In Russia, fundraising has begun to erect a monument to the Red Army soldiers who died in Polish concentration camps. The Russian Military Historical Society is collecting money and has published the following message on its website:
“More than 1.2 thousand Red Army prisoners of war who died in concentration camps during the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1921 in the vicinity of Krakow are buried in the military burial plot of the Krakow City Memorial Cemetery. The names of most of them are unknown. It is our descendants’ duty to bring back their memory.”
As historian Nikolai Malishevsky writes, a scandal broke out in Poland after this. The Polish side is outraged: it sees this as an attempt by Russia to “distort history” and “divert attention from Katyn.” The stupidity and wretchedness of such reasoning is obvious, because in fact the Poles remained true to their “best traditions” - portraying themselves as an “eternal victim” on the part of either the Russian or German aggressors, while completely ignoring their own crimes. And they really have something to hide!
Let us cite an article on this subject by the same Nikolai Malishevsky, who knows the history of the Polish Gulag very well. I think that the Poles have absolutely nothing to object to the facts presented in this material...
The Red Army soldiers found themselves near Warsaw not as a result of an attack on Europe, as Polish propagandists lie, but as a result of a counterattack by the Red Army. This counterattack was a response to the attempt of the Polish blitzkrieg in the spring of 1920 with the aim of securing Vilna, Kiev, Minsk, Smolensk and (if possible) Moscow, where Pilsudski dreamed of inscribing with his own hand on the walls of the Kremlin: “It is forbidden to speak Russian!”
Unfortunately, in the countries of the former USSR, the topic of mass death in Polish concentration camps of tens of thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Baltic states, Jews, and Germans has not yet been sufficiently covered.
As a result of the war launched by Poland against Soviet Russia, the Poles captured over 150 thousand Red Army soldiers. In total, together with political prisoners and internees, more than 200 thousand Red Army soldiers, civilians, White Guards, fighters of anti-Bolshevik and nationalist (Ukrainian and Belarusian) formations ended up in Polish captivity and concentration camps...
Planned genocide
The military Gulag of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is more than a dozen concentration camps, prisons, marshalling stations, concentration points and various military facilities such as the Brest Fortress (there were four camps here) and Modlin. Strzałkowo (in western Poland between Poznan and Warsaw), Pikulice (in the south, near Przemysl), Dombie (near Krakow), Wadowice (in southern Poland), Tuchole, Shipturno, Bialystok, Baranovichi, Molodechino, Vilna, Pinsk, Bobruisk...
And also - Grodno, Minsk, Pulawy, Powązki, Lancut, Kovel, Stryi (in the western part of Ukraine), Shchelkovo... Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who found themselves in Polish captivity after the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 found a terrible, painful death here .
The attitude of the Polish side towards them was very clearly expressed by the commandant of the camp in Brest, who stated in 1919: “You Bolsheviks wanted to take our lands away from us - okay, I’ll give you the land. I have no right to kill you, but I will feed you so much that you yourself will die.” Words did not diverge from deeds. According to the memoirs of one of those who arrived from Polish captivity in March 1920, “For 13 days we did not receive bread, on the 14th day, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but very rotten, moldy... The sick were not treated, and they died in dozens...”
From a report on a visit to the camps in Brest-Litovsk by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the presence of a doctor of the French military mission in October 1919:
“A sickening smell emanates from the guardhouses, as well as from the former stables in which prisoners of war are housed. The prisoners are chillingly huddled around a makeshift stove where several logs are burning - the only way to warm themselves. At night, sheltering from the first cold weather, they lie in close rows in groups of 300 people in poorly lit and poorly ventilated barracks, on planks, without mattresses or blankets. The prisoners are mostly dressed in rags... Complaints. They are the same and boil down to the following: we are starving, we are freezing, when will we be freed? ...Conclusions. This summer, due to overcrowding of premises unsuitable for habitation; close cohabitation of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom died immediately; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; swelling, hunger during the three months of stay in Brest - the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis... Two severe epidemics devastated this camp in August and September - dysentery and typhus. The consequences were aggravated by close living together of sick and healthy, lack of medical care, food and clothing... The mortality record was set in early August, when 180 people died from dysentery in one day... Between July 27 and September 4, t .e. In 34 days, 770 Ukrainian prisoners of war and internees died in the Brest camp. It should be recalled that the number of prisoners imprisoned in the fortress gradually reached, if there is no mistake, 10,000 people in August, and on October 10 it was 3,861 people.”
Later, “due to unsuitable conditions,” the camp in the Brest Fortress was closed. However, in other camps the situation was often even worse. In particular, a member of the League of Nations commission, Professor Thorwald Madsen, who visited the “ordinary” Polish camp for captured Red Army soldiers in Wadowice at the end of November 1920, called it “one of the most terrible things he saw in his life.” In this camp, as former prisoner Kozerovsky recalled, prisoners were “beaten around the clock.” An eyewitness recalls: “Long bars were always at the ready... I was spotted with two soldiers caught in a neighboring village... Suspicious people were often transferred to a special punishment barracks, and almost no one came out from there. They fed 8 people once a day with a decoction of dried vegetables and a kilogram of bread. There were cases when starving Red Army soldiers ate carrion, garbage and even hay. In the Shchelkovo camp, prisoners of war are forced to carry their own excrement on themselves instead of horses. They carry both plows and harrows" ( AVP RF.F.0384.Op.8.D.18921.P.210.L.54-59).
