Of all the countries and peoples who participated in the war, the Germans took the most responsible approach to sexual servicing of their soldiers. To account for front-line brothels and prostitutes, the military department created a special ministry. The works of the famous researcher of the Third Reich Andrei Vasilchenko will help us understand what happened with sexual services in the Wehrmacht.
In the cities of northwestern Russia, brothels, as a rule, were located in small two-story houses. The workers were driven here not by a machine gun, but by severe war hunger. From 20 to 30 girls worked in shifts, each of whom served up to several dozen clients a day.
The monthly salary was about 500 rubles. The brothel cleaner received 250 rubles, the doctor and accountant received 900 each.
The once developed system, without further ado, was used in different occupied regions.
In one of the brothels in the city of Stalino (now Donetsk), the life of prostitutes proceeded according to the following schedule: 6.00 - medical examination, 9.00 - breakfast, 9.30 - 11.00 - exit to the city, 11.00 - 13.00 - stay at the hotel, preparation for work, 13.00 - 13.30 - lunch, 14.00 - 20.30 - service for soldiers and officers, 21.00 - dinner. Girls were required to spend the night only in a hotel.
Some restaurants and canteens for Germans had so-called meeting rooms, in which dishwashers and waitresses could provide additional services for a fee.
A. Vasilchenko cites an excerpt from a German diary:
“On another day, long lines lined up at the porch. Women most often received payment in kind for sexual services. For example, German clients of a bath and laundry plant in Marevo, Novgorod region, often pampered their beloved Slavic women in “brothel houses” with chocolates, which was almost a gastronomic miracle at that time. The girls usually didn’t take money. A loaf of bread is a much more generous payment than rapidly depreciating rubles.”
And in the memoirs of the German artilleryman Wilhelm Lippich, who fought near Leningrad, we find the following:
“In our regiment I knew soldiers who took advantage of the chronic hunger of local young women to satisfy their sexual needs. Having grabbed a loaf of bread, they went a couple of kilometers from the front line, where they received what they wanted for food. I heard a story about how one heartless soldier, in response to a request for payment, cut off a woman only a couple of slices and kept the rest for himself.”
In Brest, which was not a front-line city, the situation was slightly different in form, but not in essence. Brest resident Lydia T., who was a teenage girl during the occupation, was etched in her memory by a pretty, well-dressed young lady who came out of the Gestapo building. She walked along the street (the current Ostrovsky street), and by some inexplicable vibes it was clear that this was not a secret agent or informant and not a victim of the dungeons, this was something completely different...
There were brothels for Germans in many occupied cities of North-West Russia.
During the Great Patriotic War, many cities and towns in the North-West were occupied by the Nazis. On the front line, on the outskirts of Leningrad, there were bloody battles, and in the quiet rear the Germans settled in and tried to create comfortable conditions for rest and leisure.
“A German soldier must eat, wash and relieve sexual tension on time,” many Wehrmacht commanders reasoned. To solve the latter problem, brothels were created in large occupied cities and visiting rooms in German canteens and restaurants, and free prostitution was allowed.
*** Girls usually didn’t take money
Mostly local Russian girls worked in the brothels. Sometimes the shortage of priestesses of love was filled from the residents of the Baltic states. The information that the Nazis were served only by purebred German women is a myth. Only the top of the Nazi party in Berlin was concerned with the problems of racial purity. But in war conditions, no one was interested in the woman’s nationality. It is also a mistake to believe that girls in brothels were forced to work only under threat of violence. Very often they were brought there by severe war famine.
Brothels in large cities of the North-West were usually located in small two-story houses, where 20 to 30 girls worked in shifts. One served up to several dozen military personnel per day. Brothels enjoyed unprecedented popularity among the Germans. “On some days, long lines lined up at the porch,” one Nazi wrote in his diary. Women most often received payment in kind for sexual services. For example, German clients of the bath and laundry plant in Marevo, Novgorod region, often pampered their favorite Slavic women in “brothel houses” with chocolates, which was almost a gastronomic miracle at that time. The girls usually didn’t take money. A loaf of bread is a much more generous payment than rapidly depreciating rubles.
German rear services monitored order in brothels; some entertainment establishments operated under the wing of German counterintelligence. The Nazis opened large reconnaissance and sabotage schools in Soltsy and Pechki. Their “graduates” were sent to the Soviet rear and partisan detachments. German intelligence officers sensibly believed that it was easiest to “stab” agents “on a woman.” Therefore, in the Soletsky brothel, all the service personnel were recruited by the Abwehr. The girls, in private conversations, asked the cadets of the intelligence school how devoted they were to the ideas of the Third Reich, and whether they were going to go over to the side of the Soviet Resistance. For such “intimate-intellectual” work, women received special fees.
