D. M. Karbyshev - a hero not broken by German concentration camps
Today, very few people from the 20 generation, both young and old, will be able to say something intelligible about the legendary Soviet hero, Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev. His name is widely known, mainly because of the large number of city streets in the post-Soviet space named for him, rarely found institutions named after him (for example, schools), but these are just the remaining fragments of that legend about a man whose fate was known once every pioneer in every corner of the USSR ...Dmitry Karbyshev was born on October 26 1880 of the year in Omsk in the family of a military official. At a young age, Dmitry was left without a father, however, he decided to follow in his footsteps and in 1898, he graduated from the Siberian Cadet Corps, and two years later - the St. Petersburg Nikolaev Military Engineering School. After graduating from college, Karbyshev with the rank of second lieutenant is assigned to the service by the company commander in the 1 th East Siberian Sapadny battalion, which was located in Manchuria.
Dmitry Karbyshev participated in the Russian-Japanese war: as part of his battalion, he strengthened his position, was engaged in building bridges and installing communications equipment. He showed himself to be a brave officer in the battles of Mukden, and it is not surprising that during the two years of this war Karbyshev had five orders and three medals.
In 1906, Dmitry Karbyshev was fired from the army to the reserve: according to documented sources, for campaigning at that troubled revolutionary time among the soldiers. A year later, however, Karbyshev was again called up to serve as the company commander of the sapper battalion: his knowledge and experience came in handy when rebuilding the fortifications in Vladivostok.
After graduating from the Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy with honors in 1911, Dmitry Mikhailovich was assigned to Brest-Litovsk, where he takes part in the construction of the forts of the Brest-Litovsk fortress.
Karbyshev meets the First World War as part of the 8 Army General A. A. Brusilov, who fought in the Carpathians. In 1915, Karbyshev was one of the most actively attacking the fortress of Przemysl, he was wounded in the fights in fights. For the heroism shown in these battles, Karbyshev receives the Order of St. Anne with swords and is promoted to lieutenant colonel.
Dmitry Karbyshev joined the Red Guard in December 1917 of the year, from next year he is already in the Red Army. During the Civil War, Karbyshev helped strengthen military positions throughout the country - from Ukraine to Siberia. From 1920, Dmitry Mikhailovich was the engineering chief of the 5 Army of the Eastern Front, and a little later he was appointed Assistant Chief of Engineers of the Southern Front.
After the Civil War, Karbyshev taught at the Frunze Military Academy, since 1934 he has been working as a teacher at the General Staff Academy of the Military. Among the students of the Academy Karbyshev was popular. This is what General of the Army Shtemenko remembers about him: “... a favorite saying of sappers went from him:“ One sapper, one ax, one day, one stump ”. True, it was altered by wits, in Carbyshevsk it sounded like this: "One battalion, one hour, one kilometer, one ton, one row."
In 1940, Karbyshev was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general of engineering troops, and in 1941, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Military Sciences (he is the author of more than 100 scientific papers on military engineering, military stories). His theoretical manuals on engineering support during combat operations and the tactics of the engineering troops were considered fundamental materials in training the commanders of the Red Army before the Great Patriotic War.
Dmitry Karbyshev participated in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, developed recommendations for the engineering support of the Mannerheim line breakthrough.
The beginning of the Great Patriotic War found Karbyshev in the headquarters of the 3-th army of the city of Grodno. Dmitry Mikhailovich is offered to provide transportation and personal security to return to Moscow, however, he refuses, preferring to retreat along with the Red Army units. Once in the environment and trying to get out of it, Karbyshev was seriously wounded in a fierce battle (near the Dnieper, in the Mogilev region), and in an unconscious state captured by the Germans.
From this moment begins the three-year history of the Karbyshevsky captivity, his wanderings in the Nazi camps.
In Hitler's Germany, Karbyshev was well known: already in 1940, year IV, the RSHA Administration of the Imperial Security Directorate opened a special file on it. The dossier was specially marked and passed under the “IV D 3-a” accounting category, which meant, besides monitoring the activity, to apply a special appeal in the event of capture in captivity.He began his camp "way" in the Polish city of Ostrov-Mazowiecki, where he was sent to a distribution camp. Soon Karbysheva sent to the camp of the Polish town of Zamost, Dmitry Mikhailovich settled in the barracks number XXUMX (later called the general's). The Germans reckon on the fact that after the hardships of camp life, Karbyshev agreed to cooperate with them, did not justify himself, and in the spring of 11, Karbyshev was transferred to the officer concentration camp of the city of Hammelburg (Bavaria). This camp, which consisted solely of a contingent of Soviet prisoner officers and generals, was special - the task of his leadership was to persuade prisoners to cooperate with Nazi Germany by any means. That is why in its atmosphere certain norms of legality and humane treatment were observed. However, these methods did not work on Dmitry Karbyshev, his motto was born here: “There is no greater victory than victory over oneself! The main thing is not to fall on your knees before the enemy. ”
Since 1943, the “preventive work” with Karbyshev has been led by Pelit, a former officer of the tsarist Russian army (it is noteworthy that this Pelit once served together with Dmitry Mikhailovich in Brest). Colonel Pelit was warned that the Russian military engineer was of particular interest to Germany. Accordingly, every effort should be made to bring him to the side of the Nazis.
Thin psychologist Pelit took up the matter with the foundation: playing the role of an experienced warrior, far from politics, painted Karbyshev all the advantages of switching to the German side (fantastic in essence). Dmitry Mikhailovich, however, immediately spotted Pelit's cunning and stood his ground: I don’t betray my homeland.
The Gestapo Command decides to use a slightly different tactic. Dmitry Karbyshev is taken to Berlin, where he is organized a meeting with Heinz Raubenheimer, a famous German professor and connoisseur of fortification engineering. In exchange for cooperation, he offers Karbyshev the conditions for working and living in Germany, which would make him a practically free man. Dmitry Mikhailovich’s response was exhaustive: “My beliefs do not fall out with the teeth from the lack of vitamins in the camp diet. I am a soldier and remain faithful to my duty. And he forbids me to work for the country that is in a state of war with my homeland. ”
After such a firm refusal, tactics against the Soviet prisoner of war again change - Karbyshev is sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp, a camp famous for its hard labor and truly inhuman conditions towards prisoners. Dmitry Karbyshev’s six-month stay in Flossenbürg’s hell ended with his transfer to the Nuremberg Gestapo prison. After which the camps where Karbysheva is identified began to turn into a gloomy merry-go-round. Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen - these truly nightmarish death camps, through which Karbyshev had to go, and in which, despite the inhuman conditions of existence, he remained a strong-willed and inflexible person until his last days.
Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev died in the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen: he froze, being doused with water in the cold ... He died heroically and martyrly, without betraying his Soviet homeland.
The details of his death became known from the words of the Canadian Army Major Seddon De Saint-Clair, who also passed Mauthausen. It was one of the first reliable information about the life of Karbyshev in captivity, because he was then considered missing in the USSR at the very beginning of the war.
In 1946, Dmitry Karbyshev was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. And 28 February 1948 was opened a monument and a memorial plaque on the site of the former concentration camp of Mauthausen, where Lieutenant General Karbyshev was savagely tortured.
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