The Rape of Berlin: The Untold History of War. Fanatics of the Soviet Army - About the atrocities of the Soviet “liberators” in Europe

May 6th, 2002

(Antony Beevor) " " , Great Britain.

“The 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, on shaggy horses with loot tied to their saddles, Lend-Lease Dodges and Studebakers, followed by a second echelon , 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, they were well aware of what was happening from detailed reports, one of which stated: “many Germans believe that all German women remaining in East Prussia were raped by Red Army soldiers.”

Given numerous examples gang rapes of “both minors and old women.”

Issued order No. 006 with the goal of directing “feelings to 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 to take revenge for the Fatherland, which suffered, 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. Natalia Hesse, close friend 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.”

Ability Soviet officers to convince oneself that most of the victims were either satisfied or agreed that this was a fair price to pay for the actions of the Germans in Russia is surprising. 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 Königsberg begged their tormentors to kill them, they 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 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 as part of Communist Party, but already in the next decade Stalin did everything to make Soviet society virtually asexual. This had nothing to do with the puritanical views of Soviet people - the fact is that love and sex did not fit into the concept of “deindividualization” of the individual. Natural desires had to be suppressed. Freud was banned, divorce 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 soldiers, for the most part, were characterized by complete ignorance of sexual issues 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 most hardcore 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 displaced persons. work 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.”

Rape Soviet women nullify 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 this, 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 the shelter and 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. lane.).

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 a 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, came the next stage - post-war hunger - as Susan Brownmiller noted, "the 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 trading themselves for food or the alternative currency of cigarettes. Helke Sander, a German film director who has studied this issue in depth, writes of "a mixture of direct violence, blackmail, calculation and real affection."

The fourth stage was a strange form of cohabitation between Red Army officers and 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.
____________________________________
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Posts from This Journal by “fascist atrocities” Tag

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Rape during armed conflicts always has military-psychological significance as a means of intimidation and demoralization of the enemy. At the same time, violence against women acted as a manifestation of sexist (i.e. purely male) and racist syndromes, especially strong in large-scale stressful situations.

War violence is different from rape committed in peacetime. Sexual violence in time of war or during armed conflict can have a double meaning if carried out on a large scale. It serves not only to humiliate the individual who experiences it, but also to demonstrate to the people of the enemy state that his political leaders and the army is unable to protect him. Therefore, such acts of violence, unlike those carried out in Everyday life, occur not secretly, but publicly, often even with the forced presence of other people.

In general, there are three features that distinguish military sexual violence from rape committed in peacetime. The first is a public act.. The enemy must see what is happening to his “property,” which is why rapists often rape women in front of their own home. This is an act against the husband (symbolically the father of the nation or the leader of the enemy), and not an act against the woman. The second is gang rape.. Comrades in arms do it in one agreement: everyone must be like the others. This reflects the constant group need to strengthen and reproduce solidarity. In other words, drink together, hang out together, rape together. The third is the murder of a woman after sexual assault.

Documents available to researchers indicate mass violence against women in the occupied territories by Wehrmacht soldiers. However, it is difficult to determine the real scale of sexual crime during the war caused by the occupiers on the territory of the USSR: primarily due to the lack of generalizing sources. Besides, in Soviet time This problem was not emphasized and no records were kept of such victims. Certain statistical data could be provided by women's visits to doctors, but they did not seek help from doctors, fearing the condemnation of society.

Back in January 1942, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. Molotov noted: “There are no boundaries to the people’s anger and indignation, which are caused in the Soviet population and in the Red Army by countless facts of vile violence, vile mockery of women’s honor and mass murders of Soviet citizens and women, which are committed by fascist German officers and soldiers... Everywhere, brutal German bandits are breaking into houses, raping women and girls in front of their relatives and their children, mocking those who were raped...”

On the Eastern Front, group sexual violence against women was quite common among Wehrmacht soldiers. But not only German soldiers did this during the years of occupation; their allies did not disdain such behavior. The Hungarian military especially “distinguished itself” in this, according to witnesses of the occupation. The Soviet partisans did not remain aloof from such crimes.

In Lvov in 1941, 32 garment factory workers were raped and then killed by German stormtroopers. Drunk soldiers dragged Lviv girls and young women into the park named after. Kosciuszko was raped. Jewish women had to endure terrible scenes of sexual humiliation during the pogrom on July 1, 1941 in Lvov. The angry crowd stopped at nothing; women and girls were stripped and driven in their underwear through the streets of the city, which, of course, humiliated their dignity and caused, in addition to physical, psychological trauma. For example, eyewitnesses recounted the following incident: participants in the pogroms stripped a twenty-year-old Jewish girl, stuck a baton in her vagina, and forced her to march past the post office to the prison on Lontskogo Street, where “prison work” was being carried out at that time.

