"Courage will not leave you": how General Karbyshev lived and died
On February 18, 1945, Lieutenant General Dmitry Karbyshev was brutally murdered in Hitler's Mauthausen concentration camp. He lived and died as a true hero, refusing to collude with the Germans. "Izvestia" recalls the biography of the unbroken Russian officer.
By origin Karbyshev - from the Cossacks. He was born in 1880 in Omsk, in a noble family with a long tradition of officers - on Polkova Street. The head of the family died early, the mother of the future general, Alexandra Efimovna, was left with six children.
Dmitry Karbyshev was not admitted to the Siberian Cadet Corps on the state account, because his older brother Vladimir was associated with the revolutionary movement (he was acquainted even with the young Vladimir Ulyanov). Dmitry Karbyshev did become a cadet, but he had to pay for it. In the corps he was considered the best mathematician. And after the end of the cadet epic he entered St. Petersburg Nicholas Engineering School.
Hero of Mukden
He received his baptism of fire during the Russo-Japanese War, in Manchuria, in the 1st East Siberian Engineer Battalion. Lieutenant Karbyshev commanded the cable section of the sapper company. He participated in the tragic for Russia battle at Mukden. He showed himself not only a competent and orderly officer-sapper, but also a desperately brave man. He was wounded. For a year and a half of participation in combat operations Karbyshev was awarded five times with battle orders. And this despite the fact that he was considered "politically unreliable" and it happened that Karbyshev was suspended from service because of "socialist agitation".
Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 for control of Manchuria and Korea, Russian army reserves at Mukden.
Nevertheless, he was admitted to the Nikolayev Engineering Academy. And Karbyshev became the best student there, and for the project of the fort received a large prize. He graduated from the Academy with honors and in the rank of captain was sent to Brest-Litovsk - to design and build fortifications of this western outpost of the Russian Empire. From there Karbyshev went straight to the active army. The First World War began. Karbyshev spent it in the 8th Army, under the command of General Alexei Brusilov. He earned a reputation as one of the best sappers in the Russian Army. As an engineer, Karbyshev provided the famous Brusilov breakthrough.
Red commander
In early 1917, Lieutenant Colonel Karbyshev supported the February Revolution, then - the Bolsheviks. By the way, Karbyshev's teacher, 60-year-old Lieutenant General Konstantin Ivanovich Velichko - the largest military engineer of that time - also came over to the side of the new authorities.
Civil War. Trophy tank MK-A Sphinx from the 2nd tank detachment of the Russian Army at Snigirevka station. Seated on the tank are (from left to right): Sergei Gusev, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front, Mikhail Frunze, commander of the Southern Front, and Dmitry Karbyshev, deputy chief of engineers of the Southern Front
When the Civil War broke out, Karbyshev showed himself as a brilliant military engineer. He built fortifications that held back Kolchak's offensive, provided the engineering side of the Perekop and Chongar operations. At the end of the war he became chairman of the Military-Technical Committee of the Main Military-Technical Directorate of the Red Army and the head of training of all military academies in military engineering. At the same time, by the way, remained non-partisan, because "to make a career" never sought. Karbyshev joined the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks only in 1940, at the age of 60.
He turned out to be a talented teacher, colleagues and students called Karbyshev "walking encyclopedia". In 1938, his major work was published - "Engineering support of defense of SD (rifle division)", in 1941 - "Engineering support of combat operations of rifle formations" in two parts.
Captured and recognized
The war caught him in Grodno, at the headquarters of the 3rd Army - on an inspection mission. The Germans were quickly overcoming all the lines of Soviet defense in Belorussia. With the headquarters of the other - 10th - Army a few days later, General Karbyshev fell into the encirclement. North of Mogilev, near the village of Dobreika, together with his comrades he crossed the Dnieper River, hoping to reach his comrades. But there the encircled were met by a German ambush. From the explosion of an air bomb the general was severely concussed. The Germans found him covered with earth. Lieutenant General of the Engineers Dmitry Karbyshev was taken prisoner.
The Germans immediately recognized him. They had Karbyshev's works in their libraries. From the first days of captivity, he began to induce him to cooperate. At that time, and the chief of military intelligence Admiral Canaris, and some ideologists from Hitler's entourage had an idea - to create an army of defectors, prisoners and representatives of emigration of the first wave. Much later, a similar formation was headed by General Andrei Vlasov - but it was Karbyshev who Hitler wanted to see at the head of this army. A patriot of his country, he resolutely refused.
"My beliefs do not fall out with my teeth."
