drag him to the rear, for this the medical instructor has everything under his command. There is always someone to take him out of the battlefield. The medical instructor does not obey anyone.

Not in everything one can agree with A. Volkov. Girls-medical instructors rescued the wounded, pulling them out on themselves, dragging them along, there are many examples of this. Another thing is interesting. The front-line women themselves note the discrepancy between the stereotypical screen images and the truth of the war.

For example, the former medical instructor Sofya Dubnyakova says: “I watch films about the war: a nurse is on the front line, she walks neat, clean, not in cotton trousers, but in a skirt, she has a cap on a crest .... Well, not true! ... We could pull out the wounded like this? .. It's not that you crawl in a skirt when there are only men around. But to tell the truth, we were only given skirts at the end of the war. Then we got knitwear underwear instead of men's underwear. "

In addition to the medical instructors, among whom there were women, the medical orderlies were porters - they were only men. They also helped the wounded. However, their main task is to carry out the already bandaged wounded from the battlefield.

On August 3, 1941, the People's Commissar of Defense issued Order No. 281 "On the Procedure for Presenting Military Nurses and Porters for Good Combat Work to the Government Award." The work of orderlies and porters was equated with a military feat. The order stated: "For the removal of 15 wounded from the battlefield with their rifles or light machine guns, submit each orderly and porter for the government award with a medal" For military merit "or" For courage ". For the removal of 25 wounded from the battlefield with their weapons to submit to the Order of the Red Star, for the removal of 40 wounded - to the Order of the Red Banner, for the removal of 80 wounded - to the Order of Lenin.

150 thousand Soviet women were awarded military orders and medals. 200 - Orders of Glory, 2nd and 3rd degree. Four became full holders of the Order of Glory of three degrees. 86 women were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

At all times, the service of women in the army was considered immoral. There are a lot of offensive lies about them, it is enough to remember the PPZh - a field-field wife.

Oddly enough, such an attitude towards women was generated by male front-line soldiers. War veteran N.S. Posylaev recalls: "As a rule, women who ended up at the front soon became the officers' mistresses. But how else: if a woman is on her own, there will be no end to harassment. It's a different matter with someone ..."

To be continued...

A. Volkov said that when a group of girls arrived in the army, the "merchants" immediately came for them: "First, the youngest and most beautiful were taken by the army headquarters, then by the headquarters of a lower rank."

In the fall of 1943, a girl-medical instructor arrived in his company at night. And only one medical instructor is assigned to the company. It turns out that the girl “was harassed everywhere, and since she was not inferior to anyone, they sent her all the way down. From the army headquarters to the division headquarters, then to the regiment headquarters, then to the company, and the company commander sent the hard-to-reach into the trenches. "

Zina Serdyukova, a former foreman of the reconnaissance company of the 6th Guards Cavalry Corps, knew how to behave strictly with soldiers and commanders, but one day the following happened:

“It was winter, the platoon was quartered in a rural house, I had a nook there. In the evening, the regiment commander summoned me. Sometimes he himself set the task of sending him to the rear of the enemy. This time he was drunk, the table with the leftovers of food was not cleared. Without saying anything, he rushed to me, trying to undress. I knew how to fight, I'm a scout after all. And then he called the orderly, ordering to hold me. The two of them tore my clothes off. The hostess with whom I was quartered flew into my screams, and only this saved me. I ran through the village, half-naked, insane. For some reason, I thought that I would find protection from the corps commander, General Sharaburko, he called me his daughter in his father's way. The adjutant would not let me in, but I rushed to the general, beaten, disheveled. She told me incoherently how Colonel M. tried to rape me. The general reassured him, saying that I would never see Colonel M. again. A month later, my company commander reported that the colonel was killed in action, he was in the penal battalion. That's what war is, it's not just bombs, tanks, exhausting marches ... "

Everything was in life at the front, where "there are four steps to death." However, most veterans remember with sincere respect the girls who fought at the front. Those who were sitting in the rear, behind the backs of women who had gone to the front as volunteers, scolded most often.

Former front-line soldiers, despite the difficulties they had to face in the men's team, remember their fighting friends with warmth and gratitude.

Rachel Berezina, in the army since 1942 - a translator-reconnaissance officer of military intelligence, ended the war in Vienna as a senior translator of the intelligence department of the First Guards Mechanized Corps under the command of Lieutenant General I.N. Russiyanov. She says that they treated her very respectfully, in the intelligence department, in her presence, they even stopped swearing.