Conditions in transit and in prisons, where political prisoners were also kept, were not the best. The head of the distribution station in Pulawy, Major Khlebowski, very eloquently described the position of the Red Army soldiers: “obnoxious prisoners, in order to spread disorder and ferment in Poland, constantly eat potato peelings from the dung heap.” In just 6 months of the autumn-winter period of 1920-1921, 900 out of 1,100 prisoners of war died in Pulawy. The deputy head of the front sanitary service, Major Hakbeil, most eloquently said what the Polish concentration camp at the collection station in Belarusian Molodechno was like: “The prisoner camp at the collection station for prisoners was a real dungeon. No one cared about these unfortunate people, so it is not surprising that a person unwashed, unclothed, poorly fed and placed in inappropriate conditions as a result of infection was doomed only to death.” In Bobruisk “there were up to 1,600 captured Red Army soldiers(as well as the Belarusian peasants of Bobruisk district sentenced to death. - Auto.), most of whom are completely naked»...
According to the testimony of the Soviet writer, an employee of the Cheka in the 20s, Nikolai Ravich, who was arrested by the Poles in 1919 and visited the prisons of Minsk, Grodno, Powązki and the Dombe camp, the cells were so crowded that only the lucky ones slept on bunks. In the Minsk prison there were lice everywhere in the cell, and it was especially cold because outer clothing had been taken away. “In addition to an ounce of bread (50 grams), hot water was provided in the morning and evening, and at 12 o’clock the same water, seasoned with flour and salt.” Transit point in Powązki "was filled with Russian prisoners of war, most of whom were cripples with artificial arms and legs." The German revolution, writes Ravich, freed them from the camps and they spontaneously went through Poland to their homeland. But in Poland they were detained by special barriers and driven into camps, and some were forced into forced labor.
The Poles themselves were horrified
Most of the Polish concentration camps were built in a very short period of time, some were built by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. They were completely unsuited for long-term detention of prisoners. For example, the camp in Dąba near Krakow was an entire city with numerous streets and squares. Instead of houses there are barracks with loose wooden walls, many without wooden floors. All this is surrounded by rows of barbed wire. Conditions for keeping prisoners in winter: “The majority are without shoes - completely barefoot... There are almost no beds and bunks... There is no straw or hay at all. They sleep on the ground or boards. There are very few blankets.” From a letter from the chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation at peace negotiations with Poland, Adolf Joffe, to the chairman of the Polish delegation, Jan Dombski, dated January 9, 1921: “In Dombe, most of the prisoners are barefoot, and in the camp at the headquarters of the 18th division, most of them do not have any clothes.”
The situation in Bialystok is evidenced by letters preserved in the Central Military Archive from a military medic and the head of the sanitary department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Zdzislaw Gordynski-Yukhnovich. In December 1919, he reported in despair to the chief doctor of the Polish Army about his visit to the marshalling yard in Bialystok:
“I visited the prisoner camp in Bialystok and now, under the first impression, I dared to turn to Mr. General as the chief doctor of the Polish troops with a description of the terrible picture that appears before the eyes of everyone who ends up in the camp... Again the same criminal neglect of one’s duties all the bodies operating in the camp brought shame on our name, on the Polish army, just as happened in Brest-Litovsk... There is unimaginable dirt and disorder in the camp. At the doors of the barracks there are piles of human waste, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The patients are so weakened that they are unable to reach the latrines. Those, in turn, are in such a state that it is impossible to get closer to the seats, since the entire floor is covered with a thick layer of human feces. The barracks are overcrowded, and there are many sick people among the healthy. According to my data, among the 1,400 prisoners there are no healthy people at all. Covered in rags, they hug each other, trying to keep warm. The stench reigns, emanating from patients with dysentery and gangrene, legs swollen from hunger. Two particularly seriously ill patients lay in their own excrement, leaking from their torn pants. They did not have the strength to move to a dry place. What a terrible picture.”
Former prisoner of the Polish camp in Bialystok Andrei Matskevich later recalled that a prisoner who was lucky received a day “a small portion of black bread weighing about ½ pound (200 grams), one shard of soup, more like slop, and boiling water.”
The concentration camp at Strzałkowo, located between Poznań and Warsaw, was considered the worst. It appeared at the turn of 1914-1915 as a German camp for prisoners from the fronts of the First World War on the border between Germany and the Russian Empire - near the road connecting two border areas - Strzalkowo on the Prussian side and Sluptsy on the Russian side. After the end of World War I, it was decided to liquidate the camp. However, instead it passed from the Germans to the Poles and began to be used as a concentration camp for Red Army prisoners of war. As soon as the camp became Polish (from May 12, 1919), the mortality rate of prisoners of war in it increased more than 16 times during the year. On July 11, 1919, by order of the Ministry of Defense of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was given the name “prisoner of war camp No. 1 near Strzałkowo” (Obóz Jeniecki Nr 1 pod Strzałkowem).
After the conclusion of the Riga Peace Treaty, the concentration camp in Strzalkowo was also used to hold internees, including Russian White Guards, military personnel of the so-called Ukrainian People's Army and the formations of the Belarusian “father”-ataman Stanislav Bulak-Bulakhovich. What happened in this concentration camp is evidenced not only by documents, but also by publications in the press of that time.
In particular, the New Courier of January 4, 1921 described in a then sensational article the shocking fate of a detachment of several hundred Latvians. These soldiers, led by their commanders, deserted from the Red Army and went over to the Polish side in order to return to their homeland. They were received very cordially by the Polish military. Before they were sent to the camp, they were given a certificate that they voluntarily went over to the side of the Poles. The robbery began already on the way to the camp. The Latvians were stripped of all their clothes, with the exception of underwear. And those who managed to hide at least part of their belongings had everything taken away from them in Strzałkowo. They were left in rags, without shoes. But this is a small thing compared to the systematic abuse to which they were subjected in the concentration camp. It all started with 50 blows with barbed wire whips, while the Latvians were told that they were Jewish mercenaries and would not leave the camp alive. More than 10 people died from blood poisoning. After this, the prisoners were left for three days without food, forbidden to go out for water on pain of death. Two were shot without any reason. Most likely, the threat would have been carried out, and not a single Latvian would have left the camp alive if its commanders - Captain Wagner and Lieutenant Malinovsky - had not been arrested and put on trial by the investigative commission.
