Women medical workers of the Red Army, taken prisoner near Kiev, were collected for transfer to a prisoner of war camp, August 1941:

The dress code of many girls is semi-military and semi-civilian, which is typical for the initial stage of the war, when the Red Army had difficulties in providing women's uniform sets and uniform shoes in small sizes. On the left is a sad captured artillery lieutenant, who could be the “stage commander”.

How many female soldiers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity is unknown. However, the Germans did not recognize women as military personnel and regarded them as partisans. Therefore, according to the German private Bruno Schneider, before sending his company to Russia, their commander, Oberleutnant Prinz, familiarized the soldiers with the order: “Shoot all women who serve in units of the Red Army.” Numerous facts indicate that this order was applied throughout the war.
In August 1941, on the orders of Emil Knol, commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th Infantry Division, a prisoner of war, a military doctor, was shot.
In the city of Mglinsk, Bryansk region, in 1941, the Germans captured two girls from a medical unit and shot them.
After the defeat of the Red Army in Crimea in May 1942, in the fishing village "Mayak" not far from Kerch, an unknown girl was hiding in the house of a resident of Buryachenko. military uniform. On May 28, 1942, the Germans discovered her during a search. The girl resisted the Nazis, shouting: “Shoot, you bastards! I am dying for the Soviet people, for Stalin, and you, monsters, will die like a dog!” The girl was shot in the yard.
At the end of August 1942 in the village of Krymskaya Krasnodar region a group of sailors was shot, among them were several girls in military uniform.
In the village of Starotitarovskaya, Krasnodar Territory, among the executed prisoners of war, the corpse of a girl in a Red Army uniform was discovered. She had a passport with her in the name of Tatyana Alexandrovna Mikhailova, 1923. She was born in the village of Novo-Romanovka.
In the village of Vorontsovo-Dashkovskoye, Krasnodar Territory, in September 1942, captured military paramedics Glubokov and Yachmenev were brutally tortured.
On January 5, 1943, not far from the Severny farm, 8 Red Army soldiers were captured. Among them is a nurse named Lyuba. After prolonged torture and abuse, all those captured were shot.

Two rather grinning Nazis - a non-commissioned officer and a fanen-junker (officer candidate, right) - are escorting a captured Soviet girl soldier - into captivity... or to death?


It seems that the “Hans” do not look evil... Although - who knows? In war, completely ordinary people often do such outrageous abominations that they would never do in “another life”...
The girl is dressed in a full set of field uniforms of the Red Army model 1935 - men's, and in good "command" boots that fit.

A similar photo, probably from the summer or early autumn of 1941. Convoy - a German non-commissioned officer, a female prisoner of war in a commander's cap, but without insignia:

Divisional intelligence translator P. Rafes recalls that in the village of Smagleevka, liberated in 1943, 10 km from Kantemirovka, residents told how in 1941 “a wounded female lieutenant was dragged naked onto the road, her face and hands were cut, her breasts were cut off... »
Knowing what awaited them if captured, female soldiers, as a rule, fought to the last.
Captured women were often subjected to violence before their death. A soldier from the 11th Panzer Division, Hans Rudhof, testifies that in the winter of 1942 “... Russian nurses were lying on the roads. They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked... On these dead bodies... obscene inscriptions were written."
In Rostov in July 1942, German motorcyclists burst into the yard in which nurses from the hospital were located. They were going to change into civilian clothes, but did not have time. So, in military uniform, they were dragged into a barn and raped. However, they did not kill him.
Women prisoners of war who ended up in the camps were also subjected to violence and abuse. Former prisoner of war K.A. Shenipov said that in the camp in Drohobych there was a beautiful captive girl named Luda. “Captain Stroer, the camp commandant, tried to rape her, but she resisted, after which German soldiers", called by the captain, tied Luda to a bed, and in this position Stroyer raped her and then shot her."
In Stalag 346 in Kremenchug at the beginning of 1942, the German camp doctor Orland gathered 50 female doctors, paramedics, and nurses, stripped them and “ordered our doctors to examine them from the genitals to see if they were suffering from venereal diseases. He conducted the external inspection himself. He chose 3 young girls from them and took them to “serve” him. German soldiers and officers came for the women examined by doctors. Few of these women managed to avoid rape.

Women soldiers of the Red Army who were captured while trying to escape the encirclement near Nevel, summer 1941.




Judging by their haggard faces, they had to endure a lot even before being captured.

Here the “Hans” are clearly mocking and posing - so that they themselves can quickly experience all the “joys” of captivity!! And the unfortunate girl, who, it seems, has already had her fill of hardships at the front, has no illusions about her prospects in captivity...

In the left photo (September 1941, again near Kyiv -?), on the contrary, the girls (one of whom even managed to keep a watch on her wrist in captivity; an unprecedented thing, watches are the optimal camp currency!) do not look desperate or exhausted. The captured Red Army soldiers are smiling... A staged photo, or did you really get a relatively humane camp commandant who ensured a tolerable existence?

Camp guards from among former prisoners of war and camp police were especially cynical about women prisoners of war. They raped their captives or forced them to cohabit with them under threat of death. In Stalag No. 337, not far from Baranovichi, about 400 women prisoners of war were kept in a specially fenced area with barbed wire. In December 1967, at a meeting of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, the former chief of camp security, A.M. Yarosh, admitted that his subordinates raped prisoners in the women’s block.
Women prisoners were also kept in the Millerovo prisoner of war camp. The commandant of the women's barracks was a German woman from the Volga region. The fate of the girls languishing in this barracks was terrible:
“The police often looked into this barracks. Every day, for half a liter, the commandant gave any girl her choice for two hours. The policeman could have taken her to his barracks. They lived two to a room. These two hours he could use her as a thing, abuse her, mock her, do whatever he wanted.
Once, during the evening roll call, the police chief himself came, they gave him a girl for the whole night, the German woman complained to him that these “bastards” are reluctant to go to your policemen. He advised with a grin: “And for those who don’t want to go, arrange a “red fireman.” The girl was stripped naked, crucified, tied with ropes on the floor. Then they took a large red hot pepper, turned it inside out and inserted it into the girl’s vagina. They left it in this position for up to half an hour. Screaming was forbidden. Many girls had their lips bitten - they were holding back a scream, and after such punishment they could not move for a long time.
The commandant, who was called a cannibal behind her back, enjoyed unlimited rights over captured girls and came up with other sophisticated bullying. For example, “self-punishment”. There is a special stake, which is made crosswise with a height of 60 centimeters. The girl must undress naked, insert a stake into the anus, hold on to the crosspiece with her hands, and place her feet on a stool and hold on like this for three minutes. Those who could not stand it had to repeat it all over again.
We learned about what was going on in the women's camp from the girls themselves, who came out of the barracks to sit on a bench for ten minutes. Also, the policemen boastfully talked about their exploits and the resourceful German woman.”

Women doctors of the Red Army who were captured worked in camp hospitals in many prisoner of war camps (mainly in transit and transit camps).


There may also be a German field hospital in the front line - in the background you can see part of the body of a car equipped for transporting the wounded, and one of the German soldiers in the photo has a bandaged hand.

Infirmary barracks of the prisoner of war camp in Krasnoarmeysk (probably October 1941):


In the foreground is a non-commissioned officer of the German field gendarmerie with a characteristic badge on his chest.

Women prisoners of war were held in many camps. According to eyewitnesses, they made an extremely pathetic impression. It was especially difficult for them in the conditions of camp life: they, like no one else, suffered from the lack of basic sanitary conditions.
K. Kromiadi, a member of the labor distribution commission, visited the Sedlice camp in the fall of 1941 and talked with the women prisoners. One of them, a female military doctor, admitted: “... everything is bearable, except for the lack of linen and water, which does not allow us to change clothes or wash ourselves.”
A group of female medical workers captured in the Kiev pocket in September 1941 was held in Vladimir-Volynsk - Oflag camp No. 365 "Nord".
Nurses Olga Lenkovskaya and Taisiya Shubina were captured in October 1941 in the Vyazemsky encirclement. First, the women were kept in a camp in Gzhatsk, then in Vyazma. In March, as the Red Army approached, the Germans transferred captured women to Smolensk to Dulag No. 126. There were few captives in the camp. They were kept in a separate barracks, communication with men was prohibited. From April to July 1942, the Germans released all women with “the condition of free settlement in Smolensk.”

Crimea, summer 1942. Very young Red Army soldiers, just captured by the Wehrmacht, and among them is the same young girl soldier:


Most likely, she is not a doctor: her hands are clean, she did not bandage the wounded in a recent battle.

