There is a line 6 bus to the former concentration camp, which you can take at the station in Weimar, the final stop is Buchenwald.

On the way we passed a huge memorial.

In the photo there is a bell tower, the Roman numeral MCMXLV means 1945. There is a bus stop here, but, unfortunately, we did not have enough time to visit this memorial. Left for next time ;)

The final stop is a platform with parking spaces for cars. The yellow houses are former barracks for the SS men, who were trained here to guard the camps and from here were sent to “work” throughout Europe. Three of the four surviving houses have ordinary apartments and people live there.

How can you live here? At the site where more than 50,000 people were tortured and killed? I don't understand.

Camp plan. Buildings that no longer exist are marked in gray, and those that have survived are marked in red.

Photo of the camp from a bird's eye view (view from the north). 1940

First we went west, to the former camp station. New prisoners and prisoners of war arrived on this platform, and from here the sick and infirm were sent to Auschwitz and other death camps.

A place where visitors put things found on the territory of the station.

The road to the cemetery from the times when the camp was controlled by Soviet troops. From 1945 to 1950, Nazis and their accomplices were kept in a camp called “Special Camp No. 2”. Of the 28,000 prisoners, 7,000 died.

We go to the main gate, pass garages and a gas station of that time.

This is the camp commandant's office building. Until 1941, the commandant was Karl Otto Koch, who was tried for theft and corruption and executed on April 5, 1945 in a sand quarry near the camp. After him, from 1941 to 1945, Hermann Pister worked here; he died in 1948 of a heart attack in prison, shortly before his hanging.

Main gate. In the left wing there is the so-called. “bunker” - there are solitary cells where prisoners were tortured and killed, some of them spent tens of months there before their death. We'll go there later, but for now we'll go right.

Here you can take a look at the bear enclosure. This is all that remains of the zoo, which was built in 1938 with the money of prisoners and was supposed to serve as a “distraction and entertainment” for the guards. Concentration camp guards walked here off duty, and the wives of high-ranking officers with their children loved to watch the animals here. Weimar residents could also come here, since there was no restricted area around the camp.

The panoramic photograph clearly shows that the distance from the enclosure to the concentration camp fence is less than 10 meters.

Entrance to an artificial rock where bears lived.

Postcard from 1939.

This photograph, taken by the American military a couple of days after the liberation of the camp, shows the crematorium courtyard and the zoo behind a low wooden fence.

Watch tower. By the way, the glass at the top, where the machine gunners stood, was installed much later, when the camp had already become a memorial.

Let's return to the main gate. I'll add a couple of historical photos here for comparison.

The liberated child prisoners of Buchenwald leave the camp gates.

American soldiers on the way to the liberated camp.

We went into the “bunker”. On the left is the toilet room, on the right is the guards’ room.

In the next room, on the wall there are plaques with the names of those who were executed in the basement of the crematorium.

I found some in Internet archives.

Relatives of Captain Grigory Stepanovich Petrov turned to me and asked me to find out who installed a memorial plaque in memory of him in the crematorium building, since they only learned in 2015 that Grigory Stepanovich was captured. I sent a request regarding the memorial plaque to the archives of the Buchenwald memorial on April 19, 2018 and remains unanswered.

Captain Petrov Grigory Stepanovich.

This is what Vera Petrova wrote to me about Grigory Stepanovich:

“Grigory sent this photo to Petrova’s (Zueva) mother Anastasia Tikhonovna. The family of Stepan Grigorievich and Anastasia Tikhonovna Petrov from the village of Kosa had five sons. The boys were left without a father early on, but Anastasia Tikhonovna raised all five sons to be good, hardworking, educated and decent people. Gregory, the eldest of the sons, connected his fate with military affairs. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he held the rank of captain and commanded a battalion. All five Petrov sons were at the front, and only the youngest, Semyon Stepanovich, returned home. The fate of Grigory Stepanovich Petrov was unknown for many years. According to all documents and entries in the Book of Memory, he was considered missing. And only in 2015 we learned that Grigory Stepanovich Petrov was captured near Smolensk and shared the tragic fate of the prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp."

Several dozen urns are stored in a separate room. The families of the murdered were sent a letter notifying them of the death of a relative (of course, some illness was always indicated as the cause of death) and offered to “buy back” the urn with the ashes. If the relatives agreed, then they filled the urn with ashes from the “common heap” and sent it away.

Toilet and shower room for crematorium workers.

In the basement, which served as storage for bodies before burning.

People were hanged on these hooks. There is a stool preserved in the corner (visible in the video), which was knocked out from under the victim’s feet. Also in this basement Ernst Thälmann was killed.

From the 6th to the 22nd second - a former stable where 8483 Soviet prisoners of war were shot one at a time, shot in the back of the head.
From the 22nd second - the basement in the crematorium building, the SS men hanged more than 1000 people on hooks.

An elevator for transporting bodies to the first floor in the furnace room.

In the annex to the crematorium, before burning the corpses, tattoos were cut out (for collection), hair was cut off, or heads were cut off to make the so-called. “Tsantsa” (a human head dried in a special way. Facial features are preserved, but it becomes the size of a fist).

“Operating” instruments are stored in a glass cabinet.

Replicas of a cart that was used to transport stones from a nearby quarry and a post for hanging punished prisoners.

Chambers for disinfection of camp clothes and mattresses. Now there is a museum here.

All that was left of the barracks were the foundations.

