On January 27, 1945, Red Army troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, or Auschwitz, a whole complex of death camps, where the Nazis killed almost one and a half million people in a few years. Terrifying memories of the prisoners of Auschwitz: the participants in those events started talking about many things only now.
On the morning of January 27, 1945, 16-year-old Zhenya Kovalev woke up on the second tier of bunks of block 32 of the Auschwitz concentration camp from a burning feeling of hunger. Waiting for breakfast - a mug of tea - was unbearably difficult. It was unusually quiet around - neither the barking of the shepherd dogs nor the shouts of the guards could be heard, then a veil fell over our eyes.
“It must have been a hungry faint. When I woke up, there was no one in the barracks, I cautiously looked out into the street. Crowds of people walked from side to side. It was not by the rules. I was frightened, especially from the fact that among the striped robes I fancied people in the uniform of the Red Army and with weapons,”recalls a former prisoner of Auschwitz No. 149568 Yevgeny Filippovich Kovalev today.
Today, an 87-year-old man finds it difficult to remember even the day of the liberation of Auschwitz. For a long 20 years, he regularly attended meetings with children at Moscow school No. 1094, where a museum of juvenile concentration camp prisoners was organized, but he never said anything.
“He always just cried and was silent. And just recently, a first-grader brought a loaf of white bread to a meeting with former prisoners. And they all began to break off a piece, chew, "washing down" the bread with their tears. And it was only after that that Evgeny Filippovich spoke for the first time,”says the director of the school museum Evgeny Zimin.
The story of 14-year-old partisan Kovalev
At the age of three, Zhenya Kovalev was left without a mother. He was raised and fed by his elder brothers and sisters, whom he had four. In 1941, when the Germans came to the Smolensk region, he went with them to a partisan detachment, in which he was appointed a liaison. The young partisan was then only 14 years old.
Promotional video:
“My friend and I received an assignment - to scout out on the Smolensk-Vitebsk road how bridges are guarded. We did not reach one of them about 50 meters, we see - a car is driving towards it, stopped: "Who are they?" We say: "We are looking for cattle - the cow is lost." Well, we were immediately in the car and taken to Rudnya, to the prison. They beat them with sticks, ramrods, everyone tried to find out where the detachment was, who was in charge. We didn't say anything. Why they didn’t kill us, I don’t know …”, says Yevgeny Kovalev.
From prison, Zhenya Kovalev was sent to Auschwitz. Both young partisans were brought to the camp at night.
“We had no idea where they were taking us. Everything is lit, dogs, machine gunners. Shaved, and - in quarantine. A week later, out of 700 people, only 150 of us remained alive. They called it - “selection”. From there we were sent to block 32, says the former partisan.
Evgeny Kovalev was in Auschwitz from 1943 to 1945. He worked on the construction of a vegetable store not far from the railway station.
“The rise was at 6 in the morning, we worked 12 hours, at 10-11 in the evening - lights out. In the morning - tea, in the afternoon - gruel, in the evening - tea and a loaf of bread for four. Every morning in our barracks there were no five or seven people waking up. But this is not the worst thing. The worst thing is "selection". It was held twice a month. On the street they were stripped to the waist, examined. Didn't pass the "selection" - to the crematorium! The corpses were also burned in an open way - well, that is, in deep pits,”recalls a former prisoner of Auschwitz.
Evgeny Filippovich says that in his free time no one talked to anyone, and if there were any conversations, it was only about food. To dream of something, he also does not remember - they were too tired at work. The elderly man was able to recall only one dream that he had on New Year's: “I dreamed of bread, and I don’t remember any more potatoes, so boiled, hot, with salt”.
Evgeny Kovalev was subjected to corporal punishment only once: “The rule was that one of the Germans came, you had to take off the striped skullcap and lower your head. And I didn't see the guard. Well, on Friday, after work - it was the day of punishment, I was "invited" to the street. They told me to lie on the ground, I lay down, of course. The SS men beat them with whips, mostly on a soft spot. The back then was black for a long time. Beat me - and in a pool with cold water, you run until you fall …"
Yevgeny Kovalev says that during the two years he spent in Auschwitz, he never got sick with anything. He reluctantly talks about sanitary conditions.
