Yesterday, the world marked International Day of Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camp Prisoners. The day was initiated by the UN to remember interethnic riot of Buchenwald prisoners on April 11, 1945. Residents of Moscow, Astana, Chisinau, Kiev, Yerevan and other cities came to streets to remember victims. Among them former prisoners of Buchenwald and Auschwitz and other Nazi fabrics of death.
Boris Sbernik, ex-prisoner of the Minsk Ghetto, professor
Minsk was one of the first cities to be occupied by the Germans, it happened on June 27-28, 1941. In July (the order was issued on July 20) the commandant ordered all Jews who remained in the city to gather at one place, and then this region of the city was fenced off. That’s how the Minsk Ghetto began. It was the largest ghetto on the USSR territory, some 150,000 people died in it, 50,000 of them were Jews brought from Germany. They were told they would be sent to Palestine, but in fact they were brought to Minsk in 1941, they were given a separate territory within the ghetto, and soon they were all killed. The Minsk Ghetto existed till October 21, 1943. They used to kill off some of its inhabitants and relocate the fence, making its territory smaller.
I hope you all know what a ghetto is. For all those who survived the war – it was constant expectation of death. All was done according to a sort of schedule: there were so-called pogroms. The first one occurred on November 11, 1941, as far as I remember. We lived near the cemetery back then, my mom was still alive (she died some 2 weeks later). Our older relatives decided that if a pogrom began, it would start near the cemetery, so we moved to our friends' place, who lived on another street. Sadly, everything happened in quite the opposite manner: there was no pogrom where we lived, but it happened where we moved to. I remember how they drove us out of our home and flocked a great number of people into a factory yard. They made us form a column 3 or 4 people wide and then the vehicles drove up that now we call ‘murder-buses’. I was 7 years old back then, I hadn’t even gone to school, and I remember I wanted to ‘get a ride in the car’, but my mom kept pulling us to the tail of the column, even though they were hitting her with the butts of their rifles. When the cars were filled with people they drove away, and others came for the remaining people… but my mom kept pulling me to the column’s tail, despite the butts, thus saving me and herself. But then the clock struck four – and they stopped working, like on an ordinary working day. That’s how we survived the first pogrom, but there were many others to come.
The biggest one happened on March 2 in 1942. Mom was already gone; I was with my neighbors and relatives. We dug a pit under the floor of the house. My grandpa – I thought he was ancient back then, but now I’m older than he was – hid us in this pit, covered with rugs and moved our only bed on top of the pit. He himself hid in a wardrobe. When the Nazis came, they saw no one, but he coughed and they caught him. They shot him right on site, we saw it all through the holes in the floor.
That was the biggest pogrom, but there were others till the last one, that took place on October 21, 1943. That day I went to the ‘Russian district’. We used to go there all the time with my friend Mike, he was a couple of years older than me. His dad was Russian, so he knew all the holidays and traditions, and we went to the ‘Russian part’ of the city to beg from November 1941. My mom was already dead – she also sneaked out of the ghetto to save me, to beg someone to take me with them to the suburbs, but she never returned.
This boy always took me with him, or sometimes went alone, but that rainy morning he didn’t want to go and sent me alone. I didn’t want to go along but I couldn’t refuse, as otherwise I would have nothing to eat. The final pogrom took place on this day, and my friend was killed in it.
I remember that at the time, when the ghetto was about to end, I was sitting alone in another part of the city and I was thinking of turning myself in, but then I saw an familiar boy coming up to me (he was 4 years older that I am, and we didn’t know each other well), he was with a little girl. He asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was thinking of going back to the ghetto, and he said he knew a road to a partisan unit and invited me to go with him. In three days he had gathered 10 of us at the railway station (one of us being the little girl – she was his sister, and she was only six). We went on foot for three days, we made 90 km (and we had no proper clothes or shoes) to the Pukhovich district where the partisan unit was located. This unit saved people from the ghetto. It was the 5th Unit of the Second Minsk Partisan Brigade.
The road was extremely difficult and not without adventures. They caught us more than once, they wanted to kill us and we lied that we were just going from one village to another, but naturally they didn’t want to believe us… When we got close to the partisan zone, a group of policemen caught us and said they knew we were Jews. The made us turn our faces to the bushes… Many years have passed since then, but one doesn’t forget such moments. It was a beautiful evening. I remember that not one of us begged for mercy. I remember feeling quite frustrated about the hard journey we had had to make – all for nothing. But then they said it was all a joke and that they were in fact partisans. We didn’t believe them at first. But then in fact we saw they were partisans dressed in police uniforms. That’s how we got to the unit and we spent some 9 months there, till Minsk was liberated. Before our troops made their final offensive, the Nazis decided to clear the ‘partisan zone.’
