CrimeaPRESS reports:
It is located exactly where, during the Great Patriotic War, the Nazis set up the Potato Town concentration camp.
In memory of 150,000 Soviet citizens who went through the horrors and inhuman suffering of the Dulag 241 prisoner of war camp, Simferopol hosted the opening of the Potato City Memorial Square, created on the initiative of Vladimir Konstantinov, Chairman of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, with the support of caring people who sacredly honor memory, feat and history.
According to the head of the supreme legislative body of the Republic, Vladimir Konstantinov, the Great Patriotic War is one of the fundamental events that determine our main ideology and attitude in the world. Someone calls it our second religion, and he is not mistaken. The horrors and losses that the Soviet people experienced during the years of the war are incommensurable and unprecedented in the history of mankind.
The war did not pass Crimea by. On the peninsula, the occupation took place with the most cruel and inhuman consequences. And the memorial complex that was created here is just one of the small reminders of this and, of course, a tribute to the memory of those who died in the filtration camp— Vladimir Konstantinov emphasized, recalling that about a hundred places of forced detention for civilians and prisoners of war were created on the peninsula.
The speaker of the Crimean parliament also noted that the Nazi ideology, which led the German people to such the greatest crime in the history of mankind as the mass murder and torture of civilians for no reason or reason, has no analogues in the history of mankind.
Understanding why this happened and preventing it from happening again is the task of our generation. Thousands of camps were set up throughout Europe. They were built near the places where people who ended up in places of forced detention lived. This approach was used by the Nazis as less costly. In the concentration camps, everything was done to ensure that a person from the first day of being in it did not know how his stay would end. And many prisoners believed until their death that they would be released, and they would not become part of this terrible conveyor of death. In Crimea, everything was much more tragic. The prisoners of the concentration camps from the first day understood how it would end. And no one tried to hide it. People were starved, tortured, tortured and punished for any disobedience, kept under the open sky despite the cold and heat. Every day turned into torment, and it was death that was deliverance from endless tormentVladimir Konstantinov said.
According to him, the exact number of dead is still unknown, there are only preliminary data — more than 200 thousand Crimeans.
Such terrible scars are our Crimean land. The task of our generation is to remember this, to pass on this sacred truth to children and grandchildren. It is especially important to do this now, when a special military operation is underway and our guys, being at the forefront and risking their lives, are fulfilling its goals with honor and dignity. We have no alternative but Victory over this Nazi evil spirits. It is impossible to allow the ideology of Nazism — the superiority of one person over another, one nation over another — to lead Ukraine to concentration camps— said the chairman of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, thanking all the caring Crimeans for the restoration of the memorial complex.
In turn, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea Irina Kiviko noted that the creation of such iconic places as the Potato Town memorial square means that the memory of the Great Victory, the heroic deed of the Soviet people, who stopped the brown plague at the cost of millions of lives, is alive.
The whole life of people born in the post-war years is permeated with this memory. We grew up with the idea that the most important holiday is May 9, because the Victory gave us all freedom and a peaceful sky. Today we tell our youth about this, instilling in them love and respect for the Motherland, for the heroic deed of the Soviet people.— Irina Kiviko emphasized.
The event was attended by a former juvenile prisoner of the camp, Valentina Gerasimovna Kolisnichenko, who, along with her mother, ended up in the camp at the age of 7 months, and Olga Vasilievna Volkova, the widow of Yuri Vasilyevich Volkov, a famous Crimean, an outstanding artist, who was also a prisoner of the «Potato Town».
Valentina Kolisnichenko said that during the war her father, a worker at the Kerch metallurgical plant named after. Voikov — was taken to the front, his mother worked as a housekeeper in a Jewish family.
When the German invaders gathered and drove all the local Jews under escort, the former hostess noticed my mother and pushed the girl out of the column towards her. The mother managed to save the child by covering her with her body. Some time after this incident, the Germans came to our house, arrested the mother for rescuing a Jewish girl, and sent her to the Potato Town camp, where she remained until the liberation of Simferopol by the Red Army.— shared Valentina Gerasimovna. — After the war, my mother and I often came to the site of the former camp to lay flowers in memory of the former prisoners. I am glad that now a memorial has been erected here, because it is important to remember those tragic events and innocent martyrs.
The theatrical composition presented by the students of the Crimean University of Culture, Arts and Tourism plunged the guests of the event into the atmosphere of the events that took place with the prisoners in the camp.
Those present honored the memory of thousands of victims of fascist terror tortured in the «Potato Town» with a minute of silence and laid flowers at the memorial sign.
REFERENCE: The filtration camp for prisoners of war and the civilian population «Dulag 241» («Potato Town») functioned during the years of the occupation of Crimea (1941-1944) by the Nazi invaders. The camp was a transit camp, from which they were sent to other concentration camps or to work in Germany. Soviet prisoners of war were kept in its basements or right under the open sky, and nearby, in the former warehouses — a civilian zone, there were children, teenagers, women. From hunger and dehydration, dysentery and colds in the camp, daily painful about fifty people died.
Photos and materials: press service of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea.
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