How did Soviet women shock the German invaders. Women captured by the Germans

In the development of the topic and in addition to the article Elena Senyavskaya, posted on the site on May 10, 2012, we bring to the attention of readers a new article by the same author, published in the journal

At the final stage of the Great Patriotic War, having liberated the Soviet territory occupied by the Germans and their satellites and pursuing the retreating enemy, the Red Army crossed the state border of the USSR. From that moment, her victorious path began through the countries of Europe - both those that languished under fascist occupation for six years, and those who acted as an ally of the III Reich in this war, and across the territory of Nazi Germany itself. In the course of this advance to the West and the inevitable various contacts with the local population, Soviet military personnel, who had never been outside their own country before, received many new, very contradictory impressions about representatives of other peoples and cultures, from which ethnopsychological stereotypes of their perception of Europeans were further formed. . Among these impressions, the most important place was occupied by the image of European women. Mentions, and even detailed stories about them are found in letters and diaries, on the pages of memoirs of many participants in the war, where lyrical and cynical assessments and intonations most often alternate.

The first European country, which the Red Army entered in August 1944, was Romania. In the “Notes on the War” of the front-line poet Boris Slutsky, we find very frank lines: “Sudden, almost pushed into the sea, Constanta opens. It almost coincides with the average dream of happiness and "after the war." Restaurants. Bathrooms. Beds with clean linen. Shops with reptile sellers. And - women, smart city women - girls of Europe - the first tribute we took from the vanquished ... "He further describes his first impressions of" abroad ":" European hairdressers, where they wash their fingers and do not wash brushes, the absence of a bath, washing from a basin, “where at first the dirt from the hands remains, and then the face is washed”, feather beds instead of blankets - out of disgust caused by everyday life, immediate generalizations were made ... In Constanta we first met with brothels ... Our first delights before the fact of the existence of free love quickly pass. It affects not only the fear of infection and high cost, but also contempt for the very possibility of buying a person ... Many were proud of past stories like: a Romanian husband complains to the commandant's office that our officer did not pay his wife the agreed one and a half thousand lei. Everyone had a clear consciousness: “It’s impossible for us” ... Probably, our soldiers will remember Romania as a country of syphilitics ...”. And he concludes that it was in Romania, this European outback, that "our soldier most of all felt his elevation above Europe."

Another Soviet officer, Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Force Fedor Smolnikov, on September 17, 1944, wrote down his impressions of Bucharest in his diary: “Ambassador Hotel, restaurant, ground floor. I see how the idle public walks, she has nothing to do, she waits. They look at me like a rarity. "Russian officer!!!" I am very modestly dressed, more than modestly. Let be. We will still be in Budapest. This is as true as the fact that I am in Bucharest. First class restaurant. The audience is dressed up, the most beautiful Romanian women climb their eyes defiantly (Hereinafter highlighted by the author of the article). We spend the night in a first-class hotel. The metropolitan street is seething. There is no music, the audience is waiting. Capital, damn it! I will not give in to advertising ... "

In Hungary, the Soviet army faced not only armed resistance, but also insidious blows in the back from the population, when they “killed drunken and stragglers alone in the farms” and drowned in silo pits. However, “women, not as depraved as the Romanians, yielded with shameful ease ... A little love, a little debauchery, and most of all, of course, fear helped.” Quoting the words of one Hungarian lawyer, “It is very good that Russians love children so much. It’s too bad that they love women so much,” Boris Slutsky comments: “He did not take into account that Hungarian women also loved Russians, that along with the dark fear that pushed apart the knees of matrons and mothers of families, there were the tenderness of the girls and the desperate tenderness of the soldiers who gave themselves to the killers their husbands."

Grigory Chukhrai in his memoirs described such a case in Hungary. His part was quartered in one place. During the feast, the owners of the house where he and the fighters settled down “under the influence of Russian vodka relaxed and admitted that they were hiding their daughter in the attic.” Soviet officers were indignant: “Who do you take us for? We are not fascists! “The hosts were ashamed, and soon a lean girl named Mariyka appeared at the table, who greedily began to eat. Then, having got used to it, she began to flirt and even ask us questions ... By the end of the dinner, everyone was friendly and drank to "borotshaz" (friendship). Mariyka understood this toast too straightforwardly. When we went to bed, she appeared in my room in one undershirt. As a Soviet officer, I immediately realized that a provocation was being prepared. “They expect that I will be tempted by the charms of Mariyka, and they will raise a fuss. But I will not succumb to provocation, ”I thought. Yes, and the charms of Mariyka did not appeal to me - I showed her the door.

The next morning, the hostess, putting food on the table, rattled the dishes. “Nervous. Failed provocation! I thought. I shared this thought with our Hungarian translator. He laughed.

This is not a provocation! You were shown a friendly disposition, but you neglected it. Now you are not considered a person in this house. You need to move to another apartment!

Why did they hide their daughter in the attic?

They were afraid of violence. We have accepted that a girl, before entering into marriage, with the approval of her parents, can experience intimacy with many men. We are told: they don’t buy a cat in a tied bag ... "

Young, physically healthy men had a natural attraction to women. But the ease of European morals corrupted some of the Soviet fighters, while others, on the contrary, convinced that relations should not be reduced to simple physiology. Sergeant Alexander Rodin wrote down his impressions of the visit - out of curiosity! - a brothel in Budapest, where part of it stood for some time after the end of the war: “... After leaving, a disgusting, shameful feeling of lies and falsehood arose, a picture of a woman’s obvious, frank pretense did not go out of her head ... It is interesting that such an unpleasant aftertaste from visiting a brothel was not only with me, a youngster, who was also brought up on principles like “do not give a kiss without love, but also with most of our soldiers with whom I had to talk ... Around the same days I had to talk with one a beautiful Magyar woman (she knew Russian from somewhere). To her question, did I like it in Budapest, I replied that I liked it, only brothels are embarrassing. "But why?" - asked the girl. Because it is unnatural, wild, - I explained: - a woman takes money and after that, immediately begins to “love!” The girl thought for a while, then nodded in agreement and said: “You’re right: it’s ugly to take money in advance” ... "

Poland left other impressions about itself. According to the testimony of the poet David Samoilov, “... in Poland they kept us strict. It was difficult to get out of the location. And pranks were severely punished. And he gives impressions of this country, where the only positive moment was the beauty of Polish women. “I cannot say that we liked Poland very much,” he wrote. - Then in it I did not meet anything gentry and knightly. On the contrary, everything was petty-bourgeois, farmer-both concepts and interests. Yes, and in eastern Poland they looked at us warily and semi-hostilely, trying to rip off everything possible from the liberators. However, the women were consolingly beautiful and coquettish, they captivated us with their demeanor, cooing speech, where everything suddenly became clear, and they themselves were captivated at times by crude masculine strength or a soldier's uniform. And the pale, emaciated former admirers of them, gritting their teeth, for the time being went into the shadows ... ".