The mass rape of women and girls in the villages of Galicia is mentioned in the report of the Ukrainian rebels for October 1943: “ On October 21, 1943, pacification began in the Dolynshchina. The pacification is carried out by the Sondereinsat SD department of 100 people, composed exclusively of Uzbeks under the leadership of the security police officer in the Valley, the Pole Jarosz. The Uzbek department arrived at about 16:00 in the evening in the village of Pogorilets and started a terrible shooting and wanted to catch people. People began to run wherever they could. All the men ran into the forest. The Uzbeks rushed to the farms and began to shoot and catch chickens and geese, and search from house to house for butter, cheese, eggs, meat and, first of all, moonshine, then they forced the women to cook and bring food to them. After eating well and drinking moonshine, they caught the girls. They raped them where they caught them. There were several cases of rape in the presence of relatives, who were forced to stand in the corners, and their brutal instincts were poured out on their daughters in the most refined way. It is impossible to know the number of rape cases, since everyone is embarrassed to confess. Similar pacification was carried out in the villages of Ilemnya, Grabov and Lopyanka" The reasons for such actions were cited by the rebels as the small number of people willing to travel to Germany from these villages and the actions of partisans in the region.

No less horrific scenes of sexual violence were carried out at Western Ukraine Soviet partisans. This is evidenced by many reports of UPA detachments, however, to illustrate the rape of women by Red partisans, it is still worth citing Soviet sources - they are reliable and, most importantly, objective, because UPA reports and the memories of witnesses to a certain extent could “bend” in this aspect. Documents of the “Ukrainian Headquarters” partisan movement“indicate sexual violence against civilians by the “people's avengers.” An interesting point: in the reports of partisan formations stationed in the Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kiev regions there are few references to the rape of women; they begin to appear with rare frequency during raids in Western Ukraine. This is explained by the attitude of Soviet partisans towards this politically “unreliable” region and the unfriendly perception of the Soviets on the part of the local population. The vast majority of Galicians considered them enemies and supported the Ukrainian rebels. One should not discount the fact that the partisans during the raid were not too worried about their reputation; they understood that, apparently, they would not soon return to the scenes of their crimes. Being in the same territory, it is worth thinking about establishing normal relations with the population in order to be able to receive food or clothing from them. During the raid, all this could have been taken by force.

Sexual violence is described quite thoroughly in a report by former partisans of the formation named after. Budyonny V. Buslaev and N. Sidorenko addressed to the head of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR S. Savchenko. The document states, in particular: “ In the village of Dubovki, near Tarnopol, a woman aged 40-45 was raped by partisans Gardonov, Panasyuk, Mezentsev, detachment commander Bubnov and others. The victim's last name is unknown. In the village of Verkhobuzh, near Brody, sergeant major Mezentsev tried to rape a 65-year-old girl and her mother, took her out into the street at night and demanded consent at gunpoint. He put him against the wall and fired a machine gun over their heads, after which he raped him... In one village, I don’t remember the name, near Snyatin, foreman Mezentsev, getting drunk, pulled out a pistol and tried to rape a girl who ran away, then he raped her grandmother, who was 60 -65 years old... The platoon commander Pavel Bublik personally incited the soldiers to do this, was engaged in selling horses for vodka, which he took back before leaving... He systematically drank, carried out illegal searches on his own and demanded vodka from the population. He always did this with weapons in his hands, shooting in apartments, intimidating the population. In the village of Biskov (in the Carpathian Mountains) in the apartment of the formation headquarters, the headquarters cook shot through the windows, kitchen utensils and the ceiling because he wanted to rape the owner, but she ran away. After which he made his need on the table... The robberies were carried out, of course, during searches under the pretext of whether there were “spies” or “Banderaites”, and searches, as a rule, were carried out in places where there could be watches and other valuables. Things like watches, razors, rings, expensive suits were simply taken away without appeal. About our approach partisan unit the population usually knew 30-40 km away. And in last days one could come across villages left with only grandfathers, or even empty houses».

Of course, the leadership of the NKVD demanded an explanation from the command of the Budennovsky formation. In the report, the commander of the “For Kyiv” detachment, Captain Makarov, explained everything simply. He denies all the facts, and accused the partisans who wrote the note of treason (the complainants left the detachment and went to the rear of the Red Army) and connections with Bandera. By the way, this is a fairly common type of unsubscribe from commanders partisan detachments if they are accused of looting, drunkenness or sexual violence. (It’s a paradox - it turned out that Makarov did not suspect that there were two Banderaites in his detachment, and “he saw the light” only when they wrote a memo about violations in the unit). The matter was probably hushed up. At least, it was not possible to trace its further course due to the lack of documents indicating the punishments imposed on the defendants.

