Newborn children in death camps. Survivors of the horror of a concentration camp

Psychologist Irina ALYMOVA told me about the fate of a little girl who was born in a fascist concentration camp. And soon I met with 73-year-old Tamara Yakovlevna KARPOVA, and she herself told me what turns life had in store for the Russian “Austrian”.
Tamara’s mother, Alexandra Kapitonovna PETROVA, remained a widow at the very beginning of the war. She had nowhere to escape from her native Pskov with six children, the youngest of whom was two years old in 1943, and the eldest was already 16. The whole family was loaded into a carriage by the Nazis who captured the city and sent to work in the homeland of the invaders - Austria.
This is how the Petrov family ended up in the largest Austrian concentration camp, Mauthausen. There, male prisoners were sent to the quarries, and female prisoners to the brick factory. Tamara Yakovlevna says that she knows about that period only from the words of her older sister. After the war, their mother did not say a word about what happened in the camp.
At first, they, like hundreds of other prisoners, lived in a cramped barracks, the older children worked together with the adults at the factory, the little ones squirmed in the dirt under the bunks, receiving crumbs from their parents’ rations, which were barely enough to stay on their feet.

Overnight, as older sister Maria told my interlocutor, everything changed. Their large family was moved from the barracks to a separate room, the children were given double food rations, and the mother of many children began to work several hours less than the others. These concessions, as it turned out, were given to the family by the head of their section, an Austrian, who began to pay attention to the Pskov woman, who at the age of 40 had not lost her beauty.
Now no one will tell whether those feelings were mutual, or whether the Russian woman saved her children in such an ingenuous way (one of her little sons died on the way to the camp). But on September 30, 1944, a little girl Tamara was born in the dungeons of the camp. German midwives attended the birth. The nursing mother was given even greater concessions compared to other prisoners...
“As Maria said, life in the camp, even despite the goodwill of the Austrian officer, was terrible,” says my interlocutor. – Prisoners died in the hundreds, the weak were simply thrown from a high wall into a moat of water to certain death...
Once, according to the elder sister’s recollections, they themselves almost died. In February 1945, when Soviet General Karbyshev was being tortured on the parade ground by dousing ice water in the cold, the prisoners pressed their heads to the windows. The Nazis also began to drag those who watched these tortures into the yard.
“Mom was grabbed along with others and taken to the ravine to be shot,” says Tamara Yakovlevna, according to her older sister. “She carried me in her arms, the younger children clung to her hem. The Nazis put women and children on the edge of a cliff... Everyone was saved by the return of an Austrian officer, who rushed straight to the ravine and forbade shooting. They say that it was on this day that my mother’s long black hair turned gray overnight.
From the stories of her relatives, Tamara knows that her blood father has more than once rescued the children of his beloved woman from trouble: he saved 14-year-old Volodya from execution and protected 17-year-old Masha from abuse.

When Soviet troops approached Austria and the bombing began, an officer approached Alexandra and said that if it was necessary to withdraw, the prisoners would be destroyed, so she and her children needed to escape. On a dark night, a woman and her children walked through the bunker into an underground passage that led far beyond the city.
“Masha told me that they came out in the forest,” recalls Tamara Yakovlevna. “We got lost for a long time until we came across our own people.” True, the joy from this meeting turned out to be premature. The soldiers, having met a Russian woman with a bunch of children in the suburbs of Vienna, began to openly mock her, calling her “Austrian litter.” The soldiers dragged Masha into the nearest bushes, not paying attention to the crying children and her mother, who had fallen to her knees in prayer. And who knows whether we would have survived or not, but here salvation came unexpectedly - a Soviet commander rode up on horseback and ordered to leave the women alone.
My interlocutor says that later my mother thanked God that in that turmoil they were not arrested as enemy spies, but were allowed to go home. Apparently, the exhausted gray-haired woman with six ragged children was not considered a recruited agent dangerous to the Soviet country.
It took them several months to reach their native Pskov. When we returned, we settled in the attic of someone else’s house because everything was destroyed.
“The memories of how poorly we lived are still preserved,” says my interlocutor. “Mom worked as a janitor, they didn’t hire her anywhere else.” Until the end of her life, she shuddered at every knock, was terribly afraid that they would come for us, and hid us from strangers.

Despite the fact that Alexandra had a certificate stating that the family was taken to Austria forcibly, the attitude towards them was condemning from those around her. Still would! After all, the woman brought with her a child born from an enemy. For a long time she was afraid to even register her daughter, who only had an Austrian birth certificate.
“I was considered an “enemy of the people,” sighs Tamara Yakovlevna, “they didn’t even accept me as a pioneer.” And after 9th grade, I decided to enter the Industrial College, I passed on the basis of points, but they didn’t take me, saying that the documents were not in order.
The girl cried and complained to her mother. But she, lowering her eyes, said: “Nothing can be done. Only the war is to blame.”
Tamara got a job as a nurse at an oncology institute. The head of the department liked the diligent girl so much that he called his colleagues from the medical school with a personal request that she be accepted into nursing courses, and Tamara had the opportunity to get a profession.
And in 1964, the older sister Valentina and her husband went to construction sites in the Krasnoyarsk Territory and called Tamara along with them. In Siberia, the girl met Valentin, an Astrakhan resident, who came to the construction site with a team from the Caspian capital. And a year later, in November 1965, they went together to the groom’s homeland.
“Our daughter Tanechka was born in 1966,” says my interlocutor. “And everything would have been fine if Valentin hadn’t started drinking in Astrakhan.” One day we had a fight over this, and my common-law husband silently turned around and went to his brother in Kamchatka, leaving my daughter and me to the mercy of fate. We never met him again.
The young woman did not want to leave Astrakhan. She rented a room, got a job at a shoe factory, and 7 years later, having trained as a 7th grade craftsman, she went to work at Oblobuvbyt, where they made shoes to order.