But not all assessments of Polish women looked so romantic. On October 22, 1944, junior lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand wrote in his diary: “In the distance, the city I left with the Polish name [Vladov] loomed, with beautiful Poles, proud to disgust . ... I was told about Polish women: they lured our fighters and officers into their arms, and when it came to bed, they cut off the penis with a razor, strangled their throats with their hands, and scratched their eyes. Crazy, wild, ugly females! You have to be careful with them and not get carried away by their beauty. And the Poles are beautiful, bastards. However, there are other moods in his notes. On October 24, he records the following meeting: “Today, beautiful Polish girls turned out to be my companions to one of the villages. They complained about the lack of guys in Poland. They also called me "pan", but they were inviolable. I patted one of them gently on the shoulder, in response to her remark about men, and consoled me with the thought of the road to Russia open to her - there are many men there. She hurried to step aside, and to my words she answered that there were men for her here too. We said goodbye with a handshake. So we didn’t agree, but the nice girls, albeit Polish ones. A month later, on November 22, he wrote down his impressions of the first large Polish city he met, Minsk-Mazowiecki, and among the description of architectural beauties and the number of bicycles that amazed him in all categories of the population, he gives a special place to the townspeople: “A noisy idle crowd, women, as one, in white special hats, apparently worn by the wind, which make them look like forty and surprise with their novelty. Men in triangular caps, in hats - fat, neat, empty. How many of them! … Dyed lips, lined eyebrows, affectation, excessive delicacy . How different from natural human life. It seems that people themselves live and move on purpose only to be looked at by others, and everyone will disappear when the last spectator leaves the city ... "

Not only Polish townswomen, but also villagers left a strong, albeit contradictory, impression of themselves. “The love of life of the Poles, who survived the horrors of the war and the German occupation, was striking,” recalled Alexander Rodin. Sunday in a Polish village. Beautiful, elegant, in silk dresses and stockings, Polish women, who on weekdays are ordinary peasant women, raking manure, barefoot, tirelessly work around the house. Older women also look fresh and young. Although there are black frames around the eyes ... He then quotes from his diary entry of November 5, 1944: “Sunday, the residents are all dressed up. They gather to visit each other. Men in felt hats, ties, jumpers. Women in silk dresses, bright, unworn stockings. Rosy-cheeked girls - "panenki". Beautifully curled blond hair… The soldiers in the corner of the hut are also animated. But whoever is sensitive will notice that this is a painful revival. Everyone is laughing loudly to show that they don’t care, they don’t even hurt at all and are not envious at all. What are we, worse than them? The devil knows what happiness it is - a peaceful life! After all, I didn’t see her at all in civilian life! His brother-soldier Sergeant Nikolai Nesterov wrote in his diary on the same day: “Today is a day off, the Poles, beautifully dressed, gather in one hut and sit in pairs. Even somehow it becomes uncomfortable. Wouldn't I be able to sit like this? .. "

Far more merciless in her assessment of "European morals", reminiscent of "a feast during the plague", is the soldier Galina Yartseva. On February 24, 1945, she wrote from the front to her friend: “... If it were possible, it would be possible to send wonderful parcels of their trophy items. There is something. This would be our undressed and undressed. What cities I saw, what men and women. And looking at them, such evil, such hatred takes possession of you! They walk, love, live, and you go and free them. They laugh at the Russians - "Schwein!" Yes Yes! Bastards... I don't like anyone except the USSR, except for those peoples who live with us. I do not believe in any friendship with the Poles and other Lithuanians...”.

In Austria, where Soviet troops broke into in the spring of 1945, they were faced with "general surrender": "Whole villages were headed by white rags. Elderly women raised their hands when they met a man in a Red Army uniform. It was here, according to B. Slutsky, that the soldiers "fell on the blond women." At the same time, “the Austrians did not turn out to be overly stubborn. The vast majority of peasant girls married "spoiled". Soldiers-holidays felt like in Christ's bosom. In Vienna, our guide, a bank official, marveled at the persistence and impatience of the Russians. He believed that gallantry is enough to get everything you want from a wreath. That is, it was not only about fear, but also about certain features of the national mentality and traditional behavior.

And finally Germany. And the women of the enemy - mothers, wives, daughters, sisters of those who from 1941 to 1944 mocked the civilian population in the occupied territory of the USSR. How did the Soviet military see them? The appearance of German women walking in a crowd of refugees is described in the diary of Vladimir Bogomolov: “Women - old and young - in hats, shawls with a turban and just a canopy, like our women, in smart coats with fur collars and in shabby, incomprehensible cut clothes . Many women wear dark glasses so as not to squint from the bright May sun and thereby protect their faces from wrinkles.... " Lev Kopelev recalled a meeting in Allenstein with evacuated Berliners: "There are two women on the sidewalk. Intricate hats, one even with a veil. Solid coats, and they themselves are smooth, well-groomed. And he cited soldier comments addressed to them: “chickens”, “turkeys”, “would like such a smooth ...”

How did the Germans behave when meeting with Soviet troops? In the report of the Deputy Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. Aleksandrov dated April 30, 1945 on the attitude of the civilian population of Berlin to the personnel of the Red Army troops said: “As soon as our units occupy one or another area of ​​the city, residents gradually begin to take to the streets, almost all of them have white armbands on their sleeves. When meeting with our servicemen, many women raise their hands up, cry and tremble with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all the same as they were painted by their fascist propaganda, this fear quickly disappears, more and more population takes to the streets and offers their services, trying in every possible way to emphasize their loyal attitude to the Red Army.

The greatest impression on the winners was made by the humility and prudence of the German women. In this regard, it is worth citing the story of mortarman N.A. Orlov, who was shocked by the behavior of German women in 1945: “No one in the minbat killed civilian Germans. Our special officer was a "Germanophile". If this happened, then the reaction of the punitive authorities to such an excess would be quick. About violence against German women. It seems to me that some, when talking about such a phenomenon, “exaggerate” a little. I have a different kind of example. We went to some German city, settled in the houses. A "frau", about 45 years old, appears and asks for "the commandant's hero". They brought her to Marchenko. She declares that she is responsible for the quarter, and has gathered 20 German women for sexual (!!!) service to Russian soldiers. Marchenko understood the German language, and to the political officer Dolgoborodov, who was standing next to me, I translated the meaning of what the German woman said. The reaction of our officers was angry and obscene. The German woman was driven away, along with her "detachment" ready for service. In general, German obedience stunned us. They expected guerrilla warfare and sabotage from the Germans. But for this nation, order - "Ordnung" - is above all. If you are a winner, then they are “on their hind legs”, moreover, consciously and not under duress. That's the kind of psychology...

David Samoilov cites a similar case in his military notes: “In Arendsfeld, where we had just settled down, a small crowd of women with children appeared. They were led by a huge mustachioed German woman of about fifty - Frau Friedrich. She stated that she was a representative of the civilian population and requested that the remaining residents be registered. We replied that this could be done as soon as the commandant's office appeared.

It's impossible, said Frau Friedrich. - There are women and children. They need to be registered.

The civilian population with a cry and tears confirmed her words.

Not knowing what to do, I suggested that they take the basement of the house where we were staying. And they calmed down went down to the basement and began to be accommodated there, waiting for the authorities.

Herr Commissar,” Frau Friedrich told me benevolently (I wore a leather jacket). We understand that soldiers have small needs. They are ready, - continued Frau Friedrich, - to provide them with several younger women for ...

I did not continue the conversation with Frau Friedrich.

After talking with the residents of Berlin on May 2, 1945, Vladimir Bogomolov wrote in his diary: “We are entering one of the surviving houses. Everything is quiet, dead. We knock, please open. You can hear whispering in the corridor, muffled and excited conversations. Finally the door opens. Women without age, huddled together in a close group, bow frightened, low and obsequiously. German women are afraid of us, they were told that Soviet soldiers, especially Asians, would rape and kill them... Fear and hatred on their faces. But sometimes it seems that they like to be defeated - their behavior is so helpful, their smiles are so touching and their words are sweet. These days, there are stories about how our soldier went into a German apartment, asked for a drink, and the German woman, as soon as she saw him, lay down on the sofa and took off her tights.

“All German women are depraved. They don't mind being slept with." , - such an opinion was common in the Soviet troops and was supported not only by many illustrative examples, but also by their unpleasant consequences, which were soon discovered by military doctors.

Directive of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00343/Sh dated April 15, 1945 read: “During the stay of troops on enemy territory, cases of venereal diseases among military personnel have sharply increased. A study of the reasons for this situation shows that venereal diseases are widespread among Germans. The Germans, before the retreat, and also now, in the territory occupied by us, took the path of artificially infecting German women with syphilis and gonorrhea in order to create large foci for the spread of venereal diseases among the Red Army soldiers».

On April 26, 1945, the Military Council of the 47th Army reported that “... In March, the number of venereal diseases among military personnel increased compared to February of this year. four times. ... The female part of the German population in the surveyed areas is affected by 8-15%. There are cases when German women with venereal diseases are deliberately left by the enemy to infect military personnel.

To implement the Decree of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 056 of April 18, 1945 on the prevention of venereal diseases in the troops of the 33rd Army, a leaflet was issued with the following content:

"Comrade soldiers!

