How the Russians abused German women. What did the Nazis do with captured women?

What did the Nazis do with the captured women? Truth and myths regarding the atrocities that German soldiers committed against Red Army soldiers, partisans, snipers and other females. During the Second World War, many volunteer girls were sent to the front; almost a million especially female ones were sent to the front, and almost all signed up as volunteers. It was already much more difficult for women at the front than for men, but when they fell into the clutches of the Germans, all hell broke loose.

Women who remained under occupation in Belarus or Ukraine also suffered a lot. Sometimes they managed to survive the German regime relatively safely (memoirs, books by Bykov, Nilin), but this was not without humiliation. Even more often, a concentration camp, rape, and torture awaited them.

Execution by shooting or hanging

The treatment of captured women who fought in positions in the Soviet army was quite simple - they were shot. But scouts or partisans, most often, faced hanging. Usually after much bullying.

Most of all, the Germans loved to undress captured Red Army women, keep them in the cold or drive them along the street. This comes from the Jewish pogroms. In those days, girlish shame was a very strong psychological tool; the Germans were surprised at how many virgins there were among the captives, so they actively used such a measure to completely crush, break, and humiliate.

Public flogging, beatings, carousel interrogations are also some of the favorite methods of the fascists.

Rape by the entire platoon was often practiced. However, this mainly happened in small units. The officers did not welcome this, they were forbidden to do this, so more often guards and assault groups did this during arrests or during closed interrogations.

Traces of torture and abuse were found on the bodies of murdered partisans (for example, the famous Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya). Their breasts were cut off, stars were cut out, and so on.

Did the Germans impale you?

Today, when some idiots are trying to justify the crimes of the fascists, others are trying to instill more fear. For example, they write that the Germans impaled captured women on stakes. There is no documentary or photographic evidence of this, and it’s simply unlikely that the Nazis wanted to waste time on this. They considered themselves “cultured,” so acts of intimidation were carried out mainly through mass executions, hangings, or general burning in huts.

Of the exotic types of executions, only the gas van can be mentioned. This is a special van where people were killed using exhaust gases. Naturally, they were also used to eliminate women. True, such machines did not serve Nazi Germany for long, since the Nazis had to wash them for a long time after the execution.

Death camps

Soviet women prisoners of war were sent to concentration camps on an equal basis with men, but, of course, the number of prisoners who reached such a prison was much less than the initial number. Partisans and intelligence officers were usually hanged immediately, but nurses, doctors, and representatives of the civilian population who were Jewish or related to party work could be driven away.

The fascists did not really favor women, since they worked worse than men. It is known that the Nazis carried out medical experiments on people; women's ovaries were cut out. The famous Nazi sadistic doctor Joseph Mengele sterilized women with X-rays and tested them on the human body’s ability to withstand high voltage.

Famous women's concentration camps are Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Salaspils. In total, the Nazis opened more than 40 thousand camps and ghettos, and executions were carried out. The worst situation was for women with children, whose blood was taken. Stories about how a mother begged a nurse to inject her child with poison so that he would not be tortured by experiments are still horrifying. But for the Nazis, dissecting a living baby and introducing bacteria and chemicals into the child was in the order of things.

Verdict

About 5 million Soviet citizens died in captivity and concentration camps. More than half of them were women, however, there would hardly have been even more than 100 thousand prisoners of war. Basically, representatives of the fair sex in greatcoats were dealt with on the spot.

Of course, the Nazis responded for their crimes, both with their complete defeat and with executions during the Nuremberg trials. But the worst thing was that many, after the Nazi concentration camps, were sent to Stalin’s camps. This, for example, was often done with residents of occupied regions, intelligence workers, signalmen, etc.

Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kiev, were collected for transfer to a prisoner of war camp, August 1941:

The dress code of many girls is semi-military and semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniform sets and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left is a sad captured artillery lieutenant, who could be the “stage commander”.

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Oberleutnant Prinz, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in units of the Red Army.” Numerous facts indicate that this order was applied throughout the war.
In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.
In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from a medical unit and shot them.
After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village "Mayak" not far from Kerch, an unknown girl was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko. military uniform. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, you bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!” The girl was shot in the yard.
At the end of August 1942, in the village of Krymskaya, Krasnodar Territory, a group of sailors was shot, among them were several girls in military uniform.
In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was discovered. She had a passport with her in the name of Tatyana Alexandrovna Mikhailova, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.
In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military paramedics Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.
On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.

Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (officer candidate, right) - are escorting a captured Soviet girl soldier - into captivity... or to death?

It seems that the “Hans” do not look evil... Although - who knows? In war, completely ordinary people often do such outrageous abominations that they would never do in “another life”...
The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army model 1935 - men's, and in good "command" boots that fit.

A similar photo, probably from the summer or early autumn of 1941. Convoy - a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded female lieutenant was dragged naked onto the road, her face and hands were cut, her breasts were cut off... »
Knowing what awaited them if captured, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.
Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. A soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, Hans Rudhof, testifies that in the winter of 1942 “... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written."
In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists burst into the yard in which nurses from the hospital were located. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they were dragged into a barn and raped. However, they did not kill him.
Women prisoners of war who ended up in the camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drohobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Luda. “Captain Stroyer, the camp commandant, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Luda to a bed, and in this position Stroyer raped her and then shot her.”
In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 female doctors, paramedics, and nurses, stripped them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals to see if they were suffering from venereal diseases. He conducted the external inspection himself. He chose 3 young girls from them and took them to “serve” him. German soldiers and officers came for the women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

Women soldiers of the Red Army who were captured while trying to escape the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941.

Judging by their haggard faces, they had to endure a lot even before being captured.

Here the “Hans” are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves can quickly experience all the “joys” of captivity!! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already had her fill of hardships at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity...

In the left photo (September 1941, again near Kyiv -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her wrist in captivity; an unprecedented thing, watches are the optimal camp currency!) do not look desperate or exhausted. The captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... A staged photo, or did you really get a relatively humane camp commandant who ensured a tolerable existence?

Camp guards from among former prisoners of war and camp police were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped their captives or forced them to cohabit with them under threat of death. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 women prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District former boss camp guard A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped prisoners in the women's block.
Women prisoners were also kept in the Millerovo prisoner of war camp. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German woman from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barracks was terrible:
“The police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl her choice for two hours. The policeman could have taken her to his barracks. They lived two to a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, abuse her, mock her, do whatever he wanted.
Once, during the evening roll call, the police chief himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, the German woman complained to him that these “bastards” are reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “And for those who don’t want to go, arrange a “red fireman.” The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl’s vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. Screaming was forbidden. Many girls had their lips bitten - they were holding back a scream, and after such punishment they for a long time couldn't move.
The commandant, who was called a cannibal behind her back, enjoyed unlimited rights over captured girls and came up with other sophisticated bullying. For example, “self-punishment”. There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl must undress naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the crosspiece with her hands, and place her feet on a stool and hold on like this for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it all over again.
We learned about what was going on in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on a bench for ten minutes. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.”