Maria Fridman, a scout of the 1st division of the NKVD, which fought in the area of ​​Nevskaya Dubrovka near Leningrad, recalls that the scouts protected her, filled her with sugar and chocolate, which they found in German dugouts. True, sometimes we had to defend ourselves with a fist in the teeth.

“If you don't give it to the teeth, you will be lost! .. In the end, the scouts began to protect me from other people's admirers:“ If no one, so no one. ”

When girls-volunteers from Leningrad appeared in the regiment, every month we were dragged to the “brood,” as we called it. In the medical battalion they checked whether anyone had become pregnant ... After one such "brood" the regimental commander asked me in surprise: "Maruska, who are you taking care of?" They will kill us anyway ... ”They were rough people, but kind. And fair. Later, I have never met such militant justice as in the trenches ”.

The everyday difficulties that Maria Fridman had to face at the front are now remembered with irony.

“The lice ate a soldier. They pull off their shirts, pants, but what is the girl's feeling? I have to look for an abandoned dugout and there, stripping naked, I tried to get rid of lice. Sometimes they helped me, someone would stand at the door and say: "Don't poke your nose, Maruska is crushing lice there!"

And a bath day! And go out of necessity! Somehow I retired, climbed under a bush, above the breastwork of a trench, the Germans either did not immediately notice, or they let me sit quietly, but when I began to pull on my pants, it whistled left and right. I fell into a trench, pants at my heels. Oh, they giggled in the trenches about how Maruskin had blinded the Germans' ass ...

At first, I must confess, I was annoyed by this soldier's cackle, until I realized that they were not laughing at me, but at their own soldier's fate, covered in blood and lice, laughing in order to survive, not to go crazy. And it was enough for me that after a bloody skirmish someone asked in alarm: "Manka, are you alive?"

M. Fridman fought at the front and behind enemy lines, was wounded three times, awarded the medal "For Courage", the Order of the Red Star ...

To be continued...

Front-line girls bore all the hardships of front-line life on an equal basis with men, not yielding to them either in courage or in military skill.

The Germans, whose women in the army carried only auxiliary service, were extremely surprised at such an active participation of Soviet women in hostilities.

They even tried to play the "women's card" in their propaganda, talking about the inhumanity of the Soviet system, which throws women into the fire of war. An example of this propaganda is a German leaflet that appeared at the front in October 1943: "If a friend was wounded ..."

The Bolsheviks have always amazed the whole world. And in this war they gave something completely new:

« The woman at the front! Since ancient times, people have been fighting and everyone has always believed that war is a man's business, men should fight, and it never occurred to anyone to involve women in war. True, there were isolated cases, like the notorious "shock women" at the end of the last war - but these were exceptions and they went down in history as a curiosity or anecdote.

But no one has thought of the mass involvement of women in the army as fighters, on the front line with arms in hand, except for the Bolsheviks.

Every nation strives to protect its women from danger, to preserve a woman, for a woman is a mother, the preservation of the nation depends on her. Most men may die, but women must survive, or the whole nation may die. "

Did the Germans suddenly think about the fate of the Russian people, they are worried about the question of its preservation. Of course not! It turns out that all this is just a preamble to the most important German thought:

"Therefore, the government of any other country, in the event of excessive losses threatening the continued existence of the nation, would try to withdraw its country from the war, because every national government is dear to its people." (Highlighted by the Germans. Here is the main idea: we must end the war, and the government needs a national one. - Aaron Schneer).

« The Bolsheviks think differently. The Georgian Stalin and the various Kaganovichs, Berias, Mikoyans and the entire Jewish kagal (well, how can one do without anti-Semitism in propaganda! - Aaron Schneer), sitting on the people's neck, absolutely does not give a damn about the Russian people and all other peoples of Russia and Russia itself. They have one goal - to preserve their power and their skins. Therefore, they need war, war at all costs, war by any means, at the cost of any sacrifice, war to the last man, to the last man and woman. “If a friend was wounded,” for example, both legs or arms were torn off him, it doesn’t matter, to hell with him, the “girlfriend” will also be able to die at the front, drag her there into the meat grinder of war, there is nothing to be tender with her. Stalin is not sorry for the Russian woman ... "

The Germans, of course, miscalculated, did not take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of thousands of Soviet women, girls volunteers. Of course, there were mobilizations, emergency measures in conditions of extreme danger, the tragic situation that developed at the fronts, but it would be wrong not to take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of young people born after the revolution and ideologically prepared in the pre-war years for struggle and self-sacrifice.