During the investigation, among other things, it turned out that walking around the camp, accompanied by corporals with wire whips and beating prisoners, was Malinovsky’s favorite pastime. If the beaten person moaned or asked for mercy, he was shot. For the murder of a prisoner, Malinovsky rewarded the sentries with 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks. The Polish authorities tried to quickly hush up the scandal and the case...
In November 1919, the military authorities reported to the Polish Sejm commission that the largest Polish prisoner camp No. 1 in Strzałkow was “very well equipped.” In reality, at that time the roofs of the camp barracks were full of holes, and they were not equipped with bunks. It was probably believed that this was good for the Bolsheviks. Red Cross spokeswoman Stefania Sempolowska wrote from the camp: “The communist barracks were so crowded that the squashed prisoners were unable to lie down and stood propping up one another.” The situation in Strzalkow did not change in October 1920: “Clothing and shoes are very scanty, most go barefoot... There are no beds - they sleep on straw... Due to lack of food, prisoners, busy peeling potatoes, secretly eat them raw.”
The report of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation states: “By keeping prisoners in their underwear, the Poles treated them not as people of an equal race, but as slaves. The beating of prisoners was practiced at every step...” Eyewitnesses say: “Every day, those arrested are driven out into the street and, instead of walking, are forced to run, ordered to fall into the mud... If a prisoner refuses to fall or, having fallen, cannot rise, exhausted, he is beaten with blows from rifle butts.”
Polish Russophobes did not spare either the Reds or the Whites
As the largest of the camps, Strzałkowo was designed for 25 thousand prisoners. In reality, the number of prisoners sometimes exceeded 37 thousand. The numbers changed quickly as people died like flies in the cold. Russian and Polish compilers of the collection “Red Army Men in Polish Captivity in 1919-1922.” Sat. documents and materials" claim that “in Strzałkowo in 1919-1920. About 8 thousand prisoners died." At the same time, the RCP(b) committee, which operated clandestinely in the Strzalkowo camp, stated in its report to the Soviet Commission on Prisoners of War Affairs in April 1921 that: “During the last epidemic of typhoid and dysentery, 300 people each died. per day... the serial number of the list of those buried has exceeded the 12th thousand...". Such a statement about the enormous mortality rate in Strzałkowo is not the only one.
Despite claims by Polish historians that the situation in Polish concentration camps had once again improved by 1921, documents indicate otherwise. The minutes of the meeting of the Mixed (Polish-Russian-Ukrainian) Commission on Repatriation dated July 28, 1921 noted that in Strzalkow “the command, as if in retaliation, after the first arrival of our delegation sharply intensified its repressions... Red Army soldiers are beaten and tortured for any reason and for no reason... the beatings took the form of an epidemic.” In November 1921, when, according to Polish historians, “the situation in the camps had radically improved,” RUD employees described the living quarters for prisoners in Strzalkow: “Most of the barracks are underground, damp, dark, cold, with broken glass, broken floors and a thin roof. Openings in the roofs allow you to freely admire the starry sky. Those placed in them get wet and cold day and night... There is no lighting.”
The fact that the Polish authorities did not consider “Russian Bolshevik prisoners” to be people is also evidenced by the following fact: in the largest Polish prisoner of war camp in Strzałkowo, for 3 (three) years they were unable to resolve the issue of prisoners of war taking care of their natural needs at night. There were no toilets in the barracks, and the camp administration, under pain of execution, forbade leaving the barracks after 6 pm. Therefore, prisoners “We were forced to send natural needs into pots, from which we then had to eat.”
The second largest Polish concentration camp, located in the area of the city of Tuchola (Tucheln, Tuchola, Tuchola, Tuchol, Tuchola, Tuchol), can rightfully challenge Strzałkowo for the title of the most terrible. Or, at least, the most disastrous for people. It was built by the Germans during the First World War, in 1914. Initially, the camp held mainly Russians, later they were joined by Romanian, French, English and Italian prisoners of war. Since 1919, the camp began to be used by the Poles to concentrate soldiers and commanders of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian formations and civilians who sympathized with the Soviet regime. In December 1920, a representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Natalia Krejc-Wieleżyńska, wrote: “The camp in Tukholi is the so-called. dugouts, which are entered by steps going down. On both sides there are bunks on which the prisoners sleep. There are no hay fields, straw, or blankets. No heat due to irregular fuel supply. Lack of linen and clothing in all departments. The most tragic are the conditions of the new arrivals, who are transported in unheated carriages, without appropriate clothing, cold, hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker ones die.”
From a letter from a White Guard: “...The internees are housed in barracks and dugouts. They are completely unsuited for winter. The barracks were made of thick corrugated iron, covered on the inside with thin wooden panels, which were torn in many places. The door and partly the windows are fitted very poorly, there is a desperate draft from them... The internees are not even given bedding under the pretext of “malnutrition of the horses.” We are thinking with extreme anxiety about the coming winter."(Letter from Tukholi, October 22, 1921).
