April 11 is the day of liberation of concentration camp prisoners. International Day for the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps

Humanity preserves many mournful dates and horrific acts, many of which occurred in the 20th century, which included two world wars at once. One of the most terrible pages of human history was the history of fascist concentration camps. It was not for nothing that the concentration camps were called death camps; from 1933 to 1945, about 20 million people from 30 countries of the world passed through them, of which about 12 million died, while every fifth prisoner was a child. This is a special date for our country, since about 5 million of those killed were citizens of the USSR.

In memory of the victims and survivors, the International Day of the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps is celebrated annually on April 11 all over the world. This date was not chosen and approved by the UN by chance. It was installed in memory of the international uprising of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp, which occurred on April 11, 1945. The International Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946 recognized that the imprisonment of civilians of foreign countries, as well as the forced use of their labor in the interests of Germany, was not only a war crime of the Hitler regime, but also a crime against humanity. Backbreaking slave labor, terrible living conditions, beatings and abuse from guards, and failure to provide medical care had a very negative impact on the health, life expectancy, and psycho-emotional state of the victims of Nazism.

Concentration camps are places where large masses of people were detained on political, racial, social, religious and other grounds. In total, more than 14 thousand concentration camps, prisons and ghettos operated in Germany and the countries it occupied. Practical and disciplined Germans used these qualities to the most horrifying ends, creating conveyor belts of death that worked like clockwork. According to the SS men, each prisoner whose life expectancy in the concentration camps was less than a year brought the Nazi regime almost 1,500 Reichsmarks in net profit. For Nazi Germany, concentration camps were not only a method of intimidation, an indicator of dominance, material for various studies and suppliers of free labor, but also a source of income. The most terrible components were processed and used for production purposes: hair, leather, clothing, jewelry of murdered prisoners, even gold crowns from teeth.

Main gate of the Birkenau camp (Auschwitz 2)

The first concentration camp was established in Germany in March 1933 in Dachau. By the beginning of World War II, there were already approximately 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists in concentration camps and prisons in Germany. In subsequent years, Hitler's Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of the European countries it occupied, which were turned into places for the organized, systematic murder of millions of people.

Among the world-famous death camps of Hitler Germany today, in which tens and hundreds of thousands of prisoners were held and died, are Auschwitz (Auschwitz) - 4 million prisoners, Majdanek - 1.38 million prisoners, Mauthausen - 122 thousand prisoners, Sachsenhausen - 100 thousand prisoners, Ravensbrück - 92.7 thousand prisoners, Treblinka - 80 thousand prisoners, Stutthof - 80 thousand prisoners. The number of children under the age of 14 in these concentration camps was 12-15%. Tens of thousands of victims were also counted in the concentration camps that were created by the Nazis on the territory of the USSR - Salaspils, Alytus, Ozarichi, the 9th Fort of Kaunas. The design capacity of destruction in the Auschwitz concentration camp alone was up to 30 thousand people per day.

One of the largest Nazi concentration camps was Buchenwald, which began operating on July 19, 1937, near the German city of Weimar. By 1945, this camp already had 66 branches and external work teams. The largest of them were "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen, Germany), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld, Germany) and "Ohrdruf" (in Thuringia, Germany). During the years of the camp's existence from 1937 to 1945, approximately 239 thousand prisoners passed through it. Initially these were German political prisoners, but later during the Second World War representatives of a wide variety of nationalities were held here. In the Buchenwald camp, prisoners were subjected to various criminal medical experiments, prisoners were exploited by the owners of many large industrial enterprises. In total, more than 56 thousand people of 18 nationalities were killed in Buchenwald, including 19 thousand Soviet prisoners of war.

Liberated prisoners of Buchenwald

Especially many prisoners died in a branch of the camp called “Dora”, where V-aircraft missiles were produced in underground rooms and workshops. The camp was located near the city of Nordhausen. According to the plans of the Nazis, none of its prisoners, who were involved in the construction of a secret underground plant and then worked in its workshops, were to come to the surface alive. All of them were considered carriers of state secrets and were included in special lists of the Main Directorate of Reich Security of the SS. When the underground enterprise started operating, there were two conveyors operating on it: from one, projectile planes came off, from the other, several trucks transported the corpses of prisoners every day, which were then burned in the Buchenwald crematorium.

On April 11, 1945, Buchenwald prisoners, who learned that Allied troops were approaching the camp, organized a successful uprising, disarming and capturing approximately 200 camp guards and taking control of the concentration camp into their own hands. On April 13, American troops entered the camp; it was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the Americans. On April 16, 1945, by order of the American commandant of the camp, 1,000 Weimar residents were brought to it so that they could personally see the Nazi atrocities. The Buchenwald prisoners who carried out a successful uprising thereby saved themselves from destruction, since the day before the Nazi authorities had already given an order for the physical extermination of all prisoners remaining in the camp.

