Candlesticks made of women in Nazi concentration camps. How the Nazis abused children in the Salaspils concentration camp. Deadly torture of the Inquisition
Torture is often called various minor troubles that happen to everyone in everyday life. This definition is given to raising disobedient children, standing in line for a long time, doing a lot of laundry, then ironing clothes, and even the process of preparing food. All this, of course, can be very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of debilitation largely depends on the character and inclinations of the person), but still bears little resemblance to the most terrible torture in the history of mankind. The practice of interrogation with prejudice and other violent actions against prisoners took place in almost all countries of the world. The time frame is also not defined, but since to modern man psychologically closer to the relatively recent events, his attention is drawn to the methods and special equipment invented in the twentieth century, in particular in the German concentration camps of the times. But there were also ancient Eastern and medieval tortures. The fascists were also taught by their colleagues from Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive bodies. So why was everything over people?
Meaning of the term
To begin with, when starting to study any issue or phenomenon, any researcher tries to define it. “To name it correctly is already half to understand” - says
So, torture is the deliberate infliction of suffering. In this case, the nature of the torment does not matter; it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or deprivation of sleep), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both “channels of influence.”
But it is not only the fact of suffering that matters. Senseless torment is called torture. Torture differs from it in its purposefulness. In other words, a person is beaten with a whip or hung on a rack for a reason, but in order to get some result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to admit guilt, divulge hidden information, and sometimes they are simply punished for some misdemeanor or crime. The twentieth century added one more item to the list of possible purposes of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes carried out with the aim of studying the body's reaction to unbearable conditions in order to determine the limits of human capabilities. These experiments are recognized Nuremberg Tribunal inhumane and pseudoscientific, which did not prevent the study of their results after the defeat of Nazi Germany by specialist physiologists of the victorious countries.
Death or trial
The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that after receiving the result, even the most terrible tortures stopped. There was no point in continuing them. The position of executioner-executor, as a rule, was occupied by a professional who knew about painful techniques and the peculiarities of psychology, if not everything, then a lot, and there was no point in wasting his efforts on senseless bullying. After the victim confessed to a crime, depending on the degree of civilization of society, she could expect immediate death or treatment followed by trial. Legally formalized execution after biased interrogations during the investigation was characteristic of the punitive justice of Germany in the initial Hitler era and for Stalin’s “open trials” (the Shakhty case, the trial of the industrial party, reprisals against Trotskyists, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent suits and shown to the public. Broken morally, people most often obediently repeated everything that the investigators forced them to admit. Torture and executions were rampant. The veracity of the testimony did not matter. Both in Germany and in the USSR in the 1930s, the confession of the accused was considered the “queen of evidence” (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, USSR prosecutor). Brutal torture was used to obtain it.
Deadly torture of the Inquisition
In few areas of its activity (except perhaps in the manufacture of murder weapons) humanity has been so successful. It should be noted that in recent centuries there has even been some regression compared to ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the reason most often became the external attractiveness of the unfortunate victim. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who actually committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the unequivocal doom of the condemned. No matter how long the torment lasted, it only ended in the death of the condemned. The execution weapon could have been the Iron Maiden, the Brazen Bull, a bonfire, or the sharp-edged pendulum described by Edgar Poe, which was methodically lowered onto the victim’s chest inch by inch. The terrible tortures of the Inquisition were prolonged and accompanied by unimaginable moral torment. The preliminary investigation may have involved the use of other ingenious mechanical devices to slowly disintegrate the bones of the fingers and limbs and sever the muscle ligaments. The most famous weapons were:
A metal sliding bulb used for particularly sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;
- “Spanish boot”;
A Spanish chair with clamps and a brazier for the legs and buttocks;
An iron bra (pectoral), worn over the chest while hot;
- “crocodiles” and special forceps for crushing male genitals.
The executioners of the Inquisition also had other torture equipment, which it is better not for people with sensitive psyches to know about.