Women doctors of the Red Army who were captured worked in camp hospitals in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps).

There may also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background you can see part of the body of a car equipped for transporting the wounded, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.

Infirmary barracks of the prisoner of war camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941):

In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely pathetic impression. It was especially difficult for them in the conditions of camp life: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.
K. Kromiadi, a member of the labor distribution commission, visited the Sedlice camp in the fall of 1941 and talked with the women prisoners. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.”
A group of female medical workers captured in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was held in Vladimir-Volynsk - Oflag camp No. 365 "Nord".
Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. First, the women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, as the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred captured women to Smolensk to Dulag No. 126. There were few captives in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was prohibited. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with “the condition of free settlement in Smolensk.”

Crimea, summer 1942. Very young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young girl soldier:

Most likely, she is not a doctor: her hands are clean, she did not bandage the wounded in a recent battle.

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female medical workers were captured: doctors, nurses, and orderlies. First, they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. In Rivne, everyone was lined up, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: “this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan.” Those who were separated from the general group were shot. Those who remained were loaded back into the wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the carriage into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. We recovered through a hole in the floor.
Along the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and the women were brought to the city of Zoes on February 23, 1943. They lined them up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. A history teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute who pretended to be a Serbian. She enjoyed special authority among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, stated in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which it was impossible to sit down or move due to the cramped conditions. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the recalcitrants were sent to Ravensbrück. This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped clothes (blue and gray stripe) dresses and jackets without lining. Underwear - shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.
The barracks were divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tier bunks with a narrow passage between them. One cotton blanket was given to two prisoners. In a separate room lived the blockhouse - the head of the barracks. In the corridor there was a washroom and toilet.

Stage Soviet women-prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):

The prisoners carry all their meager belongings; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them tied their heads with scarves “like women” and took off their heavy boots.

Ibid., Stalag 370, Simferopol:

The prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.
The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. First, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given camp striped clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: “SU” - Sowjet Union.
Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS men spread a rumor throughout the camp that a gang of female killers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.
Every day the prisoners got up at 4 am for verification, which sometimes lasted several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.
Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, since warm water did not have. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turns.
Women whose hair had survived began to use combs that they made themselves. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion.”
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, for five people they received a small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

One of the prisoners, S. Müller, testifies in her memoirs about the impression Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück:
“...one Sunday in April we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to carry out some order, citing the fact that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstraße (the main “street” of the camp - A. Sh.) and were deprived of lunch.
But the women from the Red Army bloc (that’s what we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstraße. And what did we see?
It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, kept in alignment, walked as if in a parade, taking their steps. Their steps are like drumroll, beat rhythmically along Lagerstraße. The entire column moved as one. Suddenly a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to start singing. She counted down: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up, huge country,
Get up for mortal combat...

I had heard them sing this song in a low voice in their barracks before. But here it sounded like a call to fight, like faith in an early victory.
Then they started singing about Moscow.
The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment of humiliated prisoners of war by marching turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility...
The SS failed to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.”

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once amazed their enemies and fellow prisoners with their unity and spirit of resistance. One day, 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners intended to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to pick up the women, their comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up in groups of five and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove those who came into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.”
In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to the concentration camp in Barth to the Heinkel aircraft plant. The girls refused to work there either. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove their wooden stocks. They stood in the cold for many hours, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who agreed to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died from pneumonia.
Constant bullying, hard labor, and hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself at the wire.
And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Heads up, Russian girls!
Over your head, be brave!
We don't have long to endure
The nightingale will fly in the spring...
And it will open the doors to freedom for us,
Takes a striped dress off your shoulders
And heal deep wounds,
He will wipe the tears from his swollen eyes.
Heads up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
It won't be long to wait, it won't be long -
And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a unique description of the Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “...their cohesion was explained by the fact that they went through army school even before captivity. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebellion, their unwillingness to obey the Germans."

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Auschwitz prisoner A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Victorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Klavdiya Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.
In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and transfer to the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.
The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrin camp.
Despite the death that reigned in captivity, despite the fact that any relationship between male and female prisoners of war was prohibited, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love sometimes arose, giving new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German hospital management did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released to the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
Thus, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the First City Hospital for childbirth on 23.2.42, left with the child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”

Probably one of the last photographs of Soviet women soldiers captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:

Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - “For Courage” (dark edging on the block), the second one may also have “BZ”. There is an opinion that these are pilots, but - IMHO - it is unlikely: both have “clean” shoulder straps of privates.

In 1944, attitudes towards women prisoners of war became harsher. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order “On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war.” This document stated that Soviet women held in prisoner-of-war camps should be subject to inspection by the local Gestapo office in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.
Based on this order, the head of the Security Service and SD on April 11, 1944 issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to the concentration camp, such women were subjected to so-called “special treatment” - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - senior group seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in Gentin. The plant produced a lot of defective products, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera was in charge of the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First they brought the men and shot them one by one. Then - a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do that? ” I never found out what she did. She replied that she did it for her homeland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: “This is for your homeland.” The Russian woman spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning the corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Fuck her!” The oven door was open and the heat caused the woman's hair to catch fire. Despite the fact that the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. All the prisoners working in the crematorium saw this.” Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
________________________________________ ____________________

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1190, l. 110.

Right there. M-37/178, l. 17.

Right there. M-33/482, l. 16.

Right there. M-33/60, l. 38.

Right there. M-33/ 303, l 115.

Right there. M-33/ 309, l. 51.

Right there. M-33/295, l. 5.

Right there. M-33/ 302, l. 32.

P. Rafes. They had not yet repented then. From the Notes of a Divisional Intelligence Translator. "Spark." Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1182, l. 94-95.

Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - “Spark.” M., 1998. No. 6.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1182, l. eleven.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/230, l. 38.53.94; M-37/1191, l. 26

B. P. Sherman. ...And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists on the territory of the city of Baranovichi and its surroundings on June 27, 1941 - July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.

S. M. Fischer. Memories. Manuscript. Author's archive.

K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.

T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944... p. 143.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/626, l. 50-52. M-33/627, l. 62-63.

N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing your head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in Hitler’s camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32-33.

Right there. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security authorities, where they sought her confession of treason, committed suicide

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. On Sat. "Witnesses for the prosecution." L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team. Memoirs of prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.

Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.

S. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team... p. 51-52.

Women of Ravensbrück... p.127.

G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol Fortress. Simferopol.1965, p. 82-83.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.