One of these girls was Yulia Drunina, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who went to the front. A poem she wrote after the war explains why she and thousands of other girls voluntarily went to the front:

"I left my childhood Into a dirty war-room, Into an infantry train, Into an ambulance platoon. ... I came from school Into dug-out dugouts. From the Beautiful Lady - Into" mother "and" overwhelm ". Because the name is Closer than" Russia ", I couldn't find it. "

Women fought at the front, thus asserting their, equal with men, the right to defend the Fatherland. The enemy has repeatedly praised the participation of Soviet women in battles:

"Russian women ... communists hate any enemy, they are fanatical, dangerous. In 1941, sanitary battalions defended the last frontiers before Leningrad with grenades and rifles in their hands."

Liaison officer Prince Albert Hohenzollern, who took part in the assault on Sevastopol in July 1942, "admired the Russians, and especially the women, who, according to him, display amazing courage, dignity and fortitude."

According to the Italian soldier, he and his comrades had to fight at Kharkov against the "Russian women's regiment." Several women were captured by the Italians. However, in accordance with the agreement between the Wehrmacht and the Italian army, all captured by the Italians were handed over to the Germans. The latter decided to shoot all the women. According to the Italian, “the women did not expect anything else. They only asked to be allowed to wash in the bath and wash their dirty linen in order to die neat, as it should be according to the old Russian customs. The Germans granted their request. putting on clean shirts, we went to be shot ... "

The fact that the Italian's story about the participation of a female infantry unit in battles is not fiction is confirmed by another story. Since both in the Soviet scientific and fiction, there were numerous references only to the exploits of individual women - representatives of all military specialties and never talked about the participation in the battles of individual female infantry units, I had to refer to the material published in the Vlasov newspaper "Zarya".

To be continued...

In the article "Valya Nesterenko - Pomkomvplato of Intelligence" tells about the fate of a captured Soviet girl. Valya graduated from the Ryazan Infantry School. According to her, about 400 women and girls studied with her:

“Why were they all volunteers? They were considered volunteers. But how did they go! Soviet power? " They answer - "We love". - "So it is necessary to protect!" They write statements. And then try it, give it up! And in 1942, mobilizations began altogether. Each receives a summons, appears at the military registration and enlistment office. Goes to the commission. The commission gives a conclusion: fit for combat service. Send to the part. Those who are older or have children are mobilized for work. And whoever is younger and without children - that one in the army. There were 200 people in my graduation. Some did not want to study, but they were then sent to dig trenches.

Our regiment of three battalions had two male and one female. The female was the first battalion - submachine gunners. In the beginning, there were girls from orphanages. They were desperate. We took this battalion until ten settlements, and then most of them went out of order. Have requested a refill. Then the remnants of the battalion were withdrawn from the front and a new female battalion was sent from Serpukhov. A women's division was specially formed there. There were older women and girls in the new battalion. All were mobilized. We studied for three months as submachine gunners. At first, while there were no big battles, they were brave.

Our regiment was advancing on the villages of Zhilino, Savkino, Surovezhki. The women's battalion acted in the middle, and the men's battalion from the left and right flanks. The women's battalion was to cross Chelm and advance to the edge of the forest. As soon as they climbed the hillock, the artillery began to beat. Girls and women started screaming and crying. They huddled together, so the German artillery put them all in the heap. There were at least 400 people in the battalion, and three girls survived from the entire battalion. What happened is scary to look at ... mountains of female corpses. Is this a woman's business, war? "

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Chief Lieutenant Prince, acquainted the soldiers with the order: "Shoot all women who serve in the Red Army." Numerous facts indicate that this order was applied throughout the entire war.

In August 1941, on the orders of Emile Knoll, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.

In the town of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the medical unit and shot them.

After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko in the Mayak fishing village near Kerch. On May 28, 1942, the Germans found her during a search. The girl put up resistance to the Nazis, shouted: "Shoot, you bastards! I'm dying for Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die of a dog! "The girl was shot in the yard.

At the end of August 1942, in the village of Krymskaya, Krasnodar Territory, a group of sailors was shot, among them were several girls in military uniform.

In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport in the name of Tatiana Aleksandrovna Mikhailova, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.

