It took only 21 minutes to change the course of the war and human destinies. 21 minutes of nerves, aspiration, fearlessness. This is not a script for a modern blockbuster. The amazing escape of dozens of Russian guys went down in the history of the Great Patriotic War and “gave” the Soviet Union the title of space power.

The main character of this story is Mikhail Ivanovich Devyataev. By nationality – Mordvin. In a poor village family he was the thirteenth child. At the age of 16, having seen an airplane for the first time, he decided to become a pilot. In 1939 he became one. The war overtook Mikhail near Minsk. On June 23, he took part in an air battle for the first time, and on the 24th he shot down the first enemy plane. By 1944, fighter pilot Devyatayev was awarded three military orders and fought in the famous division of General Pokryshkin.

On July 13, “Mordvin” (that was his call sign) was shot down. The battle took place behind the front line, and I woke up already in captivity.

- Run, run at all costs! – this was the first clear thought that came to Devyatayev.

By the end of 1944, the Nazis were in dire need of labor. Devyatayev was sent first to the Sachsenhausen death camp, and then to its branch on the island of Usedom. An island located north of Berlin, in the waves of the gray Baltic.

Escape from Hell (…21 minutes. Island. Secret base of the Fuhrer)

In 1936, all the inhabitants of the island were evicted to create the “Goering Nature Reserve”. A gigantic center for the development of a missile weapons program arose here. It was headed by Wernher von Braun. 36 professors, 8,000 specialists and 16 thousand prisoners of Nazi concentration camps worked on the creation of a new generation of weapons.

The aviation division, which tested the latest technology, was headed by a thirty-three-year-old ace Karl Heinz Graudenz. He flew a Heinkel 111, decorated with the monogram “G.A.” - Gustav Anton.

While working in the airfield team, history teacher Nikitenko (as Mikhail called himself in captivity) began to “grope” for like-minded people. He carefully dropped the idea of ​​escaping, hinting that there was an experienced pilot among them. Now the prisoners began to carefully notice details. They soon noticed that the boss “G.A.” flies more often than others. Immediately after landing, they began to prepare him for the next flight. This means that he is more suitable for capture than others.

“Everyone understood the degree of risk. I myself believed that luck was one chance in a hundred,” Devyatayev later recalled. “But we could no longer retreat. Repeatedly going over the escape plan, we became so accustomed to the idea of ​​“we slurp camp gruel at lunch and have dinner at home, among our own people,” that we already believed it as a given. On February 7 we decided: either tomorrow or never.

And the next day was frosty and sunny. At noon, when everyone was supposed to have lunch, “G.A.” in full view of the air defense anti-aircraft guns and the powerful SS service guarding the base, somehow unprepossessingly, first making several attempts to break away from the concrete strip, and then, almost crashing on takeoff, rose into the air and disappeared over the horizon. At the place where he parked, only motor covers and a cart with batteries remained. It was they who were discovered by Graudenz some time later....

That morning, Lieutenant Graudenz, having had a quick lunch in the dining room, was putting flight documents in order in his office. Suddenly the phone rang:

- Who took off like a crow? – the chief lieutenant heard the rude voice of the air defense chief.

- Nobody took off for me...

“I saw it myself through binoculars—the Gustav Anton took off, somehow.”

“Get yourself another pair of binoculars, stronger ones,” Graudenz flared up. – My Gustav Anton is with its engines covered. Only I can take off on it.

Chief Lieutenant Graudenz jumped into the car and two minutes later he was in the parking lot of his plane...

Goering and Bormann flew to the island to deal with the emergency. At first, professionals from British Military Intelligence were suspected of the hijacking. After all, it was London that was “covered” by V-2s taking off from Usedom. An urgent formation revealed the absence of ten prisoners. They were all Russian. It turned out that one of them was not teacher Nikitenko, but pilot Devyatayev.

We are our own, brothers, our own...

It turned out that the entire operation took twenty-one minutes.

The approach of the front was signaled by dense anti-aircraft fire. Suddenly the right engine “G. A.". This means you need to sit down immediately. The artillerymen of the 61st Army from the road leading to the front line saw how a German plane unexpectedly landed on the field.

- Fritz! Hyundai hoh! Give up! – the fighters rushed. But when they ran up, they stopped in shock. Ten ghost-shadows in striped robes, with traces of blood and dirt, barely audibly whispered through tears: “Brothers, brothers, we are ours!”

They were carried to the unit's location in their arms. None of the fugitives weighed more than 40 kilograms.

“On the back of the flight map I wrote who we were, where we fled from, where we lived before the war. He listed the names: Mikhail Devyatayev, Ivan Krivonogov, Vladimir Sokolov, Vladimir Nemchenko, Fedor Adamov, Ivan Oleynik, Mikhail Yemets, Pyotr Kutergin, Nikolai Urbanovich, Dmitry Serdyukov, said Mikhail Ivanovich.

At that time, this was the only document of the fugitives. Soon others appeared. For example, “Certificate about the landing of the German Heinkel-111 aircraft and the detention of the crew of 10 people,” signed by the head of the Smersh counterintelligence department of the 61st Army. Colonel Mandralsky reported: “We are conducting interrogations of the detainees – Devyatayev and others – in the direction of their affiliation with the enemy’s intelligence agencies.”

Biographical information was ascertained. The oldest was 35-year-old Mikhail Yemets, a former instructor of the RK VKP(b), originally from Poltava. The youngest, still teenagers, deported by the Germans to Germany were Vladimir Nemchenko from Belarus, Nikolai Urbanovich from the Stalingrad region and Dmitry Serdyukov, a native of Kuban.

Ivan Krivonogov, a Gorky resident, was a lieutenant, the rest were privates.

They were captured at the very beginning of the war.

The interrogations were tough and mostly at night. They didn't feed me for two days. On the third, after the circumstances of the escape were clarified, they, now Soviet prisoners, were brought crackers and boiling water. The officers - Devyatayev, Krivonogov and Yemets - were taken away somewhere. The rest were given a month of quarantine, then sent to a penal company, tasked with crossing the Oder.

Volodya Sokolov was the first to die, sinking to the bottom of a strange river. Then the “triangle letters” from Kolya Urbanovich stopped coming. Pyotr Kutergin, Dmitry Serdyukov and Vladimir Nemchenko met their deaths near the walls of Berlin.

Belated recognition

For many years, the following fact was much less known. In September 1945, Devyatayev was urgently requested to the island of Usedom at his disposal. a certain Sergei Pavlovich Sergeev. This was the pseudonym of the designer Korolev, to whom everyone addressed himself only as “Comrade Colonel.” At that time, Korolev was developing a jet engine for a new type of aircraft at the special prison design bureau at the Kazan Motor-Building Plant. Time and his superiors were pushing him, but in order to get off the ground, he needed a “key” to the secrets of German designers.

Someone told Korolev about a pilot who had hijacked a fascist plane so equipped with radio equipment that further testing of the V-2 would have been impossible without it. It was not for nothing that Hitler ranked the fugitive among his personal enemies.

Devyatayev and Korolev inspected what had been a high-tech center just six months ago. There were even parts and entire assemblies found, from which the Fau was later assembled in Kazan.

“I can’t free you yet,” Korolev said in parting, with a note of bitterness in his voice.

Devyatayev was sent to a logging camp near Brest, and then, with the rank of junior lieutenant, he was sent to serve in the artillery. Having been demobilized, Mikhail returned to Kazan, where for a long time he could not find work. Then he finally got a job as a mechanic on one of the military ships.

Mikhail Devyatayev had never heard that the parts and components found in the flooded workshops contributed to the launch of the Soviet R-1 rocket, an almost exact copy of the V-2, at the Kapustin Yar test site in early 1948. In three years, the USSR caught up not only with Germany, but also with the USA.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into orbit, gaining the ability to deliver a nuclear charge to any point on the globe. This step by Soviet science was accompanied by general rejoicing. It is also reflected in the fate of our brave heroes.

The veil of secrecy from their feat, if not completely removed, was at least slightly opened. In the capital, at the persistent request of the Queen, Devyatayev was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. Either jokingly or seriously, Mikhail Ivanovich claimed that he received the title of Hero not for courage and military merits, but for his contribution to the development of Soviet rocketry. His good name was also restored to his comrades. The surviving participants of the heroic ten were awarded, albeit more modestly.

On the island, in the place where Heinkel 111 took off from the ground, there is a granite obelisk. Devyatayev, who was first imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp for his feat, and then received the highest award of the Motherland, and his comrades were included in the Guinness Book of Records.

Komi Republic, Syktyvkar, 11th grade,
scientific supervisor B. R. Kolegov

In memory of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War,
for whom Stalin’s phrase “We have no prisoners -
we have only traitors” turned out to be fatal.

I did not set any goal when preparing this work. The goal, like the work itself, arose by chance. My grandfather Alexander Alexandrovich Kalimov died. Fate tested his strength all his life. But he did not give in to it, he worked. He became not the last person in the city and the republic.

My grandfather was born in the village of Tydor, Ust-Vymsky district, in 1920. He was the thirteenth child in the family. His life seemed simple to me. An ordinary rural boy of the 30s: study, work, military service, during the war - participation in battles, after the war - work, pension and death. My grandfather’s archive was accidentally discovered by my parents after his death and brought to us. Among grandfather's papers, dad found a box of chocolates. He opened it and, in a bundle, in an old shawl, he discovered his grandfather’s handwritten memoirs, dated 1946. They talked about the events that grandfather had to endure from 1941 to 1945. The manuscript is a homemade large-format book-album containing 90 handwritten sheets. It is covered with bleached canvas with an ink inscription on the flyleaf “A. Kalimov."

I hesitated for a long time whether to participate or not to participate in the competition. I hesitated until I decided to read my grandfather’s memoirs. After reading them, I realized that my grandfather dedicated his notes to our generation and therefore I simply had to participate in the competition. Reading my grandfather's diary, I traced his path.

SUMMER 1941

Grandfather ended up serving in the Red Army in 1939 in the border troops of the NKVD, which were located on the territory of Estonia. Until 1940, he guarded “temporary border lines with neighboring states.” After Estonia “entered” the USSR, he began guarding the USSR border.

It was here that on June 22, 1941, in the 21st year of his life, junior sergeant of the NKVD border troops Alexander Kalimov was caught in the Great Patriotic War. All the ideas and slogans on which he was raised (“War with little blood,” “War on foreign territory,” “All Soviet people as one will stand up to defend their fatherland”) were refuted in the very first days of the war.

Even then, grandfather realized the fallacy of these slogans. “The absolute majority of Estonians stood up for the defense of their homeland on the side of the German occupiers.” Estonians began to go into the forests and form local national militia units there. “They hid from mobilization in the forests and, when the Red Army retreated, they shot soldiers in the back... They called themselves Kaicelites” Kaicelite (Kaitselit) - a national-patriotic paramilitary organization in Estonia, founded in 1918, existed until 1940. In fact - a militia. ( Note ed.). Only a small part of the Estonians (from land-poor peasants and a certain layer of workers) “organized into destruction battalions and bravely fought alongside the Red Army units against the fascist armada.”

After the first bloody days of the war, the border units of the NKVD, in which my grandfather served, were destroyed. Some defended to the last, others retreated, snarling fire and losing wounded.

My grandfather also attended one of these military clashes. It occurred between the retreating border units of the NKVD (from the city of Haapsalu) and a German landing force landed near the city of Pärnu in the area of ​​​​the village of Kerbly. A combined NKVD detachment was formed to hold the village of Kerbly. My grandfather also joined it. It was in the area of ​​this village that his first baptism of fire took place.

The Nazi offensive was so rapid that not only the operation to capture (return) Pärnu failed, but also the retreat. All roads were already occupied by German troops - tanks, infantry, motorcyclists.

Here the grandfather mentions his feelings in battle and describes in detail how he himself personally kills living people. My grandfather felt like “a beast against beasts at that moment.” I don't understand this cruelty. But for him, in mid-August 1941, the war became just work.

“We found ourselves cut off from our unit. They began to retreat. They abandoned the machine gun along the way, since it was impossible to get through with it and there were no cartridges for it. It began to get dark. The German artillery shifted its fire further, apparently towards our retreating unit. I... took the direction of travel to Tallinn using the compass, which I had kept since the outpost... The route to Tallinn lay 50 kilometers in a straight line. I walked around villages, farmsteads, and roads, since the Nazis occupied this entire area.” For four days without food, my grandfather walked towards Tallinn. When it became clear that there was no strength for the further journey, he went to a farmstead, standing separately near the forest. “Having cleaned the machines, we approached the house. A woman and an old man were working in the garden. I called them over as I approached the garden and asked them for bread or something to eat. She invited me into the house. I warned them that if anything happened or danger threatened, I would shoot them first. He loaded the grenades and went into the house with the old man and the old woman. There was also a girl in the house who brought water to wash. I was really dirty, I was climbing on the ground for four days. The old woman brought bread, milk, and butter to the table. Having eaten, he lit a cigarette, gave the old man some Russian shag to smoke, left the hostess 15 rubles of money (which she did not want to take) and went in his own direction.” He walked about five hundred meters away from the farm and walked through a dry swamp with small pine trees and high hummocks, where blueberries and blueberries grew. He walked and ate berries. Suddenly the grandfather noticed that five people were walking towards the farm (and therefore towards him): two men (one in Estonian military uniform, the other in blue overalls) and three girls. “They were approaching, speaking loudly in Estonian. The Estonian in military uniform had a rifle on his back... The high hummocks served as good camouflage for me. I... silently pushed the cartridge into the chamber, loaded the grenades and prepared for decisive action. An Estonian in a blue overalls, 10–15 meters from me, bent down and began picking berries from a large bush. The handle of a revolver was sticking out in his trouser pocket, under his overalls. Another Estonian stood facing me 20–22 meters away next to the approaching girls. One girl noticed me. She turned pale and froze. I jumped to my feet... and shouted: “Hands up!” The girls screamed in a voice that was not their own and started running. An Estonian with a rifle tried to take it off from behind his back, but my first bullet hit him, and I fired the second at another, who managed to turn to face me. This one in the overalls staggered, tugging at his pocket with his right hand, apparently trying to pull out the revolver, and started running. I fired the fourth bullet into his head, aiming from my knee... I walked up to the dead Estonian and pulled his revolver out of my pocket. I... started running and ran for several kilometers. I calmed down when night came.”

This is amazing: on the one hand, the grandfather leaves the owner of the farm money (albeit unnecessary) for lodging and food, on the other hand, he kills young people with weapons (“enemies”?) near the farm.

On the fourth day he went out not far from Tallinn to some kind of construction battalion standing on the defensive. “They fed us and showed us the location of our unit.”