After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, about 300 female medical workers were captured: doctors, nurses, and orderlies. First, they were sent to Slavuta, and in February 1943, having gathered about 600 women prisoners of war in the camp, they were loaded into wagons and taken to the West. In Rivne, everyone was lined up, and another search for Jews began. One of the prisoners, Kazachenko, walked around and showed: “this is a Jew, this is a commissar, this is a partisan.” Those who were separated from the general group were shot. Those who remained were loaded back into the wagons, men and women together. The prisoners themselves divided the carriage into two parts: in one - women, in the other - men. We recovered through a hole in the floor.
Along the way, the captured men were dropped off at different stations, and the women were brought to the city of Zoes on February 23, 1943. They lined them up and announced that they would work in military factories. Evgenia Lazarevna Klemm was also in the group of prisoners. Jewish. A history teacher at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute who pretended to be a Serbian. She enjoyed special authority among women prisoners of war. E.L. Klemm, on behalf of everyone, stated in German: “We are prisoners of war and will not work in military factories.” In response, they began to beat everyone, and then drove them into a small hall, in which it was impossible to sit down or move due to the cramped conditions. They stood like that for almost a day. And then the recalcitrants were sent to Ravensbrück. This women's camp was created in 1939. The first prisoners of Ravensbrück were prisoners from Germany, and then from European countries occupied by the Germans. All the prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in striped (blue and gray striped) dresses and unlined jackets. Underwear - shirt and panties. There were no bras or belts. In October, they were given a pair of old stockings for six months, but not everyone was able to wear them until spring. Shoes, as in most concentration camps, are wooden lasts.
The barracks were divided into two parts, connected by a corridor: a day room, in which there were tables, stools and small wall cabinets, and a sleeping room - three-tier bunks with a narrow passage between them. One cotton blanket was given to two prisoners. In a separate room lived the blockhouse - the head of the barracks. In the corridor there was a washroom and toilet.

A convoy of Soviet women prisoners of war arrived at Stalag 370, Simferopol (summer or early autumn 1942):




The prisoners carry all their meager belongings; under the hot Crimean sun, many of them tied their heads with scarves “like women” and took off their heavy boots.

Ibid., Stalag 370, Simferopol:


The prisoners worked mainly in the camp's sewing factories. Ravensbrück produced 80% of all uniforms for the SS troops, as well as camp clothing for both men and women.
The first Soviet women prisoners of war - 536 people - arrived at the camp on February 28, 1943. First, everyone was sent to a bathhouse, and then they were given camp striped clothes with a red triangle with the inscription: “SU” - Sowjet Union.
Even before the arrival of the Soviet women, the SS men spread a rumor throughout the camp that a gang of female killers would be brought from Russia. Therefore, they were placed in a special block, fenced with barbed wire.
Every day the prisoners got up at 4 am for verification, which sometimes lasted several hours. Then they worked for 12-13 hours in sewing workshops or in the camp infirmary.
Breakfast consisted of ersatz coffee, which women used mainly for washing their hair, since there was no warm water. For this purpose, coffee was collected and washed in turns.
Women whose hair had survived began to use combs that they made themselves. Frenchwoman Micheline Morel recalls that “Russian girls, using factory machines, cut wooden planks or metal plates and polished them so that they became quite acceptable combs. For a wooden comb they gave half a portion of bread, for a metal one - a whole portion.”
For lunch, the prisoners received half a liter of gruel and 2-3 boiled potatoes. In the evening, for five people they received a small loaf of bread mixed with sawdust and again half a liter of gruel.

One of the prisoners, S. Müller, testifies in her memoirs about the impression Soviet women made on the prisoners of Ravensbrück:
“...one Sunday in April we learned that Soviet prisoners refused to carry out some order, citing the fact that, according to the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross, they should be treated as prisoners of war. For the camp authorities this was unheard of insolence. For the entire first half of the day they were forced to march along Lagerstraße (the main “street” of the camp - A. Sh.) and were deprived of lunch.
But the women from the Red Army bloc (that’s what we called the barracks where they lived) decided to turn this punishment into a demonstration of their strength. I remember someone shouted in our block: “Look, the Red Army is marching!” We ran out of the barracks and rushed to Lagerstraße. And what did we see?
It was unforgettable! Five hundred Soviet women, ten in a row, kept in alignment, walked as if in a parade, taking their steps. Their steps, like the beat of a drum, beat rhythmically along Lagerstraße. The entire column moved as one. Suddenly a woman on the right flank of the first row gave the command to start singing. She counted down: “One, two, three!” And they sang:

Get up, huge country,
Get up for mortal combat...

I had heard them sing this song in a low voice in their barracks before. But here it sounded like a call to fight, like faith in an early victory.
Then they started singing about Moscow.
The Nazis were puzzled: the punishment of humiliated prisoners of war by marching turned into a demonstration of their strength and inflexibility...
The SS failed to leave Soviet women without lunch. The political prisoners took care of food for them in advance.”

Soviet women prisoners of war more than once amazed their enemies and fellow prisoners with their unity and spirit of resistance. One day, 12 Soviet girls were included in the list of prisoners intended to be sent to Majdanek, to the gas chambers. When the SS men came to the barracks to pick up the women, their comrades refused to hand them over. The SS managed to find them. “The remaining 500 people lined up in groups of five and went to the commandant. The translator was E.L. Klemm. The commandant drove those who came into the block, threatening them with execution, and they began a hunger strike.”
In February 1944, about 60 women prisoners of war from Ravensbrück were transferred to the concentration camp in Barth to the Heinkel aircraft plant. The girls refused to work there either. Then they were lined up in two rows and ordered to strip down to their shirts and remove their wooden stocks. They stood in the cold for many hours, every hour the matron came and offered coffee and a bed to anyone who agreed to go to work. Then the three girls were thrown into a punishment cell. Two of them died from pneumonia.
Constant bullying, hard labor, and hunger led to suicide. In February 1945, the defender of Sevastopol, military doctor Zinaida Aridova, threw herself at the wire.
And yet the prisoners believed in liberation, and this faith sounded in a song composed by an unknown author:

Heads up, Russian girls!
Over your head, be brave!
We don't have long to endure
The nightingale will fly in the spring...
And it will open the doors to freedom for us,
Takes a striped dress off your shoulders
And heal deep wounds,
He will wipe the tears from his swollen eyes.
Heads up, Russian girls!
Be Russian everywhere, everywhere!
It won't be long to wait, it won't be long -
And we will be on Russian soil.

Former prisoner Germaine Tillon, in her memoirs, gave a unique description of the Russian women prisoners of war who ended up in Ravensbrück: “...their cohesion was explained by the fact that they went through army school even before captivity. They were young, strong, neat, honest, and also rather rude and uneducated. There were also intellectuals (doctors, teachers) among them - friendly and attentive. In addition, we liked their rebellion, their unwillingness to obey the Germans."

Women prisoners of war were also sent to other concentration camps. Auschwitz prisoner A. Lebedev recalls that paratroopers Ira Ivannikova, Zhenya Saricheva, Victorina Nikitina, doctor Nina Kharlamova and nurse Klavdiya Sokolova were kept in the women's camp.
In January 1944, for refusing to sign an agreement to work in Germany and transfer to the category of civilian workers, more than 50 female prisoners of war from the camp in Chelm were sent to Majdanek. Among them were doctor Anna Nikiforova, military paramedics Efrosinya Tsepennikova and Tonya Leontyeva, infantry lieutenant Vera Matyutskaya.
The navigator of the air regiment, Anna Egorova, whose plane was shot down over Poland, shell-shocked, with a burnt face, was captured and kept in the Kyustrin camp.
Despite the death that reigned in captivity, despite the fact that any relationship between male and female prisoners of war was prohibited, where they worked together, most often in camp infirmaries, love sometimes arose, giving new life. As a rule, in such rare cases, the German hospital management did not interfere with childbirth. After the birth of the child, the mother-prisoner of war was either transferred to the status of a civilian, released from the camp and released to the place of residence of her relatives in the occupied territory, or returned with the child to the camp.
Thus, from the documents of the Stalag camp infirmary No. 352 in Minsk, it is known that “nurse Sindeva Alexandra, who arrived at the First City Hospital for childbirth on 23.2.42, left with the child for the Rollbahn prisoner of war camp.”

Probably one of the last photographs of Soviet women soldiers captured by the Germans, 1943 or 1944:


Both were awarded medals, the girl on the left - “For Courage” (dark edging on the block), the second one may also have “BZ”. There is an opinion that these are pilots, but - IMHO - it is unlikely: both have “clean” shoulder straps of privates.

