Eighty-one years ago, on March 19, 1944, Soviet troops liberated the prisoners of the Nazi Azarychi extermination camp.
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| Azarychi |
Even as they retreated under the blows of the Red Army, the Nazis sought to destroy as many Soviet civilians as possible. To this end, they created the Azarychi concentration camp in a swamp near the village of the same name (present-day Kalinkovich District, Gomel Region, Belarus).
Throughout the summer of 1943 and into late autumn, on the right bank of the Dnieper, from north to south, downstream, by order of the German fascist command, engineering and defense work was carried out to build a heavily fortified defense line in the path of the Soviet troops' offensive.
In addition to prisoners of war and representatives of the Wehrmacht army who had committed crimes, the civilian population living in the frontline zone was involved everywhere in digging trenches. All able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 65 were to accompany the Wehrmacht troops and carry out the excavations. Since livestock was slaughtered and villages and fields were burned at the same time (scorched earth tactics), the question arose of what to do with the disabled residents. The German 9th Army's military diary stated: "It is planned to transfer all disabled people from the front-line zone to the territory to be abandoned. The decision to relieve the food burden in this way was made by the Army High Command after careful calculations and analysis of the consequences."
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| Josef Harpe |
On March 10, 1944, by order of the 9th Army commander, General of the Panzer Forces Josef Harpe, the commander of the 56th Panzer Corps, General Friedrich Hossbach, and the commander of the 35th Infantry Division, General Georg Richert,[6] a concentration camp was established, to which, according to various sources, between thirty and fifty thousand Soviet citizens were quickly transported: residents of the Gomel, Mogilev, and Polesie regions of Belarus, as well as the Smolensk and Oryol regions of Russia[6] - the elderly, disabled women, and children.
In June 1944, two camps were established on the eastern bank of the Dnieper and southeast of Vitebsk. The first contained more than 3,000 civilians expelled from Mogilev and nearby settlements. The second contained about 8,000 civilians at the time of the camp's liberation by troops of the 3rd Belorussian Front.
By March 12, 1944, soldiers of the 35th Infantry Division and the Waffen-SS had herded at least 40,000, and possibly 50,000, men into the barbed-wire swamp near the village of Ozarichi. At the same time, hundreds of people were shot and killed on the way to the territory behind the barbed wire. Many of those classified as disabled and impounded in a confined space without food or drinking water were sick with typhus. The 9th Army's diary described this as a success. "The operation brought significant relief to the entire battlefield. Residential areas were unloaded and cleared for troop deployment. Food was no longer wasted in useless mess halls. Due to the isolation of patients, the sources of infection were significantly reduced."[5]
Some authors claim that the German command intended to use typhus as a biological weapon against the advancing Soviet troops, and the Ozarichi concentration camp, where typhus patients were collected, was created specifically for this purpose. At the end of the war Josef Harpe was taken prisoner by the Americans and held in captivity until 1948.Harpe died in 1968 in the city of Nuremberg. Very light punishment for a war criminal
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| Three-year-old Tanya stands next to the body of her murdered mother at the Azarychi concentration camp. |
Those ten days under the open sky will forever go down in history as one of the most atrocious crimes of Nazism. Azarychi prisoners lived an average of three days. Hungry, exhausted from long marches, weakened by constant beatings, they were kept in the cold on the ground, deprived of food and water. The occupiers deliberately forbade burying the dead.
There were no buildings (huts, trenches, etc.) on the grounds of the Ozarichi concentration camp; prisoners were kept outdoors. In the event of a severe cold snap or a strong gust of wind, people removed the clothes from the corpses and saved themselves and their children by wrapping their arms and legs in rags.
The hygienic conditions in the camp were terrible. There were no latrines on the camp grounds. The snow cover became a solid mess. During the thaw, all the sewage flowed into the swampy parts of the camps, from where prisoners were forced to draw water to moisten their throats and stir the flour soup for the children. The liquid was also squeezed out of the moss.