Part of the grandfather held on toughly and still stopped the enemy’s advance. Fighting has already begun in the city. The losses were so great that, in the end, in the unit to which my grandfather was sent, only he and his partner, a fighter from the Estonian fighter battalion, remained. “I brought a company mortar that someone had left on the battlefield, and 12 boxes of mines (35 pieces per box). We installed the mortar under a hillock, behind a concrete fence. We fired from ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the evening on August 28, 1941, until we had shot through the entire supply of mines. When all the mines were shot, we threw the mortar into the well and parted ways.” Grandfather went to Tallinn. The situation in the city turned out to be terrifying. “I went to the barricades, and there was no single command there, everyone who wanted to protect Tallinn commanded. The next day there was not a single middle commander in our sector, and very few fighters and junior commanders remained. I had no way of knowing where everyone had gone. I thought maybe they were taking up defensive positions in another place.”

But on the afternoon of August 29, 1941, grandfather was informed that Tallinn had been surrendered, that the Estonian government had flown to Moscow, and many Soviet generals and officers, abandoning the remnants of the Estonian group of troops, were transported to Leningrad on military ships. Warships in the harbor did not take on land units.

The doomed people were in panic. “They were looking for boats to get to our military ships, but there were no whole boats, and the people who went to sea on the boats they found were capsized due to overload and very high winds.” My grandfather tried to get into the port. “Our soldiers were driving in a car, I asked to be taken. They were driving to the mine harbor, where, according to them, they were supposed to put us in prison. We drove through the entire city past burning houses, warehouses, and cars. It was impossible to get to the harbor; the entire street was clogged with thousands of broken and intact cars, tanks, and guns. We left the car and walked. Several thousand soldiers and officers crowded along the shore.” The Baltic Fleet quickly left Tallinn harbor, leaving the ground units trapped. The fleet abandoned hundreds of thousands of people on the shore, who were supposed to serve as “cannon fodder” and die, covering the withdrawal of the main parts of the fleet. In the harbor, filled with a crowd of Red Army soldiers, Red Navy men, and commanders, panic arose. And then the voice of some colonel sounded: “We’ll make our way overland in small groups to Leningrad.”

From the soldiers and officers remaining on the shore of the Tallinn Bay, combat companies were quickly formed and sent to break through along the bay. “So a crowd of several thousand (I can’t call it an army, since no one obeyed anyone, only common aspirations now forced them to walk together) reached the Tallinn-Paldiski road.” The grandfather in the platoon turned out to be the only soldier who “had a compass and a map and could navigate by them.” Their small detachment headed towards the town of Paldiski.

The town of Paldiski was located in the opposite direction (one hundred kilometers) from Leningrad. Why did they need to go there? Maybe they hoped that they would be picked up by some Soviet warship that had broken into Paldiski harbor?

The detachment came out not far from the desired road from Paldiski, and began to advance towards it, and walked along its right side. “And ahead on the road we saw a column of tanks - they were enemy tanks. They opened fire. Hundreds of dead and wounded remained in a small area.” The survivors ran wherever they could. My grandfather also fled. In his diary, he writes: “I, Domorodov, Nikolai and several other people fled towards the bay. Machine gun fire was heard for a long time. It was getting dark. Our group consisted of 12 people." Grandfather received a second wound (from shrapnel in his left leg below the knee). “I could walk, but the wound was very difficult, and then my left leg began to swell, but then I didn’t want to pay attention to it.” The detachment headed east through the forests, avoiding large roads, villages, and cities. “We walked for four days without food... some of the food (rotten and abandoned root vegetables and cabbage), which we took out at night from peasant gardens, helped little, and it was already difficult for us to move.” The hunger reached such a stage that they decided to go to a nearby farmhouse to get food. “As darkness fell we approached the house. The door was locked. I started to pull out the hole, but a woman was walking from the barns, and I stopped breaking. She was very scared. Promising to feed us and give us what we needed, she opened the lock. I asked where her husband was. She replied that she was in the barn. I ordered to call. She called out his name. A middle-aged man came. When he approached, he began to speak Russian with a slight accent. He also did not refuse our request.”

“We immediately rushed to the table, not knowing where to start. I ate standing up. Domorodov sat down. Nikolai also came in, saying that there was no danger.” And why was there any need to stand guard if “the owner himself claimed that none of the Germans or Kaitzelites came to him”? But something still alerted my grandfather - the “smell of something alien”, the feigned hospitality of the hosts? Or maybe it was too quiet around? In a word, grandfather was in a hurry to leave the farm as quickly as possible. “I told the owner that we would leave in five minutes and let him prepare bags of food for our journey.” The owner tried to detain them by offering them vodka, and even drank it himself, showing that the vodka was good. Grandfather “refused and advised no one to drink, because we can’t drink until we get to our people.” He began to collect packages of food into bags and asked his comrades, Domorodov and Nikolai, to do the same. “But they still ate quickly and whatever they wanted and didn’t understand my anxiety.” Then there was a knock on the door, “a knock that was stronger than any blow to the ear. We jumped to our feet." Grandfather tried to find out from the owner who might be knocking, but the owners were no longer around (they hid behind the stove). Grandfather realized that they were trapped.

Grandfather learned the further events of that day later, having regained consciousness, in the bathhouse. “Here I came to consciousness. The moon was shining through the window. My head hurt and I couldn't move my right arm or breathe deeply. I was thirsty. I couldn't figure out where I was. It seemed to me that this was all a dream. Why do I see a window, the moon, some kind of bench, an uneven floor? I realized that someone was lying nearby. Who is he? Black overcoat, next to the head there is a cap without a ribbon. Yes, this is Domorodov! Where is Nikolai? It was hard to speak because my mouth was dry. I called Nikolai, and something stabbed in my chest. Nikolai responded to my left. So we’re together, but where?” Grandfather was still sure that he was not in captivity, that his comrades had snatched him from the hands of the enemy. “Domorodov moaned. On the chest, through the unbuttoned collar of the shirt, something white was visible. I touched it with my left hand. It turned out that they were paper bandages.” Then the grandfather was burned by the thought that this was captivity. “I am captive in a way I never thought possible before. If someone had told me earlier that it was possible to be captured the way I was, I would hardly have believed him. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was obvious: we were in captivity, and tomorrow the Kaycelites would hand us over to the Germans. A kaizelite is looking out the open window, with a bayonet and a rifle barrel sticking out next to his head. What should we do now? Run? But how? Perhaps happiness will smile again, and there will still be an opportunity to hold a weapon in your hands. Oh, what fools we are, we went into the house.” Grandfather was very worried about captivity. “I mentally said goodbye to everyone, and my whole life passed before my eyes.” Grandfather suddenly realized that he was now cut off from his homeland and that “she did not recognize my love.” Grandfather never cried, but “at this thought my eyes filled with tears. For me it was better to die than to be captured."

Grandfather understood one thing: that the most terrible period in his life was coming - the period of captivity.

SUMMER 1941. TALLINN FORTRESS

The sleepless night in the bathhouse is over. “In the morning the door opened and we were called outside.” Near the bathhouse stood a carriage drawn by a pair of horses. A German stood next to the cart. “I went out on my own. Nikolai and the Estonian carried Domorodov out and put him in a cart.” Grandfather was too weak to climb onto the cart on his own (the wound received during the night skirmish hampered him). “I climbed onto the cart with the help of Nikolai. I felt dizzy and my right arm couldn’t support my body.” When the prisoners were placed in the cart, an Estonian woman came up with a piece of bread, but she was driven away. The guards behaved peacefully. “They didn’t touch us or ask us anything.” First, the prisoners were taken to the German commandant's office, where they were transferred to a car along with two soldiers and taken to Tallinn. “The German took Nikolai and me to the Tallinn Fortress.”

When grandfather and Nikolai entered the Tallinn fortress, they saw a terrible picture: “in the middle of the fortress square, a crowd of people in Russian greatcoats were fighting among themselves, pushing each other, grabbing something from the ground and from each other’s hands.” When he and his partner came closer, the crowd had already dispersed in all directions. People were walking nearby, bent over, collecting something from the ground. Grandfather approached one of them. He collected pea-sized pieces of crackers into his helmet. “I asked him why he was doing this and where the crackers were coming from. He answered me rudely and indifferently that tomorrow I would collect them here too, and briefly explained that every day three bags of such crackers are thrown into the fortress, and there are about three thousand people here. That's why they fight. After all, everyone wants to eat.”

The first picture of camp life amazed my grandfather, but very soon they would become a common occurrence.

In the Tallinn fortress there were prisoners of all types of troops and all ranks. “There were infantrymen, sailors, artillerymen and tank crews, Red Army soldiers and commanders: lieutenants, captains, majors. People with secondary and higher military education...” But, as grandfather recalls, “the gloomy faces of lieutenants, captains, majors (people with secondary and higher military education) were no different from everyone else.” Grandfather got the impression that there was only a gray mass gathered here, people who had lost all hope for life. “Many have been sitting for 4-5 days, receiving nothing but three bags of burnt crackers a day for everyone. There were many wounded who could not move.”

As my grandfather noted in his memoirs, the people in the Tallinn fortress were gathered by the Nazis for one purpose - to reduce the number of living ones. There were different conversations among the prisoners. “Some said that for the fascists it doesn’t matter where they starve us to death - here (even here it’s better, since it’s difficult to escape) or in another place; others said that they would soon be sent somewhere.” It was in the fortress that it became clear who was capable of what - betrayal or mutual assistance. In captivity, physical strength, endurance and mercilessness are important, and in the Tallinn fortress my grandfather had almost no chance of surviving without someone else’s help. After all, he was wounded and did not receive support from Nicholas, with whom he ended up in this fortress. He was healthy, not wounded or crippled. In the struggle, he managed to snatch more burnt crackers, but he didn’t want to share them, so he tried not to show his grandfather’s eyes. Recalling Nikolai’s behavior, grandfather says: “Of course, I wouldn’t ask him for them (burnt crackers), but I wanted to have a friend, to talk to someone, to calm down, but I couldn’t find anyone.” Grandfather began to look for new comrades among the prisoners. But I didn't find them. “Whoever I turned to, everyone was busy with their own thoughts, my conversation turned out to be boring for them. I started talking about the future. This question interested all the prisoners, but no one wanted to talk about it, since there was no future for the prisoners of the Tallinn Fortress.” How did they live? “Some had a glimmer of hope, but many of their neighbors were already in despair and were sure that nothing could be changed.” This hopelessness was reflected in mass suicides. “Many of the prisoners committed suicide: throwing themselves from the walls of the fortress, throwing themselves at the sentry, and hanging themselves; many died from wounds and exhaustion.” As the grandfather himself recalls: “I stayed in the fortress for three days. During this time, I managed to eat only one cracker per fifty grams. But it was not hunger that tormented me, but the thought of death in this fortress from the wound I received. There was no dressing material. I bandaged myself, tearing my dirty shirt into bandages. My shoulder and arm became swollen, and my chest began to swell. This was accompanied by severe pain, and I often lost consciousness and could not sleep.” In the fight against the disease, my grandfather was helped by the cold, “since at night the stones on which I had to lie were covered with frost.” Fortunately for grandfather, three days after his stay in the Tallinn fortress, the Germans began to take out the surviving people from there. At the same time, the main difference for them was: alive - dead. They threw prisoners into the back of the truck, without knowing whether the person was wounded or exhausted. My grandfather was lucky. He was thrown into the back of the truck. The car with prisoners moved from the Tallinn fortress.

SUMMER 1941. VILANDI CAMP

The car with prisoners drove all day. Grandfather recalls: “At night they dropped us into a field and led us through the mud. Many were worried: what if they were leading them to execution?” To people who were hungry, doomed to death, and exhausted to the limit, this thought seemed like a reality, but no one wanted to even think about it. “They didn’t shoot us. They took us to the booth. A wire fence in three rows, with a spiral in the middle, about three meters high, extended from the booth to the left and right. A spotlight beam was shining along the line of wire fences, illuminating the booth where we were taken and our site.” In this booth they were searched (everything prohibited was confiscated) and driven behind a line of wire fences. Then they moved through the mud to some kind of structure. “It turned black a hundred meters away from us. Around us, as we walked, half-dead figures staggered to the right and left. These were prisoners. Their faces were not visible, and I could not understand why they were walking through the mud here. When we began to get closer to this blackened structure, we realized that it was just a barn, closed and with three walls. There was no wall on our side. There were corpses in the mud near the barn. A rumble and groan could be heard from the barn, as if from underground, but no screams were heard.” My grandfather felt heavy and scared. He shouted out the one last name that he remembered: “Kopylov!” He responded. After talking, they decided to stick together. Grandfather recalls that “in the Vilandi camp, Kopylov turned out to be a loyal friend and a good person.” Then they will go through a lot together, and who knows if I would be reading these lines now if my grandfather had not found such a friend.

The camp to which my grandfather was brought was a regular transit point for Russian prisoners of war. Here they were not forced to work, they were not recruited to the side of the Germans. Here they simply destroyed “unnecessary material.”

“Several thousand half-dead souls were staggering throughout the camp. There was nowhere to sit or lie down. In the dark, when the police were not looking, they sat on the corpses or lay down on them, dragging several corpses together, but it was safe to lie down only from an hour to five, when the police did not walk around the camp. Kopylov and I wandered around all night. It became difficult and scary, and the thought arose that we too would soon have to lie motionless in this mud. Run? But it seemed impossible. From every corner at night, floodlights and light bulbs illuminated the barriers. There were towers in the corners where guards with machine guns sat. Before our eyes, three people who approached the wire were shot. Everything we saw that first night deprived us of hope for a successful escape, and indeed for life in general. That night we experienced something that seemed worse than death.” It began to dawn and grandfather was able to see the entire “landscape of this earthly hell.” Each of the prisoners in the camp tried to put on as much clothing as possible in order to keep at least a little warm. “The living walked all the time to at least warm up a little. Now the faces of the prisoners became clearly visible. Most of them were black and blue or pale to blue, splashed with mud."

“When it got dark, we pulled three corpses together and went to sleep on them, covered with overcoats that we had taken from the same dead people,” recalls the grandfather. - It began to rain lightly. It was cold. We fell asleep for an hour, and for another hour we went around warming ourselves.” This went on every day.