Earlier, on January 27, 1945, Red Army troops liberated the first and largest of Hitler’s concentration camps, Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau), which was located 70 kilometers from the Polish city of Krakow. In this place of evil and inhumanity, approximately 1,300,000 people were killed from 1941 to 1945 (estimates vary from 1.1 to 1.6 million people), of whom 1,000,000 were Jews. Already in 1947, a museum complex was opened on the territory of the camp, which is now included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It was in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 that the prisoner's number was tattooed on the arm. For small children and infants, individual numbers were pricked on the thigh. According to the Auschwitz State Museum, this concentration camp was the only Nazi camp in which prisoners were tattooed with personal numbers.

Display cases with shoes taken from prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp

One of the most terrible pages in the history of Auschwitz was the medical experiments carried out by SS doctors, including on children. For example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a quick method of biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10. And Dr. Joseph Mengele, as part of anthropological and genetic experiments, carried out experiments on children with physical disabilities and twin children. In addition, various experiments were carried out in Auschwitz with the use of new drugs and medicines on prisoners, various toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin transplants and other experiments were carried out.

The Red Army soldiers who liberated Auschwitz found approximately 7 thousand kilograms of prisoners' hair, packed in bags, unburnt in German warehouses. These were the remains that the camp authorities did not manage to sell or send to factories. An analysis that was later carried out at the Institute of Forensic Sciences showed that the hair contained traces of hydrocyanic acid, a poisonous component that was included in the composition of the Zyklon B gas. German companies made tailor's beads from the human hair of concentration camp prisoners.

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Union of Former Juvenile Prisoners of Fascism, Alexander Urban, noted that every fifth of the 6 million citizens of the USSR who passed through fascist concentration camps was then still a child. Currently, minor prisoners of fascism are already elderly people, the youngest of whom are over 70 years old, and every year there are fewer and fewer of them. According to experts, in 2013, about 200 thousand representatives of this category of citizens lived in Russia, almost 80 thousand of them were disabled.

The bodies of deceased prisoners are piled up against the wall of the crematorium in the German concentration camp Dachau.

The International Day for the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps is celebrated all over the world with commemorative events, commemoration of fallen citizens and veneration of their memory, laying flowers at mass grave sites and graves of victims of fascism. Many years have passed since the end of World War II; it seems like a very long time ago. But not for prisoners who personally went through the horrors of fascist dungeons. The biography of these people is a real lesson in courage for the younger generation. It is everyone’s sacred duty to preserve their memory. Only by preserving the memory of those terrible events and paying tribute to the people who died and survived in that hell can we hope that something like this will never happen again in human history.

Based on materials from open sources

One of the terrible photographs taken by the Americans in Buchenwald

During the Second World War, on the territory of Nazi Germany, in the allied countries of the Third Reich and in the territories occupied by them, there were 14,000 concentration camps (in addition to prisons, ghettos, etc.). The Nazis burned prisoners in crematorium ovens (sometimes alive), poisoned them in gas chambers, took blood for Wehrmacht soldiers, conducted terrible medical experiments on them, tested new drugs, tortured, raped, starved them and forced them to work until complete exhaustion. In March 1945, an armed uprising broke out on the territory of Buchenwald (the largest concentration camp), organized by the international forces of the prisoners themselves.

When American troops entered the Buchenwald concentration camp, the rebels were already in control of the death camp, and a red flag was raised over the camp. Thanks largely to this, the Nazis did not have time to cover up the traces of their terrible crimes and the prisoners’ testimony reached the international Nuremberg tribunal. April 11 is the day the Americans entered the territory of Buchenwald and was adopted by the UN as the date when the planet celebrates the “International Day of the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps.” In total, in the territories controlled by the Nazis, 18,000,000 people were kept in concentration camps, death camps, and prisons. Of these, more than 11 million were destroyed. Among the dead were 5 million citizens of the USSR. Every fifth prisoner was a child (there are more terrible figures: “more than 20 million people from 30 countries of the world were detained, 12 million did not live to see liberation.”

New terrible trials awaited prisoners of Nazi concentration camps - citizens of the Soviet Union in their homeland. A significant part of them passed through NKVD filtration camps. The communist regime headed by Stalin categorically declared them “traitors, accomplices of the enemy, who are unworthy of the attention of the Soviet people and the trust of society.” People did not have the right to enter special, higher educational institutions and military schools. Less than 2% of juvenile prisoners received university diplomas.

Unlike their fellow sufferers in almost all countries that fought against fascism, citizens of the country of the Soviets were not only deprived of any social protection from the state, but their “treacherous” past remained a black mark in their biography. Only with the fall of the totalitarian regime did former prisoners begin to receive government support in the Russian Federation and post-Soviet countries, benefits, etc. However, most of the people who went through the Nazi hell did not live to see this, because their physical and mental health was undermined in captivity and outside it.

World War II - Holocaust.

Nazi death camps -

Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Dachau

(Photo)

The expression "Lebensunwertes Leben" ("unworthy to live") was used by Nazi Germany to identify people whose lives were of no value and who should be killed without delay. At first this applied to people with mental disorders, and then to “racially inferior” people, people of non-traditional sexual orientation or simply “enemies of the state” both within the country and abroad.