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| The girl Vera Kuryan, whose mother and all her relatives died in the Azarychi concentration camp |
The prisoners were guarded day and night by German soldiers in watchtowers equipped with machine guns. When anyone approached the barbed wire, the guards would fire without warning. He also threatened to be shot for any kind of protest. Many dead and wounded lay along the guard fence. All three camps were surrounded by barbed wire, the entrances to which were mined.
The prisoners were starved; they were not given water, fires were prohibited, and prisoners received no medical care. There were cases where people chewed bitter pine needles and ate them with snow. [9]
There were cases where the Germans fed prisoners bread mixed with bran and sawdust, throwing it from cars. These were fights between prisoners over bread.
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Outdoors and without food
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The Nazis created conditions for mass death. The typhus epidemic that broke out in the camp was no coincidence. Many went mad. The Nazis shot anyone who tried to escape. All access points were mined. Once a week, bread was brought and thrown in pieces to the crowds of exhausted people, like dogs.
There were also cases of rape of girls by German soldiers in the camp. After the rape, the girls were murdered and their bodies mutilated (their breasts were cut off, their cheeks were slashed).
Many died after liberation due to the inhumane conditions they endured. This fulfilled the central tenet of Nazi policy: "undermining the biological strength of the Soviet people."
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The living alongside the dead
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Liberation
The prisoners of Ozarichi were liberated by Lieutenant General Pavel Ivanovich Batov's 65th Army. The 65th Army command was aware of the presence of concentration camps on the front line of the German defense. The objective of creating a concentration camp and the threat posed to the prisoners should the Red Army attempt to liberate them were also known. The threat was that, in the event of an attempt to free the prisoners, the Germans were prepared to destroy the civilian population by exposing them to mortar fire.
P. I. Batov, "In Campaigns and Battles"[7]:
In March 1944, on the line north of Ozarichi and further toward Parichi in the swamps, scouts of the 37th Guards Division discovered three extermination camps created by the Nazi command. Thousands of Soviet citizens languished and died there, mainly the elderly, women, and children. The story of these camps is one of the most atrocious atrocities committed by the fascist invaders during the war on Belarusian soil.
On March 18, 1944, following the instructions of the Chief of Staff of the 65th Army, Major General M.V. Bobkov, Soviet parliamentarians delivered an ultimatum to the command of the Wehrmacht's 110th Infantry Division requiring the immediate withdrawal of German troops from the first line of defense and the abandonment of the concentration camps in the neutral zone. The Soviet command guaranteed the withdrawal of German troops within 24 hours without pursuing the retreating troops.
On the night of March 19, the German troops withdrew to the prepared defense line along the Tremlya River, leaving the concentration camps in the neutral zone. On the morning of March 19, the first Red Army soldiers appeared on the territory of the Ozarichi concentration camp. The entrances to the camp were mined, so the Soviet command demanded a certain order of conduct for the prisoners. The lack of attention to the army's needs had tragic consequences: there were dead and wounded, blown up by the mines.
Some two or three thousand Red Army soldiers participated in the liberation of the prisoners. Those suffering from typhus, weakened children, and the elderly were carried out by the Red Army on stretchers, wrapped in coats or blankets, sent to quarantine, and then to hospitals. Among those rescued were those suffering from alimentary dystrophy and acute bacillary dysentery. In two days, on March 18 and 19, 1944, troops of the 18th Corps of the 65th Army of the Samara 1st Belorussian Front liberated 34,110 people from the Ozarichi camps, including 15,960 children under the age of 13, 517 orphans, 13,072 women, and 4,448 elderly people. Among those rescued were infants. More than 300 of the liberated prisoners suffered bullet and shrapnel wounds.
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Maria Rychankova (from the village of Virichev) with three children, liberated from a concentration camp, on the way to the village of Ozarichi. On the left is Ivan (born in 1937), in Maria's arms is Fenya, and on the right is Anya. Two-year-old Fenya (died on March 23) and four-year-old Anya (died on March 29) died from the consequences of imprisonment.
