There is no person in the world today who does not know what a concentration camp is. During the Second World War, these institutions, created to isolate political prisoners, prisoners of war and persons who posed a threat to the state, turned into houses of death and torture. Not many who got there managed to survive in harsh conditions, millions were tortured and died. Years after the end of the most terrible and bloody war in the history of mankind, memories of Nazi concentration camps still cause trembling in the body, horror in the soul and tears in the eyes of people.
What is a concentration camp
Concentration camps are special prisons created during military operations on the territory of the country, according to special legislative documents.
There were few repressed persons in them, the main contingent were representatives of the lower races, according to the Nazis: Slavs, Jews, gypsies and other nations to be exterminated. For this, the concentration camps of the Nazis were equipped with various means, with the help of which people were killed by tens and hundreds.
They were destroyed morally and physically: raped, experimented, burned alive, poisoned in gas chambers. Why and for what was justified by the ideology of the Nazis. Prisoners were considered unworthy to live in the world of the "chosen ones". The chronicle of the Holocaust of those times contains descriptions of thousands of incidents confirming the atrocities.
The truth about them became known from books, documentaries, stories of those who managed to become free, get out of there alive.
The institutions built during the war years were conceived by the Nazis as places of mass extermination, for which they received the true name - death camps. They were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers, soap factories, crematoria, where hundreds of people could be burned a day, and other similar means for murder and torture.
No less number of people died from exhausting work, hunger, cold, punishment for the slightest disobedience and medical experiments.
living conditions
For many people who passed the "road of death" beyond the walls of the concentration camps, there was no turning back. Upon arrival at the place of detention, they were examined and "sorted": children, the elderly, the disabled, the wounded, the mentally retarded and the Jews were subjected to immediate destruction. Further, people "fit" for work were divided into male and female barracks.
Most of the buildings were built in haste, often they did not have a foundation or were converted from sheds, stables, warehouses. They put bunks in them, in the middle of a huge room there was one stove for heating in winter, there were no latrines. But there were rats.
The roll call, held at any time of the year, was considered a severe test. People had to stand for hours in the rain, snow, hail, and then return to cold, barely heated rooms. Not surprisingly, many died from infectious and respiratory diseases, inflammation.
Each registered prisoner had a serial number on his chest (in Auschwitz he was beaten out with a tattoo) and a stripe on the camp uniform indicating the “article” under which he was imprisoned in the camp. A similar winkel (colored triangle) was sewn on the left side of the chest and the right knee of the trouser leg.
The colors were distributed like this:
- red - political prisoner;
- green - convicted of a criminal offense;
- black - dangerous, dissident persons;
- pink - persons with non-traditional sexual orientation;
- brown - gypsies.
The Jews, if they were left alive, wore a yellow winkel and a hexagonal "Star of David". If the prisoner was recognized as a "racial defiler", a black border was sewn around the triangle. Runners wore a red and white target on their chest and back. The latter were expected to be shot at just one glance in the direction of the gate or wall.
Executions were carried out daily. Prisoners were shot, hanged, beaten with whips for the slightest disobedience to the guards. Gas chambers, whose principle of operation was the simultaneous destruction of several dozen people, worked around the clock in many concentration camps. The captives who helped clean up the corpses of the strangled were also rarely left alive.
Gas chamber
The prisoners were also mocked morally, erasing their human dignity under conditions in which they ceased to feel like members of society and just people.
What fed
In the first years of the existence of concentration camps, the food provided to political prisoners, traitors to the motherland and "dangerous elements" was quite high in calories. The Nazis understood that the prisoners should have the strength to work, and at that time many sectors of the economy were based on their work.
The situation changed in 1942-43, when the bulk of the prisoners were Slavs. If the diet of the German repressed was 700 kcal per day, the Poles and Russians did not receive even 500 kcal.
The diet consisted of:
- liters per day of an herbal drink called "coffee";
- soup on water without fat, the basis of which was vegetables (mostly rotten) - 1 liter;
- bread (stale, moldy);
- sausages (approximately 30 grams);
- fat (margarine, lard, cheese) - 30 grams.
The Germans could count on sweets: jam or preserves, potatoes, cottage cheese and even fresh meat. They received special rations that included cigarettes, sugar, goulash, dry broth, and more.
Beginning in 1943, when a turning point occurred in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet troops liberated the countries of Europe from the German invaders, concentration camp prisoners were massively destroyed in order to hide the traces of crimes. Since that time, in many camps, the already meager rations have been cut, and in some institutions people have stopped being fed altogether.
The most terrible torture and experiments in the history of mankind
Concentration camps will forever remain in the history of mankind as places where the Gestapo carried out the most terrible torture and medical experiments.
The task of the latter was considered to be "assistance to the army": doctors determined the boundaries of human capabilities, created new types of weapons, drugs that could help the soldiers of the Reich.