At the factory, Tamara met a guy who came to get a job after serving in the army. Khamit Karpov was 2 years younger than her. But he looked after me so beautifully!
“I got married in Tatar style,” Tamara Yakovlevna smiles, remembering. - My husband “stole” me.
She tells how Khamit brought her to his mother to meet him, and in the evening the future mother-in-law stood at the door and did not let Tom out of the house. “Your son loves you. You will get married! - the groom’s mother said unquestioningly.
They registered on December 19, 1968. A year later, a daughter, Elvira, was born, and in 1973, Gulnara.
Khamit worked in the fire department, and after his retirement, he worked on a fire train. He died of cancer on March 16, 2008, and until his last days his faithful wife Tamara was nearby, helping him endure the suffering. Although, as she herself admits, it was not easy to endure the torment of a loved one. Moreover, she also had health problems.
“Everyone in our family suffered from heart disease,” the woman sighs. – Four sisters and a brother died from strokes and heart attacks. I did not escape the disease. The heart attack happened in 2004. And since then, an unhealthy heart regularly reminds itself...
After burying her husband, Tamara Yakovlevna began to live with her youngest daughter in the area of ​​the 2nd precinct. But over time, I realized that if you have a heart condition, you need to be closer to the doctors. The older daughters' living conditions do not allow them to take their mother with them. Therefore, she resolved the issue radically.
“I filled out the documents for the nursing home myself,” says the woman. – I came here 3 months ago, and I don’t regret anything. After I settled in the boarding school, I had a heart attack, and help arrived in time.
The woman continues to thoughtfully sort through the documents and photographs that she has carefully kept for many years. After all, she remained the only keeper of the family history, which after many years can lift the curtains of secrecy from the events of many years ago.
Tatiana AVERINA, Astrakhan

Blood was taken from children until they died. The corpses were destroyed in the crematorium or dumped into disposal pits...

Most of the children in the Krasnoberezhny camp did not stay long: their blood was needed in the west. They were sent to other camps in covered canvas cars. The nearest one is Salaspils. This concentration camp was created by the Nazis in 1941 on the territory of Latvia. Children were brought here from Belarus, the Pskov and Leningrad regions, captured during punitive operations.

The official name is Salaspils Extended Police Prison and Labor Education Camp. Here were juvenile prisoners whom the Nazis used in their medical experiments. Over the three years of the Salaspils camp’s existence, more than 3.5 thousand liters of children’s blood were pumped out. Often, juvenile prisoners became “full donors.” This meant that their blood was taken until they died. The corpses were destroyed in crematoria ovens or dumped in disposal pits. In one of them, a German woman accidentally found a Belarusian girl, Zina Kazakevich, barely breathing: after another blood draw, she fell asleep. She was considered dead. She woke up already in the house of a compassionate German woman: Frau was walking past the disposal pit, noticed a movement, pulled out the girl and went out.

What is Salaspils?

"Salaspils" is a system of concentration camps. According to archival documents, the Stalag-350 concentration camp, separately for captured Soviet military personnel, was located two kilometers from the camp with civilians and occupied an area of ​​about 18.5 hectares.

According to Hitler’s documents, the central concentration camp was designated “AEL Salaspils” (Salaspils Labor and Educational Camp) and was one of the exemplary “factories” for the suppression and destruction of individuals. The German name for the Salaspils concentration camp is “Lager Kurtenhof”.

This children's concentration camp is known for taking blood from Soviet children for Nazi wounded soldiers. Moreover, the children’s food per day was 100 grams of bread and 1.5 liters of liquid, similar to soup (gruel). Salaspils was a “Children’s Blood Donation Factory” for the Nazis.

The atrocities of Hitler's fascism - children in concentration camps

Children - prisoners of the Auschwitz death camp:

Children - prisoners of death camps Auschwitz:

Concentration camp for children SALASPILS - a children's blood factory for the Nazis. Memories of a prisoner:

Matsulevich Nina Antonovna recalls:

“When the war started, I was six years old. We grew up very quickly. Before my eyes there are several motorcycles and machine gunners. It became scary, and we immediately ran to my mother’s hut. We tried to escape from the police raid, and my mother hid us in a vegetable pit. At night we left. We wandered around the wheat field for a long time, hoping to find at least someone we knew. After all, no one thought that the war would be so long. And the Germans found us in the forest. They attacked us with dogs, pushed us with machine guns, took us onto the road and brought us to the railway station. Heat. I want to eat. I'm thirsty. Everyone is tired. In the evening the train arrived, and we were all pushed into the carriage. No toilet. Only in the right side of the carriage was a small hole cut.

We drove for an endlessly long time. So it seemed to me. The train stopped all the time. Finally, we were ordered to leave. We ended up in a camp in the city of Daugavpils. They pushed us into cells. From where, from time to time, beaten, wounded, tortured seventeen-year-old girls were snatched and brought back. They threw them on the floor and no one was allowed to approach.