The State Archive of the Russian Federation contains memoirs of Lieutenant Kalikin, who passed through the concentration camp in Tukholi. The lieutenant who was lucky enough to survive writes: “Even in Thorn, all sorts of horrors were told about Tuchol, but the reality exceeded all expectations. Imagine a sandy plain not far from the river, fenced with two rows of barbed wire, inside which dilapidated dugouts are located in regular rows. Not a tree, not a blade of grass anywhere, just sand. Not far from the main gate are corrugated iron barracks. When you pass by them at night, you hear some strange, soul-aching sound, as if someone is quietly sobbing. During the day the sun in the barracks is unbearably hot, at night it is cold... When our army was interned, the Polish minister Sapieha was asked what would happen to it. “She will be dealt with as required by the honor and dignity of Poland,” he answered proudly. Was Tuchol really necessary for this “honor”? So, we arrived in Tukhol and settled in iron barracks. The cold weather set in, but the stoves were not lit for lack of firewood. A year later, 50% of the women and 40% of the men who were here fell ill, mainly from tuberculosis. Many of them died. Most of my friends died, and there were also people who hanged themselves.”
Red Army soldier Valuev said that at the end of August 1920 he and other prisoners: “They were sent to the Tukholi camp. The wounded lay there, unbandaged for weeks, and their wounds were full of worms. Many of the wounded died; 30-35 people were buried every day. The wounded lay in cold barracks without food or medicine.”
In frosty November 1920, the Tuchola hospital resembled a conveyor belt of death: “Hospital buildings are huge barracks, in most cases made of iron, like hangars. All the buildings are dilapidated and damaged, there are holes in the walls through which you can stick your hand... The cold is usually terrible. They say that during frosty nights the walls become covered with ice. The patients lie on terrible beds... All are on dirty mattresses without bed linen, only ¼ have some blankets, all are covered with dirty rags or a paper blanket.”
Representative of the Russian Red Cross Society Stefania Sempolovskaya about the November (1920) inspection in Tuchol: “The patients lie in terrible beds, without bed linen, only a quarter have blankets. The wounded complain of terrible cold, which not only interferes with the healing of wounds, but, according to doctors, increases the pain during healing. Sanitary personnel complain about the complete lack of dressings, cotton wool and bandages. I saw bandages drying in the forest. Typhus and dysentery were widespread in the camp and spread to prisoners working in the area. The number of sick people in the camp is so great that one of the barracks in the communist section has been turned into an infirmary. On November 16, more than seventy patients lay there. A significant part is on the ground."
The mortality rate from wounds, disease and frostbite was such that, according to the conclusion of American representatives, after 5-6 months there should have been no one left in the camp. Stefania Sempolovskaya, commissioner of the Russian Red Cross Society, assessed the mortality rate among prisoners in a similar way: “...Tukholya: The mortality rate in the camp is so high that, according to calculations made by me with one of the officers, with the mortality rate that was in October (1920), the entire camp would have died out in 4-5 months.”
The emigrant Russian press, published in Poland and, to put it mildly, had no sympathy for the Bolsheviks, directly wrote about Tukholi as a “death camp” for Red Army soldiers. In particular, the emigrant newspaper Svoboda, published in Warsaw and completely dependent on the Polish authorities, reported in October 1921 that at that time a total of 22 thousand people had died in the Tuchol camp. A similar figure of deaths is given by the head of the II Department of the General Staff of the Polish Army (military intelligence and counterintelligence), Lieutenant Colonel Ignacy Matuszewski.
In his report dated February 1, 1922 to the office of the Polish Minister of War to General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Ignacy Matuszewski states: “From the materials available to the II Department... it should be concluded that these facts of escapes from the camps are not limited only to Strzałkow, but also occur in all other camps, both for communists and for interned whites. These escapes were caused by the conditions in which the communists and internees were (lack of fuel, linen and clothing, poor food, and long waits to leave for Russia). The camp in Tukholi became especially famous, which internees call the “death camp” (about 22,000 captured Red Army soldiers died in this camp."
Analyzing the contents of the document signed by Matuszewski, Russian researchers, first of all, emphasize that it “was not a personal message from a private person, but an official response to the order of the Minister of War of Poland No. 65/22 of January 12, 1922, with a categorical instruction to the head of the II Department of the General Staff: “... provide an explanation under what conditions the escape of 33 communists from the camp took place prisoners of Strzałkowo and who is responsible for this.” Such orders are usually given to special services when it is necessary to establish with absolute certainty the true picture of what happened. It was no coincidence that the minister instructed Matuszewski to investigate the circumstances of the escape of communists from Strzałkowo. The head of the II Department of the General Staff in 1920-1923 was the most informed person in Poland on the real state of affairs in the prisoner of war and internment camps. The officers of the II Department subordinate to him were not only involved in “sorting” arriving prisoners of war, but also controlled the political situation in the camps. Due to his official position, Matushevsky was simply obliged to know the real state of affairs in the camp in Tukholi.
Therefore, there can be no doubt that long before writing his letter of February 1, 1922, Matuszewski had comprehensive, documented and verified information about the death of 22 thousand captured Red Army soldiers in the Tucholi camp. Otherwise, you have to be a political suicide to, on your own initiative, report unverified facts of this level to the country's leadership, especially on an issue that is at the center of a high-profile diplomatic scandal! Indeed, at that time in Poland passions had not yet had time to cool down after the famous note of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR Georgy Chicherin dated September 9, 1921, in which he, in the harshest terms, accused the Polish authorities of the death of 60,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
In addition to Matuszewski’s report, reports from the Russian émigré press about the huge number of deaths in Tukholi are actually confirmed by reports from hospital services. In particular, regarding “a clear picture regarding the death of Russian prisoners of war can be observed in the “death camp” in Tukholi, in which there were official statistics, but even then only during certain periods of the prisoners’ stay there. According to these, although not complete, statistics, from the opening of the infirmary in February 1921 (and the most difficult winter months for prisoners of war were the winter months of 1920-1921) and until May 11 of the same year, there were 6,491 epidemic diseases in the camp, 17,294 non-epidemic ones. In total – 23785 diseases. The number of prisoners in the camp during this period did not exceed 10-11 thousand, so more than half of the prisoners there suffered from epidemic diseases, and each of the prisoners had to get sick at least twice in 3 months. Officially, 2,561 deaths were registered during this period, i.e. in 3 months, at least 25% of the total number of prisoners of war died.”
