List of captured soldiers who fell under Stalingrad. Stalingrad battle. German camps for Soviet prisoners of war. Pool and buckwheat porridge
Victory in Stalingrad and the fate of German prisoners
Rokossovsky recalled: “Prisoners of war gave us a lot of trouble. Frosts, difficult conditions of the terrain, devoid of forests, lack of housing - most of the settlements were destroyed during the fighting, and we placed hospitals in the remaining ones - all this greatly complicated the matter.
First of all, it was necessary to organize the dispersal of a huge mass of prisoners, create controlled columns, pull them out of the ruins of the city, take measures to prevent epidemics, feed, drink and warm tens of thousands of people. With the incredible efforts of the workers of the front and army rear, political workers, doctors, this task was completed. Their intense, frankly, selfless work in those conditions saved the lives of many prisoners of war.
Endless columns moved along the roads German soldiers. They were led by German officers, who were responsible for maintaining military order on the way and at stops. The head of each column had a card in his hands with a marked route and an indication of stopping points and overnight stays.
Fuel, hot food and boiling water were brought to the places of halts. According to the reports of staff commanders, political workers and according to reports received from those responsible for the evacuation of prisoners of war, everything was going well.
I must say that the prisoners themselves turned out to be quite prudent: each of them had a spoon, a mug and a bowler hat.
The attitude towards prisoners of war on the part of the fighters and commanders of the Red Army was truly humane, I would say more - noble. And this despite the fact that we all knew how inhumanly the Nazis treated our people who were captured by them. German prisoners of war generals were placed in houses, in decent conditions for that time, they had all their personal belongings with them and did not need anything.
But the situation of the German and Romanian prisoners of war near Stalingrad was by no means as favorable as it might seem to a reader who has read Rokossovsky's memoirs.
On January 29, 1943, a directive was issued by the Military Council of the Don Front to the military councils of the armies on shortcomings in relation to prisoners of war and special contingents and measures to eliminate them.
It was by no means about extrajudicial reprisals against prisoners and about the insufficient provision of medical assistance to them and insufficient food supplies. No, the directive was about something completely different:
“A number of facts of unacceptable complacency and rudeness in relation to prisoners and special contingents were noted.
1. The German General Drepper, delivered to the headquarters of the DF, found himself in a holster hanging on his belt, a loaded pistol, a notebook, personal documents, correspondence (57th Army) were not taken away.
2. When convoying to receiving points, the lagging behind are left to move independently, they are lost on the road, and conditions are created for escaping from captivity.
3. In the sectors of the 57th and 21st armies, two cases of an organized escape of officers in order to break through to Rostov were recorded.
4. In the 57th Army, one of the former servicemen of the spacecraft, who was stopped on the road by a traffic controller, at the request to show documents, fired a shot at the traffic controller from a revolver in his pocket.
5. In the 65th Army, one of the escorts on January 27, 1943 led a limping German prisoner by the arm, instead of forcing other Germans to do it.
All this testifies to the presence of criminal carelessness, the lack of proper order in the areas of military rear areas.
The Military Council of the DF requires:
1. Subject all prisoners of war to a search, seize weapons and sharp-cutting objects, personal documents and correspondence.
2. Escort officers separately under reinforced escort.
3. In connection with the presence of a number of facts of dressing officers in a soldier's uniform, all prisoners of war are subjected to a thorough check.
4. Strictly demand from the convoys not to allow the stretching of the columns and the backlog of prisoners on the way.
5. Released from captivity of the former soldiers of the Red Army to escort to assembly points under strict escort. Immediately take measures to completely clear the rear areas of this category of people, among whom there are many corrupt bastards and traitors.
6. Demand from detachments a more thorough search of areas and a strict check of documents.
7. Stop sending prisoners to the rear without a special direction of the corresponding headquarters (regiment - division).
8. Punish the guilty employees of the RO of the 57th Army, who did not seize the weapons of General Drepper.
Report the measures taken.
Telegin.
But the real problem was not to prevent the prisoners from escaping.
Where could people half-dead from hunger flee across the snow-covered Don steppe in the fierce February frosts, when hundreds of kilometers separated them from the German positions? Recall that in the Soviet labor camps located in the taiga and tundra, fugitives were not even pursued. Only in the spring did they find corpses - "snowdrops". The main task was not to prevent escapes, but to feed the prisoners, prevent the spread of epidemics among them, and also prevent extrajudicial reprisals against prisoners, including under the pretext of murder when trying to escape. We have to admit that the rear services of the Don Front failed to cope with these tasks. Tens of thousands of German soldiers died from hunger and epidemics, also weakened by many days of malnutrition in the "boiler". According to the few survivors, in the first days of captivity they were often not only not given food, but even the last supplies were taken away. Many also could not stand the exhausting marches on foot from the ruins of Stalingrad to the camps. As the German historian Rüdiger Overmans writes, “the overwhelming majority did not see any cruelty in the fact that the guards shot the lagging behind. It was still impossible to help them, and the shot was considered an act of mercy compared to a slow death from the cold. He also admits that many soldiers, being too exhausted, would not have survived in captivity even if the food were tolerable.
Until January 10, 1943, the Stalingrad grouping lost about 10 thousand people killed. At least 40,000 Wehrmacht and Allied soldiers and officers died after 10 January. 130,000 people were captured, including 110,000 Germans, and the rest were the so-called “voluntary assistants” of the Wehrmacht (“hi-vi”) from among Soviet citizens, as well as 3,000 Romanians and a small number of Croats.
The situation of German prisoners taken in Stalingrad turned out to be no better than the situation of Soviet prisoners in German camps in the tragic winter of 1941/42. Of the 110,000 Germans who were captured in Stalingrad, only 5,000 survived, that is, less than 5 percent. And of those Germans and Italians who were captured by the Anglo-Americans in May 1943 in North Africa, significantly more than half survived. Characteristically, more than half of the surviving Stalingrad prisoners were officers. Officers' camps provided better food and better medical care. Tens of thousands of German soldiers died from starvation and epidemics, weakened by 73 days of malnutrition in the "boiler". In addition, the headquarters of the Don Front, which became the headquarters of the Central Front, already on February 4 began to be transferred to the Kursk region. The rear services of the Don Front were no longer engaged in prisoners, and new structures had not yet been formed.
