Instead of a preface:

"- When there were no gas chambers, we shot on Wednesdays and Fridays. Children tried to hide these days. Now the crematorium ovens work day and night and the children no longer hide. The children are used to it.

- This is the first eastern subgroup.

- How are you, children?

- How do you live, children?

- We live well, our health is good. Come.

- I don’t need to go to the gas station, I can still give blood.

- The rats ate my ration, so the blood did not go.

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

- I can donate blood.

- And I...

Take it.

- They don't know what it is?

- They forgot.

- Eat, children! Eat!

- Why didn't you take it?

- Wait, I'll take it.

- You might not get it.

- Lie down, it doesn't hurt, as if you'll fall asleep. Lie down!

- What's with them?

Why did they lie down?

"The kids probably thought they were given poison..."

A group of Soviet prisoners of war behind barbed wire

Majdanek. Poland

The girl is a prisoner of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac

KZ Mauthausen, jugendliche

Children of Buchenwald

Josef Mengele and child

Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials

Children of Buchenwald

Mauthausen children display numbers carved into their hands

Treblinka

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

Some critters use this photo as "proof" of the famine in Ukraine. It is not surprising that it is in the Nazi crimes that they draw "inspiration" for their "revelations"

These are the children released in Salaspils

"From the autumn of 1942, masses of women, old people, children from the occupied regions of the USSR: Leningrad, Kalinin, Vitebsk, Latgale were forcibly brought to the Salaspils concentration camp. Children from infancy to 12 years old were forcibly taken away from their mothers and kept in 9 barracks of them 3 hospitals, 2 for crippled children, and 4 barracks for healthy children.

The permanent contingent of children in Salaspils during 1943 and until 1944 was over 1,000 people. There was a systematic extermination of them by:

A) the organization of a blood factory for the needs of the German army, blood was taken from both adults and healthy children, including babies, until they fainted, after which sick children were taken to the so-called hospital, where they died;

B) gave the children poisoned coffee to drink;

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

D) children were injected with children's, women's and even horse urine. Many children had festering and leaking eyes;

E) all children suffered from diarrhea of ​​a dysentery nature and dystrophy;

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

3) crippled and maimed children were taken out to be shot.

Mortality among children from the above causes averaged 300-400 per month during 1943/44. to the month of June.

According to preliminary data, over 500 children were exterminated in the Salaspils concentration camp in 1942; more than 6,000 people.

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

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

Most of these children who were taken out and given up for education died, because. were easily susceptible to all kinds of diseases after losing blood in the Salaspils camp.

On the eve of the expulsion of the German fascists from Riga, on October 4-6, they loaded babies and toddlers under the age of 4 from the Riga orphanage and the Mayorsky orphanage, where children of executed parents were kept, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, prisons and partly from the Salaspils camp and exterminated 289 babies on that ship.

They were hijacked by the Germans to Libava, an orphanage for infants located there. Children from Baldonsky, Grivsky orphanages, nothing is known about their fate yet.

Not stopping before these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 in the stores of Riga sold substandard products, only on children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did the little ones die in droves. More than 400 children died in the Riga Children's Hospital alone in 9 months of 1944, including 71 children in September.

In these orphanages, the methods of raising and keeping children were policemen and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp Krause and another German Schaefer, who went to children's camps and houses where children were kept for "inspection".

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

Senior detective of the NKVD captain g / security / Murman /

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

According to the People's Commissariat of Education of the Latvian SSR, which was investigating the facts of the deportation of the civilian population into German slavery, as of April 3, 1945, it is known that from the Salaspils concentration camp during German occupation 2,802 children were distributed:

1) for kulak farms - 1,564 people.

2) in children's camps - 636 people.

3) taken up by individual citizens - 602 people.

The list was compiled on the basis of data from the card file of the Social Department of the Interior of the Latvian General Directorate "Ostland". Based on the same file, it was revealed that children were forced to work from the age of five.

AT last days During their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, homes for infants, grabbed children from apartments, herded them to the port of Riga, where they loaded them like cattle into the coal mines of steamships.

Through mass executions in the vicinity of Riga alone, the Germans killed about 10,000 children, whose corpses were burned. At mass executions 17,765 children were destroyed.

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

Abren County - 497
Ludza County - 732
Rezekne county and Rezekne - 2045, incl. through Rezekne Prison more than 1,200
Madona County - 373
Daugavpils - 3 960, incl. through Daugavpils prison 2000
Daugavpils County - 1,058
Valmiera county - 315
Jelgava - 697
Ilukst district - 190
Bauska county - 399
Valka County - 22
Cesis county - 32
Jekabpils county - 645
In total - 10 965 people.

