Uman Pit - the name of the temporary camp for prisoners, which was located during the Great Patriotic War on the territory of a brick factory quarry in August-September 1941. Its depth reached 10 meters. At the same time, there were no structures on the territory of the quarry, so people suffered under heavy rains, languished under the scorching sun. This is one of the main crimes of the Nazi regime. At the same time, it is not possible even today to establish the exact number of victims, since their lists were not kept. Even the total number of prisoners who ended up in the camp is known only approximately. In this article, we will tell you everything that is known about this terrible tragedy.
Battle of Uman
In fact, the Uman Pit appeared after one of the first battles of the Great Patriotic War, which went down in history as the Battle of Uman.
Uman is a city in the modern Cherkasy region, located on the territory of Ukraine. ATIn early August 1941, during the rapid offensive of the Army Group "South" on the territory of the Soviet Union, the Red Army units were surrounded. The so-called "Uman Cauldron" was formed.
The result of the battle was the defeat of the Soviet units. The 6th and 12th armies of the Southwestern Front were almost completely destroyed. Separate parts of the Southern Front also suffered.
According to Soviet historians, about 65 thousand people, almost 250 tanks, were surrounded by German troops. By August 8, 11 thousand people managed to escape from the boiler. There are significant discrepancies in estimates of the number of Soviet troops that were surrounded. The Germans claim that 103 thousand people were taken prisoner.
At the same time, the Wehrmacht lost about 4,5 thousand people killed and more than 15 thousand wounded.
Soviet prisoners of war were placed in a concentration camp, which was created on the territory of a quarry near Uman, and they began to call it the Uman Pit. Due to poor conditions of detention, many prisoners died after a short time. In addition, in the camp itself and on the battlefields, the Germans and their accomplices staged mass executions of commissars, Jews, communists, and severely weakened and wounded soldiers.
"Uman Cauldron" is considered the most crushing defeat in the history of the Red Army. Currently, this is one of the tragic and at the same time white spots in the study of the Great Patriotic War.
Concentration camp
Umanskaya Yama concentration camp was a transit camp. It was located onquarry area. In German reports it is listed under the name Stalag-349.
Uman Pit was a clay quarry about 300 meters wide and about one kilometer long. The height of the sheer walls reached 15 meters.
Photos of the Uman Pit have been preserved, which still amaze with cruelty and inhumanity. Several tens of thousands of prisoners were driven here, many of whom died simply because of poor conditions. The total number of deaths in this tragedy is still unknown.
Containment conditions
Those who managed to survive said that this camp, according to rough estimates, could be designed to support 6-7 thousand people. It also contained several tens of thousands.
There were no buildings on the territory of the quarry, except for low and small sheds, originally intended for storing bricks. As a result, most of the prisoners had to sleep out in the open. Two huge iron barrels were installed on the territory of the camp, in which food was prepared for the prisoners. Even in conditions of round-the-clock work, they could supply food to no more than two thousand people. 60-70 people died from malnutrition every day. In addition, executions continued throughout the day.
Seriously ill prisoners were collected on the territory of the hostel of the former brick factory, but they were not given any treatment there. The dead were buried in mass graves. They rested in ditches, the corpses were sprinkled with lime.
Data on the dead
To establish the data of the victims, historians and researchers have carried out extensive work. One of the most famous lists of those killed in the Uman Pit was compiled by Grigory Uglov. During the Great Patriotic War, he was a doctor in the 2nd Infantry Regiment, which was part of the 44th Infantry Division, named after Shchors.
With the permission of the German authorities, on a daily basis, he put strongly twisted paper sheets into bottles, on which the names and surnames of the dead were indicated. These documents also contained information about their dates of birth, hair color, camp number, military rank, nationality. Fingerprints and addresses were provided where possible.
Thanks to the painstaking work of Corner, it was possible to restore about three thousand fates of ordinary soldiers.
Opening graves
After the war, a commission was established to investigate the crimes committed by the Nazis on the territory of the Soviet Union. Part of the mass graves was then opened. Also, several graves were discovered during earthworks after some time.
The same bottles with the coordinates and data of the dead soldiers turned out to be in these graves. The lists were transferred to the Ministry of Defense. Until recently, they were kept under the heading "Secret", which was removed in 2013.
Of course, this is only a small part of the victims. The lists include only those who died on the territory of the hospital in a concentration camp. The names of most of the other prisoners are likely to remain so.unknown.
Memories of eyewitnesses
Eyewitnesses who visited this terrible camp, claim that at first the prisoners were not given any food or water. In their memories of the Uman Pit, prisoners of war say that people drank all the puddles in the quarry, and then began to eat clay. In the stomach, the clay was lumped together, causing the person to die in terrible agony.
Meals were arranged only a few days later. As soon as the kitchens began to work, the prisoners began to rush towards them, the Germans opened fire from machine guns on the crowd.
When it started to rain one day, many people started digging small holes in the walls to keep warm. Since the entire quarry was made of clay, they soon began to collapse. The people who didn't manage to get out faced a terrible death.
The camp was surrounded by barbed wire, towers with machine gunners were installed. Orderlies were constantly moving around the camp, collecting the bodies of the dead. But they didn't make it. A few days later, the bottom of the pit was strewn with the bodies of the dead, which no one removed.
According to German chronicles, epidemics soon broke out in the Uman Pit.
Hitler's visit
In August 1941, Adolf Hitler arrived in Uman with his colleague, the leader of the Nazis in Italy, Benito Mussolini.
Some sources mention that after the solemn victorious parade they visited this camp as well.
Book in Ukrainian
The book about the Uman Pit underThe title "They are not subject to oblivion" was released in 2014. It was published in Ukrainian.
Great interest among researchers was the fact that it published the names of approximately 3,300 Soviet soldiers and officers who died on the territory of the hospital in this Nazi camp.
At the same time, many of them until that moment were listed as dead in captivity or missing.
Identification issues
The identity of the dead in this concentration camp was restored just according to the book of Grigory Uglovy, who put notes with the names of the victims into bottles. But there are certain problems with them, the exact identification of the dead still remains difficult.
Even at the stage of compiling these lists, some names were changed almost beyond recognition. This was due to difficulties in recording, repeated translation from one language to another and vice versa. Because of this, it is not possible to establish their true spelling. However, the researchers still did everything they could.
After the initial identification of the name of the deceased prisoner, his data was checked against the information base that was created by the Ministry of Defense. The generalized database "Memorial" is currently available on the Internet. At this stage, soldiers were found who were not even in this base. This means that nothing was previously even approximately known about their fate.
Finally, the difficulties in determining the identities of the dead arose due to the fact that thebeyond recognition were not only surnames, but also the names of settlements due to constant translations from one language to another.
All this greatly complicates the work of researchers, but they do not despair. The data of the victims of this terrible concentration camp continues to be established to this day. There is hope that after some time this page of national history will no longer be called a white spot.