The stump of an old oak tree, called "Goethe's Oak" by the prisoners, in memory of the fact that Goethe often visited this hill, where a concentration camp was later built. During construction, this oak was not cut down and stood here until August 1944, when it was damaged during one of the bombings and then cut down.

A porch on the site of one of the barracks.

The last barrack remaining in the farthest corner of the camp was, unfortunately, closed.

To see the ruins of the stables where Soviet prisoners of war were shot, you need to go through the gate in the southwestern corner of the camp.

Shelter for security.

The sign marks two sentinel routes: orange - around the camp (see photo below) and blue around the entire territory.

The paved patrol path around the camp is well preserved.

On one of the pillars we noticed such a handsome man. Later he accompanied us, appearing from time to time between the trees in front of us as we walked towards the former stable.

Along the road there were other ruins of some buildings.

The arena building was destroyed during one of the bombings.

The foundation of a former stable.

There are almost no photographs of this building on the Internet.

In the middle there is a memorial plaque with text in German, Russian and French. Click to enlarge photo.

Under the pretext of a medical examination, prisoners of war were brought here from the camp (Soviet prisoners of war, as a rule, were not even included in the camp list). The entrance was on the right, in the first room they were asked to undress (loud music was played in this room to muffle the shots), then one by one they were taken along the corridor to the farthest room (on the model on the left, with a brown floor), here everything looked like in an office doctor, an SS man in a dressing gown sat at the table and pretended to be a doctor (perhaps it was the commander of Sonderkommando 99 - Wolfgang Otto, photo below), then the prisoner of war was asked to stand against the wall to measure his height (on the model - with a red floor). When the prisoner stood up, a small door opened behind him and a shot was fired in the back of the head from the next room.

The room with a ruler for measuring height (or rather, for shooting) was restored. I repeat once again - in total, 8483 Soviet soldiers and officers were shot in this way!

This is what the “doctor’s office” looked like to reassure a prisoner of war.

This is what the room for measuring height looked like.

The gap in the wall through which the shot was fired.

View from the executioner's side.

The cart for transporting the bodies of executed prisoners of war to the crematorium has survived to this day.

The so-called “Team 99” (99 is the telephone number in the former stable, where their main “working” place was located). Here are some of the members of this “team”:

The commander of "Team 99" - Wolfgang Otto (German: Wolfgang Otto), was sentenced in 1947 to 20 years, later the term was reduced by 10 years, was released in 1952 due to good behavior, in 1954 he got a job as a teacher of religion in a Catholic school school. In 1962, he was fired due to the facts of his past in Buchenwald that emerged; he sued for a long time to reinstate him to his job; the court refused him, but awarded him a lifelong pension of 1,700 DM. Died in 1989.

Max Schobert (German: Max Schobert) - a member of Team 99, fled to Austria in April 1945, was captured, tried and executed by hanging in 1948.

Werner Berger (German: Werner Berger) - executioner from “Team 99”, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, released in 1954. Suspected of the murder of Ernst Thälmann, he died free in 1964.

On the way back we looked into the yard of the former kennel. It was here that the camp shepherd dogs, trained to wear the prisoners' striped uniforms, were kept.

Photos of camp guards in American captivity. Basically, they all received minor prison sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years.

Photos of young SS men from the camp archive of camp guard students and guards, from here they were sent to serve throughout Europe.

Personal file of one of the prisoners. Nikolai Tupikin from the village of Lubitskoye.

Report of the camp dentist to the camp commandant. In January 1944, 491 grams of gold were confiscated from 101 prisoners (dead and living).

Preparations for transporting camp prisoners.

51.021508 11.249239

Concentration camp "Buchenwald"

The Buchenwald concentration camp was one of the largest places of Nazi imprisonment. The Nazis began building Buchenwald in July 1937. on the northern slope of Mount Ettersberg (450 meters above sea level) in the picturesque area of ​​Thuringia, near the city of Weimar, that is, in the very center of the country. The camp was intended for elements especially dangerous to the "Third Reich"

When choosing a place for the camp, the Nazis had in mind, first of all, the poor climatic conditions of the northern slope of the mountain: constant fog, rain, sudden changes in temperature, lack of oxygen - all this had a detrimental effect on the prisoners’ bodies. The area of ​​the camp was about 1.5 square meters. km. for every prisoner in Buchenwald in 1944, for example, there were 3.3 square meters. meters

The camp consisted of 160 branches. It was surrounded by a wire fence. Eight strands of wire on the inside and nine on the outside. Wire bound lengthwise and crosswise. A high voltage current of 450 volts is passed throughout the fence. Around the camp, every 100 meters, there were 23 guard towers, equipped with powerful searchlights and machine guns.

Each tower had a sentry on duty 24 hours a day. The main gates have a bell alarm. There was also a special alarm system on each tower, and the corner towers also had a telephone connection to the central entrance. In front of the fence, a special five- to six-meter wire system closed all approaches to the camp territory. Getting out of fascist captivity with such a security system was extremely difficult. For each prisoner killed, the command gave the concentration camp sentries an additional few days of leave. In the report on the cause of death in such cases it was written “Killed while attempting to escape.”

Polish prisoner number 4349, King Müller, who worked as a clerk in a quarry, shows that on the pretext of an escape attempt, from January 1940 to March 1941, an average of 8 prisoners were killed by guards every day. “In 15 months, I submitted more than 3,600 death reports.”

On the left side of the entrance there were 26 scouts. Most of the prisoners serving their “punishment” died. On the right side were the offices and offices of the Fuhrer's report, the Fuhrer's camp and other SS men. Opposite the entrance there was a parade ground on which Appel events took place, often several times a day.