In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, the captured military assistant Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.

On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and humiliation, all the detainees were shot.

The translator of the divisional intelligence P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 "a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, cut her face, arms, cut off her breasts ..."

Knowing what awaited them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Often captured women were subjected to violence before death. A soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, Hans Rudgof, testifies that in the winter of 1942 "... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown on the road. They lay naked ... On these dead bodies ... obscene inscriptions were written. ".

In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the courtyard where the hospital attendants were. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they were dragged into the barn and raped. However, they did not kill him.

Women prisoners of war who ended up in the camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drohobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Luda. "Captain Stroer, the camp commandant, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers summoned by the captain tied Luda to a bunk, and in this position Stroer raped her and then shot her."

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and "ordered our doctors to examine them from the side of the genitals - are they not sick with venereal diseases. He performed the external examination himself. 3 of them were young girls, took them to his place to “serve.” German soldiers and officers came for the women examined by the doctors. ”Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

The camp guards from among the former prisoners of war and camp policemen were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped the captives or, under threat of death, forced them to cohabit with them. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 women prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, the former head of the camp's security, A.M. Yarosh, admitted that his subordinates had raped prisoners of the women's bloc.

The prisoner of war camp in Millerovo also held captive women. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga Germans. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible:

“Policemen often looked into this barrack. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived in pairs in a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, One day, during an evening check-up, the police chief himself came, he was given a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “A you for those who do not want to go, arrange a “red fireman.” The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted into the girl's vagina. Left in this position for up to half an hour. Many girls had their lips bitten - they held back their screams, and after such a punishment they could not move for a long time. la and other sophisticated bullying. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the crosspiece with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it first. We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on the bench for ten minutes. The policemen also boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman. "

To be continued...

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely miserable impression. In the conditions of camp life, it was especially difficult for them: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.

K. Kromiadi, a member of the labor distribution commission, who visited the Sedlice camp in the fall of 1941, talked with the captive women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: "... everything is tolerable, with the exception of the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to either change or wash."

A group of female medical workers taken prisoner in the Kiev cauldron in September 1941 was held in Volodymyr-Volynsk - Oflag No. 365 "Nord" camp.

Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, the women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk, to Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barrack, communication with men was prohibited. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with "the condition of free settlement in Smolensk."

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female medical workers were taken prisoner: doctors, nurses, nurses. At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. In Rivne, everyone was lined up, and the next search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "This is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." Those who were separated from the general group were shot. Those who remained were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the carriage into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Reeling through the hole in the floor.

On the way, the captive men were dropped off at different stations, and the women were brought to the city of Zoes on February 23, 1943. They lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewess. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed particular prestige among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm on behalf of all German said: "We are prisoners of war and will not work at military factories." In response, they began to beat everyone, and then they drove into a small hall, in which it was impossible either to sit or move because of the tightness. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the disobedient ones were sent to Ravensbrück.

This women's camp was established in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All prisoners were shaved, dressed in striped (blue and gray stripes) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and underpants. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for six months, but not everyone was able to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are made of wood.

The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: the day room, which contained tables, stools and small closets, and the sleeping room - three-tiered bunks with a narrow passage between them. One cotton blanket was issued for two prisoners. In a separate room lived a block - the head of the barracks. There was a washroom and a restroom in the corridor.

The prisoners worked mainly at the sewing enterprises of the camp. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.

The first Soviet female prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to the bathhouse, and then they were given camp striped clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.

Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS had spread rumors throughout the camp that a gang of female killers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.

Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning, in fact, sometimes lasting for several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which the women used mainly to wash their hair, as there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn.

Women whose hair was intact began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that "Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion."

For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gourd and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening we received a small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gourd for five.

One of the prisoners S. Müller testifies in her memoirs about the impression the Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück: that according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross they should be treated like prisoners of war, which was unheard of insolence for the camp authorities.

But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: "Look, the Red Army is marching!" We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?

It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping the alignment, walked, as if on a parade, striking a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The entire column moved as a whole. Suddenly a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: "One, two, three!" And they sang:

Get up huge country, Get up to mortal battle ...

Then they sang about Moscow.

The fascists were puzzled: the punishment of the marching of the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...

The SS failed to leave Soviet women without dinner. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance. "

To be continued...