N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In the collection: In the Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk.1958, p. 84.

A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war... p. 62.

A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again. M., 1958, p. 6-11.

N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing your head... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/438 part II, l. 127.

A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener… S. 153.

A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again... p. 106.

A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener…. S. 153-154.

"I didn’t immediately decide to publish this chapter from the book “Captive” on the website. This is one of the most terrible and heroic stories. A low bow to you, women, for everything you have suffered and, alas, never appreciated by the state, people, and researchers. This was difficult to write about. It is even more difficult to talk to former prisoners. Low bow to you - Heroines."

“And there were no such beautiful women in all the earth...” Job (42:15)

"My tears were bread for me day and night... ...my enemies mock me..." Psalter. (41:4:11)

From the first days of the war, tens of thousands of female medical workers were mobilized into the Red Army. Thousands of women voluntarily joined the army and militia divisions. Based on the resolutions of the State Defense Committee of March 25, April 13 and 23, 1942, mass mobilization of women began. Only at the call of the Komsomol, 550 thousand Soviet women became warriors. 300 thousand were drafted into the air defense forces. Hundreds of thousands go to the military medical and sanitary services, signal troops, road and other units. In May 1942, another GKO resolution was adopted - on the mobilization of 25 thousand women in the Navy.

Three air regiments were formed from women: two bomber and one fighter, 1st separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, 1st separate women's reserve rifle regiment.

Created in 1942, the Central Women's Sniper School trained 1,300 female snipers.

Ryazan Infantry School named after. Voroshilov trained female commanders of rifle units. In 1943 alone, 1,388 people graduated from it.

During the war, women served in all branches of the military and represented all military specialties. Women made up 41% of all doctors, 43% of paramedics, and 100% of nurses. In total, 800 thousand women served in the Red Army.

However, female medical instructors and nurses in active army were only 40%, which violates the prevailing idea of a girl under fire saving the wounded. In his interview, A. Volkov, who served as a medical instructor throughout the war, refutes the myth that only girls were medical instructors. According to him, the girls were nurses and orderlies in medical battalions, and mostly men served as medical instructors and orderlies on the front line in the trenches.

“They didn’t even take frail men for the medical instructor courses. Only the big ones! The work of a medical instructor is harder than that of a sapper. A medical instructor must crawl his trenches at least four times a night to find the wounded. It’s written in movies and books: she’s so weak, she was dragging a wounded man , so big, almost a kilometer on you! Yes, this is nonsense. We were especially warned: if you drag a wounded man to the rear, you will be shot on the spot for desertion. After all, what is a medical instructor for? A medical instructor must prevent a large loss of blood and apply a bandage. And so that "To drag him to the rear, for this the medical instructor is subordinate to everyone. There is always someone to carry him out of the battlefield. The medical instructor does not obey anyone. Only the chief of the medical battalion."

You can’t agree with A. Volkov on everything. Female medical instructors saved the wounded by pulling them out on themselves, dragging them behind them; there are many examples of this. Another thing is interesting. The women front-line soldiers themselves note the discrepancy between stereotypical screen images and the truth of the war.

For example, former medical instructor Sofya Dubnyakova says: “I watch films about the war: a nurse on the front line, she walks neatly, cleanly, not in padded trousers, but in a skirt, she has a cap on her crest... Well, that’s not true!... Isn’t it true? "We could pull out a wounded man like this?.. It's not very good for you to crawl around in a skirt when there are only men around. But to tell the truth, skirts were only given to us at the end of the war. Then we also received underwear instead of men's underwear."

In addition to the medical instructors, among whom there were women, there were porter nurses in the medical units - these were only men. They also provided assistance to the wounded. However, their main task is to carry the already bandaged wounded from the battlefield.

On August 3, 1941, the People's Commissar of Defense issued order No. 281 "On the procedure for submitting military orderlies and porters for government awards for good combat work"The work of orderlies and porters was equivalent to military feat. The said order stated: “For the removal from the battlefield of 15 wounded with their rifles or light machine guns present each orderly and porter for a government award with a medal “For Military Merit” or “For Courage.” For the removal of 25 wounded from the battlefield with their weapons, submit to the Order of the Red Star, for the removal of 40 wounded - to the Order of the Red Banner, for the removal of 80 the wounded - to the Order of Lenin.

150 thousand Soviet women were awarded military orders and medals. 200 - Orders of Glory of the 2nd and 3rd degrees. Four became full holders of the Order of Glory of three degrees. 86 women were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

At all times, women's service in the army was considered immoral. There are many offensive lies about them; just remember PPZh - field wife.

Oddly enough, men at the front gave rise to such an attitude towards women. War veteran N.S. Posylaev recalls: “As a rule, women who went to the front soon became the mistresses of officers. How could it be otherwise: if a woman is on her own, there will be no end to the harassment. It’s a different matter with someone else...”

To be continued...

A. Volkov said that when a group of girls arrived in the army, “merchants” immediately came for them: “First, the youngest and most beautiful were taken by the army headquarters, then by lower-ranking headquarters.”

In the fall of 1943, a girl medical instructor arrived in his company at night. And there is only one medical instructor per company. It turns out that the girl “was pestered everywhere, and since she did not yield to anyone, everyone sent her lower. From army headquarters to division headquarters, then to regimental headquarters, then to the company, and the company commander sent the untouchable to the trenches.”

Zina Serdyukova, a former sergeant major of the reconnaissance company of the 6th Guards Cavalry Corps, knew how to behave strictly with soldiers and commanders, but one day the following happened:

“It was winter, the platoon was quartered in a rural house, and I had a nook there. In the evening the regiment commander called me. Sometimes he himself set the task of sending them behind enemy lines. This time he was drunk, the table with the remains of food was not cleared. Without saying anything, he rushed towards me, trying to undress me. I knew how to fight, I’m a scout after all. And then he called the orderly, ordering him to hold me. The two of them tore my clothes off. In response to my screams, the landlady where I was staying flew in, and that was the only thing that saved me. I ran through the village, half-naked, crazy. For some reason, I believed that I would find protection from the corps commander, General Sharaburko, he called me his daughter like a father. The adjutant did not let me in, but I burst into the general’s room, beaten and disheveled. She told me incoherently how Colonel M. tried to rape me. The general reassured me, saying that I would not see Colonel M. again. A month later, my company commander reported that the colonel had died in battle; he was part of a penal battalion. This is what war is, it’s not just bombs, tanks, grueling marches...”

Everything in life was at the front, where “there are four steps to death.” However, most veterans remember the girls who fought at the front with sincere respect. Those who were slandered most often were those who sat in the rear, behind the backs of the women who went to the front as volunteers.

Former front-line soldiers, despite the difficulties they had to face in the men's team, remember their combat friends with warmth and gratitude.