About 20 thousand people could line up on the parade ground. Appels often lasted 18 hours, after which prisoners were given salted herring while depriving them of drinking water. In 1940, a crematorium and mortuary were built. In the crematorium, the Nazis burned 18 corpses per hour. Even with its appearance, the crematorium brought mortal fear to the prisoners. On the slopes of the mountain, barracks stood with their facades at the main gate. Buchenwald was divided into two parts - large and small camps. In the large one there were prisoners who were part of the work teams; in the small one, they underwent the so-called quarantine.

The first prisoners were brought from Buchenwald on July 16, 1937. The first arrest took place on July 19 of the same year. On July 27, the first political prisoners began to arrive at Buchenwald. These were German anti-fascists, true sons of their people, who fought against the Nazi regime. At the end of 1937, there were 2,912 people in the camps.

In May - June 1938, everyone who refused to cooperate with the Nazis was thrown into Buchenwald. From that time on, the number of people in the camp grew rapidly. After the murder of the secretary of the German embassy in Paris, E. Rath, several thousand Jews were thrown into a concentration camp. On the first night, 70 prisoners went crazy. The prisoners were left without water or food for several days.

When a person ends up in Buchenwald, he prepares for the most terrible tests. But suddenly he feels some kind of concern for himself. Some people unknown to him lend a helping hand, encourage him, and then seek relief, allowing him not only to take a breath, but to get stronger and gather his strength.

Facilitating the plight of prisoners, especially those who showed the will to fight fascism, was one of the first tasks of the underground organizations in the Buchenwald camp.

Rarely do any of the prisoners pass through the quarry, where the labor is harder than the cruel execution. People who were physically weakened came here, some of them could barely move their legs. And such people were given picks or crowbars, forcing them to carry heavy stones on their hands and pull up a multi-pound trolley. Gradually, the Soviet center, with the help of German anti-fascists who worked in the hospital (Revere), created its own group of underground workers, specially engaged in the temporary release of Russian prisoners of war and prisoners from hard labor.

Soviet doctors prisoners of war L. Suslov, A. Gurin, A. Karnaukhov (died in 1953), G. Boyko and others, assigned to the camp hospital, provided considerable medical assistance to prisoners. According to the instructions of the center, they arranged rest for those who died from overwork. Such prisoners, under the guise of being seriously ill, were assigned to inpatient treatment. Here they rested, receiving additional food. Temporary rest somewhat restored the strength of completely exhausted people. Over 9 months of 1944, more than 800 Russian prisoners received temporary release from work thanks to the efforts of the underground organization. That same year, about the same number of people received medical care. All this convincingly shows the scope of the underground work of Soviet prisoners in Buchenwald

The actions of underground fighters aimed at saving people who were in danger of death were associated with enormous risks. Here is a prisoner sentenced to death. Deliverance seems unthinkable in a camp specially designed for killing. But then some hidden forces perform a miracle: a man doomed by the Nazis suddenly survives. This was the case, for example, with the head of the Soviet underground center in Buchenwald, I. Simakov.

The entire complex mechanism of the underground was put into action if any of the anti-fascists were threatened with reprisals. “Hold on, friend, we will help you,” the condemned man heard in the terrible moments of waiting for death. And help came. Of course, in an environment of mass executions, only individuals could be saved.

To save a comrade from certain death in a concentration camp, great ingenuity and intelligence were required. The center of the Russian underground organization, which had strong ties with German anti-fascists who had penetrated the office of the camp Gestapo, found out in advance which of the Russians faced the death penalty. Such a prisoner was admitted to the hospital under the pretext of a dangerous contagious disease. The imaginary patient was given the number of one of the deceased, and comrades who worked in the Gestapo office made the corresponding entries on the registration cards. The rescued person was immediately included in one of the transports leaving for any branch of Buchenwald. Sometimes it was possible to snatch someone sentenced to death almost from under the noses of the SS men.

It was impossible to escape from the Buchenwald camp itself. Chances of escape appeared when the prisoner got into one of the next transports sent outside the camp. The center of the Soviet underground paid a lot of attention to organizing escapes. An escape plan was carefully thought out, the prisoner or group of prisoners was provided with maps, even compasses, and supplied with civilian clothes stolen from the storage room.

Not everyone captured during the escape was returned to Buchenwald. Many were shot on the spot or sent to other camps for extermination. The Nazis brutally dealt with prisoner of war Ivan Kvasov, who was sent with a group of prisoners from Buchenwald to one of the mines in Salzungen. On instructions from the center, Kvasov had to organize a mass escape. While exploring the mine for this purpose, he one day came across an emergency exit blocked with rock. The secret work of cleaning it up began. Not with picks and shovels, but with their hands, tearing off their nails, the prisoners cleared the passage, meter by meter approaching the goal. The escape was timed to coincide with the moment when the Nazis were preparing to transport people weakened by work back to Buchenwald, of course, for extermination. On the first night, seven people ran away, followed by ten more. Over the course of three days, about 70 Soviet prisoners escaped from the mine. People hid in stacks of straw, in the attics of abandoned houses, and in garbage bins. Ivan Kvasov himself died. He was the last to leave and was captured by the guards. The Nazis shot the courageous patriot.