The German prisoners in Stalingrad were on a starvation diet for the last few weeks before the capture. However, much more could have been done to save them from starvation. How to explain, for example, the fact that during the captivity even the remnants of food were taken away from the unfortunate. And foot marches from the ruins of Stalingrad to camps 20–30 km from the city in 30-degree frost turned into a “death road” for many. If the goal had been set to keep alive as many Stalingrad prisoners as possible, the number of survivors might have been an order of magnitude greater. But Stalin, equally merciless to his own and enemy soldiers, never set such a goal.
According to official Soviet data, 93 thousand German soldiers and officers were captured. German estimates of the number of prisoners are about 20,000 higher, but it seems too high, since its authors suggest that in the last week of battles for which there are no reports, the ratio of dead to prisoners was the same as the penultimate one, for which there are reports. Meanwhile, there is reason to believe that in recent days more German soldiers have died than were captured. Of the Stalingrad prisoners, according to Overmans, only 2,800 officers and 2,200 non-commissioned officers and privates returned to their homeland. Perhaps the number of soldiers returning from captivity is slightly underestimated here, but hardly more than 1-2 thousand ...
To justify the Soviet side, it should be said that the German army and the armies of the Western Allies faced the same problems in dealing with large masses of prisoners. Let me remind you that out of almost 4 million Soviet prisoners captured by the Germans in 1941, more than half died of starvation. After all, the number of Soviet prisoners of 1941 exceeded 3.8 million people and was more than the average strength of the German land army in the East of 3.3 million people. But even the German command issued an instruction according to which the commandants of prisoner-of-war camps and officers in charge of sending prisoners of war to the rear had the right to seize up to 20 percent of food from German army units for the needs of prisoners. However, in practice this has rarely been possible. The German troops in the East also experienced an acute shortage of food, and the commanders refused to share with the prisoners what their soldiers were in dire need of. In conditions when their own troops experienced supply difficulties, the prisoners were inevitably fed according to the residual principle. Almost as high was the death rate among the German and Italian prisoners captured in May 1943 by the Americans and the British in Tunisia (there were up to 250 thousand). Soviet troops in 1942-1943 themselves experienced considerable difficulties in supplying food. Cases of death of soldiers from exhaustion were not only in besieged Leningrad, but also on the Bryansk and Don fronts.
Perhaps the headquarters of the Don Front would have been able to take care of the prisoners, somehow arrange their supply and medical care. But Rokossovsky was already recalled to Moscow on February 4. And since the Don Front was disbanded, and part of its rear services, having become part of the new Central Front, was transferred to the Kursk region, there was often no one to take care of the prisoners, which further aggravated the situation of the captured soldiers of the 6th German Army, and without that weakened by a long stay in the "boiler". The bulk of them died in the front line, before they could be sent to the rear camps.
I note that even among the 5 thousand captured Red Army soldiers who remained in the encircled Stalingrad in the hands of the Germans, the mortality rate was lower: out of 5 thousand, 1 thousand survived ... Officers in Soviet captivity were more or less tolerably fed and sought to attract to the collaborationist "Union of German Officers" and the anti-fascist committee "Free Germany". In the Wehrmacht, officers and soldiers ate the same, while in the USSR, officers, including prisoners, were entitled to an additional ration. Ordinary German soldiers sometimes could not get even basic medical care. In total, according to the data of the Chief Quartermaster of the 6th Army, Lieutenant Colonel Werner von Kunowsky, out of 248 thousand soldiers and officers of the 6th Army surrounded in Stalingrad, there were 20 thousand “Russians” (more precisely, Soviet citizens) ... 25 thousand were taken out by air .wounded and specialists. Thus, from the composition of the 6th armies in total, including those who died in captivity, more than 200 thousand people died - Germans, Romanians, Croats and Russians. Of these, until January 10, 1943, only about 10 thousand people died. The rest found their deaths in the last three weeks of fighting and in captivity. How many Soviet soldiers died near Stalingrad, no one has calculated.
The surviving German prisoners recalled that in the first weeks of captivity they were starving almost the same as in the environment: “From a black, slimy heap, I dug out several almost hard potatoes. We boiled them for a long time in a pot until they turned into gruel. Dark to blue, unappetizing mess, creaking on the teeth, it seemed to us yummy ... ”There were cases of cannibalism. German and Soviet camp personnel stole food and speculated on it. Sometimes doctors prescribed medicines only in exchange for food. The bulk of the prisoners died from typhus and typhoid fever and dystrophy.
The fate of 20 thousand "accomplices" captured in Stalingrad - former Soviet prisoners who served in auxiliary positions in the 6th Army - is unknown. Some of them could end up in the Gulag. It is also possible that some of them were used to replenish the Red Army.
And German prisoners were also used to clear mines from the ruins of Stalingrad. On February 23, 1943, the head of the NKVD Directorate for the Stalingrad Region, Commissar of State Security of the Third Rank L. Voronin, reported to GKO member G.M. L.P. Beria and your instructions on carrying out mine clearance work in the city of Stalingrad and the Stalingrad region, the NKVD Directorate of the Stalingrad Region carried out the following measures ... military units conducting demining work. (RGASPI, f. 83, op. 1, d. 19, l. 37). I don’t know if we managed to find anyone among the dying prisoners who was fit to carry out such a complex and dangerous operation.
Of course, then, in February 1943, there was a “tense” with food in the Soviet Union. Not only in besieged Leningrad, but sometimes even Red Army soldiers at the front died of dystrophy, even without being surrounded. So, on the Kalinin front in the 1st quarter of 1943, 76 soldiers died of exhaustion (the quartermasters were unable to organize the delivery of food to the positions). As a result, the front commander, General Maxim Purkaev, was removed from his post. And the German prisoners in Stalingrad were on a starvation ration for several weeks and were severely malnourished (since January 25, they were supposed to have 120 g of bread a day, but this ration was not always given out). However, much more could have been done to save the soldiers of the Paulus army from starvation. They saw the prisoners as enemies and took revenge on them for the suffering inflicted by the Germans on the Soviet people. Almost nothing was done to help them. How to explain, for example, the fact that during the captivity even the remnants of food were taken away from the unfortunate, without offering anything in return. When prisoners barely able to stand were driven on foot from the ruins of Stalingrad to camps 20-30 km from the city in 30-degree frost, for many it was a "death road". Well, Stalin was alien to the generosity of the winners.
On April 1, 1943, the NKVD Directorate for the Stalingrad Region informed Beria about the situation of the Stalingrad prisoners: “After the liquidation of the Stalingrad grouping of enemy forces in Stalingrad itself and the nearest large settlements, a network of camps was organized for the maintenance of prisoners of war officers and soldiers of the German army.