During the Second World War, the Nazi policy boiled down to the complete extermination of all Jews. Death squads, the Einsatzgruppen, operated in the east, killing about 1 million people. Afterwards, the construction of concentration death camps began, such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Dachau, etc., where prisoners were starved and brutal medical experiments were performed on them.

In 1945, when the advancing Allied forces entered these camps, they were exposed to the terrible consequences of this policy: hundreds of thousands of hungry and sick prisoners locked in rooms with thousands of decomposing bodies, gas chambers, crematoria, thousands of mass graves, as well as documents describing terrifying medical experiments, photos of people tortured to death and much more. In this way, the Nazis exterminated more than 10 million people, including 6 million Jews.
Warning: Below are photographs of people who died as a result of Nazi repression. Not for the faint of heart.

This photo was taken between 1941 and 1943 by the Paris Holocaust Memorial. This shows a German soldier taking aim at a Ukrainian Jew during a mass execution in Vinnitsa (a city located on the banks of the Southern Bug, 199 kilometers southwest of Kyiv). On the back of the photo it was written: “The last Jew of Vinnitsa.”
The Holocaust was the persecution and mass extermination of Jews living in Germany during World War II from 1933 to 1945.

German soldiers interrogate Jews after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Thousands of people died from disease and starvation in the overcrowded Warsaw ghetto, where the Germans herded more than 3 million Polish Jews back in October 1940.
The uprising against the Nazi occupation of Europe in the Warsaw Ghetto took place on April 19, 1943. During this riot, approximately 7,000 ghetto defenders were killed and approximately 6,000 were burned alive as a result of massive burning of buildings by German troops. The surviving residents, about 15 thousand people, were sent to the Treblinka death camp. On May 16 of the same year, the ghetto was finally liquidated.
The Treblinka death camp was established by the Nazis in occupied Poland, 80 kilometers northeast of Warsaw. During the existence of the camp (from July 22, 1942 to October 1943), about 800 thousand people died in it.

1943 A man takes the bodies of two Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. Every morning, several dozen corpses were removed from the streets. The bodies of Jews who died of starvation were burned in deep pits.
The officially established food standards for the ghetto were designed to allow the inhabitants to die from starvation. In the second half of 1941, the food standard for Jews was 184 kilocalories.
On October 16, 1940, Governor General Hans Frank decided to organize a ghetto, during which the population decreased from 450 thousand to 37 thousand people. The Nazis argued that Jews were carriers of infectious diseases and that isolating them would help protect the rest of the population from epidemics.

On April 19, 1943, German soldiers escort a group of Jews, including small children, into the Warsaw ghetto. This photograph was included in SS Gruppenführer Stroop's report to his military commander and was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials in 1945.

After the uprising, the Warsaw ghetto was liquidated. 7 thousand (out of more than 56 thousand) captured Jews were shot, the rest were transported to death camps or concentration camps. The photo shows the ruins of a ghetto destroyed by SS soldiers. The Warsaw ghetto lasted for several years, and during this time 300 thousand Polish Jews died there.
In the second half of 1941, the food standard for Jews was 184 kilocalories.

Mass execution of Jews in Mizoche (urban-type settlement, center of the Mizochsky village council of the Zdolbunovsky district, Rivne region of Ukraine), Ukrainian SSR. In October 1942, the residents of Mizoch opposed Ukrainian auxiliary units and German police who intended to liquidate the ghetto population. Photo courtesy of the Paris Holocaust Memorial.

Deported Jews in the Drancy transit camp, on their way to a German concentration camp, 1942. In July 1942, French police herded more than 13 thousand Jews (including more than 4 thousand children) to the Vel d'Hiv winter velodrome in southwestern Paris, and then sent them to the train terminal in Drancy, northeast of Paris. Paris and deported to the east. Almost no one returned home...
Drancy was a Nazi concentration camp and transit point that existed from 1941 to 1944 in France, used to temporarily hold Jews who were later sent to death camps.

This photo is courtesy of the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It depicts Anne Frank, who in August 1944, along with her family and others, was hiding from the German occupiers. Later, everyone was captured and sent to prisons and concentration camps. Anna died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen (a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony, located a mile from the village of Belsen and a few miles southwest of Bergen) at the age of 15. After the posthumous publication of her diary, Frank became a symbol of all Jews killed during World War II.

Arrival of a trainload of Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia at the Auschwitz II extermination camp, also known as Birkenau, in Poland, May 1939.
Auschwitz, Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau - a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945 in the west of the General Government, near the city of Auschwitz, which in 1939 was annexed by Hitler's decree to the territory of the Third Reich.
At Auschwitz II, hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies and prisoners of other nationalities were kept in one-story wooden barracks. The number of victims of this camp was more than a million people. New prisoners arrived daily by train at Auschwitz II, where they were divided into four groups. The first - three quarters of all those brought (women, children, old people and all those who were not fit for work) were sent to the gas chambers for several hours. The second was sent to hard labor at various industrial enterprises (most of the prisoners died from disease and beatings). The third group went to various medical experiments with Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the “angel of death.” This group consisted mainly of twins and dwarfs. The fourth consisted primarily of women who were used by the Germans as servants and personal slaves.