Our younger sister Tonya died there. I don’t remember exactly how much time passed - a month, a week. After some time, we were again taken to the prison yard and pushed into cars.

We were taken to the Salaspils camp. The Germans unofficially called him "blood factory". Officially - educational and labor. This is what the Germans dubbed it in their documents.

But what kind of education of labor in children can we talk about when there were children of three years old and even infants!

They put badges around our necks, and from that moment we no longer had the right to give our names. Only the number. We didn't stay in the barracks long. We were lined up on the square. My two sisters were identified and taken away by their tags, they were picked up and taken away. After some time, we were lined up again in the square and my mother was taken away again by numbers. We were left alone. When they took my mother away, she could no longer walk. They led her by the arms. And then they took me by the arms and legs, shook me loose and threw me into the back of the truck. They did the same with others.

They let us out into the street for a walk. Of course, I wanted to cry and scream. But we were not allowed to do this. We still held on because we knew: behind our barracks there are barracks where the prisoners of war are, our soldiers. We would quietly turn our backs to them, and they would quietly say to us:

“Guys, you are Soviet children, be patient a little, don’t hang your noses. Don't think that we are abandoned here. We will be released soon. Believe in our victory."

We have written down in our hearts that we cannot cry or moan.

Today, one girl from Saratov school No. 23 gave me this poem:

The eyes of a seven year old girl
Like two faded lights.
More noticeable on a child's face
Great, heavy melancholy.

She is silent, no matter what you ask her,
If you joke with her, there will be silence in response,
It's like she's not seven, not eight,
And many, many bitter years.

When I read this poem, I cried for half a day and couldn’t stop. It’s as if this modern girl peeked through a crack at what it was like for ragged, hungry, parentless children to go through.

And the worst thing was when the Germans entered the barracks and laid out their white instruments on the tables. And each of us was placed on the table, we voluntarily extended our hand. And those who tried to resist were tied up. There was no use screaming. So they took blood from children for German soldiers. From 500 grams and more.

If the child could not make it, they carried him and took all the blood, mercilessly, and immediately carried him out the door. Most likely, he was thrown into a pit or crematorium. Day and night there was stinking, black smoke. This is how they burned the corpses.

After the war we went there on excursions, and it still seems like the earth is groaning.

In the mornings, a Latvian warden came in, a tall blonde in a cap, long boots, and a whip. She shouted in Latvian:

"What do you want? Black or white bread?

If a child said that he wanted white bread, he was pulled from his bunk - the matron beat him with this whip until he lost consciousness.

Then they brought us to Jurmala. It was a little easier there. At least there were beds. The food was almost the same. We were taken to the dining room. We stood at attention. We had no right to sit down until we read the Lord’s Prayer, until we wished health to Hitler and his quick victory. Often we got it.

Every child had ulcers; if you scratched them, they would bleed. Sometimes the boys managed to get salt. They gave it to us and we carefully squeezed these precious white grains with two fingers and began to rub this sore with this salt. You won't make a sound, you won't groan. Suddenly the teacher is close. This will be an emergency - where did they get the salt? An investigation will begin. They will beat you, kill you.

And in 1944 we were released. 3 July. I remember this day. The teacher - she was the nicest, spoke Russian - told us:

“Get ready and run to the door, on tiptoe, so that there is no rustle.”

She took us at night in the dark to a bomb shelter. And when we were released from the bomb shelter, everyone shouted “Hurray.” And we saw our soldiers.

They started teaching us how to write the letter “a” on a newspaper. And when the war ended, we were transferred to another orphanage. We were given a vegetable garden with beds. At this point we began to live like human beings.

They started taking pictures of us, finding out where someone was born. But I didn’t remember anything. Only the name is the village of Koroleva.

One day we heard that Germany had capitulated.

The soldiers lifted us under our arms and threw us up like balls. They and we cried, this day gave life to so many of us.

We were given papers: we were classified as the first category of victims. And in brackets it was indicated - "medical experiments". We don’t know what the German doctors did to us. Maybe some drugs were administered - I don’t know. I only know that I am still alive. Our doctors are surprised how I live in the complete absence of the thyroid gland. I have lost it. She was like a thread.

But I couldn’t find out exactly where I was born. Two girls I knew were taken from an orphanage. I sat and cried. The girls' mother looked at me for a long time and remembered that she knew my mother and father. She wrote my address on a small piece of paper. I pounded on the teacher’s door with my fists and screamed:

"Look where I was born."

And then they persuaded me to calm down. Two weeks later the answer came - no one was alive. Grief and tears.

And mom was found. It turns out that she was taken to Germany. We began to gather in a group.

I remember my meeting with my mother in every detail.

Once I looked out the window. I see a woman coming. Tanned. I shout:

“Mom came to see someone. They'll pick it up today."

But for some reason I was shaking all over. The door to our room opens, our teacher’s son comes in and says:

“Nina, go, they’re sewing a dress for you.”

I walk in and see a woman sitting on a small stool near the wall, near the door. I passed by. I go to the teacher, who is standing in the middle of the room, walked up to her, and pressed herself against her. And she asks:

“Do you recognize this woman?”

I answer:

“Ninochka, daughter, I am your mother,” my mother could not stand it.