*** And full and satisfied
Some canteens and restaurants where German soldiers dined had so-called visiting rooms. Waitresses and dishwashers, in addition to their main work in the kitchen and hall, also provided sexual services. There is an opinion that in the restaurants of the famous Faceted Chamber in the Novgorod Kremlin there was such a meeting room for the Spaniards of the Blue Division. People talked about this, but there are no official documents that would confirm this fact.
The canteen and club in the small village of Medved became famous among Wehrmacht soldiers not only for their “cultural program”, but also for the fact that striptease was shown there!
*** Free prostitutes
In one of the documents from 1942 we find the following: “Since the brothels available in Pskov were not enough for the Germans, they created the so-called institute of sanitary-supervised women or, more simply put, they revived free prostitutes. Periodically, they also had to appear for a medical examination and receive appropriate marks on special tickets (medical certificates).”
After the victory over Nazi Germany, women who served the Nazis during the war were subject to public censure. People called them “German bedding, skins, b...”. Some of them had their heads shaved, like the fallen women in France. However, not a single criminal case was opened regarding cohabitation with the enemy. The Soviet government turned a blind eye to this problem. In war there are special laws.
*** Children of love.
Sexual “cooperation” during the war left a lasting memory. Innocent babies were born from the occupiers. It is difficult to even calculate how many blond and blue-eyed children with “Aryan blood” were born. Today you can easily meet in the North-West of Russia a person of retirement age with the features of a purebred German, who was born not in Bavaria, but in some distant village in the Leningrad region.
Women did not always leave the “German” child who had taken root during the war years alive. There are known cases when a mother killed a baby with her own hands because he was “the son of the enemy.” One of the partisan memoirs describes the incident. For three years, while the Germans were “meeting” in the village, the Russian woman gave birth to three children from them. On the very first day after the arrival of the Soviet troops, she carried her offspring onto the road, laid them in a row and shouted: “Death to the German occupiers!” smashed everyone's heads with a cobblestone...
*** Kursk.
The commandant of Kursk, Major General Marcel, issued an “Instruction for the regulation of prostitution in the city of Kursk.” It said:
Ҥ 1. List of prostitutes.
Only women who are on the list of prostitutes, have a control card and are regularly examined by a special doctor for sexually transmitted diseases can engage in prostitution.
Persons intending to engage in prostitution must register to be included in the list of prostitutes in the Department of the Order Service of the city of Kursk. Entry into the list of prostitutes can only occur after the relevant military doctor (sanitary officer) to whom the prostitute must be sent gives permission. Deleting from the list can also only occur with the permission of the relevant doctor.
After being included in the list of prostitutes, the latter receives a control card through the Department of the Order Service.
§ 2. When performing her trade, a prostitute must adhere to the following regulations:
A) ... to engage in her trade only in her apartment, which must be registered by her in the Housing Office and in the Department of the Law and Order Service;
B)… nail a sign to your apartment, as directed by the relevant doctor, in a visible place;
B)…has no right to leave his area of the city;
D) any attraction and recruitment on the streets and in public places is prohibited;
E) the prostitute must strictly follow the instructions of the relevant doctor, in particular, regularly and accurately appear for examinations within the specified time limits;
E) sexual intercourse without rubber guards is prohibited;
G) prostitutes who have been prohibited from having sexual intercourse by the appropriate doctor must have special notices posted on their apartments by the Department of the Order Service indicating this prohibition.
§ 3. Punishments.
1. Punishable by death:
Women who infect Germans or members of the Allied Nations with a venereal disease, despite the fact that they knew about their venereal disease before sexual intercourse.
A prostitute who has intercourse with a German or a person of an allied nation without a rubber guard and infects him is subject to the same punishment.
A sexually transmitted disease is implied and always when this woman is prohibited from having sexual intercourse by the appropriate doctor.
2. The following are punishable by forced labor in a camp for up to 4 years:
Women who have sexual intercourse with Germans or persons of the Allied nations, although they themselves know or suspect that they are sick with a venereal disease.
3. The following are punishable by forced labor in a camp for a period of at least 6 months:
A) women engaged in prostitution without being included in the list of prostitutes;
B) persons who provide premises for prostitution outside the prostitute’s own apartment.
4. The following are punishable by forced labor in a camp for a period of at least 1 month:
Prostitutes who do not comply with this regulation developed for their trade.
§ 4. Entry into force.
Prostitution was regulated in a similar way in other occupied territories. However, strict penalties for contracting sexually transmitted diseases led to the fact that prostitutes preferred not to register and carried out their trade illegally. The SD assistant in Belarus, Strauch, lamented in April 1943: “First, we eliminated all the prostitutes with venereal diseases that we could detain. But it turned out that women who were previously sick and reported it themselves later went into hiding after hearing that we would treat them badly. This error has been corrected, and women suffering from venereal diseases are being cured and isolated.”