As we can see, during the war, women often became victims of rape by soldiers of the opposing sides. In the post-war period, it was very difficult for them to return to a full life. After all, in the USSR they did not receive their due medical care, in cases of pregnancy they could not get rid of the fetus - abortion was prohibited by law in the Soviet Union. Many, unable to bear it, committed suicide; some moved to another place of residence, thus trying to protect themselves from gossip or people’s sympathy and try to forget what they had experienced.

March 29th, 2015 , 09:49 pm

I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the documents carefully selected in materials about the “Atrocities of the Liberators” .

We have no moral right to honor an army that has completely dishonored itself through total rape of children in front of their parents, mass murder and torture of innocent civilians, robbery and legalized looting.

The “liberators” began to engage in atrocities against the population (rape and torture followed by the murder of civilians) in Crimea. Thus, the commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front, General of the Army Petrov, in order No. 074 of June 8, 1944, condemned the “outrageous antics” of the soldiers of his front on the Soviet territory of Crimea, “even reaching armed robberies and the murder of local residents.”

In Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, the atrocities of the “liberators” increased, even more so in the Baltic countries, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia, where acts of violence against the local population assumed horrific proportions. But complete terror came on the territory of Poland. Mass rapes of Polish women and girls began there, and the military leadership, which had a negative attitude towards the Poles, turned a blind eye to this.

Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to explain these atrocities as “revenge on the Germans for the occupation.” The Poles did not participate in this occupation, but they were raped to almost the same extent as the Germans. Therefore, the explanation must be sought elsewhere.

Not only soldiers and officers, but also the highest ranks of the Soviet army - the generals - tainted themselves with sexual crimes (and not only in Germany, but even earlier in Poland). Many Soviet “liberator” generals raped local girls. A typical example: Major General Berestov, commander of the 331st rifle division, on February 2, 1945, in Petershagen near Preussisch-Eilai, with one of the officers accompanying him, he raped the daughter of a local peasant woman, whom he forced to serve himself, as well as a Polish girl (p. 349 in the cited book).

In general, almost all Soviet generals in East Germany were involved in sexual crimes in a particularly serious form: rape of children, rape with violence and mutilation (cutting off breasts, torturing the female genitals with all sorts of objects, gouging out eyes, cutting out tongues, nailing nails, etc.) - and the subsequent murder of the victims. Jochaim Hoffmann, on the basis of documents, names the names of the main persons guilty of or involved in such crimes: these are Marshal Zhukov, generals: Telegin, Kazakov, Rudenko, Malinin, Chernyakhovsky, Khokhlov, Razbiitsev, Glagolev, Karpenkov, Lakhtarin, Ryapasov, Andreev, Yastrebov , Tymchik, Okorokov, Berestov, Papchenko, Zaretsky, etc.

All of them either personally raped German and Polish women, or participated in this, allowing and encouraging this with their instructions to the troops and covering up these sexual crimes, which is a criminal offense and under the Criminal Code of the USSR an article of execution.

According to the most minimal estimates of current research in Germany, in the winter of 1944 and spring of 1945, Soviet soldiers and officers killed 120,000 civilians in the territory they occupied (usually with rape of women and children, with torture) (these were not those who died during the fighting!). Another 200,000 innocent civilians died in Soviet camps, more than 250,000 died during the deportation into Soviet labor slavery that began on February 3, 1945. Plus, infinitely many died from the occupation policy of “the blockade - as revenge for the blockade of Leningrad” (in one Koenigsberg they died of hunger and inhuman conditions“artificial blockade” during the occupation of 90,000 people for six months).

Let me remind you that since October 1944, Stalin allowed military personnel to send parcels with trophies home (generals - 16 kg, officers - 10 kg, sergeants and privates - 5 kg). As letters from the front prove, this was taken to mean that “the looting was unequivocally authorized by the senior leadership.”

At the same time, the leadership allowed the soldiers to rape all women. Thus, the commander of the 153rd Infantry Division, Eliseev, announced to the troops in early October 1944:

“We are going to East Prussia. Red Army soldiers and officers are granted the following rights: 1) Destroy any German. 2) Seizure of property. 3) Rape of women. 4) Robbery. 5) ROA soldiers are not taken prisoner. It's not worth wasting a single cartridge on them. They are beaten to death or trampled underfoot.” (BA-MA, RH 2/2684, 11/18/1944)

The main looter in the Soviet army was Marshal G.K. Zhukov, who accepted the surrender of the German Wehrmacht. When he fell out of favor with Stalin and was transferred to the post of commander of the Odessa Military District, Deputy Defense Minister Bulganin, in a letter to Stalin in August 1946, reported that customs authorities had detained 7 railway cars “with a total of 85 boxes of Albin furniture May" from Germany", which were to be transported to Odessa for Zhukov’s personal needs. In another report to Stalin dated January 1948, State Security Colonel General Abakumov reported that during a “secret search” of Zhukov’s Moscow apartment and his dacha, a large amount of stolen property was discovered. Specifically, among other things, the following were listed: 24 pieces of gold watches, 15 gold necklaces with pendants, gold rings and other jewelry, 4000 m of wool and silk fabrics, more than 300 sable, fox and astrakhan skins, 44 valuable carpets and tapestries, partly from Potsdam and others locks, 55 expensive paintings, as well as boxes of china, 2 boxes of silverware and 20 hunting rifles.