It should be taken into account that the outcome of the escape often depended not so much on the deception of the guards at the work site, but on whether it would be possible to evade pursuit. The Czechoslovakian border, where many prisoners of war sought to join the partisans, was relatively close, about 100 kilometers. But, as already mentioned, escape from the concentration camp itself was completely excluded. The camp teams, as a rule, were located much further from the border. Getting to the Czech border was very difficult. There are cases where, in the event of a successful mass escape, only individual prisoners managed to get to either the Czech partisans or their own advancing troops. The rest were caught and brutally massacred. All this was taken into account when organizing escapes. The routes were especially carefully thought out. And yet many failed to achieve their final goal.

Helping prisoners, rescuing those doomed to execution, organizing escapes testified to the growing strength of the underground organization in Buchenwald.

On Mount Ettersberg, near Weimar, where the Buchenwald concentration camp was located, a monument to resistance fighters and victims of fascism has now been erected. The monument does not remember what cannot be forgotten, what calls for tireless struggle. Here is the road along which columns of prisoners once walked from Weimar. Here are the huge crater-graves, now surrounded by a wall, where the SS men buried many thousands of murdered prisoners. Everything calls for people of good will not to rest until all attempts to revive fascism and start a world war are put to an end on our planet.

In 1957, a Soviet delegation consisting of N. S. Simakova, N. F. Kunga, B. G. Nazirova, M. Soskovets came to the traditional Buchenwald meeting. Then the rally participants agreed to build a monument to the victims of Buchenwald.

At this meeting, all foreign comrades unanimously noted the decisive role of Soviet prisoners of war in the struggle of Buchenwald prisoners.

The role of N. S. Simakov as the leader of an underground organization was noted. This calm-looking man walked excitedly around the territory of the former camp. Young trees have already grown here. In the square, once trampled by tens of thousands of feet, where prisoners were checked, the grass was green. Nikolai Semenovich knows every piece of land here. He unmistakably found the place where barracks No. 7 stood, in a small room of which he lived as a barracks sledge, and that depression in the ground where the underground fighters stored their weapons. Simakov also determined the route along which the underground once passed, secretly carrying parts of military weapons from the military plant.

In 1958, the opening of the Buchenwald monument took place. The Soviet War Veterans Committee sent its delegation to the opening of the monument. Simakov, Küng, Baklanov, Nazirov, Sakharov and Lysenko, as well as senior officials of the War Veterans Committee, were part of the Soviet delegation. Buchenwald concentration camp fascist

There were many joyful and exciting meetings! The two leaders of the Buchenwald underground, the German Walter Barthel and the Russian Nikolai Simakov, warmly embraced. Frenchman Pierre Provost was incredibly happy to see Russian patriot Nikolai Sakharov. Other former Soviet prisoners of war also found their friends here. On land soaked in the blood of the victims of Hitlerism, they swore allegiance to the cause of the fight against fascism, to the cause of the fight for peace throughout the world. The unveiling of the monument was attended by comrades Walter Ulbricht, Otto Grotewohl and Rosa Thalmann.

When the moment came for the opening of the monument, the pennants of many countries soared into the cloudless autumn sky, and among them the pennant of the USSR. The ringing of the “Buchenwald bell” mounted on a fifty-meter tower was heard.

The delegation of the Soviet War Veterans Committee at the opening of the monument in Buchenwald. From left to right (sitting): member of the section of former prisoners of war P. P. Pavlov, executive secretary of the Soviet Committee of War Veterans A. P. Maresyev, deputy. Chairman of the War Veterans Committee A. S. Nikitin, former prisoner of Buchenwald S. M. Baklanov. From left to right (standing): N. S. Simakov, N. N. Sakharov, B. G. Nazirov, chairman of the presidium.

When I was doing search work, I managed to find people in our city who were prisoners of concentration camps. But I did not receive information about the situation in the concentration camps there. Not a single one spoke about all the horrors that he managed to survive. I understand these people. I think it would be cruel to ask how the Germans abused people, a person who herself went through all the circles of hell and miraculously remained alive. Anyone who was in a concentration camp tries to forget everything that happened to him. And you can’t insist that he say something. The mental wounds of those who were in the concentration camp will never heal. This pain is with them forever. But who, if not they, will tell us about it? You can't be silent about this!

I want to talk about the fate of an interesting person I.P. Nikolenko. He did not live to see this time, but his fate was bright, interesting, and tragic. Ivan Pavlovich went through the war and was a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp. It was from him that we first learned about the horrors of Buchenwald.

I.P. Nikolenko believed that everything heroic was a thing of the past, but the war began. He, along with his friends, began to come to the military registration and enlistment office, wanting to go to the front. They told him that there would still be enough war to last his lifetime. He continued his studies at school. Meanwhile, the front approached Donbass.

I.P. On May 18, 1942, Nikolenko was sent to the artillery battalion of the 845th regiment of the 277th division and immediately found himself in battle. Participated in the battle on the Seversky Donets River. Like everyone else, putting on a military uniform, he carried out the call “Donbass was and will remain Soviet!” Many fascist soldiers remained forever on the banks of the Seversky Donets.

On July 22, the Germans reached the Don. The division in which I.P. was Nikolenko did not escape the encirclement. In one of her last fights she failed. Nikolenko I.P. was captured.

In August of the same year, Ivan Pavlovich was already in the Rouga coal basin. He managed to escape, but was found and kept in prison in Dortmund for a long time. In February 1943, Nikolenko I.P. escaped from there, but was recaptured and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Under number 24835 he was held as a political prisoner until the armed uprising on April 11, 1945.

The military organization in Buchenwald began to emerge in the summer of 1942, when the German communists created the first paramilitary branches under the leadership of Harry Kuhn and Otto Roth. Almost all members of the so-called inside camp guard, numbering 60 people, entered these sections. Later their number almost doubled.