About mortality in Tukholi in the most terrible months of 1920/1921 (November, December, January and February), according to Russian researchers, “One can only guess. We must assume that it was no less than 2,000 people per month.” When assessing the mortality rate in Tuchola, it must also be remembered that the representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Krejc-Wieleżyńska, noted in her report on visiting the camp in December 1920 that: “The most tragic are the conditions of the new arrivals, who are transported in unheated carriages, without adequate clothing, cold, hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to hospital, and the weaker ones die.” The mortality rate in such echelons reached 40%. Those who died on the trains, although they were considered sent to the camp and were buried in camp burial grounds, were not officially recorded anywhere in general camp statistics. Their number could only be taken into account by the officers of the II Department, who supervised the reception and “sorting” of prisoners of war. Also, apparently, the mortality rate of newly arrived prisoners of war who died in quarantine was not reflected in the final camp reports.
In this context, of particular interest is not only the above-cited testimony of the head of the II Department of the Polish General Staff, Matuszewski, about mortality in the concentration camp, but also the recollections of local residents of Tucholy. According to them, back in the 1930s there were many plots here, “on which the ground collapsed underfoot, and human remains protruded from it”…
...The military Gulag of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lasted a relatively short time - about three years. But during this time he managed to destroy tens of thousands of human lives. The Polish side still admits the death of “16-18 thousand”. According to Russian and Ukrainian scientists, researchers and politicians, in reality this figure may be about five times higher...
Nikolai Malishevsky, “Eye of the Planet”
In 1940, the Auschwitz-Brzezinka concentration camp, also known by its German name Auschwitz-Birkenau, was established in the small town of Auschwitz, 70 kilometers west of Krakow. Of the many camps built by the Nazis, Auschwitz was the largest and most terrible: two million people died here, of which 85-90% were Jews.
How to get to Auschwitz?
There are regular buses from Krakow to Oswiecim station (1 hour 30 minutes). From the station you can take a local bus to the camp gate, and several buses drop off visitors right at the entrance. Shuttle buses leave every hour from the Auschwitz car park to Birkenau. Alternatively, you can take a taxi or walk 3 kilometers.
Martyrs' Museum and Birkenau Camp
Most of the buildings of Auschwitz have been preserved on the territory of the Martyrs' Museum (daily June-August 8.00-19.00, May and September 8.00-18.00, October-April 8.00-17.00, March and November - mid-December 8.00-16.00, mid-December - February 8.00-15.00; the entrance is free). First, they show a dark film filmed during the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops in May 1945. Part of the camp barracks is given over to “exhibits” found after liberation - these are rooms filled with clothes, suitcases, toothbrushes, glasses, shoes and piles of women’s hair.
In other barracks there are national memorials, and the exhibition ends with gas chambers and ovens where the bodies of the victims were burned. The huge Birkenau camp (same opening hours) is visited less frequently than Auschwitz. Birkenau's gas chambers were damaged but not destroyed by the Germans when they fled in 1945. The victims were transported in closed carriages directly to the gas chambers (the railway line and platforms were preserved as they were).
In contact with
Just hearing this name alone brings a lump to your throat. Auschwitz remains in people's minds for many years as an example of genocide that resulted in the death of an incredible number of people. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people come to Auschwitz, a city whose name is inextricably associated with the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, to learn its history and honor the memory of those killed.
The Auschwitz concentration camp became one of the most effective elements of this conveyor belt of death. An excursion here and to the neighboring Birkenau camp leaves an unforgettable impression.
Auschwitz
Open: daily 8.00-19.00, free admission, www.auschwitz.org.pl
Above the camp gate are written the words: "Arbeit Macht Frei" (“Work will set you free”). The camp authorities, fleeing the advancing Soviet army, tried to destroy evidence of the genocide, but did not have time, so that about 30 camp blocks were preserved, some of them became part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Up to 200,000 people could be held in the camp every day. There were 300 prison barracks, 5 huge gas chambers, each of which could accommodate 2,000 people, and a crematorium. It is impossible to forget this terrible place.
Auschwitz was originally a barracks for the Polish army. Jews from countries such as Norway, Greece, etc., were herded onto freight trains, where there was no water, no food, no toilets and almost no air to breathe, and were taken to concentration camps in Poland. The first 728 “prisoners of war,” most Poles and all from the city of Tarnow, were brought here in June 1940. Then whole streams of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war were sent to the camps. They turned into slaves; some died of starvation, others were executed, and many were sent to gas chambers, where mass murder was carried out using the poisonous gas "Cyclone-B".
Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the retreating Nazis, so many buildings that bear witness to the atrocities that took place have been preserved. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is located in the ten surviving barracks (Tel.: 33 844 8100; www.auschwitz.org.pl; admission free; 08.00-19.00 June-August, 08.00-18.00 May and September, 08.00-17.00 April and October, 08.00-16.00 March and November, 08.00-15.00 December - February).In 2007, UNESCO, when adding the complex to the World Heritage List, gave it the name “Auschwitz-Birkenau - Nazi German Concentration Camp” (1940-45)”, to focus attention on Poland’s non-involvement in its creation and functioning.
A 15-minute documentary is shown every half hour in the visitor center cinema located at the entrance to the camp. (ticket for adults/discount 3.50/2.50zt) about the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. It is shown in English, German and French throughout the day. Check the information desk for the schedule as soon as you arrive. The film is not recommended for viewing by children under 14 years of age. Documentary footage filmed after the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945 will provide a useful introduction to those trying to comprehend what they are about to see. The visitor center also has a cafeteria, bookstores, and a currency exchange office. (kantor) and a storage room.