East, Ancient and Modern
No matter how ingenious the European inventors of self-harm techniques may be, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind were still invented in the East. The Inquisition used metal tools, which sometimes had a very intricate design, while in Asia they preferred everything natural, natural (today these products would probably be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything was used. Eastern torture and execution had the same goals as European ones, but technically differed in duration and greater sophistication. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scaphism (from the Greek word “scaphium” - trough). The victim was immobilized with shackles, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then the whole body was smeared with a sweet mixture and lowered into the swamp. The blood-sucking insects slowly ate the man alive. They did the same thing in the case of execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate person was to be burned in the scorching sun, his eyelids were cut off for greater torment. There were other types of torture that used elements of the biosystem. For example, it is known that bamboo grows quickly, a meter per day. It is enough to simply hang the victim at a short distance above the young shoots, and cut off the ends of the stems at an acute angle. The person being tortured has time to come to his senses, confess everything and hand over his accomplices. If he persists, he will slowly and painfully be pierced by the plants. This choice was not always provided, however.
Torture as a method of inquiry
Both in and at a later period various types torture was used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized savage structures, but also by ordinary authorities state power, today called law enforcement. It was part of a set of investigation and inquiry techniques. From the second half of the 16th century, they practiced in Russia different types bodily influence, such as: whipping, hanging, racking, burning with pincers and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe was also by no means distinguished by humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying and even the fear of death did not guarantee finding out the truth. Moreover, in some cases the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case with a miller, which the inscription on the pediment of the French Palace of Justice calls for to be remembered. He took upon himself someone else's guilt under torture, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.
Abolition of torture in different countries
At the end of the 17th century, a gradual shift away from the practice of torture and a transition from it to other, more humane methods of inquiry began. One of the results of the Enlightenment was the realization that it is not the severity of punishment, but its inevitability that influences the reduction of criminal activity. In Prussia, torture was abolished in 1754; this country became the first to put its legal proceedings at the service of humanism. Then the process went progressively, different states followed her example in the following sequence:
| STATE | Year of the phatic ban on torture | Year of official ban on torture |
| Denmark | 1776 | 1787 |
| Austria | 1780 | 1789 |
| France | ||
| Netherlands | 1789 | 1789 |
| Sicilian kingdoms | 1789 | 1789 |
| Austrian Netherlands | 1794 | 1794 |
| Venetian Republic | 1800 | 1800 |
| Bavaria | 1806 | 1806 |
| Papal States | 1815 | 1815 |
| Norway | 1819 | 1819 |
| Hanover | 1822 | 1822 |
| Portugal | 1826 | 1826 |
| Greece | 1827 | 1827 |
| Switzerland (*) | 1831-1854 | 1854 |
Note:
*) the legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland has changed in different times the specified period.
Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.
Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774 by issuing a secret decree. By this, on the one hand, she continued to keep criminals at bay, but, on the other, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. This decision was formalized legally by Alexander I in 1801.
As for England, torture was prohibited there in 1772, but not all, but only some.
Illegal torture
The legislative ban did not mean their complete exclusion from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class who were ready to break the law in the name of its triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and if exposed, they were threatened with legal prosecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was necessary to “work with people” more carefully, without leaving visible traces. In the 19th and 20th centuries, objects that were heavy but had a soft surface were used, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation was manifested in the fact that most often these were codes of laws), rubber hoses, etc. They were not left without attention and methods of moral pressure. Some investigators sometimes threatened severe punishments, long sentences, and even reprisals against loved ones. This was also torture. The horror experienced by those under investigation prompted them to make confessions, incriminate themselves and receive undeserved punishments, until the majority of police officers performed their duty honestly, studying evidence and collecting testimony to bring a reasonable accusation. Everything changed after totalitarian and dictatorial regimes came to power in some countries. This happened in the 20th century.
After the October Revolution of 1917, violence broke out on the territory of the former Russian Empire. Civil war, in which both warring parties most often did not consider themselves bound by the legislative norms that were mandatory under the tsar. Torture of prisoners of war in order to obtain information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. During the years of the Red Terror, executions most often took place, but mockery of representatives of the “exploiter class,” which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed “gentlemen,” became widespread. In the twenties, thirties and forties, the NKVD authorities used prohibited methods of interrogation, depriving those under investigation of sleep, food, water, beating and mutilating them. This was done with the permission of management, and sometimes on his direct orders. The goal was rarely to find out the truth - repressions were carried out to intimidate, and the investigator's task was to obtain a signature on a protocol containing a confession of counter-revolutionary activities, as well as slander of other citizens. As a rule, Stalin’s “backpack masters” did not use special torture devices, being content with available objects, such as a paperweight (they beat them on the head), or even an ordinary door, which pinched fingers and other protruding parts of the body.