“They gave me a small piece of soap for a month. On the washing day, the clothes were taken away, they were steamed in the ovens, and we were smeared with some kind of smelly yellow rubbish. From this solution, the skin cracked and bubbled - this is from fleas. At night, a barrel was brought into the barracks - this is a toilet. We didn’t have any paper, and we didn’t have to wipe anything - once a week you “go out” like hares, you know, with such pebbles, everything is dry,”Kovalev recalls.
January 27, 1945 Yevgeny Filippovich Kovalev considers his second birthday. He remembers that in Auschwitz that day everyone shouted "Hurray!"
The story of the liberator soldier of Auschwitz
Vladimir Chernikov is 3 years older than Evgeny Kovalev. He entered the gates of the death camp as a liberator, 70 years ago he was only 19 years old and he just returned from the hospital after being wounded.
“The first to approach us was a man in a striped robe with a bandage over his left eye. He smoked something so smelly that we asked him: "What kind of tobacco is this?" He said he smokes straw. There were eight of us, I did not smoke then, but I was the eldest and told everyone to "unload". The man, seeing several packs of cigarettes, fell to his knees, we raised him to his feet, he carefully put the tobacco in his handbag and invited us to see the camp, - he took us on a tour,”recalls WWII veteran Vladimir Chernikov.
On the way, the former prisoner of Auschwitz lifted the bandage and showed the festering wound, explained that the SS men had knocked out his eye with a whip with a metal tip.
“On the way to the crematorium, we met several women. We had instructions not to kiss anyone, not to touch anyone. But they threw themselves on our neck and began to kiss, in silence! We cried, they cried. Well, how could I push someone away ?!”- says the war veteran.
The biggest impression on the young soldier that day was made by the people who were lying on the bunks and could not get up. There were not enough doctors, and it was not clear how to help them.
“We entered one barrack after the crematorium. There I saw ashes, at the entrance - things and clothes … And when I entered the barrack, I also thought: "living ashes." Not to convey this feeling - like a living person, but like - no. There was such a state of shock, I came out - crowds of people wander around, all in striped robes. Women in some kind of gray, greasy, either dressing gowns, or dresses, on their legs - wooden blocks … Someone was sitting on the ground and chewing grass … I did not see children, but there were many women. I haven't seen corpses,”says the liberator of Auschwitz.
Vladimir Chernikov spent only three hours in the "death camp", he had to go further - to liberate Europe. Then there were two more concentration camps on his battle path, but the strongest impression remained from Auschwitz.
The Germans left this camp on the evening of January 26. They left in a hurry, but, nevertheless, they managed to blow up several crematoria and destroy most of the archival documents. The Nazis took the most able-bodied prisoners to Germany in advance. On the day of the liberation of the camp, there were more than 7 thousand people in Auschwitz. The adjacent territory was mined, so no one defended the "death factory" on January 27, 1945 from the advancing Soviet troops. It is believed that during the liberation of the world's most famous concentration camp, about 300 Red Army soldiers were killed, mostly - these were mine explosions.
According to official data, from 1941 to 1945 in the Auschwitz concentration camp, located in Poland, about 1 million 400 thousand people were killed. Only in the last two years - from 43rd to 45th, according to the testimony of a medical officer of the "death camp", about one thousand children died from hunger and cold in this camp. 1.5 thousand babies were drowned immediately after their birth.
Auschwitz midwife report
Pole Stanislava Leszczynska decided to tell the whole truth about the situation of children and mothers in Auschwitz only in 1965. For 20 years, she remained silent.
“There were many pregnant women among the huge number of women who were transported there. I performed the functions of a midwife there in turn in three barracks, which were built of planks, with many cracks gnawed by rats. Inside the barracks there were three-story bunks on both sides. Each of them was supposed to accommodate three or four women - on dirty straw mattresses. It was harsh, because the straw had long been rubbed into dust, and the sick women lay almost on bare boards, besides not smooth ones, but with knots that rubbed their bodies and bones,”- from the memoirs of Stanislava Leshchinskaya.