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The liberated prisoners received soldiers' rations for some time.
Army newspaper of the 65th Army "Stalin's Strike"[11]:
He is not a person who will forget! It is impossible, impossible to forget, like your mother's appearance and your daughter's sweet face. Do you remember, comrade soldiers and officers, our stories about the extermination camp, from which one of our units liberated 33,434 elderly people, women, and children?
— April 22, 1944.
By decision of the Military Council of the 65th Army on March 19, 1944, a state of emergency was declared in this territory "in order to create conditions that would exclude any possibility of civilians left behind by the Germans infiltrating the military zone and infecting military personnel and local residents with typhus."
Quarantine zones were created, and 25 field hospitals were deployed, where doctors from three armies were urgently deployed.
Despite the measures taken by the 65th Army command, many prisoners died after liberation. Around 700 cases of typhus have been reported as a result of contact between the liberated prisoners and the local population. More than fifty soldiers from the 65th Army, who participated in the liberation of those with typhus, became infected and died. They are buried in the area of the village of Ozarichi. [4]
Furthermore, after the prisoners were released, the disease spread to the soldiers of the 19th Rifle Corps, led by General D.I. Samarsky, who took an active part in rescuing the prisoners. Typhus also began to affect the inhabitants of the settlements where the hospitals were located. In the village of Starye Novoselki, there is a mass grave in which 230 soldiers are buried. According to ancient sources, most of the soldiers died of typhus.
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Patients waiting for a car to be sent to the hospital after the camp is liberated
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Of the 3,000 staff members involved in providing medical care and anti-epidemic measures to the population, about 8 percent became infected and developed typhus despite preventive measures.
Death toll
The number of prisoners in the Ozarichi concentration camp ranged between 30,000 and 55,000 (mostly disabled citizens (elderly, children, disabled people, women)). Among them were about 7,000 typhus patients. The death toll in Ozarichi fluctuated around 20,000. They were mainly residents of the regions of Soviet Belarus and Soviet Russia. According to the accounts of some eyewitnesses, between 70 and 100 people died in the camp every day.
At the end of February 1944, following instructions from Hitler and the commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Ernst Busch (who died in captivity in England in 1945), the commander of the Wehrmacht's 9th Army, Harpe, ordered the deportation of civilians living in the rear of the 9th Army to the Ozarichi concentration camp. The order was destroyed after its execution and does not appear in archival documents. Within 4 or 5 days, residents of the Zhlobin, Bobruisk, and Kirov districts were transferred to the camp. From the collection points, they were sent by car or driven on foot to Zhlobin, Telusha, and Krasny Bereg, then loaded into calf wagons of 60 to 65 people each and transported within one or two days to the Rudobelka and Starushka stations.
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| Bodies of women and children who died at the Ozarichi camp. |
In total, according to German archives, nine echelons of 60 wagons each were sent. Prisoners from Polish intermediate camps during the same period were transported on foot or by car. Along the way, they mingled with typhoid fever patients. Along the way, the Germans mocked and beat them. Those left behind were shot. The columns of prisoners were followed by funeral teams, who burned the corpses.
The materials of the Nuremberg Trials also cited the following figures: among those released, 15,960 children under 13, 13,072 disabled women, and 4,448 elderly people.[11]
Trial
Immediately after the liberation of the camp, the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army conducted an investigation into the crimes committed by the Nazis at the Ozarichi concentration camp. The conclusion on the investigation materials in the case of the extermination of Soviet citizens was approved on April 4, 1944, by the Military Prosecutor of the 65th Army, Colonel of Justice Burakov, and the investigation materials were transferred to the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Crimes of the German Fascist Invaders.
In Belarus, in 1946-1947, several trials of German war criminals accused of crimes committed at the Ozarichi concentration camp were held.