In Nazi Germany
Torture in the concentration camps created after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously used in that they were a strange mixture of Eastern sophistication and European practicality. Initially, these “correctional institutions” were created for guilty Germans and representatives of national minorities declared hostile (Gypsies and Jews). Then came a series of experiments that were somewhat scientific in nature, but in cruelty exceeded the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind.
Trying to create antidotes and vaccines Nazi doctors the SS administered lethal injections to prisoners, performed operations without anesthesia, including abdominal ones, froze prisoners, starved them of heat, did not allow them to sleep, eat or drink. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the “production” of ideal soldiers, not afraid of frost, heat and injury, resistant to the effects of toxic substances and pathogenic bacilli. The history of torture during the Second World War forever imprinted the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, became the personification of inhumanity. They also conducted experiments on lengthening limbs by mechanical stretching, suffocating people in rarefied air, and other experiments that caused painful agony, sometimes lasting for long hours.
The torture of women by the Nazis concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them of reproductive function. Various methods were studied - from simple ones (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated ones, which had the prospect of mass application in the event of a Reich victory (irradiation and exposure to chemicals).
It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when Soviet and allied troops began to liberate the concentration camps. Even appearance prisoners spoke more eloquently than any evidence that their very content in inhumane conditions it was torture.
Current state of affairs
The torture of the fascists became the standard of cruelty. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity sighed with joy in the hope that this would never happen again. Unfortunately, although not on such a scale, torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain some of the terrible signs modern world. Developed countries, declaring their commitment to rights and freedoms, are looking for legal loopholes to create special territories in which compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners of secret prisons have been exposed to punitive forces for many years without specific charges being brought against them. The methods used by military personnel of many countries during local and major armed conflicts in relation to prisoners and those simply suspected of sympathizing with the enemy, sometimes exceed in cruelty and bullying of people in Nazi concentration camps. In international investigations of such precedents, too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe a duality of standards, when war crimes of one of the parties are completely or partially hushed up.
Will the era of a new Enlightenment come when torture will finally be finally and irrevocably recognized as a disgrace to humanity and banned? So far there is little hope for this...
Next you will find the history of the German concentration camp Ravensbrück, which was built specifically for female prisoners who worked here for the benefit of the Third Reich, and was liberated on April 30, 1945 by the Red Army.
The guarded detention camp for women Ravensbrück was built in 1939 by prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
The camp consisted of several parts, one of which had a small men's section. The camp was built for forced labor of prisoners. The products of the SS Gesellschaft für Textil und Lederverwertung mbH ("Society for Textile and Leather Manufacturing"), the German electrical engineering concern Siemens & Halske AG and
some others.
Initially, German women who “disgraced the nation” were sent to the camp: “criminals,” women of “asocial behavior,” and members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect. Later, gypsy and Polish women began to be sent here. In March 1942, most of them were sent to build the Auschwitz death camp, and in October 1942, the “liberation of the camp from Jews” began: more than 600 prisoners,
including 522 Jewish women, were deported to Auschwitz. In February 1943, the first Soviet prisoners of war appeared here. By December 1943, there were 15,100 women prisoners in Ravensbrück and in the outer camps.
Blanca Rothschild, prisoner of the camp: “A real hell awaited us in Ravensbrück. All our clothes were taken away. They forced us to undergo a medical examination, and it was... even the word “shameful” doesn’t fit here, because there was nothing human about the people who carried it out. They were worse than animals. Many of us were completely young girls who had never been examined by a gynecologist before, but they were looking for, God knows, either diamonds or something else. We were forced to go through this. I have never seen such a chair as there in my life. Every minute there was humiliation."
All belongings of those arriving at the camp were taken away and they were given a striped dress, slippers and a badge, colored depending on the category to which the prisoner belonged: red for political prisoners and members of the Resistance movement, yellow for Jews, green for criminals , purple for Jehovah's Witnesses, black for gypsies, prostitutes, lesbians and thieves; in the center of the triangle was a letter indicating nationality.