You are seduced by German women, whose husbands went to all the brothels of Europe, became infected themselves and infected their German women.

Before you are those Germans who were specially left by the enemies in order to spread venereal diseases and thereby incapacitate the soldiers of the Red Army.

We must understand that our victory over the enemy is near and that soon you will have the opportunity to return to your families.

With what eyes will the one who brings a contagious disease look into the eyes of his relatives?

How can we, the soldiers of the heroic Red Army, be a source of contagious diseases in our country? NO! For the moral image of a soldier of the Red Army must be as pure as the image of his homeland and family!”

Even in the memoirs of Lev Kopelev, who angrily describes the facts of violence and looting by Soviet military personnel in East Prussia, there are lines that reflect the other side of “relations” with the local population: they sell a loaf of bread and wives and daughters.” The squeamish tone in which Kopelev conveys these "stories" implies their unreliability. However, they are confirmed by many sources.

Vladimir Gelfand described in his diary his courtship of a German girl (the entry was made six months after the end of the war, on October 26, 1945, but still very characteristic): “I wanted to enjoy the caresses of pretty Margot to the fullest - kisses and hugs were not enough. I expected more, but did not dare to demand and insist. The girl's mother was pleased with me. Still would! On the altar of trust and affection from my relatives, I brought sweets and butter, sausage, expensive German cigarettes. Already half of these products is enough to have the fullest reason and the right to do anything with the daughter in front of the mother, and she will not say anything against it. For food today is more precious than even life, and even such a young and sweet sensual woman as the gentle beauty Margot.

Interesting diary entries were left by the Australian war correspondent Osmar White, who in 1944-1945. was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army under the command of George Paton. Here is what he wrote down in Berlin in May 1945, just a few days after the end of the assault: “I walked through the night cabarets, starting with the Femina near Potsdammerplatz. It was a warm and humid evening. The air smelled of sewage and rotting corpses. The front of the Femina was covered in futuristic nudes and advertisements in four languages. The dance hall and restaurant were filled with Russian, British and American officers escorting (or hunting for) the women. A bottle of wine cost $25, a horsemeat and potato burger $10, and a pack of American cigarettes a mind-boggling $20. The cheeks of Berlin women were rouged and their lips made up so that it seemed that Hitler had won the war. Many of the women were wearing silk stockings. The hostess of the evening opened the concert in German, Russian, English and French. This provoked a taunt from the captain of the Russian artillery, who was sitting next to me. He leaned towards me and said in decent English: “Such a rapid transition from national to international! RAF bombs make great professors, don't they?"

The general impression of European women that Soviet servicemen have is that they are well-groomed and smart (in comparison with compatriots exhausted by the war in the half-starved rear, on lands liberated from occupation, and even with front-line girlfriends dressed in washed-out tunics), accessible, self-serving, dissolute or cowardly submissive. The exceptions were Yugoslav and Bulgarian women. Severe and ascetic Yugoslav partisans were perceived as comrades and were considered inviolable. And given the severity of morals in the Yugoslav army, "partisan girls probably looked at the PPZh [camping field wives] as creatures of a special, nasty sort." Boris Slutsky recalled the Bulgarians as follows: “... After the Ukrainian complacency, after the Romanian debauchery, the severe inaccessibility of Bulgarian women struck our people. Almost no one boasted of victories. It was the only country where officers were accompanied on walks very often by men, almost never by women. Later, the Bulgarians were proud when they were told that the Russians were going to return to Bulgaria for brides - the only ones in the world who remained clean and untouched.

A pleasant impression was left by the Czech beauties, who joyfully met the Soviet soldiers-liberators. Embarrassed tankers with oil-covered and dust-covered combat vehicles, decorated with wreaths and flowers, said among themselves: “... Something is a tank bride to clean it up. And their girls, you know, fasten. Good people. I have not seen such sincere people for a long time…” The friendliness and cordiality of the Czechs was sincere. “... - If it were possible, I would kiss all the soldiers and officers of the Red Army for the fact that they liberated my Prague,” said ... a worker of the Prague tram to a general friendly and approving laugh, "- this is how he described the atmosphere in the liberated Czech capital and moods of local residents May 11, 1945 Boris Polevoy.

But in other countries through which the victorious army passed, the female part of the population did not command respect. “In Europe, women gave up, changed before anyone else ... - wrote B. Slutsky. - I was always shocked, confused, disoriented by the lightness, the shameful lightness of love relationships. Decent women, of course, disinterested, were like prostitutes - in hasty availability, the desire to avoid intermediate stages, disinterest in the motives that push a man to get closer to them. Like people who learned three obscene words from the entire lexicon of love lyrics, they reduced the whole thing to a few gestures, causing resentment and contempt among the most yellow-mouthed of our officers ... It was not ethics at all that served as restraining motives, but the fear of getting infected, the fear of publicity, of pregnancy " , - and added that under the conditions of the conquest "universal depravity covered and hid a special female depravity, made her invisible and shameless."

However, among the motives that contributed to the spread of "international love", despite all the prohibitions and harsh orders of the Soviet command, there were several more: female curiosity for "exotic" lovers and the unprecedented generosity of Russians to the object of their sympathies, which favorably distinguished them from stingy European men.

Junior Lieutenant Daniil Zlatkin at the very end of the war ended up in Denmark, on the island of Bornholm. In his interview, he said that the interest of Russian men and European women in each other was mutual: “We didn’t see women, but we had to ... And when we arrived in Denmark ... it’s free, please. They wanted to test, test, try a Russian person, what it is, how it is, and it seemed to work better than the Danes. Why? We were selfless and kind… I gave a half-table box of chocolates, I gave 100 roses to a stranger… for her birthday…”

At the same time, few people thought about a serious relationship, about marriage, in view of the fact that the Soviet leadership clearly outlined its position on this issue. The Decree of the Military Council of the 4th Ukrainian Front of April 12, 1945 stated: “1. Explain to all officers and all personnel of the troops of the front that marriage with foreign women is illegal and is strictly prohibited. 2. Report all cases of military personnel marrying foreigners, as well as the connections of our people with hostile elements of foreign states, immediately on command to bring the perpetrators to justice for the loss of vigilance and violation of Soviet laws. The directive of the head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Belorussian Front dated April 14, 1945 read: “According to the head of the Main Directorate of Personnel of the NPO, the Center continues to receive applications from officers of the army with a request to sanction marriages with women of foreign countries (Polish, Bulgarian, Czech and etc.). Such facts should be regarded as a dulling of vigilance and a dulling of patriotic feelings. Therefore, it is necessary in political educational work to pay attention to a deep explanation of the inadmissibility of such acts on the part of officers of the Red Army. To explain to all officers who do not understand the futility of such marriages, the inexpediency of marrying foreigners, up to a direct prohibition, and not to allow a single case.

And women did not entertain illusions about the intentions of their gentlemen. “At the beginning of 1945, even the most stupid Hungarian peasant women did not believe our promises. European women were already aware that we were forbidden to marry foreign women, and they suspected that there was a similar order also for appearing together in a restaurant, cinema, etc. This did not prevent them from loving our womanizers, but it gave this love a purely “outside” [carnal] character,” B. Slutsky wrote.

In general, it should be recognized that the image of European women, formed by the soldiers of the Red Army in 1944-1945, with rare exceptions, turned out to be very far from the suffering figure with chained hands, looking with hope from the Soviet poster "Europe will be free!" .