And my legs gave out, like cotton wool, wood. They don't listen to me, I can't move. I huddle and huddle with the teacher, I just can’t believe in my happiness.

“Ninochka, daughter, come to me,” my mother calls again.

Then the teacher took me to my mother and sat me down next to her. Mom hugs, kisses me, asks questions. I told her the names of my brothers and sisters and neighbors who lived next to us. So we were finally convinced of our relationship.

My mother took me from the orphanage, and we went to our homeland, Belarus. Something terrible was happening there. There was a current on the outskirts of our village. There was grain threshing there. So the Germans gathered all the residents who stayed and did not run away like us. People thought that the war would not last long and they survived the Finnish and First World Wars, the Germans did nothing to them. They just didn’t know that the Germans had become completely different. They drove all the residents into the current and doused them with gasoline. And those who survived were burned alive using flamethrowers. Some were shot in the square, forcing people to dig a hole ahead of time. My uncle’s entire family died this way: his wife and four children were burned alive in his house.

And we stayed to live. I have granddaughters. And I would like to wish everyone happiness and health, and also learn to love your Motherland. Properly.

The Nazis burned the archives, but those who saw their atrocities with their own eyes are still alive. Another prisoner of the camp, Faina Augostane, recalls:

“They started taking blood from the children when we were all distributed to barracks. It was scary when you walk in the fog and don’t know if you’ll come back. I saw a girl lying on the aisle with a piece of skin cut out from her leg. Bloody, she was moaning."

Faina Augostone is outraged by the official position of today's Latvian authorities, who claim that there was an educational and labor camp here.

“It’s a disgrace,” she says. - Blood was taken from the children, the children died and were stacked in piles. My younger brother has disappeared. I saw him still crawling, and then on the second floor they tied him to a table. His head hung to one side. I called him: “Gena, Gena.” And then he disappeared from this place. He was thrown like a log into the grave, which was filled to the brim with dead children.”

Labor camp was the official designation in Nazi papers for this terrible place. And those who repeat this today are repeating Nazi-Hitler phraseology.

Immediately after the liberation of Latvia in 1944, an Extraordinary State Commission to investigate the atrocities of the Nazi invaders was created on the basis of a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In May 1945, having examined only a fifth of the territory of the death camp (54 graves), the commission found 632 corpses of children aged presumably from five to ten years. The corpses were arranged in layers. Moreover, in all of them, without exception, Soviet doctors found fir cones and bark in the ventricles, and traces of terrible starvation were visible. Some children were found to have arsenic injections.

Newsreels from those years impartially show stacks of small corpses under the snow. Adults buried alive stood in their graves.

During the excavations, they found a terrible picture, the photograph of which later shocked more than one generation and was called “Salaspils Madonna” - a mother buried alive, clutching her child to her chest.

There were 30 barracks in the camp, and the largest was the children's barracks.

The Extraordinary Commission found that about 7,000 children were tortured here, and in total about 100,000 people died, more than in Buchenwald.

Since the beginning of 1943, several punitive operations took place, after which the camp was filled with prisoners. Latvian punitive police battalions served in the German camp.

Instead of recognizing the black page of history, Latvia began its presidency of the European Union by banning an exhibition dedicated to the memory of the victims of Salaspils in 2015. The official Latvian authorities explained their actions rather strangely: supposedly the exhibition harms the image of the country.

The goal is very clear: firstly, Latvian nationalists are trying to whitewash themselves because their role in the genocide of people is very great.

“The population captured during the invasion of the partisan region is partially driven to Germany, and the remainder are sold in Latvia for two marks to landowners,” the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army reported.

Secondly, Western countries now want to turn Russia from a victorious country and liberator of the world from Nazism into an ally of Nazism. Despite everything, the exhibition “Stolen Childhood” opened at the Russian cultural center in Paris.

However, Latvian officials continue to argue that the camp cannot be compared to Buchenwald.

A living eyewitness to the tragedy, Anna Pavlova, having learned about this, says: “God forbid these officials should experience that they claim the opposite. Don’t let Boy experience what the children and girls suffered, for whom the Germans specially allocated a separate barracks and sent soldiers there for comfort. The scream there was terrible.”

Each mark on this marble wall is one day of the existence of the death camp.

When I got to Kanfenberg, it was autumn. The sun illuminated the harvested fields, still green meadows and mountains covered with dense forest. But in the camp everything was bleak and gloomy. The gray bulk of the Bolenwerk plant, several dozen black barracks. Their inhabitants also seemed monotonously gray.

Suddenly some woman smiled at me - openly and sincerely, and I began to distinguish human faces. I learned that most of the prisoners were Soviet citizens (Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars). Besides them, there were also French, Italians, Lithuanians and two Polish families.

There was also a children's barracks where 104 Soviet children from 3 to 14 years old lived. Some were older: mothers, trying to protect their children from hard 12-hour work at the factory, belittled their age. Dressed in rags, thin and pale children wandered sadly around the yard, unwanted by anyone: their mothers worked at the factory and lived in a separate barracks behind a high barbed wire fence. They could see their children only on Sundays.

I felt that my place was among these children with a disfigured fate. Knowing German and Russian quite well, I asked permission to study with them. I was introduced to the wife of the deputy Lagerführer, who was in charge of the children's barracks.