Stella Kugelman, a prisoner of the camp who ended up in Ravensbrück at the age of 5: “I was in the camp under the care of other women who fed and hid me, I called them all mothers. Sometimes they showed me mine real mother in the window of the barracks, where I was not allowed to enter. I was a child and thought that this was normal, that this was how it should be. One day, another of my camp mothers, a German anti-fascist Klara, told me: “Stella, your mother was burned, she is no more.” To my surprise, I did not react, but then I always knew and remembered it - that my mother was burned. I realized this nightmare much later, five years later, already in an orphanage near Bryansk, at the New Year’s tree. I was sitting near the stove, watching the wood burn, and suddenly I realized what exactly the Nazis had done to my mother. I remember that I screamed and told the teacher about it - she and I cried all night.”
There were many children in the camp. Many were born there, but were taken away from their mothers. According to records, between September 1944 and April 1945, 560 children were born in the camp (23 women had premature births, 20 children were stillborn, and 5 abortions were performed). About a hundred of them survived. Most children died from exhaustion.
The prisoners lived according to a strict schedule. At 4 am - rise. Later - breakfast consisting of half a glass of cold coffee without bread. Then - roll call, which lasted 2 - 3 hours, regardless of the weather. Moreover, inspections were deliberately extended during the winter. After this, the prisoners went to work, which lasted 12-14 hours with breaks for lunch, which consisted of 0.5 liters of water with rutabaga or potato peelings. After work - a new roll call, at the end of which they gave out coffee and 200 grams. bread
Memoirs of camp prisoner Nina Kharlamova: “The head doctor, Percy Treite, an executioner with a medical diploma, killed. How many of his patients did he kill, ordering his SS sisters to inject poison into their veins! How many tuberculosis patients were sent to the gas chamber! How many were assigned to the “black transport”, which was also called “himmeltransport”, that is, “transport to heaven”. He was called that because he went to camps where there were crematoria, in which everyone who arrived with such transport was burned.”
In 1944, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler personally visited Ravensbrück. He gave the order to destroy all patients who were unable to move independently. This was done by the chief camp doctor, Percy Treite, known for his cruelty. According to the recollections of prisoners, he killed everyone indiscriminately, he himself daily selected batches of prisoners for burning and liked to perform operations without anesthesia
During the operation of the camp, from 50 to 92 thousand people died there. Prisoners mostly died from malnutrition, exhausting work, poor sanitary conditions, and abuse by guards. Twice a month, prisoners were selected to be exterminated. Every day up to 50 people were killed in the camp. Medical experiments were constantly carried out: the prisoners were injected with staphylococci, causative agents of gas gangrene and tetanus, as well as several types of bacteria at the same time; women were specially mutilated, healthy limbs were amputated, and then they were “planted” with other prisoners and sterilized. In the fall of 1943, a crematorium was built for the concentration camp.
On April 27, 1945, the evacuation of the camp began. The Germans drove more than 20 thousand people westward. 3.5 thousand people remained in the camp. On April 28, the march reached the commune of Retzow, the outer camp of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The next and final stop was Ravensbrück's outer camp Malchow. Here the SS guards locked the gates of the camp and barracks and abandoned the prisoners. The next day Malkhov was liberated by the Red Army.
In the photo: released Ravensbrück prisoner Henriette Wuth.
On April 30, 1945, on the day of the liberation of the camp, the prisoners of Ravensbrück took an oath: “In the name of many thousands of victims who were tortured, in the name of mothers and sisters turned to ashes, in the name of all victims of fascism, we swear! Never forget the black night of Ravensbrück. Tell the children's children everything. Until the end of your days, strengthen friendship, peace and unity. Destroy fascism. This is the motto and the result of the struggle.” Already on May 3, 1945, the camp began operating as a military hospital, in which the best Soviet doctors from nearby military locations worked. The Book of Memory of those killed in Ravensbrück was created many years later, since just before the liberation the Germans destroyed almost all documents.