Almost 70% of the experimental subjects did not survive after such executions, almost all were incapacitated or crippled.
over women
One of the main goals of the SS was to cleanse the world of a non-Aryan nation. To do this, experiments were carried out on women in the camps to find the easiest and cheapest method of sterilization.
Representatives of the weaker sex were injected with special chemical solutions into the uterus and fallopian tubes, designed to block the work of the reproductive system. Most of the test subjects died after such a procedure, the rest were killed in order to examine the state of the genital organs during the autopsy.
Often women were turned into sex slaves, forced to work in brothels and brothels organized at the camps. Most of them left the establishments dead, having not survived not only a huge number of "clients", but also monstrous mockery of themselves.
Over the children
The purpose of these experiments was to create a superior race. Thus, children with mental disabilities and genetic diseases were subjected to forcible killing (euthanasia) so that they would not be able to further reproduce “inferior” offspring.
Other children were placed in special "nurseries", where they were brought up at home and in harsh patriotic moods. Periodically, they were exposed to ultraviolet rays so that the hair acquired a light shade.
One of the most famous and monstrous experiments on children are those carried out on twins, representing an inferior race. They tried to change the color of their eyes, making injections of drugs, after which they died of pain or remained blind.
There were attempts to artificially create Siamese twins, that is, to sew children together, to transplant parts of each other's bodies into them. There are records of the introduction of viruses and infections to one of the twins and further study of the condition of both. If one of the couple died, the second was also killed in order to compare the state of internal organs and systems.
Children born in the camp were also subjected to strict selection, almost 90% of them were killed immediately or sent for experiments. Those who managed to survive were brought up and "Germanized".
over men
The representatives of the stronger sex were subjected to the most cruel and terrible tortures and experiments. To create and test drugs that improve blood clotting, which were needed by the military at the front, gunshot wounds were inflicted on men, after which observations were made about the rate at which bleeding stopped.
The tests included the study of the action of sulfonamides - antimicrobial substances designed to prevent the development of blood poisoning in frontline conditions. For this, parts of the body were injured and bacteria, fragments, earth were injected into the incisions, and then the wounds were sewn up. Another type of experiment is the ligation of veins and arteries on both sides of the wound being inflicted.
Means for recovery after chemical burns were created and tested. Men were doused with a composition identical to that found in phosphorus bombs or mustard gas, which at that time was poisoned by enemy "criminals" and the civilian population of cities during the occupation.
An important role in experiments with drugs was played by attempts to create vaccines against malaria and typhus. The test subjects were injected with the infection, and then - trial formulations to neutralize it. Some prisoners were given no immune protection at all, and they died in terrible agony.
To study the ability of the human body to withstand low temperatures and recover from significant hypothermia, men were placed in ice baths or driven naked into the cold outside. If after such torture the prisoner had signs of life, he was subjected to a resuscitation procedure, after which few managed to recover.
The main resurrection measures: irradiation with ultraviolet lamps, having sex, introducing boiling water into the body, placing in a bath with warm water.
In some concentration camps, attempts were made to turn sea water into drinking water. It was processed in various ways, and then given to prisoners, observing the reaction of the body. They also experimented with poisons, adding them to food and drinks.
One of the most terrible experiences are attempts to regenerate bone and nerve tissue. In the process of research, joints and bones were broken, observing their fusion, nerve fibers were removed, and the joints were changed in places.
Almost 80% of the participants in the experiments died during the experiments from unbearable pain or blood loss. The rest were killed in order to study the results of the study "from the inside." Few survived such abuses.
List and description of death camps
Concentration camps existed in many countries of the world, including the USSR, and were intended for a narrow circle of prisoners. However, only the Nazis received the name "death camps" for the atrocities carried out in them after Adolf Hitler came to power and the beginning of the Second World War.
Buchenwald
Located in the vicinity of the German city of Weimar, this camp, founded in 1937, has become one of the most famous and largest such establishments. It consisted of 66 branches, where prisoners worked for the benefit of the Reich.
Over the years of its existence, about 240 thousand people visited its barracks, of which 56 thousand prisoners officially died from murder and torture, among whom were representatives of 18 nations. How many there were in fact is not known for certain.
Buchenwald was liberated on April 10, 1945. A memorial complex in memory of its victims and heroes-liberators was created on the site of the camp.
Auschwitz
In Germany it is better known as Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a complex that occupied a vast territory near the Polish Krakow. The concentration camp consisted of 3 main parts: a large administrative complex, the camp itself, where torture and massacres of prisoners were carried out, and a group of 45 small complexes with factories and work areas.
The victims of Auschwitz, according to official figures alone, were more than 4 million people, representatives of the "inferior races", according to the Nazis.
The “death camp” was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the troops of the Soviet Union. Two years later, the State Museum was opened on the territory of the main complex.