American soldiers inspect carriages containing the bodies of those who died at the Dachau concentration camp on May 3, 1945. During the war, Dachau was known as the most sinister concentration camp, where the most sophisticated medical experiments were carried out on prisoners, which many high-ranking Nazis came regularly to observe.

The bodies of the dead are piled up against the wall of the crematorium in the German Dachau concentration camp. The photo was taken on May 14, 1945 by soldiers of the US 7th Army who entered the camp.
Throughout the history of Auschwitz, there were about 700 escape attempts, 300 of which were successful. If someone escaped, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all prisoners from his block were killed - this was the most effective method that prevented escape attempts. January 27 is the official Holocaust Remembrance Day.

An American soldier inspects thousands of gold wedding rings that were taken from Jews by the Nazis and hidden in the salt mines of Heilbronn (a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany).

American soldiers examine lifeless bodies in a crematorium oven, April 1945.

A pile of ashes and bones at the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. Photo dated April 25, 1945. In 1958, a memorial complex was founded on the territory of the camp - in place of the barracks, only a foundation laid with cobblestones remained, with a memorial inscription (the number of the barracks and who was in it) at the place where the building had previously been located. Also, the crematorium building has survived to this day, the walls of which have plaques with names in different languages ​​(relatives of the victims perpetuated their memory), observation towers and several rows of barbed wire. The entrance to the camp lies through the gate, untouched since those terrible times, the inscription on which reads: “Jedem das Seine” (“To each his own”).

Some believe that the 20th century was a time of high civilization, but it was precisely this century that gave humanity examples of indescribable barbarity, far surpassing the atrocities of the most terrible ancient and medieval rulers. We are talking about the concentration camps of the Third Reich, through which more than 20,000,000 people passed (every sixth was a child!), of whom 12 million did not live to see liberation.

Mass killings by shooting, hanging, gas poisoning, hunger and cold, brutal beatings, medical experiments on living people, including children, blood sampling from already malnourished children - all this is only a small part of what citizens had to experience behind the barbed wire 35 -ty countries of the world that fell under the monstrous roller coaster of the Nazi regime. In memory of them, so that this would never happen again, it was decided to establish the International Day for the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps.

Story

The concentration camps of Hitler's Germany operated from March 22, 1933 until the very end of the Nazi state in 1945. The first and largest concentration camp, Auschwitz, whose name has become a household name these days, was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945. And on April 11 of the same year, prisoners of another center of Nazi barbarity, the Buchenwald concentration camp, rebelled and completely seized control of its entire territory. The Nazis did not have time to involve the army in suppression; on the same day, American troops advancing from the west entered Buchenwald. What they saw there became a shock for them for the rest of their lives.

But these were only two camps out of more than 14 thousand similar institutions operating throughout the territory of the Third Reich. That is why such a phenomenon could not go unnoticed by the world community. And the UN, representing the interests of all mankind, decided to establish this memorable date for centuries.

Traditions

Although the date under discussion is the memory of the salvation of millions of people, the memory of other millions who found their death behind barbed wire does not allow any festive events to be held on this day:

1. Funeral ceremonies are held in museums preserved in former concentration camps.
2. All churches around the world hold memorial services.
3. On this day, surviving prisoners always try to meet, although every year it becomes more and more difficult for them to do so, and remember their fallen comrades.

Of course, the media does not stand aside either. Thematic films and programs are broadcast on many channels.

By decision of the United Nations, it became the International Day for the Liberation of Prisoners from Nazi Concentration Camps.

On this day, the underground International Resistance Committee, which had been operating since 1943 in Buchenwald, one of Hitler’s most terrible death camps, upon learning of the approach of the Allied forces, gave the order to begin an armed uprising. The rebels managed to disarm and capture more than 800 SS men and guards, and took control of the camp.

By the beginning of the speech in Buchenwald, the Resistance Committee had about 200 underground cells. Along with other prisoners, they included over 850 captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army. Thanks to a clear plan, it took the rebels less than an hour to liberate the entire concentration camp. So, it took the prisoners about twenty minutes to capture the camp gates and destroy the SS men there.

Only on the morning of April 13 did American troops approach Buchenwald. By this time, the rebels had already raised the Red Flag over the camp. Having carried out the uprising, the prisoners of Buchenwald were saved from destruction, since the Nazi authorities the day before gave the order for the physical extermination of all prisoners.

More than 21 thousand prisoners, including 914 children, the youngest of whom was barely 4 years old, were saved from extermination.

In addition, prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were liberated on April 22, 1945, Dachau on April 29, and Ravensbrück on April 30, 1945.