As a result of the undercover work organized in the camps, as well as the operational filtering of the volunteers of the German army and the personnel of the "Ukrainian auxiliary police" companies, we identified and took into investigative processing 91 people of official employees of the German and Romanian intelligence, counterintelligence, police and other administrative bodies. Including:
1. Abwehr employees - five,
2. Employees of departments 1st - 23,
3. Employees of the secret field police - eight,
4. Employees of the field gendarmerie - four,
5. Employees of the 2nd bureau of various Romanian military headquarters - six,
6. Employees of the military commandant's offices - four,
7. Radio intelligence officers - four,
8. Employees of the mouth of propaganda - three,
9. Employees of military courts - five,
10. Employees of various households. teams, special communications teams, translators - 29.
38 people from those selected, according to the order of the 2nd Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR, were sent to Moscow by us.
Few people know that there were about 20 thousand Soviet citizens in the "cauldron" in the 6th German Army, who served in the rear units of the Wehrmacht as "voluntary helpers" ("hi-vi"), as well as in the Stalingrad police. There is a legend that in recent weeks the defense of Stalingrad, the command of the 6th Army brought all the Hee-Vis into one combat unit - the Sturmfeld division, giving them weapons and sending them to positions. Say, there was no doubt about their reliability, since Soviet citizens did not expect mercy from the "Reds" and fought not for life, but for death. In fact, the Sturmfeld battle group did not fight in Stalingrad, but on the Chir front, and it was formed not from the "hee-wi", but from the rear parts of the artillery. In the encircled Stalingrad, no one even thought of arming the hi-vi. And it was not at all a doubt about their reliability, but an acute shortage of ammunition. So, only in the period from January 1 to January 9, 1943, on the eve of the last Soviet offensive, the troops of the 6th Army shot 629 tons of ammunition, and received only 48.5 tons of ammunition by air. military affairs were significantly inferior to the German soldiers. Therefore, it made no sense to allow the Hee-Vi to use scarce ammunition.
And it’s far from a fact that the “hi-vi” who fell into Soviet captivity were certainly shot. With the same success, they could be sent to the Gulag or mobilized into the Red Army, which was in dire need of "cannon fodder." It is not known exactly how many "hi-vi" fell into Soviet captivity, and what was their fate.
After the surrender of the remnants of the 6th German Army on February 2, 1943, 120,300 corpses of Germans and 32,000 corpses of Red Army soldiers were found and buried in the ruins of Stalingrad (RGASPI, f. 83, op. 1, d. 19, l. 164).
This text is an introductory piece. From the book 100 great military secrets author Kurushin Mikhail YurievichTHE FATE OF CAPTIVE SOVIET GENERALS (According to V. Mirkiskin.) During the Second World War, 5,740,000 Soviet prisoners of war passed through the crucible of German captivity. Moreover, only about 1 million were in concentration camps by the end of the war. On the German lists
From the book "The Mortal Field" ["Trench Truth" of the Great Patriotic War] authorI started my journey in Stalingrad In the spring of 1945, there were two or three people in our infantry battalion who had been fighting since 1942. Lapshin F. I. Fedor Ivanovich Lapshin started the war in Stalingrad and ended it with the rank of foreman near the German city of Guben. He
From the book Vyoshenskoe uprising author Venkov Andrey VadimovichChapter 8 “There were no prisoners, due to the fierceness of the battle ...” (From the White Guard newspaper) Both the Reds and the Cossacks on the insurgent front were preparing for decisive battles. There was a lull in the direction of the main blow of the Bolsheviks ... By this time, everything was taken up to suppress the uprising
From the book 1812. Everything was wrong! author Sudanov GeorgyAbout "tens of thousands" of Russian prisoners Historian A.I. Popov writes that “the total number of Russian soldiers who were captured during the war is unknown, and it is hardly even possible to accurately establish it, but we should be talking about tens of thousands of people.” Let's leave aside this very
From the book Interrupted flight of the Edelweiss [Luftwaffe in the attack on the Caucasus, 1942] author Degtev Dmitry Mikhailovich"Good progress has been made in Stalingrad..." On October 12 and 13, the bulk of Fiebig's VIII Air Corps returned from the Caucasus to bases around Stalingrad. October 14, on the eve of the decisive attack on the tractor plant. Dzerzhinsky, German aviation made a new
From the book A deadly fire awaits us! The most true memories of the war author Pershanin Vladimir NikolaevichI started my journey in Stalingrad In the spring of 1945, there were two or three people in our infantry battalion who had been fighting since 1942. Lapshin F.I. Fyodor Ivanovich Lapshin started the war in Stalingrad and ended it with the rank of foreman near the German city of Guben. They
From the book Special Forces Combat Training author Ardashev Alexey Nikolaevich From the book 100 great military secrets [with illustrations] author Kurushin Mikhail Yurievich From the book Frontline Mercy author Smirnov Efim IvanovichThe fate of captured Soviet generals During World War II, 5,740,000 Soviet prisoners of war passed through the crucible of German captivity. Moreover, only about 1 million were in concentration camps by the end of the war. In the German lists of the dead, there was a figure of about 2
From the book How SMERSH saved Stalin. Assassination attempts on the Leader author Lenchevsky YuriUnspeakable about Stalingrad The Great Patriotic War clearly revealed the decisive importance of strategic reserves for the conduct of successful defensive and offensive operations. State Committee The defense paid great attention to their creation. Their role in disrupting the plan
From the book Gods of War ["Artillerymen, Stalin gave the order!"] author Shirokorad Alexander BorisovichThe fate of German pilots On the night of September 5, 1944, the head of the Gzhatsky RO of the NKVD received a message that an enemy plane flew in the direction of Mozhaisk, which was fired three times by our anti-aircraft artillery in the areas of the Kubinka station of the Moscow region, Mozhaisk and
From the book Russia in the First World War author Golovin Nikolai NikolaevichChapter 6 Operations of the 152-mm railway battery No. 680 in Stalingrad In the autumn of 1941, several swinging parts of the 152-mm B-38 guns, which were intended for the project 68 cruisers under construction, were delivered from Leningrad to Stalingrad to the Barrikady plant. At the beginning of 1942 . factory
From the book Basic Special Forces Training [ extreme survival] author Ardashev Alexey NikolaevichNUMBER OF PRISONERS We said above that our Headquarters, in its reply dated October 10/23, 1917 to the head of the French mission, General Janin, determines the number of our ranks who were captured at 2,043,548. Meanwhile, in the book “Russia in the World War 1914– 1918, published by the Department of Military Statistics
From the book Miracle of Stalingrad author Sokolov Boris VadimovichCapture of prisoners and documents Search. The search is carried out with the aim of capturing prisoners, documents, samples of weapons and equipment. In addition, other tasks can be solved by search, such as: reconnaissance of the terrain, fortifications, structures, obstacles and barriers of the enemy,
From the author's bookInterrogation of prisoners The prisoners are the most important source obtaining information about the enemy (especially officers). Through them, one can establish the size, composition of the grouping and weapons of the enemy, the numbering of his units, the nature of the fortifications, the political and moral
From the author's bookStreet fighting in Stalingrad For two months, the German 6th Army captured all the new quarters of Stalingrad, in fierce battles pushing the Soviet troops to the Volga. The Soviet reserves were crushed in battles, but they could not stop the enemy. Losses of the Soviet troops during
The archives of the Federal Security Service of the Volgograd region contain materials from interrogations of prisoners of war of the German army and its allies. The correspondent of "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" managed to get acquainted with these records. Old, yellowed paper. The text is typed. The names of the NKVD officers who conducted the interrogations have been smeared over. The papers are stapled together into a large barn book. During interrogations, the conquerors who collapsed at Stalingrad talk about what happened in their ranks.
