Women's Day in Gulag. Correspondent: camp bed
Women in captivity in the Germans. How did the Nazis mocked over the prisoners of Soviet women
The Second World War of the roller went through humanity. Millions of dead and much more crippled lives and destinies. All warring parties were doing truly monstrous things, justifying all the war.
Caution! The material presented in the selection may seem unpleasant or frightening.
Of course, the Nazis especially distinguished themselves in this regard, and this is not even given the Holocaust. There are many as documented and frankly frank stories about what the German soldiers soldered.
One of the high-ranking German officers recalled the instructions that they passed. Interestingly, there were only one order regarding women's military personnel: "shoot".
The majority did the majority, but among the dead often find women in the form of the Red Army - soldiers, nurses or senses, on the bodies of which traces of cruel torture
Residents of the village of Luggleevka, for example, say that when they had the Nazis, they found a seriously injured girl. And in spite of everything they dragged her on the road, stripped and shot.
We recommend to read 
But before his death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. All her body turned into a solid bloody messenger. Approximately the Nazis came with partisans. Before executing, they could spread out the devils and for a long time to keep in the cold.
Women soldiers of the Red Army in captivity y and Germans 1 part
Of course, the captives were constantly exposed to rape.
Women servicemen of the Red Army in captivity of Finins and Germans Part 2. Jewish
And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to enter into an intimate connection with the captives, then simple ordinary in this matter was more freedom.
And if the girl did not die after the whole company he used her, then she was simply shot.
Even worse there was a situation in concentration camps. Is that the girl was lucky and someone from the highest camp ranks took her to him as servants. Although it did not save it from rape.
In this regard, the most cruel place was camp number 337. There they kept the prisoners with naked clocks on the frost, they settled in the barracks on a hundred people immediately, and anyone who could not do work immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were destroyed daily in Stalage.
Women used the same torture as men, and even much worse. In terms of torture, the Nazis could envy the Spanish Inquisition.
Soviet soldiers knew exactly what was happening in concentration camps and what faces captivity. Therefore, nobody wanted to give up and was not going. Begg to the end, until the very death, she was the only one was the winner in those terrible years.
Bright memory to all those who died in the war ...
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The story contains scenes of torture, nation, sex. If it insults your gentle soul - do not read, and go on x ... from here!
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The plot is happening during the Great Patriotic War. On the territory occupied by the fascists there is a partisan detachment. Fascists know that among the partisans there are many women, that's just how to calculate them. Finally, they managed to catch the girl Katya when she tried to draw a scheme for the location of German firepoint ...
The captive girl was introduced into a small room at school, where the Gestapo separation was now located. Interrogated Katya young officer. In addition to him in the room there were several policemen and two vulgar views of a woman. Katya knew them, they were serviced by the Germans. That's just not fully knew how.
The officer instructed the guards holding a girl to let her go, what they did. He told her gesture. Girl sat down. The officer ordered one of the maiden to bring tea. But Katya refused. The officer drank a sip, then lit. Suggested Kate, but she refused. The officer began a conversation, and he spoke well in Russian.
What is your name?
Katerina.
I know that you are engaged in intelligence in favor of the Communists. It's true?
But you are so young, so beautiful. You probably got to the service for them by chance?
Not! I am Komsomolka and I want to be a communist, like my father, hero Soviet Unionwho died at the front.
I'm sorry that such a young beautiful girl came on a rod of red. At one time, my father served in the Russian army in the first world War. He commanded his mouth. He has a lot of glorious victories and awards. But when the Communists came to power - for all merits in front of his homeland, he was accused of the enemy of the people and shot. We were waiting for hungry death as children of the enemies of the people, but one of the Germans (who was captive, and whom the father did not allow to shoot) helped us flee to Germany and even enter the service. I always wanted to be a hero like my father. And now I arrived to save my homeland from the Communists.
You are a fascist bitch, the invader, the murderer of any unhappy people ...
We never kill innocent. On the contrary, we return to them that they were taken out of red. Yes, we recently hung two women who set fire to houses where our soldiers were temporarily settled. But the soldiers had time to run out, and the owners lost the last thing that did not take the war from them.
They fought against ...
His people!
Not true!
Well, let we invaders. From you now need to answer a few questions. After that, we will define you a measure of punishment.
I will not answer your questions!
Well, then name with whom together you organize terrorist attacks against German soldiers.
Not true. We watched you.
Then why should I answer?
So that innocent people are not injured.
I can not call anyone ...
Then I will suggest the boys to unleash your stubborn tongue.
You will not get anything!
And this we will see. So far there was not a single case out of 15 and so that we did not happen ... for the work of the boys!
1) Irma Greza - (October 7, 1923 - December 13, 1945) - Outdoor nazi camps Death Ravensbrüc, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belmen.
Among the nickname, Irma had a "blonde devil", "Angel of Death", "Beautiful Beast". For torture over prisoners, she used emotional and physical methods, scored to death of women and enjoyed an arbitrary shot of prisoners. She Morious famine his dogs to then hurt them for victims, and personally selected hundreds of people to send to gas chambers. The dream was heavy boots, with her always, in addition to the gun, was a wicker whip.
In the western post-war press, the possible sexual deviations of Irma dreams were constantly discussed, its numerous connections with the SSEs from the security, with the commandant Bergen-Belsen by Joseph Kramer ("Belisen Beast").
April 17, 1945, she was captured by the British. The Belzensky process initiated by the British Military Tribunal continued from September 17 to November 17, 1945. Together with the Irma Greza, this process was considered by the affairs of other camp workers - the commandant of Joseph Kramer, the warden of Yuanna Bormann, Nurses Elizabeth Folkenerat. Irma Greza was convicted and sentenced to hanging.
Last night before the penalty, the dream was laughed and sled songs along with his colleague Elizabeth Folkenerat. Even when Irma's Irma was sketched on the neck of Irma, the face remains calm. Its last word was "faster", facing the English executioner.
2) Ilsa Koch - (September 22, 1906 - September 1, 1967) - German Actor NSDAP, Wife Karl Koha, Commandant concentration camps Buchenwald and Majdanek. The most famous under the pseudonym as "Frau Abazhur" received the nickname "Buchenwald Witch" for the brutal torture of prisoners of the camp. Koh was also accused of making souvenirs from human skin (however, there was no significant evidence on Ilze on Ilze, it was not presented).
On June 30, 1945, Koch was arrested by American troops and in 1947 sentenced to life imprisonment. However, a few years later, the American General Lucius Glue, the military commandant of the American occupation zone in Germany, freed it, finding the charges in returning orders about the execution and the manufacture of souvenirs from human skin insufficiently proven.
This decision caused a protest from the public, so in 1951 Ilsa Koch was arrested in West Germany. The German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.
On September 1, 1967, Koch committed suicide, having fun in the camera of Bavarian Prison Aibach.
3) Louise Danz - genus. December 11, 1917 - Women's concentration camps. It was sentenced to life imprisonment, but later released.
She began working in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, then she was transferred to Maydanek. Later, Danz served in Auschwitz and Mahov.
The concluded subsequently told that they were subjected to ill-treatment from Danz. She beat them, confiscated clothes issued for the winter. In Malkhove, where Danz had the post of senior warden, she Morious prisoners with hunger, without eating food for 3 days. On April 2, 1945, she killed a minor girl.
Danz was arrested on June 1, 1945 in Luttsy. On continuing from November 24, 1947 to December 22, 1947, the court of the Higher National Tribunal, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1956 by the state of health (!!!). In 1996, he was charged against her the above-mentioned killing of a child, but it was removed after the doctors said that Danz would be too hard to transfer a re-imprisonment. She lives in Germany. Now she is 94 years old.