In Riga, dead children were buried at Pokrovsky, Tornyakalns and Ivanovo cemeteries, as well as in the forest near the Salaspils camp.

in the moat

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

Children behind the wire

Soviet children-prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk

“The girl who is second from the pillar on the right in the photo - Claudia Nyuppieva - published her memoirs many years later.

“I remember how people fainted from the heat in the so-called bathhouse, and then they were poured over cold water. I remember the disinfection of the barracks, after which there was a buzzing in the ears and many had nosebleeds, and that steam room, where all our rags were processed with great “dilience”. Once the steam room burned down, depriving many people of their last clothes.

The Finns shot prisoners in front of children, administered corporal punishment to women, children and the elderly, regardless of age. She also said that the Finns shot young guys before leaving Petrozavodsk and that her sister was saved by a miracle. According to available Finnish documents, only seven men were shot for trying to escape or for other crimes. During the conversation, it turned out that the Sobolev family was one of those who were taken out of Zaonezhye. Mother Soboleva and her six children had a hard time. Claudia said that their cow was taken away from them, they were deprived of the right to receive food for a month, then, in the summer of 1942, they were transported on a barge to Petrozavodsk and assigned to concentration camp number 6, to the 125th barrack. The mother was immediately taken to the hospital. Claudia recalled with horror the disinfection carried out by the Finns. People died in the so-called bath, and then they were doused with cold water. The food was bad, the food was spoiled, the clothes were worthless.

Only at the end of June 1944 were they able to get out from behind the barbed wire of the camp. There were six Sobolev sisters: 16-year-old Maria, 14-year-old Antonina, 12-year-old Raisa, nine-year-old Claudia, six-year-old Evgenia and very little Zoya, she was not yet three years old.

Worker Ivan Morekhodov spoke about the attitude of the Finns towards prisoners: "There was little food, and it was bad. The baths were terrible. The Finns did not show any pity."

In a Finnish concentration camp

Auschwitz (Auschwitz)

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka

The photographs of 14-year-old Czeslava Kwoka, courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, perished during World War II. In December 1942, the Polish Catholic Czesława, originally from Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz with her mother. They both died three months later. In 2005, photographer (and co-prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not realize why she was here and did not understand what she was being told. And then the kapo (prison guard) took a stick and hit her in the face. This German woman simply took out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful, young and innocent creature. She was crying, but there was nothing she could do. Before being photographed, the girl wiped her tears and blood from her broken lip. To be honest, I felt like I was being beaten, but I couldn't intervene. For me it would be fatal."

This is not written in the history books. During the Second World War, when the genocide of the Jewish people took place, the highest German officials had unusual toilets where they could satisfy their needs.

Jews were brought straight from Auschwitz who, for some reason, did not like the commander or were very guilty.

The prisoners were chained at the place of the urinal and there they remained until the end of their days without food and water. But it was only half the trouble, any German working at the headquarters could come and urinate directly on the prisoner, throw a smoldering cigarette butt at them.

In such terrible conditions, few could hold out for long. When a prisoner died or simply became unusable, he was taken off the chain and simply thrown like garbage into a pit.

Of course, there are no links to any authoritative sources, as one of the primary sources of this story is a group in classmates https://ok.ru/chertovo.logovo/topic/66049527414895 and YouTube channel (video above)

IN THE OPINION OF THE EDITOR, THIS IS ANOTHER FAKE STORY

And here is a more plausible story about the mockery of German Nazis over captured Jews:

THE HOLOCAUST IN THE TOILET OR NEW EVIDENCE OF EXTRAORDINARY NAZI ABORTIONS

More and more evidence of Hitler's abuse of Jewish prisoners continues to surface. The stories presented recently in the report of the Association of Former Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps are still being revealed unknown fact that during the Second World War in camps such as Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Chelmno, prisoners were forbidden to use toilet paper. Instead, the SS men forced the prisoners to use sandpaper, which was a real torment for the latter.

As a result of the forced use of sandpaper, many prisoners developed serious skin irritation in intimate places, however, when they sought medical help, SS doctors simply laughed at them. “I could hardly sit, and the daily trip to the bathroom was sheer torture,” recalls Leon Vrundelman, now an Israeli citizen. - The rash on the skin bled from time to time, but whenever I asked for help, the doctors began to laugh and make stinging jokes about it. They sometimes even waved clean toilet paper in front of us (which they could use) to further humiliate and torment us.”
The use of sandpaper reportedly killed thousands of prisoners.
German researchers have unearthed World War II photographs showing stacks of industrial sandpaper being loaded onto boxcars to be sent to concentration camps. Other photographs show empty train cars before sandpaper is loaded onto them.