At the end of the war, the Nazis tried to destroy the camp during their flight, but about 30 barracks survived, as well as guard towers and barbed wire. You can freely walk between barracks and enter those that are open. In one of them, glass cases contain piles of shoes, crooked glasses, piles of human hair and suitcases with the names and addresses of prisoners who were told they were simply being relocated to another city. Photographs of prisoners are hung in the corridors, some of which are decorated with flowers brought by surviving relatives. Next to block No. 11, the so-called “death block,” there is an execution wall, where prisoners were shot. Here the Nazis conducted their first experiments using the Zyklon-B. The barrack next door is dedicated to the “Trials of the Jewish People.” At the end of the exhibition of historical documents and photographs, the names of people killed in the concentration camps are listed to the piercing, sad melody of “Merciful God.”
General information is provided in Polish, English and Hebrew, but to better understand everything, purchase the small guide to Auschwitz-Birkenau (translated into 15 languages), available at the visitor center. From May to October, visitors arriving between 10.00 and 15.00 can explore the museum only as part of a guided tour. English-language excursions (price for adults/discounted 39/30zl, 3.5 hours) start daily at 10.00, 11.00, 13.00, 15.00, and they can also organize a tour for you if there is a group of ten people. Excursions in other languages, including Russian, must be booked in advance.
Auschwitz can be easily reached from Krakow. If you want to stay nearby, the Center for Dialogue and Prayer is 700 meters from the complex (Centrum Dialogu i Modlitwy w Oswiecimiu; Tel.: 33 843 1000; www. centrum-dialogu.oswiecim.pl; Kolbego street (ul. Kolbego), 1; camping place 25zl, single/double room 104/208zl). It is cozy and quiet, the price includes breakfast, and you can also be offered full board. Most rooms have private bathrooms.
Birkenau
Admission to Birkenau is free, open from 08.00-19.00 June - August; 08.00-18.00 May and September; 08.00-17.00 April and October; 08.00-16.00 March and November; 08.00-15.00 December - February.
Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, is located 3 km from Auschwitz. A short inscription in Birkenau reads: “Let this place be forever a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis exterminated about one and a half million men, women and children, mostly Jews, from various countries of Europe.”
Birkenau was built in 1941, when Hitler moved from isolating political prisoners to a program of mass extermination. Three hundred long barracks on an area of 175 hectares served as storage for the most brutal machine of Hitler’s “solution” to the Jewish question. Approximately 3/4 of the Jews brought to Birkenau were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.
Indeed, Birkenau was the epitome of a death camp: it had its own railway station for transporting prisoners, four huge gas chambers, each of which could kill 2,000 people at once, and a crematorium equipped with elevators for loading the ovens with the bodies of prisoners.
Visitors are given the opportunity to climb to the second floor of the main guard tower at the entrance, which offers views of the entire huge camp. Seemingly endless rows of barracks, towers and barbed wire - all this could accommodate up to 200 thousand prisoners at a time. At the back of the camp, behind a terrible pond where the ashes of the murdered people were poured, there is an unusual monument to the victims of the Holocaust with an inscription in 20 languages of those prisoners who were killed in Auschwitz and Birkenau.
While retreating, the Germans, although they destroyed most of the structures, just look at the area fenced with barbed wire to understand the scale of the crimes committed by the Nazis. A viewing platform at the entrance to the camp will allow you to look around a large area. In some ways, Birkenau is even more shocking than Auschwitz, and there are generally fewer tourists here. It is not necessary to visit the memorial as part of a tour group.
Road there and back
Typically, a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau takes place as a day trip from Krakow.
There are 12 daily flights from Krakow Main Station to Auschwitz (13zt, 1.5 hours) Even more trains depart from the Krakow-Plaszow station. A more convenient way to travel is the hourly bus service to Auschwitz from the bus station. (11zt, 1.5 hours) who are either passing by the museum or it is their final stop. For bus schedules in the opposite direction, see the information board at the Birkenau Visitor Center. From a stop near the street. Pavia near Galeria Krakowska, numerous minibuses go in this direction.
From April 15 to October 31, from 11.30 to 16.30, buses run between Auschwitz and Birkenau every half hour. (from May to September traffic stops at 17.30, from June to August - at 18.30). You can also walk the 3 km between camps or take a taxi. There are buses from Auschwitz to the local train station (movement interval 30-40 minutes). Many Krakow travel agencies organize excursions to Auschwitz and Birkenau (from 90zt to 120zt per person). Find out in advance how much time you will be given to stay at museums, as some of them have a very busy schedule and you may not have time to see everything that interests you.
On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated. He was released by the Ukrainians, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland said Grzegorz Szhetyna, since the operation was carried out by the forces of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Both in Poland itself and in Europe, the historical “discoveries” of the head of the Polish foreign policy department caused a storm of indignation, and he himself was forced to justify himself. However, this is not the first attempt to rewrite the history of World War II.
Hell Factory Statistics
Concentration camps were invented long before Nazi Germany began building them in Europe. However, Hitler became a “revolutionary” in this matter, setting one of the main tasks for the camp administration to be the mass extermination of representatives of “inferior nations” - Jews and Gypsies, as well as prisoners of war. Soon, when Germany began to suffer defeats on the Eastern Front, Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians were also included in the nations to be destroyed as “representatives of the defective Slavs.”
In total, Nazi Germany created more than one and a half thousand camps on its territory and mainly in Eastern Europe, in which 16 million people were detained. 11 million were killed or they died from disease, hunger and overwork. There were more than 60 concentration camps in which more than 10 thousand people were held.