4) Jenny-Wanda Barkmann - (May 30, 1922 - July 4, 1946) from 1940 to December 1943 worked as a fashion model. In January 1944, she became an oversight in a small concentration camp Stutthof, where she became famous for the brutal beating of prisoners-women, some of them she scored to death. She also participated in the selection of women and children in gas chambers. She was so cruel but at the same time very beautiful that women prisoners nicknamed her "beautiful ghost."
Jenny fled from the camp in 1945, when Soviet troops began to approach the camp. But it was caught and arrested in May 1945 while trying to leave the station in Gdansk. She, as they say, flirted with her guardian policemen and was not particularly worried about her fate. Jenny Wanda Barcmann was convicted, after which she was given to say the last word. She stated, "Life is really great pleasure, and pleasure, as a rule, long."
Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was publicly played at the Biskupian hill near Gdansk on July 4, 1946. She was only 24 years old. Her body was burned, and the dust was published in the restroom of the house where she was born.
5) Gertrud Bote - (January 8, 1921 - March 16, 2000) - an overseas of female concentration camps. It was arrested on charges of war crimes, but later released.
In 1942 he received an invitation to work as an oversight to the Concentration camp Ravensbrück. After a four-week preliminary training, the bot was sent to Stuttgof, the concentration camp, which was near the city of Gdansk. In it, the bot was received by the nickname "Stutthof Sadiastka" because of the cruel treatment of women-prisoners.
In July 1944, Herda Steinhoff was sent to the Bromberg-Ost concentration camp. From January 21, 1945, the bot was an oversight during a march of the death of prisoners, held from Central Poland to Bergen-Belsen camp. March ended on February 20-26, 1945. In Bergen-Belzen, the bot led the detachment of women, consisting of 60s and the manufacture of wood.
After the liberation of the camp was arrested. In the Belisen Court was sentenced to 10 years of conclusion. Released previously specified period of December 22, 1951. Died on March 16, 2000 in Huntsville, USA.
6) Maria Mandel (1912-1948) - Nazi military criminal. Having ranked in the period 1942-1944, the post of the head of the female camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenaau concentration camp, is really responsible for the death of about 500 thousand women-prisoners.
The service colleagues were described by Mandel as "an extremely smart and devoted man" man. The prisoners of Auschwitz were called her monster. Mandel personally made the selection of prisoners, and the thousands sent them into gas chambers. There are cases when Mandel personally took on his patronage of several prisoners under his patronage, and when they were bored with her, made them in the lists of destruction. Also, Mandel belongs to the idea and the creation of a female camp orchestra who encountered the gate of newly promoted fun music. According to the memories of the survivors, Mandel was a melomanka and treated well to musicians from the orchestra, personally came to them to the Barack with a request to play something.
In 1944, Mandel was transferred to the post of head of the Multiplator's concentration camp, one of the parts of the Lahau concentration camp, where he served until the end of the war with Germany. In May 1945, she escaped to the mountains in the area of \u200b\u200bher native city - Münzkirchen. On August 10, 1945, Mandel was arrested by American troops. In November 1946, she as a military criminal was transferred to Polish authorities on their request. Mandel was one of the main defendors of the process over the workers of Auschwitz, which took place in November-December 1947. The court sentenced her to the death penalty. The sentence was carried out on January 24, 1948 in Krakow prison.
7) Hildegard Neumann (May 4, 1919, Czechoslovakia -?) - Senior wardrift in concentration camps Ravensbrück and Teresyienstadt.
Hildegegard Neumann began his service at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in October 1944, becoming immediately an Ober-Wrapper. Due to good work, she was transferred to Terezienstadt concentration camp as the head of all overwhelmed camp. Beauty Hildegard, according to the reviews of prisoners, was a cruel and merciless to them.
She controlled from 10 to 30 female police and more than 20,000 women of Jewish prisoners. Neumann also contributed to deportation from Teresienstadt more than 40,000 women and children in the death camps of Auschwitz (Auschwitz) and Bergen-Belmen, where most of them were killed. According to researchers, more than 100,000 Jews were deported from the Teresienstadt camp and were killed or died in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belzene, another 55,000 died in Terezienstadt.
Neumann left the camp in May 1945 and did not suffer criminal responsibility for war crimes. Subsequent fate Hildegard Neumann is unknown.
The road from Berlin-Tegel Airport to Ravensbrück takes a little more than an hour. In February 2006, when I first went here, there was a heavy snowfall and a truck crashed on the Berlin Ring Road, so the road took more time.
Heinrich Himmler often went to Ravensbrück, even in such ferocious weather. Friends lived at the CC in the vicinity, and if he drove by, he looked at the inspection to the camp. He rarely left him without handing out new orders. Once he ordered to put more root in the prisoner's soup. And another time I was outraged that the extermination of prisoners passes too slowly.
Ravensbrüc was the only Nazi concentration camp for women. The camp was called from a small village in the vicinity of Fürstenberg and is located about 80 km north of Berlin on the road leading to the Baltic Sea. Women falling into the camp at night, sometimes thought that were near the sea, because they felt the smell of salt in the air and sand under their feet. But when dawned, they understood that the camp was on the shore of the lake and was surrounded by the forest. Himmler liked to have a camping in the hidden places with beautiful nature. View of the camp is hidden today; The monstrous crimes originated here and the courage of his victims are still unknown for the most part.
Ravensbrüc was created in May 1939, only four months before the start of the war, and was released by soldiers Soviet army Six years later, this camp was one of the latter to which allies got. In the first year of existence, it contained less than 2000 prisoners, almost all of them were Germans. Many were arrested because they opposed Hitler - for example, the Communists, or Jehovah's Witnesses, called Hitler Antichrist. Others were concluded, because the Nazis considered their lower creatures whose finding in society was undesirable: prostitutes, criminals, beggars, Roma. Later in the camp began to contain thousands of women from the national national countries, many of which participated in resistance. They also brought children here. A small proportion of prisoners - about 10 percent - the Jews were, but officially the camp was not intended only for them.
The largest number of prisoners of Ravensbrück was 45,000 women; For more than six years of the existence of the camp through his gate, about 130,000 women were bought, Morious hunger, forced to work to death, poisoned, tortured, killed in gas chambers. Exemplary calculations of the number of victims vary from 30,000 to 90,000; The real number is likely to be between these numbers - too few SS documents survived to speak for sure. The mass destruction of evidence in Ravensbrüc is one of the reasons why there is so little known about the camp. In the last days of his existence, all prisoners were burned in the crematorium or on a fire, together with bodies. The ash was dropped into the lake.
For the first time I learned about Ravensbrück when I wrote my earlier book about the faith of Atkins, an officer intelligence management of special operations during World War II. Immediately after her end, the faith began to independently find women from USO (British special operations management - approx. Newo), which parachuted to the occupied territory of France to help resistance, many of which were missing missing. Faith went on their trail and found that some of them were captured and placed in concentration camps.
I tried to recreate her searches and started with personal records that kept her sister sister of Feb Atkins in the brown cardboard boxes in their home in Cornwall. The word "Ravensbrück" was written on one of these boxes. Inside there were handwritten interviews with surviving and suspected members of the SS - one of the first received about the camp of evidence. I shed paper. "We were forced to undress and outdated a ballast," one of the women told faith. There was a "post of suffocating blue smoke."
Vera Atkins. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
One of the survivors told about the camp hospital, where "bacteria causing syphilis were introduced into the spinal cord." Another described the arrival of women to the camp after the "death march" from Auschwitz, in the snow. One of the Agents of the USO, enclosed in the Camp of Dachau, wrote that he had heard of women from Ravensbrück, who were forced to work in the Bordell Dakhau.
Several people mentioned a young woman-guard named Binz with "short blond hair." Another warden was once a nanny in Wimbledon. Among the prisoners, according to the British investigator, there were "Cream of the Women's Society of Europe", including the niece of Charles de Gaulle, the former champion of Britain on Golf and many Polish graphics.