In 1944, attitudes towards women prisoners of war became harsher. They are subjected to new tests. In accordance with the general provisions on the testing and selection of Soviet prisoners of war, on March 6, 1944, the OKW issued a special order “On the treatment of Russian women prisoners of war.” This document stated that Soviet women held in prisoner-of-war camps should be subject to inspection by the local Gestapo office in the same way as all newly arriving Soviet prisoners of war. If, as a result of a police check, the political unreliability of female prisoners of war is revealed, they should be released from captivity and handed over to the police.
Based on this order, the head of the Security Service and SD on April 11, 1944 issued an order to send unreliable female prisoners of war to the nearest concentration camp. After being delivered to the concentration camp, such women were subjected to so-called “special treatment” - liquidation. This is how Vera Panchenko-Pisanetskaya, the eldest of a group of seven hundred girl prisoners of war who worked at a military plant in the city of Gentin, died. The plant produced a lot of defective products, and during the investigation it turned out that Vera was in charge of the sabotage. In August 1944 she was sent to Ravensbrück and hanged there in the autumn of 1944.
In the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, 5 Russian senior officers were killed, including a female major. They were taken to the crematorium - the place of execution. First they brought the men and shot them one by one. Then - a woman. According to a Pole who worked in the crematorium and understood Russian, the SS man, who spoke Russian, mocked the woman, forcing her to follow his commands: “right, left, around...” After that, the SS man asked her: “Why did you do that? ” I never found out what she did. She replied that she did it for her homeland. After that, the SS man slapped him in the face and said: “This is for your homeland.” The Russian woman spat in his eyes and replied: “And this is for your homeland.” There was confusion. Two SS men ran up to the woman and began to push her alive into the furnace for burning the corpses. She resisted. Several more SS men ran up. The officer shouted: “Fuck her!” The oven door was open and the heat caused the woman's hair to catch fire. Despite the fact that the woman resisted vigorously, she was placed on a cart for burning corpses and pushed into the oven. All the prisoners working in the crematorium saw this.” Unfortunately, the name of this heroine remains unknown.
________________________________________ ____________________

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1190, l. 110.

Right there. M-37/178, l. 17.

Right there. M-33/482, l. 16.

Right there. M-33/60, l. 38.

Right there. M-33/ 303, l 115.

Right there. M-33/ 309, l. 51.

Right there. M-33/295, l. 5.

Right there. M-33/ 302, l. 32.

P. Rafes. They had not yet repented then. From the Notes of a Divisional Intelligence Translator. "Spark." Special issue. M., 2000, No. 70.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1182, l. 94-95.

Vladislav Smirnov. Rostov nightmare. - “Spark.” M., 1998. No. 6.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/1182, l. eleven.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/230, l. 38.53.94; M-37/1191, l. 26

B. P. Sherman. ...And the earth was horrified. (About the atrocities of the German fascists on the territory of the city of Baranovichi and its surroundings on June 27, 1941 - July 8, 1944). Facts, documents, evidence. Baranovichi. 1990, p. 8-9.

S. M. Fischer. Memories. Manuscript. Author's archive.

K. Kromiadi. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany... p. 197.

T. S. Pershina. Fascist genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944... p. 143.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/626, l. 50-52. M-33/627, l. 62-63.

N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing your head. (On the activities of the anti-fascist underground in Hitler’s camps) Kyiv, 1978, p. 32-33.

Right there. E. L. Klemm, shortly after returning from the camp, after endless calls to the state security authorities, where they sought her confession of treason, committed suicide

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win. On Sat. "Witnesses for the prosecution." L. 1990, p. 158; S. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team. Memoirs of prisoner No. 10787. M., 1985, p. 7.

Women of Ravensbrück. M., 1960, p. 43, 50.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 160.

S. Muller. Ravensbrück locksmith team... p. 51-52.

Women of Ravensbrück... p.127.

G. Vaneev. Heroines of the Sevastopol Fortress. Simferopol.1965, p. 82-83.

G. S. Zabrodskaya. The will to win... p. 187.

N. Tsvetkova. 900 days in fascist dungeons. In the collection: In the Fascist dungeons. Notes. Minsk.1958, p. 84.

A. Lebedev. Soldiers of a small war... p. 62.

A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again. M., 1958, p. 6-11.

N. Lemeshchuk. Without bowing your head... p. 27. In 1965, A. Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Yad Vashem Archive. M-33/438 part II, l. 127.

A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener… S. 153.

A. Nikiforova. This must not happen again... p. 106.

A. Streim. Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener…. S. 153-154.

“Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...” The truth about women in the war, which was not written about in the newspapers...
For Victory Day, blogger radulova published memoirs of women veterans from the book by Svetlana Alexievich.

“We drove for many days... We left with the girls at some station with a bucket to get water. They looked around and gasped: one train after another was coming, and there were only girls there. They sing. They wave at us, some with headscarves, some with caps. It became clear: there weren’t enough men, they were dead in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we, instead of them... Mom wrote me a prayer. I put it in the locket. Maybe it helped - I returned home. I kissed the medallion before the fight...”

“One night, a whole company conducted reconnaissance in force in our regiment’s sector. By dawn she had moved away, and a groan was heard from the no-man's land. Left wounded. “Don’t go, they’ll kill you,” the soldiers wouldn’t let me in, “you see, it’s already dawn.” She didn’t listen and crawled. She found a wounded man and dragged him for eight hours, tying his arm with a belt. She dragged a living one. The commander found out and rashly announced five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. But the deputy regiment commander reacted differently: “Deserves a reward.” At the age of nineteen I had a medal “For Courage”. At nineteen she turned gray. At the age of nineteen, in the last battle, both lungs were shot, the second bullet passed between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed... And they considered me dead... At nineteen... My granddaughter is like this now. I look at her and don’t believe it. Child!”

“I was on night duty... I went into the ward of the seriously wounded. The captain is lying there... The doctors warned me before duty that he would die at night... He wouldn’t live until the morning... I asked him: “Well, how? How can I help you?" I’ll never forget... He suddenly smiled, such a bright smile on his exhausted face: “Unbutton your robe... Show me your breasts... I haven’t seen my wife for a long time...” I felt ashamed, I answered him something. She left and returned an hour later. He lies dead. And that smile on his face...”

…………………………………………………………………….

“And when he appeared for the third time, in one moment - he would appear and then disappear - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and my hands somehow began to tremble, trembling and chills began to spread throughout my body. Some kind of fear... Sometimes in my dreams this feeling comes back to me... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I see him through the optical sight, I see him well. It’s as if he’s close... And something inside me resists... Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger... We didn’t succeed right away. It’s not a woman’s business to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"

“And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward himself would not go to war. These were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline medics ranked second after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What does it mean, for example, to pull a wounded man out of the battlefield? I’ll tell you now... We went on the attack, and let’s mow us down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. Everyone was lying down. They were not all killed, many were wounded. The Germans are hitting and they don’t stop firing. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third... They began to bandage and drag away the wounded, even the Germans were speechless with amazement for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously wounded, and each saved a maximum of two or three people. They were awarded sparingly; at the beginning of the war, awards were not scattered. The wounded man had to be pulled out along with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war there was not enough of him. A rifle, a machine gun, a machine gun - these also had to be carried. In forty-one, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation of awards for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded people carried out from the battlefield along with personal weapons - the medal “For Military Merit”, for saving twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for saving forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for saving eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one person in battle... From the bullets...”

“What was going on in our souls, the kind of people we were then will probably never exist again. Never! So naive and so sincere. With such faith! When our regiment commander received the banner and gave the command: “Regiment, under the banner! On your knees!”, we all felt happy. We stand and cry, everyone has tears in their eyes. You won’t believe it now, my whole body tensed up from this shock, my illness, and I got “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous fatigue, and so, my night blindness went away. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul...”

…………………………………………

“I was thrown against a brick wall by a hurricane wave. I lost consciousness... When I came to my senses, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - they seemed to be moving, barely opened her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. In the corridor I meet our older sister, she didn’t recognize me and asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not there.” They quickly bandaged my head, left hand above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. It was getting dark before my eyes and sweat was pouring out. I started handing out dinner and fell. They brought me back to consciousness, and all I could hear was: “Hurry! Hurry up!” And again - “Hurry! Hurry up!” A few days later they took more blood from me for the seriously wounded.”

“We were young and went to the front. Girls. I even grew up during the war. Mom tried it on at home... I have grown ten centimeters..."

……………………………………

“They organized nursing courses, and my father took my sister and me there. I am fifteen years old, and my sister is fourteen. He said: “This is all I can give to win. My girls...” There was no other thought then. A year later I went to the front...”

……………………………………

“Our mother had no sons... And when Stalingrad was besieged, we voluntarily went to the front. Together. The whole family: mother and five daughters, and by this time the father had already fought…”

………………………………………..

“I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I left with a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defends the Motherland. Dad went to the military registration and enlistment office early in the morning. He went to receive my certificate and went early in the morning specifically so that everyone in the village would see that his daughter was at the front...”

……………………………………….

