Chief surgeon of the Red Army Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko in the Oryol concentration prison.
The concentration camp in Orel was located on the territory of the city prison on the street. Red Army and was called by the Nazi authorities "army collection point number 20 of the 2nd tank German army." The conditions of detention in the camp were aimed at the deliberate extermination of Soviet citizens. Up to 60-80 people were held in unheated, dark and damp prison cells with an area of 15-20 square meters. Due to the large crowd of people, inmates had to sleep standing or sitting on the cement floor without bedding. Lack of water for drinking and washing, fresh air, extremely poor nutrition (200 g of rye bread a day, twice a day a watery soup made from rotten soybeans, buckwheat flour or spoiled rye flour at the rate of 25 g per person per person) led to mass death of people. So, about 3 thousand people died in the camp from diseases caused by hunger. Exhausted and sick prisoners of war were involved in hard physical labor in quarrying stone, unloading shells, erecting defensive structures, etc. The practice of punishment consisted of undressing prisoners of war in winter and regular beatings. Prisoners of war, exhausted by work, were usually shot.
Member of the Extraordinary State Commission, Academician N. N. Burdenko personally established the systematic extermination of prisoners of war by the Nazis in the camp and in the "infirmary" - the prison where the wounded Red Army soldiers were kept. “The pictures,” says academician N. N. Burdenko, “that I had to see, surpass any imagination. The joy at the sight of the liberated people was clouded by the numbness on their faces ...
Obviously, the suffering they experienced equated life and death. I watched these people for three days, bandaged them, evacuated them - the psychological stupor did not change. In the early days, something similar lay on the faces of doctors. They died in the camp from disease, from hunger, from beatings, died in the "infirmary" - a prison from infection of wounds, from sepsis, from hunger. As a result of the shootings, which were carried out in the prison yard with German precision, civilians died on schedule - on Tuesdays and Fridays in groups of 5-6 people. The Germans also took the convicts to remote places, where Russian troops dug trenches before leaving the city, and there they were shot. Those shot in the city were taken and thrown into trenches, mainly in the woodlands. The executions in the prison were carried out as follows: the men were placed facing the wall, the gendarme fired a shot from the revolver in the back of the head. This shot damaged vital centers, and death occurred instantly. In most cases, the women lay facedown on the ground, and the gendarme shot in the back of the head. The second method: groups of people were driven into a trench and, turning their faces in one direction, they were fired at them from machine guns, directing the shot into the same occipital region. Groups of children were found in the trenches, who, according to eyewitnesses, were buried alive. "
After the liberation of Orel from the fascist invaders, at the site of the death of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians, the Bratsk cemetery of the victims of fascism was arranged near the north-eastern wall of the former convict (between Oktyabrskaya and Krasnoarmeyskaya streets). center. At the cemetery there are three mounds 1 m high with steep slopes and grass cover. In 1973, the cemetery was landscaped, reconstructed with a fence, paved paths were laid, the graves were bordered with a stone border, green ornamental plants were planted, a memorial wall and an obelisk were built. In the center of the concrete memorial wall, on a slab of black granite, there is an inscription: "5000 Soviet citizens who were tortured and shot by the Nazis in 1941-1943 are buried here."