Communication with Russian women sometimes ended very sadly for German military personnel. And it was not venereal diseases that were the main danger here. On the contrary, many Wehrmacht soldiers had nothing against catching gonorrhea or gonorrhea and spending several months in the rear - anything was better than going under the bullets of the Red Army and partisans. The result was a real combination of pleasant and not very pleasant, but useful. However, it was a meeting with a Russian girl that often ended with a partisan bullet for a German. Here is the order dated December 27, 1943 for the rear units of Army Group Center:
“Two chiefs of a convoy of one sapper battalion met two Russian girls in Mogilev, they went to the girls at their invitation and during a dance they were killed by four Russians in civilian clothes and deprived of their weapons. The investigation showed that the girls, together with Russian men, intended to join the gangs and in this way wanted to acquire weapons for themselves.”
According to Soviet sources, women and girls were often forced by the occupiers into brothels intended to serve German and allied soldiers and officers. Since it was believed that prostitution in the USSR had been ended once and for all, partisan leaders could only imagine forcibly recruiting girls into brothels. Those women and girls who were forced to cohabit with the Germans after the war to avoid persecution also claimed that they were forced to sleep with enemy soldiers and officers.
*** Stalino (Donetsk, Ukraine)
In the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine" for August 27, 2003 on the topic "Brothels for Germans in Donetsk." Here are excerpts: “In Stalino (Donetsk) there were 2 front-line brothels. One was called the “Italian Casino”. 18 girls and 8 servants worked only with the allies of the Germans - Italian soldiers and officers. As local historians say, this establishment was located near the current Donetsk Indoor market...The second brothel, intended for the Germans, was located in the oldest hotel in the city "Great Britain". In total, 26 people worked in the brothel (this includes girls, technical workers and management). The girls' earnings were approximately 500 rubles per week (so The ruble circulated in this territory in parallel with the stamp, the exchange rate was 10: 1. The work schedule was as follows: 6.00 - medical examination; 9.00 - breakfast (soup, dried potatoes, porridge, 200 grams of bread; 9.30-11.00 - departure to the city; 11.00-13.00 - stay in the hotel, preparation for work; 13.00-13.30 - lunch (first course, 200 grams of bread); 14.00-20.30 - customer service; 21.00 - dinner. Ladies were allowed to spend the night only in the hotel. A soldier received the commander had a corresponding coupon (within a month a private was entitled to 5-6 of them), underwent a medical examination, upon arrival at the brothel he registered the coupon, and handed over the counterfoil to the office of the military unit, washed himself (the regulations stipulated that the soldier be given a bar of soap, a small towel and 3- x condoms)... According to the surviving data in Stalino, a visit to a brothel cost a soldier 3 marks (put into the cash register) and lasted an average of 15 minutes. Brothels existed in Stalino until August 1943.
3.7 (73.62%) 69 votesWomen captured by the Germans. How the Nazis abused captured Soviet women
The Second World War swept through humanity like a roller coaster. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the warring parties did truly monstrous things, justifying everything by war.
Carefully! The material presented in this collection may seem unpleasant or intimidating.
Of course, the Nazis were especially distinguished in this regard, and this does not even take into account the Holocaust. There are many documented and outright fictional stories about what German soldiers did.
One senior German officer recalled the briefings they received. It is interesting that there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”
Most did just that, but among the dead they often find the bodies of women in the uniform of the Red Army - soldiers, nurses or orderlies, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.
Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had the Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And despite everything, they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.
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But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a bloody mess. The Nazis did much the same with female partisans. Before execution, they could be stripped naked and kept in the cold for a long time.
Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Germans, part 1
Of course, the captives were constantly raped.
Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Finns and Germans, part 2. Jewish women
And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to have intimate relations with captives, then ordinary rank and file had more freedom in this matter.
And if the girl did not die after the whole company had used her, then she was simply shot.
The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and one of the higher ranks of the camp took her as a servant. Although this did not save much from rape.
In this regard, the most cruel place was camp No. 337. There, prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were put into barracks at a time, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were exterminated in Stalag every day.
Women were subjected to the same torture as men, if not much worse. In terms of torture, the Spanish Inquisition could envy the Nazis.
Soviet soldiers knew exactly what was happening in the concentration camps and the risks of captivity. Therefore, no one wanted or intended to give up. They fought to the end, until death; she was the only winner in those terrible years.
Happy memory to all those who died in the war...
It is not very publicized that while about 25 thousand people fought in the French resistance against the fascists, more than 100 thousand Frenchmen served in the Wehrmacht army. But the most “terrible enemies” of France were the French women who “messed around” with the Germans. When the Germans retreated, healthy men and young boys demonstrated their patriotism by pursuing the traitors. Their heads were shaved, they were paraded naked through the streets for the amusement of the crowd, they were doused with slop; their children, adopted by the Germans, also remained stigmatized for life...