It presents expositions of things that belonged to the prisoners: toys that they made from wood, pictures, and other handicrafts that are exchanged for food from civilians passing by. Stylized scenes of interrogation and torture by the Gestapo, reflecting the violence of the Nazis.
The drawings and inscriptions on the walls of the barracks, made by prisoners doomed to death, remained unchanged. As the Poles themselves say today, Auschwitz is the bloodiest and most terrible point on the map of their homeland.
Sobibor
Another concentration camp in Poland, established in May 1942. The prisoners were mostly representatives of the Jewish nation, the number of those killed is about 250 thousand people.
One of the few institutions where the uprising of prisoners took place in October 1943, after which it was closed and wiped off the face of the earth.
Majdanek
The camp was founded in 1941, it was built in the suburbs of Lublin, Poland. It had 5 branches in the southeastern part of the country.
Over the years of its existence, about 1.5 million people of different nationalities died in its cells.
The surviving captives were released on July 23, 1944 by Soviet soldiers, and 2 years later a museum and research institutes were opened on its territory.
Salaspils
The camp, known as Kurtengorf, was built in October 1941 on the territory of Latvia, not far from Riga. Had several branches, the most famous - Ponary. The main prisoners were children who were subjected to medical experiments.
In recent years, prisoners have been used as blood donors for wounded German soldiers. The camp was burnt down in August 1944 by the Germans, who were forced to evacuate the remaining prisoners to other institutions under the offensive of the Soviet troops.
Ravensbrück
Built in 1938 near Fürstenberg. Before the start of the war of 1941-1945, it was exclusively female, it consisted mainly of partisans. After 1941, it was completed, after which it received a men's barracks and a children's barracks for underage girls.
Over the years of "work", the number of his captives amounted to more than 132 thousand of the fairer sex of different ages, of which almost 93 thousand died. The liberation of the prisoners took place on April 30, 1945 by Soviet troops.
Mauthausen
Austrian concentration camp built in July 1938. At first it was one of the major branches of Dachau, the first such institution in Germany, located near Munich. But since 1939 it has been functioning independently.
In 1940, it merged with the Gusen death camp, after which it became one of the largest concentration settlements on the territory of Nazi Germany.
During the war years, there were about 335 thousand natives of 15 European countries, 122 thousand of whom were brutally tortured and killed. The prisoners were released by the Americans, who entered the camp on May 5, 1945. A few years later, 12 states created a memorial museum here, erected monuments to the victims of Nazism.
Irma Grese - Nazi warden
The horrors of the concentration camps imprinted in the memory of people and the annals of history the names of individuals who can hardly be called people. One of them is Irma Grese, a young and beautiful German woman whose actions do not fit into the nature of human actions.
Today, many historians and psychiatrists are trying to explain her phenomenon by the suicide of her mother or the propaganda of fascism and Nazism, characteristic of that time, but it is impossible or difficult to find justification for her actions.
Already at the age of 15, the young girl was present in the Hitler Youth movement, a German youth organization whose main principle was racial purity. At the age of 20 in 1942, having changed several professions, Irma became a member of one of the auxiliary units of the SS. Her first place of work was the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was later replaced by Auschwitz, where she acted as the second person after the commandant.
The bullying of the "Blond Devil", as the prisoners called Grese, was felt by thousands of captive women and men. This "Beautiful Monster" destroyed people not only physically, but also morally. She beat a prisoner to death with a wicker whip that she carried with her, enjoyed shooting prisoners. One of the favorite entertainments of the "Angel of Death" was setting dogs on captives, which were previously starved for several days.
The last place of service of Irma Grese was Bergen-Belsen, where, after his release, she was captured by the British military. The tribunal lasted 2 months, the verdict was unequivocal: "Guilty, subject to execution by hanging."
The iron rod, or maybe ostentatious bravado, was also present in the woman on the last night of her life - she sang songs and laughed out loud until the morning, which, according to psychologists, hid fear and hysteria before the impending death - too easy and simple for her.
Josef Mengele - experiments on people
The name of this man still causes horror among people, since it was he who came up with the most painful and terrible experiments on the human body and psyche.
Only according to official data, tens of thousands of prisoners became its victims. He personally sorted the victims upon arrival at the camp, then they were awaited by a thorough medical examination and terrible experiments.
The “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” managed to avoid a fair trial and imprisonment during the liberation of European countries from the Nazis. For a long time he lived in Latin America, carefully hiding from his pursuers and avoiding capture.
On the conscience of this doctor, anatomical autopsy of live newborns and castration of boys without the use of anesthesia, experiments on twins, dwarfs. There is evidence of how women were tortured by sterilization using x-rays. He assessed the endurance of the human body when exposed to an electric current.
Unfortunately for many prisoners of war, Josef Mengele still managed to avoid a fair punishment. After 35 years of living under false names, constantly escaping from pursuers, he drowned in the ocean, losing control of his body as a result of a stroke. The worst thing is that until the end of his life he was firmly convinced that "in his whole life he did not harm anyone personally."