I started viewing the dates of birth and addresses, in case someone from the survivors - or even the warders - is still alive. Someone gave the faith address of Mrs. Shatney, "who knew about the sterilization of children in block 11." Dr. Louise La pores amounted to a detailed report in which it was stated that the camp was built on the territory owned by Himmler, and his personal residence was nearby. La pore lived at Merignac, Girona Department, however, judging by the date of birth, by that time was already dead. Woman from Guernsey Island, Julia Barry, lived in the town of Nettlebed, in Oxfordshire. The Russian survivors, presumably, worked "at the point of the mother and a child, at the Leningrad Station."
On the back wall of the box, I found a handwritten list of prisoners exported by a poison, which was in the camp notes, as well as drawing outline and cards. "Poles were better aware," says notes. The woman who had a list was most likely dead, but some of the addresses were in London and those who were then saved, were still alive.
I took these sketches with you during my first trip to Ravensbrück, in the hope that they would help navigate when I get there. However, because of the snowflows on the road, I doubted whether there would be there at all.
Many tried to get to Ravensbrück, but could not. Representatives of the Red Cross tried to get to the camp in the chaos of the last days of the war, but were forced to turn back, the refugee flow was so huge, moving towards them. A few months after the end of the war, when Vera Atkins chose this road to start his investigation, she was stopped in Russian PPC; The camp was in the Russian area of \u200b\u200bthe occupation and access to citizens of the Allied countries was closed. By this time, the Faith's expedition became part of a large British investigation in the camp, which was the result of which the first lawsuits on the military crimes of Ravensbrück began in Hamburg in 1946.
In the 1950s, when the Cold War began, Ravensbrüc was hidden behind the Iron Curtain, dividing the survivors from the East and from the West and the seduced history of the camp.
In the Soviet territories, this place was a memorial to camp heroines-Communists, and all the streets and schools in East Germany were named after their names.
Meanwhile, in the West Ravensbrüc literally disappeared from sight. Former prisoners, historians and journalists could not even get close to this place. In their countries, former prisoners fought for ensuring that their stories were published, but it turned out to be too difficult to produce evidence. Decoding of the Hamburg Tribunal was hidden under the edge "secret" thirty years.
"Where was he?" was one of the most frequent questions that I was asked when I started a book about Ravensbrück. Along with "Why was needed a separate female camp? Were these women with Jews? Was it a camp of death or working camp? Is anyone alive now? "
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In countries who have lost most of the people in this camp, the surviving groups tried to keep the memory of what happened. Approximately 8,000 French, 1000 Dutch, 18,000 Russians and 40000 Poles were deprived of their freedom. Now, in each of the countries - for various reasons - this story is forgotten.
Ignorance as the British - who in the camp were only about twenty women - and the Americans really scares. In Britain, you can know about Dachau, the first concentration camp, and possibly about the Bergen-Belmen camp, since the British squads freed him and captured the horror of the frames, forever injured British consciousness. Another thing with Auschwitz, which became synonymous with the destruction of Jews in gas chambers and left a real echo.
After reading the materials collected by faith, I decided to take a look at what was generally written about the camp. Popular historians (almost all of which are men) have almost nothing to say. It seemed that even books written after graduation cold War, described a completely male world. Then my friend working in Berlin shared with me a solid collection of essays written mainly by German scientists. In the 1990s, feminist historians started response actions. This book is designed to free women from the anonymity, which the word "prisoner" implies. Many further studies, often German, were built on one principle: the history of Ravensbrück was considered too one-sided, which seemed to drown out the whole pain of terrible events. Once I happened to stumble upon mentioning a certain "memory book" - she seemed to me something much more interesting, so I tried to contact the author.
More than once, I came across the eyes of memories and other prisoners, published in the 1960s and 1970s. Their books were dust in the depths of public libraries, although many were extremely causing covers. On the cover of the memoirs of the teacher of French literature, Michelina Morel, the luxurious, in the style of the Bond girl, a woman thrown over a barbed wire. The book is about one of the first wisdom of Ravensbrück, Irma Dream, was called The Beautiful Beast. ("Beautiful beast"). The language of these memoirs seemed outdated, far-fetched. Some described the oversight of the "lesbian with a brutal view", others paid attention to the "wildness" of prisoners, which "gave reason to reflect on the main virtues of the race." Such texts were confused, the feeling was evolving that no author knew how to make a good story. In the preface to one of the collections, the famous French writer Francois Moriac wrote that Ravensbrüc became "shame that the world decided to forget." Perhaps I'd rather write about a friend, so I went to meet with Ivon Basened, the only survivor, about which I had information to find out her opinion.
Ivonna was one of the women of the Wednesian division, which led Vera Atkins. She was caught when he helped resistance in France, and sent to Ravensbrück. Ivonna always willingly talked about his work in resistance, but it was worth it to affect the theme of Ravensbrück, as she immediately knew nothing. And turned away from me.
This time I said that I was going to write a book about the camp, and I hope to hear her story. She looked at me with horror.
"Oh, no, you can not do that."
I asked why not. "This is too terrible. Do you really not write about something else? How are you going to tell your children, what do you do? "
But didn't she consider this story to tell? "Oh yeah. No one knows nothing about Ravensbrück. Nobody wanted to learn from the moment of our return. " She looked out the window.
When I was already going to leave, she gave me a small book - one more memoirs, with a particularly terrifying cover of woven black and white figures. Ivonna did not read her, as she said, persistently stretching to me a book. It looked like she wanted to get rid of her.
At home I discovered under the frightening cover another, blue. I read the book in one sitting. The author was a young French lawyer named Deniz Dufurnier. She was able to write a simple and touching story of the struggle for life. The "abomination" of the book was not only that the story of Ravensbrück was forgotten, but also that everything really happened.
A few days later, French speech rang out in my answering machine. He said Dr. Louise La Por (currently Liard), a doctor from the city of Merignac, which I thought was dead before. However, now she invited me to Bordeaux, where she then lived. I could stay as much as I want, since we had to discuss a lot. "But you would have to hurry. I am 93 years old".
Soon I contacted Berbel Schindler-Zeff, the author of the "Book of Memory". Berbel, the daughter of the German Prisoner Communist, was a "database" of prisoners; She traveled for a long time in search of captive lists in forgotten archives. She gave me the address of Valentina Makarova, the Belarusian guerriana who survived Auschwitz. Valentina answered me by offering visit her in Minsk.
By the time I got to the suburbs of Berlin, the snow began to go to no. I drove past the sign of Zacshenhausen, where there was a concentration camp for men. This meant that I was moving in the right direction. Zacshenhausen and Ravensbrüc were closely related. In the men's camp, even baked bread for women prisoners, and every day he was sent to Ravensbrück on this road. Over time, every woman received half a bow every evening. By the end of the war, they were barely more than a thin piece, and "useless mouths," as the Nazis called those from whom they wanted to get rid of, and nothing had happened at all.
SS officers, warders and prisoners regularly moved from one camp to another, since the Himmler administration tried to make the most of the resources. At the beginning of the war, the female branch was opened in Auschwitz, and then in other male camps, and women warders were trained in Ravensbrück, who after headed to the rest of the camps. By the end of the war, several SS officers were sent from Auschwitz in Ravensbrüc. Prisoners were also exchanged. Thus, despite the fact that Ravensbrüc was completely female camp, he borrowed many features of male camps.
The SS Empire, created by Himmler, was huge: by the middle of the war there were no less than 15,000 Nazi camps, which included temporary work camps, as well as thousands of auxiliary, related to the main concentration camps, scattered throughout Germany and Poland. The largest and terrifying camps built in 1942 as part of the final decision of the Jewish question. According to estimates, 6 million Jews were destroyed by the end of the war. To date, the facts about the genocide of the Jews are so well known and so stunning that many believe that the Hitler's destroying program was only in the Holocaust.
