Direct translation of the article. Edited. Follow the link in the title for photos.
IA REGNUM continues to investigate the traces of Hitler's aggression and genocide on the territory of modern Russia. Our new step on this path is a series of essays on concentration, labor, transfer camps on the territory of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation within its current borders.
Millerovo pit - a camp for Soviet prisoners of war on the territory of the city of Millerovo, Rostov region - was part of the Dulag-125 concentration camp.
Dulag is a transit camp
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According to various sources, at least 120,000 prisoners of war passed through it, of which more than 40,000 died.
On June 28, 1942, German forces launched a southerly offensive known as Plan Blau. In early July, having occupied Voronezh, the German 4th Panzer Army of the Wehrmacht turned to the south and moved to Rostov, almost without encountering resistance.
On July 12, units of the 4th Panzer Army, advancing from the north, linked up in the Millerovo area with units of the 1st Panzer Army advancing from the west. The encirclement, known as the "Millerovocauldron", got about 40,000 and commanders of the 9th, 24th, 38th Soviet armies. By July 15, 1942, German units occupied Millerovo. In the period from 15 to 17 July, 75,000 Soviet soldiers were captured in the Millerovo area.
During the occupation, several concentration camps were located in the city of Millerovo. The most ambitious was called Millerovskaya Pit.
It was a temporary transit camp in which the prisoners of war were in the open air, their life and food were not organized. During the offensive of the German troops in 1942, there were so many prisoners that they did not have time to send them to the west, and the prisoners stayed in this concentration camp for months, even though it was temporary. Soviet prisoners of war were in the open air from July to December 1942: in summer under intolerable heat, and in winter in severe frost.
After the liberation of the Rostov region from the Nazis, at the end of March 1943, a special commission carried out the opening of the graves on the territory of the camp.
IA REGNUM refers to the materials of the Rostov local historian Natalia Orlenko, who described the "pit of death" better than others and collected few memories of it.
According to various sources, from 40,000 to 200,000 people died in this place, both the Red Army soldiers and local residents.
The Dulag-125 concentration camp was located in the Glubokaya River valley, south of the city of Millerovo. The Germans chose a very convenient place for their camp. There was a railway nearby, which made it possible to quickly send people to Germany. And on both sides of the river, the banks rose steeply by 20-30 meters. The whole area was perfectly visible. This was a natural obstacle to escape. There were more of them until the Germans installed barbed wire, towers and dogs. After that, the escapes decreased, all attempts were stopped by the executions of those who fled and just crowds of prisoners. But the locals still came, exchanged the prisoners for food, handed them food, under the threat of their own lives. Those who managed to escape were hidden in their own homes.
The number of prisoners of war was huge, and they quickly drank the water. They ate all the vegetation and living creatures, even there were no bushes. For many years after, nothing grew in this valley, nor was found. The prisoners were almost not fed, every few days they were given a pot of gruel for several people. Naturally, there was terrible unsanitary conditions and high mortality.
In some places in the ravines, sandstone stones came to the surface. We used to walk there as children, and I remember the inscriptions carved on those stones, something like "-- Yves. Belov Bel. Church. 1920."
And then someone erased these inscriptions. With modern search capabilities. But these inscriptions are nothing compared to other destroyed evidence.
As a local resident said, being a boy, a pioneer, in the post-war years he and his friends found many medallions and army documents in the caches along this beam. He says they took a whole bucket, took it to the military registration and enlistment office, they were given gratitude, what they brought was burned in the boiler furnace. Much later, a former employee of the military registration and enlistment office confessed about this, before his death, he repented to that, already an adult, pioneer. This was an order from above, hiding real losses.
From the memoirs: A. Gondusov: "Along the contour of the camp there were SS men with dogs and machine guns. We, boys, picking apples in the orchard of the local technical school, rolled them from the mountainside for ours, and they, poor fellows, grabbed them, but shouted: 'Go away, they will shoot you!' The automatic burst immediately confirmed their words.
According to the stories of our mothers, together with the children, when they were looking for their relatives among the prisoners from a hill above the pit, the Nazis often snatched pretty young women and girls, threw them into the camp, and they disappeared without a trace ... There were so many prisoners that they almost drank the Glubokaya River, ate all the vegetation in the area, including thorns with roots. Some tried to escape from the camp, and then at night machine gun fires and dogs barking were heard ."
The Germans carried out executions of prisoners of war who, due to illness or severe injury, were not able to work. Excerpts from the testimony of Lieutenant General Kurt von Osterreich, arrested in 1945 by officers of the Smersh counterintelligence department of the NKO of the USSR, are interesting. Kurt von Osterreich reported that in German prisoner of war camps, it was practiced to kill disabled (wounded, exhausted and sick) Soviet prisoners of war with the help of poisons, using the medical staff of the camps, and also in another way. He was sent to Ukraine as head of the prisoner of war department at the headquarters of the Army Group "B". During a visit in the summer of 1942 to Dulag-125 in Millerovo, the camp commandant, when asked about what he was doing with disabled Russian prisoners of war, reported,
This is how Dulag-125 is described by his former prisoner, an officer of the Red Army named Zadera. Near the agricultural technical school, the Germans fenced off a ditch, where they drove several thousand prisoners of war.
"We slept right on the ground, the wounded were not given any assistance and they were not fed, but at first the security was minimal, and it was possible to escape. But the Germans quickly adjusted everything with the guards, drove the dogs, put barbed wire in three rows ... but they also did not feed and did not provide assistance to the wounded."
According to the testimony of the prisoners, the camp was divided into three sections. Towers were installed along the perimeter, as well as machine-gun nests and mortar crews. The civilian population from among the Jewish nationality, as well as party workers, were kept separately from the prisoners of war. In the middle of the camp, the wounded were placed, who were later sent to school No. 5 in the city of Millerovo, where the captured Soviet doctors provided medical care.
According to the testimony of MR Yatsenko, "the seriously wounded the Germans were poisoning with something inside the camp." Those who died from wounds, diseases, those who were shot and tortured were buried by special teams in a ditch outside the camp.
According to N.F.Khoroshilov, inside the camp, the Germans, policemen-guards for disobedience beat with sticks, shot prisoners. According to the testimony of the prisoner of the Usatenko camp, the prisoners of war dug wells on the territory of the camp, from where they got water for drinking, since the water in the Glubokaya river was completely drained out during the several weeks of the camp's existence. With the onset of cold weather, the prisoners dug out dugouts, which served them as a refuge from rain and snow. They were fed in the camp once a day; as a rule, the food was burnt wheat and sunflower seeds, which the prisoners boiled in huge vats. The prisoners of war were watered once a day, one scoop of water was relied on for one prisoner. At night, prisoners of war were forbidden to get up from their place, if someone got up, then the Germans immediately fired from the towers.
In his memoirs, A. Gondusov, an eyewitness of those years, wrote: “Having occupied my hometown of Millerovo in the Rostov region and shot about three hundred patriots and communists in the first days, the invaders then organized a huge camp on the southern outskirts of the city, in the natural depression of the Glubokaya River. I was a living witness - a twelve-year-old boy who saw all this terrible tragedy, all the mockery of the prisoners of war by the Nazis. There was truly hell! "
While preparing this article, one again feels an acute annoyance that all the photographs were taken by German soldiers. I understand that the situation here is specific, no one else, except them, could take such photos. But no matter what military theme you take, there will be a hundred German ones for one of our photographs. And they are actively selling them to us at online auctions. Would feel at least a little guilty, would have collected all such photos from all over Germany and would have given us as meager compensation.
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