Now, according to polls, a significant majority of French people are convinced that their country tried much more to defeat fascism than Russia, which generally “it is not known on whose side it fought.”
The ground for such a wild historical aberration was created not least by the “witch hunt” in those first post-war months. It was a time of national rejoicing and no less vile general settling of scores with the weakest.
At improvised forehead sites, women had their hair shaved and a fascist swastika drawn on their bare skin. They, naked or half-naked, were put on public display, subject to curses, spitting, slaps, and dirty jokes. Many then could not bear the humiliation and committed suicide. To the applause and boos of the crowd.
Many French were relieved when they walked through the streets of cities and sat down under general hooting and under an escort of volunteers - among them there were many who served Pétain - they led women with shorn hair. If men cannot protect their women, the least they can do is not destroy them by reproach.
The French began to wash away national humiliation using a method reminiscent of “hazing” in the army. You were humiliated - you chose someone weaker and humiliate him. Even more cruel. Then you will feel better.
After the war, some prefects were punished for being too zealous. But not all of them. The General Secretary of the Bordeaux Prefecture, Maurice Papon, who sent trains of Jews to German concentration camps, after the war continued to successfully climb the bureaucratic ladder and rose to the rank of Paris Prefecture (and, in a fit of patriotic duty, literally drowned Algerians in the Seine), and then to Minister of the Budget under Valéry Giscard d"Estene.
Only a couple of years ago did justice reach Papon, and even then it was somewhat timid. After the war, people like Papon were almost included in the “golden fund” of the domestic bureaucracy, capable of accurately fulfilling its administrative functions. And it is not their fault that their task included sending human material to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the ovens of Dachau. But this problem was solved efficiently and quickly.
Do you have any complaints regarding the formation of trains or train schedules? No? So what's up? Papons are excellent organizers, we should be proud of them! So Papon proudly wore the Order of the Legion of Honor and dozens of other awards.
Really, why bother with prefects? Moreover, then almost everyone can be asked: why did you so zealously carry out these prefectural orders?
Hairdressing special forces La Resistance in action
And how should one react to the fact that a member of the PCF with half a century of experience, the former head of a group of partisans near Besançon, and then the constant mayor of his village accused of slander those who reminded him how in 1944 he arrested, raped and tortured three girls “for relations with fascists."
How should the French react when a popular TV show features the German writer Gabriela Wittkop, whose “past life” it turns out was Gabrielle Menardot, who was convicted and shaved on the false accusation that she slept with a German soldier. In fact, it turned out that the soldier was a progressive anti-fascist deserter, and also... a homosexual, just like herself.
Or Emile Louis. The one who is involved in the murder of a group of helpless patients in a psychiatric hospital. During one of the interrogations, he told how three of his sisters were taken away by partisans and shaved in the main square of the city. But who paid attention to his childhood memory? Then he vowed revenge. And he took revenge. Not to the partisans - to the whole society.
France's conscience remains wounded. Time has not healed her. Maybe not all French people know about this, not everyone is aware of it. The traumatic, shameful aura remains. Only the French don't seem to know what to do about it. They don’t know, for example, that one cannot ignore the fate of that woman who for forty years after the public execution lived in semi-prisonment in Saint-Flour under either the guard or the protection of family members. Loneliness, silence. It was as if she had been erased from the list of the living.
Virgili in his book counted about 20 thousand such “enemies of the people”. Mixed in the general stream were informers, prostitutes, bohemian women, naive lovers and simply victims of jealousy or slander.
In fact, there were - and the author of the study admits this - much more. It’s just that most of the “shorn” kept a vow of silence, not remembering the black page of their biography. And it is not appropriate for the amateur hairdresser-enthusiasts of that time to now recall their “exploits”, which are unlikely to do them credit.
Fabrice Virgili's book "Shorn Women after the Liberation" did not become a bestseller. She passed by refined criticism and the public, who wanted to forget the short but terrible period of the Middle Ages that befell France immediately after the Second World War. When, waking up from the fascist occupation and general collaboration, the country began to look for those responsible for its shame.
Similar things happened in Norway.
During the war, under the auspices of the SS, a program called “Springs of Life” was carried out to improve the gene pool of the German nation. Norwegian women who were pregnant or had already given birth (who had affairs with German soldiers) could give birth to children in clinics where the wives of German officers gave birth, and live far from the reproaches of relatives and the sidelong glances of acquaintances.
Previously, women and children underwent a medical examination, after which their anthropometric indicators were taken, on the basis of which conclusions were made whether they were of interest within the framework of this program.
After the end of the war, they had a hard time... Some mothers were deprived of parental rights, many children were unreasonably recognized as mentally retarded. Much later, those who went through this nightmare sued the Norwegian government, but lost... And this is in the homeland of the Nobel Peace Prize...
