I am proud that I am RUSSIAN
This is a kind of our distinctive feature that puts us on the other side of human nature, allowing us to accomplish what others cannot do. This is our gift and our curse!
A year before the beginning of the bloodbath in the Donbass, I wrote a large text in three parts about the Brest Fortress, trying to understand its amazing and inexplicable phenomenon.
Probably, to some extent, this work can be considered prophetic, because the next year after its publication the Donbass became a giant Brest fortress! With the only difference that the enemy was not able to seize this Russian stronghold.
A lot of books will be written about the superhuman feat of Donbass, and not less films are shot. But a little later. When the enemy will be finally defeated. When such Russian cities as Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Nikolaev, Odessa, Kiev and many others will be liberated ...
And this time I want to tell history about the Russian superhuman, which occurred in February 1945 of the year in Germany ...
On the night of 2 on 3 February, 1945, the prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp, lifted machine gun fire from the bombardment. The shouting “Hurray!” That came from outside did not leave any doubts: there is a real battle in the camp. This 500 of prisoners of the block №20 (suicide unit) attacked machine-gun towers.
In the summer of 1944, unit No. XXUMX appeared in Mauthausen, for Russians. It was a camp in the camp, separated from the general territory by a fence with a height of 20 meters, on top of which there was a wire under current. Along the perimeter were three towers with machine guns. Prisoners of the 2,5 block received ¼ common ration. Spoons, plates they were not supposed to. The unit was never heated. There were neither frames nor glasses in the window openings. The block was not even nar. In winter, before driving the prisoners into the block, the SS men poured water from the floor of the block with a hose. People went to the water and just did not wake up.
“Death planners” had a “privilege” - they did not work like other prisoners. Instead, they spent the whole day doing “exercise” - they ran around the block without a stop or crawled.
During the existence of the block, about 6 thousands of people were destroyed in it. By the end of January, in block No.20, about 570 prisoners remained alive.
With the exception of the 5-6 Yugoslavs and several Poles (participants in the Warsaw uprising), all the prisoners of the "death block" were Soviet prisoners of war officers sent here from other camps.
Prisoners were sent to the 20 block of Mauthausen, even in concentration camps representing a threat to Reich III due to their military education, volitional qualities and organizational abilities. All of them were captured as wounded or unconscious, and during their time in captivity they were recognized as "incorrigible." In the accompanying documents of each of them was the letter "K", which meant that the prisoner was subject to liquidation as soon as possible. Therefore, those who arrived in the 20 block were not even branded, since the life span of the prisoner in the 20 block did not exceed several weeks.
On the appointed night around midnight, the "bomber" began to get out of their hiding places "weapon"- cobblestones, pieces of coal and fragments of a broken washstand. The main "weapon" were two fire extinguishers. 4 assault groups were formed: three were supposed to attack machine-gun towers, one if necessary - to repel an external attack from the side of the camp.
About one o'clock in the morning, the suicide bombers of the 20 block began jumping out of the window apertures and rushed to the towers, shouting “Hurray!” Machine guns opened fire. Foamy streams of fire extinguishers hit the faces of the machine-gunners, a hail of stones flew. Even pieces of ersatz-soap and wooden blocks with legs flew. One machine gun choked, and the members of the assault group immediately climbed onto the tower. Having seized a machine gun, they opened fire on neighboring towers. The prisoners, with the help of wooden boards, shortened the wire, threw blankets on it and began to move over the wall.
Out of almost 500 people, more than 400 managed to break through the outer fence and ended up outside the camp. As agreed, the fugitives broke up into several groups and rushed in different directions to make it difficult to capture. The largest group ran to the forest. When the SS men began to overtake it, several dozen people separated and rushed towards the persecutors to take their last battle and hold their enemies for at least a few minutes.
One of the groups stumbled upon a German anti-aircraft battery. After removing the sentry and bursting into the dugouts, the fugitives, with their bare hands, stifled a cannon's servant, seized a weapon and a truck. The group was overtaken and accepted their last fight.
About a hundred prisoners escaped into liberty died in the first hours. Bogging in the deep snow, in the cold (the thermometer that night showed minus 8 degrees), exhausted, many simply physically could not go more than 10-15 km.
But more than 300 were able to escape persecution and hid in the vicinity.
In search of fugitives, besides guarding the camp, parts of the Wehrmacht, SS units and the local field gendarmerie were deployed in the vicinity. Caught fugitives were taken to Mauthausen and shot at the crematorium wall, where they immediately burned the bodies. But most often they were shot at the place of capture, and corpses were already brought to the camp.
In the German documents, the measures to search for the fugitives were called “Mülviertel Hare Hunt”. Local people were involved in the search.
Volkssturm fighters, members of the Hitler Youth, members of the local NSDAP unit and non-partisan volunteers excitedly searched around the “hares” and killed them on the spot. They killed by improvised means - axes, pitchforks, because they took care of the cartridges. The bodies were taken to the village of Ried in der Riedmarkt, and dumped in the courtyard of a local school.
Here the SS men were counting, crossing out the sticks drawn on the wall. A few days later, the SS men declared that “the account had settled”.
But.
Survived one person from the group that destroyed the German anti-aircraft battery. Ninety-two days, risking their lives, the Austrian peasant woman Langtaler, whose sons fought as part of the Wehrmacht at that time, hid two runaways in her farm. The 19 who escaped were never caught. 11 names are known. 8 of them survived and returned to the Soviet Union.
In 1994, the Austrian director and producer Andreas Gruber made a film about events in Mühlviertel.
The film "Hunting Hares" was the highest grossing in Austria in 1994 — 1995.
The film received several awards:
Special Jury Prize at the 1994 San Sebastian Film Festival;
Audience Award 1994;
Culture Award of Upper Austria;
Austrian Film 1995 Award.
It is curious that we have not shown this film. Few people have heard of this movie at all. Is it only filmmakers.
But they are not interested in such plots. "For some reason."
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