Bone fragments are still found in this land. The crematorium could not cope with the huge number of corpses, although two sets of ovens were built. They burned poorly, leaving fragments of bodies - the ashes were buried in pits around the concentration camp. 72 years have passed, but mushroom pickers in the forest often come across pieces of skulls with eye sockets, bones of arms or legs, crushed fingers - not to mention decayed scraps of striped "robes" of prisoners. The Stutthof concentration camp (fifty kilometers from the city of Gdansk) was founded on September 2, 1939 - the day after the outbreak of World War II, and its prisoners were liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945. The main thing that Stutthof became famous for is that These were "experiments" by SS doctors who, using humans as guinea pigs, made soap from human fat. A bar of this soap was later used at the Nuremberg trials as an example of Nazi savagery. Now some historians (not only in Poland, but also in other countries) are speaking out: this is “military folklore”, fantasy, this could not have happened.
Soap from prisoners
The Stutt-Hof museum complex receives 100 thousand visitors a year. Barracks, towers for SS machine gunners, a crematorium and a gas chamber are available for viewing: small, for about 30 people. The premises were built in the fall of 1944; before that, they “coped” with the usual methods - typhus, exhausting work, hunger. A museum employee, taking me through the barracks, says: on average, the life expectancy of the inhabitants of Stutthof was 3 months. According to archival documents, one of the female prisoners weighed 19 kg before her death. Behind the glass I suddenly see large wooden shoes, as if from a medieval fairy tale. I ask: what is this? It turns out that the guards took away the prisoners’ shoes and in return gave them these “shoes” that abraded their feet to bloody blisters. In winter, prisoners worked in the same “robe”, only a light cape was required - many died from hypothermia. It was believed that 85,000 people died in the camp, but lately EU historians are re-estimating: the number of prisoner deaths has been reduced to 65,000.
In 2006, the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland conducted an analysis of the same soap presented at the Nuremberg trials, says the guide Danuta Ochocka. - Contrary to expectations, the results were confirmed - it was indeed made by a Nazi professor Rudolf Spanner from human fat. However, now researchers in Poland claim: there is no exact confirmation that the soap was made specifically from the bodies of Stutthof prisoners. It is possible that the corpses of homeless people who died of natural causes, brought from the streets of Gdansk, were used for production. Professor Spanner indeed visited Stutthof at different times, but the production of “soap of the dead” was not carried out on an industrial scale.
Gas chamber and crematorium in the Stutthof concentration camp. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Hans Weingartz
"People were skinned"
The Institute of National Remembrance of Poland is the same “glorious” organization that advocates for the demolition of all monuments to Soviet soldiers, and in this case the situation turned out to be tragicomic. Officials specifically ordered an analysis of the soap in order to obtain proof of the “lies of Soviet propaganda” in Nuremberg, but it turned out the opposite. As for industrial scale, Spanner produced up to 100 kg of soap from “human material” in the period 1943-1944. and, according to the testimony of his employees, he repeatedly went to Stutthof for “raw materials.” Polish investigator Tuvya Friedman published a book where he described his impressions of Spanner’s laboratory after the liberation of Gdansk: “We had the feeling that we had been in hell. One room was filled with naked corpses. The other is lined with boards on which skins taken from many people have been stretched. Almost immediately they discovered a furnace in which the Germans were experimenting in making soap using human fat as a raw material. Several bars of this “soap” lay nearby.” A museum employee shows me a hospital used for experiments by SS doctors; relatively healthy prisoners were placed here under the formal pretext of “treatment.” Doctor Carl Clauberg went to Stutthof on short business trips from Auschwitz to sterilize women, and SS Sturmbannführer Karl Wernet from Buchenwald cut out people's tonsils and tongues, replacing them with artificial organs. Wernet was not satisfied with the results - the victims of the experiments were killed in a gas chamber. There are no exhibits in the concentration camp museum about the savage activities of Clauberg, Wernet and Spanner - they “have little documentary evidence.” Although during Nuremberg trials the same “human soap” from Stutt-hof was demonstrated and the testimony of dozens of witnesses was voiced.