Mikhail Kalmykov, Free Press
This article and documentary will tell about the different fate of women during the Second World War and their desire to survive and continue the human race. First, you will learn how prisoners of a German concentration camp lived and gave birth, and then you will see how French women solved the problem of procreation and survival under Nazi occupation.
Stanislawa Leszczynska (pictured), a midwife from Poland, remained in the Auschwitz camp for two years until January 26, 1945, and only wrote this report in 1965.
“Out of thirty-five years of work as a midwife, I spent two years as a prisoner of the Auschwitz-Brzezinka women’s concentration camp, continuing to fulfill my professional duty. Among the huge number of women taken there, there were many pregnant women.
I performed the functions of a midwife there alternately in three barracks, which were built from boards with many cracks, gnawed by rats. Inside the barracks, there were three-story bunks on both sides. Each of them had to accommodate three or four women - on dirty straw mattresses. It was hard, because the straw had long been worn down to dust, and the sick women lay on almost bare boards, which were not smooth, but with knots that rubbed their bodies and bones.
In the middle, along the barracks, there was a stove built of brick, with fireboxes along the edges. It was the only place for childbirth, since there was no other facility for this purpose. The stove was lit only a few times a year. Therefore, the cold was tormenting, painful, piercing, especially in winter, when long icicles hung from the roof.
I had to take care of the water necessary for the mother and the child myself, but in order to bring one bucket of water, I had to spend at least twenty minutes.
In these conditions, the fate of women in labor was deplorable, and the role of the midwife was unusually difficult: no aseptic means, no dressings. At first I was left to my own devices; In cases of complications requiring the intervention of a specialist doctor, for example, when removing the placenta manually, I had to act myself. The German camp doctors - Rohde, Koenig and Mengele - could not tarnish their calling as a doctor by providing assistance to representatives of another nationality, so I had no right to appeal to their help. Later, several times I used the help of a Polish woman doctor, Irena Konieczna, who worked in the next department. And when I myself fell ill with typhus, the doctor Irena Byaluvna, who carefully looked after me and my patients, provided me with great help.
I will not mention the work of doctors in Auschwitz, since what I observed exceeds my ability to express in words the greatness of a doctor’s calling and heroically performed duty. The feat of the doctors and their dedication were imprinted in the hearts of those who will never be able to talk about it again, because they suffered martyrdom in captivity. A doctor in Auschwitz fought for the lives of those sentenced to death, giving his own life. He had at his disposal only a few packs of aspirin and a huge heart. The doctor did not work there for fame, honor or to satisfy professional ambitions. For him, there was only a doctor’s duty - to save lives in any situation.
The number of births I attended exceeded 3000. Despite the unbearable dirt, worms, rats, infectious diseases, lack of water and other horrors that cannot be conveyed, something extraordinary was happening there.
One day, an SS doctor ordered me to compile a report on infections during childbirth and deaths among mothers and newborn children. I answered that I had not had a single death among either mothers or children. The doctor looked at me with disbelief. He said that even the advanced clinics of German universities cannot boast of such success. I read anger and envy in his eyes. Perhaps the extremely exhausted organisms were too useless food for the bacteria.
A woman preparing for childbirth was forced for a long time to deny herself a ration of bread, for which she could get herself a sheet. She tore this sheet into shreds that could serve as diapers for the baby.
Washing diapers caused many difficulties, especially due to the strict ban on leaving the barracks, as well as the inability to do anything freely inside it. Women in labor dried their washed diapers on their own body.
Until May 1943, all children born in the Auschwitz camp were brutally killed: they were drowned in a barrel. This was done by nurses Klara and Pfani. The first was a midwife by profession and ended up in a camp for infanticide. Therefore, she was deprived of the right to work in her specialty. She was assigned to do what she was best suited for. She was also entrusted with the leadership position of barracks head. A German street wench, Pfani, was assigned to help her. After each birth, loud gurgling and splashing of water could be heard from the room of these women. Soon after this, the mother in labor could see the body of her child thrown out of the barracks and torn apart by rats.
In May 1943, the situation of some children changed. Blue-eyed and blond-haired children were taken from their mothers and sent to Germany for the purpose of denationalization. The shrill cries of mothers accompanied their children as they were taken away. As long as the child remained with the mother, motherhood itself was a ray of hope. The separation was terrible.
Jewish children continued to be drowned with merciless cruelty. There was no question of hiding a Jewish child or hiding him among non-Jewish children. Klara and Pfani took turns watching Jewish women closely during childbirth. The born child was tattooed with the mother's number, drowned in a barrel and thrown out of the barracks.
The fate of the other children was even worse: they died a slow death of starvation. Their skin became thin, as if parchment, with tendons, blood vessels and bones visible through it. Soviet children held on to life the longest; About 50% of the prisoners were from the Soviet Union.
