Rzhev was released on March 3, 1943.
Of the 50 thousand pre-war population, no more than 300 people remained in the city.
Two days before the liberation, the Germans locked all of them in a mined Old Believer church.
The doomed survived by a miracle - the explosion did not thunder, they had time to be cleared by the scouts of the advanced units of the Red Army entering Rzhev.
Few people were so lucky.
Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier in the Tver Region
RIA News
© Grigory Sysoev
"When the Germans retreated from the village of Drachevo, Gzhatsky District in March 1943, the assistant to the head of the German field gendarmerie, Lieutenant Boss, drove 200 residents into the house of the collective farmer Chistyakova, closed the doors and set fire to the house, in which all 200 people were burned down
," says one of the acts of the Emergency State commission on the atrocities of the German invaders.
In the village of Vyritsa, Leningrad Region, a children's concentration camp operated during the years of occupation.
Children from the fighting zone were forcibly taken to it.
What for?
To supply children's blood to the soldiers of the Wehrmacht.
“My sister Lena died there, in the infirmary.
She said: “Sasha, take me from here.
I already have no blood, but they take everything. "
The next day she was gone
, ”one of the survivors recalled.
These and thousands of other facts of the deliberate extermination of civilians - children, women, the elderly - were documented and voiced by the Soviet side at the Nuremberg trials.
No one ever had any doubts that all the dots over i in understanding who is the criminal in the Second World War, who is the victim, who is the hero-liberator, are set for eternal times.
But no.
In the 21st century, the rehabilitation of Nazism has crept into our world.
Smiling, tolerant, wearing intelligent glasses, she made nests in the swamps of the Internet space, laid eggs ... Someone hatched from there with frightening frequency.
Then with a cry about a "criminal order" that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was carrying out - the Germans who executed her, it turns out, "stopped the crime"?
Either a TV presenter popular in the last century, or some kind of cartoonist, or someone else whose names should not be called.
No matter how tortuous and florid they express their "alternative opinions", it is always implied that Hitler and his pack are not to blame for unleashing a war of annihilation against the peoples of the USSR 80 years ago, no!
It is the USSR, Russia, Stalin and the Russian people themselves who are to blame for the enormous sacrifices incurred in the struggle to survive against Euronazism.
And we, the citizens of Russia, at some point stopped paying attention to WHAT exactly and WHAT they were talking about.
It's time to put an end to this.
It's time to stop treating public statements about the war as something that should be of interest only to historians.
Respect for the deeds of ancestors should mean respect for the truth of a fact and a document, for the accuracy of the term, for the correctness of the chosen formulations.
And if we demand respect for the memory of the fallen soldiers of the Red Army, if we demand respect for the memory of all victims, we should finally explain and confirm the figures of our human and material losses.
Once at a lecture, back in the early 2000s, I asked third-year students: "What are the combat, military and general losses of our country in the Great Patriotic War?"
It seemed to me that this was a question for a sixth grader in a Soviet school.
But suddenly there was silence in the hall.
Smartphones, thank God, have not yet been available, there is nowhere to spy on.
I had to simplify the question.
“Okay, just general losses.
Give the official figure. "
And away we go ... Seven million!
Twenty!
Thirty!
Fifty!
I couldn’t believe my ears, it seemed to me that either I got to some crazy auction, or the students of my favorite university were making fun.
No, they just didn't know.
The fruits of the scholarship of the 1990s, Soros textbooks and all kinds of information rubbish ... Just complete ignorance!
Officially - 26.6 million.
Remember children: 26.6.
The figure is difficult to calculate (more on that later), but it is official and as accurate as possible today.
By the way, at the same time I decided to check the students for quick wits.
Here, I say, the second question: our ally, Great Britain, fought Hitler two years longer than we did.
She fought these two years almost alone.
If ours, as they say on "Echo of Moscow", the price of victory is 26.6 million, then how much, tell me, did our main allies - the British - pay with their lives for the common victory?
The students were doing fine with their quick wit and arithmetic.
“If we are 26.6 in four years and together with the United States and Britain, then the British plus two more years alone - at least 40 million,” the audience breathed in chorus.
Well, who is interested in the "price of victory" paid by our brothers in arms - see the corresponding article on the Istoriya.RF portal.
And although every life is priceless and there is nothing more disgusting than such "statistics", we still need to know the numbers.
Understand how they are counted.
For today these are not just statistics.
This, taking into account all the disgusting attempts to revise both the root causes and the outcome of the Second World War in the West, is, alas, big politics.
And these figures must be official, scientifically verified and substantiated.
So 26.6 million
Historians continue to use data from the late 1980s today.
They are calculated by comparing the size and age structure of the country's population for June 1941 and December 31, 1945.
The temporary border was shifted upwards in order to take into account servicemen who died of wounds in hospitals, the return to their homeland of prisoners of war released from German camps, "eastern workers" (ostarbeiters) and others.
The estimate of the population of the USSR on June 22, 1941 was made by moving the results of the pre-war census of the country's population to the indicated date (the last was in January 1939) with the correction of the number of births and deaths and the annexation of new territories on the eve of the war.
