Who brought life: how the Red Army liberated Sachsenhausen
On April 22, 1945, the Red Army troops liberated the Sachsenhausen concentration camp — in the very center of the Third Reich, near Berlin, near the town of Oranienburg, very close to quiet residential areas. Izvestia recalled how it was.
Himmler's favorites
Sachsenhausen occupies a special place in the long line of Hitler's death camps. It was created back in July 1936, and it was supposed to serve as an example for other camps, most of which arose after the outbreak of World War II. SS chief Heinrich Himmler often visited Sachsenhausen. He even built himself a villa nearby.
The camp was completed in September 1938, and its first victims were prisoners of another concentration camp, Esterwegen, who were building it.
Head of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security of Germany, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler (center) with an inspection
On the gate was an inscription made of metal rods: "Arbeit macht frei" — "Labor liberates". Later, such inscriptions began to appear in many concentration camps, but Sachsenhausen was the first. The camp, which was relatively small in size and had the shape of a triangle, was guarded by 19 watchtowers, from which every corner was shot. A wire fence was installed around the camp, through which an electric current was passed. The guards who tortured the Sachsenhausen builders received Reich awards.
A field for experiments
It was there, in the "sacred center of Germany," that guards were trained for other camps and "new technologies were developed." For example, there was a special shoe testing track in the camp. Nine different road surfaces were laid around the parade ground. The prisoners who were selected for the experiment had to travel forty kilometers with a load on their shoulders at a different pace every day. After such executions, many remained disabled.
For the slightest act of insubordination, prisoners were shot on the spot or executed on gallows in the presence of other prisoners. In 1943, a gas chamber was installed in the camp. This "technical innovation" was approved by Himmler himself. The exact number of people killed in it is unknown. Hundreds of people were heading to the gas chamber immediately after arriving in Sachsenhausen. The camp also had its own crematorium, as there were so many dead. The ashes of the victims were "disposed of" in a specially designated area. It had to be expanded several times.
Prisoners at the entrance to the Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II
The most inhumane experiments were conducted in the medical unit. Poisons and electric current were tested on the prisoners. Sachsenhausen supplied medical schools in Germany with anatomical demonstration objects — these were murdered prisoners.
There was a special design in the camp for shooting in the back of the head. The shooting range, in which real people served as targets for German soldiers and officers, was also active. That's how the camp guards practiced shooting.
They also engaged in counterfeiting in Sachsenhausen. One of Hitler's ideas was to destroy the American and British economies through the massive introduction of counterfeit dollars and pounds. It was not possible to implement this plan. But the artists-prisoners of Sachsenhausen in special workshops, under pain of death, created about a million counterfeit banknotes.
Monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators on the territory of the Memorial complex "Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp" near the city of Oranienburg, liberated by Soviet troops on April 22, 1945
"Everything here was adapted for the constant torture and mass extermination of prisoners. Suffice it to say that of the 200,000 people who passed through the gates of Sachsenhausen, 100,000 were destroyed and burned in the crematorium. Every second person was killed. Trains of the doomed arrived at the camp every day and never returned. Often they were not even brought into the camp, but were driven directly from the wagons to the crematorium, and there they found a painful death. In batches of several hundred people, they were herded into a specially equipped shooting range for mass shootings and there they were bombarded with a barrage of machine-gun fire. Others were led into the crematorium, ordered to undress and go to the shower room to wash. Then the door was hermetically sealed and poisonous gas was used instead of water. The unfortunate people died in terrible agony," recalled pilot Mikhail Devyataev, who was held in Sachsenhausen for several months as a suicide bomber.
He managed to switch to the category of "penalty takers" under a different name, and Devyataev was transferred to the Uzedom camp, from where he, along with nine other Soviet prisoners of war, managed to escape by hijacking a German Heinkel He-111 aircraft.