Rachelle Berezina, in the army since 1942 - intelligence translator military intelligence, ended the war in Vienna as a senior translator in the intelligence department of the First Guards mechanized corps under the command of Lieutenant General I.N. Russiyanov. She says that they treated her very respectfully; the intelligence department even stopped swearing in her presence.

Maria Fridman, an intelligence officer of the 1st NKVD division, who fought in the Nevskaya Dubrovka area near Leningrad, recalls that the intelligence officers protected her and filled her with sugar and chocolate, which they found in German dugouts. True, sometimes I had to defend myself with a “fist in the teeth.”

“If you don’t hit me in the teeth, you’ll be lost!.. In the end, the scouts began to protect me from other people’s suitors: “If it’s no one, then no one.”

When volunteer girls from Leningrad appeared in the regiment, every month we were dragged to the “brood,” as we called it. In the medical battalion they checked to see if anyone was pregnant... After one such “brood,” the regiment commander asked me in surprise: “Maruska, who are you taking care of for? They will kill us anyway...” The people were rude, but kind. And fair. I have never seen such militant justice as in the trenches.”

The everyday difficulties that Maria Friedman had to face at the front are now remembered with irony.

“The lice infested the soldiers. They take off their shirts and pants, but what does it feel like for the girl? I had to look for an abandoned dugout and there, stripping naked, I tried to cleanse myself of lice. Sometimes they helped me, someone would stand at the door and say: “Don’t poke your nose in, Maruska is squashing lice there!”

And bath day! And go when needed! Somehow I found myself alone, climbed under a bush, above the parapet of the trench. The Germans either didn’t notice right away or let me sit quietly, but when I started pulling on my panties, there was a whistling sound from left and right. I fell into the trench, my pants at my heels. Oh, they were laughing in the trenches about how Maruska’s ass blinded the Germans...

At first, I must admit, this soldier’s cackling irritated me, until I realized that they were not laughing at me, but at their fate as a soldier, covered in blood and lice, they were laughing in order to survive, not to go crazy. And it was enough for me that after a bloody skirmish someone asked in alarm: “Manka, are you alive?”

M. Friedman fought at the front and behind enemy lines, was wounded three times, awarded the medal “For Courage”, the Order of the Red Star...

To be continued...

Front-line girls bore all the hardships of front-line life on an equal basis with men, not inferior to them either in courage or military skill.

The Germans, in whose army women carried out only auxiliary service, were extremely surprised by such an active participation of Soviet women in hostilities.

They even tried to play the "women's card" in their propaganda, talking about the inhumanity of the Soviet system, which throws women into the fire of war. An example of this propaganda is a German leaflet that appeared at the front in October 1943: “If a friend has been wounded...”

The Bolsheviks always surprised the whole world. And in this war they gave something completely new:

« Woman at the front! Since ancient times, people have been fighting and everyone has always believed that war is a man’s business, men should fight, and it never occurred to anyone to involve women in war. True, there were individual cases, like the notorious “shock women” at the end of the last war - but these were exceptions and they went down in history as a curiosity or an anecdote.

But no one has yet thought of the massive involvement of women in the army as fighters, on the front line with weapons in hand, except the Bolsheviks.

Every nation strives to protect its women from danger, to preserve women, for a woman is a mother, and the preservation of the nation depends on her. Most of the men may perish, but the women must survive, otherwise the entire nation may perish."

Are the Germans suddenly thinking about the fate of the Russian people? They are concerned about the issue of its preservation. Of course not! It turns out that all this is just a preamble to the most important German thought:

“Therefore, the government of any other country, in the event of excessive losses that threaten the continued existence of the nation, would try to take its country out of the war, because everyone national government Dear your people." (Emphasis by the Germans. This turns out to be the main idea: we need to end the war, and we need a national government. - Aron Schneer).

« The Bolsheviks think differently. The Georgian Stalin and the various Kaganovichs, Berias, Mikoyans and the entire Jewish kagal (how can you do without anti-Semitism in propaganda! - Aron Schneer), sitting on the people’s neck, don’t give a damn about the Russian people and all the other peoples of Russia and Russia itself. They have one goal - to preserve their power and their skins. Therefore, they need war, war at all costs, war by any means, at the cost of any sacrifice, war to the last man, to last man and women. “If a friend was wounded” - for example, both legs or arms were torn off, it doesn’t matter, to hell with him, “the girlfriend” will also “manage” to die at the front, drag her too into the meat grinder of war, there is no need to be gentle with her. Stalin does not feel sorry for the Russian woman..."

The Germans, of course, miscalculated and did not take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of thousands of Soviet women and girl volunteers. Of course, there were mobilizations, emergency measures in conditions of extreme danger, tragic situation, which developed at the fronts, but it would be wrong not to take into account the sincere patriotic impulse of young people born after the revolution and ideologically prepared in the pre-war years for struggle and self-sacrifice.

One of these girls was Yulia Drunina, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who went to the front. A poem she wrote after the war explains why she and thousands of other girls voluntarily went to the front:

“I left my childhood Into a dirty heated vehicle, Into an infantry echelon, Into a medical platoon. ... I came from school Into damp dugouts. From a Beautiful Lady - Into “mother” and “rewind”. Because the name is Closer than “Russia”, I couldn't find it."

Women fought at the front, thereby asserting their right, equal with men, to defend the Fatherland. The enemy repeatedly gave highly appreciated participation of Soviet women in battles:

“Russian women... communists hate any enemy, are fanatical, dangerous. In 1941, the sanitary battalions defended the last lines before Leningrad with grenades and rifles in their hands.”

Liaison officer Prince Albert of Hohenzollern, who took part in the assault on Sevastopol in July 1942, “admired the Russians and especially the women, who, he said, showed amazing courage, dignity and fortitude.”

According to the Italian soldier, he and his comrades had to fight near Kharkov against the “Russian women’s regiment.” Several women were captured by the Italians. However, in accordance with the agreement between the Wehrmacht and the Italian army, all those captured by the Italians were handed over to the Germans. The latter decided to shoot all the women. According to the Italian, “the women did not expect anything else. They only asked to be allowed to first wash themselves in the bathhouse and wash their dirty linen in order to die in a clean state, as it should be according to old Russian customs. The Germans granted their request. And here they are, having washed and Putting on clean shirts, we went to be shot..."

The fact that the Italian’s story about the participation of a female infantry unit in the battles is not fiction is confirmed by another story. Since both in Soviet scientific and fiction, there were numerous references only to the exploits of individual women - representatives of all military specialties and never talked about the participation in battles of individual female infantry units, I had to turn to the material published in the Vlasov newspaper "Zarya".

To be continued...