The second day passed calmly for my grandfather. “Kopylov and I safely received our rations and “extra payment” - with just one blow with a club on the back for not having time to remove the caps in which the gruel was poured in time. The gruel seemed very tasty to us, and the bread, which left pieces of wood on our teeth, was even tastier. We ate every bit of it and walked towards the barn. We approached the crowd from where the song was heard. It was sung by a prisoner, as thin as the rest of us. Listening to it, many cried, some were stern and thoughtful, but everyone listened, and everyone was hypnotized by this song. I only made out the last two verses:

Eh, you, Rus', you are my dear,
I won't have to come back to you.
Whoever returns will not forget that century,
He will tell his family everything.
He will tell you everything, tears will roll,
He drinks a glass and his head turns.
May fate allow us to return home - to continue our work.”

Hearing this song, grandfather felt uplifted and wanted to move on with his life.

“The singer was asked to sing again, but he refused:

Comrades, it’s hard for me to sing. I composed these words and sang them for a friend, but what good will it do me if I perform them again?

A policeman came out from the crowd of listeners, pushing the goners with both hands, approached the singer and asked:

Will you sing for me?

Please, Mr. Policeman, but this will not be interesting for you,” he answered obediently, but clearly in his quiet voice.

First tell me who you are? Artist? Communist? Or a Jew?

I am Russian, and I am not an artist or a communist.

“Okay, wait here until I come,” he said imperiously and rudely, leaving for the kitchen. A few minutes later the policeman returned with a loaf of bread and ordered them to sing. The singer repeated this song, trying to put more feeling into it, but his voice broke off. When he finished singing, the policeman gave him the bread and ordered him to eat it all at once. Taking the loaf, the singer was delighted and began to swallow the bread without chewing. Then he began to break it into pieces and eat it slowly. His exhausted stomach was already overloaded - after all, there were about two kilograms in the loaf.

The policeman shouted:

Eat faster! Ten more minutes left. If you don’t have time, I’ll take a bath (that’s what he called the restroom).

The singer swallowed the last pieces while sitting in the mud. The policeman left laughing. And the singer lay down in the mud and died, holding in his left hand a piece of paper on which the song was written in pencil. Then all the prisoners of this camp sang it, and it came, with some changes, to other camps, and after four years to Russia.”

My grandfather spent a terrible 14 days in the Viljandi camp.

SECOND HALF 1942. KIWILI

The Kiviõli camp was carefully guarded. He was located near the “shale mountain” or “monument to prisoners,” as the prisoners themselves called it because everything was thrown there: waste from the factory, mine rock and dead prisoners. The wind from the mountain carried fine dust, ash, and soot throughout the factory, the village, and the fields. All the roofs of houses, streets, and gardens were covered with dust. When my grandfather and his partners were driven to the entrance to the camp and dropped off at the factory, everyone read the inscription on the roof of the central building: “Be able to escape,” drawn with a stick on the settled dust. “The police showed us the place where we were supposed to stay. It was a room of 15–16 cubic meters. There were already 12 people housed here, but they were now at work.” There was no one in the room at the time of check-in. My grandfather looked around and determined that the prisoners were sleeping on bunks and on the floor in torn jackets and overcoats. A few hours later the prisoners were driven from work. “One after another, dirty, with yellow faces, they entered the room and sat down on the bunks and on the floor. Nobody greeted us; this rule was forgotten in the death camps. Then one guy with a mustache asked us where we were from and when they brought us? And again there was silence.” This is how the continuation of captivity in a new place began for my grandfather. “They lined up in a column of five, treating the timid ones with a hose in the face. The head of the camp, a young SS man, came. He was a real beast: he beat the prisoner, even if he didn’t like his look. He skipped one at a time, checking whether SU was visible on all things. We didn’t have these letters yet, and the policeman smeared them with red oil paint all over our backs, on our trousers and on our hats. The letters SU meant Sowjet Union in German, but the prisoners deciphered it in their own way: if you managed to escape, if they caught you they would kill you. They strictly checked that there was not a single thing without this mark, but this did not deter the prisoners - they ran away at the first opportunity.”

For the first time, my grandfather encountered writings on his clothes and a reluctance to have conversations, since not only did he not have the strength to do so, but there was also a fear of betrayal. At the same time, the prisoners had enough strength for “black humor.” This irony supported and helped distract me.

The working day in the camp began very early. “We got up at three o’clock. Ten minutes after the whistle, Estonian kaizelites entered the barracks and beat those who did not stand up with boots and hoses. We were given 150 grams of bread and boiling water for breakfast. All four of us were herded into a slate mine and given carbide lamps and torn rubber boots. In the mine we dug holes where groundwater collected. We then pumped it out from there. In these same pits, the Nazis “bathed” prisoners who did not fulfill the quota.”

What is the norm for a camp prisoner? In 12 hours, a prisoner had to complete work that a healthy person would complete in 8 hours. Therefore, most of the prisoners of the Kiviyl camp were subjected to “bathing”. Many received pneumonia, and almost all had rheumatism of the legs. They were kept in such conditions for no more than three months. About 20 people died every week. After most of the camp prisoners stopped fulfilling the quota, unlimited work hours were introduced - until you fulfill the quota, you will not leave the mine.

My grandfather and his comrades had to go through such trials. “Kopylov worked for one week - his right arm was broken by the breed, and he was put in the medical unit. Ivanov was beaten to death.” The hopelessness of existence and the end result - death - forced the prisoners to commit rash acts, almost suicide. “Razmyslov was killed. It happened as follows. We were escorted from work. Razmyslov ran out of line to pick up bread thrown onto the railway tracks by some passenger. They fired two shots at him, but did not hit him. He fell into line next to me, hiding the bread under his jacket. The guard walked back and forth but didn't say anything. When we approached the camp, Razmyslov was left at the gate, and then taken to the guard. An hour later he came into the room with a scratched face. He didn’t answer questions for a long time, and then he told how he was beaten. In the morning he told me that his kidney was damaged because he wet the bed at night without feeling anything. He went to work, but did not work, telling the Estonians that he was sick. They wrote down his number. In the evening, when the guards came for the prisoners, he went out. When I left the mine after work, I heard a dull thud at the security booth and saw Razmyslov running towards the fence of the plant, and the guards were shooting at him. He fell. The bullets hit his arm, chest and head. He was dead. Near the booth they found a kaitselite (who had beaten Razmyslov the day before) with a broken skull. It turns out that Razmyslov climbed into the booth and hit the fascist on the head with a crowbar, and then ran to the guard. Razmyslov's body was thrown into a trolley with ash and thrown onto a shale mountain. Ash and rock buried him on the top of the mountain.” Perhaps Razmyslov did this, feeling that he would soon die. “My eyes became bloodshot when I looked at these fascists. I would cut my throat for my beloved friend.” So my grandfather’s only friend was Kopylov, and he was in the medical unit.

My grandfather worked in the camp mine for about a month. Every day he felt more and more weak. Already at the beginning of summer, grandfather came out of the mine, leaning on the shoulders of a friend. “He let me go, but even with all my efforts, I only walked a few steps and fell unconscious. The security thought I was faking it and beat me with hoses. They brought me on a stretcher to the medical unit.” There my grandfather met Kopylov. It was there that the idea of ​​escape arose. “Kopylov has been in the medical unit for more than a month. Although his arm had not yet healed, they wanted to discharge him. I, having spent only three days there, was discharged together with Kopylov.” The crippled and very weak were taken to adjust the air hatches of the mine. The security was weak: two guards and an Estonian foreman. My grandfather and Kopylov decided to take advantage of this. All that remains is to choose the time and day. The escape was spontaneous. “The first day the guards were strict. On the second day, during a break, it started to rain, and the guards sat under the tree to have lunch. We were seated opposite, under other lonely trees. We were separated from the guards (who were supposedly watching us) by several tens of meters.” At that moment my grandfather decided to escape. “It seemed impossible to escape. I lay down and began to crawl along a very small hollow, looking towards the guards. Waving my hand to Kopylov, I crawled further towards the forest. Kopylov warned his comrades to be silent and not look in our direction, and crawled after me. We moved through the bushes on all fours, and when we reached a tall pine forest, we walked standing as best we could. We couldn’t run, but we tried to walk widely and often.” When the fugitives had walked more than a kilometer, they heard shooting from behind. They continued to move deeper into the forest and deceived their pursuers. “The shooting has stopped. We were alone in the forest and felt free. It is unlikely that the camp guards could find our traces. But there were many enemies: almost every Estonian was dangerous for us. Any rustle caused alarm. We walked and walked further and further. Freedom, hope, hatred - that’s what gave us strength and energy.”

SECOND HALF 1942. ESCAPE

This was my grandfather's first real escape. They fled with Kopylov not according to plan, but out of despair - a little more and they, if they had not died, would have been sent to the Tapa camp. There is guaranteed death, not ominous uncertainty. The fugitives moved at night and slept during the day, alternately replacing each other. The one who was not sleeping was using a knife that my grandfather kept from the camp (we never found it later) to pierce a smoking pipe. We walked east, using the stars to determine our direction. The main task of the fugitives was to get weapons and food.

The fugitives moved towards Lake Peipsi. They decided to go around it from the north and cross the Narva River. They moved towards their goal for 16 days. On the seventeenth day the weather was gloomy and there was light rain, so the fugitives slept in a barn on the next farm in the hayloft. In a dream, my grandfather saw how “he was swimming in the water, and then some nasty people grabbed him by the hair with a hook and pulled him out of the water, stripping his body until it bled.” The dream was a dream, but when grandfather opened his eyes, he discovered that he had been awakened by the noise of the wings of a hawk, which “flew into the barn.” They quickly caught the hawk and ate it, “but Kopylov said it was bad.” Then my grandfather told him his dream, and Kopylov said that this was also bad.

In the afternoon, having eaten their last food supplies, the fugitives decided to walk a little to the east. The sun was bright and burning, but they did not take off their black overcoats (they turned them over so that the letters SU would not be visible), since the torn shirts would have given them away. “We believed that Estonians (except for old and young) cut hay for their livestock for the winter and therefore it is quite safe to enter the house to ask for what they need, and if there is no one in the house, then to steal what they need.” They began to look for another farm, which soon appeared on the path of the fugitives. “Soon we noticed a lonely house standing near the forest. There were many sheds near him, which means the owner was rich.” The fugitives lay down about fifty meters from the estate and began to watch to determine whether there was anyone in the house. They lay there for more than two hours. “An old woman with a child came out into the yard. It seemed like they were the only ones in the house, and the young people were at work.” My grandfather and Kopylov took a risk and went to the farm. They picked tobacco in the garden and left it near the bathhouse to pick it up later. Then we approached the porch of the house. “At that moment a woman of about forty came out with a bucket in her hands. Seeing us, overgrown, in strange clothes, she quickly turned back to the door, wanted to go in, but then she came up to us and asked in Estonian: “Wenelane?” - Russians?” Something disgusting sounded in her voice, but neither my grandfather nor Kopylov needed her sweet treatment, they needed food. “I confirmed in Estonian: “Ja” - and asked her where her husband and brothers were. She didn’t answer right away, but then, raising her head, said that they were working. I said that we need bread and meat. She nodded her head, and she and I entered the house. Kopylov remained in the yard. The woman walked into the room, leaving me in the hallway.” My grandfather did not listen to her and entered the room. My grandfather barely had time to look around the room when the woman returned. My grandfather sensed danger when he looked into her eyes. The woman couldn’t stand his gaze and walked away to the table. “At that moment, a man of about twenty, yellow, thin, and short, came out of the room. He also asked if I was Russian and wanted to go back.” Grandfather made a leap towards the door. “The man jumped to the side. I rushed to the exit. When I found myself in the corridor, I saw a man loading a rifle. I rushed at him. The struggle for weapons began. A shot rang out. The bullet flew under the left arm. A woman attacked me from behind, but I hit her in the chest with my elbow, and she fell behind.” Holding the rifle with his left hand, my grandfather reached into his pocket for a knife with his right hand, “but then I felt a blow to the head, then another.” Having lost consciousness, he did not remember anything else.

When my grandfather regained consciousness, he found himself lying face down on the floor in a pool of blood. Grandfather began to look around. “Raising my head, I saw a frail Estonian standing, another one I had not seen, and a woman. They were looking at the butt that had been smashed on my head.” I felt dizzy and thirsty. Grandfather tried to get up. The Estonians dragged him into the yard. And they sat him down next to Kopylov, who was sitting on the ground not far from the porch. He was standing outside, but when he heard a woman scream (she screamed after being hit by my grandfather), he rushed to help and, after a short scuffle, received two bullets in the limb. The Estonians clearly did not know what to do with the fugitives. “I asked the woman for a drink. She replied that communists and bandits were given only the gallows, and pointed to a tub of dirty water. We got drunk. How armed Estonians began to gather from the ground.” My grandfather realized that the escape had failed. “Well, Misha, such is our fate - to die uselessly in some damned Estonia. You and I will still have time to say goodbye.”

An hour or more later, the Germans came running from the commandant's office, led by an officer and a dog. (“There were about 10–15 of them, we didn’t count.”) The fugitives were subjected to the first interrogation. “They asked who else was with us. I replied that there were five more people. Let them search. They asked our last names. We answered that Ivanov and Petrov. The officer wrote, and the translator questioned the Estonians. When we finished writing, an officer came up to us with a translator, who read out the document and let us sign it. We refused due to “illiteracy”. The officer was not surprised and told us through an interpreter to put up a cross. I held the document upside down, and the officer turned it over, drawing a cross with his finger. I busily took a pencil and put a cross on the entire sheet. The officer first laughed cheerfully at my “stupidity,” and then hit me with his boot several times on my shoulders and back until I was knocked to the ground. The officer went to rewrite the act, but they no longer brought it to sign.”

The fugitives were taken by cart to the commandant's office, where they spent the night in a barn under heavy guard. “In the morning we were taken by cart to the railway station, which was 27 kilometers from Narva. We were taken by train to the camp in the city of Tapa.”

They did not reach the front line by only about 27 km (9–11 hours).

They were brought to the Tapa camp, which was located near the station. The former fugitives were unloaded from the cart at the entrance gate. There, grandfather and Kopylov spent 32 days in a punishment cell. “I weighed 42 kilograms, and Kopylov - 39.”

But the friends survived and later even found a way to feed themselves, using the camp “bazaar”, which, like in all other permanent prisoner of war camps, was located on the “plaze” (central camp square). “From the medical unit we went out into the common courtyard of the camp to the market to exchange tobacco for soup. Trade was carried out for Russian money (provided that no one had money). The bazaar was rich. Russian prisoners here sold meat, lard, bread, eggs, fried and boiled hedgehogs, clothes, tobacco.” My grandfather wondered, “Where does all this come from?” The answer was on the surface. “Several defectors (people who voluntarily sided with the Germans) went under guard to work for the Estonian kulaks, and they sold food ten times more expensive than outside the camp, from which the guards also profited.” The defectors lived in separate barracks and received large rations. From them the Germans recruited camp spies. Subsequently, the Vlasov Army was formed from them. In the evening, one by one, they were afraid to go out, as they were being killed for a cigarette. The defectors were not given enough soup (even if they were corrupt), so we exchanged their tobacco for soup (“a pot of soup for 5–6 tobacco cigarettes”). The “poorer” prisoners sold potato peelings, fried mice and boiled frogs, and herbal soup at the market. This product was cheaper.