As a result, the population of the USSR on the eve of the war was determined at 196.7 million people.
Remember the words of our heroine on the scaffold, published in P. Lidov's essay "Tanya" in 1942?
“You’ll hang me now, but I’m not alone.
You can't outweigh everyone.
There are 200 million of us! .. "
The population at the end of 1945 is calculated in a similar way: by moving back the data of the 1959 census - 170.5 million people, of which 159.5 million were born before the start of the war.
Thus, the commission concluded that the total population decline during the war years amounted to 37.2 million people.
The blame for these losses lies entirely with the aggressor, regardless of whether these people became victims of a policy of extermination, died at the front or died from the deterioration of life in the rear.
However, this number was subsequently excluded from those who probably would have died a natural death (from all causes) during the war years "and so", naturally, in accordance with the general average mortality rates of the USSR population for 1940.
The total number of "natural deaths" was estimated at 11.9 million.
The commission added to the number of losses 1.3 million children who were born and died immediately during the war years due to increased infant mortality.
As a result of these calculations (37.2 million - 11.9 million + 1.3 million), the final figure of 26.6 million was obtained, which is assigned the official status.
Civilian casualties
Historians have also calculated how many civilian Soviet citizens fell victim to the Nazi extermination policy.
The official number for today is 13.7 million people.
It consists of examinations of thousands of mass graves in the territory liberated from the occupation, testimony of witnesses, calculations.
It has been proven that at least 7.4 million Soviet civilians were deliberately killed - shot, burned, buried alive.
From hard labor and inhuman treatment, another 2.2 million people were killed from among the Ostarbeiters stolen into the Reich.
Finally, in the occupied territories, more than 4.1 million people died (died) prematurely from the general deterioration of living conditions, hunger and disease.
The resulting number of 13.7 million people is amazing.
But can we be satisfied with such calculations?
I guess not.
First of all, the exclusion of “natural mortality” (11.9 million) from the total number of losses, which we spoke about above, leads to the fact that the total number of losses of 26.6 million people does not converge with the total figures for individual categories of victims.
Why is that?
For example, within the framework of the concept of accounting for "natural mortality" in besieged Leningrad from the fall of 1941 to January 1944, someone died "of old age."
But in reality, this person died of hunger, that is, he became a victim of a war crime.
How to count?
According to the accepted logic, the natural mortality rate should also be applied to the victims of the blockade, Babi Yar and Khatyn, since it is applied in relation to the total number of losses.
But doing so is absurd, because we know that these people were actually killed by the Nazis, and did not die of old age and disease.
Their "statistically" natural death was in reality unnatural, violent and premature.
In addition to the victims associated with terror and the harsh conditions of the occupation, the civilian population of the USSR suffered huge losses from air raids and shelling.
That is, from everything that the military dryly calls "the enemy's combat impact" - in all front-line areas, besieged cities and other settlements.
Losses of civilians from the bombing of Sevastopol and Odessa, Kerch and Novorossiysk, Smolensk and Tula, Kharkov, Minsk are in the hundreds of thousands.
We have somehow forgotten about a lot, but we will remember the tragedy of Murmansk - and today the world's northernmost big city.
First, the Nazis tried to capture it from land, from Norway - by the forces of their elite Wehrmacht divisions.
But ideally equipped for winter battles, provided with the best level of weapons at that time, clothing, hot food, equipment, they were never able to break through the "northern barrier", the "thin red line" of semi-frostbitten soldiers of the Red Army, NKVD and the people's militia and enter our last ice-free northern port.
And then the city was subjected to horrific aerial bombardment.
What Coventry!
The number of civilian casualties and destruction (in proportion to the population and the number of houses) from the bombing is comparable to Dresden, Frankfurt, even Stalingrad!
In Stalingrad, even before the breakthrough of the German troops, before the start of the legendary battle, only a day (!) In August 1942, during a massive German air raid, from 40 to 70 thousand civilians were killed.
One of the most beautiful peaceful cities of the Union, in which there were practically no military units, there was no aviation or even anti-aircraft batteries, it was cynically burned and turned into ruins already then - in one day.
The largest war crime in history - an attempt to starve the inhabitants of Leningrad, killed at least 800 thousand people.
Further.
The destruction of Soviet prisoners of war seems to refer only to the loss of servicemen.
The official number of losses of the Red Army, according to the Ministry of Defense, is 8.67 million people, and taking into account losses from all causes (killed, died of wounds and diseases, disappeared and were captured) - 11.9 million.The difference is over 3 million people were called up at the beginning of the war and did not reach their military units, who were captured at the beginning of the war and liberated at the end, ended up in the occupied territory, missing.
Some of them turned out to be alive, some of those that died were accounted for in the number of military losses, another part - in the losses of civilians.
And some are still not accounted for anywhere.
The fact is that partisans, or even just men of conscription age, who were captured in the occupied territory, often ended up in prisoner of war camps.