“I remember they let me go on leave. Before going to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, I loved candy terribly. I say:
- Give me some sweets.
The saleswoman looks at me like I'm crazy. I didn’t understand: what are cards, what is a blockade? All the people in line turned to me, and I had a rifle bigger than me. When they gave them to us, I looked and thought: “When will I grow up to this rifle?” And everyone suddenly began to ask, the whole line:
- Give her some sweets. Cut out the coupons from us.
And they gave it to me.”

“And for the first time in my life, it happened... Ours... Women's... I saw blood on myself, and I screamed:
- I was hurt...
During reconnaissance, we had a paramedic with us, an elderly man. He comes to me:
- Where did it hurt?
- I don’t know where... But blood...
He, like a father, told me everything... I went to reconnaissance after the war for about fifteen years. Every night. And the dreams are like this: either my machine gun failed, or we were surrounded. You wake up and your teeth are grinding. Do you remember where you are? There or here?”

…………………………………………..

“I went to the front as a materialist. An atheist. She left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was taught well. And there... There I began to pray... I always prayed before the battle, I read my prayers. The words are simple... My words... The meaning is one, that I return to mom and dad. I didn’t know real prayers, and I didn’t read the Bible. No one saw me pray. I am secretly. She secretly prayed. Carefully. Because... We were different then, different people lived then. You understand?"

“It was impossible to attack us with uniforms: they were always in the blood. My first wounded was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. In 1970, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still has a large scar on it. In total, I carried out four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion... They were carrying men two to three times heavier than us. And they are even more seriously wounded. You are dragging him and his weapon, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You put eighty kilograms on yourself and drag it. You lose... You go after the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And you yourself have forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. Now I can’t believe it anymore...”

……………………………………

“I later became a squad commander. The entire squad is made up of young boys. We're on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. The guys can go overboard if necessary, and that’s it. Well, what about me? A couple of times I got so bad that I jumped straight overboard and started swimming. They shout: “The foreman is overboard!” They'll pull you out. This is such an elementary little thing... But what kind of little thing is this? I then received treatment...

………………………………………

“I returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I’m all white. I was seriously wounded, concussed, and I couldn’t hear well in one ear. My mother greeted me with the words: “I believed that you would come. I prayed for you day and night.” My brother died at the front. She cried: “It’s the same now - give birth to girls or boys.”

“But I’ll say something else... The worst thing for me in war is wearing men’s underpants. That was scary. And this somehow... I can’t express myself... Well, first of all, it’s very ugly... You’re at war, you’re going to die for your Motherland, and you’re wearing men’s underpants. Overall, you look funny. Ridiculous. Men's underpants were long then. Wide. Sewed from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and all of them are wearing men's underpants. Oh my God! In winter and summer. Four years... We crossed the Soviet border... We finished off, as our commissar said during political classes, the beast in its own den. Near the first Polish village they changed our clothes, gave us new uniforms and... And! AND! AND! They brought women's panties and bras for the first time. For the first time throughout the war. Haaaa... Well, I see... We saw normal women's underwear... Why aren't you laughing? Are you crying... Well, why?”

……………………………………..

“At eighteen years old Kursk Bulge I was awarded the medal “For Military Merit” and the Order of the Red Star, and at the age of nineteen I was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, second degree. When new additions arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They were also eighteen to nineteen years old, and they asked with ridicule: “What did you get your medals for?” or “Have you been in battle?” They pester you with jokes: “Do bullets penetrate the armor of a tank?” I later bandaged one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Shchegolevatykh. His leg was broken. I splint him, and he asks me for forgiveness: “Sister, I’m sorry that I offended you then...”

“We disguised ourselves. We are sitting. We are waiting for night to finally make an attempt to break through. And Lieutenant Misha T., the battalion commander was wounded, and he was performing the duties of a battalion commander, he was twenty years old, and began to remember how he loved to dance and play the guitar. Then he asks:
-Have you even tried it?
- What? What have you tried? “But I was terribly hungry.”
- Not what, but who... Babu!
And before the war there were cakes like this. With that name.
- No-no...
- I haven’t tried it yet either. You’ll die and won’t know what love is... They’ll kill us at night...
- Fuck you, fool! “It dawned on me what he meant.”
They died for life, not yet knowing what life was. We have only read about everything in books. I loved movies about love...”

…………………………………………

“She shielded her loved one from the mine fragment. The fragments fly - it's just a fraction of a second... How did she make it? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he stayed to live. Thirty years later, Petya Boychevsky came from Krasnodar and found me at our front-line meeting, and told me all this. We went with him to Borisov and found the clearing where Tonya died. He took the earth from her grave... He carried it and kissed it... There were five of us, Konakovo girls... And I alone returned to my mother...”

……………………………………………

“A separate smoke masking detachment was organized, commanded by the former commander of the torpedo boat division, Lieutenant Commander Alexander Bogdanov. Girls, mostly with secondary technical education or after the first years of college. Our task is to protect the ships and cover them with smoke. The shelling will begin, the sailors are waiting: “I wish the girls would put up some smoke. It’s calmer with him.” They drove out in cars with a special mixture, and at that time everyone hid in a bomb shelter. We, as they say, invited fire upon ourselves. The Germans were hitting this smoke screen...”

“I’m bandaging the tanker... The battle is on, there’s a roar. He asks: “Girl, what’s your name?” Even some kind of compliment. It was so strange for me to pronounce my name, Olya, in this roar, in this horror.”

………………………………………

“And here I am the gun commander. And that means I am in the one thousand three hundred and fifty-seventh anti-aircraft regiment. At first, there was bleeding from the nose and ears, complete indigestion set in... My throat was dry to the point of vomiting... At night it was not so scary, but during the day it was very scary. It seems that the plane is flying straight at you, specifically at your gun. It's ramming at you! This is one moment... Now it will turn all, all of you into nothing. Everything is over!”

…………………………………….

“And by the time they found me, my legs were severely frostbitten. Apparently, I was covered in snow, but I was breathing, and a hole appeared in the snow... Such a tube... The ambulance dogs found me. They dug up the snow and brought my earflap hat. There I had a passport of death, everyone had such passports: which relatives, where to report. They dug me out, put me on a raincoat, my coat was full of blood... But no one paid attention to my legs... I was in the hospital for six months. They wanted to amputate the leg, amputate it above the knee, because gangrene was setting in. And here I was a little faint-hearted, I didn’t want to remain living as a cripple. Why should I live? Who needs me? Neither father nor mother. A burden in life. Well, who needs me, stump! I’ll choke..."

………………………………………

“We received a tank there. We were both senior driver mechanics, and there should only be one driver in a tank. The command decided to appoint me as commander of the IS-122 tank, and my husband as senior mechanic-driver. And so we reached Germany. Both are wounded. We have awards. There were quite a few female tankers on medium tanks, but on heavy tanks I was the only one.”

“We were told to dress in military uniform, and I’m about fifty meters. I got into my trousers, and the girls upstairs tied them around me.”

…………………………………..

“As long as he hears... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, is it really possible to die. You kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He’s already dead, his eyes are on the ceiling, and I’m still whispering something to him... I’m calming him down... The names have been erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain...”

…………………………………

“We had a nurse captured... A day later, when we recaptured that village, dead horses, motorcycles, and armored personnel carriers were lying everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her breasts were cut off... She was impaled... It was frosty, and she was white and white, and her hair was all gray. She was nineteen years old. In her backpack we found letters from home and a rubber green bird. A children's toy..."

……………………………….

“Near Sevsk, the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. I crawled up to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling in pieces... On the veins... Covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand to bandage it. No other way. And I have neither a knife nor scissors. The bag shifted and shifted on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I chewed this pulp with my teeth. I gnawed it, bandaged it... I bandaged it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I’ll fight again.” In a fever..."

“The whole war I was afraid that my legs would be crippled. I had beautiful legs. What to a man? He’s not so scared if he even loses his legs. Still a hero. Groom! If a woman gets hurt, then her fate will be decided. Women's destiny..."

…………………………………

“The men will build a fire at the bus stop, shake out the lice, and dry themselves. Where are we? Let's run for some shelter and undress there. I had a knitted sweater, so lice sat on every millimeter, in every loop. Look, you'll feel nauseous. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice... I had them all...”

………………………………….

“Near Makeyevka, in Donbass, I was wounded, wounded in the thigh. This little fragment came in and sat there like a pebble. I feel it’s blood, I put an individual bag there too. And then I run and bandage it. It’s a shame to tell anyone, the girl was wounded, but where – in the buttock. In the ass... At sixteen years old, this is a shame to say to anyone. It's awkward to admit. Well, so I ran and bandaged until I lost consciousness from loss of blood. The boots are full..."

………………………………….