For the first time, grandfather speaks about the Vlasov Army (ROA) and the principles of recruitment into it. From his story one can understand that few in the camp became defectors and went to serve in the army of General Vlasov: “They began to send a train from the camp, where all the penal prisoners ended up. During loading we were given 500 grams of bread (which we dealt with immediately) and for the next five days we were given nothing. 12 people died along the way. They brought us to Poland to the old fortress of the city of Deblin.”

END OF 1942. DEMBLI FORTRESS

The ancient fortress, turned by the Germans into a prisoner of war camp, buried under its walls in 1941–1942 more than 120 thousand Soviet people who died from epidemics, hunger and torture. The fortress was entangled with hundreds of rows of wire, which divided it into zones and blocks. Each zone and block had different orders. “In one block the Germans kept representatives of the southern peoples of the USSR, in other blocks - representatives of other peoples of the USSR. We were in a transfer block, and the Germans did not pay attention to us, since we were ordered to be sent to a concentration camp. Nobody was working on anything. The prisoners wandered around the block during the day, some lay down, many played cards for their rations. Some won and survived, while others lost and died. Still others sold their belongings to smoke or eat. The Russian police were afraid to beat the penalty box, because at the first opportunity they were killed from around the corner.” Former police officers and defectors who ended up in the barracks were subjected to lynching.

Hatred of traitors gave rise to cruelty. They were tried, but they did it formally, having fun rather than defending them, just as formally as the fascists.

In January 1943, my grandfather and Kopylov said goodbye to the Demblinsky fortress. “We penalty prisoners were loaded onto a train and transported for three days without food. Because of hunger and cold, three people died in our carriage, and more than a hundred corpses were thrown out from the entire train.” When the train stopped and the prisoners were unloaded from the cars and lined up in a column, my grandfather immediately realized that the worst had happened. “By order of the commandant of the Tapa camp, we ended up in a concentration camp near the city of Limburg in Germany.”

In this camp, my grandfather lost his best friend in captivity. “I also got sick and ended up in isolation. At the same time, Kopylov was also sent somewhere. After 1.5 years, I learned through prisoners that he was working at a mine in the Saar region.” They did not meet after the war.

In the death camp, where there were not only men, but also women, it was probably especially difficult for them, because it was harder for them to resist bullying, endure hunger and beatings. “Russian girls worked not far from us. They scattered or unloaded crushed stone from the cars at the station. Others worked at the crushing plant. They were all kept in the same conditions as us.”

A woman in a camp is a terrible concept in itself. In a concentration camp it is always harder for her than for a man. She is not only a labor force. The camp guards can also use her to satisfy their male desires. And she (the security) took advantage of it. Some of the prisoners openly engaged in prostitution. “They were kept in the same conditions as the others, but they had a greater opportunity to get something from the outside. They did nothing but dressed well and ate well.” Those women who refused were beaten and abused in every possible way by the Germans. These women treated the prisoners differently. “One part of the women treated us indifferently, since we could not provide them with certain camp benefits. Others felt sorry and helped us. Still others were so offended by their fate and blamed us for it that they simply did not pay attention to us.”

The life of a prisoner trapped in a mine teaches how to find a way out of a completely hopeless situation. “We made slippers from cloth with rubber soles. The Germans brought cloth to the camp, and cut rubber from a conveyor belt. Previously, they cut from the old one, but when it was removed, they began to cut from the one that was in use. They were also shot for this, and then they began to shoot everyone whose tires were found during a search. They began to guard the conveyor, but it was long, and after extinguishing their lamps, they cut several meters of rubber away from the guard and hid them in the face or drift. The next day they were cut into pieces and carried into the camp like soles nailed to wooden stocks. For each pair, the German gave 1–1.5 kilograms of bread. It was a great support." Soon the Germans began to search as they descended into the mine. They took everything they found. The prisoners had to stop sewing slippers.

So much for business in a concentration camp. So much for the relationship between guards and prisoners. The guards bring in part of the material, and the prisoners, risking their lives, extract the second part and manufacture the goods.

The Allies began a massive bombing campaign against Germany. It was then that my grandfather realized that the war would soon end. “On the same day, our allied aircraft bombed the cities of Saarbrücken and Neukirchen. When the planes attacked, the Germans hid in bunkers, leaving security to the Russian police.” At the moment of the bombing, the entire camp went out into the courtyard and watched its progress, rejoicing at every bomb thrown. The entire camp radiated one thing - revenge. The prisoners did not feel any pity.

The security did everything to persuade them to betray. “They feel doom, they are afraid to think that they will be brought to their knees. They are now grasping for the latest. They praise the traitor Vlasov, they publish Russian newspapers, put forward slogans “For Russia without the Bolsheviks,” they send propagandists from Russian traitors to deceive the Russian people, to dispel hope, saying that Stalin will not recognize us, that we will remain traitors. This is all funny. Most don't believe them. We know that the British have landed troops in France and are advancing.”

In some ways the fascists were right. Nowadays, most people know Stalin’s catchphrase that we have no prisoners, only traitors. But then they believed that the Motherland and Stalin would help them. I think that even knowing about this phrase, they would not have gone over to the side of the enemy. Even when grandfather wrote his diary (memoirs), he believed in Stalin. Later he became disillusioned with him and once even told my father that Stalin was worse than Hitler because he killed more people.

There my grandfather had his first love. “Russian girls worked every other shift at another elevator. Once I met a girl of about nineteen, she was thin and pale, with kind eyes and a modest smile without joy. She handed me a package with three hundred grams of bread wrapped in it. I took it and thanked her. She brought bread every day and left without saying anything. When we were transferred to another place, she began passing the bread through her friends. After some time, she asked me to come to her elevator.” Grandfather went to her, ignoring the security. He was probably in love. This is evident from his description of the meeting and the discomfort that the grandfather feels. “She was waiting at the entrance. I was poorly dressed, I hadn’t shaved for a week, and I was dirty. She was dressed better, everything was adjusted and intact. Thanks to her help, I felt better, but I was still very thin, so I approached her like a beggar approaches a patron and said hello. I was embarrassed, she noticed this and took my hands, sat down on the beam, giving me space. I sat down awkwardly, feeling increasingly weak. She asked if I had received bread. I replied that I had received it and that she was hurting herself in vain.”

How can two people in love spend time in a concentration camp? “Marusya did not look at me; large transparent tears fell drop by drop down her cheek. I wanted to calm her down, but in my position it seemed impossible to me, and I remained silent, feeling and understanding her grief. When we were already saying goodbye, she wrote her address on a piece of paper and wrote down mine. I subsequently lost this piece of paper; I only remembered the Smolensk region.”

Then grandfather did not understand that it was goodbye. “The next day, in the morning, when we were taken to the factory, I met her friend Valya, who gave me farewell greetings from Marusya: she was taken away. I said nothing. Everything was clear to me. I spent the whole day forgetting myself and receiving kicks and sticks.”

Did they love each other or did he feel only gratitude? What would have happened if Grandpa had kept her address? Would you have found her (what if Marusya survived the concentration camp) or her relatives? It seems to me that if they met, it would be easier for them to survive the hardships of life after captivity together.

AT ZWEIBRUCKEN CAMP

Zweibrücken was bombed. During the Allied bombing, many prisoners escaped, and those who did not make it were shot. Therefore, the camp was almost empty. “There are no more than ten thousand prisoners of war left in it.” Prisoners were taken to dig trenches. They heard how “the Anglo-Americans shelled (not bombed, but shelled) German fortifications with heavy artillery.” They dreamed of quick freedom.

At this time, my grandfather tried to carry out another escape. He found partners. “I met former junior lieutenant Nikolai Balakliysky and Sashka Tatarin. Sashka Tatar speculated in the camp. I sold bread for tobacco, bought lighters with it, which I exchanged for bread.” Preparations for the escape were very thorough. It was impossible to organize it on the camp rations. “Sashka began to help us with soup and sometimes bread. Nikolai also speculated a little.” The most unnecessary thing in preparing the escape was my grandfather: “I did not know how and could not engage in speculation.”

On March 13, 1945, the escape took place. They were throwing earth out of the trench and were at the very end of it. “We were guarded by an old man. He often came up and said: “Niks gyt” (not good). I asked him what was bad, he replied that everything was bad. He scolded Hitler, looking around, and said that Germany was finished.” They talked to the old man (“The old man spoke about himself and his attitude towards the Nazis”), gave him something to drink, took him to the observation post and looked around.

It was raining. “If we stood in a trench, he saw us, but if we bent down, we were not visible... We put our hats on the parapet, threw down our shovels and (switching either to a wide step or to a single file step) walked about 500 meters.” They found themselves at the end of the trench and began to think: where to go? “There was another trench to the left, about two hundred meters from us, some people were walking about five hundred meters away - apparently, they were also guarding prisoners there. About a hundred meters away there was a country road along which a German was riding on bulls - we heard him talking with the bulls.” Grandfather suggested standing up to his full height and slowly walking into the next trench. His escape partners refused. “I convinced them. They stood up and walked with wide, even steps.”

So they reached a trench that led the prisoners to the edge of the forest. “It was quiet in the forest. We turned there and went downhill, and when we came to a small open place, we could see Saarbrücken below. We decided to wait for the evening under an acacia bush. When it got dark, I stood between the branches of an acacia tree and felt free.”

FREE AGAIN

Having rested and slept, the fugitives went west. On the fifth day, the fugitives “met” the allies. “We... looked through the window. We hear a noise. Tanks are coming, with a white star on them. Everyone ran out into the street joyfully. Three tanks stopped. Negroes drove up in a car with machine guns at the ready. Seeing us, the two shouted friendly: “Russ?” We shouted joyfully: “Yes, Russians.” And several chocolate bars, cigarettes, sweets, and bags flew towards us from the car. The tanks and the car moved on."

Now grandfather and his escape comrades felt freedom. They understood it the way captivity taught them. Grandfather and his comrades stayed here for two more days. To get enough. “We took the bags and went to the hill where the broken carts stood. They picked up food there. They took milk and wine from the Germans. Dressed in new clothes. Now there was everything: drinking, smoking, and eating.” Two days later they decided to move west. “They said that the Americans live in the city of Landspuhl, seven kilometers from us, and it’s full of Russians. We decided to go there."

IN THE TOWN OF LANDSTUHL

The transit camp where my grandfather ended up was located outside the city. It was a camp for Russian soldiers who were captured. “The fence wire was trampled by American tanks. The barracks are partitioned off with boards. There were no free rooms. Bonfires were burning in the streets as food was being prepared. Former prisoners rode bicycles and motorcycles. The male gender was mostly drunk.” Everything was taken from the Germans. They came to the German, put him against the wall and took everything they wanted. Everyone did that. Many Germans were shot if he was a fascist or had a bad attitude towards Russians.

The Russian prisoners realized that in the conditions of this camp they were allowed to do everything that was permitted. And that's what they did. “We filled half the carriage with more food than we could have eaten in two years. A barrel of alcohol was wheeled in from somewhere. My friends drank all the time, but I never drank and was responsible for the safety of food. In the evenings, there were about thirty people in the carriage, girls came.”

The robbery in Landstuhl lasted about two weeks. Only after the Americans posted an order that all Russians needed to gather at the assembly point in the city of Nomburg did it subside. Former Russian prisoners began to leave the city. My grandfather also left him. “We took two cars of groceries, got into the third ourselves and went there.”

AT THE COLLECTION POINT IN NOMBURG

The collection point was located in a former German military town. “There were about twenty thousand people at the assembly point.” At first, they lived wherever they liked, ate their own food and dealt with their former offenders. “The first days there was a reprisal against former fascist servants. Policeman Nikolai Balamut was thrown from a third-floor window, Alex the cook was killed with knives, Volodya the policeman was hanged, and the translator was drowned in the restroom. The lynching went on for a week, and then they calmed down.”

Then a colonel from the Soviet mission arrived. He brought order to the camp. Everyone was shuffled and placed in a new way. “Families separately, girls separately, prisoners of war and those liable for military service separately. Three regiments, battalions, companies, platoons, and squads were formed.” Grandfather was appointed first as a squad commander, and then as an assistant company commander for political affairs: “My task was to convince them to stop robbing the Germans, arbitrariness, and hooliganism.”

At the end of May, the Americans formed a train of former prisoners and prisoners and handed them over to representatives of the USSR on the Elbe. Many of the prisoners ended up in active units of the Soviet Army. My grandfather also ended up there. “We were sent to the 234th assembly point in the city of Rathenov, where we were checked, and from there to a military unit. I ended up in a mechanized regiment, where I was a command squad, then a platoon commander and a company agitator.” This is where grandfather found the end of the war.
“On March 3, 1946, he was demobilized according to the decree of the presidium. On March 27 I arrived in my hometown. I walked for 20 days and went to work in the Komi office of Prombank as an accountant.”

Finally, you can not be afraid, not feel like a hunted animal. War is over! It could have been a happy ending, like in the movies, but the reality at that time was different. The cruelty of people in post-war life, people who should support him, because he survived so much that they could be proud of him, turned out to be more terrible for him than the fascist camps.

IF NOT MY FRIEND, DON'T READ

“This can all be assessed differently, but the facts will remain facts. I'm unhappy with my fate. I would like to live and work with benefit for people, but for some reason it is impossible to be the same as I was before the army and in the army. Now I am met with suspicion, an undeserved insult. I am often asked the question why I survived. It is very difficult to answer, because I never thought of staying alive, but hatred of my tormentors and love for the present kept me alive. I love the present, but no, there is no way for me today to fight with all the energy that our party calls for, only because people think that I and all prisoners of war do not understand high aspirations, are cowardly, with animal instincts. Yes, there are a lot of them, but it’s hard and unbearable for me.”