We publish fragments of declassified documents with minor corrections in those cases where the protocolist's errors are obvious.
Last lesson
In the village of Beketovka (now part of Volgograd), platoon commander Walter Gergard, who served in the 40th Panzer Grenadier Regiment before being captured, is being interrogated. Once, in a peaceful life, he was a teacher. Then he went to kill.
“In short, the position of the German soldier is the position of a fighter who is no longer aware of the goals and objectives of the offensive, who has also lost faith in this. At first he was told that the lack of territory and the future of the German people require sacrifices, and if necessary, then his life," Gergard said in January 1944. "The state of the German soldier today can be described as stupid. The highest goal for him is to save life and maintain health for a better time. This is facilitated by his combat morale. Self-injury is part of the daily routine and for the most part are done so skillfully that nothing can be proven. Voluntary frostbite is now practiced especially willingly. If only they could get away from the torment of the front. Soldiers quite openly talk about self-mutilations that they saw with their own eyes.
Most do not want to later become landowners in Russia. They yearn for their homeland, for their loved ones. Sayings like: "O Russia, you are the grave of my youth!" - often rush to the sky, like moans.
Another former teacher Gottlieb Wilhelmovich (as he is presented in the protocol. - Ed.) Speidel was supposed to become his deputy commandant after the capture of Stalingrad.
“The commandant’s office of the center and the southern part of the Tsaritsa was subordinate to me,” the failed “vice mayor” of the city testified in February 1943. “A burgomaster was appointed in each commandant’s office, who was a confidant of the commandant’s office; Two companies of Ukrainian police were brought from Kharkov to help the commandant's offices.The Ukrainian police were attached to the German gendarmerie and carried out guard duty at the most important industrial facilities.
Interrogation of Augustus in August
Even before the main events on the Volga, the chief sergeant major of the field gendarmerie, August Schaefer, was captured. Perhaps the 47-year-old German was lucky that he did not get to Stalingrad itself. He was interrogated in August 1942 near the village of Nizhne-Chirskaya.
“The long-range plans of the German command are not known to me. Among many soldiers there is a desire to end the war as soon as possible and return home, as they are tired of the war. Many are surprised by the endless supply of military materials of the Russian army,” Schaefer admits. on the side of the Russians, but they are afraid to do this, since the command inspired the soldiers that the Russians do not take prisoners and destroy everyone who is to surrender.Some soldiers express fear that the German army went very far into the depths of Russia, which could lead to the death of the entire army. Older soldiers most often complain about the hardships of the war; young people are more cheerful, but among them there are those who are dissatisfied with the prolongation of the war.
Here is another German surname - Neugardt. But it belongs to Boris Dmitrievich from Kaluga, a former tsarist officer. Unlike most white emigrants, in 1941 he did not disdain to join the ranks of the army that was going to war against his homeland.
“I know that the German government treated the Russian emigration as a whole very negatively, considering it outdated and incapable of anything,” says Boris Dmitrievich in February 1943. “The Germans supported those parts of this emigration that could serve them in their plans for the dismemberment of Russia.
In the theater of operations, advantages were everywhere for Ukrainians, Belarusians, Balts, Caucasians and other nationalities.
Some national battalions were formed and sent to the front, where, according to reports from the headquarters of the German command at the end of January, they performed well.
Gypsy troops
The morale of the German allies was clearly not up to par. Here is what the commander of the machine gunners from the third Romanian army, Fleskim Bukuzh, told in December 1942:
“Relations between the Romanian and German officers are strained. German officers always keep apart, look at the Romanians with contempt; Romanian officers, seeing this, show enmity towards the Germans. The Romanian officers are especially outraged that a Romanian officer, equal in rank, is obliged to greet the German.
Soldiers and people in Romania are increasingly asking the question: what are we fighting for? While expressing the aimlessness of the war against Russia."
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Kataescu echoes his compatriot:
"The moral and political state of the Romanian army is very low for the reason that the soldiers have no interests in Russia and are fighting under German compulsion."
But a look from the other side, this is the teacher Walter Gerhard, already familiar to us:
"I must make the reservation that the unit to which I belonged has never yet fought shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of other states and my statements are based on what I heard.
The German soldier, like the Hungarian, treats the Romanians as half-wild gypsies. Added to this is the impossibility of explaining through language.
All this is just part of the archive. It also contains documents relating to the activities of the security agencies during the war, the civilian population. And so far, not all of them have been declassified.
Help "RG"
Recall that on November 23, 1942, Soviet troops surrounded the 330,000-strong enemy group during the counteroffensive near Stalingrad. The Greatest Battle in world history ended with the complete defeat of the Nazis. Those Germans and their allies who survived the cauldron became prisoners. Only a few will see native home, this will happen after the death of Stalin.
Since a huge number of Fritz laid down their arms had to be placed somewhere, it was planned to transfer them to corrective labor in other regions of the country. But all transport was mobilized for the needs of the front. Therefore, the evacuation was delayed: by the end of March 1943, only about 30 thousand people were taken out of the Stalingrad region.
On the territory of the region that spring there were 13 camps for prisoners: five directly in Stalingrad itself and eight in the region. Under them adapted any premises where you can accommodate a lot of people. Privates and officers were kept separately. The camps were immediately divided into distribution, labor and health camps.
The Nazis did not arrange organized riots, but there are many reports of escapes, robberies and killings of civilians. The 35th division of the NKVD troops was engaged in escorting the prisoners. The leadership of the commissariat adopted a number of resolutions to tighten measures during escort.