Documentation reviewed the other day by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (CSV) clearly indicates that the sandpaper manufacturer who placed the orders Nazi Germany, - a company from Sweden, a subsidiary of the American company International Supplies of Industrial Paper (IIPB) - knew for what purposes this paper was used, but still continued to supply it. A representative of the CSV said that their Center, together with the World Jewish Congress and the International Federation of Jewish Representatives, will begin to file lawsuits against both the subsidiary and the parent corporation for their complicity in the Holocaust. According to preliminary estimates, the amount of damage caused will be approximately 18 billion US dollars.

A spokesman for the American concern MPPB made a brief comment on the findings: “We are deeply shocked and saddened by this unfortunate activity of our company during the Second World War,” said Thomas Pupkins. - The recent meeting of the ruling council of the company instructed to organize meetings with Jewish representatives and associations of prisoners who survived the Holocaust, to establish the amount of appropriate compensation. We are simply not able to put into words our regret and guilt for what we have done. We are morally indebted to the Jewish people for bringing these facts to our attention, and we pray to providence that such things will never happen again.”

Lenin pushed tens of millions of people in a bloody battle, opened the Solovetsky camp special purpose and contributed to the massacres. Saint?.." - asks Andrey Kharitonov in the newspaper "Kuranty" (Moscow, 04/02/1997).

Laudatory Soviet words, but in practice?
* * * * *
"The careful isolation of ideological opponents, touchingly proclaimed by the Soviet government, very successfully reaches and sometimes even exceeds the" pre-war norms "- tsarist hard labor. Having set itself the same goal - the destruction of the socialists, and not daring to do this openly, the Soviet government is trying to give its hard labor a decent look Giving something on paper, in reality they are depriving everything: but for what we have, we paid a terrible price ... if in terms of the shortness of time, quantitatively, you have not yet caught up with hard labor, then qualitatively even with a surplus. Yakut history and Romanovskaya and all others turn pale with it. In the past, we did not know the beating of pregnant women - the beating of Kozeltseva ended in a miscarriage ... "( E. Ivanova. Application to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. 07/12/1926. CA FSB RF. H-1789. T. 59. L. 253v. Cit. on. Book. Morozov K. Trial Socialist-Revolutionaries and Prison Confrontation (1922-1926): Ethics and Tactics of Confrontation. M.: ROSSPEN. 736c. 2005.)

* * * * *

"I remember this incident. In 1929, on Solovetsky Island, I worked at an agricultural camp. And then one day mothers were driven past us. So in Solovki they called women who gave birth to a child there. On the way, one of the mothers fell ill, and since it was evening, the convoy decided to spend the night at our campsite. They put these mothers in the bath. No bed was provided. These women and their children were terrible to look at; thin, in tattered dirty clothes, looking hungry all over. I say to the criminal Grisha, who worked there as a cattleman:
- Listen, Grisha, you work next to the milkmaids. Go and get some milk from them, and I'll go to the guys and ask what anyone has from food.

While I was going around the barracks, Grigory brought young. The women fed their babies to them. They thanked us heartily for milk and bread. We gave the guard two packs of makhorka for allowing us to do a good deed. Then we learned that these women and their children, who were taken to the island of Anzer, all died there. What kind of monster do you have to be to do this arbitrariness. ( Zinkovshchuk Andrey. Prisoners of the Solovetsky camps. Chelyabinsk. Newspaper. 1993. 47 p.) http://www.solovki.ca/camp_20/woman.php

* * * * *

Professor I.S.: Bolshevism in the Light of Psychopathology

In July 1930, one prisoner, assistant professor of geology D., was brought to Solovki and immediately placed in the neuro-psychiatric department under observation. During my tour of the department, he suddenly attacked me and tore my dressing gown. His face, in the highest degree soulful, beautiful, with an expression of deep sorrow, seemed to me so sympathetic that I spoke to him affably, despite his excitement. When he learned that I was an ordinary prisoner doctor, and not a "genius doctor," he began to beg my forgiveness with tears. I called him into my doctor's office and talked heart to heart.

"I don't know if I'm healthy or crazy?" he said to himself

During the study, I became convinced that he was mentally healthy, but, having endured a lot of moral torture, he gave the so-called "hysterical reactions." It would be hard not to give such reactions after what he endured. His wife sacrificed her feminine honor to save her husband, but was grossly deceived. His brother, who raised a story about this, was arrested and shot. D. himself, accused of "economic counter-revolution", was interrogated for a whole week by a conveyor of investigators who did not let him sleep. Then he spent about two years in solitary confinement, and the last months in "death row".

“My investigator shot himself,” D. finished his story, “and after a ten-month trial with Professor Orshansky, they sentenced me to 10 years in a concentration camp and sent me to Solovki with an order to keep me in a psycho-isolator, until further notice”...