People who were interested in Ravensbrück are usually very surprised, having learned that most women have not been Jews there.
To date, historians distinguish certain types of camps, but these names can be confused. Ravensbrüc is often determined as a slave labor camp. This term is designed to mitigate the whole horror of what happened, and could also become one of the reasons why the camp was forgotten. Definitely Ravensbrüc became an important element of the slave labor system - from Siemens, the Giant in the world of electronics, there were plants there - but the work was just a stage on the way to death. Prisoners called Ravensbrüc death camp. The surviving Frenchwoman, the ethnologist German Tilon, said that people there were "slowly destroyed."
Photo: PPCC Antifa
Alive from Berlin, I watched the white fields that were replaced by dense trees. From time to time I drove past abandoned collective farms left since the times of the Communists.
In the depths of the forest, the snow was still stronger, and it became difficult for me to look for the road. Women from Ravensbrück were often sent to the forest during a snowfall chop trees. The snow sticks to their wooden shoes, so they walked on a kind of snow platforms, their legs were tucked. If they fell, the German shepherds were thrown on them, which warders were led next on the leashes.
The names of the villages in the forest resembled those that I read in the testimony. From the village of Altglobso was a rudeness of Dorothea Binz, an overseas with short hair. Then the spire of the Fürstenberg Church appeared. From the city center, the camp was not visible, but I knew that he was on the other shore of the lake. The prisoners were told how, leaving the camp gate, saw the spire. I drove past the Fürstenberg station, where so many terrible travel was completed. Once the February of the Red Army's female arrived here, which were brought from Crimea in wagons to transport livestock.
Dorothea BINTs on the first Ravensbryk Court in 1947. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
On the other side of Fürstenberg to the camp conducted by a cobbled road, which prisoners were built. On the left side stood at home with double roofs; Thanks to the Wrawn Map I knew that the warders lived in these houses. In one of the houses there was a hostel in which I was going to spend the night. The interior of the former owners has long been replaced for a flawless modern situation, but the perfume perfumes still live in their old rooms.
By right side Opened view of the wide and snow-white church of the lake. Ahead was a commandant headquarters and a high wall. A few minutes later I already stood at the entrance to the camp. Ahead was another wide white field planted with lime trees, which, as I learned later, were planted in the first days of the camp. All the barracks located under the trees disappeared. During the Cold War, the Russians used the camp as a tank base and demolished most of the buildings. Russian soldiers played football in place, which was once called Appelplatz and where the prisoners stood on roll call. I heard about the Russian database, but did not expect to discover such a degree of destruction.
Siemens camp, which was a few hundred meters from the southern wall, Zaros, and there was very difficult to get there. The same happened with an extension, "camp for the younger," where many murders were committed. I had to draw them in the imagination, but I did not need to imagine cold. Prisoners were standing here, on the square, in thin cotton clothes. I decided to hide in the "bunker", a stone prison building, the cameras of which were redone during the Cold War in the memorials of the victims of the Communists. Name lists were hollowed on a shining black granite.
In one of the rooms, the workers were removed memorials and re-soldered the premises. Now, when the power returned to the West, historians and archivists worked on the new statement of the events and above the new memorial exhibition.
Outside the camps, I found other, more personal memorials. Near the crematorium there was a long transition with high walls, known as the "firing alley". Here lay a small rose bouquet: if they were not frozen, they would be called. Nearby was a sign named.
In the furnaces in the crematorium lay three bouquets of flowers, the roses were grapped the shore of the lake. Since access to the camp again appeared, the former prisoners began to come to remember the dead friends. I needed to find other survivors while I had time.
Now I understood what my book should be: Biography Ravensbrück from the beginning to the very end. I have to try to combine the fragments of this story together. The book should shed light on the crimes of the Nazis against women and show how an understanding of the women's female camps can expand our knowledge about the history of Nazism.
So much evidence was destroyed, so many facts are forgotten and merged. But still a lot has been preserved, and now you can find new readings. British judicial protocols have long returned to public access, and there have been many details of those events in them. Documents that were hidden behind the iron curtain were also available: since the end of the Cold War, the Russians partially opened their archives, and certificates were found in several European capitals who had never been investigated before. The survivors from the East and Western side began to share each other memories. Their children asked questions, found hidden letters and diaries.
The most important role in the creation of this book was played by the voices of the prisoners themselves. They will direct me, disclose before me what really happened. A few months later, in the spring, I returned to the annual ceremony to celebrate the liberation of the camp, and met Valentina Makarov, surviving after the death march in Auschwitz. She wrote to me from Minsk. Her hair was white with blue sweat, face - sharp, like flint. When I asked how she managed to survive, she replied: "I believed in the victory." She uttered it as if I had to know it.
When I approached the room, in which executions were made, because of the clouds for a few minutes the sun suddenly looked. Forest pigeons have sowed in the crowns of Lipa, as if trying to drown out the noise from the car's rushing past. A bus was parked near the building, in which French schoolchildren came; They fixed the car to smoke on the cigarette.
My gaze was directed to the other side of the explosion lake, where the spire of the Fürstenberg Church was seen. There, in the distance, workers were torn with boats; In the summer, visitors often rent boats, not guessing that at the bottom of the lake there is the dust of the camp prisoners. Hanging wind challenged over the edge of ice is a lonely red rose.
"1957. The doorbell is heard, "recalls Margaret Buber-Neuman, surviving Uznage Ravensbrück. "I open and see an elderly woman in front of him: she breathes hard, and several teeth lacking in the mouth. Guest mumbles: "Do you really not recognize me? This is me, Johann Langefeld. I was the main supervisor in Ravensbrück. " IN last time I saw her fourteen years ago, in her office in the camp. I performed the duties of her secretary ... She often prayed, asking God to give her power to end the evil that was going on in the camp, but every time a Jewish appeared on the threshold of her cabinet, her face distorted hatred ...
And here we sit at one table. She says that she would like to be born a man. Speaks about Himmler, whom he still calls "Reichsfür" from time to time. She says, not clever, a few hours, confused in events different years and trying to somehow justify its actions "
Prisoners in Ravensbrück.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In early May 1939, due to the trees surrounding the tiny village of Ravensbrüc, a small string of trucks seemed to be a small string of trucks. Cars drove the lakeside by the shore, but their axes were bogged down in swampy coastal soil. A part of the newcomers jumped out the quilt of the cars; Others began to unload brought boxes.
Among them was a woman in uniform - gray jacket and skirt. Her legs were immediately bogged down in the sand, but she hastily freed himself, rose to the top of the slope and examined the surroundings. Behind the shiny in the sun, the stools of the lake visited the ranks of the fallen trees. In the air heated the smell of sawdust. The sun was paled, but there was no shadow nearby nearby. To the right of it, on the far shore of the lake, was located a small town of Fürstenberg. The coast was sleeping with boat houses. The church spire was visible.
On the opposite shore of the lake, to the left of it, a long gray wall pulled up with a height of about 5 meters. The forest path led to the complex of the complex towering over the surroundings, on which the signs of "extraneous entry are prohibited" hung. The woman is medium height, the chorenny, with curly brown hair - purposefully moved to the goal.
Johanna Langefeld arrived from the first party of supervisioners and prisoners to trace the unloading equipment and inspect the new concentration camp for women; It was planned that he would start functioning in a few days, and Langefeld will become oberaufzerer - Senior supervisor. For his life, she was pretended by a lot of female correctional institutions, but none of them went into any comparison with Ravensbrück.