Notes
Slutsky B. Notes about the war. Poems and ballads. SPb., 2000. S. 174.
There. pp. 46-48.
There. pp. 46-48.
Smolnikov F.M. Let's fight! Diary of a veteran. Letters from the front. M., 2000. S. 228-229.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. pp. 110, 107.
There. S. 177.
Chukhray G. My war. M.: Algorithm, 2001. S. 258-259.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000. S. 127.
Samoilov D. One variant people. From military notes // Aurora. 1990. No. 2. S. 67.
There. pp. 70-71.
Gelfand V.N. Diaries 1941-1946. http://militera.lib.ru/db/gelfand_vn/05.html
There.
There.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000. S. 110.
There. pp. 122-123.
There. S. 123.
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. F. 372. Op. 6570. D; 76. L. 86.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. S. 125.
There. pp. 127-128.
Bogomolov V.O. Germany Berlin. Spring 1945 // Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did you dream about me? .. M .: Magazine "Our Contemporary", No. 10-12, 2005, No. 1, 2006. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03. html
Kopelev L. Keep forever. In 2 books. Book 1: Parts 1-4. M.: Terra, 2004. Ch. 11. http://lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (hereinafter - RGASPI). F. 17. Op. 125. D. 321. L. 10-12.
From an interview with N.A. Orlov on the site "I remember". http://www.iremember.ru/minometchiki/orlov-naum-aronovich/stranitsa-6.html
Samoilov D. Decree. op. S. 88.
Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did I dream about you?.. // Our contemporary. 2005. Nos. 10-12; 2006. No. 1. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03.html
From the Political Report on bringing to the personnel of the directive of Comrade. Stalin No. 11072 dated April 20, 1945 in the 185th Infantry Division. April 26, 1945. Cit. Quoted from: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
Cit. By: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
There.
There.
State archive of the Russian Federation. F. r-9401. Op. 2. D. 96. L. 203.
Kopelev L. Decree. op. Ch. 12. http://lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Gelfand V.N. Decree. op.
White Osmar. Conquerors" Road: An Eyewitness Account of Germany 1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003 . XVII, 221 pp. http://www.argo.net.au/andre/osmarwhite.html
Slutsky B. Decree. op. S. 99.
There. S. 71.
Field B. Liberation of Prague // From the Soviet Information Bureau ... Journalism and essays on the war years. 1941-1945. T. 2. 1943-1945. M.: APN Publishing House, 1982. S. 439.
There. pp. 177-178.
There. S. 180.
From an interview with D.F. Zlatkin dated June 16, 1997 // Personal archive.
Cit. By: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/04.html
There.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. pp. 180-181.

The article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, project No. 11-01-00363а.

The design used the Soviet poster of 1944 "Europe will be free!". Artist V. Koretsky

The Second World War went like a skating rink through humanity. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the belligerents did truly monstrous things, justifying everything with war.

Of course, in this regard, the Nazis were especially distinguished, and this is not even taking into account the Holocaust. There are many both documented and frankly fictional stories about what the German soldiers did.

One of the high-ranking German officers recalled the briefings they went through. Interestingly, there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”

Most did so, but among the dead, the bodies of women in the form of the Red Army are often found - soldiers, nurses or nurses, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.

Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And in spite of everything they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.

But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a continuous bloody mess. The Nazis did the same with female partisans. Before being executed, they could be stripped naked and kept in the cold for a long time.

Of course, the captives were constantly raped. And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to have an intimate relationship with the captives, then ordinary privates had more freedom in this matter. And if the girl did not die after a whole company used her, then she was simply shot.

The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and one of the higher ranks of the camp took her to him as a servant. Although it did not save much from rape.

In this regard, camp No. 337 was the most cruel place. There, the prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were settled in the barracks at once, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were destroyed daily in the Stalag.

Women were subjected to the same torture as men, and even much worse. In terms of torture, the Nazis could be envied by the Spanish Inquisition. Very often, girls were bullied by other women, such as the wives of commandants, just for fun. The nickname of the commandant of Stalag No. 337 was "cannibal".

Image copyright BBC World Service

A remarkable book goes on sale in Russia - the diary of an officer of the Soviet Army Vladimir Gelfand, in which, without embellishment and cuts, the bloody everyday life of the Great Patriotic War is described.

Some believe that a critical approach to the past is unethical or simply unacceptable, given the heroic sacrifices and deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens.

Others believe that future generations should know the true horrors of war and deserve to see the unvarnished picture.

BBC correspondent Lucy Ash tried to understand some little-known pages of the history of the last world war.

Some of the facts and circumstances outlined in her article may not be appropriate for children.

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Twilight is gathering in Treptow Park on the outskirts of Berlin. I look at the monument to the warrior-liberator towering above me against the backdrop of the sunset sky.

A 12-meter-high soldier standing on the ruins of a swastika holds a sword in one hand, and a little German girl sits on his other hand.

Five thousand of the 80 thousand Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin from April 16 to May 2, 1945 are buried here.

The colossal proportions of this monument reflect the scale of the victims. At the top of the pedestal, where a long staircase leads, you can see the entrance to the memorial hall, lit up like a religious shrine.

My attention was drawn to an inscription reminding that the Soviet people saved European civilization from fascism.

But for some in Germany, this memorial is an occasion for different memories.

Soviet soldiers raped countless women on their way to Berlin, but this was rarely talked about after the war, either in East or West Germany. And in Russia today, few people talk about it.

Diary of Vladimir Gelfand

Many Russian media regularly dismiss the rape stories as a myth concocted in the West, but one of the many sources that told us what happened is the diary of a Soviet officer.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Vladimir Gelfand wrote his diary with amazing sincerity at a time when it was deadly

Lieutenant Volodymyr Gelfand, a young Jew originally from Ukraine, from 1941 until the end of the war kept his notes with unusual sincerity, despite the then-existing ban on keeping diaries in the Soviet army.

His son Vitaly, who allowed me to read the manuscript, found the diary while sorting through his father's papers after his death. The diary was available online, but is now being published in Russia for the first time in book form. Two abridged editions of the diary were published in Germany and Sweden.

The diary tells of the lack of order and discipline in the regular troops: meager rations, lice, routine anti-Semitism and endless theft. As he says, the soldiers even stole the boots of their comrades.

In February 1945, Gelfand's military unit was based near the Oder River, preparing for an attack on Berlin. He recalls how his comrades surrounded and captured a German women's battalion.

“The day before yesterday, a women’s battalion was operating on the left flank. It was utterly defeated, and the captured German cats declared themselves avengers for their husbands who died at the front. I don’t know what they did to them, but it would be necessary to execute the scoundrels mercilessly,” Vladimir Gelfand wrote.

One of the most revealing stories of Helphand relates to April 25, when he was already in Berlin. There Gelfand rode a bicycle for the first time in his life. Driving along the banks of the Spree, he saw a group of women dragging their suitcases and bundles somewhere.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption In February 1945, the military unit of Gelfand was based near the Oder River, preparing for an attack on Berlin.

"I asked the German women where they live, in broken German, and wondered why they left their home, and they spoke with horror about the grief that the front line workers had caused them on the first night of the Red Army's arrival here," writes the author of the diary. .

“They poked here,” the beautiful German woman explained, lifting up her skirt, “all night, and there were so many of them. I was a girl,” she sighed and cried. “They ruined my youth. I was poked by everyone. There were at least twenty of them, yes, yes, and burst into tears."

“They raped my daughter in my presence,” the poor mother put in, “they can still come and rape my girl again.” From this again everyone was horrified, and bitter sobbing swept from corner to corner of the basement where the owners had brought me. here, - the girl suddenly rushed to me, - you will sleep with me. You can do whatever you want with me, but you are the only one!" writes Gelfand in his diary.

"The hour of revenge has struck!"

German soldiers by that time had stained themselves on Soviet territory with the heinous crimes they committed for nearly four years.

Vladimir Gelfand came across evidence of these crimes as his unit fought its way towards Germany.

“When every day they are killed, every day they are injured, when they pass through the villages destroyed by the Nazis ... Dad has a lot of descriptions where villages were destroyed, down to children, small children of Jewish nationality were destroyed ... Even one-year-olds, two-year-olds ... And this is not for some time, these are years. People walked and saw it. And they walked with one goal - to take revenge and kill, "says the son of Vladimir Gelfand Vitaly.

Vitaly Gelfand discovered this diary after his father's death.

The Wehrmacht, as the ideologists of Nazism assumed, was a well-organized force of the Aryans, who would not stoop to sexual contact with "untermenschs" ("subhumans").

But this ban was ignored, says Oleg Budnitsky, a historian at the Higher School of Economics.