It was only 90 km away from Minsk and no German ever went there, as there were dangerous marshes there. When they sent the troops we all had to hide literally in the marshes, lying on the ground and stretching our hands out not to drown.
When we returned to our village there were only 9 kids out of 10 (we all made our escape in ones and twos), the boy who led us to the partisans, Joseph by name, was missing. When they published a miscellany of memoirs about those events, I wrote that it was a great pity – he saved us all but had to die himself. But miracles happen. In 1993, when we were marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Minsk Ghetto in Belarus and when I was standing near ‘The Pit’ memorial (a memorial constructed through public donations on the place where the victims of the biggest pogrom were killed) my friend Felix came up to me (he was the head of the ex-ghetto prisoners organization, which we founded together) and said that there were some people who were with me in the Partisan unit. He led me up to a woman, whom I didn’t recognize. I asked her if she remembered how Joseph led us all to the village but then died himself… She said: “Why?! He didn’t die, here he is right here!” She turned out to be his little sister. So after 50 years we finally met again: a strange picture – two adult men hugging and crying.
Unfortunately, there were not many of those who survived the Minsk ghetto. Jews weren’t even accepted in the ranks of the partisans at first.
Maidan Kusainov, the head of Kazakhstan scouting force Memorial zone
4,559,000 soldiers and officers fell prisoners in the USSR. 40% of them were killed. In Germany and its allies 3,777000 were taken captive, 13.9% of them were killed. Compare: 13.9% German military prisoners in NKVD camps and 49% prisoners in Nazi death camps. The figures say about extreme cruelty toward Soviet prisoners. Civil person were treated even worse than soldiers. 5,059,000 people went missing or taken captive. Scouting forces discovered that 4.5 million of them were killed at battle fields. This number is growing day after day.
However, there is another interesting comparison: there are 5 types of camps. First is a composite camp at a battle field, where number of unknown losses is great, and it doesn’t include those who died during the path to the composite camp. Second is a transit camp Dulag; for example, Dulag-205 near Kharkov Pot. During transition from camp to camp it is thought about 500 thousand prisoners had died. Third is a permanent camp like Schtalag. And fourth type is major working camps. Minor working camps existed too.
These are four types of camps. There were 22 thousand death camps in the territory of Germany and occupied countries, where civil and military people were imprisoned. The Convention on Military Prisoners wasn’t signed by the Soviet Union, and it worsened position of Soviet military prisoners.
I’m working at battle fields and in transit and composite camps. Unexpected pages are being discovered. At the moment the list of dead in death camps is filling with names of those who died in composite and transit camps and those who died during transition from camp to camp.
Vitaly Kachanovsky, the chairman of the presidium and the council of the Organization of Anti-Nazi Fighters of Ukraine
I have been in three death camps: Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald and Dachau. In Buchenwald we organized underground and prepared a riot. On April 11 prisoners set free the camp Buchenwald by their own. I didn’t take part in it, because we were taken to Dachau as suspicious persons. But I know all those friends – in general they were military prisoners – who had been working at military plants and had been steeling parts of weapon. They were armed when were freeing Buchenwald.
Anatoly Gozun, the deputy chairman of Moldova Association of Former Ghetto and Death Camp Prisoners
I know what it is to be a prisoner of a death camp. When Chisinau was being attacked, me, mother, brothers and sisters escaped and stayed near the village Zhury. There was a big haymow near the village, and a Moldavian farmer stopped us and said: “Don’t go to the village. Nazis are shooting people there.” The next day we were taken captive and transported to ghetto of Rybnitsy. About 25 thousand Jewish prisoners were shot dead in Dubossary, 12 members of my family were killed. I was taken to shootings thrice, but I stayed alive. The International Congress of Prisoners produced a film about my mother, she is still alive, she is 101 year old, and she has brilliant memory. People who survived in this tragedy have no hatred in hearts.
Nelli Shimiryan, the former death camp prisoner
Excessive suffering endured by children during the Second World War has been described. Famine, cold, bomb attacks, beating, abuse – little children suffered from it. I was 5 when the war broke out. I had to see and learn about it. I pray to all forces that could prevent a war to forbid wars forever for people, children never suffer again. The well-known lines are “People of war curse the war! Kill the war, people of Earth!” That’s how it should be for children never cry and no children tears drop during a war.
Inna Shupak, the chairman of the public association Moldova without Nazism, the deputy of the Moldavian parliament
Speaking about the disaster that happened in the 20th century, we understand that there is a possibility the tragedy can repeat in the 21st century. And there are people who are aimed at making young people to forget these events. It is provided through various schemes, first of all through education. It is understandable for many countries of the world. We should resist rehabilitation of Nazism together, that is why the international human rights organization The World without Nazism was founded.