The article “Valya Nesterenko - deputy platoon commander of reconnaissance” tells about the fate of a captured Soviet girl. Valya graduated from the Ryazan Infantry School. According to her, about 400 women and girls studied with her:

“Why were they all volunteers? They were considered volunteers. But how they went! They gathered young people, a representative from the district military registration and enlistment office comes to the meeting and asks: “How do you girls love Soviet power?” They answer - “We love you.” - “That’s how we need to protect!” They write applications. And then try, refuse! And in 1942, mobilizations began altogether. Everyone receives a summons, appears at the military registration and enlistment office. Goes to a commission. The commission gives a conclusion: fit for combat service. Sent to a unit. Those who are older or have children, - those are mobilized for work. And those who are younger and without children are sent to the army. There were 200 people in my graduating class. Some did not want to study, but they were then sent to dig trenches.

In our regiment of three battalions there were two men's and one women's. The first battalion was female - machine gunners. In the beginning, there were girls from orphanages. They were desperate. With this battalion we occupied up to ten settlements, and then most of them fell out of action. Requested a refill. Then the remnants of the battalion were withdrawn from the front and a new women's battalion was sent from Serpukhov. A women's division was specially formed there. The new battalion included older women and girls. Everyone got involved in mobilization. We trained for three months to become machine gunners. At first, while there were no big battles, they were brave.

Our regiment advanced on the villages of Zhilino, Savkino, and Surovezhki. The women's battalion operated in the middle, and the men's on the left and right flanks. The women's battalion had to cross Chelm and advance to the edge of the forest. As soon as we climbed the hill, the artillery began to fire. The girls and women started screaming and crying. They huddled together, and the German artillery put them all in a heap. There were at least 400 people in the battalion, and only three girls remained alive from the entire battalion. What happened was scary to watch... mountains of female corpses. Is war a woman’s business?”

In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.

In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from a medical unit and shot them.

After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village "Mayak" not far from Kerch, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, you bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!” The girl was shot in the yard.

At the end of August 1942, in the village of Krymskaya, Krasnodar Territory, a group of sailors was shot, among them were several girls in military uniform.

In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was discovered. She had a passport with her in the name of Tatyana Alexandrovna Mikhailova, born in 1923 in the village of Novo-Romanovka.

In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military paramedics Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.

On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded girl lieutenant was dragged naked onto the road, her face and hands were cut, her breasts were cut off...”

Knowing what awaited them if captured, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. A soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, Hans Rudhof, testifies that in the winter of 1942, “... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They were lying naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written ".

In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists burst into the yard in which nurses from the hospital were located. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they were dragged into a barn and raped. However, they did not kill him.

Women prisoners of war who ended up in the camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drohobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Luda. “Captain Stroyer, the camp commandant, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Luda to a bed, and in this position Stroyer raped her and then shot her.”

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 female doctors, paramedics, and nurses, stripped them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals to see if they were suffering from venereal diseases. He carried out the external examination himself. He chose of which 3 were young girls, he took them to “serve.” German soldiers and officers came for the women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

Women prisoners were also kept in the Millerovo prisoner of war camp. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German woman from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barracks was terrible:

"The policemen often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two to a room. For these two hours, he could use her as a thing, abuse, mock, do whatever he wants. One day, during an evening roll call, the police chief himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, a German woman complained to him that these “bastards” are reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “A For those who don't want to go, organize a "red fireman". The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl's vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. Screaming was forbidden. Many girls had their lips bitten - they were holding back a scream, and after such punishment they could not move for a long time.The commandant, who was called a cannibal behind her back, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated abuses. For example, “self-punishment”. There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl must undress naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the crosspiece with her hands, and place her feet on a stool and hold on like this for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it all over again. We learned about what was going on in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on a bench for ten minutes. The policemen also boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman."

To be continued...

K. Kromiadi, a member of the labor distribution commission, visited the Sedlice camp in the fall of 1941 and talked with the women prisoners. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.”

A group of female medical workers captured in the Kiev cauldron in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - Oflag camp No. 365 "Nord".

Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. First, the women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, as the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred captured women to Smolensk to Dulag No. 126. There were few captives in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was prohibited. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with “the condition of free settlement in Smolensk.”

Along the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and the women were brought to the city of Zoes on February 23, 1943. They lined them up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. A history teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute who pretended to be a Serbian. She enjoyed special authority among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, stated in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which it was impossible to sit down or move due to the cramped conditions. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the disobedient ones were sent to Ravensbrück.

This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.

The barracks were divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tier bunks with a narrow passage between them. One cotton blanket was given to two prisoners. In a separate room lived the blockhouse - the head of the barracks. In the corridor there was a washroom and toilet.

The prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.

The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. First, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.

Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS men spread a rumor throughout the camp that a gang of female killers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.

Every day the prisoners got up at 4 am for verification, which sometimes lasted several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, since there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turns.

Women whose hair had survived began to use combs that they made themselves. The Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion.”

For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, for five people they received a small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

One of the prisoners, S. Müller, testifies in her memoirs about the impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück: “...on one Sunday in April we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to carry out some order, citing the fact that that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day, they were forced to march along Lagerstraße (the main “street” of the camp - author’s note) and were deprived of lunch.

But the women from the Red Army bloc (that’s what we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstraße. And what did we see?

It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, kept in alignment, walked as if in a parade, taking their steps. Their steps, like the beat of a drum, beat rhythmically along Lagerstraße. The entire column moved as one. Suddenly a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to start singing. She counted down: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up, huge country, get up for mortal combat...

Then they started singing about Moscow.

The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment of humiliated prisoners of war by marching turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility...

The SS failed to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance."

To be continued...

In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to the concentration camp in Barth to the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there either. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove their wooden stocks. They stood in the cold for many hours, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who agreed to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died from pneumonia.

Constant bullying, hard labor, and hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself onto the wire.

And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Heads up, Russian girls! Over your head, be brave! We don't have long to endure, A nightingale will fly in in the spring... And open the doors to freedom, Take off the striped dress from the shoulders And heal deep wounds, Wip away the tears from swollen eyes. Heads up, Russian girls! Be Russian everywhere, everywhere! It won't be long to wait, not long - And we will be on Russian soil.

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Auschwitz prisoner A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Victorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Klavdiya Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.

In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and transfer to the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, and infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.

The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrin camp.

Despite the death that reigned in captivity, despite the fact that any relationship between male and female prisoners of war was prohibited, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love sometimes arose, giving new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German hospital management did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released to the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.

Thus, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the First City Hospital for childbirth on 23.2.42, left with the child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”

Based on this order, the head of the Security Service and SD on April 11, 1944 issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to the concentration camp, such women were subjected to so-called “special treatment” - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya, the eldest of a group of seven hundred girl prisoners of war who worked at a military plant in the city of Gentin, died. The plant produced a lot of defective products, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera was in charge of the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.