Concentration camps were present in many countries of the world. The most famous for the Soviet people was the Gulag, created in the early years of the Bolsheviks coming to power. In total there were more than a hundred of them and, according to the NKVD, in 1922 alone there were more than 60 thousand “dissenters” and “dangerous to the authorities” prisoners.
But only the Nazis made it so that the word "concentration camp" went down in history as a place where they massively torture and exterminate the population. A place of bullying and humiliation committed by people against humanity.
This small, clean house in Kristiansad next to the road to Stavanger and the port during the war years was the most terrible place in all of southern Norway. "Skrekkens hus" - "House of Horror" - that's what they called it in the city. Since January 1942, the Gestapo headquarters in southern Norway have been located in the city archive building. Arrested people were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, from here people were sent to concentration camps and to be shot. Now, in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where the prisoners were tortured, there is a museum that tells about what happened during the war years in the building of the state archive.
The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. There were only new lights and doors. The main exposition with archival materials, photographs, posters is arranged in the main corridor.
So the suspended arrested person was beaten with a chain.
So tortured with electric stoves. With the special zeal of the executioners, the hair on the head could catch fire in a person.
In this device, fingers were clamped, nails were pulled out. The machine is authentic - after the liberation of the city from the Germans, all the equipment of the torture chambers remained in its place and was saved.
Nearby - other devices for conducting interrogation with "addiction".
Reconstructions were arranged in several basements - as it looked then, in this very place. This is a cell where especially dangerous arrested persons were kept - members of the Norwegian Resistance who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.
The torture chamber was located in the next room. Here, a real scene of the torture of a married couple of underground workers taken by the Gestapo in 1943 during a communication session with an intelligence center in London is reproduced. Two Gestapo men torture a wife in front of her husband, who is chained to the wall. In the corner, on an iron beam, another member of the failed underground group is suspended. They say that before interrogations, the Gestapo were pumped up with alcohol and drugs.
Everything was left in the cell, as it was then, in 1943. If you turn over that pink stool at the woman's feet, you can see the mark of Kristiansand's Gestapo.
This is a reconstruction of the interrogation - the Gestapo provocateur (on the left) shows the arrested radio operator of the underground group (he is sitting on the right, in handcuffs) his radio station in a suitcase. In the center sits the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo, SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Kerner - I will talk about him later.
In this showcase are things and documents of those Norwegian patriots who were sent to the Grini concentration camp near Oslo, the main transit point in Norway, from where prisoners were sent to other concentration camps in Europe.
The system for designating different groups of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Jewish, political, gypsy, Spanish republican, dangerous criminal, felon, war criminal, Jehovah's Witness, homosexual. The letter N was written on the badge of a Norwegian political prisoner.
School tours are given to the museum. I stumbled across one of these - several local teenagers were walking down the corridors with Ture Robstad, a local war survivor volunteer. It is said that about 10,000 schoolchildren visit the museum in the Archive every year.
Toure tells the children about Auschwitz. Two boys from the group were there recently on an excursion.
Soviet prisoner of war in a concentration camp. In his hand is a homemade wooden bird.
In a separate display case, things made by Russian prisoners of war in Norwegian concentration camps. These handicrafts were exchanged by Russians for food from local residents. Our neighbor in Kristiansand had a whole collection of such wooden birds - on the way to school she often met groups of our prisoners going to work under escort, and gave them her breakfast in exchange for these carved wooden toys.
Reconstruction of a partisan radio station. Partisans in southern Norway transmitted to London information about the movements of German troops, the deployment of military equipment and ships. In the north, the Norwegians supplied intelligence to the Soviet Northern Fleet.
"Germany is a nation of creators."
Norwegian patriots had to work under the strongest pressure on the local population of Goebbels propaganda. The Germans set themselves the task of the speedy nazification of the country. Quisling's government made efforts for this in the field of education, culture, and sports. Quisling's (Nasjonal Samling) Nazi Party, even before the start of the war, inspired the Norwegians that the main threat to their security was the military power of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that the Finnish campaign of 1940 contributed to the intimidation of the Norwegians about Soviet aggression in the North. With the coming to power, Quisling only stepped up his propaganda with the help of the Goebbels department. The Nazis in Norway convinced the population that only a strong Germany could protect the Norwegians from the Bolsheviks.
Several posters distributed by the Nazis in Norway. "Norges nye nabo" - "The New Norwegian Neighbor", 1940. Pay attention to the now fashionable technique of "reversing" Latin letters to imitate the Cyrillic alphabet.
"Do you want it to be like this?"