The German command was so concerned about the spread of venereal diseases among the troops that they organized a network of army brothels in the occupied territories.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Vitaly Gelfand hopes to publish his father's diary in Russia

It is difficult to find direct evidence of how German soldiers treated Russian women. Many of the victims simply did not survive.

But at the German-Russian Museum in Berlin, its director Jörg Morre showed me a photograph taken in the Crimea from a German soldier's personal album.

The photo shows the body of a woman, sprawled on the ground.

"It looks like she was killed during or after being raped. Her skirt is pulled up and her hands are covering her face," says the director of the museum.

“This is a shocking photo. We had a debate in the museum about whether such photographs should be exhibited. This is war, this is sexual violence in the Soviet Union under the Germans. We show the war. We don’t talk about the war, we show it,” says Jörg Morre .

When the Red Army entered the "lair of the fascist beast," as the Soviet press called Berlin at the time, the posters encouraged the fury of the soldiers: "Soldier, you are on German soil. The hour of revenge has struck!"

The political department of the 19th Army, advancing on Berlin along the coast of the Baltic Sea, announced that a real Soviet soldier is so full of hatred that the thought of sexual contact with German women would be disgusting to him. But this time, too, the soldiers proved that their ideologists were wrong.

Historian Anthony Beevor, doing research for his book "Berlin: The Fall", published in 2002, found reports in the Russian state archive about the epidemic of sexual violence in Germany. These reports at the end of 1944 were sent by the NKVD officers to Lavrenty Beria.

"They were given to Stalin," says Beevor. "You can see from the marks whether they were read or not. They report mass rapes in East Prussia and how German women tried to kill themselves and their children to avoid this fate."

"Inhabitants of the Dungeon"

Another wartime diary kept by the bride of a German soldier tells how some women adapted to this horrific situation in an attempt to survive.

Since April 20, 1945, the woman, whose name has not been named, has left on paper observations that are ruthless in their honesty, insightful and sometimes flavored with the humor of the gallows.

Among her neighbors are "a young man in gray trousers and thick-rimmed glasses, who on closer inspection turns out to be a woman," as well as three elderly sisters, she writes, "all three dressmakers huddled together in one big black pudding."

Image copyright BBC World Service

While waiting for the approaching units of the Red Army, the women joked: “Better a Russian on me than a Yankee on me,” meaning that it is better to be raped than to die in a carpet bombing by American aircraft.

But when the soldiers entered their basement and tried to drag the women out, they begged the diary's author to use her knowledge of the Russian language to complain to the Soviet command.

On the ruined streets, she manages to find a Soviet officer. He shrugs. Despite Stalin's decree banning violence against civilians, he says, "it still happens."

Nevertheless, the officer goes down with her to the basement and chastises the soldiers. But one of them is beside himself with anger. “What are you talking about? Look what the Germans did to our women!” he shouts. “They took my sister and…” The officer calms him down and leads the soldiers out into the street.

But when the diarist goes out into the corridor to check whether they have left or not, she is seized by waiting soldiers and brutally raped, almost strangling her. Terrified neighbors, or "dungeon dwellers" as she calls them, hide in the basement, locking the door behind them.

“Finally, two iron bolts opened. Everyone stared at me,” she writes. “My stockings are down, my hands are holding the remnants of the belt. I start screaming: “You pigs! I've been raped here twice in a row, and you leave me lying here like a piece of dirt!"

She finds an officer from Leningrad with whom she shares a bed. Gradually, the relationship between the aggressor and the victim becomes less violent, more mutual and ambiguous. The German woman and the Soviet officer even discuss literature and the meaning of life.

“There is no way to say that the major is raping me,” she writes. “Why am I doing this? For bacon, sugar, candles, canned meat? major, and the less he wants from me as a man, the more I like him as a person."

Many of her neighbors made similar deals with the winners of defeated Berlin.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Some German women have found a way to adapt to this terrible situation.

When the diary was published in Germany in 1959 under the title "Woman in Berlin", this candid account caused a wave of accusations that he tarnished the honor of German women. Not surprisingly, the author, anticipating this, demanded that the diary not be published again until her death.

Eisenhower: shoot on the spot

Rape was not only a problem for the Red Army.

Bob Lilly, a historian at Northern Kentucky University, was able to access the archives of US military courts.

His book (Taken by Force) caused so much controversy that at first no American publisher dared to publish it, and the first edition appeared in France.

According to Lilly's rough estimate, about 14,000 rapes were committed by American soldiers in England, France and Germany from 1942 to 1945.

"There were very few cases of rape in England, but as soon as the American soldiers crossed the English Channel, their number increased dramatically," says Lilly.

According to him, rape has become a problem not only of the image, but also of army discipline. "Eisenhower said to shoot soldiers at the scene of the crime and report executions in military newspapers like the Stars and Stripes. Germany was at its peak," he says.

Were soldiers executed for rape?

But not in Germany?

No. Not a single soldier was executed for raping or killing German citizens, Lilly admits.

Today, historians continue to investigate the facts of sexual crimes committed by the Allied forces in Germany.

For many years, the topic of sexual violence by allied forces - American, British, French and Soviet soldiers - in Germany was officially hushed up. Few reported it, and even fewer were willing to listen to it all.

Silence

It is not easy to talk about such things in society in general. In addition, in East Germany it was considered almost blasphemy to criticize the Soviet heroes who defeated fascism.

And in West Germany, the guilt felt by the Germans for the crimes of Nazism overshadowed the subject of the suffering of this people.

But in 2008, in Germany, based on the diary of a Berliner, the film "Nameless - One Woman in Berlin" was released with actress Nina Hoss in the title role.

This film was a revelation for the Germans and prompted many women to talk about what happened to them. Among these women is Ingeborg Bullert.

Now 90-year-old Ingeborg lives in Hamburg in an apartment full of photos of cats and books about the theater. In 1945, she was 20. She dreamed of becoming an actress and lived with her mother on a rather fashionable street in Berlin's Charlottenburg district.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption "I thought they were going to kill me," says Ingeborg Bullurt

When the Soviet offensive began on the city, she hid in the basement of her house, as did the author of the diary "Woman in Berlin".

“Suddenly, tanks appeared on our street, bodies of Russian and German soldiers lay everywhere,” she recalls. “I remember the terrifying twang of falling Russian bombs. We called them Stalinorgels (“Stalin’s organs”).”

One day, between bombings, Ingeborg climbed out of the basement and ran upstairs for a rope, which she adapted for a lamp wick.

“Suddenly, I saw two Russians pointing guns at me,” she says. “One of them forced me to undress and raped me. Then they switched places and another raped me. I thought I was going to die, that they would kill me.”

Then Ingeborg did not tell about what happened to her. She kept quiet about it for decades because it would be too hard to talk about it. "My mother used to brag about the fact that her daughter had not been touched," she recalls.

Wave of abortions

But many women in Berlin were raped. Ingeborg recalls that immediately after the war, women between the ages of 15 and 55 were ordered to be tested for venereal diseases.

"To get food cards, you needed a medical certificate, and I remember that all the doctors who issued them had waiting rooms full of women," she recalls.

What was the real scale of the rapes? The most commonly quoted figures are 100,000 women in Berlin and two million throughout Germany. These figures, hotly disputed, were extrapolated from the meager medical records that have survived to this day.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption These medical documents from 1945 miraculously survived Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption In just one district of Berlin, 995 abortion requests were approved in six months.

At the former military factory, where the state archive is now kept, his employee Martin Luchterhand shows me a stack of blue cardboard folders.

In Germany at the time, abortion was banned under article 218 of the penal code. But Luchterhand says there was a short period of time after the war when women were allowed to terminate their pregnancies. A special situation was connected with the mass rapes in 1945.

Between June 1945 and 1946, 995 abortion requests were approved in this area of ​​Berlin alone. The folders contain over a thousand pages of different colors and sizes. One of the girls writes in round, childish handwriting that she was raped at home, in the living room, in front of her parents.