In January 1946, during the Minsk Trial, the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military Region sentenced Lieutenant General Johann Richert, commander of the 35th Infantry Division, to death by hanging. He was the founder of the Rudobelka and Dert concentration camps.
In December 1947, during the Gomel Trial, the Military Tribunal of the Byelorussian Military Region sentenced the commander of the 110th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Eberhard von Kurowski, founder of the "Podosinnik," "Ozarichi," and other concentration camps, as well as members of his staff (and others, a total of 16 people) who participated in the deportation of the civilian population to the concentration camps, to imprisonment in correctional labor camps for a term of 25 years each.
In November 1947, during the Bobruisk Trial, the Military Tribunal of the Byelorussian Military Region sentenced the commanders of the divisions of the 9th Army to 25 years each for participating in the deportation of the population to the Ozarichi concentration camp (a total of 21 defendants).
However, not all participants in the events were convicted. One of them, Friedrich Gossbach, lived in West Germany after the end of the war and wrote memoirs (including about the Ozarichi concentration camp). And the former quartermaster of the 9th Army, Colonel Werner Bodenstein, the most active organizer of the Ozarichi concentration camp, continued to serve in the Bundeswehr after the war and rose to the rank of brigadier general.
Memoirs of Prisoners and Eyewitnesses
Army General K. K. Rokossovsky was beside himself with rage when he heard the story of Lieutenant Colonel Kolodkin, who organized assistance for the liberated prisoners of the Ozarichi concentration camps.
K. K. Rokossovsky told a member of the Military Council of the Telegin Front[9]:
Make all the soldiers aware of these camps, elect representatives from the regiments, and send them there. This will be better than any political talk.
The liberated concentration camps and the prisoners themselves presented a terrible picture.
A member of the Belarusian government, Grekova, upon returning from the concentration camp, testified:
All the children were evacuated. There were about a hundred sick women left. You can't imagine this horror. There is barbed wire in the swamp. There are mines everywhere. People are delirious, with temperatures of forty degrees on frozen ground...
The existence of the Ozarichi ( Azarychi ) extermination camp was short: on the night of March 18-19, the Nazis abandoned it.
Memoirs of a former prisoner of the Ozarichesky concentration camp, Mikhail Porkalov, a native of the village of Molcha (in 1944, he was 11 years old)[7]:
On the morning of March 18, we found that the camp guards were no longer there; the Germans had left. Some ran to the wire fence, to the gate, but everything there was mined, and many people died. No one knew where the passageway was, but people were fleeing the camp as if from hell; no one was thinking about the mines. We soon saw scouts. When they left the camp, they thought it was all over, but the joy of liberation was soon overshadowed by the deaths of the youngest children, who died in the hospitals one after another. Eight children in our large family died of typhus.
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Brothers Moisey, 11, and Grisha Beliakov, 9, from the Kirov district, Mogilev region, whose mother died in the concentration camp
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Memoirs of a former prisoner of the Ozarichi concentration camp, Ivan Osadchy, a native of the village of Ugly, Oktyabrsky District (in 1944, he was 13 years old)[7]:
In early March 1944, I fell ill with typhus. When the Germans arrived in the village, I had been ill for six days. They drove cars with tarpaulins and gathered people around the village. We were told we would be resettled from the frontline zone. It was allowed to take everything with you. People took clothes and food. Everyone was ordered to go to their front doors and wait for the cars to arrive. My mother began to cry and beg me not to take me because she was sick. But the German command ignored these requests. They carried me out on a blanket and put me in a car. In total, about 50 of us were taken out. At first, we were taken to the Mikul-Gorodok concentration camp (near the village of Dubrova), where they took everything from us, leaving only those who could hide grain and millet in their pockets. We stayed at this camp for two days. On March 10, we were marched in columns on foot to "Ozarichi." I felt sick, so my mother tried to put me in a cart. But the officer kicked me out of the cart, as I was already an adult, and the babies and toddlers were taken in a horse-drawn carriage. My mother started begging and crying again, saying I was sick. They put me in a cart anyway; I wouldn't have made it on my own. After all, this was about 15 kilometers, driven through mud. I clearly remember the moment we approached the camp. It was terrifying. Near the gate, there was a large crowd of people, being herded with rifle butts, dogs attached to them.