The propaganda of the "new Norway" in every way emphasized the kinship of the "Nordic" peoples, their unity in the struggle against British imperialism and the "wild Bolshevik hordes". Norwegian patriots responded by using the symbol of King Haakon and his image in their struggle. The king's motto "Alt for Norge" was ridiculed in every possible way by the Nazis, who inspired the Norwegians that military difficulties were temporary and that Vidkun Quisling was the new leader of the nation.
Two walls in the gloomy corridors of the museum are given over to the materials of the criminal case, according to which the seven main Gestapo men were tried in Kristiansand. There have never been such cases in Norwegian judicial practice - the Norwegians tried Germans, citizens of another state, accused of crimes in Norway. Three hundred witnesses, about a dozen lawyers, the Norwegian and foreign press took part in the process. The Gestapo were tried for torture and humiliation of those arrested, there was a separate episode about the summary execution of 30 Russian and 1 Polish prisoners of war. On June 16, 1947, all were sentenced to death, which for the first time and temporarily was included in the Criminal Code of Norway immediately after the end of the war.
Rudolf Kerner is the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo. Former shoemaker. A notorious sadist, in Germany he had a criminal past. He sent several hundred members of the Norwegian Resistance to concentration camps, is guilty of the death of an organization of Soviet prisoners of war uncovered by the Gestapo in one of the concentration camps in southern Norway. He was, like the rest of his accomplices, sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1953 under an amnesty declared by the Norwegian government. He went to Germany, where his traces were lost.
Near the building of the Archive there is a modest monument to the Norwegian patriots who died at the hands of the Gestapo. In the local cemetery, not far from this place, the ashes of Soviet prisoners of war and English pilots, shot down by the Germans in the sky over Kristiansand, rest. Every year on May 8, flagpoles next to the graves raise the flags of the USSR, Great Britain and Norway.
In 1997, it was decided to sell the building of the Archive, from which the State Archive moved to another place, into private hands. Local veterans, public organizations strongly opposed, organized themselves into a special committee and ensured that in 1998 the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, transferred the historic building to the veterans' committee. Now here, along with the museum that I told you about, there are offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN
This name has become a symbol of the brutal attitude of the Nazis towards captured children.
During the three years of the existence of the camp (1941-1944) in Salaspils, according to various sources, about a hundred thousand people died, seven thousand of them were children.
The place from which they did not return
This camp was built by captured Jews in 1941 on the territory of the former Latvian training ground, 18 kilometers from Riga, near the village of the same name. According to the documents, Salaspils (German: Kurtenhof) was originally called an “educational labor camp”, and not a concentration camp.
An impressive area, fenced with barbed wire, was built up with hastily built wooden barracks. Each was designed for 200-300 people, but often in one room there were from 500 to 1000 people.
Initially, Jews deported from Germany to Latvia were doomed to death in the camp, but since 1942, "undesirable" Jews from various countries: France, Germany, Austria, and the Soviet Union were sent here.
The Salaspils camp also gained notoriety because it was here that the Nazis took blood from innocent children for the needs of the army and mocked young prisoners in every possible way.
Full donors for the Reich
New prisoners were brought in regularly. They were forced to strip naked and sent to the so-called bathhouse. It was necessary to walk half a kilometer through the mud, and then wash in icy water. After that, the arrivals were placed in barracks, all things were taken away.
There were no names, surnames, titles - only serial numbers. Many died almost immediately, while those who managed to survive after several days of imprisonment and torture were “sorted out”.
The children were separated from their parents. If the mothers did not give, the guards took the babies by force. There were terrible screams and screams. Many women went crazy; some of them were placed in the hospital, and some were shot on the spot.
Infants and children under the age of six were sent to a special barrack, where they died of starvation and disease. The Nazis experimented on older prisoners: they injected poisons, performed operations without anesthesia, took blood from children, which was transferred to hospitals for wounded soldiers of the German army. Many children became "full donors" - they took blood from them until they died.
Considering that the prisoners were practically not fed: a piece of bread and a gruel from vegetable waste, the number of child deaths was in the hundreds per day. The corpses, like garbage, were taken out in huge baskets and burned in crematorium ovens or dumped into disposal pits.
Covering up traces
In August 1944, before the arrival of the Soviet troops, in an attempt to destroy the traces of atrocities, the Nazis burned down many barracks. The surviving prisoners were taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, and German prisoners of war were kept on the territory of Salaspils until October 1946.
After the liberation of Riga from the Nazis, a commission to investigate Nazi atrocities found 652 children's corpses in the camp. Mass graves and human remains were also found: ribs, hip bones, teeth.
One of the most eerie photographs that clearly illustrates the events of that time is the “Salaspils Madonna”, the corpse of a woman who hugs a dead baby. It was found that they were buried alive.
The truth pricks the eyes
Only in 1967, the Salaspils memorial complex was erected on the site of the camp, which still exists today. Many famous Russian and Latvian sculptors and architects worked on the ensemble, including Ernst Unknown. The road to Salaspils begins with a massive concrete slab, the inscription on which reads: "The earth groans behind these walls."