A 40-year-old lady, a former Viennese dancer, agreed to this position, imagining white cribs and white curtains in children's bedrooms, and saw plank 2-tier bunks with bare mattresses and dirty shirtless children shivering under thin and gray blankets . She really didn't know how to cope with dirt, lice, hunger and need. Panickingly fearing any infection, she did not visit the children, although she received a regular salary for supervising the children. Convinced of the goodness and greatness of the Fuhrer, this lady assured me that Hitler, of course, knew nothing about the situation in the camps.

The barracks occupied by the children were divided into 3 parts: for kids, for older girls and older boys. Only the kids had the only stove. Two old women were on duty there at night, looking after the fire in the stove. Besides them, I found the Russian teacher Raisa Fedorovna visiting the children. She complained that the older boys did not listen to her at all, responding to all comments with noise and whistling. Pani Raisa was too quiet and timid. She did not know how to give orders and only asked the children. And she did it in such a tone, as if she initially intended disobedience. Like, no matter what I tell you, you still won’t listen... It got to the point that as soon as Mrs. Raisa appeared on the threshold, an unimaginable hubbub arose. She, poor thing, blushed, waved her hand and retreated... However, she carried out specific instructions very diligently and later became my indispensable assistant. I had a serious talk with the boys, and they began to behave differently.

Following the example of scouting, I organized three groups. In each group, elders were chosen who appointed guards on duty every day. In the mornings, at 6:30, I received their reports. The children took this very seriously, which helped establish discipline and brought some variety to their sad life.

During the report, they stood in pairs near their bunks and stood at attention. The duty officers reported how the night had gone and who was unwell. I checked the cleanliness of hands, faces, ears, and sent some to the washroom. She examined patients and wrote down those who needed bandaging.

The children were very weak. After the slightest scratch, they developed non-healing ulcers, especially on their legs. I asked the camp doctor for paper bandages, cotton wool, lignin, hydrogen peroxide, potassium permanganate, fish oil and ichthyol ointment. At first it was necessary to do up to forty dressings a day, gradually their number decreased.

Children's clothing is difficult to describe. Dirty rags, from which, moreover, they have long since outgrown. I won’t forget 6-year-old Alyosha Shkuratov, whose only trousers were so tight that they couldn’t fasten on his swollen tummy. The tight shirt did not cover him either - his stomach was constantly left bare. Surprisingly, this child never caught a cold. Alyosha spoke little, was unusually serious and had his own opinion about everything. He did not allow himself to be stroked on the head or kissed. “Boys should not be petted,” he said. If Alyosha deserved praise, he could only be patted on the shoulder. You should have seen those huge gray eyes of a hungry child! Exceptionally expressive, they always looked straight into the face of the speaker.

When they sent me my father’s shirt from home, I altered it for Alyosha. He was very proud of his first men's shirt. I just couldn’t cope with his lice and said: “Remember, Alyosha, if I find a louse in your new shirt, I will take it from you.” How many times after that did Alyosha take off his “man’s” shirt and search it! I already regretted that I had threatened the child, but what else could I do in those conditions?

Later the Lagerführer gave me some second-hand clothes, which I believe were sent from some death camp. I organized a group of seamstresses from the older girls. We sat at a long table in the kids' bedroom (it was warmer there) and together we altered these things for those most in need. Their own things were immediately darned and patched. It happened that between tasks I rested. Then the younger children - Nadya, Katya, Vitya, Seryozha, Zhenya - approached me from different corners. Some approached boldly, others quietly, on tiptoe. They put their heads on my lap and I stroked them one by one. The children did not say a word, as if this moment was sacred to them. Having had their fill of affection, when their little necks began to go numb from the uncomfortable position, they just as silently returned to their bunks. The kids were waiting for this ritual, and I understood that affection for their development was as necessary as food, which, unfortunately, I could not give them.

Breakfasts and dinners were delivered to the children by a French prisoner, a bank employee from Montfeler, Andre Plaschuk - a kind, smiling young man. I assigned older boys to help him. In the morning, the children were given surrogate coffee and a piece of black bread (50-100 grams each, depending on age). Having received the bread, everyone ate it slowly, trying not to drop a crumb. Some ate it right away, others tried to stretch out this pleasure for the whole day: after all, bread was their only delicacy.

At the same time, the younger children of the Ausliders (all foreigners, with the exception of Russians) received skim milk and white bread, the older children received coffee with milk and bread with margarine. My children have never seen milk.

The worst thing happened with lunch, for which two lines lined up in the square at the same time. Auslider children lined up and received a two-course meal: soup and a second course - potatoes, porridge or dumplings, sometimes with a piece of boiled meat. And the children with “ost” tags stood in another line and ate one boiled rutabaga of an indescribable color. How much envy and hatred there was about this, and on the other hand, turning up one’s nose and contempt for those who constantly eat only rutabaga!

A few months before the end of the war, foreigners began to be given jelly and cake on Fridays, but mine still received gray rutabaga. I will not forget the sobs of 5-year-old Seryozha Kovalenko, who put down his bowl and cried: “Why was Alik (a Crimean Tatar of the same age) given jelly and cake, and I was given rutabaga? I don't want rutabaga! I won’t eat, I want some cake too,oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Seryozha was one of the weakest children: thin, with dark circles under his eyes, he, nevertheless, was distinguished by his courageous character - a real rebel.