Volgograd unwittingly found itself at the center of an all-Russian scandal. The words of the Russian schoolboy Nikolai Desyatnichenko that many Wehrmacht soldiers did not want to fight and died innocently because of the difficult conditions in captivity, scattered throughout the country and made a lot of noise. About how the fate of the German soldiers and officers captured near Stalingrad actually developed, the site was told by the deputy head of the Museum "Memory" Oleg Firstkov.
There is no exact data on how many Germans were captured near Stalingrad. In each individual prisoner of war camp, records of the contingent held there were undoubtedly kept, but the corresponding archival data has not yet been systematized. Therefore, this work is still waiting for its researcher.
After the start of the counter-offensive of the Soviet troops near Stalingrad on November 19, 1942, a 330,000-strong enemy group was surrounded. But far from all the Nazis who were in the "cauldron" were captured. Some of them the Wehrmacht managed to evacuate by planes, some died. At the final stage of Operation Ring, from January 10 to February 2, 1943, 91 thousand soldiers, 2.5 thousand officers, 24 generals and one field marshal were captured. But the total number of Germans captured near Stalingrad was greater - some historians believe that there were about 200 thousand people.
The leadership of the Soviet Union quickly realized that in the conditions of Stalingrad destroyed and devastated by the war, it was impossible to keep such a huge number of prisoners. And already on March 1, 1943, an order was issued to transfer captured German soldiers to other regions of the country.
About a third of the prisoners of war died in the first months of captivity, finding their last refuge in the frozen land of Stalingrad. Their mortality peaked in February-March 1943.
Approximately 70 percent of the captured Germans had severe frostbite and dystrophy of the second and third degree, explains Oleg Firstkov. - Almost every one of them suffered from beriberi. That is, they were already seriously ill, emaciated people. Even if they were placed in ideal conditions most would have died anyway. Simply because the hunger and cold they experienced, as well as the wounds received in battles, had irreversible health consequences. In addition, a considerable number of prisoners of war became victims of epidemics - dysentery and typhus.
The historian notes that the consequences for the captured Germans would have been much less catastrophic if the commander of the sixth German army, Friedrich Paulus, had agreed to the terms of the ultimatums put forward to him and refused to resist, thereby saving the life and health of his soldiers.
Food rations and health camps
In total, there were 40 distribution camps for prisoners of war on the territory of the Stalingrad region, 27 of which were located directly in Stalingrad. The largest of them was the camp in Beketovka - about 70 thousand people were kept there. There were 13 camps in the districts of the region - in Gorodishche, Dubovka, Kotelnikovo, Ilovlya, Kamyshin, Uryupinsk and a number of other settlements. As a rule, they were placed far from the combat zone - so that the prisoners would not have the opportunity to escape, taking advantage of the turmoil caused, for example, by an unexpected enemy air raid.
Given the large number of prisoners, at the first stage they were placed in broken buildings and dugouts that were not adapted for habitation. Over time, corps specially designed to hold prisoners were erected in the camps.
The Nazis who needed treatment were assigned to special health camps. Due to the acute shortage of qualified medical personnel, which were not enough even in the combat units of the Red Army, doctors from among the prisoners of war themselves were often involved in the treatment of the Germans. At the end of February 1943, 15 hospitals for captured Nazis operated on the territory of the Stalingrad region.
They provided primary assistance to those in need, - Oleg Firstkov specifies. - Of course, there is no need to talk about some first-class treatment. As a rule, patients with epidemic diseases, including pediculosis, were quarantined there. That is, the conditions of detention of prisoners cannot be called inhuman, although they were, of course, difficult. The whole country then lived in difficult conditions, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that it was not sweet for the prisoners either. Germany, again, did not supply its prisoners with food or medicine. Therefore, all these concerns fell on the shoulders of the Soviet Union.
Here it is worth mentioning the myth launched by some bloggers that the population of Stalingrad allegedly often beat captured Nazis to death with stones and sticks, and the escorts, being sympathetic to the feelings of the inhabitants of the city, did not prevent this. Volgograd historians, despite the fact that they are engaged in a deep study of this topic, do not have such data. But numerous memoirs of Stalingraders of a completely different plan are documented. The inhabitants of the city destroyed to the ground, despite the fact that many of them lost their relatives and friends, suffering from hunger themselves, shared their last with the captives. Against all odds, they took pity on the ragged and emaciated soldiers of the enemy army and secretly passed them food.
In the museum-reserve Battle of Stalingrad» There is an interesting exhibit - a box of biscuits. Representatives of the Red Cross were allowed into the prisoner of war camps, and one of them, wanting to somehow alleviate the plight of the slaves, gave the Germans an unthinkable treat by camp standards. When a column of prisoners was driven through the city, one of them called the Stalingrad girl and gave her these biscuits. Then an adult woman, who kept the box left over from the German gift, handed it over to the museum for storage.
By the way, the prisoners were fed in accordance with the allowances determined by the government. Their diet included fish, meat, and bread. The diet was calculated in accordance with the needs of an adult. Although there were interruptions in the supply of POW camps with food, no one starved the "guests" from Germany. Of course, prisoners of war were not fed as satisfyingly as Soviet soldiers, but the energy consumption of a soldier taking part in hostilities was incomparably higher than that of a prisoner.
"Courses to improve labor skills" and salary
At first, the imprisoned Nazis were busy arranging their own camp life - they built barracks, production workshops, baths, clubs, put the camp territory in order. They began to be attracted to work on the restoration of the destroyed Stalingrad in the spring - summer of 1943. They were engaged in clearing streets, sorting out rubble and collecting building materials suitable for use.
In most cases, the Germans were involved in low-skilled work, - says Oleg Firstkov. - But some of them, who underwent special training, under the supervision of a Soviet foreman, were engaged in bricklaying. At the camps, special courses were organized, after which the prisoners received the profession of a bricklayer or a locksmith.
The entire contingent was divided into three labor categories: the main group, conditionally fit and unfit for physical labor. Those who were healthy could be involved in hard work, those with limited fitness were given simpler work, and the unfit were engaged in simple work in the camp or were exempted from labor altogether.
Toward the end of the war, prisoners of war even began to receive wages for their work. They had the opportunity to transfer this money to books. Therefore, many, returning to Germany, already had not only the skills of a builder, locksmith or turner, but also a certain amount for the arrangement of their post-war life.
How many captured Germans returned to their homeland?