According to the midwife, it was just as cold in the maternity barracks as in the rest of the camp. The stove was heated only a few times a year. Stanislava went to fetch water herself, it took about twenty minutes to bring one bucket.
“In these conditions, the fate of women in labor was deplorable, and the role of a midwife was unusually difficult: no aseptic means, no dressings. At first I was on my own; in cases of complications requiring the intervention of a specialist doctor, for example, when removing the placenta manually, I had to act on my own,”recalls Stanislava Leshchinskaya.
Later, the prisoner-midwife was joined by prison doctors - Irena Konechnaya and Irena Bialuvna. The latter saved Stanislava from death when she fell ill with typhoid fever. The doctor at Auschwitz had only a few packs of aspirin at his disposal.
“The number of births I received exceeded 3 thousand. Despite the intolerable dirt, worms, rats, infectious diseases, lack of water and other horrors that cannot be conveyed, something extraordinary was happening there. One day, an SS doctor ordered me to file a report on infections during childbirth and deaths among mothers and newborns. I replied that I had not a single fatal outcome, either among mothers or among children. The doctor looked at me in disbelief. He said that even the improved clinics of German universities cannot boast of such success. I read anger and envy in his eyes. Perhaps, to the limit, depleted organisms were too useless food for bacteria,”- from the memoirs of Stanislava Leshchinskaya.
Washing diapers, which mothers in Auschwitz made from shirts exchanged during pregnancy for rations of bread, caused many difficulties, especially because of the strict prohibition to leave the barracks, as well as the inability to freely do anything inside it. The washed diapers of a woman in labor were dried on her own body.
“Until May 1943, all children born in the camp were brutally killed: they were drowned in a barrel. Nurses Klara and Pfani did this. The first was a midwife by profession and ended up in a camp for infanticide. Therefore, she was deprived of the right to work in her specialty. She was instructed to do what she was more fit for. She was also entrusted with the leading position of the headman of the barrack. A German street girl Pfani was assigned to help her. After each birth, a loud gurgle and splash of water could be heard from the room of these women. Soon after, the woman in labor could see the body of her child, thrown out of the barracks and torn apart by rats,”says Stanislava Leshchinskaya.
Before the murder, the born child was tattooed with the mother's number, drowned in a barrel and thrown out of the barracks. The fate of the other children was even worse: they died a slow death from hunger. Their skin became thin, like parchment, tendons, blood vessels and bones showed through it. Soviet children clung to life the longest; about 50% of the pregnant prisoners were, according to the Polish midwife, from the Soviet Union.
“Among the many tragedies experienced there, I remember the story of a woman from Vilna who was sent to Auschwitz to help the partisans. Immediately after she gave birth to a child, someone from the guard called out her number. I went to explain her situation, but it didn’t help, it only provoked anger. I realized that she was being summoned to the crematorium. She wrapped the child in dirty paper and pressed it to her breast … Her lips moved silently - apparently, she wanted to sing a song to the baby, but this woman did not have the strength … she could not utter a sound - only big tears flowed from under her eyelids, flowed down her unusually pale cheeks, falling on the head of the little condemned man,”Stanislav shares his memories.
The former prisoner of a concentration camp in 1965 explained her 20-year silence by her concern over trends emerging in Polish society. Against the background of the recent statement of the Polish Foreign Minister that the Ukrainians liberated Auschwitz, her words look simply prophetic: “If in my Fatherland, despite the sad experience of the war, tendencies directed against life can arise, then I hope for the voice of all obstetricians, all real mothers and fathers, all decent citizens in defense of the life and rights of the child."
At the same time, a young Russian girl was in Auschwitz with the Polish midwife. But their paths in the camp did not cross. In 1945, 19-year-old Katya Dovidenkova was generally sure that after the experiments that were carried out with female prisoners, she would never become a mother.