Among the many tragedies experienced there, I especially vividly remember the story of a woman from Vilna, sent to Auschwitz for helping the partisans. Immediately after she gave birth to the child, one of the guards shouted out her number (prisoners in the camp were called by numbers). I went to explain her situation, but it did not help, and only caused anger. I realized that she was being called to the crematorium. She wrapped the child in dirty paper and pressed her to her chest... Her lips moved silently - apparently, she wanted to sing a song to the baby, as mothers sometimes did, singing lullabies to their babies in order to comfort them in the painful cold and hunger and soften their bitter fate . But this woman had no strength... she could not make a sound - only large tears flowed from under her eyelids, flowed down her unusually pale cheeks, falling on the head of the little condemned man. What was more tragic, it is difficult to say - the experience of the death of a baby dying in front of its mother, or the death of a mother, in whose consciousness her living child remains, abandoned to the mercy of fate. Among these nightmarish memories, one thought, one leitmotif flashes in my mind. All children were born alive. Their goal was life! Hardly thirty of them survived the camp. Several hundred children were taken to Germany for denationalization, over 1,500 were drowned by Klara and Pfani, and over 1,000 children died of hunger and cold (these estimates do not include the period until the end of April 1943).
I still have not had the opportunity to transmit my obstetric report from Auschwitz to the Health Service. I convey it now in the name of those who cannot say anything to the world about the evil caused to them, in the name of mother and child.
Monument to Stanislawa Leszczynska in St. Anne's Church near Warsaw.
If in my Fatherland, despite the sad experience of war, anti-life tendencies may arise, then I hope for the voice of all obstetricians, all real mothers and fathers, all decent citizens in defense of the life and rights of the child.
In the concentration camp, all children - contrary to expectations - were born alive, beautiful, plump. Nature, opposed to hatred, fought stubbornly for its rights, finding unknown vital reserves. Nature is the obstetrician's teacher. He, together with nature, fights for life and together with her proclaims the most beautiful thing in the world - the smile of a child.
Stanislawa Leszczynska (1896 - 1974) remained in the camp until January 26, 1945, but only in 1965 was she able to write this report...
Love and sex during the occupation / Amour et Sexe Sous Loccupation
Summer of 1942 France wants to forget about the German occupation... We wanted to drown in a whirlwind of feverish passions and escape from reality, but after that a gloomy morning always came...
In conditions where death is very close, the survival instinct makes itself felt. Life resists death even if bombs are exploding nearby, since the thirst for life is very strong despite the horrors happening around. It has been noticed that during wars, human sexual behavior is activated to the maximum. This phenomenon will be explored in this film, which contains exclusive interviews and rare film footage created by German filmmakers.
N Did you bow to a German soldier on the street? At the commandant's office you will be flogged with canes. Didn't pay taxes on windows, doors and beard? Fine or arrest. Late for work? Execution.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, author of the book “Daily Life of the Population of Russia during the Nazi Occupation,” Boris Kovalev, told “MK” in St. Petersburg about how ordinary Soviet people survived during the Great Patriotic War in territories occupied by the enemy.
Instead of Russia - Muscovy
— What were the Nazis’ plans for the territory of the Soviet Union?
- Hitler did not have much respect for the USSR, he called it a colossus with feet of clay. In many ways, this dismissive position was associated with the events of the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, when small Finland very successfully resisted the Soviet Union for several months. And Hitler wanted the very concept of “Russia” to disappear. He has repeatedly stated that the words “Russia” and “Russian” must be destroyed forever, replacing them with the terms “Muscovy” and “Moscow”.
It was all about the little things. For example, there is a song “Volga-Volga, dear mother, Volga is a Russian river.” In it, in the songbook published for the population of the occupied areas, the word “Russian” was replaced with “powerful”. “Muscovy,” according to the Nazis, was supposed to occupy a relatively small territory and consist of only seven general commissariats: in Moscow, Tula, Gorky, Kazan, Ufa, Sverdlovsk and Kirov. The Nazis were going to annex a number of regions to the Baltic states (Novgorod and Smolensk), to Ukraine (Bryansk, Kursk, Voronezh, Krasnodar, Stavropol and Astrakhan). There were many contenders for our North-West. For example, Finnish rulers talked about a great Finland before the Urals. By the way, they viewed Hitler’s plans to destroy Leningrad negatively. Why not turn it into a small Finnish town? The plans of Latvian nationalists were to create a great Latvia, which would include the territory of the Leningrad region, Novgorod region, and Pskov region.
— How did the Germans treat local residents in the occupied territory?