Simultaneously with the advent of intra-camp security, groups of sanitary and counter services emerged. The military organization also included a technical group that was engaged in obtaining weapons and communications equipment. The organization also had an intelligence department.

The main goal of the underground struggle in the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberation through open armed action.

At the end of 1943 - beginning of 1944, research work was underway in the workshop to create a hand grenade. The underground members produced more than 150 grenades. They also had a significant supply of bottles of non-flammable liquid.

Soviet prisoner Leonid Orlov worked at the Gustaya Lov-Verke plant. Krug, he received an order from the center for the production of pistols for the underground, and with the help of underground worker Danilenko, he got a job as a foreman in a pistol shop. With the help of reliable comrades, the manufacture and hidden parts of pistols were carried in the wooden soles of shoes, in the hidden linings of jackets, secret pockets, and in pieces of bread. They transported disassembled carbines in strollers with sand...

Soviet underground fighters played a major role in obtaining weapons, transporting them to the camp and compiling them. Sirotkin, L. Yosem, S. Karpov, P. Lysenko and others.

A siren buzzed sharply over the camp, which meant for the sentries on the towers the right to open fire on the camp, and for the underground fighters - preparations for an assault on the SS fortifications. Everyone entered into a decisive battle.

21 thousand people of 33 nationalities, of which 904 were children, were saved from planned extermination by the Nazis.

I.P. Nikolenko, working on the archives of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was registered under the nickname “Petrenko”: he was a member of the Komsomol underground youth group of the International Anti-Fascist Organization of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Has awards:

• - Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree;
• - medal "Defender of the Fatherland";
• - medal "50 years of victory in the Department of Internal Affairs";
• - medal "40 years of victory in the Department of Internal Affairs";
• - medal "Veteran of Labor";
• - Zhukov medal;
• - memorial sign of 50 years of liberation of Ukraine;
• - anniversary sign "Participant of the Resistance".

All his life, Ivan Pavlovich wrote letters to those with whom fate brought him together in Buchenwald. Memoirs of Nikolenko I.P. used by Heinz Albertus in his 1984 book "Kinder in Bychenwald"

Usenko Ivan Markovich was born on February 12, 1921 in the Krasnodar region. When the war began, he went to the front and was a pilot. According to his wife, when the Soviet troops began to retreat, he ended up in a concentration camp in Slovakia. He escaped from it, but was caught and sent to another concentration camp.

About myself I.M. Usenko did not like to talk, but it is known that at the beginning of 1945 he escaped from a concentration camp. There was a whole group of fugitives. Usenko runs instead of the captive captain Kazakov. When I ended up in our area, I almost ended up in Siberia. Returning to the Krasnodar region, he could not get a job. Then he came to Chervonopartizansk, where he worked for Donbasenergo all his life.

Has awards:

Medal "Defender of the Fatherland";

Medal "50 Years of Victory in the Second World War";

Medal "40 years of victory in the Second World War";

Zhukov Medal;

Memorial sign "50 years of liberation of Ukraine";

Medal "Veteran of Labor";

Order of the Great Patriotic War, 2nd class;

Order of the Red Star.

He died in November 2006. His wife buried him with the Order of the Red Star on his chest.

Usenko I.M. was a guest at the opening of the II hall of the museum "Valor and Glory" in ChZOSH No. 1 in May 2005

Soviet prisoners of war, finding themselves behind the barbed wire of Buchenwald, continued to actively fight against the worst enemy of humanity - fascism. The homeland has not forgotten their front-line exploits. Many of them were awarded government awards, N. S. Simakov was awarded the Order of Glory, III degree, for the defense of the borders of the USSR, N. F. Küng was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree, N. N. Sakharov was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree, B. N. Sirotkin - medal "For Courage". The Order of the Red Star was awarded to S. D. Kotov - for courage shown in battles with the Nazi invaders, E. Yaltsev - for the defense of the borders of the USSR. Many other former Buchenwald prisoners also received government awards.

Story

Shipment of corpses

Reliable information, documents and interrogation reports are presented in the collection by Angelika Ebbinghaus “Destruction and Treatment. The Nuremberg trial of doctors and its consequences" (Vernichten und Heilen. Der Nürnberger Ärzteprozess und seine Folgen). This book was published thanks to donations from 8,000 doctors after the German Federal Medical Authority refused to fund the project.

Organized resistance

Political prisoners, over the course of a long period of work, managed to occupy some key positions in the management of the camp. They influenced the statistics of forced labor and the defense of the camp. The hospital barracks were also under the control of the prisoners.

For example, one of the most persistent members of the resistance, Albert Kunz, was sent to Camp Dora, where V-2 rockets were being produced. With the support and organization of Kunz, actions of sabotage were organized there in the work of the plant.

International camp committee

With the arrival of new political prisoners from countries occupied by the Nazis, anti-fascists of different nationalities created resistance groups. From these groups, the International Camp Committee (Das Internationale Lagerkomitee) was created in July 1943, which, under the leadership of the communist Walter Barthel, resisted the Nazis. The committee was founded in a hospital barracks, and its secret meetings were held there. The committee later organized the International Paramilitary Organization (Internationale Militärorganisation).

Liberation

At the beginning of April 1945, the SS removed several thousand Jews from the camp. However, the Nazis failed to carry out the mass evacuation of prisoners scheduled for April 5, 1945. In the last weeks of Buchenwald's existence, an underground armed organization arose here. When American troops entered Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, the organization was already in control of the camp. Of the 238,380 prisoners who have passed through Buchenwald since its founding, 56,549 have died or been killed.

