Fascism and atrocities will forever remain inseparable concepts. Since the introduction of the bloody ax of war by fascist Germany over the world, the innocent blood of a huge number of victims has been shed.
The birth of the first concentration camps
As soon as the Nazis came to power in Germany, the first "death factories" began to be created. A concentration camp is a deliberately equipped center for the mass involuntary imprisonment and detention of prisoners of war and political prisoners. The name itself still terrifies many to this day. Concentration camps in Germany were the location of those individuals who were suspected of supporting the anti-fascist movement. The first concentration camps were located directly in the Third Reich. According to the "Emergency Decree of the Reich President on the Protection of the People and the State", all those who were hostile to the Nazi regime were arrested for an indefinite period.
But as soon as hostilities began - such institutions turned into giant machines that suppressed and destroyed a hugenumber of people. German concentration camps during the Great Patriotic War were filled with millions of prisoners: Jews, communists, Poles, gypsies, Soviet citizens and others. Among the many causes of death of millions of people, the main ones were the following:
- violent bullying;
- illness;
- bad containment conditions;
- exhaustion;
- hard physical labor;
- inhumane medical experiments.
Developing a brutal system
The total number of correctional labor institutions at that time was about 5 thousand. German concentration camps during the Great Patriotic War had different purposes and capacities. The spread of racial theory in 1941 led to the emergence of camps or "death factories", behind the walls of which they methodically killed first Jews, and then people belonging to other "inferior" peoples. The camps were set up in the occupied territories of Eastern European countries.
The first phase of the development of this system is characterized by the construction of camps on the German territory, which had the maximum similarity with the holds. They were intended to contain opponents of the Nazi regime. At that time, there were about 26 thousand prisoners in them, absolutely protected from the outside world. Even in the event of a fire, the rescuers had no right to be in the camp.
The second phase is 1936-1938, when the number of arrests grew rapidly and new places of detention were required. Among those arrestedthere were homeless people and those who did not want to work. A kind of cleansing of society from asocial elements that disgraced the German nation was carried out. This is the time of the construction of such well-known camps as Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Later, Jews were sent into exile.
The third phase of the development of the system begins almost simultaneously with the Second World War and lasts until the beginning of 1942. The number of prisoners inhabiting concentration camps in Germany during the Great Patriotic War almost doubled thanks to the captured French, Poles, Belgians and representatives of other nations. At this time, the number of prisoners in Germany and Austria is significantly inferior to the number of those who are in the camps built in the conquered territories.
During the fourth and final phase (1942-1945) the persecution of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war intensifies significantly. The number of prisoners is approximately 2.5-3 million.
The Nazis organized "death factories" and other similar detention facilities in the territories of various countries. The most significant place among them was occupied by German concentration camps, the list of which is as follows:
- Buchenwald;
- Galle;
- Dresden;
- Düsseldorf;
- Cutbus;
- Ravensbrück;
- Schlieben;
- Spremberg;
- Dachau;
- Essen.
Dachau - Camp One
One of the first camps in Germany was the Dachau camp, located near the small town of the same name near Munich. He was a kind of model for creatingthe future Nazi penitentiary system. Dachau is a concentration camp that existed for 12 years. A huge number of German political prisoners, anti-fascists, prisoners of war, clergymen, political and public activists from almost all European countries were serving their sentences in it.
In 1942, a system consisting of 140 additional camps began to be created on the territory of southern Germany. All of them belonged to the Dachau system and contained more than 30 thousand prisoners used in a variety of hard work. Among the prisoners were well-known anti-fascist believers Martin Niemoller, Gabriel V and Nikolai Velimirovic.
Officially, Dachau was not designed to exterminate people. But, despite this, the official number of prisoners who died here is about 41,500 people. But the real number is much higher.
Also, behind these walls, various medical experiments were carried out on people. In particular, there were experiments related to the study of the effect of height on the human body and the study of malaria. In addition, new medicines and hemostatic agents were tested on prisoners.
Dachau, a very notorious concentration camp, was liberated on April 29, 1945 by the US 7th Army.
Work makes you free
This phrase of metal letters, placed above the main entrance to the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, is a symbol of terror and genocide.
BDue to the increase in the number of arrested Poles, it became necessary to create a new place for their detention. In 1940-1941, all residents were evicted from the territory of the Polish city of Auschwitz and the villages adjacent to it. This place was intended to form a camp.
It consisted of:
- Auschwitz I;
- Auschwitz-Birkenau;
- Auschwitz Buna (or Auschwitz III).
The whole camp was surrounded by watchtowers and barbed wire under electric voltage. The forbidden zone was located at a great distance outside the camps and was called the "zone of interest".
Prisoners were brought here on trains from all over Europe. After that, they were divided into 4 groups. The first, consisting mainly of Jews and people unfit for work, were immediately sent to the gas chambers.
Representatives of the second performed a variety of work at industrial enterprises. In particular, the labor of prisoners was used at the Buna Werke oil refinery, which produced gasoline and synthetic rubber.
A third of the new arrivals were those who had congenital physical disabilities. They were mostly dwarfs and twins. They were sent to the "main" concentration camp for anti-human and sadistic experiments.