“The doctor arrived, did a cardiogram, and they asked me:
- When did you have a heart attack?
- What heart attack?
- Your whole heart is scarred.
And these scars are apparently from the war. You approach the target, you are shaking all over. The whole body is covered with trembling, because there is fire below: fighters are shooting, anti-aircraft guns are shooting... We flew mainly at night. For a while they tried to send us on missions during the day, but they immediately abandoned this idea. Our “Po-2” shot down from a machine gun... We made up to twelve sorties per night. I saw the famous ace pilot Pokryshkin when he arrived from a combat flight. He was a strong man, he was not twenty or twenty-three years old like us: while the plane was being refueled, the technician managed to take off his shirt and unscrew it. It was dripping as if he had been in the rain. Now you can easily imagine what happened to us. You arrive and you can’t even get out of the cabin, they pulled us out. They couldn’t carry the tablet anymore, they dragged it along the ground.”

………………………………

“We strived... We didn’t want people to say about us: “Oh, those women!” And we tried harder than men, we still had to prove that we were no worse than men. And for a long time there was an arrogant, condescending attitude towards us: “These women will fight…”

“Wounded three times and shell-shocked three times. During the war, everyone dreamed of what: some to return home, some to reach Berlin, but I only dreamed of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would turn eighteen. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to see eighteen. I walked around in trousers and a cap, always in tatters, because you are always crawling on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded person. I couldn’t believe that one day it would be possible to stand up and walk on the ground instead of crawling. It was a dream! One day the division commander arrived, saw me and asked: “What kind of teenager is this? Why are you holding him? He should be sent to study.”

…………………………………

“We were happy when we took out a pot of water to wash our hair. If you walked for a long time, you looked for soft grass. They also tore her legs... Well, you know, they washed them off with grass... We had our own characteristics, girls... The army didn’t think about it... Our legs were green... It’s good if the foreman was an elderly man and understood everything, didn’t take excess underwear from his duffel bag, and if he’s young, he’ll definitely throw away the excess. And what a waste it is for girls who need to change clothes twice a day. We tore the sleeves off our undershirts, and there were only two of them. These are only four sleeves...”

“Let’s go... There are about two hundred girls, and behind us there are about two hundred men. It's hot. Hot Summer. March throw - thirty kilometers. The heat is wild... And after us there are red spots on the sand... Red footprints... Well, these things... Ours... How can you hide anything here? The soldiers follow behind and pretend that they don’t notice anything... They don’t look at their feet... Our trousers dried up, as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds there, and the smell of blood could be heard all the time. They didn’t give us anything... We kept watch: when the soldiers hung their shirts on the bushes. We’ll steal a couple of pieces... Later they guessed and laughed: “Master, give us some other underwear. The girls took ours.” There was not enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded... Not that... Women's underwear, perhaps, only appeared two years later. We wore men's shorts and T-shirts... Well, let's go... Wearing boots! My legs were also fried. Let's go... To the crossing, ferries are waiting there. We got to the crossing, and then they started bombing us. The bombing is terrible, men - who knows where to hide. Our name is... But we don’t hear the bombing, we have no time for bombing, we’d rather go to the river. To the water... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet... Under the fragments... That's it... There was shame worse than death. And several girls died in the water...”

“Finally got the appointment. They brought me to my platoon... The soldiers looked: some with mockery, some even with anger, and others shrugging their shoulders - everything was immediately clear. When the battalion commander introduced that, supposedly, you have a new platoon commander, everyone immediately howled: “Oooh…” One even spat: “Ugh!” And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the same guys who survived carried me in their arms to my dugout. They were proud of me.”

……………………………………..

“We set out on a mission in a quick march. The weather was warm, we walked light. When the positions of long-range artillerymen began to pass, suddenly one jumped out of the trench and shouted: “Air! Frame!" I raised my head and looked for a “frame” in the sky. I don't detect any plane. It's quiet all around, not a sound. Where is that “frame”? Then one of my sappers asked permission to leave the ranks. I see him heading towards that artilleryman and slapping him in the face. Before I had time to think of anything, the artilleryman shouted: “Boys, they’re beating our people!” Other artillerymen jumped out of the trench and surrounded our sapper. My platoon, without hesitation, threw down the probes, mine detectors, and duffel bags and rushed to his rescue. A fight ensued. I couldn't understand what happened? Why did the platoon get involved in a fight? Every minute counts, and there’s such a mess here. I give the command: “Platoon, get into formation!” Nobody pays attention to me. Then I pulled out a pistol and shot into the air. Officers jumped out of the dugout. By the time everyone was calmed down, a significant amount of time had passed. The captain approached my platoon and asked: “Who is the eldest here?” I reported. His eyes widened, he was even confused. Then he asked: “What happened here?” I couldn't answer because I didn't really know the reason. Then my platoon commander came out and told me how it all happened. This is how I learned what “frame” was, what an offensive word it was for a woman. Something like a whore. Frontline curse..."

“Are you asking about love? I’m not afraid to tell the truth... I was a pepezhe, which stands for “field wife.” Wife at war. Second. Illegal. The first battalion commander... I didn’t love him. He was a good man, but I didn't love him. And I went to his dugout a few months later. Where to go? There are only men around, it’s better to live with one than to be afraid of everyone. During the battle it was not as scary as after the battle, especially when we were resting and re-forming. As they shoot, fire, they call: “Sister! Little sister!”, and after the battle everyone will guard you... You won’t get out of the dugout at night... Did the other girls tell you this or didn’t they admit it? They were ashamed, I think... They kept silent. Proud! And it all happened... But they are silent about it... It is not accepted... No... For example, I was the only woman in the battalion who lived in a common dugout. Together with men. They gave me a place, but what a separate place it is, the whole dugout is six meters. I woke up at night from waving my arms, then I would hit one on the cheeks, on the hands, then on the other. I was wounded, ended up in the hospital and waved my hands there. The nanny will wake you up at night: “What are you doing?” Who will you tell?”

…………………………………

“We buried him... He was lying on a raincoat, he had just been killed. The Germans are firing at us. We need to bury it quickly... Right now... We found old birch trees and chose the one that stood at a distance from the old oak tree. The biggest. Near it... I tried to remember so that I could come back and find this place later. Here the village ends, here there is a fork... But how to remember? How to remember if one birch tree is already burning before our eyes... How? They began to say goodbye... They told me: “You are the first!” My heart jumped, I realized... What... Everyone, it turns out, knows about my love. Everyone knows... The thought struck: maybe he knew too? Here... He lies... Now they will lower him into the ground... They will bury him. They’ll cover it with sand... But I was terribly happy at the thought that maybe he knew too. What if he liked me too? As if he was alive and would answer me something now... I remembered how on New Year he gave me a German chocolate bar. I didn’t eat it for a month, I carried it in my pocket. Now it doesn’t reach me, I remember all my life... This moment... Bombs are flying... He... Lying on a raincoat... This moment... And I am happy... I stand and smile to myself. Abnormal. I’m glad that maybe he knew about my love... I came up and kissed him. I’ve never kissed a man before... This was the first...”

“How did the Motherland greet us? I can’t do without sobbing... Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there!” They lured young p... our men. Front-line b... Military bitches..." They insulted me in every way... The Russian dictionary is rich... A guy is seeing me off from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, my heart is pounding. I'll go and sit in a snowdrift. "What happened to you?" - "Never mind. I danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet in boots were worn out - size forty. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I'm used to being responsible for myself. I was waiting for kind words, but I didn’t understand them. They are like children's to me. At the front among the men there is a strong Russian mate. I'm used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin.”

“My legs disappeared... My legs were cut off... They saved me there, in the forest... The operation took place in the most primitive conditions. They put me on the table to operate, and there wasn’t even iodine; they sawed my legs, both legs, with a simple saw... They put me on the table, and there was no iodine. Six kilometers away, we went to another partisan detachment to get iodine, and I was lying on the table. Without anesthesia. Without... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw... A carpenter's saw... We had a surgeon, he himself also had no legs, he spoke about me, other doctors said this: “I bow to her. I have operated on so many men, but I have never seen such men. He won’t scream.” I held on... I'm used to being strong in public..."

……………………………………..

Running up to the car, she opened the door and began to report:
- Comrade General, on your orders...
I heard:
- Leave...
She stood at attention. The general didn’t even turn to me, but looked at the road through the car window. He is nervous and often looks at his watch. I am standing. He turns to his orderly:
- Where is that sapper commander?
I tried to report again:
- Comrade General...
He finally turned to me and with annoyance:
- Why the hell do I need you!
I understood everything and almost burst out laughing. Then his orderly was the first to guess:
- Comrade General, maybe she is the commander of the sappers?
The general stared at me:
- Who are you?
- Comrade General, sapper platoon commander.
-Are you a platoon commander? – he was indignant.