The Americans brought Weimar residents to the camp, most of whom said they knew nothing about the camp.

Operation of the camp in 1945-1950 in the NKVD system

During the period 1945-1950. the camp was used by the NKVD, initially receiving the name “Special Camp No. 2”, and in 1948 it was integrated into the Gulag system. According to Soviet archival data, in 1945-1950, 28 thousand 455 prisoners passed through the camp, of which 7 thousand 113 died.

Memorial

Monument to the victims of Buchenwald

In 1951, a memorial plaque was erected on the territory of the former camp in memory of the participants in the camp Resistance, and in 1958 it was decided to open a national memorial complex in Buchenwald.

Today, all that remains of the barracks is the foundation laid with cobblestones, which indicates the place where the buildings were. Near each there is a memorial inscription: “Barrack No. 14. Roma and Sinti were kept here,” “Barrack No. ... Teenagers were kept here,” “Barrack No. ... Jews were kept here,” etc.

The creators of the Buchenwald memorial complex preserved the crematorium building. Plates with names in different languages ​​are mounted into the walls of the crematorium: the relatives of the victims perpetuated their memory. Observation towers and several rows of barbed wire have been preserved; the camp gate with the inscription “Jedem das Seine” (“To each his own” in German) has not been touched.

see also

• International Day for the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps

Notes

Links

• Muslim Magomaev Buchenwald alarm
• Eyewitness accounts and list of Soviet prisoners of war
• Official website of Buchenwald (German) (English) (French)
• List of all concentration camps and their branches (German)

When in 1937, on July 15, builders arrived in the northern region of Weimar, on Mount Ettersberg, perhaps they would not have paid much attention to them. However, they came here accompanied by police with dogs. At this time, a train arrived from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to Weimar. Murderers, swindlers and thieves were kept in this camp. It was impossible not to notice this.

However, it soon became known that among the arrivals there were not so many criminals. A motley crowd formed their core: gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, fighters who resisted the Nazi regime.

Start of construction

Karl Koch, the commandant of the future camp, said that their task is to clear the forest from the land, lay power lines and sewers, and build roads, garages, houses, and barracks. He ordered to start with the barracks - after all, the builders needed somewhere to live.

Such “concern” on the part of the SS man for the prisoners was just a smoke screen. No one, including those closest to Koch, knew the essence of the order Karl received from Berlin. And it consisted of creating a concentration camp, which was to become the largest in Germany.

The first concentration camp victim

The death camp began to live up to its name exactly a month later. His first victim was Hermann Kempeck, a worker from Altona. At the age of 23, he was hanged, either for stealing radishes from the camp garden, or for another equally minor offense. There was no concentration camp as such yet. There were 2 years left before the start of World War II. And the first victim has already been found.

New murders

Hermann was soon followed by other Buchenwald prisoners. By the end of the year there were already 52 killed. Such zeal, which is quite remarkable, was immediately noted in the Reich Chancellery. Koch was promoted to rank in September. He was now a Standartenführer (in other words, a colonel).

"Bunker"

The rows of barracks multiplied, Buchenwald expanded. The concentration camp became the place of residence for more and more prisoners. Now on the site of the barracks there are platforms marked with dark rubble. By the end of 1937, that is, in less than six months, Mount Ettersberg, on which the camp is located, was home to 2,561 prisoners. However, the SS men were not interested in simply killing. They came up with a torture facility in February 1938, which they called the “bunker.” Martin Sommer, the overseer, had fun here.

The most outstanding creation of cynicism created by the Nazis was the prison in the Buchenwald concentration camp. This concentration camp was the place where Sommer practiced various techniques of “heart-to-heart talk.” These were then recommended by management as "best practices". The “bunker” was a series of solitary punishment cells. This room was located to the left of the gate to the camp, the inscription on which, translated, read “To each his own.”

Buchenwald, giving "to each his own"

The SS men abused the prisoners not only physically, but also mentally. The famous inscription on the gates of Buchenwald can still be read today. It is an interpretation of the Roman law principle of “giving to each his own.” The inscription on the Buchenwald gate was forged by order of the leadership at the beginning of 1938, on its inner side.

Lack of water

After the bloody event (a series of pogroms against Jews) called Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, the number of prisoners inhabiting Buchenwald doubled. The concentration camp began to experience a shortage of water. Because of this, Karl Koch ordered a limit on its consumption. From that time on, only 4 buckets of water per day were required for a barracks in which several hundred people lived.

Prisoner escape attempt and first public execution

Life in such a monstrous place as Buchenwald (concentration camp) became more and more unbearable. One of the prisoners, Emil Bargatsky, unable to bear it, decided to escape. He killed an SS guard during an escape attempt. However, it was not possible to carry out the plan - the prisoner who left the concentration camp was caught. The first public execution to which a prisoner was sentenced for resisting the regime took place on June 4.

What could be determined by the patch on the robe?

The SS men did not ask the prisoners anything. The prisoners had stripes on their uniforms, which could be used to determine what country this person was from, what barracks he lived in, and how much he had committed crimes against Nazism. At the same time, the patch was a document indicating how long its owner had to live: a week or a month.

Crematorium

It became increasingly difficult to bury. And the management decided to build a crematorium, which became part of a terrible plan. The SS physicians rendered their verdict in the pathology department. They decided what the corpse was suitable for: making a souvenir (representing a head the size of a fist), making leather goods, or preparing drugs for use in university clinics.