A former prisoner of the Ozarichi concentration camp, Mikhail Porkalov, a native of the village of Molcha (he was 11 years old in 1944), says:
"At first, they took us to the Rabkor sorting point. There they took off all our clothes, searched people's mouths, and looked for gold crowns. If they found any, they took people aside. All the things people took with them were taken away or cut with knives; only clothes and small backpacks were allowed. We arrived at the camp on March 8. A terrible picture appeared before us, because there were already people there, there were many corpses around. People had little clothing; I think this was done so that more people would be infected with typhus. The climate also contributed to this. The weakened body was affected very quickly. Every day, about a hundred people died, and their people dragged them into a special ditch, which I discovered only when we began to leave the camp. It was forbidden to move around the territory, and it was also forbidden to approach the fence, the sentries fired without warning. We kept warm, huddled together. We had a large family: five adults and ten children. There was another family a meter away from us, but neither we nor the adults were practically speaking to each other. No one had the slightest idea where we were, where our army was... Everyone was thinking only about how to survive. On the morning of March 18, we found that the camp guards were no longer there, the Germans had left. Some ran to the wire fence, to the gate, but everything there was mined, many people died. No one knew where the passage was, but people were fleeing the camp as if from hell, no one was thinking about the mines. Soon we saw scouts. When we left the camp, we thought it was all over, but the joy of liberation was very soon overshadowed by the deaths of the youngest children, who died in the hospitals one after another. 8 The children in our large family died of typhus.
General Batov, commander of the 65th Army, which liberated the prisoners of the Ozarichi concentration camp, recalled this camp in his book "In Campaigns and Battles."
P. I. Batov. "In Campaigns and Battles":
On the right flank, the enemy took no further active action. But here another enemy raged: typhus. Scouts reported to the division commander that nearby, in the swamp, they saw camps: barbed wire, behind which lay the cold, without any shelter: women, men, and the elderly. Division commander Ushakov sent several units to recapture the suffering people before they were shot by the Nazis. But the German fascist command did not give the order to destroy the prisoners. It was waiting for something else. Russian soldiers will rush to the freezing women, hug the children, and then a typhus louse will crawl among the ranks of the advancing Soviet troops... Everyone who was brought to the camps near the front line was infected with typhus. The atrocities of the fascists at the Ozarichi concentration camp were unparalleled in a series of crimes against the peaceful Soviet population, humanity as a whole. Here, the occupiers used a biological weapon: a typhus epidemic.
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In 1965, on the site of the "Ozarichi extermination camp" (now the Kalinkovichi district of the Gomel region), a memorial complex was erected according to a design by sculptor D. A. Popov and chief architect F. U. Khairulin. There is a monument of three steles, on which the names of women, children, and the elderly are carved. On the pedestal are wreaths and fresh flowers in memory of the thousands of prisoners who remained forever in Ozarichi.
On June 26, 2004, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus, the "Museum of Remembrance of the Victims of the Ozarichi Extermination Camp" was opened in the village council building. It contains archival materials, documents, prisoners' memoirs, their photographs, and personal belongings.
Students of the Ozarichi District Gymnasium organized a museum of local lore, which collected materials on the history of their relatives, the prisoners of "Ozarichi."[9]
On March 19, 2014, a requiem meeting was held in the village of Ozarichi. It was dedicated to the memory of the fallen prisoners and those who managed to survive.[10]
A film[12] was also made about the Ozarichi concentration camp.
On December 9, 2023, after reconstruction, an updated memorial complex was inaugurated in Azarychi.