A year before the new appointment, Langefeld held the post of senior supervisor in Lichtenburg, a medieval fortress near Torgau, city on the shore of Elba. Lichtenburg was temporarily turned into a female camp for the construction period of Ravensbrück; The shredded halls and raw dungeons were close and contributed to the occurrence of diseases; Detention conditions were unbearable for women. Ravensbrüc was built specifically for the purpose intended for him. The territory of the camp was about six acres - enough to accurately accommodate about 1,000 women from the first batch of prisoners.
Langafeld passed through the iron gate and walked along the aptellace - the main square of the camp with a football field, capable of accommodating all prisoners of the camp if necessary. At the edges of the square, the loudspeakers hung over the head of Langafelde, although it was still that the only sound on the territory of the camp was a ring of scored nails scored from afar. Walls cut off camp from external world, leaving only the sky above its territory.
Unlike male concentration camps, there were no watchdogs and machine guns in Ravensbrück. However, around the perimeter of the outside of the wall, the electric hedge was served, accompanied by signs with a skull and crossed bones, warning that the hedge is under high voltage. Only to the south, to the right of Lenhafeld, the surface rose enough to distinguish the tops of the trees on the hill.
The main construction on the territory of the camp was huge gray barracks. Wooden houses erected in a checkerboard, were one-story building with tiny windows, sealed the central square of the camp. Two rows of exactly the same barracks were the only difference was only a slightly large size - they were located on both sides of Lampshraße, the main street Ravensbrück.
Langefeld consistently examined the blocks. The first was a dining room with new tables and chairs. To the left of the aptelplas also been Revir - This term Germans used to refer to the lazarets and medical schools. Crossing the square, she went into a sanitary unit, equipped with dozens of shower. In the corner of the premises, boxes with striped cotton robes were piled up, and at the table a handful of women laid out the stacks of colored felt triangles.
Under one roof, a camp kitchen shining from large saucepans and kettles was located. In the next building there was a warehouse of prison clothing, Effektenkammerwhere heaps were kept large brown paper bags, and then - laundry, Wäscherei., With six centrifuge washing machines - Langefeld would like to be more.
A poultry farm was built nearby. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, who managed concentration camps and many more than Nazi Germany, wanted to create it so self-sufficient as possible. In Ravensbrück, it was planned to build cells for rabbits, a chicken coop and a garden, as well as smash fruit and flower gardens, where the gooseberry bushes had already begins to transplanted from the gardens of Lichtenburg. The contents of the Lichtenburg cesspools were also brought to Ravensbrück and used as fertilizer. Among other things, Himmler demanded that the camps united resources. In Ravensbrück, for example, there was no bread stoves, so bread was brought daily from Zacshenhausen, a male camp 80 km south.
The older warden walked on Lampshratrasse (the main street of the camp, running between the barracks - approx. New), Which began on the far side of the aptelplatz and led deep into the camp. The barracks were located along the Lampshraße, in exact order, so that the windows of one case went to the rear wall of the other. In these buildings, on 8 on each side of the "Street", the prisoners lived. The first barracks were planted with red sage flowers; There were linden saplings between the others.
As in all concentration camps, the grid layout was used in Ravensbrück primarily to ensure that the prisoners were always visible, and therefore the warders were required less. There was a brigade of thirty overseers and a detachment of twelve Men-SESSERS - all together under the command of Max Kögel's Tverbankannfürera.
Johanna Langefeld believed that she could manage the female concentration camp better than any man, and definitely better than Max Kögel, whose methods she despised. Himmler, however, clearly made it clear that the management of Ravensbryuk should rely on the principles of managing camps, which means Langafelde and her subordinates should have reported to the SS commandant.
Formally, neither she nor the rest of the wardrifiers had no relation to the camp. They did not simply submitted to men - there were no titles or rank in women - they were only the "auxiliary forces" of the SS. Most remained without a weapon, although those that guarded labor outfits was carried with them a pistol; Many had official dogs. Himmler believed that women fear dogs more than men.
Nevertheless, Kögel's power here was not absolute. At that time, he was only the acting commandant and did not possess some powers. For example, in the camp was not allowed to have a special prison, or the "bunker", for violators of the order, which was established in men's camps. He also could not appoint "official" beatings. Restricted by restrictions, the Shturmbannfürer sent the leadership to the SS request to increase the authority to punish prisoners, but the request was not satisfied.
However, Langafelde, highly appreciated Mashter and discipline, and not beating, such conditions satisfied, mainly when it was able to achieve significant concessions in the daily camp management. In the arch of the camp rules, Lagerordnung.It was noted that the older warden is entitled to advise SzestzhaftaLerfürera (first deputy commandant) on "female issues", although their content was defined.
Langefeld looked around, entering one of the barracks. Like a lot, the recreation organization of prisoners in the camp was for her in a novelty - more than 150 women just slept in each room, individual cameras, as used to it, was not envisaged. All enclosures were divided into two large bedrooms, a and b, on both sides of them - zones for washing, with a number of twelve pelvis for bathing and twelve restrooms, as well as a common day room, where ate prisoners.
Sleeping areas were forced by three-story beds, chosen from wooden boards. Each prisoner was filled with sawdust mattress, pillow, sheet and blanket in a blue-white cage, folded by the bed.
The value of Mutters and Disciplines Langefeld was vaccinated from an early age. She was born in the family of a blacksmith under the name of Johanne May, in the town of Kuppendre, the Rourisky region, in March 1900. Her with an older sister was brought up in the strict Lutheran tradition - parents went down in them the importance of leaning, obedience and daily prayer. Like any decent Protestant, Johann since childhood knew that her life would be determined by the role of the faithful wife and mother: "Kinder, Küche, Kirche", that is, "Children, Kitchen, Church," that was in her parents's house familiar rule. But from the small years, Johann dreamed of more.
Her parents often spoke about the past Germany. After the Sunday visit, they recalled the humiliating occupation of their beloved Rura's troops by Napoleon, and the whole family kneeling, praying God, so that he would be returned to Germany. The idol girl was her namesake, Johann Prokhazsk, the heroine of the liberation wars of the early 19th century, pretended by a man to fight the French.
All this Johanna Langefeld told Margaret Bubber Neuman, the former prisoner, in whose door she knocked many years later, in attempts to "explain their behavior." Margaret, concluded in Ravesbruck for four years, was shocked by the emergence of the former supervisor on the threshold of her house in 1957; Story Langefeld about her "Odyssey" Neuman is extremely interested, and she recorded him.
On the year of the beginning of the First World War, Johanna, which was then 14 years old, and the rest was happy when the young men of Kuppendre went to the front to return the greatness of Germany until she realized that her role and the role of all the Germans in this matter was small. Two years later, it became clear that the end of the war would never come, and German women suddenly received an order to go to work in mines, offices and factories; There, deep in the rear, women got the opportunity to take up the male work, but only in order to again stay not at the affairs after the return of men from the front.
Two million Germans died in the trenches, but six million survived, and now Johanna watched the Skaffder soldiers, many of whom were mutilated, all to one were humiliated. Under the conditions of surrender, Germany was obliged to pay reparations, undermining the economy and dispersed hyperinflation; In 1924, the favorite Johann Rur was again occupied by the French, "Straining" German coal in punishment for unpaid reparations. Her parents lost their savings, she was looking for work without a penny in his pocket. In 1924, Johanna married Shakhtar named Wilhelm Langefeld, who died in two years from the lung disease.
Here "Odyssey" Johann was interrupted; She "dissolved in years," wrote Margaret. The middle of the twenties became a dark period who fell out of her memory - she did not say about the connection with another man, as a result of which she became pregnant and turned out to be dependent on Protestant charity groups.