It seems that the heavy cast-iron doors of the three furnaces located here have still retained their heat. In the adjacent room, clay pots are arranged in pyramids. Ash was poured into them and then buried 1.5 km from the crematorium. At this site today stands a monument to the victims of this monstrous concentration camp.

A new batch of prisoners was brought to the concentration camp by September 1941. It consisted of Soviet prisoners of war. These Buchenwald prisoners were shot in the back of the head by the Nazis. Such a death in a concentration camp was considered easy. The SS men dealt with 8,000 Red Army soldiers in this way over the next 2 years.

Hermann Pister Project

They were probably lucky. After all, in January 1942, Hermann Pister was seconded to serve in Buchenwald. He headed a special project here to test vaccines. For this purpose, he used the prisoners of 3 barracks. Pister infected about a thousand prisoners with tuberculosis and typhus and tracked the progress of the diseases. In addition, documentation has been preserved indicating that hormonal experiments were carried out on homosexuals. They were conducted by Karl Wernet, a Danish doctor recruited to research by order of the SS.

Rocket production

Buchenwald at the same time acquired a new status. It was now also the site where V-2 (V-2) rockets were produced. By the beginning of 1944, 42 thousand prisoners were working for the needs of the German economy. The SS men were not bothered by the fact that every tenth of them suffered from tuberculosis, and every second from chronic malnutrition.

Appelplatz

At 4 am and 8 pm the prisoners were counted at appelplatz (the word comes from appell - “roll call”, “formation”). This procedure lasted for hours. Public punishments, executions, and beatings also took place here. The Appellplatz were not only in Buchenwald, but also in Sachsenhausen, Dachau and other concentration camps.

About 250 thousand prisoners passed through the Appellplatz. Of these, 56 thousand were victims of Buchenwald, killed or died from dysentery, exhaustion, typhus, and after medical experiments.

Number of victims of Buchenwald

By the spring of 1945, the camp's anti-fascist committee knew of only 51 thousand victims. It was this figure that was indicated in the document called the “Oath of Buchenwald.” This document, written in 1945, on April 19, is an anti-fascist appeal. It was compiled a week after units of the US Third Army liberated the concentration camp.

The picture that the Americans saw next to the crematorium, in the courtyard, shocked them so much that Adrian Miller, a lieutenant, immediately began clicking the camera shutter. The photograph he took of the corpses of Buchenwald prisoners laid out on a trailer is preserved today in the National Archives in Washington.

Special camp No. 2

After the territory of Buchenwald was transferred to the USSR in August 1945, a special camp No. 2 of the NKVD was organized here. It served to intern Nazi war criminals. This camp became an integral part of the Gulag, its foreign “branch”.

In total, more than 28 thousand people were Nazi criminals here. Before the camp was finally liquidated in 1950, more than 7 thousand people died there. The main part died from the consequences of colds suffered by prisoners in the winter of 1946-1947. At least that's what the official documents say. But no one knows the real picture.

A trial was held in the former Dachau concentration camp in the American occupation zone in 1947. It examined the cases of persons who committed war crimes in Buchenwald during the war. 31 people took part in it, and all of them received guilty verdicts. Hermann Pister, the camp commandant, was sentenced to death. However, he died in prison in 1948 before his sentence was executed. The wife of Karl Koch, the first commandant executed by the Nazis in April 1945 on corruption charges, was sentenced to life imprisonment for torturing prisoners. She committed suicide in 1967.

Buchenwald - memorial complex

From 1937 to 1950, the history of murders in this terrible place lasted. And only in 1958 the history of Buchenwald continued with a new, peaceful page. From a place where violence reigned, Buchenwald turned into a memorial complex. It became a center for the study of Nazism, as well as chronicling the Holocaust. In the southern part of this complex there is a monument dedicated to the victims of Buchenwald. There is also a tower with a bell. Its alarm should remind visitors of the horrors of war. And the inscription “To each his own” (Buchenwald) is still preserved in its original form.

In 1989, the concept of Buchenwald museum exhibitions was changed. It was decided, in particular, to seize materials that contain communist propaganda. The emphasis was placed on facts that relate to Gypsies, Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, and people from Western European countries imprisoned here. As a result of the reconstruction, in addition, a section dedicated to the history of “Special Camp No. 2” was opened.

The Buchenwald gates are still open to visitors today. Numerous excursions are held on its territory.

TASS DOSSIER /Irina Krasnenkova/. On April 11, 1945, Buchenwald prisoners rebelled and took control of the concentration camp.

The concentration camp was located on Mount Ettersberg near Weimar in the German state of Thuringia. It was created in 1937 by order of the leadership of the SS (Schutzstaffel, paramilitary forces of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party) to hold political prisoners, as well as Jews, Gypsies and representatives of sexual minorities “alien to German society.” Originally called Ettersberg.

On July 15, 1937, the first 149 prisoners were transported from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to Ettersberg, and two weeks later prisoners from the liquidated concentration camps of Sachsenburg and Lichtenburg were brought here. In fact, the camp was built by these prisoners. In July the name was changed to Buchenwald ("beech forest"). By the end of 1937, there were over 2.5 thousand prisoners here.

At the beginning of 1938, by order of the camp leadership, the inscription “To each his own” was forged on the inside of the gate. These words are an interpretation of one of the principles of Roman law (honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere - “live honestly, do not injure anyone, give each his own”). In the same year, rooms for torture and execution were equipped in the camp. Jews were singled out into a separate category of prisoners, who were subjected to special humiliation and abuse.