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once struck their enemies and fellow prisoners with their unity and spirit of resistance. Once, 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners to be sent to Majdanek, in the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to pick up the women, the comrades refused to hand them over. The SS men managed to find them. "The remaining 500 people lined up five people each and went to the commandant. The interpreter was EL Klemm. The commandant drove those who came into the block, threatening them with execution, and they started a hunger strike."

In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there either. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to undress to their shirts, remove wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, and every hour the warden came and offered coffee and bed to those who agreed to go to work. Then three girls were thrown into the punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia.

Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire.

Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Head up, Russian girls! Above your head, be bold! We do not have to endure for long, A nightingale will fly in the spring ... And open the doors to freedom, Take off the striped dress from the shoulders And heal deep wounds, Wipe the tears from swollen eyes. Head up, Russian girls! Be Russian everywhere, everywhere! There is not long left to wait, not long - And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germaine Tillon in her memoirs gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who were in Ravensbrück: rude and uneducated. Among them there were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) - benevolent and attentive. In addition, we liked their disobedience, unwillingness to obey the Germans. "

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Auschwitz prisoner A. Lebedev recalls that parachutists Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Klavdia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.

In January 1944, over 50 women prisoners of war from the Chelm camp were sent to Majdanek for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and to become civilian workers. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military assistant Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.

The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Yegorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp.

Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between prisoners of war men and women was prohibited, where they worked together, most often in camp hospitals, sometimes love arose, giving new life... As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.

Thus, from the documents of the Stalag camp hospital No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that "Alexandra Sindeva, a nurse who arrived at the 1st City Hospital for Childbirth on 23.2.42, left with her child to the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp."

In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war is hardened. They are subjected to new checks. In accordance with general provisions on the verification and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be checked by the local department of the Gestapo in the same way as all newly arrived Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of women prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and turned over to the police.

On the basis of this order, the head of the Security Service and SD on April 11, 1944 issued an order to send unreliable women prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - senior group seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military plant in the city of Gentin. A lot of scrap was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera was in charge of the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and there in the fall of 1944 she was hanged.

In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers, including a female major, were killed. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one by one. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in a crematorium and understood Russian, an SS man who spoke Russian mocked the woman, forcing her to carry out his commands: “to the right, to the left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? " What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for her homeland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: "And this is for your homeland." Confusion arose. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: "Into her furnace!" The oven door was open, and the heat caught the woman's hair on fire. Although the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a corpse trolley and pushed into the oven. This was seen by all the prisoners working in the crematorium. ”Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remained unknown.

To be continued...

The women who had escaped from captivity continued to fight against the enemy. In the secret message No. 12 of July 17, 1942, the head of the security police of the occupied eastern regions to the imperial minister of security of the 17th military district, in the section "Jews", it was reported that in Uman "a Jewish doctor was arrested, who had previously served in the Red Army and was taken prisoner. After fleeing from the POW camp, she took refuge in an orphanage in Uman under a false name and practiced medicine. She used this opportunity to access the POW camp for espionage purposes. " Probably, the unknown heroine was helping the prisoners of war.

Women prisoners of war, risking their lives, repeatedly rescued their Jewish friends. In Dulag No. 160 in Khorol, about 60 thousand prisoners were held in a quarry on the territory of a brick factory. There was also a group of female prisoners of war. Of these, seven or eight remained alive by the spring of 1942. In the summer of 1942, they were all shot for harboring a Jewess.

In the fall of 1942, in the Georgievsk camp, along with other prisoners, there were also several hundred prisoners of war girls. Once the Germans led the identified Jews to be shot. Tsilya Gedaleva was among the doomed. At the last minute, the German officer in charge of the massacre suddenly said: "Medchen raus! - Girl - get out!" And Tsilya returned to the women's barrack. The friends gave Tsilya a new name - Fatima, and in the future, according to all documents, she was a Tatar.

Military doctor of the III rank Emma Lvovna Khotina from September 9 to 20 was surrounded in the Bryansk forests. Was taken prisoner. During the next stage, she fled from the village of Kokarevka to the city of Trubchevsk. She hid under a false name, often changing her apartment. She was assisted by her comrades - Russian doctors who worked in the camp infirmary in Trubchevsk. They established contact with the partisans. And when on February 2, 1942, the partisans attacked Trubchevsk, 17 doctors, paramedics and nurses left with them. E. L. Khotina became the head of the sanitary service of the partisan association of the Zhytomyr region.