The most terrible among them were the “death camps”, intended exclusively for the mass extermination of people. There are about a dozen of them on the list.
Auschwitz
Auschwitz (in German - Auschwitz), which had three sections, occupied an area of 40 sq. km. This was the largest camp; it claimed the lives, according to various estimates, from 1.5 million to 3 million people. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the figure was 2.8 million. 90% of the victims were Jews. A significant percentage were Poles, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war.
It was a factory, soulless, mechanical, and that made it even more terrible. At the first stage of the camp's existence, prisoners were shot. And in order to increase the “performance” of this infernal machine, they constantly “improved the technology.” Since the executioners could no longer cope with the burial of the ever-increasing number of executed people, a crematorium was built. Moreover, it was built by the prisoners themselves. Then they tested the poison gas and found it “effective.” This is how gas chambers appeared in Auschwitz.
Security and supervisory functions were performed by SS troops. All the “routine work” was transferred to the prisoners themselves, the Sonderkommando: sorting clothes, carrying bodies, maintaining the crematorium. During the most “intense” periods, up to 8 thousand bodies were burned every day in the ovens of Auschwitz.
In this camp, like in all others, torture was practiced. Here the sadists got to work. The doctor was in charge Joseph Mengele, who, unfortunately, the Mossad did not reach, and he died of his own death in Latin America. He conducted medical experiments on prisoners, performing monstrous abdominal operations without anesthesia.
Despite heavy camp security, which included a high-voltage fence and 250 guard dogs, escape attempts were made at Auschwitz. But almost all of them ended in the death of prisoners.
And on October 4, 1944, an uprising occurred. Members of the 12th Sonderkommando, having learned that they were going to be replaced with a new composition, which implied certain death, decided to take desperate actions. Having blown up the crematorium, they killed three SS men, set fire to two buildings and made a hole in the energized fence, having previously caused a short circuit. Up to five thousand people were freed. But soon all the fugitives were caught and taken to the camp for a demonstration execution.
When in mid-January 1945 it became clear that Soviet troops would inevitably come to Auschwitz, able-bodied prisoners, who then numbered 58 thousand people, were driven deep into German territory. Two thirds of them died on the road from exhaustion and disease.
On January 27 at 3 o'clock in the afternoon troops under the command of Marshal entered Auschwitz I.S.Koneva. At that time, there were about 7 thousand prisoners in the camp, among whom were 500 children from 6 to 14 years old. The soldiers, who had seen enough of many atrocities during the war, discovered traces of monstrous, transcendental atrocities in the camp. The scale of the “work done” was amazing. In the warehouses, mountains of men's suits and women's and children's outerwear, several tons of human hair and ground bones, prepared for shipment to Germany, were found.
In 1947, a memorial complex was opened on the territory of the former camp.
Treblinka
An extermination camp established in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland in July 1942. During the year of the camp's existence, about 800 thousand people, mostly Jews, were killed there. Geographically, these were citizens of Poland, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, France and Yugoslavia. Jews were brought in boarded-up freight cars. The rest were mainly invited “to a new place of residence,” and they bought train tickets with their own money.
The “technology” of mass murder here differed from that existing in Auschwitz. People who arrived and did not suspect anything were invited into the gas chambers, which were labeled “Showers.” It was not poisonous gas that was used, but exhaust gases from running tank engines. At first the bodies were buried in the ground. In the spring of 1943, a crematorium was built.
An underground organization operated among the members of the Sonderkommando. On August 2, 1943, she organized an armed uprising, seizing weapons. Some of the guards were killed, several hundred prisoners managed to escape. However, almost all of them were soon found and killed.
One of the few surviving participants in the uprising was Samuel Willenberg, who after the war wrote the book “The Treblinka Uprising.” This is what he said in a 2013 interview about his first impression of the death factory:
“I had no idea what was happening in the infirmary. I just entered this wooden building and at the end of the corridor I suddenly saw all this horror. Bored Ukrainian guards with guns sat on a wooden chair. In front of them is a deep hole. It contains the remains of bodies that have not yet been consumed by the fire lit underneath them. Remains of men, women and small children. This picture simply paralyzed me. I heard burning hair crackle and bones burst. There was acrid smoke in my nose, tears were welling up in my eyes... How to describe and express this? There are things that I remember, but they cannot be expressed in words.”
After the brutal suppression of the uprising, the camp was liquidated.
Majdanek
The Majdanek camp, located in Poland, was originally intended to be a “universal” camp. But after the capture of a large number of Red Army soldiers who were surrounded near Kiev, it was decided to repurpose it into a “Russian” camp. With a prison population of up to 250 thousand, construction was carried out by prisoners of war. By December 1941, due to hunger, hard work, and also due to the outbreak of a typhus epidemic, all the prisoners, who at that time numbered about 10 thousand, died.
Subsequently, the camp lost its “national” orientation, and not only prisoners of war, but also Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and representatives of other nations were brought to it for extermination.
The camp, which had an area of 270 hectares, was divided into five sections. One was reserved for women and children. The prisoners were housed in 22 huge barracks. On the territory of the camp there were also industrial premises where prisoners worked. In Majdanek, according to various sources, from 80 thousand to 500 thousand people died.
At Majdanek, as at Auschwitz, poison gas was used in the gas chambers.
Against the background of daily crimes, the operation code-named “Enterfest” (German - harvest festival) stands out. On November 3 and 4, 1943, 43 thousand Jews were shot. At the bottom of a ditch 100 meters long, 6 meters wide and 3 meters deep, the prisoners were packed tightly in one layer. After which they were successively shot in the back of the head. Then the second layer was laid... And so on until the ditch was completely filled.