"Cultural" Nazis
“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we have an entire exhibition dedicated to the liberation of Stutt-Hof by Soviet troops on May 9, 1945,” says Dr. Marcin Owsiński, head of the museum's research department. - It is noted that this was precisely the release of prisoners, and not the replacement of one occupation with another, as it is now fashionable to say. People rejoiced at the arrival of the Red Army. Regarding the SS experiments in the concentration camp, I assure you that there is no politics here. We work with documentary evidence, and most of the papers were destroyed by the Germans during the retreat from Stutthof. If they appear, we will immediately make changes to the exhibition.
In the cinema hall of the museum they are showing a film about the entry of the Red Army into Stutthof - archival footage. It is noted that by this time only 200 exhausted prisoners remained in the concentration camp and “then the N-KVD sent some to Siberia.” No confirmation, no names - but a fly in the ointment spoils the barrel of honey: clearly there is a goal - to show that the liberators were not so good. At the crematorium there is a sign in Polish: “We thank the Red Army for our liberation.” She is old, from the old days. Soviet soldiers. They say that the atrocities of the SS doctors have not been confirmed, fewer people died in the camps and, in general, the crimes of the occupiers have been exaggerated. Moreover, this is stated by Poland, where the Nazis destroyed a fifth of the entire population. To be honest, I would like to call “ ambulance”, so that Polish politicians would be taken to a psychiatric hospital.
As a publicist from Warsaw said Maciej Wisniewski: “We will still live to see the time when they will say: the Nazis were a cultured people, they built hospitals and schools in Poland, and the war was started by the Soviet Union.” I wouldn't want to live to see these times. But for some reason it seems to me that they are not far off.Auschwitz prisoners were released four months before the end of World War II. By that time there were few of them left. Almost one and a half million people died, most of them Jews. For several years, the investigation continued, which led to terrible discoveries: people not only died in gas chambers, but also became victims of Dr. Mengele, who used them as guinea pigs.
Auschwitz: the story of a city
A small Polish town in which more than a million innocent people were killed is called Auschwitz all over the world. We call it Auschwitz. Concentration camps, experiments on women and children, gas chambers, torture, executions - all these words have been associated with the name of the city for more than 70 years.
It will sound quite strange in Russian Ich lebe in Auschwitz - “I live in Auschwitz.” Is it possible to live in Auschwitz? They learned about the experiments on women in the concentration camp after the end of the war. Over the years, new facts have been discovered. One is scarier than the other. The truth about the camp called shocked the whole world. Research continues today. Many books have been written and many films have been made on this topic. Auschwitz has become our symbol of painful, difficult death.
Where did they take place? massacres children and terrible experiments were carried out on women? Q What city do millions of people on earth associate with the phrase “death factory”? Auschwitz.
Experiments on people were carried out in a camp located near the city, which today is home to 40 thousand people. It's calm locality with a good climate. Auschwitz was first mentioned in historical documents in the twelfth century. In the 13th century there were already so many Germans here that their language began to prevail over Polish. In the 17th century, the city was captured by the Swedes. In 1918 it became Polish again. 20 years later, a camp was organized here, on the territory of which crimes took place, the likes of which humanity had never known.
Gas chamber or experiment
In the early forties, the answer to the question of where the Auschwitz concentration camp was located was known only to those who were doomed to death. Unless, of course, you take the SS men into account. Some prisoners, fortunately, survived. Later they talked about what happened within the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Experiments on women and children, carried out by a man whose name terrified the prisoners, were terrible truth, which not everyone is ready to listen to.
The gas chamber is a terrible invention of the Nazis. But there are worse things. Krystyna Zywulska is one of the few who managed to leave Auschwitz alive. In her book of memoirs, she mentions an incident: a prisoner sentenced to death by Dr. Mengele does not go, but runs into the gas chamber. Because death from poisonous gas is not as terrible as the torment from the experiments of the same Mengele.
Creators of the "death factory"
So what is Auschwitz? This is a camp that was originally intended for political prisoners. The author of the idea is Erich Bach-Zalewski. This man had the rank of SS Gruppenführer, and during the Second World War he led punitive operations. With him light hand Dozens were sentenced to death. He took an active part in suppressing the uprising that took place in Warsaw in 1944.