To him came both with a stick and with a carrot. Emigrants, former officers of the tsarist army who had sold out to the Germans, drew before Karbyshev the prospect of a sovereign Russia, which would be helped by the Third Reich. He did not even enter into conversations with such people. He was kept for several days in a punishment cell with constant bright light - but the general remained adamant.
The Nazis did not lose hope for a long time, at least partly to pull Karbyshev to their side. He was too winning a figure for propaganda: a tsarist lieutenant-colonel, a high-ranking Soviet general. Educated, intelligent, from his youth he spoke excellent German. They offered Karbyshev a scientific job. A decent standard of living, assistants, the best libraries at his service. You just need to continue your research on fortification, only - for the Germans. But again and again, neither persuasion nor threats helped them. He said: "My convictions do not fall out with my teeth from the lack of vitamins in the camp diet. I am a soldier and I remain faithful to my duty. And he forbids me to work for a country that is at war with my homeland."
Participants of the "Immortal Regiment" rally in Moscow carry portraits of Joseph Stalin and General Dmitry Karbyshev
The Germans recognized Karbyshev as "hopeless" for recruitment. Despite his advanced age (Karbyshev was already 63 at the time) and illness, he became a prisoner of the Flossenbürg camp in Bavaria, then Sachsenhausen near Oranienburg, with the most inhumane regime, without leniency. There Karbyshev drew up "Rules of Conduct of a Soviet fighter and commander in Nazi captivity", which many people learned: to hold high the honor of a Red Army soldier, to be faithful to the military oath to the end; to fight against the Nazis and their accomplices, traitors to the Motherland. Shortly before the collapse of the Third Reich, he was transferred to Mauthausen, in Austria, where the mass extermination of prisoners was planned.
Alas, in the homeland about Karbyshev knew almost nothing. They were wary of prisoners. His name was not mentioned in the press. In the army, many believed that he died in the summer of 1941, they did not believe that such a man could be taken prisoner. He was listed as missing in action until 1945.
Hero and martyr
At the beginning of February 1945, the Red Army was making its way to Austria. The mood of the prisoners had changed: now they believed in victory, although they realized that they were unlikely to escape. The camp management began to exterminate the prisoners. For this purpose Hitlerites resorted to brutal experiments. On the night of February 18, after torture, General Karbyshev was stripped naked and taken out into the cold. There he, along with several other prisoners, was doused with ice water.
"Those weak in health died, and they were immediately sent to the furnace of the camp crematorium, while the rest were driven under the cold shower with clubs. Until 12 o'clock in the morning this execution was repeated several times. At 12 a.m. during the next such execution Comrade Karbyshev deviated from the cold water pressure and was killed with a blow of a baton on the head", - recalled the surviving prisoner of Mauthausen, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Sorokin. There are reports that a few minutes before his death Karbyshev said to his comrades: "Think of your homeland, and courage will not leave you!" Sorokin's testimony played a key role in making the hero's fate known to the whole country.
"Stairway of Death" and the quarry of the Nazi concentration camp Mauthausen, where for whole days, without seeing the sun, hundreds of prisoners worked - undermining huge rocks, breaking stone
Memories of Karbyshev left several other prisoners of Hitler's camps. For example, Canadian Major Seddon de St. Clair - it is true that he was not a witness of Karbyshev's death and told about the last days of the general from hearsay. But the Canadian spoke of Karbyshev with sincere admiration: "We looked at all events through the eyes of your general, and these were very good, very faithful eyes. They helped us to understand your great country and its magnificent people. What a man!" No wonder that the Soviet general's courage became a legend at Mauthausen.
Everyone wrote about his unbending character, his impeccable courage and his open hatred of the Nazis. The Motherland learned of the general's feat - and, having checked the details of his conversations with the Germans, the investigators were convinced of the incredible firmness of Karbyshev's spirit. His name became known to the whole country as a synonym of military valor and devotion to officer duty. On August 16, 1946 Lieutenant General of the Red Army Engineering Forces Dmitry Karbyshev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union: "for exceptional fortitude and courage shown in the fight against the German invaders in the Great Patriotic War".
Monument to General Dmitry Karbyshev in Mauthausen
On the site of the former Mauthausen concentration camp, where 100 thousand people died, 30 thousand of whom were citizens of the Soviet Union, there is now a memorial complex. There first opened an obelisk in honor of General Karbyshev, and in May 1963 - a monument to the hero. "His life and death were a feat in the name of life," it is written on the granite slab in Russian and German. This is a monument to a warrior and a martyr. It is impossible to break such a man. It is also impossible to forget.
The author is the deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine "Historian"
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