“Today is a great holiday of our people. Yesterday I was at a ceremonial meeting. My colleagues don't talk to me in a friendly manner. Don't know. Or they humiliate me because I occupy a lower position, or because of my past fate, maybe I don’t know how to behave, I’m too silent, but it seems to me that this is because I was in captivity. I am also lonely at demonstrations. I am happy and ready to share my joy with them, but I don’t know why, it doesn’t work. It's hard for me to be alone and even harder to be with people you know well but who treat you like a stranger. That's why I didn't go to the demonstration. I listened to a demonstration from Moscow on the radio, but then I got bored. Although there is somewhere to go, I cannot tell anyone my grief. There is a mother, a sister, but they don’t understand. I don't tell them anything. Have a girlfriend. She knows my story, but she doesn't know my experiences. She also becomes distant. But today I won’t go to her, I love her, but I won’t go. Today I went alone to the theater to clear my thoughts at least a little, but there I met Comrade Kulakov, a former friend. We remembered the past from technical school. He is a medal bearer, wounded several times and now lies in the hospital. Whether he knows about my unhappy past, I don’t know, but he didn’t ask anything in detail, and I didn’t say anything. It's not my fault, but it's hard for me to talk. What if he doesn’t understand me, what if he accepts the past as negative. I don't want. I'll tell him another time, if possible. But am I not the same, have I changed? Why does Batalov, having learned my story, now avoid me? After all, he knows me, he knows that I could not change my Motherland in anything, he knows this, as do I myself, but why is he alienated? It’s hard for me, often unbearable. Why, shamefully, have I been carrying an ID instead of a passport for six months now? I'm afraid to show it, I'm ashamed and it's hard to death. I did not do anything against the Motherland, the Soviet government, or the Russian people. I'm ready to commit suicide. It’s not hard for me; I’ve endured more than death itself dozens of times. But there is still a little hope that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic will find true confirmation, and I will be at peace. I don't even know if I can be accepted into the institute. I would like to go into teaching, but can they really entrust me with such work when I don’t even have a passport? To another institute? But I don’t have the right to leave.”

Today is warm, the first such soft, clean, pleasant breeze this spring. The streams flow particularly rapidly. Nice day, but didn't expect anything extraordinary. I wanted to fulfill my duties at Industrial Bank and go to the cinema in the evening, but I remembered that on the 25th the deadline for renewing my ID card, which replaced passport number 1182, with the same one that replaced my last name at the Reden mine, was expiring. At lunchtime I went to the passport office. I thought that they would tell me to come tomorrow, and tomorrow they would put a stamp “extended until July 25,” but they gave me a number and asked for two photos. I went to take pictures, feeling a joy similar to the joy of a suit bought with my own money in 1936 or the joy of receiving a GTO badge. Looks like I'll get a passport. Because I know that this won’t change anything in people’s attitudes, but it will give me strength.”

This ends the diary. For many years, my grandfather was haunted by memories of the camps; he often screamed in his sleep, but did not tell his family anything. He started drinking when things got especially difficult. He often said that he was being watched, but no one believed him. Perhaps it was true, perhaps it was a consequence of psychological trauma inflicted in captivity. But he always remembered his captivity extremely sparingly. He was always alone among people.

“I don’t dare say...” Memoirs of my grandfather A. A. Kalimov about fascist captivity (1941–1945) / Irina Kalimova

Occupied Ukraine in 1941-1943. was turned by Germany into a huge forced labor camp with an extensive network of penal and punitive institutions. At this time, two camps were created and operated in Konstantinovka: a transit camp for prisoners of war Dulag 172 and a forced labor camp (penal camp). Today we can learn the conditions of existence here on the other side of the barbed wire directly from the memories of a former prisoner.

Background. The city museum preserves a battered letter from the late 70s, sent by Ivan Iosifovich Balaev. From the letter it became known that he was a participant in the Great Patriotic War, as well as a prisoner of camps in Ukraine and Germany. At that time, he began to work on a book of his memoirs and asked to be provided with some information about the local camp (they are given in the text), where he was imprisoned at one time. However, subsequent correspondence, if any, is unknown. And how his work ended remained a mystery until today.

The museum staff decided to find out the fate of Ivan Iosifovich and his work. Using the envelope, we were able to reconstruct the address in detail. However, almost 45 years have passed! Therefore, it was decided to write in two copies, the second one to the village council at the place of residence. And for good reason. Indeed, Ivan Iosifovich and his wife moved to relatives in the village of Bolshoye Boldino in 2001. By the way, an interesting fact: in this village there is the estate of A.S. Pushkin. This story could have ended already at this stage if the second option had not worked - from the village council, for which they were grateful, the letter was forwarded to a new address. His daughter and her husband, Valentina Ivanovna and Anatoly Aleksandrovich Pykhonin, answered us.

On behalf of the museum and all history buffs, we sincerely thank you for their responsiveness. In their letter to the museum they said the following. At the end of the 70s, Ivan Iosifovich sent his manuscript to the publishing house of military literature of the USSR and received a devastating review. “The meaning of it was that a person who was captured by the enemy cannot write memoirs and it is better for him to sit and keep a low profile. The review, on one and a half sheets of typescript, written by the colonel, had 83 grammatical errors! After this, the manuscript was abandoned and was discovered by chance when we moved. The book was published in a minimal edition in 2005. Life is not endless and in 2008 Ivan Iosifovich died. We have two copies left, one of which we will send you.”

The chapter “Captive”, dedicated to the stay in the Konstantinovka camp, from this autobiographical essay “I ask for one thing...” memories of a former prisoner of war” and present to the readers.

Brief biography of Ivan Iosifovich Balaev. Born in 1918 then in the Nizhny Novgorod province. In July 1940 he entered the Kharkov Military Medical School. In the first months of the war, he was released ahead of schedule and sent to the front as a military paramedic of the 5th squadron of the 161st cavalry regiment. Participated in battles in Donbass and near Kharkov. In February 1942 he was captured. Then he was in Konstantinovsky, Dnepropetrovsk, Slavutsky, Lvov, Potsdam and other camps for Soviet prisoners of war. For attempting to escape, he was severely beaten. In April 1945, he escaped from the Potsdam camp with a group of prisoners of war. He was enlisted as a private in the communications department of a motorized mechanized battalion. He took part in the battles for Potsdam, Berlin and the liberation of Prague. Graduated from the Gorky Pedagogical Institute, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences. Published more than 50 scientific articles, the book “Home Experiment and Observations in Chemistry”, etc.

With this, we move directly to the memoirs and give the floor to their author.

A. Novoselsky

Not a single war is complete without the capture of the enemy. Many wars in the past began for this reason. But before the Great Patriotic War, we were brought up on the idea that all military operations in a future war would be conducted on enemy territory and there could be no talk of any prisoners on our side.
During the period of hostilities, not a single soldier or officer thought about being captured by the enemy. In moments of leisure, we thought about the different paths of our fate: we might remain alive, we might be seriously or lightly wounded, we might kill. But getting captured? No one could allow captivity; it didn’t fit into their consciousness. This could have happened to anyone, but not to me. But fate decreed otherwise. ...