The SS Gruppenführer's assistants found a suitable location in a small Polish town. There were already military barracks here, and in addition, there was a well-established railway connection. In 1940, a man named He arrived here. He will be hanged near the gas chambers by decision of the Polish court. But this will happen two years after the end of the war. And then, in 1940, Hess liked these places. He took on the new business with great enthusiasm.
Inhabitants of the concentration camp
This camp did not immediately become a “death factory”. At first, mostly Polish prisoners were sent here. Only a year after the organization of the camp, the tradition of writing a serial number on the prisoner’s hand appeared. Every month more and more Jews were brought. By the end of Auschwitz they made up 90% of total number prisoners. The number of SS men here also grew continuously. In total, the concentration camp received about six thousand overseers, punishers and other “specialists.” Many of them were put on trial. Some disappeared without a trace, including Joseph Mengele, whose experiments terrified prisoners for several years.
We will not give the exact number of Auschwitz victims here. Let's just say that more than two hundred children died in the camp. Most of them were sent to gas chambers. Some ended up in the hands of Josef Mengele. But this man was not the only one who conducted experiments on people. Another so-called doctor is Karl Clauberg.
Beginning in 1943, a huge number of prisoners were admitted to the camp. Most of should have been destroyed. But the organizers of the concentration camp were practical people, and therefore decided to take advantage of the situation and use a certain part of the prisoners as material for research.
Karl Cauberg
This man supervised the experiments carried out on women. His victims were predominantly Jewish and Gypsy women. The experiments included organ removal, testing of new drugs, and radiation. What kind of person is Karl Cauberg? Who is he? What kind of family did you grow up in, how was his life? And most importantly, where did the cruelty that goes beyond human understanding come from?
By the beginning of the war, Karl Cauberg was already 41 years old. In the twenties, he served as chief physician at the clinic at the University of Königsberg. Kaulberg was not a hereditary doctor. He was born into a family of artisans. Why he decided to connect his life with medicine is unknown. But there is evidence that he served as an infantryman in the First World War. Then he graduated from the University of Hamburg. Apparently, he was so fascinated by medicine that he abandoned his military career. But Kaulberg was not interested in healing, but in research. In the early forties, he began searching for the most practical way to sterilize women who were not of the Aryan race. To conduct experiments he was transferred to Auschwitz.
Kaulberg's experiments
The experiments consisted of introducing a special solution into the uterus, which led to serious disturbances. After the experiment, the reproductive organs were removed and sent to Berlin for further research. There is no data on exactly how many women became victims of this “scientist”. After the end of the war, he was captured, but soon, just seven years later, oddly enough, he was released under an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war. Returning to Germany, Kaulberg did not suffer from remorse. On the contrary, he was proud of his “achievements in science.” As a result, he began to receive complaints from people who suffered from Nazism. He was arrested again in 1955. He spent even less time in prison this time. He died two years after his arrest.
Joseph Mengele
The prisoners nicknamed this man the “angel of death.” Josef Mengele personally met the trains with new prisoners and carried out the selection. Some were sent to gas chambers. Others go to work. He used others in his experiments. One of the Auschwitz prisoners described this man as follows: “Tall, with a pleasant appearance, he looks like a film actor.” He never raised his voice and spoke politely - and this terrified the prisoners.
From the biography of the Angel of Death
Josef Mengele was the son of a German entrepreneur. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine and anthropology. In the early thirties he joined the Nazi organization, but soon left it for health reasons. In 1932, Mengele joined the SS. During the war he served in the medical forces and even received the Iron Cross for bravery, but was wounded and declared unfit for service. Mengele spent several months in the hospital. After recovery, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he began his scientific activities.
Selection
Selecting victims for experiments was Mengele's favorite pastime. The doctor only needed one glance at the prisoner to determine his state of health. He sent most of the prisoners to gas chambers. And only a few prisoners managed to delay death. It was hard with those whom Mengele saw as “guinea pigs.”
Most likely, this person suffered from an extreme form of mental disorder. He even enjoyed the thought that he had a huge amount of human lives. That is why he was always next to the arriving train. Even when this was not required of him. His criminal actions were guided not only by the desire for scientific research, but also a thirst to manage. Just one word from him was enough to send tens or hundreds of people to the gas chambers. Those that were sent to laboratories became material for experiments. But what was the purpose of these experiments?