- Are these your sappers working?
- That's right, Comrade General!
- Got it wrong: general, general...
He got out of the car, walked a few steps forward, then came back to me. He stood and looked around. And to his orderly:

……………………………………….

“My husband was a senior driver, and I was a driver. For four years we traveled in a heated vehicle, and our son came with us. During the entire war he didn’t even see a cat. When he caught a cat near Kiev, our train was terribly bombed, five planes flew in, and he hugged her: “Dear little kitty, how glad I am that I saw you. I don't see anyone, well, sit with me. Let me kiss you.” A child... Everything about a child should be childish... He fell asleep with the words: “Mommy, we have a cat. We now have a real home.”

“Anya Kaburova is lying on the grass... Our signalman. She dies - a bullet hit her heart. At this time, a wedge of cranes flies over us. Everyone raised their heads to the sky, and she opened her eyes. She looked: “What a pity, girls.” Then she paused and smiled at us: “Girls, am I really going to die?” At this time, our postman, our Klava, is running, she shouts: “Don’t die! Do not die! You have a letter from home...” Anya does not close her eyes, she is waiting... Our Klava sat down next to her and opened the envelope. A letter from my mother: “My dear, beloved daughter...” A doctor is standing next to me, he says: “This is a miracle. Miracle!! She lives contrary to all the laws of medicine...” They finished reading the letter... And only then Anya closed her eyes...”

…………………………………

“I stayed with him one day, then the second, and I decided: “Go to headquarters and report. I’ll stay here with you.” He went to the authorities, but I couldn’t breathe: well, how can they say that she wouldn’t be able to walk for twenty-four hours? This is the front, that's clear. And suddenly I see the authorities coming into the dugout: major, colonel. Everyone shakes hands. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, drank, and everyone said their word that the wife found her husband in the trench, this is a real wife, there are documents. This is such a woman! Let me look at such a woman! They said such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life... What do I still have left? Enlisted as a nurse. I went with him on reconnaissance. The mortar hits, I see - it fell. I think: killed or wounded? I run there, and the mortar hits, and the commander shouts: “Where are you going, damn woman!!” I’ll crawl up - alive... Alive!”

…………………………………

“Two years ago, our chief of staff Ivan Mikhailovich Grinko visited me. He has been retired for a long time. He sat at the same table. I also baked pies. She and her husband are talking, reminiscing... They started talking about our girls... And I started to roar: “Honor, you say, respect. And the girls are almost all single. Unmarried. They live in communal apartments. Who took pity on them? Defended? Where did you all go after the war? Traitors!!” In a word, I ruined their festive mood... The chief of staff was sitting in your place. “Show me,” he banged his fist on the table, “who offended you.” Just show it to me!” He asked for forgiveness: “Valya, I can’t tell you anything except tears.”

………………………………..

“I reached Berlin with the army... I returned to my village with two Orders of Glory and medals. I lived for three days, and on the fourth my mother lifted me out of bed and said: “Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...” “Don’t touch my soul. Write, like others, about my awards...”

………………………………..

“Near Stalingrad... I’m dragging two wounded. If I drag one through, I leave it, then the other. And so I pull them one by one, because the wounded are very serious, they cannot be left, both, as it is easier to explain, have their legs cut off high, they are bleeding. Minutes are precious here, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I discovered that I was dragging one of our tankers and one German... I was horrified: our people were dying there, and I was saving a German. I was in a panic... There, in the smoke, I couldn’t figure it out... I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming... Ah-ah... They are both burnt, black. The same. And then I saw: someone else’s medallion, someone else’s watch, everything was someone else’s. This form is cursed. So what now? I pull our wounded man and think: “Should I go back for the German or not?” I understood that if I left him, he would soon die. From loss of blood... And I crawled after him. I continued to drag them both... This is Stalingrad... The most terrible battles. The best of the best. My you are diamond... There cannot be one heart for hatred and another for love. A person has only one.”

“The war ended, they found themselves terribly unprotected. Here's my wife. She is a smart woman, and she has a bad attitude towards military girls. He believes that they were going to war to find suitors, that they were all having affairs there. Although in fact, we are having a sincere conversation; most often these were honest girls. Clean. But after the war... After the dirt, after the lice, after the deaths... I wanted something beautiful. Bright. Beautiful women... I had a friend, one beautiful girl, as I now understand, loved him at the front. Nurse. But he didn’t marry her, he was demobilized and found himself another, prettier one. And he is unhappy with his wife. Now he remembers that one, his military love, she would have been his friend. And after the front, he didn’t want to marry her, because for four years he saw her only in worn-out boots and a man’s quilted jacket. We tried to forget the war. And they forgot their girls too...”

…………………………………..

“My friend... I won’t give her last name, in case she gets offended... Military paramedic... Wounded three times. The war ended, I entered medical school. She didn’t find any of her relatives; they all died. She was terribly poor, washing the entrances at night to feed herself. But she didn’t admit to anyone that she was a disabled war veteran and had benefits; she tore up all the documents. I ask: “Why did you break it?” She cries: “Who would marry me?” “Well,” I say, “I did the right thing.” She cries even louder: “I could use these pieces of paper now. I’m seriously ill.” Can you imagine? Crying.”

…………………………………….

“We went to Kineshma, this is the Ivanovo region, to his parents. I was traveling like a heroine, I never thought that you could meet a front-line girl like that. We have gone through so much, saved so many mothers of children, wives of husbands. And suddenly... I recognized the insult, I heard offensive words. Before this, except for: “dear sister”, “dear sister”, I had not heard anything else... We sat down to drink tea in the evening, the mother took her son to the kitchen and cried: “Who did you marry? At the front... You have two younger sisters. Who will marry them now?” And now, when I remember this, I want to cry. Imagine: I brought the record, I loved it very much. There were these words: and you have the right to walk in the most fashionable shoes... This is about a front-line girl. I set it up, the older sister came up and broke it in front of my eyes, saying, “You have no rights.” They destroyed all my front-line photographs... We, front-line girls, have had enough. And after the war it happened, after the war we had another war. Also scary. Somehow the men left us. They didn't cover it. It was different at the front.”

……………………………………

“It was then that they began to honor us, thirty years later... They invited us to meetings... But at first we hid, we didn’t even wear awards. Men wore them, but women did not. Men are winners, heroes, suitors, they had a war, but they looked at us with completely different eyes. Completely different... Let me tell you, they took away our victory... They did not share the victory with us. And it was a shame... It’s unclear...”

…………………………………..

“The first medal “For Courage”... The battle began. The fire is heavy. The soldiers lay down. Command: “Forward! For the Motherland!”, and they lie there. Again the command, again they lie down. I took off my hat so they could see: the girl stood up... And they all stood up, and we went into battle...”

Not long ago, the Russian media actively wrote that the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School began accepting applications from girls. Dozens of people immediately poured into the selection committee wanting to sit at the controls of a combat aircraft.

IN Peaceful time girls who master military specialties seem to us to be something exotic. But when the threat of war looms over the country, the fair sex often displays amazing courage and resilience, in no way inferior to men. This was the case during the Great Patriotic War, when women fought at the front equally with men. They mastered a variety of military professions and carried military service as nurses, pilots, sappers, intelligence officers and even snipers.

In difficult war conditions, young girls, many of whom were yesterday's schoolgirls, performed feats and died for the Fatherland. At the same time, even in the trenches they continued to preserve femininity, showing it in everyday life and reverent care for their comrades.

Few of our contemporaries are able to imagine what Soviet women had to go through during the war. There are already few of them themselves - those who survived and managed to convey precious memories to their descendants.

One of the keepers of these memories is our colleague, chief specialist of the scientific department of the Russian Historical Society, candidate of historical sciences Victoria Petrakova. She dedicated her treatise the topic of women in war, the topic of her research is Soviet girls snipers.

She told Istoria.RF about the hardships that befell these heroines (Victoria was lucky enough to communicate with some of them personally).

“Parachutes were deployed to carry bombs on board”

Victoria, I understand that the topic of women at the front is very broad, so let’s take a closer look at the Great Patriotic War.

The massive participation of Soviet women in the Great Patriotic War is an unprecedented phenomenon in world history. Neither Nazi Germany nor the allied countries had such a large number of women participating in the war, and, moreover, women did not master combat specialties abroad. For us, they were pilots, snipers, tank crews, sappers, miners...

- Did Russian women start fighting only in 1941? Why were they taken into the army?

This happened as new military specialties appeared, technology developed, and people were involved in hostilities. large quantity human resources. Women were drafted to free up men for more difficult military activities. Our women were on the battlefields during the Crimean War, the First World War, and the Civil War.

- Is it known how many women in the Soviet Union fought during the Great Patriotic War?

- Historians still have not established exact figure. Various works call the number from 800 thousand to 1 million. During the war years, these women mastered more than 20 military professions.

- Were there many female pilots among them?

- As for female pilots, we had three female aviation regiments. The decree on their creation was issued on October 8, 1941. This happened thanks to the famous pilot Marina Mikhailovna Raskova, who was already a Hero of the Soviet Union at that time and turned directly to Stalin with such a proposal. Girls actively went into aviation, because at that time there were many different flying clubs. Moreover, in September 1938, Polina Osipenko, Valentina Grizodubova and Marina Raskova made a direct flight to Moscow - Far East lasting more than 26 hours. For completing this flight they were awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union.” They became the first women Heroes of the Soviet Union before the war, and during the war Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became the first. Thus, the history of women in aviation during the war years took on a completely new meaning. As I already said, we had three aviation regiments: the 586th, 587th and 588th. The 588th was subsequently (in February 1943) renamed the 46th Guards Taman Regiment. The pilots of this particular regiment were nicknamed “Night Witches” by the Germans.

- Which of the female military pilots of that time could you especially highlight?

- Among the women who piloted fighter jets, one of the most famous is Lydia (Lily) Litvyak, who was called the “White Lily of Stalingrad.” She went down in history as the most successful female fighter: she had 16 victories - 12 individual and 4 group. Lydia began her combat journey in the skies over Saratov, then defended the skies of Stalingrad in the hardest days of September 1942. She died on August 1, 1943 - she did not return from a combat mission. Moreover, it’s interesting: she had a combat friend who said that Lydia said that the worst thing for her would be to go missing, because then the memory of her would be erased. Actually, that’s what happened. And only in the early 1970s in the Donetsk region search parties They found a mass grave, in which they found the girl. Having studied the remains and compared documents, it was established that this was Lydia Litvyak. In 1990, she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In the already mentioned 46th Women's Aviation Regiment there were many who were awarded this title posthumously. Female pilots, when they left for a combat mission at night, sometimes deployed parachutes. And the planes they flew on were practically made of plywood. That is, if shells hit them, the planes instantly ignited, and the pilots could no longer eject.

- Why didn’t they take parachutes with them?

- To take more bombs on board. Despite the fact that the plane could easily catch fire, its advantage was that it was slow-moving. This made it possible to fly up to enemy positions unnoticed, which increased the accuracy of bombing. But if a shell did hit the plane, many were burned alive in the dive bombers.

“The men cried when they saw the girls die”

- Is it known what percentage of Soviet women were able to survive until the end of the war?

This is very difficult to establish, given the leadership’s not entirely orderly mobilization policy towards women during the war. There are no statistics on losses among women at all! In the book by G. F. Krivosheev (Grigory Fedotovich Krivosheev - Soviet and Russian military historian, author of several works on military losses of the USSR Armed Forces - Note ed.), which is the most famous study to date, which contains the most accurate data on losses, it is said that women were included in the total number of losses - there were no distinctions by gender. Therefore, the number of women who died during the Great Patriotic War is still unknown.

How did women cope with everyday difficulties during the war? After all, here they were required not only moral, but also physical endurance.

- Women's health at the front was practically atrophied; the body was constantly in a state of mobilization - both mentally and physiologically. It is clear that after the war people “thawed out” and came to their senses, but during the war it simply could not be any other way. A person had to survive, he had to carry out a combat mission. The conditions were very extreme. In addition, women ended up in mixed units. Imagine: infantry marches for tens of kilometers - it was difficult to solve some everyday issues when there were only men around. In addition, not all women were subject to mobilization. Those who had small children or elderly dependent parents were not taken to war. Because the military leadership understood that all the experiences associated with this could subsequently affect the psychological state at the front.

- What was required to pass this selection?

It was necessary to have a minimum education and be in very good physical condition. Only those with excellent eyesight could become snipers. By the way, many Siberian girls were taken to the front - they were very strong girls. Among other things, they were attentive to psychological state person. We cannot help but remember Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who during the hardest days of the Moscow Battle became a reconnaissance saboteur. Unfortunately, various negative statements are currently appearing that insult the memory of this girl and devalue her feat. For some reason, people do not try to realize that she entered the reconnaissance and sabotage unit, where, naturally, they did not accept people with mental disabilities. To serve there, it was necessary to undergo a medical examination, obtain various certificates, and so on. This unit was commanded by Major, hero of the Spanish War, the legendary Arthur Sprogis. He would clearly see some deviations. Therefore, the very fact that she was enrolled in this unit and she became a reconnaissance saboteur indicates that the person was mentally stable.

- How did men treat women soldiers? Were they perceived as equal comrades in arms?

It all turned out very interesting. For example, when female snipers arrived at the front, men treated them with irony and distrust: “They brought girls!” And when the first control shooting began and these girls knocked out all the targets, respect for them, of course, increased. Naturally, they were taken care of; snipers were even called “little pieces of glass.” They were treated like fathers. The sniper Klavdia Efremovna Kalugina told me a very touching story. She had three sniper pairs, and everyone was called Mashami. All three died. Her first sniper pair, Masha Chigvintseva, died in the summer of 1944. Then Operation Bagration was underway - Belarus was liberated. Masha moved, and, apparently, the optics blurred in the sun. The German sniper fired and hit her just below the right eye, right through. Masha fell dead. Klavdia Efremovna said that at that moment she screamed throughout the entire line of defense. When she cried, soldiers ran out of the dugout and tried to calm her down: “Don’t cry, the German will hear and open mortar fire!” But nothing worked. This is understandable: after all, with a sniper couple you share shelter, food, secrets, this is your very close person. She was buried in the summer in a field where there were many wildflowers: the grave was decorated with daisies and bells. Everyone came to bury Masha, right down to the unit commanders. But it was already 1944, and the men had seen a lot of death and blood. But still, everyone cried at Masha’s funeral. When they lowered her into the ground, the commander said: “Sleep well, dear Marusya.” And all the men cried when they saw the young girls dying.

“When they came back, all sorts of unpleasant things were said.”

- In which troops was it most dangerous for women to serve?

- In 1943, a study was conducted on the Leningrad Front on injuries among women in various military professions. Naturally, he was highest in the military medical service - nurses pulled the wounded from the battlefield under bullets and shrapnel. Injuries to signalmen and miners were very common. If we talk about snipers, the injury rate of this military profession, for all its danger and complexity, was relatively low.

- Were there many women among the snipers? How were they trained?

- In the Soviet Union, there was the only women's sniper school not only in our country, but throughout the world. In November 1942, women's sniper courses were created at the Central School of Sniper Instructors (male). Then, in May 1943, the Central Women's Sniper Training School appeared; it existed until May 1945. This school graduated about two thousand female cadets. Of these, losses are 185 people, that is, 10 percent of total number. Firstly, snipers were protected and not allowed to attack: they had to fight only in defense. Snipers mostly died while performing a combat mission. This could happen due to accidental negligence: during sniper duels (when the optical sight glared in the sun, the German sniper fired a shot, and, accordingly, the sniper from the opposite side died) or under mortar fire.

- What happened to these heroines after the end of the war?

Their destinies turned out differently. In general, the topic of post-war rehabilitation of female military personnel is very complex. The memory of women's feats during the war years was consigned to oblivion for a very long time. Even the veteran grandmothers themselves told how they were embarrassed to talk about the fact that they fought. This was formed by a negative attitude in society, which was based on various stories about “field wives.” For some reason this cast a shadow on all the women who fought. When they returned, unfortunately, all sorts of unpleasant things could be said to them. But I talked with them and I know what everyday life at the front and combat work cost them. After all, many returned with health problems and were then unable to have children. Take the same snipers: they lay in the snow for two days, received maxillofacial wounds... These women endured a lot.

- Were there really no war novels with a happy ending?

There were happy cases when love was born during the war, and then people got married. There were sad stories when one of the lovers died. But all the same, as a rule, the stories of the same “field wives” are, first of all, crippled women's destinies. And we have no moral right to judge, much less condemn. Although even today someone, apparently having no respect for memory, pulls out only individual stories from the multifaceted history of the war, turning them into “fried” facts. And this is very sad. When a woman returned from war, the process of getting used to peaceful life took a long time. It was necessary to master peaceful professions. They worked in completely different fields: in museums, factories, some were accountants, and there were those who went to teach theory at higher military schools. People returned psychologically broken; it was very difficult to build a personal life.

“Not everyone could take the first shot”

After all, women are gentle and sensitive creatures, it is quite difficult to associate them with war, murder... Those girls who went to the front, what were they like?

One of my articles describes the story of Lydia Yakovlevna Anderman. She was a sniper, holder of the Order of Glory; unfortunately, she is no longer alive. She said that after the war she dreamed about the first killed German for a very long time. At school, future snipers were taught to shoot exclusively at targets, and at the front they had to face living people. Due to the fact that the distance could be small and the optical sight brought the target 3.5 times closer, it was often possible to see the enemy’s uniform and the outline of his face. Lidia Yakovlevna later recalled: “I saw through the scope that he had a red beard and some kind of red hair.” She dreamed of him for a long time even after the war. But not everyone was able to fire a shot right away: natural pity and qualities inherent in female nature made themselves felt when performing a combat mission. Of course, the women understood that there was an enemy in front of them, but it was still a living person.

- How did they overcome themselves?

The death of comrades in arms, the awareness of what the enemy was doing in their native land, tragic news from home - all this inevitably had an impact on the female psyche. And in such a situation, the question of whether it was necessary to go and carry out my combat mission did not arise: “...I must take up arms and take revenge myself. I already knew that I had no relatives left. My mother is gone...” recalled one of the snipers. Women snipers began to appear everywhere on the fronts in 1943. At that time, the siege of Leningrad had been going on for several years, villages and hamlets of Belarus were burned, and many had their loved ones and comrades killed. It was clear to everyone what the enemy had brought to us. Sometimes they ask: “What did you need to have to be a sniper? Maybe it was some kind of character predisposition, innate cruelty? Of course not. When you ask such questions, you need to try to “immerse yourself” in the psychology of a person who lived during wartime. Because they were the same ordinary girls! Like everyone else, they dreamed of marriage, created a modest military life, and took care of themselves. It’s just that the war was a very mobilizing factor for the psyche.

- You said that the memory of a woman’s feat was forgotten for many years. What has changed over time?

The first research works on the participation of women in the Great Patriotic War began to appear only in the 1960s. Now, thank God, dissertations and monographs are written about this. The feat of women is now, of course, already established in the public consciousness. But, unfortunately, it’s a little late, because many of them no longer see this. And many, perhaps, died forgotten, never knowing that anyone had written about them. In general, for studying human psychology in war, personal sources are simply invaluable: memories, memoirs, interviews with veterans. After all, they talk about things that cannot be found in any archival document. It is clear that the war cannot be idealized; these were not only exploits - it was both dirty and scary. But when we write or talk about this, we must always be as correct as possible and careful about the memory of those people. In no case should we attach labels, because we do not know even a thousandth part of what actually happened there. Many destinies were broken and distorted. And many veterans, despite everything they had to endure, retained a clear outlook, a sense of humor, and optimism until the end of their days. We ourselves can learn a lot from them. And the main thing is to always remember them with great respect and gratitude.

What did the Nazis do with the captured women? Truth and myths regarding the atrocities that German soldiers committed against Red Army soldiers, partisans, snipers and other females. During the Second World War, many volunteer girls were sent to the front; almost a million especially female ones were sent to the front, and almost all signed up as volunteers. It was already much more difficult for women at the front than for men, but when they fell into the clutches of the Germans, all hell broke loose.

Women who remained under occupation in Belarus or Ukraine also suffered a lot. Sometimes they managed to survive the German regime relatively safely (memoirs, books by Bykov, Nilin), but this was not without humiliation. Even more often, a concentration camp, rape, and torture awaited them.

Execution by shooting or hanging

The treatment of captured women who fought in positions in the Soviet army was quite simple - they were shot. But scouts or partisans, most often, faced hanging. Usually after much bullying.

Most of all, the Germans loved to undress captured Red Army women, keep them in the cold or drive them along the street. This comes from the Jewish pogroms. In those days, girlish shame was a very strong psychological tool; the Germans were surprised at how many virgins there were among the captives, so they actively used such a measure to completely crush, break, and humiliate.

Public flogging, beatings, carousel interrogations are also some of the favorite methods of the fascists.

Rape by the entire platoon was often practiced. However, this mainly happened in small units. The officers did not welcome this, they were forbidden to do this, so more often guards and assault groups did this during arrests or during closed interrogations.

Traces of torture and abuse were found on the bodies of murdered partisans (for example, the famous Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya). Their breasts were cut off, stars were cut out, and so on.

Did the Germans impale you?

Today, when some idiots are trying to justify the crimes of the fascists, others are trying to instill more fear. For example, they write that the Germans impaled captured women on stakes. There is no documentary or photographic evidence of this, and it’s simply unlikely that the Nazis wanted to waste time on this. They considered themselves “cultured,” so acts of intimidation were carried out mainly through mass executions, hangings, or general burning in huts.

From exotic species The only executions that can be mentioned are the gas van. This is a special van where people were killed using exhaust gases. Naturally, they were also used to eliminate women. True, such machines did not serve Nazi Germany for long, since the Nazis had to wash them for a long time after the execution.

Death camps

Soviet women prisoners of war were sent to concentration camps on an equal basis with men, but, of course, the number of prisoners who reached such a prison was much less than the initial number. Partisans and intelligence officers were usually hanged immediately, but nurses, doctors, and representatives of the civilian population who were Jewish or related to party work could be driven away.

The fascists did not really favor women, since they worked worse than men. It is known that the Nazis carried out medical experiments on people; women's ovaries were cut out. The famous Nazi sadistic doctor Joseph Mengele sterilized women with X-rays and tested them on the human body’s ability to withstand high voltage.

Famous women's concentration camps are Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Salaspils. In total, the Nazis opened more than 40 thousand camps and ghettos, and executions were carried out. The worst situation was for women with children, whose blood was taken. Stories about how a mother begged a nurse to inject her child with poison so that he would not be tortured by experiments are still horrifying. But for the Nazis, dissecting a living baby and introducing bacteria and chemicals into the child was in the order of things.

Verdict

About 5 million Soviet citizens died in captivity and concentration camps. More than half of them were women, however, there would hardly have been even more than 100 thousand prisoners of war. Basically, representatives of the fair sex in greatcoats were dealt with on the spot.

Of course, the Nazis responded for their crimes, both with their complete defeat and with executions during the Nuremberg trials. But the worst thing was that many, after the Nazi concentration camps, were sent to Stalin’s camps. This, for example, was often done with residents of occupied regions, intelligence workers, signalmen, etc.

In his memoirs, officer Bruno Schneider told what kind of instruction German soldiers received before being sent to the Russian front. Regarding the female Red Army soldiers, the order said one thing: “Shoot!”

This is what many German units did. Among those killed in battle and encirclement, a huge number of bodies of women in Red Army uniform were found. Among them are many nurses and female paramedics. Traces on their bodies indicated that many were brutally tortured and then shot.

Residents of Smagleevka (Voronezh region) said after their liberation in 1943 that at the beginning of the war, a young Red Army girl died a terrible death in their village. She was seriously injured. Despite this, the Nazis stripped her naked, dragged her onto the road and shot her.

Horrifying traces of torture remained on the unfortunate woman's body. Before her death, her breasts were cut off and her entire face and arms were completely mangled. The woman's body was a complete bloody mess. They did the same with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Before the show execution, the Nazis kept her half naked in the cold for hours.

Women in captivity

Those in captivity Soviet soldiers– and women too – were supposed to be “sorted.” The weakest, wounded and exhausted were subject to destruction. The rest were used for the most hard work in concentration camps.

In addition to these atrocities, female Red Army soldiers were constantly subjected to rape. The highest military ranks of the Wehrmacht were forbidden to enter into intimate relationships with Slavic women, so they did it in secret. The rank and file had a certain freedom here. Having found one female Red Army soldier or nurse, she could be raped by a whole company of soldiers. If the girl did not die after that, she was shot.

In concentration camps, the leadership often selected the most attractive girls from among the prisoners and took them to “serve.” This is what the camp doctor Orlyand did in Shpalaga (prisoner of war camp) No. 346 near the city of Kremenchug. The guards themselves regularly raped prisoners in the women's block of the concentration camp.

This was the case in Shpalaga No. 337 (Baranovichi), about which the head of this camp, Yarosh, testified during a tribunal meeting in 1967.

Shpalag No. 337 was distinguished by particularly cruel, inhumane conditions of detention. Both women and men Red Army soldiers were kept half naked in the cold for hours. Hundreds of them were stuffed into lice-infested barracks. Anyone who could not stand it and fell was immediately shot by the guards. Every day, more than 700 captured military personnel were destroyed in Shpalaga No. 337.

Women prisoners of war were subjected to torture, the cruelty of which medieval inquisitors could only envy: they were impaled, their insides were stuffed with hot red pepper, etc. They were often mocked by German commandants, many of whom were distinguished by obvious sadistic inclinations. Commandant Shpalag No. 337 was called a “cannibal” behind her back, which spoke eloquently about her character.

Not only the torture undermined the morale and last strength of the exhausted women, but also the lack of basic hygiene. There was no talk of any washing for the prisoners. Insect bites and purulent infections were added to the wounds. Women soldiers knew how the Nazis treated them, and therefore tried not to be captured. They fought to the last.