Of D.'s many stories, I remember one most vividly - about a widowed priest (who died in a prison hospital), whom some fanatical investigator forced to renounce Christ (!), Torturing children in front of him - ten- and thirteen-year-old boys. The priest did not renounce, but prayed intensely. And when at the very beginning of the torture (their hands were twisted!) Both children fainted and were carried away - he decided that they had died, and thanked God!

After listening to this story in 1930, I thought that the torture of children and torture by children is an isolated case, an exception ... But later I became convinced that such torture exists in the USSR. In 1931, I had to sit in the same cell with professor-economist V., who was subjected to "torture by children."

But the most terrible case of such torture became known to me in 1933.

A stout, simple woman of 50 years old brought to me struck me with her gaze: her eyes were full of horror, and her face was stone.

When we were alone, she suddenly says, slowly, monotonously, as if absent in her soul: “I'm not crazy. I was a party member, and now I don’t want to be in the party anymore! And she talked about what she had to endure recently. As the warden of the women's detention center, she overheard the conversation of two investigators, of whom one boasted that he could make any prisoner say and do whatever he wanted. As proof of his "omnipotence," he told how he won the "bet" by forcing one mother to break her own one-year-old child's finger.

The secret was that he broke the fingers of another, her 10-year-old child, promising to stop this torture if the mother breaks only one little finger to a one-year-old baby. The mother was tied to a hook on the wall. When her 10-year-old son screamed - "Oh, mommy, I can't" - she could not stand it and broke. And then she went crazy. And she killed her little child. She grabbed the legs and hit the stone wall with her head ...

“So, as soon as I heard this,” the warden finished her story, “I poured boiling water on my head ... After all, I am also a mother. And I have children. And also 10 years and 1 year old "..." ( Professor I.S. Bolshevism in the light of psychopathology. Magazine "Renaissance". Literary and political notebooks. Ed. S.P. Melgunov. Ed. "La Renaissance". Paris. T.6, 11-12.1949.) http://www.solovki.ca/camp_20/prof_is.php

* * * * *

Coercion to cohabit

When harassment encounters resistance, security officers do not hesitate to take revenge on their victims. At the end of 1924, a very attractive girl was sent to Solovki - a Polish girl of about seventeen. She, along with her parents, was sentenced to death for "spying for Poland." The parents were shot. And the girl, since she did not reach the age of majority, the capital punishment was replaced by exile to Solovki for ten years.

The girl had the misfortune to attract Toropov's attention. But she had the courage to refuse his disgusting advances. In retaliation, Toropov ordered her to be brought to the commandant's office and, putting forward a false version of "concealing counter-revolutionary documents", stripped naked and in the presence of the entire camp guard carefully felt the body in those places where, as it seemed to him, it was best to hide the documents.

On one of the February days, a very drunk Chekist Popov appeared in the women's barracks, accompanied by several other Chekists (also drunk). He unceremoniously climbed into bed with Madame X, a lady belonging to the highest circles of society, exiled to Solovki for a period of ten years after the execution of her husband. Popov dragged her out of bed with the words: "Would you like to take a walk behind the wire with us?" For women it meant being raped. Madame X, was delirious until the next morning.

Uneducated and semi-educated women from the counter-revolutionary environment were mercilessly exploited by the Chekists. Particularly deplorable is the fate of the Cossacks, whose husbands, fathers and brothers were shot, and they themselves were exiled. (Malsagov Sozerko. Hell Islands: Owl. prison in the Far North: Per. from English. - Alma-Ata: Alma-at. Phil. press agency "NB-Press", 127 p. 1991)
The position of women is truly desperate. They are even more deprived of rights than men, and almost everyone, regardless of their origin, upbringing, habits, is forced to quickly sink. One is entirely at the mercy of the administration, which collects tribute "in kind"... Women give themselves up for rations of bread. In this regard, the terrible spread of venereal diseases, along with scurvy and tuberculosis. " (Melgunov Sergey. "Red Terror" in Russia 1918-1923. 2nd edition supplemented. Berlin. 1924)
* * * * *

Sexual abuse of women ELEPHANT

The Solovetsky "Detcolony" was officially called the "Correctional labor colony for offenders of younger ages from 25 years old". In this "detcolony" a "childish offense" was registered - the gang rape of teenage girls (1929).

“Once I had to be present at the forensic autopsy of the corpse of one of the prisoners, taken out of the water, with her hands tied and a stone around her neck. The case turned out to be top secret: a gang rape and murder committed by prisoners of the VOKhR shooters (military guards, where prisoners were recruited, previously, at large, who worked in the punitive organs of the GPU) under the leadership of their Chekist chief. I had to "talk" with this monster. He turned out to be a hysterical sadist, former boss prisons."
(Professor I.S. Bolshevism in the light of psychopathology. Magazine "Renaissance". No. 9. Paris. 1949. Cited. by public Boris Kamov. Zh. "Spy", 1993. Issue 1. Moscow, 1993. P.81-89 - The events told by Professor I.S. took place in the city of Lodeynoye Pole, where the head office of the Svir camps was located - parts of the camps as part of the White Sea-Baltic ITL and SLON. As an expert psychiatrist, Prof. I.S. repeatedly conducted examinations of employees and prisoners of these camps ...)