In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First they brought the men and shot them one by one. Then - a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do that? ” I never found out what she did. She replied that she did it for her homeland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: “This is for your homeland.” The Russian woman spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning the corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Fuck her!” The oven door was open and the heat caused the woman's hair to catch fire. Despite the fact that the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. All the prisoners working in the crematorium saw this." Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.

To be continued...

The women who escaped from captivity continued to fight against the enemy. In secret message No. 12 dated July 17, 1942, the chief of the security police of the occupied eastern regions to the imperial minister of security of the XVII Military District, in the section “Jews,” it is reported that in Uman “a Jewish doctor was arrested, who previously served in the Red Army and was taken prisoner After escaping from a prisoner of war camp, she took refuge in orphanage in Uman under a false name and practiced medicine. She used this opportunity to gain access to the prisoner of war camp for espionage purposes." Probably, the unknown heroine provided assistance to the prisoners of war.

Women prisoners of war, risking their lives, repeatedly saved their Jewish friends. In Dulag No. 160, Khorol, in a quarry on the territory brick factory There were about 60 thousand prisoners. There was also a group of girls prisoners of war. Of these, seven or eight remained alive by the spring of 1942. In the summer of 1942, they were all shot for harboring a Jewish woman.

In the fall of 1942, in the Georgievsk camp, along with other prisoners, there were several hundred girls prisoners of war. One day, the Germans led identified Jews to execution. Among the doomed was Tsilya Gedaleva. At the last minute, the German officer in charge of the reprisal suddenly said: “Mädchen raus! - The girl is out!” And Tsilya returned to the women’s barracks. Tsila's friends gave her a new name - Fatima, and in the future, according to all documents, she passed as a Tatar.

Military doctor of the 3rd rank Emma Lvovna Khotina was surrounded in the Bryansk forests from September 9 to 20. She was captured. During the next stage, she fled from the village of Kokarevka to the city of Trubchevsk. She hid under someone else's name, often changing apartments. She was helped by her comrades - Russian doctors who worked in the camp infirmary in Trubchevsk. They established contact with the partisans. And when the partisans attacked Trubchevsk on February 2, 1942, 17 doctors, paramedics and nurses left with them. E. L. Khotina became the head of the sanitary service of the partisan association of the Zhitomir region.

Sarah Zemelman - military paramedic, medical service lieutenant, worked in mobile field hospital No. 75 of the Southwestern Front. On September 21, 1941, near Poltava, wounded in the leg, she was captured along with the hospital. The head of the hospital, Vasilenko, handed Sarah documents addressed to Alexandra Mikhailovskaya, the murdered paramedic. There were no traitors among the hospital employees who were captured. Three months later, Sarah managed to escape from the camp. She wandered through forests and villages for a month until, not far from Krivoy Rog, in the village of Vesyye Terny, she was sheltered by the family of veterinarian Ivan Lebedchenko. For more than a year, Sarah lived in the basement of the house. On January 13, 1943, Vesely Terny was liberated by the Red Army. Sarah went to the military registration and enlistment office and asked to go to the front, but she was placed in filtration camp No. 258. They called in for interrogations only at night. Investigators asked how she, a Jew, survived fascist captivity? And only a meeting in the same camp with her hospital colleagues - a radiologist and the chief surgeon - helped her.

S. Zemelman was sent to the medical battalion of the 3rd Pomeranian Division of the 1st Polish Army. Ended the war on the outskirts of Berlin on May 2, 1945. She was awarded three Orders of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and was awarded the Polish Order " Silver cross for merit."

Unfortunately, after being released from the camps, the prisoners faced injustice, suspicion and contempt for them, having gone through the hell of the German camps.

Grunya Grigorieva recalls that the Red Army soldiers who liberated Ravensbrück on April 30, 1945, looked at the girls prisoners of war “... as traitors. This shocked us. We did not expect such a meeting. Ours gave more preference to French women, Polish women - to foreign women.”

After the end of the war, female prisoners of war went through all the torment and humiliation during SMERSH inspections in filtration camps. Alexandra Ivanovna Max, one of the 15 Soviet women liberated in the Neuhammer camp, tells how a Soviet officer in the repatriation camp scolded them: “Shame on you, you surrendered into captivity, you...” And I argued with him: “Oh what were we supposed to do?" And he says: “You should have shot yourself and not surrendered!” And I say: “Where were our pistols?” - “Well, you could, should have hanged yourself, killed yourself. But do not surrender.”

Many front-line soldiers knew what awaited the former prisoners at home. One of the liberated women, N.A. Kurlyak, recalls: “We, 5 girls, were left to work in a Soviet military unit. We kept asking: “Send us home.” We were dissuaded, begged: “Stay a little longer, they will look at you with contempt.” “But we didn’t believe.”

And a few years after the war, a female doctor, a former prisoner, writes in a private letter: “... sometimes I am very sorry that I remained alive, because I always carry this dark stain of captivity. Still, many do not know "What kind of “life” was it, if you can call it life. Many do not believe that we honestly endured the hardships of captivity there and remained honest citizens of the Soviet state."

Being in fascist captivity irreparably affected the health of many women. Most of them stopped having natural women's processes and many never recovered.

Some, transferred from prisoner of war camps to concentration camps, were sterilized. “I did not have children after sterilization in the camp. And so I remained, as it were, crippled... Many of our girls did not have children. So some were abandoned by their husbands because they wanted to have children. But my husband did not abandon me, as is, He says, that’s how we’ll live. And we still live with him.”

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The Red Army soldiers, mostly poorly educated, were characterized by complete ignorance of sexual matters and a rude attitude towards women

“Soldiers of the Red Army do not believe in “individual connections” with German women,” wrote playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary, which he kept during the war in East Prussia. “Nine, ten, twelve at once - they rape them collectively.”

Long columns Soviet troops, who entered East Prussia in January 1945, were an unusual mixture of modern and medieval: tank crews in black leather helmets, Cossacks on shaggy horses with loot tied to their saddles, Lend-Lease Dodges and Studebakers, followed by a second a train consisting of carts. The variety of weapons was fully consistent with the variety of characters of the soldiers themselves, among whom were outright bandits, drunkards and rapists, as well as idealistic communists and representatives of the intelligentsia who were shocked by the behavior of their comrades.

In Moscow, Beria and Stalin were well aware of what was happening from detailed reports, one of which reported: “many Germans believe that all German women remaining in East Prussia were raped by Red Army soldiers.” Numerous examples of gang rapes of “both minors and old women” were given.