— Jews were killed from the very first days of the occupation. Remembering Hitler’s words that “the Jews are a pack of hungry rats,” in some places they were exterminated under the guise of “disinfection.” So, in September 1941, in the Nevel ghetto (Pskov region - Ed.), German doctors discovered an outbreak of scabies. To avoid further infection, the Nazis shot 640 Jews and burned their houses. Children whose only one parent was Jewish were also mercilessly destroyed. It was explained to the local population that the mixing of Slavic and Jewish blood produces “the most poisonous and dangerous seedlings.” The Gypsies were subject to the same mass extermination. The Sonderkommandos were advised to destroy them immediately, “without clogging up the prison.” But the Germans treated Estonians, Finns and Latvians as an allied population.
At the entrance to their villages there were even signs: “All requisitions are prohibited.” And the partisans called Estonian and Finnish villages mass partisan graves. Why? Let me give you an example. Alexander Dobrov, one of the participants in the battles in North-West Russia, recalls that when the Germans were approaching Volkhov, the headquarters of a Red Army regiment was located in one of the Finnish villages. And suddenly the entire local population started doing laundry and hung white sheets everywhere. After that, all the Finns quietly left the village. Our people realized that something was wrong. And ten minutes after the headquarters left the village, the German bombing began. As for the Russians, the Nazis considered them to be at the lowest level of human civilization and fit only to satisfy the needs of the victors.
Sick children in the “service” of the Nazis
— Were there schools in the occupied territory? Or did the Nazis think that Russians had no need for education?
- There were schools. But the Germans believed that the main task of the Russian school should not be to educate schoolchildren, but exclusively to instill obedience and discipline. Portraits of Adolf Hitler were always displayed in all schools, and classes began with a “word of thanks to the Fuhrer of Great Germany.” Books were translated into Russian about how kind and good Hitler is, how much he does for children. If during the years of Soviet power a girl of about five climbed onto a stool and soulfully read: “I am a little girl, I play and sing. I haven’t seen Stalin, but I love him,” then in 1942 the children recited in front of the German generals: “Glory to you, German eagles, glory to the wise leader! I bow my peasant head very low.” After reading the biography of Hitler, students in grades 6-7 studied books like “At the Origins of the Great Hatred (Essays on the Jewish Question)” by Melsky, and then had to prepare a report, for example, on the topic “Jewish dominance in the modern world.”
— Did the Germans introduce new subjects in schools?
- Naturally. Classes on the Law of God became mandatory. But history in high school was cancelled. Of the foreign languages, only German was taught. What surprised me was that in the first years of the war, schoolchildren still studied using Soviet textbooks. True, any mention of the party and works of Jewish authors were “erased out” from there. During the lesson, the schoolchildren themselves, on command, covered all the party leaders with paper.
How ordinary Soviet people survived in the occupied territories
— Was corporal punishment practiced in educational institutions?
“In some schools this issue was discussed at teachers’ meetings. But the matter, as a rule, did not go further than discussions. But corporal punishment for adults was practiced. For example, in Smolensk in April 1942, five workers were flogged at a brewery for drinking a glass of beer without permission. And in Pavlovsk they flogged us for disrespectful attitude towards the Germans, for failure to follow orders. Lidia Osipova in her book “Diary of a Collaborator” describes the following case: a girl was whipped for not bowing to a German soldier. After the punishment, she ran to complain to her boyfriends - Spanish soldiers. By the way, they were still Don Juans: they never raped, but they persuaded. Without further ado, the girl lifted her dress and showed the Spaniards her striped buttocks. After this, the enraged Spanish soldiers ran through the streets of Pavlovsk and began to beat the faces of all the Germans they came across for doing this to the girls.
— Did the Nazi intelligence services use our children in intelligence or as saboteurs?
- Of course, yes. The recruitment scheme was very simple. A suitable child - unhappy and hungry - was selected by a “kind” German uncle. He could say two or three kind words to the teenager, feed him or give him something. For example, boots. After this, the child was offered to throw a piece of tol disguised as coal somewhere at a railway station. Some children were also used against their will. For example, in 1941, the Nazis near Pskov seized an orphanage for children with delayed mental development.
Together with German agents they were sent to Leningrad and there they were able to convince them that their mothers would soon come for them by plane. But to do this, they need to give a signal: shoot from a beautiful rocket launcher. Sick children were placed near particularly important objects, in particular the Badaevsky warehouses. During a German air raid, they began to fire rockets upward and wait for their mothers... Of course, special intelligence schools for children and teenagers were also created in the occupied territory. As a rule, children from orphanages aged 13 to 17 were recruited there. Then they were thrown into the rear of the Red Army under the guise of beggars. The guys had to find out the location and number of our troops. It is clear that sooner or later the child will be arrested by our special services. But the Nazis were not afraid of this. What can the baby tell? And the most important thing is that you don’t feel sorry for him.
Prayer to Hitler
— It’s no secret that the Bolsheviks closed churches. How did the Nazis feel about religious life in the occupied territory?