Bread instead of revenge

For some soldiers, as soon as they got drunk, women became the same trophies as watches or bicycles. But others behaved quite differently. In Moscow, I met 92-year-old veteran Yuri Lyashenko, who remembers how, instead of taking revenge, the soldiers handed out bread to the Germans.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Yuri Lyashenko says Soviet soldiers behaved differently in Berlin

“Of course, we couldn’t feed everyone, right? And what we had, we shared with the children. Small children are so intimidated, their eyes are so scary ... I feel sorry for the children," he recalls.

In a jacket hung with orders and medals, Yuri Lyashenko invites me to his small apartment on the top floor of a multi-storey building and treats me to cognac and boiled eggs.

He tells me that he wanted to become an engineer, but was drafted into the army and, like Vladimir Gelfand, went through the entire war to Berlin.

Pouring cognac into glasses, he proposes a toast to the world. Toasts to the world often sound learned, but here one feels that the words come from the heart.

We are talking about the beginning of the war, when he almost had his leg amputated, and how he felt when he saw the red flag over the Reichstag. After a while, I decide to ask him about the rapes.

“I don’t know, our unit didn’t have that… Of course, obviously, such cases depended on the person himself, on the people,” the war veteran says. it is not written, you do not know it."

Look back to the past

We will probably never know the true extent of rape. The materials of the Soviet military tribunals and many other documents remain classified. Recently, the State Duma approved a law "on encroachment on historical memory", according to which anyone who belittles the contribution of the USSR to the victory over fascism can earn a fine and up to five years in prison.

Vera Dubina, a young historian at the Humanitarian University in Moscow, says she didn't know anything about the rapes until she received a scholarship to study in Berlin. After studying in Germany, she wrote a paper on the subject, but was unable to publish it.

"The Russian media reacted very aggressively," she says. "People only want to know about our glorious victory in the Great Patriotic War, and now it's getting harder and harder to do serious research."

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Soviet field kitchens distributed food to the inhabitants of Berlin

History is often rewritten to suit the conjuncture. That is why eyewitness accounts are so important. The testimonies of those who dared to speak on this topic now, in old age, and the stories of the then young people who wrote down their testimonies about what was happening during the war years.

“If people don’t want to know the truth, they want to be mistaken and want to talk about how beautiful and noble everything was, this is stupid, this is self-deception,” he recalls. “The whole world understands this, and Russia understands this. And even those who stand behind these laws of distorting the past, they also understand. We cannot move into the future until we deal with the past."

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Note.On September 25 and 28, 2015, this material was modified. We removed the captions for two of the photos, as well as the Twitter posts based on them. They do not meet BBC editorial standards and we understand that many have found them offensive. We offer our sincere apologies.

Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kiev, were collected for transfer to a prisoner of war camp, August 1941:

The uniform of many girls is semi-military-semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniforms and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left is a dull captured artillery lieutenant, perhaps the “stage commander”.

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Lieutenant Prince, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in the Red Army” (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1190, fol. 110). Numerous facts testify that this order was applied throughout the war.

• In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war was shot - a military doctor (Archive Yad Vashem. M-37/178, fol. 17.).


• In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from the sanitary unit and shot them (Archive of Yad Vashem. M-33/482, fol. 16.).


• After the defeat of the Red Army in the Crimea in May 1942, an unknown girl in military uniform was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko in the Mayak fishing village near Kerch. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, fiends, will be dog's death! The girl was shot in the yard (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/60, fol. 38.).


• At the end of August 1942, a group of sailors was shot in the village of Krymskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among them there were several girls in military uniform (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/303, l 115.).


• In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was found. She had a passport in the name of Mikhailova Tatyana Alexandrovna, 1923. Born in the village of Novo-Romanovka (Archive of Yad Vashem. M-33/309, fol. 51.).


• In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military assistants Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/295, fol. 5.).


• On January 5, 1943, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured near the Severny farm. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot. (Archive of Yad Vashem. M-33/302, fol. 32.).

Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (candidate officer, on the right; seems to be armed with a captured Soviet self-loading Tokarev rifle) - escort a captured Soviet girl soldier - to captivity ... or to death?

It seems that the "Hans" do not look evil ... Although - who knows? In the war, completely ordinary people often do such outrageous abominations that they would never have done in “another life” ... The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army model 1935 - male, and in good “commander” boots in size.

A similar photo, probably summer or early autumn 1941. The convoy is a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded lieutenant girl was dragged naked onto the road, her face, hands were cut, her breasts were cut off ... » (P. Rafes. Then they had not yet repented. From the Notes of the translator of divisional intelligence. "Spark". Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.)

Knowing what awaits them in the event of captivity, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.

Often captured women were raped before they died. Hans Rudhoff, a soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, testifies that in the winter of 1942, “... Russian nurses lay on the roads. They were shot and thrown on the road. They lay naked… On these dead bodies… obscene inscriptions were written.” (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, fol. 94–95.).

In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists broke into the yard, where there were nurses from the hospital. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they dragged them into a barn and raped them. However, they did not kill (Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - "Spark". M., 1998. No. 6.).

Women prisoners of war who ended up in camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drogobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Lyuda. “Captain Stroher, the commandant of the camp, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which the German soldiers, called by the captain, tied Lyuda to a bunk, and in this position Stroher raped her and then shot her” (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/1182, fol. 11.).

In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orlyand gathered 50 women doctors, paramedics, nurses, undressed them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals - if they were sick with venereal diseases. He carried out the inspection himself. I chose 3 young girls from them, took them to my place to “serve”. German soldiers and officers came for women examined by doctors. Few of these women escaped rape. (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/230, fol. 38,53,94; M-37/1191, fol. 26.).

A female soldier of the Red Army who was captured while trying to get out of the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941:

Judging by their emaciated faces, they had to go through a lot even before being taken prisoner.

Here the "Hans" are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves can quickly experience all the "joys" of captivity! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already drunk dashingly to the full extent at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity ...

On the right photo (September 1941, again near Kiev -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her hand in captivity; an unprecedented thing, a watch is the optimal camp currency!) Do not look desperate or exhausted. Captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... A staged photo, or did they really get a relatively humane camp commandant who ensured a tolerable existence?

The camp guards from among the former prisoners of war and camp policemen were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped captives or, under threat of death, forced them to cohabit with them. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 female prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, the former head of the camp guard A.M. Yarosh admitted that his subordinates raped the prisoners of the women's bloc (P. Sherman. ... And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists in the city of Baranovichi and its environs on June 27, 1941 - July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, testimonies. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.).

The Millerovo POW camp also contained female prisoners. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barrack was terrible: “Policemen often looked into this barrack. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl to choose from for two hours. The policeman could take her to his barracks. They lived two in a room. During these two hours, he could use her as a thing, abuse, mock, do whatever he pleases.

Once, during the evening verification, the chief of police himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, the German woman complained to him that these "bastards" were reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “For those who do not want to go, arrange a“ red fireman ”. The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl's vagina. Left in this position for half an hour. Shouting was forbidden. Many girls' lips were bitten - they held back the cry, and after such a punishment they could not move for a long time.

The commandant, behind her back they called her a cannibal, enjoyed unlimited rights over the captive girls and came up with other sophisticated mockeries. For example, "self-punishment". There is a special stake, which is made crosswise 60 centimeters high. The girl should strip naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the cross with her hands, and put her legs on a stool and hold on for three minutes. Who could not stand it, had to repeat from the beginning.

We learned about what was happening in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit for about ten minutes on a bench. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman ” (S. M. Fisher. Memoirs. Manuscript. Author's archive.).

Women doctors of the Red Army, who were taken prisoner, worked in camp infirmaries in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps):

There may also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background you can see part of the body of a car equipped to transport the wounded, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.

Infirmary hut of the POW camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941):

In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely miserable impression. In the conditions of camp life, it was especially difficult for them: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.

In the fall of 1941, K. Kromiadi, a member of the commission for the distribution of labor, who visited the Sedlice camp, talked with the captured women. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: "... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash" (K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany ... p. 197.).