The fourth group consisted of specially selected women who served as servants and personal slaves of the SS. They also sorted personal belongings confiscated from arriving detainees.
Jewish Final Solution Mechanismquestion
Every day there were more than 100 thousand prisoners in the camp, who lived on 170 hectares of land in 300 barracks. Their construction was carried out by the first prisoners. The barracks were wooden and had no foundation. In winter, these rooms were especially cold because they were heated by 2 small stoves.
The crematoriums in Auschwitz Birkenau were located at the end of the railway tracks. They were combined with gas chambers. Each of them had 5 triple furnaces. Other crematoria were smaller and consisted of one eight-muffle furnace. They all worked almost around the clock. The break was done only in order to clean the furnaces of human ashes and burnt fuel. All this was taken to the nearest field and poured into special pits.
Each gas chamber held about 2.5 thousand people, they died within 10-15 minutes. After that, their corpses were transferred to the crematoria. Other prisoners were already prepared to take their place.
A large number of corpses could not always accommodate crematoriums, so in 1944 they began to burn them right on the street.
Some facts from the history of Auschwitz
Auschwitz is a concentration camp whose history includes approximately 700 escape attempts, half of which ended successfully. But even if someone managed to escape, all his relatives were immediately arrested. They were also sent to camps. Prisoners who lived with the escapee in the same block were killed. In this way, the management of the concentration camp prevented attemptsescape.
The liberation of this "factory of death" took place on January 27, 1945. The 100th Infantry Division of General Fyodor Krasavin occupied the territory of the camp. Only 7,500 people were alive at that time. The Nazis killed or took over 58,000 prisoners to the Third Reich during their retreat.
Until our time, the exact number of lives taken by Auschwitz is not known. The souls of how many prisoners roam there to this day? Auschwitz is a concentration camp whose history consists of the lives of 1, 1-1, 6 million prisoners. It has become a sad symbol of outrageous crimes against humanity.
Guarded detention camp for women
The only huge concentration camp for women in Germany was Ravensbrück. It was designed to hold 30 thousand people, but at the end of the war there were more than 45 thousand prisoners. These included Russian and Polish women. The majority were Jewish. This women's concentration camp was not officially intended for carrying out various abuses of prisoners, but there was also no formal ban on such.
When entering Ravensbrück, women were stripped of everything they had. They were completely stripped, washed, shaved and given work clothes. After that, the prisoners were distributed among the barracks.
Even before entering the camp, the most he althy and efficient women were selected, the rest were destroyed. Those who survived did various jobs related to construction and sewing workshops.
Closer toAt the end of the war, a crematorium and a gas chamber were built here. Before that, if necessary, mass or single executions were carried out. Human ashes were sent as fertilizer to the fields surrounding the women's concentration camp or simply dumped into the bay.
Elements of humiliation and experiments in Ravesbrück
The most important elements of humiliation were numbering, mutual responsibility and unbearable living conditions. Also, a feature of Ravesbrück is the presence of an infirmary designed for experiments on people. Here the Germans tested new drugs by infecting or crippling prisoners. The number of prisoners was rapidly decreasing due to regular purges or selections, during which all women who lost the opportunity to work or had a bad appearance were destroyed.
At the time of liberation, there were approximately 5,000 people in the camp. The rest of the prisoners were either killed or taken to other concentration camps in Nazi Germany. The women who were finally imprisoned were released in April 1945.
Salaspils concentration camp
First, the Salaspils concentration camp was created in order to keep Jews in it. They were brought there from Latvia and other European countries. The first construction work was carried out by Soviet prisoners of war, who were in Stalag-350, located nearby.
Since the Nazis had practically exterminated all the Jews in the territory of Latvia at the time the construction began, the camp turned out to be unclaimed. In this regard, in May 1942 inthe empty premises of Salaspils were turned into a prison. It contained all those who evaded labor service, sympathized with the Soviet regime, and other opponents of the Hitler regime. People were sent here to die a painful death. The camp was not like other similar establishments. There were no gas chambers or crematoria here. Nevertheless, about 10 thousand prisoners were destroyed here.
Children's Salaspils
The Salaspils concentration camp was a place of detention for children who were used here to provide them with the blood of wounded German soldiers. After the blood sampling procedure, most of the juvenile detainees died very quickly.
They were kept in separate barracks and deprived of even minimal primitive care. But it was not the cold and terrible living conditions that became the main cause of the death of children, but the experiments for which they were used as experimental subjects.
The number of little prisoners who died within the walls of Salaspils is more than 3 thousand. These are only those children of concentration camps who are under 5 years old. Some of the bodies were burned, and the rest were buried in the garrison cemetery. Most of the children died due to the merciless pumping of blood.
The fate of people who ended up in concentration camps in Germany during the Great Patriotic War was tragic even after liberation. It would seem, what else could be worse! After the fascist corrective labor institutions, they were captured by the Gulag. Their relatives and children wererepressed, and the former prisoners themselves were considered "traitors". They worked only in the most difficult and low-paid jobs. Only a few of them subsequently managed to break into people.
German concentration camps are evidence of the terrible and inexorable truth of the deepest decline of humanity.
