Little prisoners of the Red Bank: Why the Soviet government was silent about the atrocities of the Nazis in Belarus

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

The world community recognized what the Nazis committed during World War II as a crime against peace and humanity. One of the manifestations of this evil is the network of concentration camps in the occupied territories, through which 18 million people have passed. Children's concentration camps became the height of cynicism and cruelty, including a donor camp in the Belarusian village of Krasny Bereg.

Trampled childhood, or why the Germans needed children

In the territories of the occupied states, including in the western republics of the Soviet Union, the Nazis created camps: first for prisoners of war, and then - with the aim of killing the "extra" civilian population belonging to the lowest, according to their ideology, races. Not only adults, but also children became victims of the Nazis. A huge number of adolescents were used as labor both in the occupied lands and in the territory of the Reich.

No less terrible was the fate of becoming the object of medical experiments in a concentration camp. New surgical techniques were practiced on Slavic children, operations bordering on sadistic ones were carried out without anesthesia in order to establish a pain threshold. Many children were destined for the terrible fate of blood donors for the soldiers of the Nazi army. This was the first glaring fact in history that enslavers used donated blood from children.

How the Nazis bullied children in the village of Krasny Bereg

In July 1941, an old estate in the small village of Krasny Bereg in the Gomel region turned into a German military hospital. When the Wehrmacht army began to suffer defeat after defeat, the need for donor blood increased significantly. So, in the outbuildings not far from the infirmary, a children's concentration camp appeared. The guys got there after the round-ups regularly carried out by the Germans in Krasny Bereg and surrounding settlements. In the early morning, the Nazis encircled the village, drove the population out of their homes and forcibly took away the children. Residents of not only Gomel, but also Mogilev and Minsk regions, as well as Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Russia became prisoners.

Children aged 8-14 years were of particular interest, which is no coincidence: this is the period when the body is actively developing, its hormonal changes take place and the blood has the most powerful healing properties. The donors were mainly girls, since they were more often the owners of the first group with a positive Rh factor - universal blood for use in medical purposes.

The children who passed the medical examination received a tag on which their blood type and personal data were indicated. Every day, a certain number of children were brought to the hospital, where their blood was pumped out - either as needed in a specific case, or completely.

The camp workers surpassed in savagery Joseph Mengele himself, a sadistic doctor who conducted the most severe experiments on prisoners. So, in Krasny Bereg, a new barbaric method of exsanguinating people was developed and tested on children. The child was injected with anticoagulants and suspended by the armpits, strongly squeezing the chest to enhance the outflow of blood, which from deep cuts on the feet fell into the containers prepared in advance. They also used the removal of skin from the feet and even their complete amputation. Almost no one was able to survive after such an operation. Children's corpses were "disposed of" - burned in a fire.

"Dead class", or how the memory of children who went through the fascist hell was immortalized in Belarus

Humanity has no right to forget about the innocent victims of Nazi atrocities. One of the reminders of their bloody crimes is a unique memorial in Krasny Bereg, often referred to as children's Khatyn. It has no analogues either in Belarus or in the whole world.

“Children who have gone through the fascist hell” - these are the words the memorial greets visitors with. The complex-monument "Square of the Sun" is located in an apple orchard. Every detail is deeply symbolic. It opens with the figure of a girl - a thin, defenseless, trying to protect herself from the horrors of war with her hands raised above her head. She stands on red stones, symbolizing droplets of child's blood. Alleys radiate from the square like rays. One of them is black - the colors of sorrow. This "ray of memory" leads to white desks - light, like the souls of children who did not have a chance to get into their class, like the lives that ended here - pure, trusting.

An empty "dead classroom", a black school board with a farewell letter from 15-year-old Katya Susanina to her father at the front, immortalized on it. On the back of the sad message there is a map of Belarus showing the locations of 16 camps created by the Germans. 5 of them are donor. Further - a snow-white "paper" boat, the kids' favorite pastime. Only they all swam away into the distance along the spring streams, and the last harbor of this was the Red Coast. On the sails are children's names taken from camp documents.

The composition is completed by easels - colored stained-glass windows, embodying the world of children's dreams. They were created according to real drawings of the children of the liberated Minsk, depicting their post-war dream. The works of children of donor age were selected for the panel. One of the stained-glass windows is based on a child's drawing by Leonid Levin, the author of the project for the Krasny Bereg complex.

How did it happen that the inhabitants of the USSR knew almost nothing about the children's donor concentration camp?

Sadly, the citizens of the Soviet Union knew little about children's donor camps. For a long time, documents of this kind have not been published with such motivation: such information can have the hardest, and sometimes irreparable impact on the human psyche, especially with a weak nervous system.

In addition, it was considered unacceptable to advertise the fact that in an international country, which was the USSR, brigades, which included local residents, helped the Germans to catch children for sending to a concentration camp. According to a number of historians and public figures, even today the difficult topic of juvenile prisoners is not studied seriously enough.

The Belarusian people sacredly honor the memory of the tragic events of World War II and condemn opportunistic politicians who are silent about the activities of children's concentration camps and even seek to deny their existence.

But these atrocities were not always committed only by men. For example, in Buchenwald they served as overseers women comparable in cruelty to sadists and executioners.