Marshall Rokossovsky issued order #006 with the goal of channeling “the feeling of hatred towards the enemy onto the battlefield.” It didn't lead to anything. There were several arbitrary attempts to restore order. The commander of one of the rifle regiments allegedly “personally shot a lieutenant who was lining up his soldiers in front of a German woman who had been knocked to the ground.” But in most cases, either the officers themselves participated in the outrages or the lack of discipline among drunken soldiers armed with machine guns made it impossible to restore order.

Calls for revenge for the Fatherland, which was attacked by the Wehrmacht, were understood as permission to show cruelty. Even young women, soldiers and medical workers, did not oppose it. A 21-year-old girl from the reconnaissance detachment Agranenko said: “Our soldiers behave with the Germans, especially with German women, absolutely correctly.” Some people found this interesting. Thus, some German women recall that Soviet women watched them being raped and laughed. But some were deeply shocked by what they saw in Germany. Natalya Hesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, was a war correspondent. She later recalled: “Russian soldiers raped all German women aged from 8 to 80. It was an army of rapists.”

Booze, including dangerous chemicals stolen from laboratories, played a significant role in this violence. It seems that Soviet soldiers could attack a woman only after getting drunk for courage. But at the same time, they too often got drunk to such a state that they could not complete sexual intercourse and used bottles - some of the victims were mutilated in this way.

The topic of mass atrocities by the Red Army in Germany was taboo for so long in Russia that even now veterans deny that they took place. Only a few spoke about it openly, but without any regrets. The commander of a tank unit recalled: “They all lifted their skirts and lay down on the bed.” He even boasted that “two million of our children were born in Germany.”

The ability of Soviet officers to convince themselves that most of the victims were either satisfied or agreed that this was a fair price to pay for the Germans' actions in Russia is astonishing. A Soviet major told an English journalist at the time: “Our comrades were so hungry for female affection that they often raped sixty-, seventy- and even eighty-year-olds, to their outright surprise, not to say pleasure.”

One can only outline the psychological contradictions. When the raped women of Koenigsberg begged their tormentors to kill them, the Red Army soldiers considered themselves insulted. They answered: “Russian soldiers don’t shoot women. Only the Germans do that.” The Red Army convinced itself that, since it had taken upon itself the role of liberating Europe from fascism, its soldiers had every right to behave as they pleased.

A sense of superiority and humiliation characterized the behavior of most soldiers towards the women of East Prussia. The victims not only paid for the crimes of the Wehrmacht, but also symbolized an atavistic object of aggression - as old as the war itself. As historian and feminist Susan Brownmiller has noted, rape, as a conqueror's right, is directed "against the enemy's women" to emphasize victory. True, after the initial rampage of January 1945, sadism manifested itself less and less. When the Red Army reached Berlin 3 months later, the soldiers were already viewing the German women through the prism of the usual “right of the victors.” The feeling of superiority certainly remained, but it was perhaps an indirect consequence of the humiliations that the soldiers themselves suffered from their commanders and the Soviet leadership as a whole.

Several other factors also played a role. Sexual freedom was widely discussed in the 1920s within the Communist Party, but in the next decade Stalin did everything to ensure that Soviet society became virtually asexual. This had nothing to do with Puritan views Soviet people- the fact is that love and sex did not fit into the concept of “deindividuation” of the individual. Natural desires had to be suppressed. Freud was banned, divorced and adultery were not approved by the Communist Party. Homosexuality became a criminal offense. The new doctrine completely prohibited sex education. In art the image female breast, even covered by clothes, was considered the height of eroticism: it had to be covered by work overalls. The regime demanded that any expression of passion be sublimated into love for the party and for Comrade Stalin personally.

The Red Army men, mostly poorly educated, were characterized by complete ignorance of sexual matters and a rude attitude towards women. Thus, the Soviet state's attempts to suppress the libido of its citizens resulted in what one Russian writer called "barracks erotica," which was significantly more primitive and cruel than even the hardest pornography. All this was mixed with the influence of modern propaganda, which deprives man of his essence, and atavistic primitive impulses, indicated by fear and suffering.

Writer Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent for the advancing Red Army, soon discovered that Germans were not the only victims of rape. Among them were Polish women, as well as young Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians who found themselves in Germany as a displaced labor force. He noted: “Liberated Soviet women often complain that our soldiers rape them. One girl told me in tears: “He was an old man, older than my father.”

The rape of Soviet women nullifies attempts to explain the behavior of the Red Army as revenge for German atrocities on the territory of the Soviet Union. On March 29, 1945, the Komsomol Central Committee notified Malenkov about a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. General Tsygankov reported: “On the night of February 24, a group of 35 soldiers and their battalion commander entered a women’s dormitory in the village of Grütenberg and raped everyone.”

In Berlin, despite Goebbels's propaganda, many women were simply not prepared for the horrors of Russian revenge. Many tried to convince themselves that, although the danger must be great in the countryside, mass rapes could not take place in the city in full view of everyone.

In Dahlem, Soviet officers visited Sister Cunegonde, abbess convent, which housed an orphanage and a maternity hospital. The officers and soldiers behaved impeccably. They even warned that reinforcements were following them. Their prediction came true: nuns, girls, old women, pregnant women and those who had just given birth were all raped without pity.

Within a few days, the custom arose among the soldiers to select their victims by shining torches in their faces. The very process of choice, instead of indiscriminate violence, indicates a certain change. By this time, Soviet soldiers began to view German women not as responsible for Wehrmacht crimes, but as spoils of war.

Rape is often defined as violence that has little to do with sexual desire itself. But this is a definition from the point of view of the victims. To understand the crime, you need to see it from the point of view of the aggressor, especially in the later stages, when “simple” rape has replaced the boundless revelry of January and February.

Many women were forced to "give themselves" to one soldier in the hope that he would protect them from others. Magda Wieland, a 24-year-old actress, tried to hide in a closet but was pulled out by a young soldier from Central Asia. He was so excited by the opportunity to make love to a beautiful young blonde that he came prematurely. Magda tried to explain to him that she agreed to become his girlfriend if he protected her from other Russian soldiers, but he told his comrades about her, and one soldier raped her. Ellen Goetz, Magda's Jewish friend, was also raped. When the Germans tried to explain to the Russians that she was Jewish and that she was being persecuted, they received the answer: “Frau ist Frau” (A woman is a woman - approx. transl.).

Soon the women learned to hide during the evening "hunting hours". Young daughters were hidden in attics for several days. Mothers only went out to fetch water in the early morning so as not to get caught Soviet soldiers sleeping off after drinking. Sometimes the greatest danger came from neighbors who revealed the places where the girls were hiding, thus trying to save their own daughters. Old Berliners still remember the screams at night. It was impossible not to hear them, since all the windows were broken.