While Langefeld and Millions of her like were with difficulty, other Germans in the twenties found freedom. The Weimar Republic led by the Socialists accepted financial assistance from America, was able to stabilize the country and follow the new liberal course. German women received the right to vote and for the first time in history entered into political parties, especially the left sense. Imitating Rose Luxembourg, the leader of the Communist Movement "Spartak", girls from the middle class (among them Margaret Buber-Neuman) Strigley's hair, watched the plays of Bertold Brecht, wandered in the forests and chatted about the revolution with comrades from the youth communist group "Vanderfogel". Meanwhile, women from the working class across the country gathered money for "red help", joined trade unions and used in factory gates.
In 1922 in Munich, when Adolf Hitler Vinyl in Germany's Nezpectors of "Oblined Jew", early a wounded Jewish girl named Olga Benario ran away from home to join the Communist Cell, abandoning his prosperous parents from the middle class. She was fourteen years old. A few months later, the schoolgirl had already drove his comrades on the paths of the Bavarian Alps, bathed in mountain streams, and then he read Marx with them by the fire and planned German communist revolution. In 1928, she became famous, attacking the building of the Berlin court and freeing the German communist, who was threatened by Guillotine. In 1929, Olga left Germany to Moscow, train with the Stalinist elite before leaving the revolution in Brazil.
Olga Benario. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Meanwhile, in the impoverished valley of Johanna Langefeld, by this moment was already a mother's mother without hope for the future. The collapse on Wall Street of 1929 caused the world depression, which had surrendered Germany to a new and even deeper economic crisis, deprived the work of millions of people and provoking widespread discontent. Most of all Langafeld was afraid that her son Herbert would take her son if she was in poverty. But instead of join the beggar, she decided to help them, turning to God. It was the religious conviction that prompted her to work with the poorest of the poor, as she told Margaret for the kitchen table in Frankfurt after all these years. She found work in the service of social assistance, where heganized the unemployed women's unemployed and "re-educated prostitutes."
In 1933, Johanna Langefeld found a new Savior represented by Adolf Hitler. Hitler's program for women could not be easier: Germans had to sit at home, to give birth as much as possible Aryan children and obey their husbands. Women were not suitable for public life; Most of the jobs would be unavailable for women, and their opportunity to enter universities is limited.
Such sentiments were easily found in any European country of the 30s, but the formulations of the Nazis against women were unique in their abusive. Hitler's environment not only with open contempt about the "blunt", "lower" female field - after a time they demanded the "segregation" between men and women, as if men did not see any sense in women, except for a pleasant decoration and, of course, Source of offspring. The Jews were not the only goats of Hitler's abuse for the troubles of Germany: Women emancipated during the Weimar Republic were accused of theft of jobs in men and corruption of national morality.
And yet Hitler was able to charm millions of Germans who wanted to "man with an iron grip" returned pride and faith in the Reich. Crowds of such supporters, many of whom were deeply religious and raised by the anti-Semitic propaganda of Joseph Goebbels, attended the Nuremberg rally in honor of the victory of the Nazis in 1933, where the American reporter William Shearer mixed up with the crowd. "Hitler drove today in this medieval city At the sunset by the slender phalanner of the nazis ... Tens of thousands of swastika flags are overshadowing the gothic landscapes of this place ... "Later, the same evening, outside the hotel, where Hitler stopped:" I was slightly shocked by the type of persons, especially the people of women ... they looked at him, As in the Messiah ... "
Do not even doubt that Langefeld gave his voice for Hitler. She was eager to take revenge on humiliation of his country. And she was enjoyable the idea of \u200b\u200b"respect for the family", which Hitler spoke about. She had the personal reasons to be a grateful regime: she had a stable job for the first time. For women - and even more so for single mothers - most career paths were closed, except that Lenhafeld chose. From service social security She was transferred to the prison service. In 1935, it was raised again: she became the head correctional colony For prostitutes in Browway, not far from Cologne.
In Browway, it has already liked that it does not fully share the methods of the Nazis on the help of the "poorest of the poor." In July 1933, a law was adopted to prevent the birth of offspring with hereditary diseases. Sterilization has become a way to deal with weaklings, loafers, criminals and crazy. Fuhrer was confident that all these degenerates are leeches of the state treasury, they should be deprived of offspring to strengthen Volksgemeinschaft. - Community of purebred Germans. In 1936, the head of Browwayer Albert Bose stated that 95% of his Uznitsi "is unable to improve and should be sterilized from moral considerations and the desire to create a healthy folk."
In 1937, Bose dismissed Langefeld. Browwater records it is stated that she was dismissed for theft, but in fact because of its struggle with such methods. The records also said that Langefeld still did not enter the party, although it was mandatory for all workers.
The idea of \u200b\u200b"respect" to the family did not spend Linin Hag, the wife of a member of the Communist Parliament in Vyestenberg. January 30, 1933, when she heard that Hitler was elected by Chancellor, it became clear to her that a new security service, Gestapo, will come for her husband: "We warned all the dangers of Hitler. Thought that people would go against him. We were wrong".
So it happened. January 31 at 5 am, while Lina and her husband was still sleeping, Gestapo has declared to them. Began the recalculation of "red". "Casas, revolvers, clubs. They were clearly pleasure for pure linen. We were not at all strangers: we knew them, and they were. They were adult men, fellow citizens - neighbors, fathers. Ordinary people. But they instructed the charged pistols on us, and in their eyes there were only hatred. "
Lina's husband began to dress. Lina was surprised how he managed so quickly throw the coat. What will he leave, not saying and words?
What are you? She asked.
"And what to do," he said and shrugged.
- He is a member of parliament! - she screamed with armed batons by police officers. They laughed.
- I heard? Community, here's who you are. But we will consider this infection with you.
While the father of the family was led by convoy, Lina tried to drag their screaming ten-year-old daughter Katie from the window.
"I don't think people will put together with it," Lina said.
Four weeks later, February 27, 1933, while Hitler tried to capture power in the party, someone set fire to the German parliament, Reichstag. Accused the Communists, although many assumed that the Nazis were standing for arson who were looking for a reason to intimidate political opponents. Hitler immediately released an order of "preventive detention", now anyone could get under the arrest for "treason." Just ten miles from Munich prepared for the discovery of a new camp for such "traitors."
The first concentration camp, Dachau, opened on March 22, 1933. In the following weeks and months, the police of Hitler wanted each communist, even if they were potential, and brought them to where their spirit had to break. Social Democrats was waiting for the same fate as members of trade unions, and all other "state enemies".
There were Jews in Dakhau, especially among the communists, but there were few of them - in the first years of the reign of Nazis, the Jews were not arrested in huge quantities. Sitting at that time in the camps were arrested for the resistance to Hitler, and not for racial affiliation. At first, the main goal of the concentration camps was to suppress resistance within the country, and then it was possible to be taken for the rest of the goals. For the suppression, the most suitable person was responsible for this business - Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, soon became also the head of the police, including the Gestapo.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler did not resemble the usual head of the police. He was a low, thin man with a weak chin and glasses in a gold rim on a sharp nose. Born on October 7, 1900, was a middle child in the Gebhard Himmler family, the Assistant Director of the School near Munich. In the evening in their Munich cozy apartment, he spent, helping Himmler-senior with his collection of stamps or listening to the heroic adventures of his grandfather's grandfather, while the charming mother of the family is a devout Catholic - embroidered, sitting in the corner.
Young Heinrich studied perfectly, but his students were considered torture and often loomed. On physical education, he barely reached BRUSEV, so the teacher forced him to engage in painful squats under the simulatory classmates. For years later, the Himmler in the men's concentration camp invented a new torture: the prisoners were skipped in a circle and forced to jump and squat until they fall. And after they were injected to make sure that they would not stand.
After graduating from school, the Himmler dreamed of joining the ranks of the army and even visited the cadet, but bad health and vision prevented him to become an officer. Instead, he studied agriculture and bought chickens. He was absorbed by another romantic dream. He returned to his homeland. In its free time Walked through the beloved Alps, often with the mother, or studied astrology with the genealogy, along the way, making notes in the diary about every detail in his life. "Thoughts and anxieties still do not leave my head," he complains.