A group of female medical workers taken prisoner in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was kept in Vladimir-Volynsk - camp Oflag No. 365 "Nord" (T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944 ... p. 143.).

Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. At first, women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, when the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred the captured women to Smolensk in Dulag No. 126. There were few prisoners in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was forbidden. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with the "condition of a free settlement in Smolensk" (Archive Yad Vashem. M-33/626, fol. 50–52. M-33/627, fol. 62–63.).

Crimea, summer 1942. Quite young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young soldier girl:

Most likely - not a doctor: her hands are clean, in a recent battle she did not bandage the wounded.

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female health workers were captured: doctors, nurses, nurses (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in the Nazi camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32–33.). At first they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 female prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. Everyone was lined up in Rovno, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: "this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan." Those who were separated from the general group were shot. The rest were again loaded into wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the car into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. Recovered in a hole in the floor (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author 9.10.1992.).

On the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and on February 23, 1943, the women were brought to the city of Zoes. Lined up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. History teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, posing as a Serb. She enjoyed special prestige among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, said in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work at military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which, because of the crowding, it was impossible to sit down or move. It stayed that way for almost a day. And then the rebellious were sent to Ravensbrück (G. Grigorieva. Conversation with the author on 9.10.1992. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security agencies, where they sought her confession of betrayal, committed suicide). This women's camp was established in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners were shaved bald, dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and shorts. There were no bras or belts. In October, a pair of old stockings was given out for half a year, but not everyone managed to walk in them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden blocks.

The barrack was divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tiered plank beds with a narrow passage between them. For two prisoners, one cotton blanket was issued. In a separate room lived a block - the older barracks. There was a washroom in the hallway (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. In the collection “Witnesses for the Prosecution”. L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Ravensbruck locksmith team. Memoirs of a prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.).

A group of Soviet women prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):

The prisoners carry all their meager possessions; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them “like a woman” tied their heads with handkerchiefs and took off their heavy boots.

Ibid, Stalag 370, Simferopol:

Prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women. (Women of Ravensbruck. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.).

The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. At first, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given striped camp clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: "SU" - Sowjet Union.

Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS spread a rumor around the camp that a gang of female murderers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.

Every day, the prisoners got up at 4 in the morning for verification, sometimes lasting several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.

Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which the women used mainly to wash their hair, as there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turn. .

Women whose hair survived began to use combs, which they themselves made. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden scallop they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion. (Voices. Memoirs of prisoners of the Nazi camps. M., 1994, p. 164.).

For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2–3 boiled potatoes. In the evening they received a small loaf of bread for five people mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win ... p. 160.).

The impression that Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück is evidenced in her memoirs by one of the prisoners, S. Müller: of the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they are to be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities, this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstrasse (the main "street" of the camp) and deprived of lunch.

But the women from the Red Army bloc (as we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstrasse. And what did we see?

It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, keeping alignment, walked, as if in a parade, minting a step. Their steps, like a drum roll, beat rhythmically along the Lagerstrasse. The whole column moved as a single unit. Suddenly, a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to sing. She counted out: "One, two, three!" And they sang:

Get up great country
Rise to the death fight...

Then they sang about Moscow.

The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment by marching the humiliated prisoners of war turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility ...

It was not possible for the SS to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance” (Sh. Müller. Ravensbrück locksmith team… pp. 51–52.).

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once struck their enemies and fellow campers with their unity and spirit of resistance. Once 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners destined to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to take the women away, the comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up five people and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove the newcomers into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike. (Women of Ravensbrück… p.127.).

In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to a concentration camp in the city of Barth at the Heinkel aircraft factory. The girls refused to work there. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove the wooden blocks. For many hours they stood in the cold, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who would agree to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died of pneumonia (G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol fortress. Simferopol. 1965, p. 82–83.).

Constant bullying, hard labor, hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself on the wire (G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win ... p. 187.).

Nevertheless, the prisoners believed in liberation, and this belief sounded in a song composed by an unknown author. (N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In Sat.: In Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk. 1958, p. 84.):

Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Above your head, be bold!
We don't have long to endure.
The nightingale will fly in the spring ...
And open the door for us to freedom,
Takes the striped dress off her shoulders
And heal deep wounds
Wipe the tears from swollen eyes.
Keep your head up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
Not long to wait, not long -
And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a peculiar description of Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “... their solidarity was explained by the fact that they had gone through army school even before being captured. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - benevolent and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebelliousness, unwillingness to obey the Germans " (Voices, pp. 74–5.).

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Prisoner of Auschwitz A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Viktorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Claudia Sokolova were kept in the women's camp (A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war ... p. 62.).

In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and move into the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya (A. Nikiforova. This should not happen again. M., 1958, p. 6–11.).

Navigator of the air regiment Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrinsky camp (N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing his head ... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.).

Despite the death reigning in captivity, despite the fact that any connection between male and female prisoners of war was forbidden, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love was sometimes born that gave new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German leadership of the infirmary did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released at the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.

So, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “the nurse Sindeva Aleksandra, who arrived at the City Hospital for childbirth on February 23, 1942, left with her child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp” (Yad Vashem archive. M-33/438 part II, fol. 127.).

Probably one of the last photographs of Soviet female soldiers captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:

Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - "For Courage" (dark edging on the block), the second may have "BZ". There is an opinion that these are pilots, but it is unlikely: both have “clean” shoulder straps of privates.

In 1944, the attitude towards women prisoners of war hardened. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order "On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war." This document stated that Soviet women prisoners of war held in camps should be subjected to checks by the local Gestapo branch in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police. (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener… S. 153.).

On the basis of this order, on April 11, 1944, the head of the Security Service and the SD issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to a concentration camp, such women were subjected to the so-called "special treatment" - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya died - the eldest of a group of seven hundred female prisoners of war who worked at a military factory in the city of Gentin. A lot of marriage was produced at the plant, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera led the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944. (A. Nikiforova. This should not happen again ... p. 106.).

In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium, the place of execution. First, the men were brought in and shot one after the other. Then a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around ...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do this? » What she did, I never found out. She replied that she did it for the Motherland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: "This is for your homeland." The Russian spat in his eyes and replied: "And this is for your homeland." There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Into her furnace!” The oven door was open and the heat set the woman's hair on fire. Despite the fact that the woman vigorously resisted, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. This was seen by all the prisoners who worked in the crematorium. (A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefengener…. S. 153–154.). Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.

The first European country, which the Red Army entered in August 1944, was Romania. In the notes of the front-line poet B. Slutsky there are the following lines:
"Suddenly, almost pushed into the sea, Constanta opens. It almost coincides with the average dream of happiness and "after the war". Restaurants. Bathrooms. Beds with clean linen. Shops with reptilian sellers. And - women, smart city women - girls of Europe - the first tribute we took from the vanquished ... "
Further, he describes his first impressions from abroad: "European hairdressers, where they wash their fingers and do not wash their brushes, the absence of a bath, washing from the basin," where first the dirt from the hands remains, and then the face is washed, "featherbeds instead of blankets - out of disgust caused by everyday life , immediate generalizations were made ...
In Constanta, we first met with brothels ... Our first enthusiasm for the fact of the existence of free love quickly passes. It affects not only the fear of infection and high cost, but also contempt for the very possibility of buying a person ... Many were proud of past stories like: a Romanian husband complains to the commandant's office that our officer did not pay his wife the agreed one and a half thousand lei.
Everyone had a distinct consciousness: “It’s impossible for us” ... Probably, our soldiers will remember Romania as a country of syphilitics .... In Romania, this European outback, our soldier most of all felt his elevation above Europe.

Another Soviet officer, Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Force F. Smolnikov, on September 17, 1944, wrote down his impressions of Bucharest in his diary:
"Ambassador Hotel, restaurant, ground floor. I see the idle public walking around, they have nothing to do, they are waiting. They look at me as a rarity. "Russian officer!!!" I am very modestly dressed, more than modestly. We will still be in Budapest.
This is as true as the fact that I am in Bucharest. First class restaurant. The audience is dressed up, the most beautiful Romanian women look defiantly. We spend the night in a first-class hotel. The metropolitan street is seething. There is no music, the audience is waiting. Capital, damn it! I will not succumb to advertising ... ".