...Under a reinforced escort of machine gunners, all the slaves, including the wounded, were driven through the streets of Slavyansk to the railway station. We walked through the streets, accompanied by guards with dogs. At the edge of the street stood several women and an old man of seventy or eighty years old. He came up to our column, cried and loudly, stretching out his hands to the column, said:
- Children! Sons! You will be taken to the Konstantinovsky prison camp. You will be lost there! If you can, run as best you can on the road, but run! Otherwise you will be lost!
Two guards ran up to the old man and shouted: “Rus, partisan!” They pushed him into our column with rifle butts. We were stunned by this turn of events. Why did the old man, what did he do to them? When he tried to leave the column, he received additional rifle butts on his back. So the old man wandered with tears in his eyes as part of our column. The next day, already in the Konstantinovsky camp, he died. Who were you, an unknown old man with a kind heart and fierce hatred for the invaders? Eternal memory to you...
The column continued to be driven through the streets of the city with shouts and rifle butts; the wounded were supported by healthy prisoners of war.
Suddenly we saw in many places structures that did not fit into the overall picture of a rather destroyed city. The structures resembled crosses, but... not crosses. Then I thought that the Germans are Catholics and Protestants and their crosses are different from the Orthodox ones. We come closer, but these are gallows! And indeed, on the second of them hangs an elderly bearded man, on the third - a young woman...
We were shocked. Where are we? In the Middle Age? People of my generation knew about gallows only from books.
Before my capture, I knew from newspapers about the atrocities of the Nazis in the temporarily occupied territory. But it’s one thing for newspapers, which cannot be completely trusted at any time and under any government; it’s a completely different thing to see all this with your own eyes.
Again the thought drills into my brain - run! But how? There are guards and dogs all around. Throw yourself at the guard and die? Ridiculous, stupid. What does this prove? But starvation and martyrdom lie ahead, which neither relatives nor comrades in arms will ever know about.
Again and again I remember the recent past, conduct introspection: why did it happen that you, a Komsomol member, brought up under the conditions of Soviet reality, ended up with the enemy as a prisoner of war? Do you yourself admit the degree of guilt? If not, then who is to blame? That's how fate turned out. And mine, and thousands like me. It's difficult to find the culprit. I was overcome with despair. An annoying thought to commit suicide appeared. Later, I became convinced that the appearance of the first signs of despair and indifference under conditions of captivity in fascist death camps is a dangerous sign, first of all, for the prisoner himself: he can completely sink and, ultimately, most likely die.
Here is the train station. With barking shouts they began to herd him into a freight (veal) car. 65-68 people each. There is no bedding on the floor in the harsh January frost, and some don’t even have overcoats or hats. It got dark, and it was dark in the carriage. In the booths, between the carriages, German machine gunners are chatting, stamping their felt boots. Suddenly we hear quiet Russian and Ukrainian speech. It was the railway workers who hitched our carriage to the train. They clearly saw who was loaded into the cars and how. The railway workers came closer, and as if checking with hammers and wrenches closer, and as if checking with hammers and wrenches the reliability of the clutch, they quietly told us:
- Guys, you are being taken to the city of Konstantinovka. There, the Germans have reliably and firmly set up a camp for prisoners of war and civilians, they feed very poorly, people are beaten with rubber batons for any reason or without reason. There is no place to sleep; the prisoners lie on the floor. The barracks are not opened at night, people die in droves. The same fate awaits you. If there is an opportunity, run along the way. Otherwise you're screwed.
There was a shock of numbness, everyone was silent. The railway workers continued:
“We, the railway workers who did not have time to evacuate, were rounded up by the Germans and forced to work at the station. They warned that if we refused, both we and our families would be sent to camps.
The German guards could not help but hear these conversations, but, probably, the Russian and Ukrainian languages ​​were incomprehensible to them.
Gradually we came to our senses and excited conversations began. What should I do? What to do? How can one find a way out of this situation? Where to begin? While the workers are hanging around our carriage, we ask them:
– What do you advise us? The carriage is strong and locked, security is nearby.
“Escape from this carriage is now impossible.” Try this in Konstantinovka. In 10-12 hours you will be there. We know that several civilians work in the camp: a doctor from the city, several electricians, and someone else. They have permanent passes into the city and from the city to the camp. Try contacting them, maybe it will work out.
At least some hope appeared, illusory, illusory, but hope.
The train started moving. We drive slowly, sometimes stopping for a short time. The piercing cold of January frosts passes through the overcoats. In the carriage we all stand huddled close to each other to keep warm at least a little. And also because there was simply nowhere to sit, and it was impossible to do this - due to the severe frost, a frosty wind was always blowing from below. The wounded moaned.
It was getting a little light when we approached Konstantinovka. The guards kicked us out of the carriages with shouts. An additional convoy with shepherd dogs arrived from the camp. Frozen and frostbitten, we tumbled out of the carriages. The wounded and exhausted were carried out in their arms. Our comrades were left lying dead in each carriage.
We approach the camp gate. On a huge territory there are semi-basement, large barracks. There were several dozen of them. The entire camp area is surrounded by several rows of barbed wire. In the corners are towers on which young machine gunners stand with their legs apart. Police guards walk in pairs along the barbed wire outside. As it later became known, according to the German classification it was the Konstantinovsky forced labor penal camp for convict workers; it was located in the workshops of a former chemical plant.
Before reaching the camp gate, they counted us. Zagainov and I were at the tail of the column with sanitary bags. We could have thrown them away - there was almost nothing left, but out of habit we keep them with us. There was a second gate in the inner camp. Here we were already met by Russian and Ukrainian police. Zagainov and I somehow fell 1-2 steps behind the column and were immediately hit in the back with batons from the police, shouting obscenely: “Catch up with the column!” It is noteworthy that we received the first clubs not from the Germans, but from “our own”, the Slavs.
Perhaps, during the entire period of fascist captivity, this first punishment was the most depressing morally and psychologically. It would be less offensive to receive the first blows from the fascists themselves. Enemies are enemies. But from the Russians! It was a shame.
For Soviet prisoners of war, as it turned out, the worst thing in the camp was not the Germans, not the commandant, but their own. “Worse than hunger and disease in the camps were pestered by policemen from prisoners of war” (Astashkov I.S. Memoirs. Hereinafter references by I. Balaev). As a rule, the police were formed from physically strong, immoral people who knew neither pity nor compassion for their comrades. In the camp in the city of Konstantinovka, Stalin region, “... the Russian police are healthy, walking with their sleeves rolled up with a whip in their hands” (Shneer A. Voina. Samizdat. jewniverse.ru).
The policemen were easily recognized by the white bandage on the right sleeve with the inscription in German: “Polizei” and the baton in their hand. The batons were rubber with a metal tip.
And here I am, a Komsomol member, a graduate of Soviet educational institutions, a citizen of the USSR, an officer, received two batons from a Russian scoundrel-traitor. Having lost my composure and reason, I wanted to break out of the column and give the policeman back, but my comrade Zagainov held me back: “You can’t! Be patient! They’ll kill you right away!”
We walk through the camp area in formation. Again we meet Germans, but those who are looking for Jews, political instructors, commissars, command staff. They peer vigilantly at the passing column. A loud shout followed:
- Halt! (Stop!)
We stopped. I still can’t understand why we didn’t remove the insignia from our buttonholes: two “kubars” with a cup and a snake. There were so many events and shocks. An officer and a non-commissioned officer come up, they see insignia on our buttonholes, medical bags on the sides and talk to each other: “Doctor, doctor!”
The two of us were taken out of the common column and sent to a separate stone barracks, which in turn was fenced with additional barbed wire. For the sake of objectivity, it must be said that the Germans were well versed in the insignia of Red Army officers. We didn’t know the insignia of the German army at all.
They took us to a stone building. There were 6 people lying on rough wooden bunks, three of them with bandaged heads, arms and legs. One captain, two senior lieutenants, the rest junior lieutenants. Everyone got up from their bunks and introduced themselves. There were different types of troops: infantrymen, a tankman with a burnt face, one called himself a communications officer. One was healthy and not injured.
The old residents of the barracks lived there for only one and a half to two weeks. Military insignia was not removed. The Germans turned a blind eye to this then. Our comrades in misfortune introduced us to the camp order. In particular, captured girls and women bring gruel and bread to our barracks. We were warned: one small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust for 8 people. But the main thing is that they all bring it. Like in a restaurant! During the distribution of gruel in one barracks, others were locked. They hand out one and open the next one.
At about four o'clock in the afternoon the girls brought “food”. Much has already been written about gruel: it is simply boiled water, at the bottom of which there was about one spoon of burnt wheat or rye. The loaf was divided exactly into 8 equal parts, which were distributed by lot. In the evening, an old civilian doctor came to our barracks and said that tomorrow we, military paramedics, would be taken to the “medical unit” of the camp (in German “revere”). We didn’t know whether this was good or bad. Old-timers said that typhus was rampant in the camp, and in addition, many were dying from exhaustion. The overall mortality rate is 70-80 people per day.
Indeed, the next morning we were taken to a special barracks, which was called the medical unit. It has three service rooms. The same old doctor met us. He said that we would work together with the orderlies in the medical unit. He immediately warned that the Germans would not give any privileges for this work, and there was a lot of work. Due to overcrowding and exceptionally poor nutrition, typhus is rampant in the camp. Tomorrow, he said, we will think together about how to get out, at least partially, of this situation. For the treatment of typhus, the German camp authorities practically do not issue any medicines. What we have: some bandages, cotton wool, lignin - we get it ourselves. The main scourge of the camp, he continued, was typhus and hunger. Inside the camp workers are prisoners of war and civilians, i.e. the doctor, his assistant, two of us military paramedics and orderlies, do not have any basic rights. The Germans from the commandant’s office are afraid to enter the camp territory so as not to become infected.
He further warned us that we should not approach the barbed wire closer than 5 meters: the guards shoot such prisoners of war without warning. You will live nearby, in the next barracks. There are no bunks there, but there is straw on the floor. At night, all the barracks, including the medical unit, are locked by the Germans. Captive girls live across the partition in your barracks. They are under investigation by the Gestapo and are suspected of intelligence in favor of the Red Army. They are beaten during interrogations. In the meantime, they play the role of nurses: they pour and distribute gruel, wash floors, and wash clothes.
The doctor once again warned us not to say anything unnecessary, there might be provocateurs.
“I can only help you with the following: I will ensure that the police do not pester you or beat you with batons, they are afraid of me, because if they get sick, they will be treated by me.” Starting tomorrow, prepare yourself white armbands with a red cross and always wear them on your right sleeve. Always! Please remember this.
And also, keep in mind that not all Germans are fascists. There are also decent people among them. The following incident happened recently. At night, in a snowstorm, a large group of prisoners took out some sharp object, cut three rows of barbed wire and crawled out in single file. Moreover, the sentry saw everything, but pretended not to notice anything. When 110-120 people crawled out of the camp, he raised the alarm. About 30 people were then caught and shot, but about a hundred disappeared into thin air: it is clear that they were hidden by the local population. From this fact I conclude that not all Germans are enemies and fascists.
Next, beware of people who are often called to the commandant's office and the Gestapo. These are either already provocateurs, or they are being recruited to become provocateurs. In general, it is advisable not to have any contact with people who have been in the Gestapo and, even more so, not to say anything unnecessary with them. Over time, perhaps we will come up with something with your release, but this requires careful preparation.
And one last thing. The Germans are not fools, don't think you can outsmart them. Gestapo workers are especially cunning and cunning. They all wear black uniforms. Try not to meet them. Beware of translator Ivanov. This is the scoundrel of scoundrels, the scoundrel of scoundrels. Pretends to be the son of a nobleman. Civil engineer by profession. Wears a German army uniform. He sniffs out commissars, political instructors, commanders, communists, Jews and turns them over to the Gestapo. Their further fate is known - execution. For execution, the consent of the Gestapo chief of the camp commandant's office or his deputy is required. The other day, this Ivanov beat two prisoners to death with a stick just because they did not give way to him in time. Such cases on his part are not isolated. So not only typhus and hunger are rampant in the camp, but also complete arbitrariness.
We thanked the old man for the detailed information about life in the camp.
This is the situation! So, it turns out that we must serve the Germans? But why the Germans? We must help, to the best of our ability, our people who are in great trouble. To our doubts about this, the old doctor answered affirmatively that in this situation, our best work is not helping the Germans, but serving our unfortunate compatriots.
They took us to a brick barracks, partitioned in two halves with boards. One half was occupied by women, and the second by orderlies, one paramedic and us, two new recruits. No bunks, just a thin layer of rotten straw on the floor, that's all.
Having asked permission, we entered the second half, where there were girls and middle-aged women, about 9-10 people in total. We wanted to find out who they were. The fates that brought them to the camp were different. The Germans captured some when they were moving from one farmstead to another in the front-line zone. Others were suspected of intelligence gathering, although the women denied this. Several were arrested for harboring wounded Red Army soldiers. They had been in the camp for a long time. The Gestapo sometimes called them, especially one who was suspected of being a spy. Some time later they were all shot. Only one was suspected of intelligence, but all were executed. Who were you really, unknown war heroines? We will never know about this.
In the morning, when a civilian doctor arrived from the city to the camp, we, together with him and the orderlies, began to inspect all the barracks in order to separate the severely malnourished from the typhoid patients. Three huge barracks were allocated for the sick. All recognized patients with typhus (the presence of a rash on the skin of the abdomen) were placed in one. The rest of the seriously ill, who were no longer able to move, had swollen legs, bags under their eyes, and the wounded were placed in two other barracks. All this preliminary work took three days. The wounded had their bandages changed. They bandaged them with everything they could bandage with: bandages, cotton wool, strips of clean linen. We managed to treat some of the wounds.
Typhoid patients were delirious: they moaned, screamed, swore, and uttered inarticulate cries. Cooled lotions were placed on their foreheads to reduce the temperature that was too high. The barracks were disinfected with a weak solution of creosol. About a week later, in one of the barracks, I heard a rather loud voice:
- Balaev! Balaev! Come here!
I quickly turned around, but could not understand who was calling me. The caller understood this and beckoned me towards him with his hand. I went. His eyes, hands, legs are swollen, he can barely move, in civilian clothes. Asks:
– Don’t recognize me?
No, I can’t admit it, no matter how much I strain my memory. I peer into his face, unable to recognize anyone I know in him.
– I am military paramedic Kiselev, I studied with you at the Kharkov Military Medical School in the paramedic department.
Only then did I remember him, but he had changed so much that it was impossible to recognize him. We said hello and hugged. Having calmed down a little, I asked him:
– Under what circumstances were you captured and why are you wearing a civilian and not a military uniform?
He, having recovered a little from his excitement and bitter-joyful meeting, told me the last military episode from his front-line life.
“There was a hot battle between the German infantry and our units. The firepower from all types of weapons on both sides was strong. The Germans and ours suffered heavy losses. Many wounded. The Germans surrounded our regiment, as a result of which not all the wounded were sent to the rear. What to do with them next? Leave to the mercy of the enemy? The radios were broken, and there was no communication with other units of the division. The regiment's command decided to infiltrate in small groups through the German battle formations and leave their encirclement. But what should we do with the wounded? Then the regimental commissar calls me and gives the following order:
- We will get out of the encirclement. It is impossible to take such a number of wounded with you and remove them from the dense ring of enemy encirclement. And you can’t leave it unattended. Therefore, based on the current situation, I order you, military paramedic Kiselev, to stay with the wounded. The regiment command sees no other way out. Take off your military uniform and change into civilian clothes, we have provided clothes for you. Put a white bandage with a red cross on your right sleeve. When the Germans arrive and ask you who you are, answer that you are a paramedic from a civilian hospital in such and such a village, he came to look after the wounded, since all the military had fled. If the Germans capture the wounded, then you will go to the farm and wait for our instructions, which will come through a messenger. The Germans will not accept you as a civilian.
An order is an order, there was no point in objecting, so I stayed. The shootout ended, there was silence for half an hour. And then... then everything went wrong.
The Germans drove up to the wounded in a truck. The translator asks who I am and how I ended up here. I answered as the Commissioner instructed me. The translator conveyed my answer to the officer. He gave some order, and the soldiers began to throw our wounded into the back like logs of firewood, despite the screams and groans. We loaded the car, got in and drove off. Some of the wounded remained. After 30 minutes the car returned. The wounded were quickly loaded, but I was also pushed into the back. They brought us all to this Konstantinovsky camp for Soviet prisoners of war. Here I was afraid to give my military rank. I’ve been here for two weeks now, I’m very weak and sick.
I offered him the following: “Don’t go anywhere. I'll be back in 5 minutes and ask the head doctor to transfer you to the barracks for the sick. We will treat!” I immediately flew into the medical unit and asked the old doctor:
- A doctor, a paramedic, my college friend, is seriously ill, he needs to be fed somehow and treated. And he told him about the guy’s fate.
“Let him come here immediately, I’ll examine him.” After the inspection, take him to the barracks where you live, put him next to you. Remember, guys, we will need more doctors, paramedics, and orderlies. There are thousands of sick and wounded.
I instantly ran to Kiselev. He led him by the arm to the medical unit. They helped me undress. The doctor listened to the condition of the lungs and heart and, unnoticed by him, shook his head. They replaced his dirty, lice-infested underwear with disinfected ones, laid another layer of straw on the floor, heated the barracks and laid him down. They gave me an extra portion of gruel and a piece of bread. He doesn’t eat, he says he has no appetite.
The doctor told us that he was unlikely to last long: his heart was working with great interruptions, inflammation and focal pulmonary tuberculosis, general exhaustion, and a decline in immunity. But we will treat. I have some aspirin, I'd like to get some sulfidine. The main thing for him now is to eat a little and drink hot homemade tea.
They looked after him, treated him, somehow fed him, but the man was fading away every day, and it became difficult to speak. On the eighth day, early in the morning, calmly, without groans, he died. He died in my arms. For the first time, my comrade and friend died in my arms.
Reported to the doctor.
- Pull yourself together, keep in mind that when a person loses faith in his own strength, he dies faster. Don't forget where we are. You will see more than one death ahead.
The terrible everyday life of the camp continued, the thought of escape was constantly in my head.
In the second half of February it became warmer; We, prisoners of war, were happy about this too. I was assigned to serve in the barracks of typhus patients. It is difficult to say for sure why more prisoners died - typhus or hunger. Perhaps it’s from hunger, and the main cause of typhus itself is dystrophy, malnutrition, lice. The overall mortality rate was 70-80 people per day. The dead were buried by a special team. Every morning the dead were loaded onto vehicles and taken outside the camp. Their clothes and underwear were first removed. After washing, everything was handed over to the Germans. If you managed to hide something, you exchanged it with the police for bread.
Most patients have a high fever and are delirious. We give them some aspirin. I emphasize that it is not the camp authorities who issue it, but we “get it”: some from our sanitary bags, and some brought from the city by an old doctor.
The sick need to be fed, but there is nothing to feed them: people with a high temperature do not eat gruel, only a little bread that the Germans prepare for prisoners, a special composition - from coarse flour mixed with finely ground sawdust. The Germans bring this bread to the barbed wire and throw it over it to the camp territory. The police then pick it up and cut it into 200 gram portions. A massive number of patients with gastrointestinal diseases appeared, many of them had bloody diarrhea: dysentery. There are a lot of shadow people walking around the camp, known by the camp name as “goners”. These are completely weak-willed, completely weakened, degraded people; their faces bear the stamp of indifference - a sure sign that a person is on the eve of his death. Weak “diarrhea” patients were also separated, but there was nothing to treat. I often gave up: how to help and how to help?
How did the camp authorities view all this? It, as I now believe, was interested in eliminating the typhus epidemic within the camp. The Germans were not concerned about saving the lives of prisoners of war, no. They were concerned that this epidemic could spread to the Germans themselves, who were very afraid of it and not without reason.
The Germans were interested in eliminating typhus, but... did not undertake anything radical to resolve this issue. At the doctor’s request to help the patients improve their nutrition, the deputy commandant and the German military doctor rudely refused; the second request - to help with medications - was also refused; installing bunks for the sick is also a refusal.
But the Germans began to widely use preventive measures for themselves. They began to enter the camp territory less often. The German military doctor rarely visited the camp and never entered the barracks. I didn’t even go to the medical unit. All medical personnel from prisoners had no right to approach the Germans closer than three steps, despite the fact that the service personnel were in dressing gowns. In general, all Germans were terrified of typhus.
The conclusion involuntarily suggested itself: the Germans created conditions for prisoners of war in which the more Soviet people died, the better for the Nazis. Surely, for example, they could not order that the floors in the barracks for the sick and wounded be covered with a significant layer of straw, which was quite sufficient in the vicinity of Konstantinovka. But they, despite our repeated requests, did not do this.
The nursing staff thought for a long time about how to get out of this situation, at least partially. And this solution was found.
On the territory of the camp there was a small, primitive disinfection chamber (we called it a louse breaker) and a small laundry room. The captured women (they had not yet been shot then) washed all the dirty linen for the sick. It was a titanic work. Then this relatively clean underwear, tunics, trousers, overcoats were passed through the decontamination chamber one by one. This took another 6-7 days. Fearing the spread of the epidemic among the Germans themselves, they agreed to this. What to do with the straw in the barracks – does it also contain lice? One by one, the barracks were disinfected with a solution of unpleasant-smelling creosol.
No matter how difficult it was, basic sanitary order was created. But what about food and medications? These are the most difficult questions under conditions of fascist captivity. Precisely captivity. As it turned out later, the Germans also created work teams that were sent to work at industrial enterprises for peasants to do agricultural work. In this case, the teams were provided with tolerable food. And the conditions in all camps for Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-42 were terrible and nightmarish. These were camps of death, arbitrariness, and the greatest humiliation.