— Indeed, by 1941 we had practically no churches left. In Smolensk, for example, one part of the temple was given to believers, and in the other they set up an anti-religious museum. Imagine, the service begins, and at the same time the Komsomol members put on some kind of masks and begin to dance something. Such an anti-religious coven was organized within the walls of the temple. And this despite the fact that by 1941 the Russian population, especially those living in rural areas, remained mostly religious. The Nazis decided to use this situation to their advantage. In the first years of the war they opened churches. The church pulpit was an ideal place for propaganda. For example, priests were strongly encouraged to express loyal feelings towards Hitler and the Third Reich in their sermons.
The Nazis even distributed the following prayer leaflets: “Adolf Hitler, you are our leader, your name inspires fear in your enemies, may your third empire come. And may your will be carried out on earth...” The true attitude of the leaders of the Third Reich towards the Christian religion was ambivalent. On the one hand, on the buckles of German soldiers it was embossed: “God is with us,” but on the other hand, Hitler said more than once in table conversations that he liked Islam much more than Christianity with its softness, love for one’s neighbor and suspiciousness. excuse me, the national origin of Jesus Christ. And Hitler, by the way, objected to a unified Orthodox Church in Russia. He once stated: “If all sorts of witchcraft and satanic cults begin to arise there (in Russian villages - Ed.), like among the blacks or the Indians, then this will deserve all kinds of support. The more moments that tear the USSR apart, the better.”
— Did the Germans consider the church and clergy as their potential allies?
- Yes. For example, priests in the occupied regions of the North-West received a secret circular in August 1942, according to which they were obliged to identify partisans and those parishioners who were opposed to the Germans. But most priests did not follow these instructions. Thus, Georgy Sviridov, a priest in the village of Rozhdestveno, Pushkin district of the Leningrad region, actively helped Soviet prisoners of war: he organized the collection of things and food for prisoners of a concentration camp in the village of Rozhdestveno. For me, the real heroes of that time were simple village priests who were spat on, insulted, and maybe even spent time in camps.
At the request of fellow villagers, they, not remembering the grievances, returned to the church in 1941 and prayed for the people in the Red Army and helped the partisans. The Nazis killed such priests. For example, in the Pskov region, the Nazis locked a priest in a church and burned him alive. And in the Leningrad region, Father Fyodor Puzanov was not only a clergyman, but also a partisan intelligence officer. Already in the 60s, a woman who cohabited with the Germans during the war confessed to him. And Father Fedor became so nervous that he had a heart attack. A cross was placed on his grave. At night, his partisan friends came, replaced the cross with a bedside table with a red five-pointed star and wrote: “To the partisan hero, our brother Fedor.” In the morning, the believers put up the cross again. And at night the partisans threw him out again. This was the fate of Fyodor’s father.
— How did the local residents feel about those priests who carried out the instructions of the Nazis?
— For example, one priest from the Pskov region praised the German invaders in his sermons. And the majority of the population treated him with contempt. Few people attended this church. There were also false priests. Thus, the dean of the Gatchina district, Ivan Amozov, a former security officer and communist, was able to pass himself off as a priest who suffered from the Bolsheviks. He presented the Germans with a certificate of release from Kolyma. However, he ended up there for bigamy, debauchery and drunkenness. Amozov behaved very disgustingly towards ordinary priests who served in village churches. War, unfortunately, brings out not only the best in people, but also the most vile.
Taxes on beards, windows and doors
— How did ordinary people, who were not traitors or collaborators, live under the occupation?
— As one woman told me, during the occupation they existed according to the principle “we lived one day - and thank God.” Russians were used for the most difficult physical work: building bridges and clearing roads. For example, residents of the Oredezhsky and Tosnensky districts of the Leningrad region worked on road repairs, peat mining and logging from six o'clock in the morning until dark and received for this only 200 grams of bread a day. Those who worked slowly were sometimes shot. For the edification of others - publicly. At some enterprises, for example, in Bryansk, Orel or Smolensk, each worker was assigned a number. There was no mention of last name or first name. The occupiers explained this to the population by their reluctance to “pronounce Russian names and surnames incorrectly.”
— Did the residents pay taxes?
— In 1941, it was announced that taxes would be no less than Soviet ones. Then new fees were added to them, often offensive to the population: for example, for beards, for dogs. Some areas even levied special taxes on windows, doors, and “excess” furniture. For the best taxpayers, there were forms of incentives: “leaders” received a bottle of vodka and five packs of shag. The headman of a model district was given a bicycle or a gramophone after the end of the tax collection campaign. And the head of the district, in which there are no partisans and everyone is working, could be presented with a cow or sent on a tourist trip to Germany. By the way, the most active teachers were also encouraged.
A photo album is stored in the Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg. On its first page, in neat letters in Russian and German, is written: “To Russian teachers as a souvenir of the trip to Germany from the propaganda department of the city of Pskov.” And below is an inscription that someone later made in pencil: “Photos of Russian bastards who are still waiting for the partisan hand ».