According to data from two city hospitals, 95,000-130,000 women were victims of rape. One doctor estimated that out of 100,000 people raped, about 10,000 later died, mostly by suicide. The mortality rate among the 1.4 million raped people in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia was even higher. Although at least 2 million German women were raped, a significant proportion, if not most, were victims of gang rape.

If anyone tried to protect a woman from a Soviet rapist, it was either a father trying to protect his daughter, or a son trying to protect his mother. “13-year-old Dieter Sahl,” neighbors wrote in a letter shortly after the event, “threw his fists at the Russian who was raping his mother right in front of him. All he achieved was that he was shot.”

After the second stage, when women offered themselves to one soldier to protect themselves from the rest, the next stage came - post-war famine - as Susan Brownmiller noted, " thin line separating war rape from war prostitution." Ursula von Kardorf notes that shortly after the surrender of Berlin, the city was filled with women selling themselves for food or the alternative currency of cigarettes. Helke Sander, a German film director, thoroughly who has studied this issue, writes about “a mixture of direct violence, blackmail, calculation and real affection.”

The fourth stage was strange shape cohabitation of Red Army officers with German "occupation wives". Soviet officials became furious when several Soviet officers deserted the army when it was time to return home to stay with their German mistresses.

Even if the feminist definition of rape as solely an act of violence seems simplistic, there is no excuse for male complacency. The events of 1945 clearly show us how thin the veneer of civilization can be if there is no fear of retaliation. They also remind us that male sexuality has dark side, the existence of which we prefer not to remember.

(The Daily Telegraph, UK)

("The Daily Telegraph", UK)

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.

The German occupiers' idea of Soviet women was formed on the basis of Nazi propaganda, which claimed that the vast eastern territory was inhabited by semi-wild, dissolute ladies devoid of intelligence who had lost the concept of human virtues.

Having crossed the border of the USSR, Nazi soldiers were forced to admit that the stereotypes imposed on them by the party did not correspond to reality at all.

Mercy

Among the amazing qualities of Soviet women, the German military especially noted their mercy and lack of hatred towards soldiers of the enemy army.

In the front-line recordings made by Major Küner, there are passages dedicated to peasant women who, despite deprivation and general grief, did not become embittered, but shared their last meager supplies of food with the needy fascists. It is also recorded there that “when we [the Germans] are thirsty during the marches, we go into their huts and they give us milk,” thereby putting the invaders into an ethical impasse.

Chaplain Keeler, who served in the medical unit, by the will of fate, ended up as a guest in the house of 77-year-old grandmother Alexandra, whose heartfelt care for him made him think about metaphysical questions: “She knows that we are fighting against them, and yet she knits socks for me . The feeling of hostility is probably unfamiliar to her. Poor people share their last good with us. Do they do this out of fear or do these people really have an innate sense of self-sacrifice? Or do they do it out of good nature or even love?”

Küner's real bewilderment was caused by the strong maternal instinct Soviet woman, about whom he wrote: “How often have I seen Russian peasant women crying over wounded German soldiers, as if they were their own sons.”

Moral

The real shock of the German occupiers was caused by the high morality of Soviet women. The thesis about the promiscuity of oriental ladies, propagated by fascist propaganda, turned out to be just a myth without foundation.

Wehrmacht soldier Michels, reflecting on this topic, wrote: “What did they tell us about the Russian woman? And how did we find it? I think it's unlikely to be found German soldier, who has visited Russia, who would not have learned to appreciate and respect a Russian woman.”

All representatives of the fair sex, brought to Germany from the occupied territories of the USSR for forced labor, were immediately sent for a medical examination, during which very unexpected details were revealed.

Doctor's assistant Eurich, orderly Gamm, at his village notebook left the following curious note: “The doctor who examined the Russian girls... was deeply impressed by the results of the examination: 99% of girls aged 18 to 35 turned out to be chaste,” and then the addition “he thinks that in Orel it would be impossible to find girls for public Houses..."

Similar data came from various enterprises where Soviet girls were sent, including from the Wolfen factory, whose representatives noted: “One gets the impression that a Russian man pays due attention to a Russian woman, which is ultimately reflected in the moral aspects of life.” .

The writer Ernest Jünger, who fought as part of the German troops, heard from the staff doctor von Grewenitz that the data on sexual immorality oriental women complete deception, he realized that his feelings did not let him down. Endowed with the ability to peer into human souls the writer, describing Russian young ladies, noted “the shine of purity that surrounds their face. Its light does not have the flickering of active virtue, but rather resembles the reflection of moonlight. However, this is precisely why you feel the great power of this light...”

Performance

The German tank general Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, in his memoirs regarding Russian women, noted their “standing, without a doubt, purely physical performance" This trait of their character was also noticed by the German leadership, which decided to use Eastern ladies stolen from the occupied territories as servants in the homes of devoted members of the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany.

The duties of the housekeeper included thorough cleaning of the apartments, which burdened the pampered German Frau and had a bad effect on their precious health.

Cleanliness

One of the reasons for attracting Soviet women to housekeeping was their amazing cleanliness. The Germans burst into rather modest-looking houses civilians, were amazed at their insight folk motives interior decoration and neatness.

The fascist soldiers who were waiting to meet the barbarians were discouraged by the beauty and personal hygiene of Soviet women, which was reported by one of the heads of the Dortmund health department: “I was actually amazed by the good appearance of the workers from the East. The greatest surprise was caused by the teeth of the workers, since so far I have not yet discovered a single case of a Russian woman having bad teeth. Unlike us Germans, they must pay a lot of attention to keeping their teeth in order.”

And chaplain Franz, who, by virtue of his vocation, did not have the right to look at a woman through the eyes of a man, restrainedly stated: “About feminine Russian women (if I can put it that way), I got the impression that with their special inner strength they keep under the moral control of those Russians who can be considered barbarians."

Family bonds

The lies of the fascist agitators, who claimed that the totalitarian authorities Soviet Union completely destroyed the institution of the family, to which the Nazis sang its praises.

From the front-line letters of German soldiers, their relatives learned that women from the USSR were not robots deprived of feelings, but reverent and caring daughters, mothers, wives and grandmothers. Moreover, the warmth and closeness of their family ties could only be envied. At every convenient opportunity, numerous relatives communicate with each other and help each other.

Piety

The fascists were greatly impressed by the deep piety of Soviet women, who, despite the official persecution of religion in the country, managed to maintain a close connection with God in their souls. Moving from one settlement to another, Nazi soldiers discovered many churches and monasteries in which services were held.

Major K. Kühner, in his memoirs, talked about two peasant women he saw who were frantically praying, standing among the ruins of a temple burned by the Germans.

The Nazis were surprised by women prisoners of war who refused to work on the days church holidays, in some places the guards met the religious feelings of the prisoners, and in others a death sentence was imposed for disobedience.

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