Sara Zemelman - military assistant, medical lieutenant, worked in the mobile field hospital No. 75 Southwestern Front... September 21, 1941 near Poltava, wounded in the leg, was taken prisoner along with the hospital. The head of the hospital, Vasilenko, handed Sarah documents in the name of Alexandra Mikhailovskaya, the murdered paramedic. There were no traitors among the hospital staff who were captured. Three months later, Sarah managed to escape from the camp. For a month she wandered through the forests and villages, until not far from Krivoy Rog, in the village of Veselye Terny, she was sheltered by the family of a paramedic veterinarian Ivan Lebedchenko. Sarah lived in the basement of the house for over a year. January 13, 1943 Veselye Terny was liberated by the Red Army. Sarah went to the military registration and enlistment office and asked to go to the front, but she was placed in the filtration camp №258. They were summoned for interrogations only at night. Investigators asked how she, a Jew, survived the Nazi captivity? And only a meeting in the same camp with her colleagues at the hospital - a radiologist and chief surgeon - helped her.

S. Zemelman was sent to the medical battalion of the 3rd Pomeranian division of the 1st Polish army. She ended the war on the outskirts of Berlin on May 2, 1945. She was awarded three Orders of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and was awarded the Polish Order of the Silver Cross of Merit.

Unfortunately, after their release from the camps, the prisoners faced injustice, suspicion and contempt for them, which went through the hell of the German camps.

Grunya Grigorieva recalls that the Red Army men who liberated Ravensbrück on April 30, 1945, looked at the prisoner-of-war girls “... as traitors. This shocked us. We did not expect such a meeting. Ours gave preference to French women, Polish women to foreign women. "

After the end of the war, women prisoners of war went through all the torment and humiliation during SMERSH checks in the filtration camps. Alexandra Ivanovna Max, one of 15 Soviet women liberated in the Neuhammer camp, tells how a Soviet officer in the camp for repatriates chastised them: "Shame on you, you surrendered prisoner, you ..." And I argue with him: " what should we have done? " And he says: "You should have shot yourself, but not to surrender!" And I said: "Where were our pistols?" "Well, you could, you should have hanged yourself, killed yourself. But don't surrender."

Many front-line soldiers knew what awaited the former prisoners at home. One of the freed women N.A. Kurlyak recalls: "We, 5 girls, were left to work in the Soviet military unit. We kept asking:" Send us home. " "But we didn't believe."

And already a few years after the war, a woman doctor, a former prisoner, writes in a private letter: "... sometimes I am very sorry that I remained alive, because I always wear this dark stain of captivity on myself. Still, many do not know what kind of “life” it was, if you can call it life. Many do not believe that we there honestly endured the burden of captivity and remained honest citizens of the Soviet state. "

Staying in fascist captivity irreparably affected the health of many women. Most of them stopped their natural female processes while still in the camp, and many never recovered.

Some transferred from POW camps to concentration camps were sterilized. “I didn’t have children after sterilization in the camp. And so I remained like a cripple ... Many of our girls did not have children. says, so we will live. And we still live with him. "

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Only recently, researchers found that in a dozen European concentration camps, the Nazis forced female prisoners to prostitute in special brothels, - Vladimir Ginda writes in the heading archive in No. 31 of the magazine Correspondent dated August 9, 2013.

Torment and death or prostitution - the Nazis put Europeans and Slavs in concentration camps before such a choice. Of the several hundred girls who chose the second option, the administration staffed brothels in ten camps - not only in those where prisoners were used as labor, but also in others aimed at mass destruction.

In Soviet and modern European historiography, this topic did not actually exist, only a couple of American scientists - Wendy Gertensen and Jessica Hughes - raised some aspects of the problem in their scientific works.

At the beginning of the 21st century, German cultural scientist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sex conveyors.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the German cultural scientist Robert Sommer began to scrupulously restore information about sex conveyors operating in the horrific conditions of German concentration camps and death factories.

The result of nine years of research was the book published by Sommer in 2009 Concentration camp brothel which shocked European readers. Based on this work, an exhibition Sex Work in Concentration Camps was organized in Berlin.

Bed motivation

"Legalized sex" appeared in the Nazi concentration camps in 1942. The SS men organized houses of tolerance in ten institutions, among which were mainly the so-called labor camps - in the Austrian Mauthausen and its branch Gusen, German Flossenburg, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen and Dora-Mittelbau. In addition, the institution of forced prostitutes was also introduced in three death camps intended for the extermination of prisoners: in the Polish Auschwitz-Auschwitz and his "satellite" Monowitz, as well as in the German Dachau.