On January 12, 1948, Zhukov acknowledged this looting in a letter to Politburo member Zhdanov, but for some reason forgot to write about it in his memoirs “Memories and Reflections.”

Sometimes the sadism of the “liberators” seems generally difficult to understand. Here, for example, is just one of the episodes listed below. As soon as Soviet units invaded German territory on October 26, 1944, unfathomable atrocities began to be committed there. Soldiers and officers of the 93rd Rifle Corps of the 43rd Army of the 1st Baltic Front in one estate nailed 5 children by their tongues to a large table and left them in this position to die. For what? Which of the “liberators” came up with such a sadistic execution of children? And were these “liberators” generally mentally normal, and not sadistic psychos?

An excerpt from Joachim Hoffmann’s book “Stalin’s War of Extermination” (M., AST, 2006. pp. 321-347).

Incited by Soviet military propaganda and the command structures of the Red Army, soldiers of the 16th Guards Rifle Division of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps of the 11th Guards Army in the last ten days of October 1944, they began to slaughter the peasant population in the ledge south of Gumbinnen. At this point, the Germans, having recaptured it, were able, as an exception, to conduct more detailed investigations. In Nemmersdorf alone, at least 72 men, women and children were killed, women and even girls were raped before this, several women were nailed to the barn gates. Not far from there, he fell at the hands of Soviet killers. big number Germans and French prisoners of war who were still in German captivity. Everywhere in the surrounding area populated areas The bodies of brutally murdered residents were found - for example, in Bahnfeld, the Teichhof estate, Alt Wusterwitz (the remains of several people burned alive were also found in a stable there) and in other places. “The corpses of civilians lay in masses along the road and in the courtyards of houses ...,” said Oberleutnant Dr. Umberger, “in particular, I saw many women who ... were raped and then killed with shots to the back of the head, some of them were lying nearby and also killed children.”

Gunner Erich Cherkus from the 121st Artillery Regiment reported his observations at Schillmäischen near Heidekrug in the Memel region, where units of the 93rd Rifle Corps of the 43rd Army of the 1st Baltic Front invaded on October 26, 1944, during his military judicial interrogation the following: “Near the barn I found my father lying face to the ground with a bullet hole in the back of his head... In one room lay a man and a woman, their hands tied behind their backs and both tied to each other with one cord... In another estate we we saw 5 children with tongues nailed to a large table. Despite an intense search, I did not find a trace of my mother... On the way we saw 5 girls tied with one cord, their clothes were almost completely removed, their backs were severely torn. It looked like the girls were being dragged quite a distance along the ground. In addition, we saw several completely crushed convoys along the road.”

It is impossible to strive to display all the terrible details, or, especially, to present a complete picture of what happened. So let a number of selected examples give an idea of the actions of the Red Army in the eastern provinces even after the resumption of the offensive in January 1945. The Federal Archives, in its report on “expulsion and crimes during expulsion” of May 28, 1974, published exact data from the so-called summary sheets about atrocities in two selected districts, namely the East Prussian border district of Johannisburg and the Silesian border district of Oppeln [now Opole, Poland]. According to these official investigations, in the Johannisburg district, in the sector of the 50th Army of the 2nd Belorussian Front, along with other countless murders, the murder on January 24, 1945 of 120 (according to other sources - 97) civilians, as well as several German soldiers, stood out and French prisoners of war from a column of refugees along the Nickelsberg - Herzogdorf road south of Arys [now Orzysz, Poland]. Near the Stollendorf-Arys road, 32 refugees were shot, and near the Arys-Driegelsdorf road near Schlagakrug on February 1, on the orders of a Soviet officer, about 50 people, mostly children and youth, snatched from their parents and loved ones in refugee wagons. Near Gross Rosen (Gross Rozensko), the Soviets burned about 30 people alive in a field barn at the end of January 1945. One witness saw “one corpse after another lying” near the road to Arys. In Arys itself, “a large number of executions” were carried out, apparently at a collection point, and in the torture basement of the NKVD, “torture of the cruelest kind” was carried out, including death.