I tried to convince the Lagerführer to allow at least the juniors to give out lunches intended for foreigners. He replied that he could not: this was an order from above. Then I asked to give out lunches at different times: after all, what the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t hurt about. He agreed to this. Since then, Seryozha and the other children ate their tasteless rutabaga without crying.

Seryozha Kovalenko and 5-year-old Bulgarian Mitya Lyakos were inseparable friends. Not far from the children's barracks there were piles of potatoes several hundred meters long.

The winter was harsh and the potatoes froze. The burts were guarded by a policeman who walked back and forth.

My children never received potatoes. Despite this, I constantly smelled the sweetish smell of frozen potatoes in the kids’ bedroom. One day the children showed me how they get it.

I looked out the window and saw such a scene. Mitya stood near the barracks with a finger to his lips. His gaze was fixed on the retreating back of the policeman. At this time, Seryozha crawled on all fours to the nearest pile, took a broken spoon out of his pocket and, having punched a hole in the pile with a few deft movements, took out potatoes and stuffed his pockets with them.

When the policeman was approaching the other end and would soon turn around, Mitya whistled, and Seryozha ran away on all fours, as quickly as a hare. They repeated this several times a day and never got caught.

The children grated their catch on graters that their mothers made from old tin cans. Then the “pies” (of course without salt and fat) were placed on the hot lid with a spoon and, after frying, they were devoured as the best delicacy.

One day the children told me that their bread was disappearing. We decided to track down the culprit. A few days later the boys shouted: “Here is a thief!” - they brought Nadya Ponomarenko to me, caught at the crime scene. She walked on thin, birdlike legs: a 4-year-old girl with a tummy swollen like a drum. The pale face was framed by light curly hair, blue eyes expressed surprise. I asked everyone to leave. She sat Nadya on her lap and began to explain: “Understand, Nadya, that your comrades are just as hungry as you. How can you take bread from them? Think about it: now you are stealing bread, and then you will like someone’s dress or other thing and you will also want to steal it? Eventually, when you grow up, you will be taken to prison."

Nadya listened attentively, her face was concentrated. After listening, she jumped off my lap and, folding her transparent hands, said: “Auntie, I didn’t steal at all, but only took it because I was hungry...”

I grabbed those thin hands, hugged the child to me and, looking into her eyes, said: “Listen, Nadya, I know what we will do. Don't take any more bread from your comrades' shelves. And when you are hungry, find me, wherever I am at that time: whether at your place, at my place or in the yard. Come or knock on the window, and I’ll try to find something for you.”

Since then, I have had the obligation to leave part of my own portion for Nadyusha. The bread stopped disappearing.

At the end of November forty-four, a mumps epidemic arose in the children's barracks, killing one child after another. This was the most difficult period of my work. At the height of my illness, I did not undress or sleep for several days. Therefore, it is not surprising that when the epidemic subsided, she fell ill herself. Then the roles changed. The children who had already recovered and their mothers surrounded me with caring care. I will never forget how, having learned that I was returning all food except apple compote, mothers got these then precious fruits from somewhere, and the children, alarmed by my condition, brought me apples, which they themselves really wanted.

When Soviet troops entered Austria in the spring of 1945, the prisoners in our camp began to be intensively “revitalized.” The plant no longer worked, and the children returned to their loved ones. Nadya also returned to her mother, who had several older children. Two months of good nutrition was enough and the girl became difficult to recognize. Her arms and legs became plump, her drum tummy sank, her face turned red. But still, from time to time I heard the usual tapping of fingers on my window.

Looking out, I saw Nadya’s roguishly smiling face.
- I'm hungry, aunt! - she said. I understood her. She took the child in her arms, caressed her and gave her candy or a piece of sugar. Nadya thanked her and, happy, skipped to her mother.

On May 9 liberation came. On June 11, the camp was disbanded, and on July 12, 1945, I said goodbye to my children forever. I remember them all my life.

Sometimes I wonder myself: how did I, then a 24-year-old girl, manage to cope with so many children, having only one adult to help?

First of all, the scouting discipline introduced from the first day and the romanticism inherent in scouting probably helped. This captivated children who were not accustomed to obey anyone.

In addition, I strictly adhered to fairness. I am convinced that a child will endure any punishment if he knows that it is truly deserved. Probably no adult feels injustice as painfully as a child...

Translation from Polish by N. Martynovich

This needs to be known and passed on to generations so that this never happens again.

Stanislawa Leszczynska, a midwife from Poland, remained in the Auschwitz camp for two years - until January 26, 1945 - and only wrote this report in 1965. “Out of 35 years of work as a midwife, I spent two years as a prisoner in the Auschwitz-Brzezinka women’s concentration camp, continuing to fulfill my professional duty. Among the huge number of women taken there, there were many pregnant women.

I performed the functions of a midwife there alternately in three barracks, which were built of boards with many cracks gnawed by rats. Inside the barracks, there were three-story bunks on both sides. Each of them had to accommodate three or four women - on dirty straw mattresses. It was hard, because the straw had long been worn down to dust, and the sick women lay on almost bare boards, which were not smooth, but with knots that rubbed their bodies and bones.

In the middle, along the barracks, there was a stove built of brick, with fireboxes along the edges. It was the only place for childbirth, since there was no other structure for this purpose. The stove was lit only a few times a year. Therefore, the cold was tormenting, painful, piercing, especially in winter, when long icicles hung from the roof.