After the outbreak of World War II, the Nazis began sending prisoners from German-occupied countries to Buchenwald, for whom a special territory was allocated ("special camp", Sonderlager) with even more harsh conditions of detention. By February 1940, out of 3 thousand people placed in the “special camp”, almost 1.5 thousand died. The Buchenwald authorities decided to build their own crematorium, which began to be used in the summer of 1940.

In the fall of 1941, a camp for Soviet prisoners of war was built in Buchenwald.

In January 1942, medical experiments began on prisoners. They were infected with tuberculosis, typhoid, yellow fever, smallpox, and cholera to test the effect of vaccines developed at the institutes of Marburg and Berlin. Hormonal “homosexuality treatment” was also carried out. The exact number of deaths resulting from these experiments is impossible to calculate.

In February 1942, the creation of the so-called began on German territory at various military factories. "outer camps" (Aussenlager), where Buchenwald prisoners were transported to work. By the end of the war, there were 136 such camps. The most famous of them was Dora (created in 1943; in 1944-1945 - an independent concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora), where V-2 rockets (V-2; Vergeltungswaffe-2, i.e.) were produced in underground tunnels. "weapon of retaliation"; the world's first long-range ballistic missile, developed by German designer Wernher von Braun). In 1943-1945. Over 60 thousand people worked here, mostly citizens of the USSR, Poland and France. Every third of them died.

At the end of 1942, the so-called “quarantine zone” or “small camp” (Kleines Lager) was fenced off with barbed wire in Buchenwald. In each of the 12 barracks, converted from stables, with an area of ​​40 by 50 m, approximately 750 people deported from different countries were kept. Here they waited to be sent to the “outer camps.” The exact number of deaths in the “small camp” is unknown; it is believed that 50-100 people died daily.

In 1942-1943. Prisoners from different countries organized an anti-fascist committee, the main task of which was to prepare an uprising. In various ways, prisoners obtained and hid telephones and wires, tools, firearms and bladed weapons, and made hand grenades. Members of the committee managed to equip an infirmary, where, contrary to the prohibitions of the camp authorities, medical care was secretly provided to Soviet prisoners of war, Jews and Poles. Thanks to their efforts, 904 children were saved from death (the anti-fascists were able to convince the authorities to place the children in one barracks, so the children were under their supervision).

In January-March 1945, over 19 thousand prisoners, mostly Jews, arrived in Buchenwald from concentration camps in Poland (including Auschwitz), which the Nazis began to liquidate as Soviet troops approached. Several thousand people died during the transfer, but these deaths were not counted. By this time, Buchenwald had become the largest concentration camp in Germany; in February 1945, there were a total of 112 thousand prisoners (including the “external camps”), a third of them were Jews.

At the beginning of April 1945, the Buchenwald authorities received an order from Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler to liquidate the camp, on the territory of which at that time there were about 50 thousand prisoners. From April 7 to April 10, 28 thousand people were sent to the camps of Dachau and Flossenbürg (in Bavaria) and Theresienstadt (in the Czech Republic). Several thousand people died during this evacuation.

On April 11, 1945, the anti-fascist committee, taking advantage of the close proximity of American troops with whom they managed to establish radio contact, gave the signal for the start of the uprising. The armed prisoners captured the sentries, occupied the observation towers, hung a white flag over the camp gates and announced the seizure of power. The camp guards offered virtually no resistance. On April 13, leadership of the camp was transferred to a representative of the American troops, who had liberated Weimar the day before.

From 1937 to 1945 About 250 thousand prisoners of almost all European nationalities passed through Buchenwald, about 160 thousand of them were transported to “external camps”. In 1941-1945. Among the prisoners were over 23 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and citizens of the USSR deported to Germany. 8.5 thousand Soviet prisoners of war were shot. As a result of torture, medical experiments and exhaustion, more than 56 thousand people died in Buchenwald. 21 thousand people lived to be liberated in the camp.

In August 1945, the Soviet “Special Camp No. 2” was created in the camp, which was in the zone of occupation of the USSR. Mostly former Nazi Party members were held here. Of the 28 thousand prisoners, 7 thousand died (according to documents, the deaths were the result of colds). In February 1950, shortly after the formation of the GDR (October 1949), the camp was disbanded. Until the early 1990s. information about the camp was not advertised.

In 1947, in the American occupation zone on the territory of the former Dachau concentration camp (Bavaria), a trial was held in which the cases of persons who committed war crimes in Buchenwald during the war were examined. 31 people participated in the trial, all of them were convicted. Camp commandant Hermann Pister (1942-1945) was sentenced to death, but died in prison in 1948 before the sentence was carried out. One of the most notable participants in the process was Ilse Koch, the wife of the first commandant Karl Koch (who was accused of corruption by the Nazis and executed in April 1945), who used especially cruel torture on prisoners. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and committed suicide in 1967.

On September 14, 1958, a national memorial complex (Nationale Mahn-und Gedenkstaette Buchenwald), a center for the study of Nazism and the Holocaust, was opened on the site of the camp. In the southern part of the complex there is a monument to the victims of Buchenwald and a tower with a bell, the alarm of which is intended to remind of the horrors of war.

In 1989, the concept of the museum exhibitions of the complex was changed. In particular, it was decided to remove materials containing communist propaganda and focus on facts concerning Jews, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war and people displaced from Western European countries imprisoned in the concentration camp. In addition, as a result of the reform, a section dedicated to the history of “Special Camp No. 2” was opened.