In the Silesian district of Oppeln, soldiers of the 32nd and 34th Guards Rifle Corps of the 5th Guards Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front killed at least 1,264 German civilians by the end of January 1945. Russian ostarbeiters, most of them forcibly deported to work in Germany, and Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity also partially escaped their fate. In Oppeln they were rounded up in a public place and killed after a brief propaganda speech. A similar thing is attested about the Kruppamühle Ostarbeiter camp near the Malapane [Mala Panev] river in Upper Silesia. On January 20, 1945, after Soviet tanks reached the camp, several hundred Russian men, women and children were gathered here and, as “traitors” and “fascist collaborators,” were shot with machine guns or crushed by tank tracks. In Gottesdorf, on January 23, Soviet soldiers shot about 270 residents, including small children and 20-40 members of the Marian Brotherhood. In Karlsruhe [now Pokuj, Poland] 110 residents were shot, including residents of the Anninsky shelter, in Kuppe - 60-70 residents, among them also residents of a nursing home and a priest who wanted to protect women from rape, etc. in other places . But Johannisburg and Oppeln were only two of many districts in the eastern provinces of the German Reich occupied by Red Army units in 1945.

Based on reports from field command services, the department of “foreign armies of the East” General Staff ground forces compiled several lists of “violations international law and atrocities committed by the Red Army in the occupied German territories,” which, although also do not give the overall picture, document many Soviet atrocities with a certain degree of reliability based on fresh traces of events. Thus, Army Group A reported on January 20, 1945 that all residents of the newly occupied settlements of Reichtal [Rychtal] and Glausze near Namslau [now Namyslow, Poland] had been shot by Soviet soldiers on the 9th mechanized corps 3rd Guards tank army. January 22, 1945, according to a report from Army Group Center, near Grünhain in the Wehlau district [now. Znamensk, Russia] tanks of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps “overtook and fired upon tank shells and machine-gun bursts" a column of refugees 4 kilometers long, "mostly women and children", and "the rest were killed by machine gunners." A similar thing happened on the same day not far from there, near Gertlauken, where 50 people from a column of refugees were killed by Soviet soldiers, partially shot in the back of the head.

In West Prussia, in an unspecified locality, at the end of January, a long convoy of refugees was also overtaken by advanced Soviet tank detachments. According to several female survivors, the tank crews (5th Guards Tank Army) doused the horses and carts with gasoline and set them on fire: “Some of the civilians, most of whom were women and children, jumped off the carts and tried to escape, some of them already looking like they were alive.” torches. After this, the Bolsheviks opened fire. Only a few managed to escape." Similarly, in Plonen at the end of January 1945, tanks of the 5th Guards Tank Army attacked and shot at a column of refugees. All women from 13 to 60 years old from this settlement, located near Elbing [now Elblag, Poland], were continuously raped by the Red Army “in the most brutal way.” German soldiers from a tank reconnaissance company found one woman with her lower abdomen torn open by a bayonet, and another young woman on a wooden plank with her face crushed. Destroyed and looted refugee convoys on both sides of the road, and the corpses of passengers lying nearby in a roadside ditch, were also discovered in Meislatain near Elbing.

The deliberate destruction by caterpillars or shelling of convoys of refugees everywhere stretching along the roads and clearly recognizable as such was reported everywhere from the eastern provinces, for example, from the area of operations of the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army. In the Waldrode district on January 18 and 19, 1945, in several places similar columns were stopped, attacked and partially destroyed, “falling women and children were shot or crushed” or, as another report says, “most of the women and children were killed.” Soviet tanks fired cannons and machine guns at German hospital transport near Waldrode, as a result of which “out of 1,000 wounded, only 80 were saved.” In addition, reports of attacks Soviet tanks There are refugee columns from Schauerkirch, Gombin, where “approx. 800 women and children,” from Dietfurt-Fihlene and other localities. Several such convoys were overtaken on January 19, 1945, and near Brest, south of Thorn [now Brzesc-Kujawski and Torun, Poland, respectively], in the then Warthegau, the passengers, mostly women and children, were shot. According to a report dated February 1, 1945, in this area over the course of three days, “out of about 8,000 people, approximately 4,500 women and children were killed, the rest were completely scattered, it can be assumed that most of them were destroyed in a similar way.”

SILESIA

Near the Reich border, west of Wielun, Soviet soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front doused the wagons of a refugee convoy with gasoline and burned them along with the passengers. On the roads lay countless bodies of German men, women and children, some in a mutilated state - with their throats cut, their tongues cut out, their bellies ripped open. Also west of Wielun, 25 employees (front-line workers) of the Todt Organization were shot by tank crews of the 3rd Guards Tank Army. All the men were shot in Heinersdorf, the women were raped by Soviet soldiers, and near Kunzendorf, 25-30 men from the Volkssturm received bullets in the back of the head. In the same way, in Glausch near Namslau, 18 people, “including men from the Volkssturm and nurses,” died at the hands of murderers, soldiers of the 59th Army. At Beatenhof near Olau [now Olawa, Poland], after re-occupying it, all the men were found shot in the back of the head. The criminals were soldiers of the 5th Guards Army.