Further, on a small field, figures-symbols with "speaking" names rise: "Unbroken", "Humiliated", "Oath", "Mother". On either side of the road are barracks with iron bars where people bring flowers, children's toys and sweets, and on the black marble wall, serifs measure the days spent by the innocent in the "death camp".
To date, some Latvian historians blasphemously call the Salaspils camp "educational and labor" and "socially useful", refusing to recognize the atrocities that were committed near Riga during the Second World War.
In 2015, an exhibition dedicated to the victims of Salaspils was banned in Latvia. Officials felt that such an event would harm the image of the country. As a result, the exposition “Stolen childhood. Victims of the Holocaust through the Eyes of Young Prisoners of the Salaspils Nazi Concentration Camp was held at the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Paris.
In 2017, there was also a scandal at the press conference “Salaspils camp, history and memory”. One of the speakers tried to express his original point of view on historical events, but received a harsh rebuff from the participants. “It hurts to hear how you are trying to forget about the past today. We cannot allow such terrible events to happen again. God forbid you experience something like this,” one of the women who managed to survive in Salaspils addressed the speaker.
We can all agree that the Nazis did terrible things during World War II. The Holocaust was perhaps their most famous crime. But in the concentration camps, terrible and inhuman things happened that most people did not know about. The camp inmates were used as test subjects in many experiments that were very painful and usually resulted in death.blood clotting experiments
Dr. Sigmund Rascher performed blood clotting experiments on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp. He created a drug, Polygal, which included beets and apple pectin. He believed that these pills could help stop bleeding from battle wounds or during surgical operations.
Each subject was given a tablet of the drug and shot in the neck or chest to test its effectiveness. The limbs were then amputated without anesthesia. Dr. Rascher created a company to produce these pills, which also employed prisoners.
Experiments with sulfa drugs
In the Ravensbrück concentration camp, the effectiveness of sulfonamides (or sulfanilamide preparations) was tested on prisoners. Subjects were given incisions on the outside of their calves. The doctors then rubbed the mixture of bacteria into the open wounds and stitched them up. To simulate combat situations, glass fragments were also brought into the wounds.
However, this method turned out to be too mild compared to the conditions at the fronts. To simulate gunshot wounds, blood vessels were tied off on both sides to cut off blood circulation. Then the prisoners were given sulfa drugs. Despite the advances made in the scientific and pharmaceutical fields through these experiments, the prisoners experienced terrible pain that led to severe injury or even death.
Freezing and Hypothermia Experiments
The German armies were ill-prepared for the cold that they faced on the Eastern Front and from which thousands of soldiers died. As a result, Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted experiments in Birkenau, Auschwitz and Dachau to find out two things: the time required for the body temperature to drop and death, and methods for reviving frozen people.
Naked prisoners were either placed in a barrel of ice water, or driven out into the street in sub-zero temperatures. Most of the victims died. Those who only fainted were subjected to painful resuscitation procedures. To revive the subjects, they were placed under lamps of sunlight, which burned their skin, forced to copulate with women, injected with boiling water or placed in baths of warm water (which turned out to be the most effective method).
Experiments with firebombs
For three months in 1943 and 1944, Buchenwald prisoners were tested for the effectiveness of pharmaceutical preparations against phosphorus burns caused by incendiary bombs. The test subjects were specially burned with a phosphorus composition from these bombs, which was a very painful procedure. Prisoners were seriously injured during these experiments.
sea water experiments
Experiments were conducted on Dachau prisoners to find ways to turn sea water into drinking water. The subjects were divided into four groups, whose members went without water, drank sea water, drank sea water treated according to the Burke method, and drank sea water without salt.
Subjects were given food and drink assigned to their group. Prisoners who received some form of seawater eventually suffered from severe diarrhea, convulsions, hallucinations, went insane, and eventually died.
In addition, the subjects were subjected to needle biopsy of the liver or lumbar punctures to collect data. These procedures were painful and in most cases ended in death.
Experiments with poisons
In Buchenwald, experiments were carried out on the effects of poisons on people. In 1943, poisons were secretly administered to prisoners.
Some died themselves from poisoned food. Others were killed for the sake of an autopsy. A year later, poisoned bullets were fired at the prisoners to speed up data collection. These test subjects experienced terrible torment.
Experiments with sterilization
As part of the extermination of all non-Aryans, Nazi doctors conducted mass sterilization experiments on prisoners from various concentration camps in search of the least laborious and cheapest method of sterilization.
In one series of experiments, a chemical irritant was injected into the reproductive organs of women to block the fallopian tubes. Some women have died after this procedure. Other women were killed for autopsies.
In a number of other experiments, prisoners were subjected to intense X-ray radiation, which led to severe burns on the abdomen, groin and buttocks. They were also left with incurable ulcers. Some test subjects died.
Bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and bone grafting experiments
For about a year, experiments were carried out on the prisoners of Ravensbrück to regenerate bones, muscles and nerves. Nerve surgeries included the removal of segments of nerves from the lower limbs.
Bone experiments included breaking and repositioning bones in several places on the lower extremities. Fractures were not allowed to heal properly as doctors needed to study the healing process and also test different healing methods.
Doctors also removed numerous fragments of the tibia from the test subjects to study bone regeneration. Bone grafts included transplanting fragments of the left tibia to the right and vice versa. These experiments caused unbearable pain and severe injuries to the prisoners.
Experiments with typhus
From the end of 1941 until the beginning of 1945, doctors conducted experiments on the prisoners of Buchenwald and Natzweiler in the interests of the German armed forces. They were testing vaccines for typhus and other diseases.
Approximately 75% of test subjects were injected with trial typhoid vaccines or other chemicals. They were injected with a virus. As a result, more than 90% of them died.
The remaining 25% of the test subjects were injected with the virus without any prior protection. Most of them did not survive. Physicians also conducted experiments related to yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid, and other diseases. Hundreds of prisoners died, and more prisoners suffered unbearable pain as a result.
Twin experiments and genetic experiments
The purpose of the Holocaust was the elimination of all people of non-Aryan origin. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals and other people who did not meet certain requirements were to be exterminated so that only the "superior" Aryan race remained. Genetic experiments were carried out to provide the Nazi Party with scientific proof of the superiority of the Aryans.
Dr. Josef Mengele (also known as the "Angel of Death") had a strong interest in the twins. He separated them from the rest of the prisoners when they entered Auschwitz. The twins had to donate blood every day. The real purpose of this procedure is unknown.
The experiments with twins were extensive. They were to be carefully examined and every centimeter of their body measured. After that, comparisons were made to determine hereditary traits. Sometimes doctors performed mass blood transfusions from one twin to the other.
Since people of Aryan origin mostly had blue eyes, experiments were carried out to create them with chemical drops or injections into the iris of the eye. These procedures were very painful and led to infections and even blindness.
Injections and lumbar punctures were done without anesthesia. One twin deliberately contracted the disease, and the other did not. If one twin died, the other twin was killed and studied for comparison.
Amputations and removals of organs were also performed without anesthesia. Most of the twins who ended up in the concentration camp died in one way or another, and their autopsies were the last experiments.
Experiments with high altitudes
From March to August 1942, the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp were used as test subjects in experiments to test human endurance at high altitudes. The results of these experiments were to help the German air force.
The test subjects were placed in a low pressure chamber, which created atmospheric conditions at altitudes up to 21,000 meters. Most of the test subjects died, and the survivors suffered from various injuries from being at high altitudes.
Experiments with malaria
1) Irma Grese- (October 7, 1923 - December 13, 1945) - overseer of the Nazi death camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
Among the nicknames of Irma were "Blond-haired devil", "Angel of death", "Beautiful monster". She used emotional and physical methods to torture prisoners, bludgeoned women to death, and reveled in the arbitrary shooting of prisoners. She starved her dogs to set them on her victims, and personally selected hundreds of people to be sent to the gas chambers. Grese wore heavy boots, with her, in addition to a pistol, she always had a wicker whip. In the Western post-war press, the possible sexual deviations of Irma Grese, her numerous connections with the SS guards, with the commandant of Bergen-Belsen Josef Kramer ("Belsen Beast") were constantly discussed.
On April 17, 1945, she was taken prisoner by the British. The Belsen trial, initiated by a British military tribunal, lasted from September 17 to November 17, 1945. Together with Irma Grese, the cases of other camp workers were considered at this trial - commandant Josef Kramer, warden Joanna Bormann, nurse Elisabeth Volkenrath. Irma Grese was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
On the last night before her execution, Grese laughed and sang along with her colleague Elisabeth Volkenrath. Even when a noose was thrown around Irma Grese's neck, her face remained calm. Her last word was "Faster", addressed to the English executioner.
2) Ilsa Koch- (September 22, 1906 - September 1, 1967) - German NSDAP activist, wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps. Best known under a pseudonym as "Frau Lampshade" Received the nickname "Buchenwald Witch" for the brutal torture of camp prisoners. Koch was also accused of making souvenirs from human skin (however, no reliable evidence of this was presented at the post-war trial of Ilse Koch).
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 Clay, the military commander of the American occupation zone in Germany, released her, considering the charges of issuing execution orders and making souvenirs from human skin insufficiently proven.
This decision caused a protest from the public, so in 1951 Ilse Koch was arrested in West Germany. A German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.
On September 1, 1967, Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in a cell in the Bavarian Eibach prison.
3) Louise Dantz- genus. December 11, 1917 - overseer of women's concentration camps. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but later released.