The International Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946 recognized that the imprisonment of civilians of foreign countries, as well as the forced use of their labor in the interests of Germany, is not only a war crime. It was classified as a crime against humanity.

History of the creation of concentration camps

Concentration camp- a place for the forced isolation of real or perceived opponents of the state, political regime, etc. Unlike prisons, ordinary camps for prisoners of war and refugees, concentration camps were created by special decrees during the war.

In Nazi Germany, concentration camps were an instrument of mass state terror and genocide. Although the term "concentration camp" was used to refer to all Nazi camps, in reality there were several types of camps, and the concentration camp was just one of them. Other types of camps included labor and forced labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and prisoner of war camps. As war events progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was also used in concentration camps.

Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were created after the Nazis came to power in order to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The first concentration camp in Germany was established near Dachau in March 1933.

By the beginning of the war, there were 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In subsequent years, Hitler's Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of the European countries it occupied, turning them into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people.

Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic ones; total extermination of Jews and Gypsies. To do this, they were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers and other means of mass extermination of people, crematoria.

There were even special death (extermination) camps, where the liquidation of prisoners proceeded at a continuous and accelerated pace. These camps were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor belt was built that turned several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.

Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled every aspect of their lives. Violators of the peace were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, food deprivation and other forms of punishment. Prisoners were classified according to their place of birth and reasons for imprisonment.

Initially, prisoners in the camps were divided into four groups: political opponents of the regime, representatives of the “inferior races,” criminals and “unreliable elements.” The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, were subject to unconditional physical extermination and were kept in separate barracks. They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, they were sent to the most grueling works.

Among the political prisoners were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists and social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, and members of various religious sects.

There were also criminals in the concentration camps, whom the administration used as overseers of political prisoners.

All concentration camp prisoners were required to wear distinctive insignia on their clothing, including a serial number and a colored triangle (“winkel”) on the left chest and right knee. (In Auschwitz, the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm). Political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals – green, “unreliable” – black, homosexuals – pink, gypsies – brown. In addition to the classification triangle, Jews also wore yellow, as well as a six-pointed “Star of David.” A Jew who violated racial laws ("racial desecrator") was required to wear a black border around a green or yellow triangle.

Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore the sewn letter “F”, the Poles - “P”, and so on.). The letter “K” stood for a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter “A” for a violator of labor discipline (from German Arbeit - “work”). The weak-minded wore the Blid badge - “fool”. Prisoners who participated or were suspected of escaping were required to wear a red and white target on their chest and back.

The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where people were kept and destroyed under various methods and means in the most difficult conditions, is 14,033 points.

Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.

The list of concentration camps includes approximately 1,650 names of concentration camps of the international classification.

On the territory of Belarus, 21 camps were approved as “other places”, on the territory of Ukraine – 27 camps, on the territory of Lithuania – 9, in Latvia – 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).

List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)

1. Arbeitsdorf (Germany)

2. Auschwitz-Birkenau/Oschwitz (Poland)

3. Bergen/Belsen (Germany)

4. Buchenwald (Germany)

5. Warsaw (Poland)

6. Herzogenbusch (Netherlands)

7. Gross-Rosen (Germany)

8. Dachau (Germany)

9. Kauen/Kaunas (Lithuania)

10. Krakow/Plaszczow (Poland)

11. Sachsenhausen (GDR-FRG)

12. Lublin/Majdanek (Poland)

13. Mauthausen (Austria)

14. Mittelbau/Dora (Germany)

15. Natzweiler (France)

16. Neuengamme (Germany)

17. Niederhagen/Wewelsburg (Germany)

18. Ravensbrück (Germany)

19. Riga/Kaiserwald (Latvia)

20. Faifara/Vaivara (Estonia)

21. Flossenburg (Germany)

22. Stutthof (Poland)

Largest Nazi concentration camps

Buchenwald (Buchenwald) – one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external work teams. The largest are: “Dora” (near Nordhausen), “Laura” (near Saalfeld) and “Ordruf” (in Thuringia), where FAU projectiles were mounted. From 1937 to 1945 About 239 thousand people were prisoners of the camp. In total, 56 thousand prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured at Buchenwald.

Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau), also known by the German names Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945. in southern Poland 60 km west of Krakow. The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1 (served as the administrative center of the entire complex), Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau, "death camp"), Auschwitz 3 (a group of approximately 45 small camps set up in factories and mines around general complex).

More than 4 million people died in Auschwitz, among whom were more than 1.2 million Jews, 140 thousand Poles, 20 thousand Gypsies, 10 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities.

Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, created in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had approximately 130 branches and external work teams located in Southern Germany. More than 250 thousand people from 24 countries were prisoners of Dachau; About 70 thousand people were tortured or killed (including about 12 thousand Soviet citizens).

Majdanek (Majdanek) – Nazi concentration camp. It was created in the suburbs of the Polish city of Lublin in 1941. It had branches in south-eastern Poland: Budzyn (near Krasnik), Plaszow (near Krakow), Trawniki (near Wiepsz), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. In the camp, the Nazis killed about 1.5 million people of various nationalities.

