Why the Dutch light candles every year in memory of 101 Uzbeks

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Every spring, the Dutch gather in a forest near Utrecht, lighting candles in memory of the executed Soviet soldiers from Central Asia. 101 prisoners of the concentration camp were shot in this place in 1942. This story did not receive wide publicity, and could have sunk into oblivion forever, if not for the Dutch journalist's own investigation.

Fatal battle near Smolensk and a hundred survivors surrounded

In the early 2000s, Dutch journalist Reiding worked in Russia for several years. It was then that he heard about a little-known Soviet cemetery located near the city of Amersfoort. The man was very surprised that such a resonant information reached him for the first time, and he set about searching for witnesses and collecting material in the local archives.

It soon became clear that the bodies of more than 800 Soviet soldiers were actually buried in the indicated place. Most of those killed were brought from various Dutch regions and Germany. And 100 and one unnamed prisoners were shot directly in Amersfoort. In the battle of Smolensk, the Red Army fought to the last bullet, after which they began to retreat to their own with their last strength. Asians, exhausted by the unfamiliar forest, unusual cold and hunger, were surrounded. There they were taken prisoner in the first days of the Nazi invasion of the USSR and sent to Holland occupied by Germany with an insidious propaganda goal.

"Untermenschen" in the Amersfoort POW camp and punishing local people for helping

According to Reiding, the Nazis deliberately selected prisoners with an Asian type of appearance, who looked "subhuman" in their eyes ("untermenschen", as the Germans called them). The Nazis hoped that this kind of Soviet citizens would accelerate the accession of the Dutch, who resisted Hitler's ideas, to Nazi society. As the journalist found out, the bulk of the prisoners were Uzbeks from Samarkand. “There may have been Kazakhs, Kyrgyz or Bashkirs among them, but the majority were Uzbeks,” Reiding said.

One of the surviving witnesses of those events, Henk Bruckhausen, told the journalist how, as a teenager, he first saw Soviet prisoners brought to the city. Their condition was so depressing that the old man remembered this sight in detail for the rest of his life. Their clothes were in tatters, their legs and arms were worn out, probably after heavy fighting and long walking. The Nazis led them along the main city street from the station to the concentration camp, exposing the "true Soviet soldier" on display. Some barely moved, supported by their comrades walking alongside.

In the camp, the captive Asians were immediately created horrifying living conditions. German guards prohibited local residents from serving food and water to the prisoners. According to the testimony of the prisoner of the camp, Alex de Leeuw, the warders specially brought the soldiers to this animal state. Throughout the fall, Soviet prisoners were kept in the open air. From the archives, Reiding learned that the hardest work was assigned to the emaciated Red Army - hauling bricks, sand, and logs in the winter season.

Torment for the sake of a propaganda video and participation in the filming of Goebbels

By 1942, the situation at the front did not please Hitler, and he ordered something to be done. Before the battle for Moscow, it was necessary to raise the spirit of the soldiers who took Smolensk with difficulty. Before that, the Nazis took possession of entire states in a matter of days, but here they were stuck in the Russian outback for two months. Then Goebbels put on ideological contrast, deciding to make the enemy insignificantly pathetic. He conceived a small video, where impartial Soviet soldiers torture each other for a crumb of bread. For this, they mocked the prisoners of non-European appearance for the sake of future filming. The goal was to torture them to an animal state, and then throw food at them, like a hungry flock of wild animals. It was assumed that the prisoners would begin to tear each other apart, which would be captured by the Nazi propaganda camera. According to some reports, Goebbels himself was present on the historical filming.

After some time, large ranks and a whole detachment of German cameramen and directors gathered in the camp. Light, camera, motor! Tall and sleek Aryans lined up around the Asiatic corral. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, they contrasted perfectly with the exhausted prisoners. Freshly baked bread was brought to the barbed wire, after which one loaf went to the corral under the cells. A second, and according to the directors' idea, the "subhumans" were to throw themselves on the bread and on each other. But things turned out differently.

Unfulfilled Nazi Expectations and an Example of Brotherly Respect

The abandoned bread landed right in the middle of the corral, where the youngest of the Uzbek prisoners approached. The audience froze in anticipation. Still quite a boy, he carefully lifted the bread and kissed it several times, bringing it, like a shrine, to his forehead. Having performed the ceremony, he handed the loaf to the eldest of the brothers. As if on command, the Asians sat in a circle, traditionally folded their legs in an oriental way and began to pass the torn off crumbs of bread along a chain, as if they were sharing pilaf at a Samarkand wedding. Everyone got their own piece, holding it in their hands for a short time and slowly eating it with closed eyes. This strange meal threw the Germans into a stupor. All that happened was not part of their insidious plans. Goebbels' idea was shattered by the nobility of the Asian people.

At dawn, in April 1942, the prisoners were announced to be built for transportation to another concentration camp in southern France, where it would be warmer and more satisfying. In fact, the Uzbeks were taken to the nearest forest belt, where they were mercilessly shot and thrown into a common grave. Reiding, referring to the recollections of eyewitnesses (camp guards and drivers), writes that some took their death bravely, holding hands. Others who tried to escape were caught up and killed anyway. In May 1945, all camp documents were burned. Historians have established only two names of the victims - Muratov Zair and Kadyrov Khatam.

Feats were performed not only at the front. So, in the deep rear, there were also unparalleled acts of philanthropy and masculinity. So during the war, the Uzbek and his wife adopted 15 children of different nationalities.