According to German historians, of the total number of their compatriots captured at Stalingrad, only six thousand people returned to Germany. That is, if we take as a basis the data on 200 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers captured near Stalingrad, far from objectivity and reliability, only three percent of their total number. But Russian historians consider this figure to be greatly underestimated.
The fact is that the prisoners were distributed throughout the territory of the Soviet Union, and no one kept any special account of the "Stalingrad" prisoners. And then, since 1992, when the figure of six thousand Germans who returned home and were captured near Stalingrad was put into circulation, a lot of time has passed. Since then, many camp archives have been opened, but no one has yet been engaged in painstaking study of their contents and systematization of relevant data.
Find out the news by opening the messenger. Share with your friends in the contact book through short messages everything that happens in Volgograd. Subscribe to our Telegram: https://t.me/newsv1
Tortured soldier of the Red Army, February 1943, Stalingrad
Victims of the Alekseevsky prisoner of war camp "Dulag-205"
The bodies of those killed in the concentration camp "Gospitomnik" Gorodishchensky district
Concentration camp "Hospital"
Memorandum of V. Abakumov to A. Vyshinsky about the brutal attitude of German military personnel towards Soviet prisoners of war
To the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Comrade Vyshinsky
In mid-January 1943, squeezing the encirclement around the 6th German Army, our troops captured the transit camp for prisoners of war, the so-called Dulag-205, located near the village of Alekseevka near Stalingrad. On the territory of the camp and near it, thousands of corpses of Red Army prisoners of war and commanders who died of exhaustion and cold were discovered, and several hundred tormented, emaciated from hunger and extremely exhausted were released. soldiers of the Red Army.
In this regard, the Smersh Main Directorate conducted an investigation, during which it was revealed that German officers and soldiers, following the instructions of the German military command, treated prisoners of war mockingly, brutally exterminated them through mass beatings and executions, created intolerable conditions detention in the camp and starved. It was also established that a similar brutal attitude of the Germans towards prisoners of war took place in the prisoner of war camps in Darnitsa near Kiev, Dergachi near Kharkov, in Poltava and Rossosh.
The direct culprits of the death of Soviet people were currently under investigation at the Smersh Main Directorate:
Rudolf Kerpert, former commandant of the Dulag-205 camp, colonel in the German army, born in 1886, a native of the Sudetenland (Germany), from a merchant family. He was taken prisoner on January 31, 1943 in Stalingrad.
Von Kunowski Werner, former Chief Quartermaster of the 6th German Army, Lieutenant Colonel of the German Army, born in 1907, native of Silesia, nobleman, son of Major General of the German Army. He was taken prisoner on January 31, 1943 in Stalingrad.
Langheld Wilhelm - a former counterintelligence officer (Abwehr officer) at the Dulag-205 camp, captain of the German army, born in 1891, a native of the mountains. Frankfurt am Main, from the family of an official, member of the National Socialist Party since 1933. He was taken prisoner on January 31, 1943 in Stalingrad.
Meder Otto, former adjutant of the commandant of the Dulag-205 camp, chief lieutenant of the German army, born in 1895, a native of the Erfurt district (Germany), a member of the fascist party since 1935. He was taken prisoner on January 31, 1943 near Stalingrad.
The testimonies of Kunovsky, Langhheld and Meder established that there was a direct order from the high command of the German army to exterminate Soviet prisoners of war - officers and privates, as "inferior" people.
So, the former counterintelligence officer at the camp, Captain Langheld, during interrogation on September 1, 1943, testified:
“The German command considered Russian prisoners of war as working cattle necessary to carry out various works. Russian prisoners of war held in the Alekseevsky camp "Dulag-205", as well as in other German prisoner of war camps, were fed starving only so that they could work for us.
The atrocities that we perpetrated on prisoners of war were aimed at exterminating them as superfluous people. In addition, I must say that in our behavior with Russian prisoners of war, we proceeded from the special attitude towards all Russian people that existed in the German army.
In the German army, in relation to the Russians, there was a conviction that is law for us: “The Russians are an inferior people, barbarians who have no culture. The Germans are called to establish new order in Russia". This conviction was instilled in us by the German government. We also knew that there were many Russian people and it was necessary to destroy as many of them as possible in order to prevent the possibility of any resistance to the Germans after the establishment of a new order in Russia.
Bullying of Russian prisoners of war was carried out by both soldiers and officers of the German army who had anything to do with prisoners of war.
This explains that in the Alekseevsky camp, designed for 1,200 people, up to 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war were imprisoned, placed in incredible crowding and in terrible unsanitary conditions.
As the German officers Kerpert, Kunovskiy, Langheld and Meder showed, the Soviet prisoners of war, while in Dulag-205, were fed from hand to mouth, and from the beginning of December 1942, the command of the 6th German Army, represented by the chief of staff, Lieutenant General Schmidt, completely stopped supplying the camp food, as a result of which mass mortality arose among prisoners of war due to starvation. From December 5, 1942, the death rate among prisoners of war from starvation reached 50-60 people a day, and by the time the camp was liberated by the Red Army, about 3,000 people had died.
The former Chief Quartermaster of the 6th German Army, Lieutenant Colonel Kunovsky, during interrogation on August 25-26, 1943, testified:
“... Personally, just like the chief of staff of the 6th German army, Lieutenant General Schmidt, like other German officers, I treated Soviet prisoners of war as inferior people.
When prisoners of war, being exhausted by hunger, lost their value for us as a labor force, in my opinion, nothing prevented us from shooting them. True, the prisoners of war were not shot, but they were starved to death. The goal has been achieved. Over 3,000 people who could be set free in connection with the defeat of the 6th German army - we exterminated.
I think that even those few prisoners of war who remained alive will never be able to restore their health and will remain crippled for life.
“... The prisoners of war were placed in incredible crowding. They were completely deprived of the opportunity to lie down and slept sitting ...
On December 5, 1942, a real famine began among the prisoners of war, on the basis of which a high mortality occurred among them. Since December 10, about 50 people have died every day. The corpses of prisoners of war who died overnight were thrown out of the dugouts every morning, taken outside the camp and buried.
Alekseevka, Dulag-205
This is also confirmed by Lieutenant Meder, who also stated that he repeatedly reported on the situation in the camp to the Chief Quartermaster of the 6th German Army Kunovsky, who, however, did not take any measures to supply the camp with food and once told Meder that the prisoners needed to be shot. Meder, during interrogation on August 27, 1943, testified:
“... Colonel Kerpert never went to the army headquarters in order to personally demand food for prisoners of war, but only wrote memos about hunger and mortality in the camp. He sent these notes through me and other camp staff to Kunovsky's headquarters.