In Grünberg [now Zielona Gora, Poland] 8 families were killed by soldiers of the 9th Guards Tank Corps. The Tannenfeld estate near Grottkau [now Grodkow, Poland] became the scene of terrible crimes. There, Red Army soldiers from the 229th Rifle Division raped two girls and then killed them after abusing them. One man's eyes were gouged out and his tongue was cut out. The same thing happened to a 43-year-old Polish woman, who was then tortured to death.

In Alt-Grottkau, soldiers of the same division killed 14 prisoners of war, cut off their heads, gouged out their eyes and crushed them under tanks. The Red Army soldiers of the same rifle division were also responsible for the atrocities in Schwarzengrund near Grottkau. They raped women, including convent sisters, shot the peasant Kalert, ripped open his wife's stomach, cut off her hands, shot the peasant Christoph and his son, as well as a young girl. On the Eisdorf estate near Merzdorf, Soviet soldiers from the 5th Guards Army gouged out the eyes of an elderly man and an elderly woman, apparently a married couple, and cut off their noses and fingers. Eleven wounded Luftwaffe soldiers were found brutally murdered nearby. Similarly, at Güterstadt near Glogau [now Pugow, Poland], 21 German prisoners of war were discovered killed by Red Army soldiers from the 4th Panzer Army. In the village of Heslicht near Striegau [now Strzegom, Poland], all the women were “raped one by one” by Red Army soldiers from the 9th Mechanized Corps. Maria Heinke found her husband, still showing faint signs of life, dying in a Soviet guardhouse. A medical examination revealed that his eyes were gouged out, his tongue was cut off, his arm was broken several times and his skull was crushed.

Soldiers of the 7th Guards Tank Corps in Ossig near Striegau raped women, killed 6-7 girls, shot 12 peasants and committed similar serious crimes at Hertwieswaldau near Jauer [now Jawor, Poland]. In Liegnitz [now Legnica, Poland], the corpses of numerous civilians were discovered, shot by Soviet soldiers from the 6th Army. In the town of Kostenblut near Neumarkt [now Sroda Slaska, Poland], captured by units of the 7th Guards Tank Corps, women and girls were raped, including a mother of 8 children who was in labor. A brother who tried to intercede on her behalf was shot dead. All foreign prisoners of war, as well as 6 men and 3 women, were shot. The sisters from the Catholic hospital did not escape mass rape.

Pilgramsdorf near Goldberg [now Zlotoryja, Poland] was the scene of numerous murders, rapes and arson by soldiers of the 23rd Guards motorized rifle brigade. In Beralsdorf, a suburb of Lauban [now Luban, Poland], the 39 remaining women were dishonored “in the most base manner” by Soviet soldiers from the 7th Guards Tank Corps, one woman was shot in the lower jaw, she was locked in a cellar and after a few days , when she was seriously ill with a fever, three Red Army soldiers, one after another, “raped her at gunpoint in the most brutal way.”

BRANDENBURG (mainly Neumark and Sternberger Land)

A general idea of the treatment of the population in the eastern parts of the province of Brandenburg is given by the report of Russian agents Danilov and Chirshin, sent by the 103rd front intelligence department from February 24 to March 1, 1945. According to him, all Germans aged 12 years and older were mercilessly used construction of fortifications, the unused part of the population was sent to the East, and the elderly were doomed to starvation. In Sorau [now Żary, Poland] Danilov and Chirshin saw “a mass of bodies of women and men... killed (stabbed to death) and shot (shots in the back of the head and in the heart), lying in the streets, in courtyards and in houses.” According to one Soviet officer, who was himself outraged by the scale of the terror, “all women and girls, regardless of age, were mercilessly raped.” And in Skampe near Zullichau (now Skampe and Sulechow, Poland, respectively), Soviet soldiers from the 33rd Army launched “terrible bloody terror.” In almost all the houses lay “strangled bodies of women, children and old people.” Not far beyond Skampe, near the road to Renchen [Benchen, now Zbonszyn, Poland], the corpses of a man and a woman were found. The woman’s stomach was torn open, the fetus was torn out, and the hole in the stomach was filled with sewage and straw. Nearby were the corpses of three hanged men from the Volkssturm.