Women in Calvary Skete

"Women! Where are the contrasts brighter (so beloved by me!) Than on our thoughtful islands? Women in the Skete of Golgotha!

Their faces are a mirror of Moscow night streets. The saffron color of their cheeks is the vague light of brothels, their dull, indifferent eyes are the windows of haz and raspberries. They came here from Sly, from Ragged, from Tsvetnoy. The stinking breath of these cesspools of a huge city is still alive in them. They still contort their faces in a friendly-coquettish smile and with a voluptuous-inviting flair pass by you. Their heads are tied with scarves. At the temples with disarming coquettishness, there are peysik curls, remnants of cropped hair. Their lips are scarlet. A gloomy clerk will tell you about this alosti, locking the red ink with a padlock. They are laughing. They are carefree. Greenery all around, the sea like fiery pearls, semi-precious fabrics in the sky. They are laughing. They are carefree. For why care for them, the poor daughters of a pitiless big city?

On the slope of the mountain graveyard. Under the brown crosses and slabs are hermits. On the crosses is a skull and two bones. Zvibelfish. On an island in Anzère. Magazine "Solovki Islands", No. 7, 07.1926. C.3-9). http://www.solovki.ca/camp_20/woman_moral.php

* * * * *

"Sanitation and hygiene"

"... among the rubbish of the burnt stone, the so-called "centre-kitchen" is placed, in which "dinners" are cooked for the prisoners ... Approaching the "centre-kitchen" it is necessary to pinch your nose with your fingers, such a stench and stench constantly comes from this Worthy of perpetuation is the fact that next to the "centre-kitchen", in the same ruins of the burned-out "priest's building", the criminal element of the prisoners set up a lavatory, which - quite officially - is called the "central toilet". Prisoners, who lose their human appearance in Solovki, are not disturbed by such a neighborhood ... Further, next to the "center-toilet", the so-called "kapterka" is placed - a warehouse food products" (A. Klinger. Solovetsky penal servitude. Notes of a fugitive. Book. "Archive of Russian revolutions". Publishing house of G.V. Gessen. XIX. Berlin. 1928.)
“Intellectual prisoners avoid going to the common bathhouse, because it is a breeding ground for lice and contagious diseases. the grave of all Solovki prisoners." (A. Klinger. Solovetsky penal servitude. Notes of a fugitive. Book. "Archive of Russian revolutions". Publishing house of G.V. Gessen. XIX. Berlin. 1928.)

* * * * *
"The very fact of the existence of cannibals in the USSR infuriated the Communist Party more than the appearance of the Holodomor. Cannibals were diligently sought out in the villages and often destroyed on the spot. Intimidated and exhausted peasants themselves used to point at each other, without sufficient evidence. Cannibals or those accused of cannibalism are not they were judged and not taken anywhere, but taken out of the village and finished there. First of all, this concerned men - they were not spared under any circumstances. " Yaroslav Tinchenko. "Kievskiye Vedomosti", Kyiv, 09/13/2000.

Leninism in action: in Russia there is cannibalism, and farmers in Germany feed pigs with grain...

(Notes of the Solovetsky Prisoner)

"Boreysha first heard this springy word" dumping ". He then went to a familiar leading comrade for clarification, and he explained:" For industrialization, a currency is needed. At any cost. Therefore, we export products to Europe. Cheap. Then we will become strong - everything from them "We'll pull it back. Without victims, the world revolution cannot be done."

Pavel felt better, but then he was sent with an propaganda team to raid the villages. He not only saw abandoned huts and corpses on the roads, but also a collective farmer, distraught with hunger, who ate her two-year-old child.

Next, we invite you, in the company of one blogger, to go on a terrible tour of the Nazi death camp Stutthof in Poland, where German doctors conducted their terrible experiments on people during the Second World War.

The most eminent German doctors worked in these operating rooms and X-ray rooms: Prof. Karl Klauberg, Dr. Karl Gebhard, Sigmund Rascher and Kurt Plötner. What brought these luminaries of science to the tiny village of Sztutowo in eastern Poland, near Gdansk? Here are heavenly places: picturesque white beaches of the Baltic, pine forests, rivers and canals, medieval castles and ancient cities. But the doctors didn't come here to save lives. They came to this quiet and peaceful place in order to do evil, cruelly mocking thousands of people and conducting savage anatomical experiments on them. No one came out alive from the hands of professors of gynecology and virology ...