In memory of this tragedy, a memorial complex was inaugurated in Azarychi. Although the prisoners were not assigned numbers, the tragedy was forever etched in the hearts of the people. Grief does not expire, nor do the crimes against humanity engendered by Nazism.
The memory of a common past and the rejection of Nazism unite Russia and Belarus today.
National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺
"Ozarichi" (Azarychi) in History
In the postwar years, USSR historians and publicists wrote little about the Ozarichi concentration camp. The camp's history has so far been studied superficially. Many archives remain closed to the public, including those in Germany. However, German historian Professor Christoph Rass, referring to numerous archival documents, published the book "Human Material. German Soldiers on the Eastern Front," which chronicles the Wehrmacht operation related to the creation of the camp at Ozarichi. [14]
Since there is still debate in Germany about how the Wehrmacht was involved in Nazi crimes, the Ozarichi are important in this regard because the operation is entirely on the Wehrmacht's conscience and did not involve SS special forces or Sonderkommandos. It is worth noting that German generals mostly escaped responsibility. Many of those who planned the Ozarichi operation lived in Germany after the war, and some of them even taught at educational institutions.
References
- 1.- https://bis.nlb.by/by/documents/145238
- 2.-↑ https://zviazda.by/be/news/20140318/1395090646-ragachouski-front
- 3.-↑ https://bel.sputnik.by/20190318/Bolsh-za-tydzen-lyudz-ne-vytrymlval---gnul-gstoryya-lagera-smerts-Azarychy-1040519167.html
- 4.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 3 Ozarichi, marzo de 1944... Archivado el 14 de julio de 2014 en Wayback Machine. Periódico militar bielorruso. Número 49 del 15 de marzo de 2013. Shkuran Arkadi.
- 5.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 Sven Félix Kellerhoff. La Wehrmacht se deshizo de los "comedores inútiles". Consultado el 19 de septiembre de 2014. Archivado desde el original el 29 de agosto de 2014.
- 6.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 The Politics of Genocide Archivado el 15 de abril de 2009 en Wayback Machine. Khatyn. Complejo Conmemorativo del Estado.
- 7.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 3 4 5 Historia del campo de exterminio de Ozarichi Archivado el 14 de julio de 2014 en Wayback Machine. Pasas de Juventa.
- 8.-↑ Los niños y la guerra. Campo de exterminio de Ozarichi. Consultado el 16 de junio de 2014. Archivado desde el original el 14 de julio de 2014.
- 9.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 3 Campo de exterminio de Ozarichi Archivado el 14 de julio de 2014 en Wayback Machine. Departamento de Educación del Comité Ejecutivo Regional de Gomel de la República de Bielorrusia. Institución educativa "Colegio Vocacional Estatal de Servicios al Consumidor de Gomel".
- 10.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 El 19 de marzo, se llevó a cabo una reunión de réquiem en el pueblo de Ozarichi (el lugar donde murieron 12.000 bielorrusos en 2 semanas) Archivado el 14 de julio de 2014 en Wayback Machine. Noticias en vídeo. Televisión metropolitana. 19 de marzo de 2014 23:40.
- 11.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 3 Bielorrusia hoy Archivado el 26 de agosto de 2014 en Wayback Machine. No es un hombre que olvide a Ozarichi. 18 de abril de 2013. 21:23:02. Ulitenok Galina.
- 12.-↑ Перейти обратно:1 2 Trial by Death Archivado el 10 de agosto de 2014 en Wayback Machine. Noticia. 21.by. 6 de mayo de 2006 00:00.
- 13.-↑ Un lugar de recuerdo y dolor. El renovado complejo conmemorativo fue inaugurado después de la reconstrucción en Ozarichi. Consultado el 9 de diciembre de 2023. Archivado desde el original el 9 de diciembre de 2023.
- 14.-(�� Campo nazi "Ozarichi" Archivado el 8 de agosto de 2014 en Wayback Machine. Foro de Movimientos de Búsqueda.