On December 5 or 6, 1942, during one of my reports to Kunovskiy, I asked him if I should talk about the situation in the camp with the chief of staff of the army. To this, Kunovskiy replied that the chief of staff was absent and that in general a direct appeal was unnecessary, since he himself reported to the command. To my categorical question: “What will you order us to do in two days, when the prisoners of war will not have a single gram of food?” Kunovsky shrugged his shoulders and said: “Then we will have to shoot the prisoners of war.” Then there were about 4,000 prisoners of war in the camp.”
Continuing his testimony, Kunovsky stated on this issue that he informed the Chief of Staff of the 6th German Army, Lieutenant General Schmidt, about the situation in the camp, but at the same time they did not take any measures to alleviate the plight of the prisoners of war. In addition, Kerpert, Langheld and Meder testified that German officers and soldiers beat Soviet prisoners of war for minor offenses, for sluggishness in work, and also without any faults.
Prisoners of war, driven mad by hunger, during the distribution of food prepared from various carrion, were poisoned by dogs to establish "order". Lyangheld said that, while interrogating prisoners of war, he himself, his sergeant major and translator, in order to obtain military intelligence from them, beat Russian prisoners of war. The camp guards - soldiers and officers - also systematically beat the prisoners of war.
Langheld confessed that he provoked, through his agents, attempts to escape the prisoners of war, as a result of which they were shot. This practice of violence, bullying, murders and provocations was widely used not only in the Alekseevsky camp, but also, as Kunovskiy, Langheld and Meder know, in other prisoner of war camps.
Langheld showed:
“Usually, I beat prisoners of war with sticks 4-5 cm in diameter, but this was not only in Alekseevka. I worked in other POW camps: in Darnitsa near Kyiv, Dergachi near Kharkov, in Poltava and in Rossosh. In all these camps, the beating of prisoners of war was practiced. The beating of prisoners of war was common in the German army.
In the Poltava camp, German soldiers from among the guards fired small-caliber rifles at prisoners of war because they urinated in a place where it was not supposed to.
Wounded Soviet soldiers in a German camp, 1942 (Photo found on a German officer taken prisoner near Stalingrad.)
About the brutal treatment of prisoners of war by the German authorities, Kunovskiy testified:
“In the spring of 1942, typhus raged in Kharkov, in the POW camps. Quarantine measures were not enforced and high mortality occurred in these camps. The doctors told me about it.
Soviet prisoners of war worked on the restoration of the Chir railway station. According to the commander of the battalion, who supervised these works, among the prisoners of war, as a result of exhaustion, diseases and high mortality arose.
The German military authorities also treated the civilian population of the occupied regions inhumanly and criminally. So, for example, in June 1942, mobilized workers were sent from Kharkov to work in Germany. The transport of these workers was carried out in appalling conditions. The food was exceptionally poor, and there was not even straw in the wagons so that the workers could lie down during the long journey.”
The adjutant of the commandant of the Dulag-205 camp Meder, being interrogated, testified:
“...Before mobilization into the army, I lived in the city of Burg, where Russian prisoners of war were brought for agricultural work. These prisoners of war were extremely emaciated and exhausted. Judging by the fact that the Russian soldiers whom I later had to see looked well-fed and healthy, I believe that the prisoners of war who came to us in Burg, in the camps and during transportation, ate extremely poorly.
In Alekseevka, in Dulag-205, where I served, there were several angry dogs. Dogs were used to restore order among prisoners of war. During the distribution of food (when the kitchens were still working), prisoners of war lined up to get some stew. Sometimes hungry people (some of them went crazy from hunger) broke the line, then the dog breeders set the dogs on them.
In the course of the investigation into the case of Kerpert, Kunovskiy, Lyanghheld and Meder, former servicemen of the Red Army - K.S. Krupachenko, K.K. Pisanovskiy, I.D. Kasinov, S.M. and Alekseev A.A., who for a long period of time, being held captive by the Germans, were kept in Dulag-205. These persons testified about the mass mortality among prisoners of war from starvation and the brutal treatment of Russian prisoners of war by the German command.
Yes, former soldier of the Red Army Alekseev A.A. during interrogation on August 10, 1943, he testified:
“... There was a high mortality in the camp, the reason for this was the following: during the entire time of my stay in the camp, prisoners of war were not given bread or water at all ...
Instead of water, dirty bloodied snow was raked out in the camp area, after which there were massive diseases of prisoners of war. There was no medical assistance. I personally had 4 wounds, and despite my repeated requests, no help was provided, the wounds festered. The German sentries fired at the POWs without warning. I personally saw how one prisoner of war, I don’t know his last name, during the distribution of food, tried to cut off a piece of horse skin with a knife - he was noticed by a sentry who shot at point-blank range at a prisoner of war and shot him dead. There were many such cases.
We slept on the ground in the mud, there was absolutely no place to warm ourselves from the cold. Felt boots and warm clothes were taken away from the prisoners of war, in return they were given torn shoes and clothes taken from the dead and the dead ...
Many of the prisoners of war, unable to endure the horrors of the camp situation, went crazy. 150 people died a day, and in the first days of January 1943, 216 people died in one day, as I learned from the workers of the camp's medical unit. The German command of the camp poisoned prisoners of war with dogs - shepherds. The dogs knocked down the weakened prisoners of war and dragged them through the snow, while the Germans stood and laughed at them. Public executions of prisoners of war were practiced in the camp ... "
"... In the prisoner of war camp for the slightest violations: noise in the queue when receiving food, failure, being late for duty - the prisoners were systematically beaten with sticks, indiscriminately guilty."
Similar testimony, illustrated by the facts of German atrocities against prisoners of war, was given by other former. soldiers of the Red Army.
Kerpert, Kunovsky, Langheld and Meder pleaded guilty to the crimes they had committed.
The investigation into the case is ongoing. I have put a question to the Government about the expediency of organizing a public trial in the case, with its coverage in the press.
Abakumov
CA FSB RF, f. 14, op. 5, d. 1, l. 228-235 (original)
For 70 years now, my mother's family album has contained photographs of German women and children whom she had never seen and who had no idea about the existence of the Muscovite Evgenia Mikhailovna Cherkashina (Sokolova). And yet, she keeps these photos of people completely unknown to her. For what?
February 1943 ... The Sixth Army of General Paulus was freezing near Stalingrad. Warm clothes were collected all over Germany. Even a historical relic, the fur coat of Bismarck himself, was donated to the winter clothing fund. To maintain military spirit, Colonel-General von Paulus was given the rank of field marshal. But nothing could save the grouping of German troops near Stalingrad - neither Bismarck's fur coat, nor Paulus' field marshal's baton ...