In Kai near Zullichau, soldiers of the same army shot the wounded in the back of the head, as well as women and children from one of the convoys. The city of Neu-Benchen [now Zbonsiczek, Poland] was plundered by the Red Army and then deliberately set on fire. Near the Schwiebus [now Swiebodzin, Poland] - Frankfurt road, Red Army soldiers from the 69th Army shot civilians, including women and children, so that the corpses lay “on top of each other.” At Alt-Drewitz near Kalenzig, soldiers of the 1st Guards Tank Army shot a medical major, a major and corpsmen and simultaneously opened fire on American prisoners of war who were being returned from the Alt-Drewitz base camp, wounding 20-30 of them and killing an unknown number . Along the road in front of Gross-Blumberg (on the Oder), in groups of 5-10, lay the bodies of about 40 German soldiers, shot in the head or back of the head and then robbed. In Reppen, all the men from a passing refugee convoy were shot by Soviet soldiers from the 19th Army, and the women were raped. At Gassen near Sommerfeld [now respectively Jasien and Lubsko, Poland], tanks of the 6th Guards Mechanized Corps opened indiscriminate fire on civilians. In Massina near Landsberg [now Gorzow Wielkopolski, Poland], soldiers of the 5th Shock Army shot an unknown number of residents, raped women and minors, and removed looted property. In an unknown village near Landsberg, soldiers of the 331st Infantry Division shot 8 male civilians, having previously robbed them.

When units of the Soviet 11th Tank Corps and 4th Guards Rifle Corps suddenly burst into the city of Lebus, located west of the Oder, in early February, the plunder of the inhabitants immediately began, and a number of civilians were shot dead. The Red Army soldiers raped women and girls, two of whom they beat with rifle butts. The unexpected breakthrough of Soviet troops towards the Oder and in places beyond the Oder became a nightmare for countless residents and German soldiers. In Gross-Neuendorf (on the Oder), 10 German prisoners of war were locked in a barn and killed with machine guns by Soviet soldiers (apparently from the 1st Guards Tank Army). In Reitwein and Trettin, military personnel (apparently from the 8th Guards Army) shot all German soldiers, police officers and other “fascists,” as well as entire families in whose houses Wehrmacht soldiers may have found refuge. In Wiesenau near Frankfurt, two women, aged 65 and 55, were found dying after being raped for hours. In Czeden [now Czedynia, Poland], a Soviet woman in an officer's uniform from the 5th Guards Tank Corps shot and killed a merchant couple. And in Genshmar, Soviet soldiers killed a landowner, an estate manager and three workers.

The strike group of the Vlasov Army, led by ROA Colonel Sakharov, on February 9, 1945, with the support of the Germans, again occupied the settlements of Neulevin and Kerstenbruch located in the bend of the Oder. According to a German report dated March 15, 1945, the population of both points was “subjected to the most terrible outrages” and was then “under the terrible impression of bloody Soviet terror.” In Neuleveen, the burgomaster and a Wehrmacht soldier who was on leave were found shot dead. In one shed lay the corpses of three desecrated and murdered women, two of whom had their legs bound. One German woman lay shot dead at the door of her house. An elderly couple was strangled to death. The perpetrators, as in the nearby village of Noybarnim, were identified as soldiers of the 9th Guards Tank Corps. In Neubarnim, 19 residents were found dead. The hotel owner's body was mutilated and her legs were tied with wire. Here, as in other settlements, women and girls were desecrated, and in Kerstenbruch even a 71-year-old woman with amputated legs was desecrated. The picture of violent crimes by Soviet troops in these villages of the Oder bend, as elsewhere in the German eastern territories, complemented by robberies and deliberate destruction.

Pomerania

There were only relatively few reports from Pomerania in February 1945, since the breakthrough battles there only really began at the end of the month. But the report of the Georgian lieutenant Berakashvili, who, having been sent by the Georgian communications headquarters to the cadet school in Posen [now Poznan, Poland], there, together with other officers of volunteer units, participated in the defense of the fortress and made his way towards Stettin [now Szczecin, Poland], nevertheless conveys some impressions of the territory southeast of Stettin. …The roads were often lined with soldiers and civilians shot in the back of the head, “always half-naked and, in any case, without boots.” Lieutenant Berakashvili witnessed the brutal rape of a peasant’s wife in the presence of screaming children near Schwarzenberg and found traces of looting and destruction everywhere. The city of Ban [now Banje, Poland] was “terribly destroyed”; on its streets lay “many corpses of civilians,” which, as the Red Army soldiers explained, were killed by them “in the form of retribution.”

The situation in the settlements around Pyritz [now Pyrzyce, Poland] fully confirmed these observations. In Billerbeck they shot the owner of the estate, as well as old and sick people, raped women and girls from the age of 10, robbed apartments, and drove away the remaining residents. On the Brederlov estate, Red Army soldiers desecrated women and girls, one of whom was then shot, as was the wife of a fugitive Wehrmacht vacationer. In Köselitz, the district commander, a peasant, and a lieutenant on leave were killed; in Eichelshagen, a low-level leader of the NSDAP and a peasant family of 6 were killed. The criminals in all cases were soldiers of the 61st Army. A similar thing happened in the villages around Greifenhagen [now Gryfino, Poland], south of Stettin. Thus, in Edersdorf, soldiers of the 2nd Guards Tank Army shot 10 evacuated women and a 15-year-old boy, finished off the living victims with bayonets and pistol shots, and also “cut out” entire families with small children.