The idea of ​​creating camp brothels belonged to the SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler. The researchers' data says he was impressed by the incentive system used in the Soviet forced labor camps to increase the productivity of prisoners.

Imperial War Museum
One of its barracks in Ravensbrück, the largest women's concentration camp in Nazi Germany

Himmler decided to learn from his experience, adding to the list of "incentives" that which was not in Soviet system, - “encouraging” prostitution. The SS chief was convinced that the right to visit a brothel, along with other bonuses - cigarettes, cash or camp vouchers, an improved diet - could make prisoners work harder and better.

In fact, the right to visit such establishments was predominantly held by the camp guards from among the prisoners. And there is a logical explanation for this: most of the male prisoners were emaciated, so they did not even think about any sexual attraction.

Hughes points out that the proportion of male inmates who used brothel services was extremely small. In Buchenwald, according to her data, where in September 1943 there were about 12.5 thousand people, 0.77% of the prisoners visited the public barracks in three months. A similar situation was in Dachau, where, as of September 1944, 0.75% of the 22 thousand prisoners who were there used the services of prostitutes.

Heavy share

Up to two hundred sex slaves worked in brothels at the same time. Most women, two dozen, were kept in a brothel in Auschwitz.

Brothel workers were exclusively female prisoners, usually attractive, between the ages of 17 and 35. About 60-70% of them were of German origin, from among those whom the Reich authorities called "antisocial elements." Some, before entering the concentration camps, were engaged in prostitution, so they agreed to similar jobs, but behind barbed wire, without any problems, and even passed their skills on to inexperienced colleagues.

The SS recruited about a third of the sex slaves from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belorussian women. Jews were not allowed to do such work, and Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit brothels.

These workers wore special insignia - black triangles sewn onto the sleeves of their robes.

The SS recruited about a third of the sex slaves from prisoners of other nationalities - Poles, Ukrainians or Belorussian women

Some of the girls voluntarily agreed to “work”. For example, one former employee of the Ravensbrück medical unit, the largest women's concentration camp in the Third Reich, where up to 130 thousand people were held, recalled that some women voluntarily went to a brothel because they were promised release after six months of work.

The Spanish woman Lola Casadel, a member of the Resistance movement, who ended up in the same camp in 1944, told how the headman of their barracks announced: “Who wants to work in a brothel, come to me. And keep in mind that if there are no volunteers, we will have to resort to force. ”

The threat was not empty: as Sheina Epstein, a Jewess from the Kaunas ghetto, recalled, in the camp the inhabitants of the women's barracks lived in constant fear of the guards, who regularly raped the prisoners. The raids were carried out at night: drunk men walked with flashlights along the bunks, choosing the most beautiful victim.

"Their joy knew no bounds when they discovered that the girl was a virgin. Then they laughed loudly and called their colleagues," - said Epstein.

Having lost their honor, or even the will to fight, some girls went to brothels, realizing that this was their last hope for survival.

“The most important thing is that we managed to escape [the camps] of Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück,” said Liselotta B., a former prisoner of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, of her “bed career”. “The main thing was to somehow survive.”

With Aryan meticulousness

After the initial selection, the workers were brought to special barracks in those concentration camps where they were planned to be used. To bring the emaciated prisoners into a more or less decent look, they were placed in an infirmary. There, paramedics in SS uniform gave them calcium injections, they took disinfectant baths, ate and even sunbathed under quartz lamps.

In all this there was no sympathy, but only calculation: the bodies were prepared for hard work. As soon as the rehabilitation cycle ended, the girls became part of the sex conveyor. The work was daily, rest - only if there was no light or water, if an air raid was announced or during the broadcast on the radio of the speeches of the German leader Adolf Hitler.

The conveyor ran like clockwork and strictly on schedule. For example, in Buchenwald, prostitutes got up at 7:00 and until 19:00 they were busy with themselves: they had breakfast, did exercises, underwent daily medical examinations, washed and cleaned, and dined. By camp standards, there was so much food that the prostitutes even exchanged food for clothes and other things. Everything ended with dinner, and at seven in the evening the two-hour work began. The camp prostitutes could not go out to her only if they had “these days” or they got sick.