"To destroy Soviet prisoners"
Back in August 1941, a meeting was held in Sachsenhausen with the participation of Commandant Hans Loritz, concentration camp inspector Richard Glucks, Chief of Staff Arthur Liebehenschel (who would become commandant of Auschwitz in the future) and SS division commander Death's Head Theodor Eike, at which these killers agreed with the Fuhrer's proposal to destroy Soviet prisoners, especially commissars and Communists, including the "young fanatics," as they called the Komsomol members.
The Nazis carried out this line scrupulously, including in the Sachsenhausen camp. Although some prisoners were subjected to special psychological treatment. Andrei Vlasov, a man who rightfully became a symbol of shameful betrayal, often visited Sachsenhausen. He spoke to Soviet prisoners of war who came here, agitated them, and offered to join the ranks of the "fighter against Bolshevism." It should be noted that there were few traitors who followed Vlasov, significantly fewer than the Germans had expected.
The fate of Yakov Dzhugashvili
Perhaps the most famous prisoner of Sachsenhausen was a senior lieutenant of the Red Army, commander of an artillery battery, Yakov Dzhugashvili, the eldest son of Joseph Stalin. In the middle of July 1941, leaving the encirclement near the city of Liozno in Belarus, he disappeared. His fate remained unknown in Moscow for several days, but Stalin's son was captured. On July 18, he was taken to the army headquarters of Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, and endless interrogations began.
Joseph Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili with his daughter Galina
On July 19, 1941, Berlin radio reported that Stalin's son had been captured. The Germans used his name in propaganda. Leaflets with the image of Yakov Dzhugashvili, who called on Soviet soldiers to surrender, were scattered over the positions of the Red Army from airplanes. Fortunately, Stalin understood that this was a fake. Marshal Georgy Zhukov recalled in his memoirs his conversation with Stalin about the fate of his son. The Supreme commander-in-chief, according to Zhukov, replied as follows: "Yakov will not get out of captivity. They'll shoot him. Murderers. According to inquiries, they keep him isolated from other prisoners of war and agitate for treason... Yakov would prefer death to treason."
And so it happened. In October 1942, he found himself in Sachsenhausen, in a special camp "A". He was being watched by specially trained guards. During interrogations, which did not stop in Sachsenhausen, Lieutenant Dzhugashvili flatly refused to cooperate with the Nazis. On April 14, 1943, he did not comply with the order to enter the barracks and demanded a meeting with the camp commandant. When the head of the guard went to the commandant to convey this unexpected request to him, Yakov ran up to the wire and grabbed it with both hands, receiving a severe electric shock, which may have proved fatal. The sentry Konrad Hafrich shot him in the head. Yakov is dead. His corpse was burned in the camp crematorium. Lieutenant Dzhugashvili did not violate his military oath.
They are not subject to oblivion
On April 21, upon learning of the approach of Soviet troops, the camp guards led the prisoners (there were 30,000 of them) out of the camp, trying to cover up the traces of their crimes. People were driven in columns, shooting those who fell and could not go on. The rest were going to be loaded onto barges and scuttled in the Baltic Sea. But the Nazis failed to do this. The advanced tank units of the advancing Red Army freed the prisoners on the march.
Mass extermination of concentration camp prisoners before the retreat of the Fascist troops
On April 22, 1945, troops of the 16th Cavalry Division of the 1st Belorussian Front entered the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Hundreds of people were found shot in the woods on the way from the camp to the Baltic. All those released received immediate medical attention and were assigned to the infirmaries. Correspondents tried to record the traces of the crimes of the "Goebbels' favorites." A military sanitary anti-epidemic squad was working in the camp. The Soviet press told millions of people about the atrocities of the Nazis.
After the war, memorial complexes were created on the territory of Sachsenhausen, as well as the Ravensbruck women's camp located nearby.
More than 200,000 prisoners passed through Sachsenhausen. More than half of them died. At least 20 thousand more died of diseases and wounds shortly after the end of the war. Now the gallows and furnaces of Sachsenhausen remind us of the brutal crimes of the Nazis, for which there can be no excuse or excuse. This is a cruel lesson for all of humanity.
The author is the deputy editor—in-chief of the magazine "Historian"
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