By twenty years, Himmler constantly scolded himself for the discrepancy between social and sexual standards. "I've always beckon," he wrote, and when it was a matter of sex: "I do not give myself and the words to Harrow." By the 1920s, he joined Munich Men's Society Tula, where the origins of the Aryan superiority and the Jewish threat were discussed. He was also accepted in the Munich ultra-right wing of parliamentarians. "How well put out the form again," he noted. National Socialists (Nazis) began to talk about him: "Heinrich fix everything." He was not equal in organizational skills and attention to detail. He also showed that he could predict the wishes of Hitler. As the Himmler found out, it is very useful to be "tricky like foxes."
In 1928 he married Margaret Boden, nurse, over him for seven years. They had a daughter Gudrun. Himmler succeeded in the professional sphere: in 1929 he was appointed head of the SS (then they were engaged only by Hitler's guard). By 1933, when Hitler came to power, Himmler turned the SS into the elite division. One of its tasks was the control of concentration camps.
Hitler proposed the idea of \u200b\u200bconcentration camps, in which it would be possible to collect and suppress opposition. As an example, he focused on the concentration camps of the British times of the South African War of 1899-1902. For the style of Nazi camps, hemmler was answered; He personally chose a place for the prototype in Dakhau and his commandant - Theodora Eike. Subsequently, Eka became the commander of the division "Dead Head" - so called the concentration camps of concentration camps; His members worn on the caps icon with a skull and bones, showing his relationship with death. Himmler ordered Eyka to develop a plan to defeat all the "state enemies".
It was this Eka and took up in Dakhau: he created SS school, the disciples called him "Dad Eike", he "harden" them before sending to other camps. The hardening meant that students should be able to hide their weakness in front of the enemies and "show only ruined" or, in other words, to be able to hate. Among the first recruits, Eike was Max Kegel, the future commandant Ravensbrück. He came to Dakhau in search of work - he was sitting for theft and only recently came out.
Kögel was born in the south of Bavaria, in the mountain town of Füssen, who is famous for Little and Gothic castles. Kögel was the son of the shepherd and orphaned for 12 years. The teenager he passes cattle in the Alps until he began to look for a job in Munich and did not get into the ultra right "People's Movement". In 1932 he joined the Nazi Party. "Dad Eyka" quickly found the use of the thirty-one-year-old Kögel, because he was already a man of the strongest hardening.
In Dakhau Kögel served with other SS-Sheps, for example, with Rudolph Hess, another recruit, the future commandant of Auschwitz, who had time to serve in Ravensbrück. Subsequently, Hess with love recalled his days in Dakhau, talking about the staff of the SS, deeply loved by Eike and forever remembered his rules that "forever remained with them in their flesh and blood."
Success Eyka was so great that soon the Dachau model was built a few more camps. But in those years, neither Eyka nor Gimmler nor anyone else thought about the concentration camp for women. Women who fought with Hitler, simply did not consider as a serious threat.
Under the repression of Hitler, thousands of women fell. At the time of the Weimar Republic, many of them felt free: members of trade unions, doctors, teachers, journalists. Often they were communists or communist wives. They were arrested, disgusting with them appealed, but did not send to the camps by type Dahau; Even thoughts did not arise to open a female branch in men's camps. Instead, they were sent to women's prisons or colonies. The mode was tough, but tolerant.
Many political prisoners were taken to Moringen, a labor camp near Hannover. 150 women slept in unlocked rooms, and the guards ran to buy wool for knitting on their instructions. In prison premises, sewing machines thundered. The table "Knight" stood separately from the rest, the senior members of the Reichstag and the wife of the manufacturers were sitting.
Nevertheless, as the gimmler found out, women can torture otherwise than men. That simple fact that men were killed, and children were taken away - usually in Nazi shelters - was already quite painful. Censorship did not allow to ask for help.
Barbara Fürbringer tried to warn her sister from America when he heard her husband, a deputy of the Reichstag of Communist glances, was tortured to death in Dachau, and their children Nazis had defined the reception desk:
Dear sister!
Unfortunately, things go bad. My dear husband Theodore suddenly died in Dakhau four months ago. Our three children were placed in the State Charitable House in Munich. I am in the women's camp in Moringhen. In my account no longer left Penny.
Censorship did not miss her letter, and she had to rewrite him:
Dear sister!
Unfortunately, things go wrong as I would like. My dear husband Theodor died four months ago. Our three children live in Munich, on Brenner Strasse, 27. I live in Moringer, not far from Hannover, on Pthedsse, 32. I would be very grateful if you sent me some money.
Himmler expected that if the broken men would be quite frightened, then everyone else will be forced to give up. The method has largely justified itself, as Lina Hag noticed, arrested a few weeks after her husband and placed in another prison: "Did no one seen what everything goes? Did no one see the truth for the shameless demagogue of Goebbels articles? I have seen it even through the thick walls of the prison, while more and more people on freedom submitted their requirements. "
By 1936, the political opposition was completely destroyed, and humanitarian units of German churches began to maintain the regime. The German Red Cross joined the side of the Nazis; At all meetings, the banner of the Red Cross began to reach the swastika, and the Glavian Convention, the International Committee of the Red Cross, inspected Himmler's Lagheri - or at least exemplary blocks - and gave green light. Western countries They perceived the existence of concentration camps and prisons as the inner case of Germany, considering it not with his own business. In the mid-1930s, most Western leaders still believed that the greatest threat to the world comes from communism, and not Nazi Germany.
Despite the lack of significant opposition both within the country and abroad, initial stage His Board Führer carefully followed public opinion. In speech uttered in the SS training camp, he noted: "I always know that I should never do a single step that could reverse. You always need to feel the situation and ask yourself: "From what can I refuse at the moment, and from what I can not?" "
Even the struggle against German Jews initially advanced much slower than many members of the party wanted. In the first years, Hitler issued laws that impede the employment and public life of Jews, spurring hatred and persecution, but he considered that before making the next steps, should pass for a while. Himmler also knew how to feel the situation.
In November 1936, the PC, which was not only the head of the SS, but also the head of the police, had to deal with a shock in the international arena that originated in the German community community. His reason came down from a steamer in Hamburg straight into the hands of Gestapo. She was on the eighth month of pregnancy. Her name was Olga Benario. A long-legged girl from Munich, who escaped from the house and became communist, was now a 35-year-old woman who was on the threshold of universal fame among the communists of the world.
After studying in Moscow in the early 1930s, Olga accepted the Comintern, and in 1935 Stalin sent it to Brazil to help coordinate the coup against President Zhetuliu Vargas. The operation was led by the legendary leader of Brazilian rebels Luis Carlos Lesz. The rebellion was organized with the aim of committing a communist revolution in the largest country of South America, thereby providing Stalin to the bridgehead in the Western Hemisphere. However, with the help of information received from the British intelligence, the plan was disclosed, Olga was arrested along with another conspiratorist, Elise Evert, and sent Hitler as a "gift".
From the Hamburg docks, Olga sent to Berlin Prison Barminstraße, where four weeks later she gave birth to a girl, Anita. Communists around the world launched a campaign with the aim of freeing them. The case attracted widespread attention, largely due to the fact that the father of the child was the notorious Carlos Prone, the leader of the failed coup; They fell in love with each other and played a wedding in Brazil. Olga's courage and her gloomy, but sophisticated beauty added acute history.