The treatment of the wounded (not with cavity wounds) was easier. There were small supplies of dressing material, and he made splints for the wounded with broken limbs. But the medications were difficult. A civilian doctor from the medical unit provided some assistance. He managed to get strong moonshine for sterilization, some alcohol, iodine tincture, solutions of hydrogen peroxide and rivanol for washing and disinfecting festering wounds. Somewhere in the city he got hold of a small bottle of technical fish oil and persuaded the Germans to transport it to the camp. Fish oil promoted wound healing with its rich vitamin content. After preliminary treatment and treatment, the patients were sent to the “infirmary”. What kind of “infirmary” it was will be discussed separately.
But this is one side of the matter. The second side is what to do with food for the seriously ill and wounded? The issue was partially resolved. The fact is that the tanks with gruel in the common kitchen were filled by cooks in the presence of police officers standing at the cauldrons with rubber batons. The doctors urgently raised the issue with the policemen and cooks about providing thicker gruel for the sick and wounded. After all, a cook using a ladle from a cauldron can hit it in different ways. Again the thought drills into my brain - run! But how? There are guards and dogs all around. Throw yourself at the guard and die? Ridiculous, stupid. What does this prove? But starvation and martyrdom lie ahead, which neither relatives nor comrades in arms will ever know about. They agreed to this. The fact is that the police were afraid of our doctors: in case of illness, they also ended up in the medical unit, where prisoners of war were treated. The Germans did not send sick policemen for treatment to any of their hospitals. They looked at them, in this case, as fellow prisoners. That's why the police agreed to the doctors' proposal!
By the way, it should be noted that when the Germans entered the camp, they did not have any rubber batons. They entrusted this “luxury” to their police servants. True, the officers had whips with them, but they rarely used them.
The old civilian doctor continued to show energetic activity. His plan was as follows. Firstly, among the captive patients there are few residents of Konstantinovka or its environs. The doctor agreed with the camp commandant so that their relatives would have the opportunity to transfer small food parcels to their sick captive relatives and fellow countrymen once a week.
Oddly enough, the commandant's office agreed to this. I still can’t understand why the Germans did this. The main reason I see is this: the camp was at the disposal of the German rear armies, and although it was guarded very carefully, the guard was carried out by ordinary infantry units. Among the security units at that time there were no SS and SD units, as the more cruel and sadistic bodies of Nazi Germany.
In other words, the camp was guarded by front-line infantry soldiers, including some of the officers. Some of them, apparently, looked at the mass disasters of Soviet prisoners of war somewhat differently.
How did you deal with the transfers?
Under the guidance of doctors, paramedics were given the intended delivery to the patient. They fed almost by force, but the sick took food especially well when the crisis had already passed. If it was impossible to feed the patients due to high temperature, the doctor locked the parcels for prisoners in a locked cabinet. It would have been impossible otherwise. After all, everyone was hungry! If a package intended for a patient could not be delivered due to the death of the patient, it was distributed among other patients at the direction of the doctors. I affirm that such a decision was the only correct one at that time. But the programs did not last long and were not widespread.
Another source of food supply was the exchange of linen for food among the population. Residents of the city willingly exchanged food for clothing. Clothing from deceased prisoners of war was washed, disinfected, and secretly from the Germans, commands were exchanged to take the corpses out of the camp.
At the expense of the dead, we could often get an additional amount of bread, albeit bad, but still. The fact is that the Germans, I believe, did not know the exact number of prisoners in the camp due to the high mortality rate. Fearing infection, they rarely counted prisoners themselves, entrusting this task to the camp doctors. Therefore, the number of deaths was underestimated, due to which additional “rations” were received.
However, all our efforts could not radically improve the situation in the camp. Basic conditions were needed: food and medicine, but they were not there. Many died from gastrointestinal diseases, pneumonia, tuberculosis...
I stayed in this camp for twelve days, and on the thirteenth I fell ill. A high temperature appeared, the old doctor examined me and said:
– Vanya, you have the classic form of typhus - characteristic small dotted spots - a rash on the skin of the abdomen. Plus high temperature. Lie down in your barracks. A paramedic, a lieutenant and a pilot are already lying there. We will do our best to save you.
That's the thing! I had a very good idea of ​​what typhus was like in the conditions of a nightmare camp, and what its outcome would be. This meant that within a month I was 80-90% guaranteed to end up in a mass grave.
The doctor should always encourage everyone, he tried to calm me down too:
– Don’t worry too much – not everyone dies. You see for yourself that some people recover...
My heart became anxious, melancholy, apathy and indifference to everything appeared. I realized that this was almost certain death, and in the coming weeks. Yes, I saw that even in the conditions of the camp very few recovered. But there were only a few of them, and they were no longer people, but living skeletons covered in skin. After recovery, such people develop a strong appetite. They need to eat a lot and well, but there was no food. Therefore, they died anyway. Although we sometimes managed to give such prisoners an extra scoop of gruel, this essentially did not change anything in their tragic fate. It turned out that the efforts of the medical staff ultimately did not give the desired positive result. Death decimated dozens of healthy and especially sick and recovering prisoners of war every day.
And here I lie. A few days later, due to the high temperature, he began to lose consciousness frequently and for a long time. I learned about this from the staff much later. I lay with a high temperature for more than thirty days, most of which I was unconscious. According to stories, a civilian doctor visited me and others almost every day; the old man forced the female nurses to take the temperature. He often brought a cracker from the city and, when we were conscious, with some homemade tea, he almost forced us to eat and drink it all, and also to sip a portion of gruel, which always tasted disgusting.
The old man managed to get some medicines in the city, which they gave him to take internally. Some kind of herbal infusions were used. It is necessary to pay tribute to the girls and women who looked after me and all the other patients. In addition, they washed the floors in typhoid barracks, distributed gruel, washed and disinfected linen, although they knew very well that they themselves could become infected. All this happened before they were shot.
The time came, and the crisis of my illness passed, the temperature subsided, and I finally regained consciousness. Someone gave me a small mirror, and I didn’t recognize myself in it! There was almost no hair on the head, the face and body were thin, the legs became thin, a dull, indifferent look.
The doctor encourages:
“Your crisis is over, but you need to lie down for a few more days.” It would be necessary to feed him, but there is nothing except gruel.
The appetite appeared “brutal”, but there was nothing to eat. Sometimes the staff brought us a cracker. As soon as you fall asleep, you are sure to dream about some kind of food, and the most delicious one at that. You wake up, there’s nothing.
Practice has long proven that of all existing trials and misfortunes, the most difficult and difficult for a person to endure is the feeling of hunger. Neither cold, nor pain, nor insomnia can compare with the experience of constant hunger.
The doctor was reassuring that a person who has had typhus does not get sick with this disease again, but if he gets sick again, it will be in a very mild form. I knew about this before, but the whole point was that I needed to eat something. At the expense of the dead, they began to give us, like other patients, an additional piece of “sawdust” bread. But still there was not enough food. And I found a small way out. You may not believe it, but I still have my watch! This thing had some value in the camp. I asked one of the orderlies to ask the police how much bread they would give for a working watch. It turned out: two loaves of real, clean bread. This is wealth that cannot be replaced by any gold in camp conditions! God be with them, for hours. Exchanged. He fed himself and gave it to his comrades. I began to spend time in the spring air more often. They managed to bring from the city some kind of dirty technical fat, according to the doctors, of very dubious quality. But they took a chance: one teaspoon a day. The fat resembled tar, but it turned out to be useful. Things have improved. The youth of the body also played a role. Again the thought of escape loomed like a star.
Soon after my relative recovery, the head physician called me to his office:
– Vanya, you have now developed immunity to typhus, so you will help treat patients in the first barracks.
I did not object: after all, this is essentially an order, at least from a senior subordinate. This was a barracks for those seriously ill with typhus. In the barracks there are groans, incoherent speech, screams, most are delirious. A particular difficulty was not to miss the moment when the patient briefly regains consciousness, and at that moment to forcefully feed him gruel and a ration of surrogate bread, measure and record his temperature. In addition, many patients were at risk of developing bedsores on their bodies when lying down for long periods of time. From time to time, the orderlies and some of the convalescents carefully turned the patients from one side to the other.
In everyday work, the melancholy, indifference, hopelessness and hopelessness of the situation were dulled. There was a feeling that the patients needed you, and this was reassuring.
In the first days there was dizziness and general weakness. After working for a week, the old man calls again:
– Vanya, in the so-called hospital for prisoners of war, a terrible epidemic of typhus has arisen, which is decimating exhausted, starving people. They are ours, Soviet people. Those who have recovered from typhus, one doctor and two paramedics are sent there. However, if you don’t want it, I can’t order it.
– What is this “hospital” like? – I asked.
He brought me up to date.
The hospital is located near the camp zone in a two-story stone building, fenced with several rows of barbed wire. In the corners of the territory there are towers with machine gunners; Russian and Ukrainian policemen with rifles and carbines walk between the towers on the outside. In addition to the prisoner-of-war medical personnel, two civilian doctors from the city work there. There are seriously ill soldiers and officers in the hospital. There are no police inside the hospital grounds. Meals are the same as in the camp. He warned not to talk too much with patients - there could be provocateurs. It may sometimes be possible to exchange disinfected linen and clothing of the deceased for bread. But the Germans are having a hard time doing this. Sometimes civilian doctors bring something for the sick, but at the checkpoint the bags are carefully checked by security. The rest is complete isolation from the outside world.
I agreed to go to work at this “hospital”. With a small group of wounded, we were sent on foot under escort to this “hospital.” We must pay tribute that along the route we, exhausted and exhausted people, were not beaten by the German guards, although this slow mournful procession lasted about an hour for 2 kilometers of the path. The civilian population was not allowed near the column during our march through the city.
At the entrance to the hospital, the senior guard handed the guard a piece of paper, we were counted, and the gates were opened.
Quietly and slowly we wander through the hospital grounds. Here, at least, the police with their rubber truncheons are not visible. April spring makes itself felt: bright green grass is sprouting here and there.
We, paramedics and doctors with red cross bands on the sleeves of our overcoats (an old doctor took care of this so as not to receive unnecessary kicks and beatings along the way), were met by the hospital doctor and separated from the rest of the sick and wounded. He took me to the first floor of the building. The barracks had two-tiered wooden bunks with rough mattresses made of rotten straw. The windows are barred with metal bars. Before us, an old paramedic and medical instructor, Ossetian by nationality, lived and worked here. The doctor who brought us said:
- You will live here. The barracks are locked at night. Tomorrow morning we go to work, there are a lot of sick and wounded.
In the morning we met with medical personnel from prisoners of war.
A week after arriving at the hospital, the doctor warned us that among the orderlies, cleaners, and food distributors there were former criminals, mainly Ukrainians by nationality, and advised us not to have any unnecessary conversations in front of them. He named specific names. Later we were convinced of this by their prison jargon.
The rooms in the barracks were large, there were no bedding, only rough mattresses with rotten straw located directly on the floor.
The hospital was “in charge” of a non-commissioned officer who spoke Russian quite well.
In response to our doctor’s request to install wooden bunks, at least for the most seriously ill and wounded, he received a rude rebuke from the non-commissioned officer:
“We have here not a sanatorium or a resort, but a hospital for prisoners of war of an army hostile to the great Germany. Don't forget about this if you don't want to end up in the Gestapo! There they will give you such “bunks” that you will never remember them again!
Then the patients, having heard this conversation, after the German left, approached the doctor:
– Doctor, don’t ask for more from us. Will the Nazis help us? There will be no help, and you will suffer.
For the wounded there was a little bit: some surgical instruments, cotton wool, dressings, tincture of iodine, rivanol. selected pharmaceuticals. All this was captured, that is, ours, confiscated from civilian medical institutions.
Every morning, except Sunday, two Russian civilian doctors came to work at the hospital - a young man and a girl named Nadya. The Germans paid them. It was rumored that she spent her free time with a German non-commissioned officer. You can judge this any way you like. But I knew that she sometimes brought food to the hospital for seriously ill patients. I've seen this myself many times. Although at that time the residents of Konstantinovka themselves lived from hand to mouth. One spring, they brought cheap jam to the hospital in two large sealed tins. The non-commissioned officer takes one can and hands it to her, saying: “For good work,” Nadya told him “Danke” (thank you). He knew perfectly well that she would give this jar to the sick. And so it happened, two hours later, when the German left, she ordered to open the jar and distribute the contents to the sick and wounded. Everyone got 20-25 grams, but it was jam! Yes, she probably dated a German, but she also helped the prisoners of war in any way she could.
“Doctor “Nadya”, maiden name Visloguzova, according to a member of the city’s underground group, medical worker Ekaterina Nikolaevna Fedorenko, left with the Germans during the retreat” (Letter to the author from the director of the city museum Dontsov B.N.). The end of May arrived, it became quite warm, the grass grew. When cooking the gruel, they began to add finely chopped nettle, but the doctors warned: boil everything thoroughly!
Many patients were very edematous: they drank a lot of water, but there was little food. The mortality rate did not decrease. The Germans strictly took into account the linen of deceased prisoners of war, although they, of course, did not use it. Some people had spare pairs of linen and towels. They managed to exchange a small part of this for food and distribute it to the sick. But hunger, as in the camp, hung like a sword of Damocles over our heads. How to get out of this situation?
One of the doctors suggested the following idea. It is necessary to select something from the small supply of medicines for the population, for example, aspirin, pyramidon, tincture of iodine and others, but so as not to deprive the captive patients. Ask “Unter” and two paramedics with this stuff (under guard, of course) to go to the villages closest to Konstantinovka to exchange medicines for food. In fact, under the guise of this action, we were going to ask the population for alms, alms. We had little hope that the Germans would agree to this. But, oddly enough, the non-commissioned officer agreed, assigning a young, big-faced machine gunner as security. I also wanted to get into this company, but the doctor did not allow it. I was still weak from typhus, and in my ward there were six seriously ill patients, for whom constant supervision was necessary. My comrade and the medical instructor, accompanied by a machine gunner, went with the basket.
It was impossible for them to even think about escaping, since all the villages surrounding the city were filled with military units, but they talked about this later.
And they said the following. Having learned where they came from and for what purpose they were traveling at gunpoint, the population greeted them very friendly. The population said that the situation with food was also very bad for them; a lot was confiscated by the Germans. But everyone helped in some way. Of course, our payment for food was purely symbolic. The basket was quickly filled: some put in a piece of bread or a few potatoes, some an egg. We collected 30 eggs, even a small jar of butter.
The German submachine gunner, escorting them back to the city, was on guard all the time. But what a surprise and disappointment they were when they were brought back to the hospital. The Germans took all the eggs, butter and part of the bread (for the dogs) from the basket. Only the pitiful remnants of what was collected were allowed to be brought into the hospital. Now we are convinced of the naivety of our idea. You should have known the fascists!
Again I have dreams about pies, cheesecakes, bread, soup. When will this all end?
Some Germans, free from guard duty, entered the hospital territory (they, of course, did not look into the wards - they were afraid). I remember one elderly German who spoke passable Russian. He treated prisoners kindly, especially the sick. One day in the summer, looking around so that his colleagues would not see his action, he handed over a piece of good real bread to two walking patients. In a conversation with our captured doctor, he said that during the First World War he was captured by the Russians. The Russians always treated him well and fed him well. He sharply condemned the act of those Germans who took away the food collected from the population. Therefore, not everything was clear in captivity; not all Germans were notorious fascists.
One day in the first ten days of June 1942, I went into the barracks for doctors. Of the three doctors, two were on site. A third man comes in, white-faced and excited. A colleague asks him: “What happened?” He, worried, told us the following:
“A few days ago, the Germans placed a traitor and traitor in one of the wards. He has an old wound on his leg and something wrong with his intestines. Calls himself an engineer, a native and resident of Stalingrad. Gestapo officials gave him paper, whatman paper, pencils, and ink. He sits and draws a map of the city of Stalingrad; he probably knows his city very well. The Gestapo men visited him yesterday and today, asking how work was going and whether they brought him good food and schnapps. How to deal with this scoundrel?
“Balaev, invite an officer from the eighth ward to consult with us,” the senior doctor asked me.
The fact is that in this room there was a prisoner of war officer wounded in the leg with one “sleeper” in his buttonholes. It was rumored among the doctors that it was the regimental commissar. He was treated in this ward for the fifth week, we knew him well and got used to him. He was a charming man, well versed in the modern military and political situation. In any case, we believed and trusted him, consulted with him on some issues, but also helped as much as we could in order to heal the wound faster. That's what they sent me for. Comes in.
- Hello, comrades, what happened?
The doctor told him about the traitorous engineer. There were three doctors in the room, me and another paramedic. The conversation took place quietly, with the door closed. They asked the captain's opinion. He asks us a counter question:
– What do you think?
- Eliminate! - there was a unanimous decision. But one of the doctors mumbled about medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath.
- Dear doctor! There is a war going on, and a difficult and bloody war. It will take many millions of lives. Every honest person must help his army, his people as much as he can. And what is this engineer like? He decided to help the enemy; the Germans needed the schematic plan of Stalingrad for some military purpose. By his actions he goes against his people, against his fellow Stalingraders. How can we talk about medical ethics? The captain was agitated and angry.
Everything, it was decided to destroy, liquidate! But how?
The goal has been set, but how to achieve it, by what means and ways? After all, this must be done so that the Gestapo does not have any suspicions about the unnatural death of their henchman. Otherwise many people will suffer.
One of the doctors took the risk and, under the guise of a regular injection, injected phenol into the vein of the traitor. In the morning, the Germans learned of the engineer’s death. They made a fuss, but there was no evidence of violent death, and gradually everything calmed down.
In June, warm, dry weather set in in the Donbass. All day the walking wounded and sick were in the fresh air, leaving the barracks with the specific smell of carbolic acid. It was possible to walk around the hospital grounds, but in many places there were warning signs in German and Russian: “Do not go closer than 5 meters to the wire! Security shoots without warning!
The question constantly arose: “How is it at the front, how is it at home? How is the family?". The fresh summer air made me feel even more hungry.
One day, the German guards gathered all the orderlies, paramedics, cleaners, and convalescents, 35-40 people in total, and led them through the gate.
We wondered where they were taking us? But we had not gone even 25 meters from the fence before they stopped us, gave us shovels and ordered us: “Dig.” They dug for a long time. The hole turned out to be 20x20 in size and about 3 meters deep. So a mass grave was dug, where the corpses of those who died in the hospital were placed. And the mortality rate was high. The dead were thrown into a pit, a layer was sprinkled with bleach, which was also sprinkled, etc. A sad, terrible picture. You can’t help but think: “What if you too are lying in the next layer?”
The expectation of possible death at the front, on the front line, differs from this expectation in fascist captivity. There, such a state rarely occurs; in the everyday worries of military labor, one hardly has to think about it. Then, on the front line, every warrior understands for what reason he can be wounded or killed. And here? Here the expectation of possible death is daily, hourly. And most importantly - in the name of what is this death?
In the summer of 1942, the Germans excitedly began to talk about the fall of Sevastopol. Sevastopol was occupied by the Germans on July 3, 1942. The heroic defenders of Sevastopol held the defense of the city for 250 days and, of course, drew off large Nazi forces. We all had a hard time with the fall of the Black Sea base.
I remember this incident: One day in May, the Germans escorted a new prisoner of war, a military doctor of 1st rank, to us. He was middle-aged, sociable, could and loved to draw well. A German comes and asks him to draw his portrait from life. Brings good paper. I entered this doctor’s cell and saw: a German soldier sitting on a rough-hewn stool, posing, and the doctor drawing. In my presence, the portrait-drawing was completed. There was a resemblance, but the hand of a professional artist was not felt. Then the second, third came...
But this doctor had to live in our hospital for no more than 6-7 days. One morning he was gone. The doctor who lived with him for a short time said the following. Last night, four SS men (black uniforms) armed with machine guns and an interpreter burst into the barracks. They called the name of this doctor. He stood up and walked out to them. One of the visitors takes a photograph out of his pocket and compares it with the doctor’s face. And suddenly the SS man shouted: “Veg! Rous! Schweinerein!” (Quickly! Come out! Pig!). In the morning, one German from the hospital guard told us that it was a Soviet intelligence officer, and he was tracked down by a woman working for the Germans. Everything, of course, could have happened...
The surname of this doctor was erased from memory, then, even if he was an intelligence officer, the surname did not mean anything.
Police guards were also allowed to enter the infirmary area. Some of the sick and wounded managed to exchange through them the spare underwear that was left by chance for bread.
Smokers were especially pitiful. It was painful and pathetic to watch how some of them exchanged their already meager ration of bread for 3-4 twists of shag! In the camp I saw people madly drawn to tobacco smoke, all the time preoccupied with looking for moss, grass, manure, cigarette butts - God knows what, that you can smoke wrapped in paper. When persuading doctors, there was always a standard answer: “we ourselves know that we smoke to the detriment of our health, but we cannot quit.” Such people quickly became swollen and weakened. They quickly sank, turning into “gors”, and, in the end, died faster than others.
In September, me, two paramedics and three doctors were sent to the rear with the next transport of prisoners from the camp, under heavy guard, in “veal” cars crowded with people. There was a rumor that they were being sent to the Dnepropetrovsk prisoner of war camp. Thus ended my tragic Constantine epic - the first period of torment, suffering, hunger, illness, humiliation and shame. “During 22 months of fascist occupation in the city of Konstantinovka, 15,382 prisoners of war and civilians were shot and tortured. 1,424 residents were driven to Germany” (Letter to the author from the head of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Konstantinovsky Civil Code of the Communist Party of Ukraine S. Nesterenko).
On September 26, 1942, the Sovinformburo reported: “In Stalingrad, in certain sectors of the front, the enemy reached the Volga...”.