Treblinka (Treblinka) - Nazi concentration camps near the station. Treblinka in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland. In Treblinka I, about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the fascists suppressed a prisoner uprising, after which the camp was liquidated. Camp Treblinka I was liquidated in July 1944 as Soviet troops approached.

Ravensbrück (Ravensbruck) - the concentration camp was founded near the city of Fürstenberg in 1938 as an exclusively female camp, but later a small camp for men and another for girls were created nearby. In 1939-1945. 132 thousand women and several hundred children from 23 European countries passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were killed.

Mauthausen (Mauthausen) - the concentration camp was created in July 1938, 4 km from the city of Mauthausen (Austria) as a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. Since March 1939 it has been an independent camp. In 1940 it was merged with the Gusen concentration camp and became known as Mauthausen-Gusen. It had about 50 branches scattered throughout the former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945), it housed about 335 thousand people from 15 countries. According to surviving records alone, more than 122 thousand people were killed in the camp, including more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens.

Events and facts of the history of concentration camps are only the background for understanding where, when and in what conditions the Soviet people found themselves due to tragic circumstances. Their names and fates are mostly unknown. But they were all soldiers and participants in that terrible war, which we have no right to forget.

Internal Policy Sector of the Makeevka City Administration

On April 11, a memorable date is celebrated all over the world - International Day of the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps. It was installed in memory of the international uprising of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp, which occurred on April 11, 1945.

On this day, desperate, exhausted prisoners of Buchenwald rebelled, taking advantage of the fact that in those days a large group of prisoners was taken out of Buchenwald, accompanied by a significant part of the guards. At the signal of the camp bell, thousands of people rushed to the guard. The prisoners took them away from the guards, shot at the towers, and broke through passages in the barriers. Buchenwald rebelled and won. Two days later, American troops entered the liberated camp.

From the uprising

In 1937, when the Third Reich was already actively preparing for wars of conquest, the Nazi leadership, following the creation of the first Dachau concentration camp (founded in 1933), began building other concentration camps, including Buchenwald. The Nazis created a huge network of such camps, turning them into places for the organized, systematic murder of millions of people. In total, more than 14 thousand concentration camps, ghettos and prisons operated in Germany and the countries it occupied. During the Second World War, more than 20 million people from 30 countries of the world passed through death camps, of which 5 million were citizens of the Soviet Union. Approximately 12 million people never lived to see liberation.

The first prisoners of Buchenwald were German anti-fascists. Already in 1937-1939. German anti-fascists form underground groups. Walter Barthel, after the death of his comrades, will become chairman of the underground International Camp Committee until the day of the liberation of Buchenwald. After the outbreak of aggression in Europe, anti-fascists from various European countries occupied by the Nazis were imprisoned in Buchenwald. In September 1941, the first batch of officers and political workers of the Red Army was brought to Buchenwald. 300 prisoners were shot at a shooting range on the territory of the plant. About 25 thousand Soviet people entered the gates of the concentration camp, but only 5 thousand people survived. In total, about a quarter of a million prisoners from all European countries passed through the camp; 56 thousand people suffered martyrdom in Buchenwald.

Bodies of prisoners, including children, killed at the Buchenwald concentration camp

In October 1941, 2 thousand Soviet prisoners of war were driven from Stalag No. 310 (near Rostock) to Weimar, and then on foot to Buchenwald. Stalags (from the abbreviated German Stammlager, main camp) in Germany were called Wehrmacht concentration camps for prisoners of war from the rank and file. A special camp was built for them - a camp in the Big Camp. The mortality rate there was enormous; about a thousand people died in six months. In 1942-1944. New batches of Soviet prisoners were brought to the camp. From the second half of 1942, Soviet citizens who were forcibly abducted from the territory of the USSR began to be brought to the concentration camp. During their stay in the Third Reich, they committed “crimes” - they tried to escape, conducted anti-Hitler propaganda, resisted, did poor work, etc. For this they were imprisoned in a concentration camp. At Buchenwald, Soviet prisoners wore a striped prison uniform, like other prisoners in the camp, with a red triangle on the left side of the chest, with the Latin letter "R" in the middle of it. The red triangle stood for “political,” and the letter “R” stood for “Russian.” The prisoners of war called them “stripes.” Prisoners from the POW camp wore their military uniform with a yellow circle on the back and the letters "SU" in red.

Already in December 1941, Soviet prisoners of war created the first underground groups. In 1942, they were united by a committee headed by a border guard, sergeant Nikolai Semenovich Simakov and Red Army officer Stepan Mikhailovich Baklanov. They set the main tasks: 1) providing food assistance to the weak; 2) uniting people into a single team; 3) countering enemy propaganda and patriotic education; 4) establishing connections with other prisoners; 5) organization of sabotage. Simakov and Baklanov studied the possibility of creating an underground organization in the Big Camp. It was a difficult matter. Among the prisoners were Gestapo agents. People of various political views languished in the Big Camp; there were nationalists, former policemen, Vlasovites and other traitors who somehow displeased the Nazis, simply criminals. Simply weak people could betray in order to get an extra bowl of gruel.