The Stutthof concentration camp was created 35 km east of Gdansk in 1939, immediately after the Nazi occupation of Poland. A couple of kilometers from the small village of Shtutovo suddenly began active construction of watchtowers, wooden barracks and stone guard barracks. During the war years, about 110 thousand people ended up in this camp, of which about 65 thousand died. This is a relatively small camp (compared to Auschwitz and Treblinka), but it was here that experiments were carried out on people, and in addition, Dr. Rudol Spanner produced soap from human bodies in 1940-1944, trying to put things on an industrial footing.

From most of the barracks, only the foundations remained.

But part of the camp has been preserved and you can fully feel the tin for what it is.

Initially, the regime of the camp was such that the prisoners were occasionally even allowed to meet with relatives. In these rooms. But very quickly, this practice was stopped and the Nazis came to grips with the destruction of prisoners, for which, in fact, such places were created.

Comments are superfluous.

It is generally accepted that the most terrible thing in such places is the crematorium. I do not agree. Dead bodies were burned there. Much worse is what the sadists did to people who were still alive. Let's take a walk to the "hospital" and see this place where the luminaries of German medicine saved the unfortunate prisoners. I said this sarcastically about "rescued". Usually relatively healthy people got to the hospital. Doctors didn't want real patients. Here people were washed.

Here the unfortunate relieved themselves. Notice what the service is - there are even toilets. In barracks, toilets are just holes in the concrete floor. In a healthy body healthy mind. Fresh "sick" were prepared for medical experiments.

Here, in these offices, at different times in 1939-1944, the luminaries of German science worked hard. Dr. Klauberg enthusiastically experimented with the sterilization of women, this topic has fascinated him throughout his adult life. The experiments were carried out with the help of x-rays, surgery and various drugs. During the experiments, thousands of women were sterilized, mostly Poles, Jews and Belarusians.

Here they studied the effect of mustard gas on the body and looked for ways to cure it. For this purpose, the prisoners were first placed in gas chambers and gas was launched into it. And then they brought them here and tried to treat them.

Carl Wernet worked here for a short period of time, devoting himself to finding a way to cure homosexuality. Experiments on gays began late, in 1944, and were not brought to any obvious result. Detailed documentation has been preserved of his operations, as a result of which a capsule with a "male hormone" was sewn into the inguinal region of homosexual prisoners of the camp, which was supposed to make them heterosexuals. They write that hundreds of ordinary male prisoners, in the hope of surviving, pretended to be homosexuals. After all, the doctor promised that the prisoners cured of homosexuality would be set free. As you understand, no one escaped alive from the hands of Dr. Vernet. The experiments were not completed, and the test subjects ended their lives in the gas chamber in the same place, next door.

While the experiments were being carried out, the subjects lived in more acceptable conditions than other prisoners.

However, the close proximity to the crematorium and the gas chamber, as it were, hinted that there would be no salvation.

A sad and depressing sight.

Ashes of prisoners.

The gas chamber, where at first they experimented with mustard gas, and since 1942 they switched to Cyclone-B for the consistent destruction of concentration camp prisoners. Thousands died in this little house across from the crematorium. The bodies of those who died from the gas were immediately dumped in the crematorium furnace.

There is a museum at the camp, but almost everything there is in Polish.

Nazi literature in the museum at the concentration camp.

Plan of the camp on the eve of its evacuation.

Road to nowhere...

The fate of the fascist fanatic doctors developed in different ways:

The main monster, Josef Mengele fled to South America and lived in Sao Paulo until his death in 1979. In the neighborhood of him, sadistic gynecologist Karl Vernet, who died in 1965 in Uruguay, quietly lived his life. Kurt Pletner lived to a ripe old age, managed to get a professorship in 1954, and died in 1984 in Germany as an honorary veteran of medicine.

Dr. Rascher was himself sent by the Nazis in 1945 to the Dachau concentration camp on suspicion of treason to the Reich, and his further fate is unknown. Only one of the monster doctors suffered a well-deserved punishment - Karl Gebhard, who was sentenced to death penalty and was hanged on June 2, 1948.

Torture is often referred to as various minor troubles that happen to everyone in everyday life. This definition is awarded to the upbringing of naughty children, long standing in line, a large wash, subsequent ironing, and even the process of preparing food. All this, of course, can be very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of exhaustion largely depends on the character and inclinations of the person), but still bears little resemblance to the most terrible torture in the history of mankind. The practice of interrogations "with partiality" and other violent acts against prisoners took place in almost all countries of the world. The time frame is also not defined, but since modern man psychologically closer are relatively recent events, then his attention is drawn to the methods and special equipment invented in the twentieth century, in particular in German concentration camps of the time. But there were both ancient Eastern and medieval tortures. The Nazis were also taught by their colleagues from the Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive bodies. So why was everything over people?