“In January 1943,” a military historian testifies, “13 distribution camps for captured Nazi soldiers and officers were formed on the territory of the city ... The largest number of prisoners of war fell on February 2 - 91,545. After a short time, their number decreased by a quarter, since 27,078 Nazis died from wounds, frostbite and exhaustion received in the environment.
In February 1943, we, a group of graduates of the 1st Moscow Medical Institute, were called to the Lubyanka, - says Evgenia Mikhailovna. - We entered this massive house, from the height of which, as the rumor claimed, Siberia was visible, we entered with caution. And although no one knew any guilt for themselves, nevertheless, goosebumps ran through the skin every time the next sentry in the corridor checked our documents. There was a very heavy aura in this Big House...
At Lubyanka we were told, - Evgenia Mikhailovna continues, - that we are in the Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees, and that our group will have to fly to Stalingrad, where Soviet troops have captured many German soldiers. And although we had not yet received diplomas, we, as ordinary doctors, were assigned to prisoner-of-war camps. On one of the last days of winter, we took off in a Douglas-type aircraft for Stalingrad. It was my first flight on an airplane, and even in the military sky. They flew for a long time with many landings. Before departure, we were well fed, there was even such a forgotten delicacy as sandwiches with cheese, hot strong tea with sugar. But, alas, such rare dishes did not stay long in our stomachs: turbidity and airsickness did their job. True, I endured the road hardships quite tolerably, and therefore in the very first postcard I informed my mother that I had endured the flight well, but almost everyone had to “fly to Riga”. “Run to Riga” - they said in the village when they wanted to say that someone was sick. My simple-hearted mother understood this allegory literally and decided that our plane was landed in Riga occupied by the Germans. She cried for a whole week until my letter arrived from Stalingrad.
I will not describe the ruins of this city. Everything around for many versts was turned into a desert swept up by snow. This is what camp No. 108/20 looked like for prisoners, where I was sent with three fellow students from the local department of the NKVD.
Steppe and steppe all around ... Before the war, there was an auxiliary farm of a tractor factory. In large concrete vats, where cucumbers and cabbage used to be salted, the Germans were sitting. They were lucky, because they, at least, hid, if not from the frost, then from the piercing icy wind. Others huddled under the canopies of the former potato piles, some simply huddled together to at least cover their backs. There were Germans, and Italians, and Hungarians, and Romanians. Romanians rescued black fur hats like papah. And many Germans were in summer field caps, tied with all kinds of rags. It was pitiful to look at them. Although the invaders of our land, but still people. Moreover, many came to these steppes by someone else's will.
The miraculously surviving gatehouse housed the camp administration and our "medical unit".
I never thought that my first patients would be Germans, captured soldiers... In a white coat over a padded jacket, I descended a rope ladder to the bottom of stinking concrete cauldrons, where people were stuffed, truly, like herring in a barrel. There was no guard next to me, of course I was afraid: you never know what could come to mind yesterday's "supermen", and now people almost distraught from suffering and doom? However, they were terribly happy about my visits - at least someone takes care of them. I dressed the wounded, gave pills to the sick, but most often I had to state - death, death, death ... Death from blood poisoning, death from exhaustion, death from typhus ...
No one deliberately starved them out of revenge, as some Western journalists later claimed decades later. It's just that everything around was destroyed by the war - scorched earth lay for hundreds of miles. Even their wounded were not always able to give shelter, warmth, food, medicine ...
For them, who during their lifetime found themselves at the bottom of hellish cauldrons, even though they were made of concrete, the appearance of a Russian girl in a white coat was tantamount to the descent of an angel into purgatory. That's what they called her "Fräulein Engel." The dying shoved photographs of their wives and children into her hands in the hope of a miracle of returning to them. Everyone tried to attract her attention to themselves, they put soldier handicrafts, home-made cigarette cases, harmonicas into the pockets of their dressing gowns ... At school and at the institute, she taught German, so at the very least she could communicate with her patients.
Once, after another round, or rather a "cloud" of concrete vats, Sokolova found in her pocket a small bundle tightly wrapped in a dirty bandage. She unfolded it - a cupronickel teaspoon fell on her knees. On the scoop, in colored enamels, was an ocean liner, from all the pipes of which black smoke was pouring. It was impossible to find out who and in which of the "cauldrons" put this gift into her pocket. She hid the spoon, along with the photographs, at the bottom of her field bag.
Willingly or involuntarily, but the girls-doctors were ready to share the fate of those who were treated for typhus. Every time after visiting the sick, they removed typhoid lice from each other. The first to fall was Zhenya Sokolova.
Together with other patients, I was taken in the open back of a truck to the hospital. The journey took several hours. I was lying on the edge near the side, I was blown away, and in addition to typhus, I caught pneumonia. There was practically no chance of survival with such a “bouquet”. But I survived. Someone must have been praying for me. Who? Mom, of course...
However, it was not only her mother who prayed for her... In one of the concrete vats, they found out that "Fräulein Engel" would not come to them again - she had fallen down with typhus. Among the soldiers sitting there was a regimental chaplain, who invited everyone to pray for the health of the Russian girl. And he began to pray. He was echoed by everyone else. The prayers of the sufferers are always intelligible. And heaven heeded the intercession of these doomed people who did not ask for themselves at all ... She learned about this prayer service from the bottom of her life ten years later, when she arrived in Berlin with her husband, an officer who served in the occupying forces. Once, in a crowded square, a stranger approached her and asked in German: “Frau Engel? Stalingrad?! She nodded in response. The man disappeared and a minute later caught up with her with flowers in his hands. He handed her a bouquet of violets and told how "alles zuber", the whole chan prayed for her health ...
After Stalingrad, Evgenia Mikhailovna Cherkashina worked as a doctor in the Moscow evacuation hospital EG 5022 and treated the Soviet wounded, who also gave her their photographs and their appreciation for the healing.
Today, my mother, a retired medical captain, turned 94. She has three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. And we all pray for her health and longevity. And, thank God, she is strong and has a clear memory. And he keeps photographs about the war and Stalingrad.
And I, being in Volgograd last year, tried to find traces of that prisoner of war camp and found it! The old-timers showed the way: the village of Beketovka (included today in the city). Only there is now not a vegetable store, but trading warehouses. The last vats in which the Germans sat were broken out about ten years ago, and the stainless steel lining was scrapped. But you can’t hand over history to the scrap ...