I had to take care of the water necessary for the mother and the child myself, but in order to bring one bucket of water, I had to spend at least twenty minutes. In these conditions, the fate of women in labor was deplorable, and the role of the midwife was unusually difficult: no aseptic means, no dressings. At first I was left to my own devices; In cases of complications requiring the intervention of a specialist doctor, for example, when removing the placenta manually, I had to act myself. The German camp doctors - Rohde, Koenig and Mengele - could not tarnish their calling as a doctor by providing assistance to representatives of another nationality, so I had no right to appeal to their help.

Later, several times I used the help of a Polish woman doctor, Irena Konieczna, who worked in the next department. And when I myself fell ill with typhus, the doctor Irena Byaluvna, who carefully looked after me and my patients, provided me with great help.

I will not mention the work of doctors in Auschwitz, since what I observed exceeds my ability to express in words the greatness of a doctor’s calling and heroically performed duty. The feat of the doctors and their dedication were imprinted in the hearts of those who will never be able to talk about it again, because they suffered martyrdom in captivity. A doctor in Auschwitz fought for the lives of those sentenced to death, giving his own life. He had at his disposal only a few packs of aspirin and a huge heart. The doctor did not work there for fame, honor or to satisfy professional ambitions. For him, there was only a doctor’s duty - to save lives in any situation.

The number of births I attended exceeded 3000. Despite the unbearable dirt, worms, rats, infectious diseases, lack of water and other horrors that cannot be conveyed, something extraordinary was happening there.

One day, an SS doctor ordered me to compile a report on infections during childbirth and deaths among mothers and newborn children. I answered that I had not had a single death among either mothers or children. The doctor looked at me with disbelief. He said that even the advanced clinics of German universities cannot boast of such success. I read anger and envy in his eyes. Perhaps the extremely exhausted organisms were too useless food for the bacteria.

A woman preparing for childbirth was forced for a long time to deny herself a ration of bread, for which she could get herself a sheet. She tore this sheet into shreds that could serve as diapers for the baby. Washing diapers caused many difficulties, especially due to the strict ban on leaving the barracks, as well as the inability to do anything freely inside it. Women in labor dried their washed diapers on their own bodies.

Until May 1943, all children born in the Auschwitz camp were brutally killed: they were drowned in a barrel. This was done by nurses Klara and Pfani. The first was a midwife by profession and ended up in a camp for infanticide. Therefore, she was deprived of the right to work in her specialty. She was assigned to do what she was best suited for. She was also entrusted with the leadership position of barracks head. A German street wench, Pfani, was assigned to help her. After each birth, loud gurgling and splashing of water could be heard from the room of these women. Soon after this, the mother in labor could see the body of her child thrown out of the barracks and torn apart by rats.

In May 1943, the situation of some children changed. Blue-eyed and blond-haired children were taken from their mothers and sent to Germany for the purpose of denationalization. The shrill cries of mothers accompanied their children as they were taken away. As long as the child remained with the mother, motherhood itself was a ray of hope. The separation was terrible.

Jewish children continued to be drowned with merciless cruelty. There was no question of hiding a Jewish child or hiding him among non-Jewish children. Klara and Pfani took turns watching Jewish women closely during childbirth. The born child was tattooed with the mother's number, drowned in a barrel and thrown out of the barracks. The fate of the other children was even worse: they died a slow death of starvation. Their skin became thin, as if parchment, with tendons, blood vessels and bones visible through it. Soviet children held on to life the longest; About 50 percent of the prisoners were from the Soviet Union.

Among the many tragedies experienced there, I especially vividly remember the story of a woman from Vilna, sent to Auschwitz for helping the partisans. Immediately after she gave birth to the child, one of the guards shouted out her number (prisoners in the camp were called by numbers). I went to explain her situation, but it did not help, and only caused anger. I realized that she was being called to the crematorium. She wrapped the child in dirty paper and pressed her to her chest... Her lips moved silently - apparently, she wanted to sing a song to the baby, as mothers sometimes did, singing lullabies to their babies in order to comfort them in the painful cold and hunger and soften their bitter fate .

But this woman had no strength... she could not make a sound - only large tears flowed from under her eyelids, flowed down her unusually pale cheeks, falling on the head of the little condemned man. What was more tragic, it is difficult to say - the experience of the death of a baby dying in front of its mother, or the death of a mother, in whose consciousness her living child remains, abandoned to the mercy of fate.

Among these nightmarish memories, one thought, one leitmotif flashes in my mind. All children were born alive. Their goal was life! Hardly thirty of them survived the camp. Several hundred children were taken to Germany for denationalization, over 1,500 were drowned by Klara and Pfani, and over 1,000 children died of hunger and cold (these estimates do not include the period until the end of April 1943).

Until now I have not had the opportunity to transmit my obstetric report from Auschwitz to the Health Service. I convey it now in the name of those who cannot say anything to the world about the evil caused to them, in the name of mother and child.

If in my Fatherland, despite the sad experience of war, anti-life tendencies may arise, then I hope for the voice of all obstetricians, all real mothers and fathers, all decent citizens in defense of the life and rights of the child.