There were also underground groups among Soviet political prisoners. They were led by Vladimir Orlov, Adam Vasilchuk and Vasily Azarov. In March, two underground Soviet centers merged into the Russian United Underground Political Center (RUUC). Simakov was approved as the head of the center. Due to territorial divisions, the two Soviet underground organizations could not be united, but the creation of a single center was of great importance for subsequent events. Soviet underground fighters developed and approved a program of action that was aimed at an armed uprising. It seemed impossible. But the Soviet people did not give up even in the most terrible conditions. Lieutenant Colonel I. Smirnov subsequently wrote: “Physically exhausted to the last degree, but not spiritually broken, we were preparing a liberation uprising.”

The committee established contacts with European anti-fascists. After Buchenwald in 1942-1943. was replenished with numerous groups of prisoners of many nationalities, it was necessary to establish interaction. In the summer of 1943, on the initiative of German anti-fascists, the International Camp Committee (ILC) was formed from underground national groups, headed by V. Bartel. It included Harry Kuhn, Ernst Busse (Germany), Svetoslav Inneman (Czechoslovakia), Jan Haken (Holland), Marcel Paul (France), Nikolai Simakov (USSR). Soon groups of Yugoslavs, Belgians, and Spaniards entered the ILC. To improve relations, the committee was divided into two sectors: Romanesque (France, Belgium, Spain and Italy) and Slavic-German (USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Hungary and Holland). With groups from England, Bulgaria, Romania, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland, connections were intermittent and personal.

The main objectives of the Committee were: 1) improving the living conditions of prisoners; 2) personnel training; 3) educational work, dissemination of political and military information; 3) sabotage of military enterprises, uniting prisoners to fight the Nazis. The main task was to prepare an uprising in order to harm Germany and release prisoners at a favorable moment for the operation or in order to save people when the Nazis decided to destroy the camp. To prepare for the uprising, the International Military Organization was established - it united 11 national military organizations. From the most experienced and brave members of the underground organization, officers formed combat groups. They were united into companies, battalions, and the battalions were combined into brigades. The first brigade was created by Soviet prisoners of war, it was called “shock”. It had 4 battalions, a battalion had 4 companies, each company had 4 platoons with 4 squads each (there were 3-5 fighters in a squad). The brigade was headed by S. M. Baklanov, the commissar was I. P. Nogaets. Battalion commanders: I. Stepchenkov, A. E. Lysenko, V. S. Popov. In 1944, three more brigades were formed: two in the Big Camp (“Wooden” and “Kamennaya” - for barracks), and one in the Small Camp. The brigades were headed by B. G. Nazirov, G. Davydze (commissar), B. G. Bibik and V. N. Azarov, S. Paykovsky and S. A. Berdnikov. Sanitary squads were also formed. They created a company that was supposed to use enemy vehicles after capturing the camp.

On April 10, 1945, after the evacuation of prisoners of war from the camp, the command of three brigades was headed by Lieutenant Colonel I. I. Smirnov. The chief of staff was Colonel K. Kartsev. Similar formations were created among prisoners of other nationalities. The general plan for the uprising was developed by Soviet officers K. Kartsev, P. Fortunatov, V. I. Khlyupin, I. I. Smirnov. There were two plans of action: “Plan A” (offensive) and “Plan B” (defensive). According to “Plan A,” the prisoners were supposed to rebel in case of unrest in Thuringia or the approach of the front. The prisoners had to take part in the uprising or make their way to the front. According to “Plan B,” the prisoners were supposed to rebel in the event of a mass extermination of prisoners. The rebels planned to make their way to the Czech border, and then act depending on the situation. According to the plan of the uprising, Buchenwald was divided into four sectors: “red”, “green”, “blue” and “yellow”. The most important was the “red” (Soviet, Czech and Slovak prisoners) sector, here the rebels were to storm the SS barracks area, living quarters and warehouses with weapons and ammunition. After this, they planned to cut off the camp’s connection with the city of Weimar and the Nora airfield.

Intelligence penetrated the German official services: work teams, porter teams, fire brigades and sanitary groups. Based on the observations of the scouts, N. Sakharov and Yu. Zhdanovich compiled maps of military operations and the surrounding area. Extraction and production of weapons were of great importance. German anti-fascist Helmut Thiemann obtained the first 12 carbines in the summer of 1944. Thiemann was able to obtain a light machine gun; it was assigned to the Soviet machine gunner D. Rogachev. Then several dozen stilettos were made. B. N. Sirotkin and P. N. Lysenko developed the design of a hand grenade. The organizer was A.E. Lysenko. N.P. Bobov, who worked at a foundry, produced cast iron ingots. Ilya Tokar (surname not established) carried out turning and milling. S. B. Shafir corrected the defects. The final operations for finishing and assembling hand grenades were carried out by A. E. Lysenko, F. K. Pochtovik, A. Vinogradsky and V. Ya. Zheleznyak. The explosives for the grenades were prepared by P. N. Lysenko and the Pole E. Lewandowski, who worked in a perfume workshop. Molotov cocktails were also produced through close cooperation. Its recipe was prepared by the Soviet chemical service colonel Nikolai Potapov. A total of 200 liter bottles of the flammable mixture were produced.