An invincible belief in the Aryan utopia, obvious mental deviations - these are the components of the personality of Joseph Mengele. All his experiments were aimed at creating a new means that could stop the reproduction of representatives of unwanted peoples. Mengele not only equated himself with God, he placed himself above him.
Joseph Mengele's experiments
The Angel of Death dissected babies and castrated boys and men. He performed the operations without anesthesia. Experiments on women included electric shocks high voltage. He conducted these experiments to test endurance. Mengele once sterilized several Polish nuns using X-rays. But the main passion of the “Doctor of Death” was experiments on twins and people with physical defects.
To each his own
On the gates of Auschwitz it was written: Arbeit macht frei, which means “work sets you free.” The words Jedem das Seine were also present here. Translated into Russian - “To each his own.” At the gates of Auschwitz, at the entrance to the camp in which more than a million people died, a saying of the ancient Greek sages appeared. The principle of justice was used by the SS as the motto of the most cruel idea in the entire history of mankind.
Serial killers and other maniacs in most cases are inventions of the imagination of screenwriters and directors. But the Third Reich did not like to strain its imagination. Therefore, the Nazis really warmed up on living people.
The terrible experiments of scientists on humanity, ending in death, are far from fiction. This real events which took place during the Second World War. Why not remember them? Moreover, today is Friday the 13th.
Pressure
German physician Sigmund Rascher was too concerned about the problems that Third Reich pilots could have at an altitude of 20 kilometers. Therefore, as the chief physician at the Dachau concentration camp, he created special pressure chambers in which he placed prisoners and experimented with pressure.
After this, the scientist opened the skulls of the victims and examined their brains. 200 people took part in this experiment. 80 died on the surgical table, the rest were shot.
White phosphorus
From November 1941 to January 1944, drugs that could treat white phosphorus burns were tested on the human body in Buchenwald. It is not known whether the Nazis managed to invent a panacea. But, believe me, these experiments took away plenty of prisoners’ lives.
The food in Buchenwald was not the best. This was especially felt from December 1943 to October 1944. The Nazis mixed food with prisoners various poisons, after which their effect on human body. Often such experiments ended with the immediate dissection of the victim after eating. And in September 1944, the Germans got tired of messing around with experimental subjects. Therefore, all participants in the experiment were shot.
Sterilization
Carl Clauberg was a German doctor who became famous for sterilization during World War II. From March 1941 to January 1945, the scientist tried to find a way to make millions of people infertile in the shortest possible time.
Clauberg succeeded: the doctor injected prisoners of Auschwitz, Revensbrück and other concentration camps with iodine and silver nitrate. Although such injections had a lot side effects(bleeding, pain and cancer), they successfully sterilized a person.
But Clauberg’s favorite was radiation exposure: a person was invited to a special chamber with a chair, sitting on which he filled out questionnaires. And then the victim simply left, not suspecting that she would never be able to have children again. Often such exposures resulted in serious radiation burns.
sea water
The Nazis during World War II once again confirmed: sea water not suitable for drinking. On the territory of the Dachau concentration camp (Germany), the Austrian doctor Hans Eppinger and professor Wilhelm Beiglbeck in July 1944 decided to check how long 90 gypsies could live without water. The victims of the experiment were so dehydrated that they even licked the recently washed floor.
Sulfanilamide
Sulfanilamide is a synthetic antimicrobial agent. From July 1942 to September 1943, the Nazis, led by the German professor Gebhard, tried to determine the effectiveness of the drug in the treatment of streptococcus, tetanus and anaerobic gangrene. Who do you think they infected to conduct such experiments?
Mustard gas
Doctors will not find a way to cure a person from a burn with mustard gas if at least one victim of this does not come to their table. chemical weapons. Why look for someone if you can poison and train on prisoners from the German concentration camp of Sachsenhausen? This is what the minds of the Reich were doing throughout the Second World War.
Malaria
SS Hauptsturmführer and MD Kurt Plötner still could not find a cure for malaria. The scientist was not even helped by the thousand prisoners from Dachau who were forced to take part in his experiments. Victims were infected through the bites of infected mosquitoes and treated with various drugs. More than half of the test subjects did not survive.