Such an unpleasant story was especially undesirable for publicity in the year of the Olympic Games in Berlin, when a lot was done for the country's estimation of the country. (For example, before the beginning of the Olympics, a cloud was produced on Berlin Gypsies. In order to remove them from the public from the public, they were driven into a huge camp, built on a swamp in the Berlin suburb, Martzane). The heads of the Gestapo took an attempt to discharge the situation by the proposal to free the child, handing it into the hands of Mother Olga, the Jewishman Evgenia Benario, who at that time lived in Munich, but Eugene did not want to accept the child: she had long renounced his daughter-communist and did the same The most with his granddaughter. Then Himmler gave the permission of Mother of the Prone, Leockadia, pick up Anita, and in November 1937, the Brazilian grandmother took the child from Barminstraße prison. Olga, devoid of kid, remained alone in the chamber.
In a letter to Leokady, she explained that she did not have time to prepare for separation:
"Sorry that anitha things in such a state. Did you get her routine of the day and a table with weight? I, as I could, tried to draw up a table. Her internal organs are in order? And bones - her legs? Perhaps she suffered due to the extraordinary circumstances of my pregnancy and its first year of life. "
By 1936, the number of women in German prisons began to grow. Despite fear, the Germans continued to act underground, many were inspired by the beginning civil War in Spain. Among the Moringhen sent to the women's "camp" in the mid-1930s there were more communication and former participants of the Reichstag, as well as women acting in small groups or alone like artist-disabled Gerda Lisak, creating anti-Nazi leaflets. Ils Hotel, a young Jew, who typing articles, criticizing the Fuhrer, was arrested by mistake. Gestapo wanted her twin sister Elese, but she was in Oslo, organized ways to evacuate Jewish children, so they took Hole instead of her.
In 1936, 500 German housewives with the Bibles and in neat white headboards arrived in Moringen. These women, Jehovah's Witnesses, protested when their husbands called on the army. They stated that Hitler is an antichrist that God is the only ruler on Earth, not a Führer. Their husbands and other men of Jehovah's Witnesses sent to the new Hitler camp called Buchenwald, where they were supposed to be 25 blows with a leather whip. But Himmler knew that even his siepers would not get the courage to the German housewives, so in Moringene, the head of the prison, a kind of chrome soldier retired, just took the Bible Jehovah's Witnesses.
In 1937, adoption of the law against Rassenschande - Literally, the "desecration of race" - prohibiting the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, the further influx of the Jewish in Moringen lifted. Later, in the second half of 1937, women concluded in the camp noticed a sudden increase in the number of vagrants brought already "lame; Some with crutches, many cough bleed. " In 1938 many prostitutes arrived.
Elsa Circle worked as usual when the group of Dusseldorf police officers, arriving at the address Corneliusstraße, 10, began to break down the door with screams. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, July 30, 1938. Police raids became commonplace, and Elsa had no cause for panic, although in lately They began to pass more often. Prostitution, according to the laws of Nazi Germany, was legitimate, but the police had many prepositions to action: perhaps one of the women did not pass the test for syphilis, or the officer required a tip to the next communist cell in Düsseldorf docks.
Several Dusseldorf officers knew these women personally. Elsa Circle has always been in demand or because of the special services provided by it - she was engaged in sadomasochism - either because of the gossip, and she always kept the Ear Egor. Elsa was also known on the streets; If she took the girls under the wing, especially if the sleepwear only came to the city, because Elsa was on the streets of Düsseldorf at the same position ten years ago - without work, away from home and without a penny for the soul.
However, it was soon that the raid was specially special. Frightened customers grabbed that they could, and half-liters ran to the street. That night, similar raids passed and not far from the place where Agnes Petri worked. Muga Agnes, local pimp, also grabbed. Delighted the quarter, the police detained in general 24 prostitutes, and by six in the morning they were all sitting behind bars, without information about release.
The attitude towards them in the police station was also different. The duty officer - Sergeant Paine - knew that most prostitutes had no stay in local chambers more than once. After driving a big dark account, he recorded them in the usual way, marking names, addresses and personal belongings. However, in a column called "Cause of Arrest", Painein diligently, opposite each name, wrote "Asoziale", "ASOsocial type", - the word he did not use before. And at the end of the column, also for the first time, a red inscription appeared - "Transportation".
In 1938, similar raids were held throughout Germany, since the Nazi cleaning of the poor people went to a new stage. The government launched the Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich program (movement against TUNYADETS), aimed against those who were considered marginalized. This movement was not observed by the rest of the world, it did not receive a broad publicity in Germany, but more than 20 thousand so-called "asocials" - "vagrants, prostitutes, tuneevans, beggars and thieves" - was caught and sent to concentration camps.
Before the beginning of World War II, another year remained, but German war with his own undesirable elements has already begun. Fuhrer stated that in preparation for war, the country should remain "clean and strong", so "useless mouths" should be closed. With the arrival of Hitler, the mass sterilization of mentally ill and mentally retarded began to power. In 1936, Gypsies were placed in reservation near large cities. In 1937, thousands of "harmonious criminals" were sent without trial to concentration camps. Hitler approved such measures, but the head of the persecution was the head of the police and the head of the SS Henry Himmler, who also called on to send "asocials" to the concentration camps in 1938.
The selected time was the value. Long until 1937, the camps initially created to get rid of the political opposition began to be allowed. Communists, social democrats and others, arrested in the first years of the Board of Himmler, were mainly broken down and most of them returned home broken. Himmler, who opposed such a mass liberation, saw his departments in danger, and began to look for new applications for camps.
Prior to that, no one had to use the concentration camp not only for the political opposition, and, by filling their criminals and garbage of society, Himmler could revive his punitive empire. He considered himself not just the police chief, his interest in science - to all types of experiments that can help create an ideal aryan race - Always was his main goal. Collecting "degenerates" inside their camps, he secured a central role in the most ambitious Fuhrer experiment, aimed at clearing the German gene pool. In addition, new prisoners were to become a ready-made workforce to restore Reich.
The nature and purpose of the concentration camps would now change. In parallel with the decrease in the number of German political prisoners, social renovans would be in their place. Among the arrested - prostitutes, small criminals, poor people - at first there were as many women as men.
Now the new generation of specially constructed concentration camps was created. And since Moringen and other women's prisons were already overcrowded and also demanded costs, Himmler proposed to build a concentration camp for women. In 1938, he convened his advisers to discuss the possible location. Probably, the friend of Himmler, Grupenfürer Oswald Paul, proposed to build a new camp in the Mecklenburg Lake District, near the village of Ravensbrück. Paul knew this terrain because he had a country house there.
Rudolf Hess later claimed that he was warned by Himmler, that the places would not be enough: the number of women should have increased, especially after the start of the war. Others noted that the earth was swampy and the construction of the camp would dragus. Himmler shall all objections. Just 80 km from Berlin, the location was convenient for inspections, and he often went there to visit the field or to his friend's childhood, a famous surgeon and a Schedule Carlo Gebhardt, who was headed by a medical clinic of Hochhenichn only 8 km from the camp.
Himmler ordered as soon as possible to translate concluded men from the Berlin concentration camp Zakshenhausen to the construction of Ravensbrück. At the same time, the remaining prisoners from the men's concentration camp in Lichtenburg near Torgau, which was already half empty, had to be translated into the Buchenwald camp, opened in July 1937. Women defined in the new female camp during the construction of Ravensbrück were to be kept in Lichtenburg.
Being inside the crucible car, Lina Haag had no idea where he was sent. After four years in the prison cell, and many others said that they were "forwarded." Every few hours the train stayed on some station, but their names are Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Mannheim - did not tell her anything. Lina looked at the "ordinary people" on the platforms - she did not see such a painting for years - and ordinary people They looked at "these pale shapes with eyes and confused hair." At night, women were filmed from the train and passed the local prisons. Women guards injected Lina to horror: "It was impossible to imagine that in the face of all these suffering they could gossip and laugh in the corridors. Most of them were virtuous, but it was a special kind of piety. It seemed that they were hiding behind God, opposed to their own lowness. "