AP
Women and children in one of the barracks of the Bergen-Belsen camp, liberated by the British

The very procedure for providing intimate services, starting from the selection of men, was as detailed as possible. Mainly the so-called camp functionaries - internees, who were engaged in internal security and wardens from among the prisoners - could get a woman.

Moreover, at first, the doors of brothels were opened exclusively for the Germans or representatives of the peoples living in the territory of the Reich, as well as for the Spaniards and Czechs. Later, the circle of visitors was expanded - only Jews, Soviet prisoners of war and ordinary internees were excluded from it. For example, logs of visits to a brothel in Mauthausen, which were meticulously maintained by the administration, show that 60% of clients were criminals.

Men who wanted to indulge in carnal pleasures first had to get permission from the camp leadership. Then they bought an entrance ticket for two Reichsmarks - a little less than the cost of 20 cigarettes sold in the cafeteria. Of this amount, a quarter went to the woman herself, and only if she was German.

In the camp brothel, clients, first of all, found themselves in the waiting room, where they checked their data. Then they underwent medical examination and received prophylactic injections. Then the visitor was given the number of the room where he should go. There the intercourse took place. Only the "missionary pose" was allowed. Conversations were discouraged.

This is how one of the “concubines” kept there, Magdalena Walter, describes the work of a brothel in Buchenwald: “We had one bathroom with a toilet, where women went to wash themselves before the next visitor came. Immediately after washing, the client showed up. Everything worked like a conveyor belt; men were not allowed to stay in the room for more than 15 minutes. ”

During the evening, the prostitute, according to the surviving documents, accepted 6-15 people.

Body into action

Legalized prostitution was beneficial to the authorities. So, in Buchenwald alone, in the first six months of operation, the brothel earned 14-19 thousand Reichsmarks. The money went to the German economic policy department.

The Germans used women not only as an object of sexual pleasures, but also as scientific material. Inhabitants of brothels carefully monitored hygiene, because any sexually transmitted disease could cost them their lives: infected prostitutes in the camps were not treated, but experiments were carried out on them.

Imperial War Museum
Liberated prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen camp

Scientists of the Reich did this, fulfilling the will of Hitler: he, even before the war, called syphilis one of the most dangerous diseases in Europe, capable of leading to disaster. The Fuhrer believed that only those peoples who would find a way to quickly cure the disease would be saved. For the sake of obtaining a miracle cure, the SS men turned infected women into living laboratories. However, they did not remain alive for long - intensive experiments quickly led the prisoners to painful death.

Researchers have found a number of cases where even healthy prostitutes were given up to be torn apart by medical sadists.

Pregnant women were not spared in the camps. In some places they were immediately killed, in some places they were artificially interrupted, and after five weeks they were sent back to the "ranks". Moreover, abortions were performed at different times and different ways- and this also became part of the research. Some prisoners were allowed to give birth, but only then to experimentally determine how long a baby can live without food.

Despicable prisoners

According to the former Dutch Buchenwald prisoner Albert van Dyck, camp prostitutes were despised by other prisoners, not paying attention to the fact that they were forced to go “on the panel” by the harsh conditions of detention and an attempt to save their lives. And the very work of brothel dwellers was akin to daily repeated rape.

Some of the women, even in the brothel, tried to defend their honor. For example, Walter came to Buchenwald as a virgin and, finding herself in the role of a prostitute, tried to defend herself from the first client with scissors. The attempt failed, and according to the records, the former virgin satisfied six men on the same day. Walter endured this because she knew: otherwise, a gas chamber, a crematorium or a barrack for cruel experiments would await her.

Not everyone had the strength to survive the violence. Some of the inhabitants of the camp brothels, according to researchers, took their own lives, some lost their minds. Some survived, but remained a prisoner for life psychological problems... Physical liberation did not relieve them of the burden of the past, and after the war, camp prostitutes were forced to hide their history. Therefore, scientists have collected little documented evidence of life in these houses of tolerance.

“It's one thing to say 'I worked as a carpenter' or 'I built roads' and quite another - 'I was forced to work as a prostitute,' says Inza Eshebach, head of the memorial at the former Ravensbrück camp.

This material was published in No. 31 of the Korrespondent magazine dated August 9, 2013. Reprinting of the publications of the journal Correspondent in full is prohibited. The rules for using the materials of the Korrespondent magazine published on the Korrespondent.net website can be found .