In Rohrsdorf, Soviet soldiers shot many residents, including a wounded military leaver. Women and girls were desecrated and then partially killed as well. In Gross-Silber near Kallis, Red Army soldiers from the 7th Guards Cavalry Corps raped a young woman with a broomstick, cut off her left breast and crushed her skull. In Preussisch Friedland, Soviet soldiers from the 52nd Guards Rifle Division shot 8 men and 2 women, and raped 34 women and girls. The terrible event was reported by the commander of the German engineering tank battalion of the 7th tank division. At the end of February 1945, Soviet officers from the 1st (or 160th) Infantry Division north of Konitz drove several children aged 10-12 years into a minefield for reconnaissance. German soldiers heard the “piteous cries” of children seriously wounded by exploding mines, “bleeding helplessly from their torn bodies.”

EAST PRUSSIA

And in East Prussia, for which they fought heavy fighting, in February 1945, the atrocities continued with unabated force... Thus, along the road near Landsberg, soldiers of the 1st Guards Tank Army killed German soldiers and civilians with bayonets, rifle butts and point-blank shots and partially massacred them. In Landsberg, Soviet soldiers from the 331st Rifle Division herded the stunned population, including women and children, into basements, set fire to houses and began shooting at people fleeing in panic. Many were burned alive. In a village near the Landsberg-Heilsberg road, soldiers of the same rifle division kept 37 women and girls locked up in a basement for 6 days and nights, partially chained them there and, with the participation of officers, raped them many times every day. Due to desperate cries, two of these Soviet officers cut out the tongues of two women with a “semi-circular knife” in front of everyone. Two other women had their folded hands nailed to the floor with a bayonet. German tank soldiers ultimately managed to free only a few of the unfortunates; 20 women died from abuse.

In Hanshagen near Preussisch-Eylau [now Bagrationovsk, Russia], Red Army soldiers from the 331st Rifle Division shot two mothers who resisted the rape of their daughters, and a father whose daughter was at the same time dragged from the kitchen and raped by a Soviet officer. Further, they were killed: a teacher couple with 3 children, an unknown refugee girl, an innkeeper and a farmer whose 21-year-old daughter was raped. In Petershagen near Preussisch-Eylau, soldiers of this division killed two men and a 16-year-old boy named Richard von Hoffmann, subjecting women and girls to brutal violence.

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

The long columns of Soviet troops that 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 strapped to their saddles, Lend-Lease Dodges and Studebakers, followed by a second echelon 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 “a 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.”

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 the puritanical views of Soviet people - the fact is that love and sex did not fit into the concept of “deindividualization” of the individual. Natural desires had to be suppressed. Freud was banned, divorce and adultery were not approved by the Communist Party. Homosexuality became a criminal offense. The new doctrine completely prohibited sex education. In art, the depiction of a woman’s breasts, even covered by clothing, 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, the abbess of a convent that 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.

Soon the women learned to hide during the evening "hunting hours". Young daughters were hidden in attics for several days. Mothers went out for water only in the early morning, so as not to get caught by 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.

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.”

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Special archive InoSMI.Ru

(The Daily Telegraph, UK)

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Women captured by the Germans. How the Nazis abused captured Soviet women

Second World War rolled through humanity like a skating rink. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the warring parties did truly monstrous things, justifying everything by war.

Carefully! The material presented in this collection may seem unpleasant or intimidating.

Of course, the Nazis were especially distinguished in this regard, and this does not even take into account the Holocaust. There are many documented and outright fictional stories about what German soldiers did.

One of the high-ranking German officers recalled the briefings they received. It is interesting that there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”

Most did just that, but among the dead they often find the bodies of women in the uniform of the Red Army - soldiers, nurses or orderlies, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.

Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had the Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And despite everything, they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.

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But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a bloody mess. The Nazis did much the same with female partisans. Before execution, they could be stripped naked and for a long time keep in the cold.

Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Germans, part 1

Of course, the captives were constantly raped.

Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Finns and Germans, part 2. Jewish women

And if the highest German officials It was forbidden to enter into intimate relationships with captives, then ordinary privates had more freedom in this matter.

And if the girl did not die after the whole company had used her, then she was simply shot.

The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and one of senior officials camp took her to his place as a servant. Although this did not save much from rape.

In this regard, the most cruel place was camp No. 337. There, prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were put into barracks at a time, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were exterminated in Stalag every day.

Women were subjected to the same torture as men, if not much worse. In terms of torture, the Spanish Inquisition could envy the Nazis.

Soviet soldiers knew exactly what was happening in the concentration camps and the risks of captivity. Therefore, no one wanted or intended to give up. They fought to the end, until death; she was the only winner in those terrible years.

Happy memory to all those who died in the war...