In total, the underground fighters obtained and were able to produce: 1 light machine gun and 200 cartridges for it, 91 rifles and 2,500 cartridges, more than 100 pistols, 16 factory-made grenades, more than 100 grenades of their own production, 200 bottles of flammable mixture, about 150 units of bladed weapons. For comparison, 2900 SS men had 15 heavy and 63 light machine guns, more than 400 Faust cartridges, etc.

On April 4, American troops occupied the city of Gotha in Thuringia. After this, the 3rd American Army stopped movement in the direction of Erfurt-Buchenwald-Weimar. Nikolai Simakov, on behalf of the Soviet organization, proposed starting an uprising. He was supported by the Czechs and the French. But overall the committee rejected this proposal. I decided to wait for a more favorable situation when the number of guards decreased. On April 6, 1945, Simakov again proposed to rebel. The ILC underground center rejected the proposal.

On April 4, the camp commandant ordered all Jews to gather at the Appelplatz (roll call parade ground). The order was not carried out. The camp commander, Hans Weiden, told the SS that because of the arrivals from outside commands, the Buchenwald camp was in such chaos that it was impossible to determine who was Jewish and who was not. The commandant of Buchenwald ordered the preparation of lists of all Jewish prisoners by barracks by April 5. The barracks elders did not comply with the order. Then the SS men themselves began to look for Jews. Some of them were hidden. By nightfall, the Germans had gathered 3-4 thousand people in the DAW (German weapons factory). In the chaos, many were able to escape, so about 1.5 thousand people were sent to transport. At the same time, the Germans prepared a list of 46 camp functionaries and ordered them to be in front of the gates in the morning. The SS decided to liquidate them as the instigators of resistance. The committee decided not to hand them over, but to hide them. If the SS tried to take at least one of them by force, it was decided to resist.

From that moment open resistance began. The orders of the German camp leadership were not followed. The night of April 5-6, 1945 marked the beginning of open preparations for the uprising in Buchenwald. The whole camp learned about the committee. On the morning of April 6, the commandant ordered the barracks elders to report to the gates. The barracks leaders stated that the prisoners on the list had disappeared (they had been hidden). Then the commandant called the camp guards (intra-camp prisoner guards). But they couldn't do anything. SS men with dogs combed the camp, but found no one. At the same time, there was no terror against prisoners. The fear of the camp leadership had an effect; the war was approaching the end, and the Nazis understood this. At the same time, the Germans began evacuating the camp and from April 5 to April 10 forcibly removed about 28 thousand prisoners.

On the night of April 7–8, the military organization of the underground was put on alert. On April 8, the Camp Committee, using an underground radio transmitter, sent a message to the American troops: “To the Allied forces. General Patton's armies. This is the Buchenwald concentration camp. "SOS" We ask for help - the SS want to destroy us.” The uprising was planned to start on the night of April 8-9. However, the committee then postponed the start of the uprising, since there were many Wehrmacht and SS field troops near Buchenwald.

On April 10, the camp leadership evacuated Soviet prisoners of war. The military organization of the underground lost its strike core - 450 Soviet prisoners of war. Almost all members of the Polish military organization were also evacuated. However, Soviet prisoners of war were able to transfer all caches of weapons and supplies to the Soviet civilian underground organization. S. Baklanov transferred command to I. Smirnov.

On April 11, the situation escalated. An American tank patrol appeared near the camp (though it passed by). Participants of the combat groups took their starting positions and distributed weapons. At 12.10 the SS men received orders to leave the camp. However, the SS controlled 23 watchtowers and took up positions in the forest around the camp. Rumors spread in the camp that the SS men had received orders to destroy Buchenwald. Suddenly a siren howled piercingly - it was a signal for an uprising. The command: “Forward!”, and the mass of prisoners begins to move.

Armed prisoners from the first echelon opened fire on the towers and windows. Smirnov's detachment rushed to the attack. Passages were made in the fence. The SS men fled. The second echelon of rebels, who had almost no weapons, rushed forward. The prisoners broke into barracks No. 14, where weapons and ammunition are stored. As a result, the rebels captured warehouses, the commandant's office and other buildings. We took up a perimeter defense. By 3 p.m. Buchenwald was taken, 21 thousand prisoners became free. On April 13, the Americans appeared.

The concentration camp system in Germany was liquidated and condemned by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity. The day of the uprising of Buchenwald prisoners was adopted by the UN as the date when the planet celebrates the International Day of the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps.

The International Day of the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps is celebrated throughout the world with commemorative events, commemoration of the victims, worship of their memory, laying flowers at the graves and burial places of victims of Nazism and fascism.