They were not military personnel.
And if we know that the Nazis deliberately exterminated about 3.1 million Soviet prisoners of war (about 60% of the number of prisoners of war), then hundreds of thousands of them are civilians killed under the guise of prisoners of war!
I am sure that, speaking about the victims of the policy of genocide, we have every right to include, in general, the prisoners of war exterminated by the Germans, regardless of whether they were civilians or soldiers.
For in no war - at least in the Christian history of mankind - no state has ever destroyed or brought to death by exhaustion and torture almost 60% of the prisoners.
As the Nazis did with the Soviet prisoners of war.
No, well, maybe wild leaders and priests of wild tribes once acted in the same way in wild times, I do not promise.
But it was definitely not about millions, or about the documented state policy of the "civilized European" state.
Enjoyed, we will not forget, the support of the Protestant churches of all German states and the Holy See itself in Rome.
Surprisingly, the death rate in German captivity for soldiers of the allies: the United States, Britain, France - at the level of 3-4%.
Feel the difference, as they say.
The difference in the attitude of the Nazis to the captured Russians / Soviet.
And to the prisoners of war Europeans and Americans, also enemies.
Therefore, we should start talking about the human losses of the USSR during the war years with the figure of 37.2 million people - as demographers determine the total population decline.
Further - to count, to clarify.
This figure will decline, but accurate data still requires a lot of work by scientists, archivists, and demographers.
Do not forget that, in addition to direct human losses, Hitler's aggression also had long-term demographic consequences.
The "demographic echo" of the war made itself felt for two or three decades after the war.
According to scientists, the indirect losses of the population of the USSR are estimated at another 23 million people.
These unborn children, premature deaths from wounds and diseases, nowhere and no one accounted for heart attacks when receiving a funeral for a son, husband, father ...
***
70 years ago, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into force.
Its author - Rafael Lemkin (by the way, a Russian citizen by birth) was the author of the term itself.
One of the first examples of genocide in history, he called the death of the inhabitants of Carthage, destroyed by Rome in the middle of the 2nd century BC.
e.
The bloody massacre during the Crusades, the annihilation of American Indians, the extermination and deportation of Christian Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Holocaust are all genocide.
The convention was adopted to prevent actions similar to the Holocaust committed by the Nazis during World War II.
The extermination of Jews (the number of victims - 6 million people), Roma (from 200 thousand to 1.5 million), Serbs (from 200 thousand to 800 thousand) are recognized as genocide at the international level.
The intentions and actions of the elite of the Third Reich against the Soviet people go far beyond the desire to destroy any separate "national, ethnic, racial or religious groups" as defined by the Convention.
They are much bigger!
And the point is not only in the enormity of the numbers of civilian Soviet citizens killed, many times higher than the consequences of both the Holocaust and the genocide of Serbs and Roma.
The point is not in numbers, but in the principles of state policy of the Reich, repeatedly formulated in writing and systematically carried out by the Nazis on the territory of the USSR.
The point is the unprecedentedness of the crime.
In fact, the “group” to be destroyed for the Nazis was ALL the population of our country - regardless of ethnic (racial) or religious affiliation.
The fault of Russians, Jews, Belarusians, Tatars, Ukrainians, Mordvinians or Chuvashes before Hitler was only that they were citizens of the USSR, poisoned by the "communist idea", and - most importantly - they simply lived on lands that, according to Hitler's plans, were subject to "merciless Germanization ".
We say today: it is our duty to the memory of our ancestors to prevent the “crimes without a statute of limitations” from being forgotten.
Not only.
In modern conditions, it is also important to correctly name what happened.
Who 30 years ago would have thought of mockingly practicing a rhetoric that likened Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR?
To equate a Nazi swastika with a red star?
And today it is already enshrined in law in some countries!
Now the USSR is excluded from the list of winners, often without mentioning it.
As if we didn't participate in the Second World War at all.
The European Union went further - they accuse the USSR of unleashing the war.
In Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, it is declared at the state level that the USSR did not liberate the peoples of these countries from fascism, but occupied and enslaved them.
But wait a minute.
Does this mean that Nuremberg's verdict in the part defining the perpetrators of crimes against peace - the preparation and unleashing of the Second World War - does not mean anything else?
It would never occur to anyone today to call Jews, Roma and Serbs the culprits of the outbreak of World War II.
But why does this come to mind in relation to Russians, other nationalities of the Soviet people?
The same victims of the classic genocide.
The only difference is that the Soviet people - the victim of aggression - having suffered unprecedented losses in history, withstood and became not just another victim nation, but a victorious nation.
The incalculable price that the USSR paid in the fight against fascism is not the “price of victory,” as they sometimes say for some reason.
It is not right.
This is the price of saving everyone who survived, and the remaining "four-fifths" of the citizens of the USSR and the salvation of all of Europe and, I am sure, the whole world from the devil of Nazism.
And we - children, grandchildren, heirs and successors of the victorious Soviet people - must do everything to preserve the truth about World War II, its heroes, victims and criminals.
And there was never a war again.