We, from the cultural group, had to maintain good relations with the commissioner. One day he came to me and said: “You SS men are being transferred to a regime camp, this is the best camp in the entire region.” I thought he was making fun of me.

We came to this camp, and, first of all, we did not understand that this was a camp. It looked like a normal residential neighborhood, there were curtains hanging on the windows and pots of flowers. There we were received by the German camp commandant, SS Hauptsturmführer. He asked: “Which division?” - "Totenkopf". - “Third block, report to the foreman there.” We were here again, in the SS! This was the best camp in all my more than four years in Russian captivity. We worked in a mine, the mine was 150 meters from the camp, after our shift in the mine, the Russian shift entered there, we had no security, we participated in all socialist competitions, and on the day of the October Revolution, and on Stalin’s birthday, and best miner, we won them all! We had a wonderful political officer, he brought us 30 women from the internment camp, we had a dance orchestra, we had a dance party, but I wasn’t there, it was my shift, damn it. And now there's a sensation! We received the same salary as the Russians. I repeat, we received the same amount as the Russians! And even more, because we worked much harder than them. And the money came to our account. But we couldn’t withdraw all the money; we had to transfer 456 rubles from our accounts for expenses for us in the camp.

In July 1948, our political officer, who did not conduct a single political lesson with us, because he immediately said that we didn’t care, told us that by the end of 1948 there would not be a single German prisoner of war. We said, well, okay, and started waiting. August passed, September passed, October came, we were lined up and sorted into different camps, this was the case in all the camps in our area. At that moment we were really afraid that we would all be shot, because he said that until the end of 1948 there would not be a single German prisoner of war left in Russia. We didn’t work in this camp, but the money from the last camp was in my account, I bought food, treated my comrades, we celebrated Christmas well. Then I was transferred to another camp, I asked to work in the mine again, then they transferred me to another camp, and there we worked in the mine again. It was bad there, the camp was far away, the conditions were bad, there were no changing cabins, there were deaths at work because labor safety was poor.

Then this camp was liquidated, and I ended up in Dnepropetrovsk, there was a giant automobile plant, workshops, and machine tools from Germany. They handled materials there very wastefully; if concrete was delivered a couple of minutes before the end of the working day, it was simply left to lie there until the next day, and it dried out. Then they broke it with crowbars and threw it away. Ready. We loaded bricks, everyone took four bricks, two at a time, and one took only two. The Russians asked, what is it, why do you take only two bricks, and everyone else takes four? He said that everyone else is lazy, they are too lazy to go twice.

On December 16, 1949, we were sleeping in a large barracks, suddenly a whistle sounded and the order to pack our things told us that we were going home. They read out the list, my name was also there. I wasn’t particularly happy, because I was afraid that something else would change. With the rest of my money, I bought two large wooden suitcases, 3,000 cigarettes, vodka, black tea, and so on and so forth at the carpentry shop. We marched on foot through Dnepropetrovsk. The Russian camp commandant knew German soldiers' songs well and ordered us to sing. All the way to the station in Dnepropetrovsk we sang one song after another, and “We are flying over England,” and “Our tanks are moving forward across Africa,” and so on, and so on. The Russian camp commandant enjoyed it. The carriages were, of course, freight cars, but they had a stove, we received enough food, the doors were not locked, and off we went. It was winter, but it was warm in the carriages, we were given firewood all the time. We arrived in Brest-Litovsk. There we were put on a siding, and there were already three trains with prisoners of war. There we were searched again, I had a flask with a double bottom, which I stole from the Russians, there I had a list of the names of the 21st comrade, about whom I knew how they died, but everything turned out okay. We were kept in Brest-Litovsk for three days, and we went to Frankfurt on the Oder.

At the freight station in Frankfurt on the Oder, a small German boy with a string bag approached our train and asked us for bread. We still had enough food, we took him into our carriage and fed him. He said that he would sing us a song for this, and sang “When in Russia the blood-red sun drowns in the mud...”, we all cried. ["When the red sun sets on the sea in Capri...", Capri Fischer, a German hit of the time.] The railway employees at the station begged us for cigarettes. OK.

We were brought to another camp, we were cleared of lice again, we were given clean linen, Russian, and 50 Eastern marks, which we, of course, immediately drank, why did we need them in West Germany. Each of us also received a packet from West Germany. We were put on a passenger train, maybe even a fast one, but the road was single track, and we had to wait for every oncoming train. We once again stopped right at some completely destroyed station, people came up to our train and asked for bread. We drove on to Marienbon. It was the end there; in the morning we crossed the border into West Germany. There were Russians there, there was no man's land, the Russians said dawaj, raz, dwa, tri, and we crossed the border.

We were received, everyone was there, politicians, a Catholic priest, a Protestant pastor, the Red Cross and so on. Then we unexpectedly heard a terrible scream, as we later learned, one anti-fascist was beaten to death there, who sent many to punishment camps. Those who did this were taken away by the police. We were in Friedland. I took apart my flask and gave the list of 21 names to the Red Cross. I passed the medical examination, they issued me a demobilization certificate, and I was stamped “SS” on it. Now I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. I went to the station, got on the train, then made a change, in any case, on December 23rd I was home again.

I was happy. The British, of course, cleaned us out, there were no more carpets in the house, clothes disappeared, and so on, and so on. But everything turned out well, I was home again. I had to register, it was in the city, then I went to the social bureau, I wanted to receive a pension or benefits for my lung injury. There they saw my demobilization certificate with the stamp “SS”, and they said, oh, SS, get out of here, we don’t want to know about you. My uncle got me a job as a car mechanic, then I gradually became a foreman there.

In German captivity, escape and wanderings around Ukraine

Letter from Red Army soldier Alexander Shapiro

On the morning of October 21, 1941, while crossing the Sula River in the Poltava region, I found myself surrounded and captured. The Germans immediately sent us to the steppe. Jews and commanders were selected there. Everyone was silent, but the Germans living in the Soviet Union gave it away. They took thirty people out, mockingly stripped them, and took away their money, watches and all sorts of small items. They took us to the village, beat us and forced us to dig a ditch, made us kneel, shouting: “Judishe shweine.” I refused to dig a ditch because I knew it was for me. I was beaten badly. They started shooting and took me by the legs and threw me into a ditch.

I told the translator that I was an Uzbek and lived in Azerbaijan. I was black, all overgrown, with a black beard and black mustache. They hit me on the head with a stick and drove me into a barn. A strange woman came up and handed me a torn cap and a hat; she had nothing else. She called the Germans robbers and said: “Why are you shooting them? They defend their land." She was severely beaten and left.

They fed us millet and beat us every day. So I suffered for eighteen days. The commandant came and said that we would be driven to Lvov, and from there to Norway. I turned to the guys and said that I was born in Ukraine and would die here, and I had to run away. A hundred people ran away that night, but I was not able to leave with them. We were lined up. We hid in a pigsty, it was warm, and they didn’t find us, the Germans shouted: “Russ, come out,” but we were silent. I reached a neighboring farm, they said that there were no Germans, they fed me and showed me the way. I decided to go to Kharkov. I passed through occupied cities and villages, saw mockery, violence against our brothers, gallows and brothels, saw all sorts of robberies. I passed through Dnepropetrovsk, where I was born and lived. I found out that my brother and his family were shot. On October 15, 1941, the Germans shot thirty thousand civilians in my hometown, and I was in Dnepropetrovsk on October 24. I went further, was in Sinelnikov, secretly saw my cousin, his wife and children. The Germans robbed and beat them, but there was no Gestapo in Sinelnikov at that time, and therefore the cousin and his family were still alive. I walked through Pavlograd and learned there that my other cousin had been killed, along with four thousand residents of Pavlograd. I saw and read stupid German advertisements that said nothing about murders and robberies. I saw how the Germans took wheat and sent it to the west, and how they took clothes, beds, and livestock.

I walked along the embankment and saw Germans, Italians, Romanians, and Hungarians going for robbery. The Italians moved on donkeys to Lozovaya, with the Hungarians, and the Romanians went south. I walked with a pitchfork, and a bucket, and a whip. I was overgrown and looked like an old man. So I reached the front and crossed the front.

Red Army soldier Alexander [Izrailevich] Shapiro

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