When the Red Army occupied Majdanek on July 22, 1944, there were several hundred surviving prisoners of various nationalities in the camp.
Sobibor
This camp operated in Poland from May 15, 1942 to October 15, 1943. Killed a quarter of a million people. The extermination of people took place using proven “technology” - gas chambers based on exhaust gases, a crematorium.
The vast majority of prisoners were killed on the first day. And only a few were left to perform various tasks in the workshops in the production area.
Sobibor became the first German camp in which an uprising took place. There was an underground group in the camp, led by a Soviet officer, Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky. Pechersky and his deputy rabbi Leon Feldhendler planned and led the uprising, which began on October 14, 1943.
According to the plan, the prisoners were supposed to secretly, one by one, eliminate the SS personnel of the camp, and then, having taken possession of the weapons located in the camp warehouse, kill the guards. It was only partially successful. 12 SS men and 38, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, Ukrainian guards were killed. But they failed to seize the weapon. Of the 550 prisoners in the work zone, 320 began to break out of the camp, 80 of them died during the escape. The rest managed to escape.
130 prisoners refused to escape; they were all shot the next day.
A massive hunt was organized for the fugitives, which lasted two weeks. It was possible to find 170 people who were immediately shot. Subsequently, another 90 people were handed over to the Nazis by the local population. 53 participants in the uprising lived to see the end of the war.
The leader of the uprising, Alexander Aronovich Pechersky, was able to make his way to Belarus, where, before reuniting with the regular army, he fought as a demolition worker in a partisan detachment. Then, as part of the assault battalion of the 1st Baltic Front, he fought his way to the west, rising to the rank of captain. The war ended for him in August 1944, when Pechersky became disabled as a result of his injury. He died in 1990 in Rostov-on-Don.
Soon after the uprising, the Sobibor camp was liquidated. After the demolition of all buildings, its territory was plowed and sown with potatoes and cabbage.
Photo at the opening of the article: surviving children after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz by Soviet troops, Poland, January 27, 1945 / Photo: TASS
In the city of Auschwitz, 60 km from Krakow, there is the State Museum of Poland, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, - Auschwitz-Birkenau. During World War II, the largest complex of German concentration camps in Poland was located here. The complex included 3 concentration and death camps: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz).
The city of Auschwitz in German sounds like Auschwitz, in September 1939 it was occupied by Hitler's troops and became part of the Third Reich. In 1940, a concentration camp was erected in the buildings of former barracks in Auschwitz Auschwitz I. It subsequently became the administrative center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex. All one-story buildings were built up to two-story ones, and the former vegetable storehouse became a crematorium and morgue. The first builders of the camp were members of the Jewish community of Auschwitz, and here they would 
whether destroyed.
A gate leads to the Auschwitz I concentration camp, above which there is still a cast-iron cynical inscription in German “Arbeit macht Frei” - “Work makes you free” or “Work sets you free.” The buildings in Auschwitz I were called blocks and there were 24 of them in total. In the basements of block No. 11 in 1941, the first test of mass poisoning of people with Zyklon B gas was carried out. Since the experiment was considered successful, the morgue in Crematorium I was converted into a gas chamber. The ovens and chambers exist to this day as a kind of monument to the cruelty of the Nazis. In the yard 
Between blocks 10 and 11, prisoners were tortured and shot, now there are wreaths and candles burning here.
The perimeter of the concentration camp was surrounded by a double barbed wire fence, through which a high voltage current was passed, and in 1942, Auschwitz I was additionally surrounded by a high reinforced concrete wall.
Construction Auschwitz II known as Birkenau(or in Polish Brzezinka, from the name of a nearby village), began in October 1941. Usually it is this part of the concentration camp that is meant when talking about the death camp at Auschwitz, since Birkenau was created specifically for mass extermination 
The area of the Jews was much larger than Auschwitz I. Here, in one-story barracks, which in reality were ordinary stables, hundreds of thousands of people were kept. The composition of the prisoners was constantly changing: new prisoners from all over occupied Europe poured in a constant stream to replace those destroyed.
A railway was built to the Auschwitz II camp, along which new prisoners were brought in trains every day 
V. They were divided into 4 groups:
Prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were tattooed on their bodies with an assigned number, and also had triangle stripes attached to their camp clothes. The color of the patch depended on the reasons for the arrest: red was worn by political prisoners, green by criminals, black by gypsies and antisocial persons, pink by homosexuals, 
purple - Jehovah's Witnesses. In addition to this, Jews also wore a yellow patch, which together looked like the Star of David.
The prisoners wore thin clothing that did not protect them from the cold, practically did not wash, and very rarely ate food made from rotten waste. All this, combined with exhausting labor, led to rapid deaths from various diseases.
Auschwitz III (Monsheep) was a group of approximately 40 small labor camps that were created around a common complex to serve the needs of mines and factories. Here were prisoners who worked for the needs of the German concern I. G. Farben, for example, produced synthetic rubber at the Buna plant. There are no excursions here.
In November 1944, before the offensive of the USSR army, some of the able-bodied prisoners were transported deep into Germany. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops entered Auschwitz and freed the prisoners remaining there. The exact number of victims who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp is still unknown; according to various sources, it ranges from 1.2 to 4 million people.
In the modern Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum you can see the barracks in which prisoners lived, the “medical” room where people were killed by injection, gas chambers, crematorium ovens, an execution wall and many evidence of the horror of those times: photographs, lists of the dead, historical 
certificates, belongings and letters of prisoners. About a million people visit the Auschwitz concentration camp museum complex, which is in fact the “largest cemetery”, every year. The site of the former concentration camp makes a depressing impression and makes you think that humanity should never allow such Nazi atrocities to happen again.