Confession of Ekaterina Davydenkova
“I came to Auschwitz as a virgin, and, of course, I was very afraid. On the first day, when we were driving through the camp in cars, we suddenly saw - two carcasses fell out of the car that was driving in front, we thought that the meat was being taken. And then two men in striped clothes appear and throw the carcasses back into the car. Only then did we see that these were human bodies, and completely without clothes. Naked, skinny people … from that moment we began to understand what awaited us,”says the former prisoner of Auschwitz.
On the way to the filtration point, Katya still managed to see how firewood was thrown into the fire from human bodies in an open trench.
“These were meter-long birch logs, I could see them well. I think now that if I got into this hell today, I would not have survived for two days - that's for sure. And then I was young, and I remember well one thought: “we must survive, we must survive,” says the former prisoner.
In front of the gas chamber, all Katya's companions were given metal tags with the words: "You will go home, they will come in handy." Then they stripped everyone naked and took them to the shower.
“Boiling water pours from above, then ice water, then boiling water again, then ice cold water, -“selection”is called. Then red lights blinked on the walls, and the floor beneath us began to slowly move apart, and we saw that we were standing over a real stove. One Polish woman began to shout: “We are political, we are political! Free us! Someone turned off the lights, and the floor moved. They brought them into another room, and there the shelves, like in a bathhouse, began to drive everyone higher, let steam in there, people began to fall from top to bottom. I am lying on the floor, and they all roll and roll …”, - says Ekaterina Davydenkova.
Later, on the street, the survivors were told to choose clothes for themselves from a heap of dresses made of rags, and they were given "goltschue" - wooden shoes.
“Then they took me to a bathhouse, or something, - they again stripped naked, knee-deep water, they began to pin numbers on my arm. First, they wrote with a pencil, and then pricked with such double needles wrapped in thread. I didn't feel anything already, I just looked at the numbers - 79663. It's not scary … trifles … trifles compared to the overall picture,”recalls the 89-year-old woman.
After that, all the prisoners were given striped clothes, Katya did not get a headscarf, so she went without a headdress until her release. For a week she was kept in quarantine, in the 21st barrack, then she was assigned to the 19th. Two-story bunks, no blankets, no pillows, shoes were placed under the head. They were taken to work through the notorious gate with the inscription “Labor liberates”.
“There was always an orchestra playing in front of the gates, led by a woman named Sonya. If men were driving towards us, we had to turn away, they - in one direction, we - in the other. But they poured something into our food, and there was no time for men. And not one of the women in the camp had a period, not one! And I didn't. Something like that was added to our food, that's for sure! I thought that I would never become a mother, even when I returned home, there was nothing for a long time, and then I got married … Now I already have great-grandchildren,”says the former prisoner of Auschwitz.
In the camp, she worked in construction. She worked, like everyone else, for 12 hours. Basically digging trenches. There was only one break - for lunch.
“Once I got tired, couldn't stand it, and sat down on the ground. A shepherd dog immediately ran up to me and breathes right into my face, its tongue is red and long! I was so scared. For several years I have only dreamed of this - this shepherd runs up to me, and I run away,”says Ekaterina Davydenkova.
According to the former prisoner of the “death camp”, the unofficial mistresses in the barracks were Poles: “They had the right to receive parcels, and they did, but we didn’t. They never shared anything with us, what are you ?! They would rather "lay" you. There, in the barracks, I had a cache behind the bed counter - a tablespoon, I found it somewhere on the street, I don't remember. So, can you imagine, when we were taken to the 30th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on an excursion, I thought: "Let me see!" I climbed and found this spoon … I was so scared, I was just petrified, I couldn't even speak. I took her to Moscow and wanted to take her to the museum. I come home, open the bag, and there is nothing! My spoon is crumbling into powder! What was it? I still don't know. But this year, for the 70th birthday, I would go, but no one called. Putin wasn’t invited and I was offended!”
Author: Oleg Goryunov