She began working in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, then she was transferred to Majdanek. Danz later served in Auschwitz and Malchow.
Prisoners later said that they were subjected to ill-treatment by Danz. She beat them, confiscated their winter clothes. In Malchow, where Danz had the position of senior warden, she starved the prisoners without giving food for 3 days. On April 2, 1945, she killed an underage girl.
Danz was arrested on 1 June 1945 in Lützow. At the trial of the Supreme National Tribunal, which lasted from November 24, 1947 to December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1956 for health reasons (!!!). In 1996, she was charged with the aforementioned murder of a child, but it was dropped after doctors said that Danz would be too hard to endure a re-imprisonment. She lives in Germany. Now she is 94 years old.
4) Jenny-Wanda Barkmann- (May 30, 1922 - July 4, 1946) Between 1940 and December 1943, she worked as a fashion model. In January 1944, she became a warden at the small Stutthof concentration camp, where she became famous for brutally beating female prisoners, some of whom she beat to death. She also participated in the selection of women and children for the gas chambers. She was so cruel, but also very beautiful, that the female prisoners called her "Beautiful Ghost".
Jenny fled the camp in 1945 when Soviet troops began to approach the camp. But she was caught and arrested in May 1945 while trying to leave the train station in Gdansk. She is said to have flirted with the policemen guarding her and was not particularly worried about her fate. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was found guilty, after which she was given the last word. She stated, "Life is indeed a great pleasure, and the pleasure is usually short-lived."
Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was publicly hanged on Biskupska Gorka near Gdansk on July 4, 1946. She was only 24 years old. Her body was burned, and the ashes were publicly washed away in the closet of the house where she was born.
5) Hertha Gertrud Bothe- (January 8, 1921 - March 16, 2000) - overseer of women's concentration camps. She was arrested on charges of war crimes, but later released.
In 1942 she received an invitation to work as a warden in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After four weeks of preliminary training, Bothe was sent to Stutthof, a concentration camp near the city of Gdańsk. In it, Bothe was nicknamed "The Sadist of Stutthof" because of her mistreatment of female prisoners.
In July 1944 she was sent by Gerda Steinhoff to the Bromberg-Ost concentration camp. From January 21, 1945, Bothe was a warden during the death march of prisoners, which took place from central Poland to the Bergen-Belsen camp. The march ended on February 20-26, 1945. In Bergen-Belsen, Bothe led a group of women, consisting of 60 people and engaged in the production of wood.
After the camp was liberated, she was arrested. At the Belzensky court, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Released earlier than the specified date on December 22, 1951. She died on March 16, 2000 in Huntsville, USA.
6) Maria Mandel(1912-1948) - Nazi war criminal. Occupying the post of head of the women's camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in the period 1942-1944, she is directly responsible for the death of about 500 thousand female prisoners.
Colleagues in the service described Mandel as an "extremely intelligent and dedicated" person. The Auschwitz prisoners among themselves called her a monster. Mandel personally selected prisoners, and sent them to the gas chambers by the thousands. There are cases when Mandel personally took several prisoners under her protection for a while, and when they bored her, she put them on the lists for destruction. Also, it was Mandel who came up with the idea and the creation of a women's camp orchestra, which met new prisoners at the gates with cheerful music. According to the recollections of the survivors, Mandel was a music lover and treated the musicians from the orchestra well, she personally came to their barracks with a request to play something.
In 1944, Mandel was transferred to the post of head of the Muldorf concentration camp, one of the parts of the Dachau concentration camp, where she served until the end of the war with Germany. In May 1945, she fled to the mountains near her hometown, Münzkirchen. On August 10, 1945, Mandel was arrested by American troops. In November 1946, as a war criminal, she was handed over to the Polish authorities at their request. Mandel was one of the main defendants in the trial of Auschwitz workers, which took place in November-December 1947. The court sentenced her to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on January 24, 1948 in a Krakow prison.
7) Hildegard Neumann(May 4, 1919, Czechoslovakia -?) - senior warden in the Ravensbrück and Theresienstadt concentration camps.
Hildegard Neumann began her service in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in October 1944, immediately becoming a head overseer. Due to good work, she was transferred to the Theresienstadt concentration camp as the head of all camp guards. Beauty Hildegard, according to the prisoners, was cruel and merciless towards them.
She supervised between 10 and 30 female police officers and over 20,000 female Jewish prisoners. Neumann also facilitated the deportation of more than 40,000 women and children from Theresienstadt to the death camps of Auschwitz (Auschwitz) and Bergen-Belsen, where most of them were killed. Researchers estimate that more than 100,000 Jews were deported from the Theresienstadt camp and were killed or died in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and another 55,000 died in Theresienstadt itself.
Neumann left the camp in May 1945 and was not prosecuted for war crimes. Hildegard Neumann's subsequent fate is unknown.