Meaning of the term

To begin with, when starting to study any issue or phenomenon, any researcher tries to define it. “To name it correctly is already half to understand” - says

So, torture is the deliberate infliction of suffering. At the same time, the nature of the torment does not matter, it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or sleep deprivation), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both "channels of influence".

But it is not only the fact of suffering that matters. Senseless torment is called torture. Torture differs from it in purposefulness. In other words, a person is whipped or hung on a rack not just like that, but in order to get some kind of result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to confess guilt, disclose hidden information, and sometimes simply punished for some misconduct or crime. The twentieth century added another item to the list of possible targets of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes carried out in order to study the reaction of the body to unbearable conditions in order to determine the limit of human capabilities. These experiments were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as inhumane and pseudoscientific, which did not prevent them from studying their results after the defeat of Nazi Germany by physiologists of the victorious countries.

Death or Judgment

The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that after receiving the result, even the most terrible tortures stopped. There was no point in continuing. The position of executioner-executor, as a rule, was occupied by a professional who knew about pain techniques and peculiarities of psychology, if not all, then a lot, and there was no point in wasting his efforts on senseless bullying. After the victim confessed to the crime, depending on the degree of civilization of society, she could expect immediate death or treatment, followed by trial. A legal execution after partial interrogations during the investigation was characteristic of the punitive justice of Germany in the initial Hitler era and of Stalin's "open trials" (the Shakhty case, the trial of the industrial party, the massacre of Trotskyists, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent costumes and shown to the public. Broken morally, people most often dutifully repeated everything that investigators forced them to confess. Torture and executions were put on stream. The veracity of the testimony did not matter. Both in Germany and in the USSR of the 1930s, the confession of the accused was considered the “queen of evidence” (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, USSR prosecutor). Severe torture was used to obtain it.

Deadly torture of the Inquisition

In few areas of its activity (except in the manufacture of murder weapons) humanity has succeeded so much. At the same time, it should be noted that in recent centuries there has even been some regression compared to ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the external attractiveness of the unfortunate victim most often became the reason. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who actually committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the unambiguous doom of the condemned. No matter how long the torment lasted, it ended only in the death of the condemned. As an execution weapon, they could use the Iron Maiden, the Copper Bull, a fire, or the sharp-edged pendulum described by Edgar Pom, methodically lowered inch by inch onto the chest of the victim. The terrible tortures of the Inquisition differed in duration and were accompanied by unthinkable moral torments. The preliminary investigation may have been carried out with the use of other ingenious mechanical devices to slowly split the bones of the fingers and limbs and rupture the muscular ligaments. The most famous tools are:

A metal expanding pear used for particularly sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;

- "Spanish boot";

A Spanish armchair with clamps and a brazier for the legs and buttocks;

An iron bra (pectoral), worn on the chest in a red-hot form;

- "crocodiles" and special tongs for crushing the male genitalia.

The executioners of the Inquisition also had other torture equipment, which it is better not to know about for people with a sensitive psyche.

East, Ancient and Modern

No matter how ingenious the European inventors of self-damaging technology may be, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind were still invented in the East. The Inquisition used metal tools, which sometimes had a very intricate design, while in Asia they preferred everything natural, natural (today these tools would probably be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything went into action. Eastern torture and executions had the same goals as European ones, but were technically longer and more sophisticated. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scaphism (from the Greek word "skafium" - a trough). The victim was immobilized with chains, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then smeared the whole body with a sweet composition, and lowered into the swamp. Blood-sucking insects slowly ate a person alive. The same was done approximately in the case of execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate man was to be burned in the scorching sun, his eyelids were cut off for greater torment. There were other types of torture that used elements of the biosystem. For example, bamboo is known to grow rapidly, up to a meter a day. It is enough just to hang the victim at a short distance above the young shoots, and cut the ends of the stems under acute angle. The victim has time to change his mind, confess to everything and betray his accomplices. If he persists, he will slowly and painfully be pierced by plants. This choice was not always available, however.

Torture as a method of inquiry

Both in and in the later period, various types of torture were used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary bodies. state power, today called law enforcement. He was part of a set of methods of investigation and inquiry. Since the second half of the 16th century, Russia has been practicing different types bodily influence, such as: whipping, hanging, racking, cauterization with tongs and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe, too, was by no means distinguished by humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying, and even the fear of death did not guarantee the clarification of the truth. Moreover, in some cases, the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case of a miller, which is remembered by an inscription on the pediment of the French Palace of Justice. He took on someone else's guilt under torture, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.