In the concentration camp, all children - contrary to expectations - were born alive, beautiful, plump. Nature, opposed to hatred, fought stubbornly for its rights, finding unknown vital reserves. Nature is the obstetrician's teacher. He, together with nature, fights for life and together with her proclaims the most beautiful thing in the world - the smile of a child."

Monument to Stanislawa Leszczynska in St. Anne's Church near Warsaw.

I apologize if you encounter factual errors in today's material.

Instead of a preface:

"When there were no gas chambers, we shot on Wednesdays and Fridays. The children tried to hide on 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 are you living, 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 rations, so I didn’t bleed.

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

And I can donate blood.

They don't know what it is?

They forgot.

Eat, children! Eat!

Why didn't you take it?

Wait, I'll take it.

Maybe you won't get it.

Lie down, it doesn't hurt, it's like falling asleep. Get down!

What's wrong with them?

Why did they lie down?

The children 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

Joseph Mengele and child

Photo taken by me from Nuremberg materials

Children of Buchenwald

Mauthausen children show numbers etched into their hands

Treblinka

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

Some creatures use this photo as “proof” of hunger in Ukraine. It is not surprising that it is from Nazi crimes that they draw “inspiration” for their “revelations”

These are the children released in Salaspils

“Since the fall of 1942, masses of women, old people, and 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 which the so-called 3 sick leaves, 2 for crippled children and 4 barracks for healthy children.

The permanent population of children in Salaspils was more than 1,000 people during 1943 and 1944. Their systematic extermination took place there by:

A) organizing 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 the sick children were taken to the so-called hospital, where they died;

B) gave children poisoned coffee;

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

D) they injected children with child, female and even horse urine. Many children's eyes festered and leaked;

D) all children suffered from dysenteric diarrhea and dystrophy;

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

3) children who were crippled or injured were taken away 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, and in 1943/44. more than 6,000 people.

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

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

Most of these children who were taken out and given away to be raised 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 infants and toddlers under the age of 4 from the Riga orphanage and the Major orphanage, where the children of executed parents, who came from the dungeons of the Gestapo, prefectures, and prisons, were loaded onto the ship "Menden" and partly from the Salaspils camp and exterminated 289 small children on that ship.

They were driven away by the Germans to Libau, an orphanage for infants located there. Children from Baldonsky and Grivsky orphanages; nothing is known about their fate yet.

Not stopping at these atrocities, the German fascists in 1944 sold low-quality products in Riga stores only using children's cards, in particular milk with some kind of powder. Why did small children 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 maintaining children were police and under the supervision of the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp, Krause, and another German, Schaefer, who went to the children's camps and houses where the children were kept for “inspection.”

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

Senior NKVD operative officer, security captain /Murman/

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

According to the People's Commissariat of Education of the LSSR, which investigated the facts of the abduction of civilians into German slavery, as of April 3, 1945, it is known that 2,802 children were distributed from the Salaspils concentration camp during the German occupation:

1) on kulak farms - 1,564 people.

2) to children's camps - 636 people.

3) taken into care by individual citizens - 602 people.

The list is compiled on the basis of data from the card index of the Social Department of Internal Affairs 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.

In the last days of their stay in Riga in October 1944, the Germans broke into orphanages, into the homes of infants, into apartments, grabbed children, drove them to the port of Riga, where they were loaded 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. 17,765 children were killed in mass shootings.

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

Abrensky district - 497
Ludza County - 732
Rezekne County and Rezekne - 2,045, incl. through Rezekne prison more than 1,200
Madona County - 373
Daugavpils - 3,960, incl. through Daugavpils prison 2,000
Daugavpils district - 1,058
Valmiera County - 315
Jelgava - 697
Ilukstsky district - 190
Bauska County - 399
Valka County - 22
Cesis County - 32
Jekabpils County - 645
Total - 10,965 people.

In Riga, dead children were buried in the Pokrovskoye, Tornakalnskoye and Ivanovskoye cemeteries, as well as in the forest near the Salaspils camp."

In the ditch

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

Children behind the wire

Soviet child prisoners of the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk

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

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

The Finns shot prisoners in front of children and 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 simply by a miracle. According to available Finnish documents, only seven men were shot for attempting to escape or other crimes. During the conversation, it turned out that the Sobolev family was one of those who were taken from Zaonezhye. It was difficult for Soboleva’s mother and her six children. 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, in the 125th barrack. The mother was immediately taken to the hospital. Claudia recalled with horror the disinfection carried out by the Finns. People burned out in the so-called bathhouse, and then they were doused with cold water. The food was bad, the food was spoiled, the clothes were unusable.

Only at the end of June 1944 were they able to leave 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 the prisoners: “There was little food, and it was bad. The baths were terrible. The Finns showed no pity.”

In a Finnish concentration camp

Auschwitz (Auschwitz)

Photos of 14-year-old Czeslava Kvoka

The photographs of 14-year-old Czeslawa Kwoka, on loan from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died from repression during World War II. In December 1942, Polish Catholic Czeslawa, originally from the town of Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz along with her mother. Three months later they both died. In 2005, photographer (and fellow prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Czeslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not understand why she was here and did not understand what was being said to her. 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 cried, but could not do anything. Before being photographed, the girl wiped tears and blood from her broken lip. Frankly, I felt as if I had been beaten, but I could not intervene. It would have ended fatally for me."

Ukrainian boy prisoner of Auschwitz

Registration photographs of children prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp