Stalag 328

The entire height at which the Lviv Citadel is located was surrounded by barbed wire in four rows, between which there were sentries . On the territory, in addition to the seven brick forts , there were another 14 smaller rooms surrounded by barbed wire in two rows. Inside the territory, sections of 100x200 m2 were fenced with barbed wire, in which prisoners of war were held in the open. Three large barracks were built on a former football field.

Filtration: officers, communists, Komsomol members, Jews

Each new batch of prisoners of war upon arrival at the camp was interrogated. During the interrogation, the Nazis selected the commanding staff , members of the Communist Party , Komsomol members, as well as Jewish soldiers. The selected were beaten and immediately imprisoned on death row, where they were not allowed to eat the doomed for 17 days. War Jews were placed in basements, then exhausted, they were taken out into the courtyard of the camp, stripped, and shot, and their corpses were burned in the camp. For this purpose, a special place was assigned, which was intensely guarded by the camp police. Prisoners of war were also taken out in closed vehicles to Lisinitsky forest, where they were destroyed.

Ukrainians

German authorities considered mandatory the separation of prisoners of war of Ukrainian nationality from other prisoners. The organizations of Ukrainian collaborators faced the task of helping captive clothes and food. At the end of September 1941 , without any warning, an order was issued from the German command to release the Ukrainians. With great triumphs on September 23, 1941, 61 Ukrainian prisoners of war were released; they all came from the Lviv district. The celebration was attended by the chief of the government, Dr. Lockzaker (who addressed the dismissed with a speech), from the German armed forces - Oberstleutenant Genker, the chief of the Propaganda Government Restsh, Oberst Byzantz and many officers. Prisoners were given food on the road.

On September 27, at 7 a.m., already in the presence of Governor Lyash himself, representatives of the German military and civilian authorities and delegates of the Ukrainian Red Cross , 1,500 prisoners were released. The liberated were given food on the road, and they left the concentration camp in the direction of Rogatin - Stanislavov .

By that time, infectious diseases, including typhoid , were already raging in the concentration camp, and sick former prisoners were spreading diseases, as a result of which they and volunteers of the Ukrainian Red Cross died.

In November 1941, authorities stopped the release of prisoners of war.

Russians

The liberation of the Russians from the Lviv death camp was carried out by recruiters of the legion of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov . According to M.K. Polyakov, who was captured near Leningrad on July 15, 1941, as part of the 832th division: “ In the winter of 1942-1943, a close associate of Vlasov came to our camp to select volunteers in the Russian legion. But not everyone was selected, but those who suffered from the Soviet regime: children of kulaks and priests, repressed, former prisoners, descendants of the exploiters . ”

French and Belgians

By August 1943, about 100 thousand prisoners of war were destroyed on the Citadel. Since 1942, prisoners of war of the French and Belgian army , as well as captured members of the Resistance , began to be moved here. In 1943, the surviving French and Belgians were taken to Stalag 325 in Strya.

Italians

Since September 1943 (shortly after Italy left the war), the contingent of prisoners began to replenish by the Italian army. Lviv at that time was an important transit point on the way of the return of Italians from the Eastern Front. Here was deployed the rearguard of the defeated 8th Army (Commando retrove del 'Est), which included a transport service, a team for cantonment No. 37, a military post department, a military hospital, a communications battalion team and a royal carabinieri team. In total, there were about 2,000 Italian military personnel in Lviv, among which there were 5 generals and 45 officers. Italians were shot in the camp and in the vicinity of Lviv.

The regime and food in the camp were specifically designed to weaken and slow the destruction of all prisoners. Soviet prisoners of war were considered as lower beings to be destroyed.

Under the threat of execution, the German administration forced the prisoners to work from morning until late at night ^[4] . The premises of the camp were not heated. The cannibalism in the prisoner of war camp was evidenced by the testimony of a translator who worked in the camp, and also paragraph 11 of the camp order for prisoners of war “Stalag 328”, where it was said in broken Ukrainian: “ Razrizivati ​​corpses are buried. full and such parts of the body . ”

The Nazis practiced executions , the distribution of poisoned food, and the deliberate spread of various epidemic diseases , among which the most common was typhus .

By the beginning of November 1941, 3,000 prisoners from dysentery died in the camp, and 380 patients with typhus were deliberately brought there from the Rava-Russian prisoner of war camp. By order of the German command, typhoid placed 10 people in the barracks among other prisoners of war. Within a few days, the camp was seized by an epidemic that lasted until March 1942 and claimed the lives of about 5,000 prisoners.

Prisoners were brutally abused by the camp police. In the killings of citizens in the Lviv region, the use command (Einsatzkommandu (Einsatzgruppe)) 5, the use groups ( Einsatzgruppe (Einsatzgruppe)) “C” , the zone of which the front line (rear) of Army Group “South” was determined during the occupation of Soviet Russia, was also involved. During its existence, the shooting of 5,577 people was documented in nine cities of the USSR (Lviv, Zlochev , Zhytomyr , Proskurov , Vinnitsa , Dnepropetrovsk , Krivoy Rog , Stalin , Rostov-on-Don ) ^[5] .

In Lviv, the communist organization " People’s Guard named after I. Franco ”, which, in particular, was engaged in assistance in organizing escape from a concentration camp of prisoners of war. The National Guards hid the fugitives in their homes, provided them with relevant documents, and then transported them to the partisans in the woods. One of the fugitives from the Citadel, Kock, joining the People’s Guards, laid explosives in the restaurant of the Georges hotel when German officers gathered there (Operation Casino).

The shootings of prisoners of war were also organized by the underground partisan group “Unitars” created in Lviv in early 1944, and even M. Frolov, an employee of the collaborative Ukrainian Central Committee . The Polish underground helped foreign prisoners escape.

So, on the night of March 20, 1944, 300 prisoners of war fled from the concentration camp in the Citadel in the direction of Yanovskaya Street and Kleparovsky Station. On the night of May 20-21, 13 Soviet and 3 French prisoners of war fled from the camp.

At the end of July 1944, the situation was unfavorable for the German army on the Lviv sector of the front. German units began to leave the city. A favorable situation developed for the actions of the Polish Home Army, which was to take possession of Lviv before the arrival of the main contingents of the Soviet troops. The Citadel abandoned by the garrison on July 23, 1944, was attempted by the Polish partisans, led by the commander of the South group, Captain Karol Borkovec. After short skirmishes with a detachment of Germans who were hiding in a former concentration camp, members of the Craiova Army found an armory.

On the same day, July 23, the Soviet 60th and 4th tank armies , the 3rd Guards Tank and 38th Army began an operation to liberate the city. Especially active was the 10th Guards Ural Volunteer Tank Corps of the 4th Panzer Army, whose fighters approached Lviv with three wedges. On Monday, July 24, an armored brigade arrived at the Citadel under the command of Captain Malofeev. The sappers of the platoon commander, Senior Lieutenant Alexei Ivanov, arrived here with them to clear the former concentration camp from mines and land mines; they exported about 10 wagons of explosives. Continuing to clear the Citadel, the Red Army stumbled upon a deep moat filled with corpses, covered with brushwood. This was reported by Captain Malofeev to the headquarters of the brigade to Captain Fomichev, who ordered the bodies of those killed to be buried. On the morning of July 25, the headquarters of the 63rd Guards Brigade moved to the concentration camp barracks.

In August 1944, the State Emergency Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes arrived at the Citadel. The forensic medical commission, which examined the site of the execution of prisoners of war, found ash and human bones, artificial teeth, household items, and human hair on the surface of the earth and in pits. Based on the testimony of witnesses, it was found that about 284 thousand prisoners of war were in the concentration camp of prisoners of war on the Citadel during its existence. Of these, as the inspection of burial sites and eyewitness accounts convinced, more than 140 thousand people died from illnesses, starvation, torture and executions. In a special camp building, the commission identified 830 captured sets of uniforms and 3640 pairs of shoes that the Nazis did not manage to use. The commission compiled a detailed list of concentration camp commandants who were tried to bring to justice: Captain Blyut, Major Sidoren, Major Roch, Oberfeldwebel 328 regiment, Fritz Miller, Oberfeldwebel Per.

Numerous inscriptions made by prisoners were found on the walls of the cells, their contents testified that the Citadel was a death camp: “ Here, Russian prisoners died of starvation on July 22, 1944 ”, “ Who will be from the Red Army here, let him tell all his comrades in arms, that they were suffering, dying of hunger and cold. January 22, 1944. "

On July 14, 1977 , the trial of the former commandant of the Stalag 328 camp police, Andrei Emelyanovich Yakushev , ended. The trial lasted almost four weeks and took place in public. Based on the testimonies of about 40 eyewitnesses, as well as based on materials from the preliminary investigation conducted by the department of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the Lviv region , it was found that with the participation of Yakushev, at least 1300 people were selected and sent for execution. The military tribunal of the Red Banner Carpathian Military District , chaired by Colonel of Justice A. A. Troshchenkov, sentenced Yakushev to be shot.

• Yanovsky (concentration camp)

• Pіnyazhko T. - Lviv: Quart, 2008 .-- 200 p. - ISBN 966-8792-09-2 . (Ukrainian)

• Піняжко Тарас. Lviv Citadel