In Hungary, the Soviet army encountered not only armed resistance, but also insidious blows in the back from the population, when "drunken and stragglers were killed in the farms" and drowned in silos.
However, "women, not as depraved as the Romanians, yielded with shameful ease ... A little love, a little debauchery, and most of all, of course, fear helped."
Citing the words of a Hungarian lawyer, "It is very good that Russians love children so much. It is very bad that they love women so much," B. Slutsky comments:
"He did not take into account that the Hungarian women also loved the Russians, that along with the dark fear that pushed apart the knees of the matrons and mothers of families, there were the tenderness of the girls and the desperate tenderness of the soldiers who gave themselves to the murderers of their husbands."
For the fighters brought up in patriarchal Russian traditions, the culture shock turned out to be local customs, according to which "a girl, before entering into marriage, with the approval of her parents, can experience intimacy with many men." “We are told: they don’t buy a cat in a tied bag,” the Hungarians themselves confided.
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Young, physically healthy men had a natural attraction to women. But the ease of European morals corrupted some of the Soviet fighters, while others, on the contrary, convinced that relations should not be reduced to simple physiology. Sergeant A. Rodin wrote down his impressions of visiting - out of curiosity - a brothel in Budapest, where part of it stood for some time after the end of the war:
"... After leaving, a disgusting, shameful feeling of lies and falsehood arose, a picture of a woman's obvious, frank pretense did not go out of my head ... like not giving a kiss without love, but most of our soldiers with whom I had to talk ...
Around the same time, I had a chance to talk with a pretty Magyar woman (she knew Russian from somewhere). To her question, did I like it in Budapest, I replied that I liked it, only brothels are embarrassing.
"But why?" - asked the girl. Because it is unnatural, wild, - I explained: - a woman takes money and after that, immediately begins to "love!" The girl thought for a while, then nodded in agreement and said: "You're right: it's ugly to take money in advance" ... "
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Poland left other impressions about itself. According to the poet David Samoilov:
"... in Poland they kept us in strictness. It was difficult to slip away from the location. And pranks were severely punished. The only positive thing in Poland is the beauty of Polish women. I can’t say that we really liked Poland, then I didn’t meet anything gentry in it and knightly.
On the contrary, everything was petty-bourgeois, farmer-both concepts and interests. Yes, and in eastern Poland they looked at us warily and semi-hostilely, trying to rip off everything possible from the liberators.
However, the women were consolingly beautiful and coquettish, they captivated us with their manners, cooing speech, where everything suddenly became clear, and they themselves were captivated by sometimes rude masculine strength or a soldier's uniform. And the pale, emaciated former admirers of them, gritting their teeth, for the time being went into the shadows ... ".
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Another front-line soldier, A. Rodin recalled:
“The love of life of the Poles, who survived the horrors of the war and the German occupation, was amazing. Sunday afternoon in a Polish village. Beautiful, elegant, in silk dresses and stockings, Polish women, who on weekdays are ordinary peasant women, raking manure, barefoot, tirelessly work around the house. Elderly women they also look fresh and young, although there are black frames around the eyes…
November 5, 1944 Sunday, the residents are all dressed up. They gather to visit each other. Men in felt hats, ties, jumpers. Women in silk dresses, bright, unworn stockings.
Rosy cheeks. Beautifully curled blond hairstyles... The soldiers in the corner of the hut are also animated. But whoever is sensitive will notice that this is a painful revival. Everyone is laughing loudly to show that they don’t care, they don’t even hurt at all and are not envious at all.
What are we, worse than them? The devil knows what happiness it is - a peaceful life! After all, I didn’t see her in civilian life at all!
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His brother-soldier Sergeant N. Nesterov wrote in his diary on the same day:
"Today is a day off, the Poles, beautifully dressed, gather in one hut and sit in pairs. It even somehow becomes uncomfortable. Couldn't I have been able to sit like that? .."

In Austria, where the Soviet troops broke into in the spring of 1945, they faced "general surrender":
"Entire villages were dominated by white rags. Elderly women raised their hands when they met a man in a Red Army uniform."
It was here, according to B. Slutsky, that the soldiers "fell on the blond women." At the same time, “Austrian women did not turn out to be overly stubborn”: most village girls led an intimate life before marriage, and city women were traditionally distinguished by frivolity and, as the Austrians themselves claimed, “chivalry is enough to get everything you want from a wreath.”
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And finally Germany. And the women of the enemy - mothers, wives, daughters, sisters of those who from 1941 to 1944 mocked the civilian population in the occupied territory of the USSR.
The appearance of German women walking in a crowd of refugees is described in the diary of V. Bogomolov:
"Women - old and young - in hats, in turbaned scarves and just a canopy, like our women, in smart coats with fur collars and in shabby, incomprehensible cut clothes. Many women go in dark glasses so as not to squint from the bright May sun and thereby protect the face from wrinkles ... "
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How did the Germans behave when meeting with Soviet troops?
In the report of the Deputy Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. Aleksandrov dated April 30, 1945 on the attitude of the civilian population of Berlin to the personnel of the Red Army troops said:
“As soon as our units occupy one or another area of ​​the city, the inhabitants gradually begin to take to the streets, almost all of them have white armbands on their sleeves.
When meeting with our servicemen, many women raise their hands up, cry and tremble with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all the same as they were painted by their fascist propaganda, this fear quickly disappears, more and more population takes to the streets and offers their services, trying in every possible way to emphasize their loyal attitude to the Red Army.
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The greatest impression on the winners was made by the humility and prudence of the German women. In this regard, it is worth citing the story of the mortar man N.A. Orlov:
"We went to some German city, settled in the houses. A Frau, 45 years old, appears and asks for the commandant's commander ... She declares that she is responsible for the quarter, and gathered 20 German women for sexual (!!!) service to Russian soldiers ...
The reaction of our officers was angry and obscene. The German woman was driven away, along with her "detachment" ready for service. In general, German obedience stunned us. They expected guerrilla warfare and sabotage from the Germans.
But for this nation, order is everything. If you are a winner, then they are on their hind legs, and consciously and not under duress. That's the kind of psychology...
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A similar case is cited in his military notes by David Samoilov:
“In Arendsfeld, where we had just settled down, a small crowd of women with children appeared. They were led by a huge mustachioed German woman of about fifty - Frau Friedrich. She stated that she was a representative of the civilian population and asked to register the remaining residents. We replied that this could be done , as soon as the commandant's office appears.
"That's impossible," said Frau Friedrich. - There are women and children. They need to be registered.
The civilian population with a cry and tears confirmed her words.
Not knowing what to do, I suggested that they take the basement of the house where we were staying. And they calmed down went down to the basement and began to be accommodated there, waiting for the authorities.
“Herr Commissar,” Frau Friedrich told me benevolently (I wore a leather jacket). We understand that soldiers have small needs. They are ready, - continued Frau Friedrich, - to provide them with several younger women for ...
I did not continue the conversation with Frau Friedrich."
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After talking with the residents of Berlin on May 2, 1945, V. Bogomolov wrote in his diary:
“We enter one of the surviving houses. Everything is quiet, dead. We knock, we ask you to open it. You can hear that they are whispering in the corridor, muffled and excitedly talking. Finally, the door opens. Women without age, who have huddled together in a close group, bow in fear, low and obsequiously. German women they are afraid of us, they were told that Soviet soldiers, especially Asians, would rape and kill them ...
Fear and hatred on their faces. But sometimes it seems that they like to be defeated - their behavior is so helpful, their smiles are so touching and their words are sweet. These days, there are stories about how our soldier went into a German apartment, asked for a drink, and the German woman, as soon as she saw him, lay down on the sofa and took off her tights.
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“All German women are depraved. They have nothing against sleeping with them,” such an opinion was common in the Soviet troops and was supported not only by many illustrative examples, but also by their unpleasant consequences, which were soon discovered by military doctors.