Abolition of torture in different countries

At the end XVII century began a gradual departure from the practice of torture and the transition from it to other, more humane methods of interrogation. One of the results of the Enlightenment was the realization that not the cruelty of punishment, but its inevitability affects the reduction of criminal activity. In Prussia, torture has been abolished since 1754, this country was the first to put its legal proceedings at the service of humanism. Then the process went forward, different states followed suit in the following sequence:

STATE	The Year of the Fatal Ban on Torture	Year of official prohibition of torture
Denmark	1776	1787
Austria	1780	1789
France
Netherlands	1789	1789
Sicilian kingdoms	1789	1789
Austrian Netherlands	1794	1794
Republic of Venice	1800	1800
Bavaria	1806	1806
papal states	1815	1815
Norway	1819	1819
Hanover	1822	1822
Portugal	1826	1826
Greece	1827	1827
Switzerland (*)	1831-1854	1854

Note:

*) the legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland changed at different times of the specified period.

Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.

Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774 by issuing a secret decree. By this, on the one hand, she continued to keep criminals in fear, but, on the other, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. This decision was legally formalized by Alexander I in 1801.

As for England, torture was banned there in 1772, but not all, but only some.

Illegal torture

The legislative ban did not at all mean their complete exclusion from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class, ready to break the law in the name of its triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and if exposed, they were threatened with legal prosecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was required to "work with people" more carefully, without leaving visible traces. In the 19th and 20th centuries, heavy objects with a soft surface were used, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation was that most often these were codes of laws), rubber hoses, etc. attention and methods of moral pressure. Some interrogators sometimes threatened severe punishments, lengthy sentences, and even reprisals against loved ones. It was also torture. The horror experienced by the defendants prompted them to make confessions, slander themselves and receive undeserved punishments, until the majority of police officers performed their duty honestly, studying the evidence and collecting evidence for a justified charge. Everything changed after totalitarian and dictatorial regimes came to power in some countries. It happened in the 20th century.

After October coup 1917 on the territory of the former Russian Empire erupted Civil War, in which both warring parties most often did not consider themselves bound by legislative norms that were binding under the tsar. Torture of prisoners of war in order to obtain information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. During the years of the Red Terror, most often executions took place, but bullying of representatives of the "class of exploiters", which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed "gentlemen", took on a mass character. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the NKVD used forbidden interrogation methods, depriving detainees of sleep, food, water, beating and mutilating them. This was done with the permission of the leadership, and sometimes on his direct orders. The goal was rarely to find out the truth - the repressions were carried out for intimidation, and the task of the investigator was to obtain a signature on the protocol containing a confession in counter-revolutionary activities, as well as a slander of other citizens. As a rule, Stalin's "shoulder masters" did not use special torture devices, being content with available items, such as a paperweight (they were beaten on the head), or even an ordinary door, which pinched fingers and other protruding parts of the body.

In Nazi Germany

Torture in the concentration camps established after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously practiced in that they were a strange mixture of Eastern sophistication with European practicality. Initially, these "correctional institutions" were created for guilty Germans and representatives of national minorities declared hostile (Gypsies and Jews). Then came the turn of experiments that had the character of some scientific character, but in cruelty surpassed the most terrible torture in the history of mankind.
In attempts to create antidotes and vaccines, Nazi SS doctors administered lethal injections to prisoners, performed operations without anesthesia, including abdominal ones, froze prisoners, put them in heat, and did not let them sleep, eat and drink. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the "production" of ideal soldiers who are not afraid of frost, heat and mutilation, resistant to the effects of poisonous substances and pathogenic bacilli. The history of torture during the Second World War forever imprinted the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, became the personification of inhumanity. They also conducted experiments on lengthening limbs by mechanical stretching, strangling people in rarefied air, and other experiments that caused excruciating agony, sometimes lasting for long hours.

The torture of women by the Nazis concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them of their reproductive function. Various methods were studied - from simple ones (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated ones, which, if the Reich won, had the prospect of mass application (irradiation and exposure to chemicals).

It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when the concentration camps began to liberate Soviet and allied troops. Even appearance prisoners spoke more eloquently than any evidence that in itself their detention in inhuman conditions was torture.

The current state of affairs

Nazi torture became the standard of cruelty. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity sighed with joy in the hope that this would never happen again. Unfortunately, although not on such a scale, but the torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain one of the terrible signs modern world. Developed countries, declaring their commitment to rights and freedoms, are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories where compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners of secret prisons have been subjected to the influence of punitive authorities for many years without specific charges being brought against them. The methods used by the military personnel of many countries during local and major armed conflicts in relation to prisoners and those simply suspected of sympathizing with the enemy sometimes surpass cruelty and mockery of people in Nazi concentration camps. In the international investigation of such precedents, too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe the duality of standards, when the war crimes of one of the parties are completely or partially hushed up.

Will the era of a new Enlightenment come, when torture will finally be finally and irrevocably recognized as a disgrace to humanity and will be banned? So far there is little hope...