The Uman Pit is the name of a temporary camp for prisoners, which was located during the Great Patriotic War in the quarry of a brick factory in August-September 1941. Its depth reached 10 meters. At the same time, there were no structures in the quarry, so people were tormented by torrential rains, languishing under the scorching sun. This is one of the main crimes of the Nazi regime. At the same time, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims today, since their lists were not kept. Even the total number of prisoners who entered the camp is known only approximately. In this article we will tell everything that is known about this terrible tragedy.
The Battle of Uman
In fact, the Uman Pit appeared after one of the first battles of World War II, which went down in history under the name Uman battle.
Uman is a city in the modern Cherkasy region, located on the territory of Ukraine. In early August 1941, during the swift offensive of Army Group South on the territory of the Soviet Union, Red Army units were surrounded. The so-called "Uman Cauldron" was formed.
The result of the battle was the defeat of the Soviet units. The 6th and 12th armies of the Southwestern Front were almost completely destroyed. Also affected parts of the Southern Front.
According to estimates of Soviet historians, about 65 thousand people, almost 250 tanks, were surrounded by German troops. By August 8, 11 thousand people managed to escape from the boiler. In estimates of the number of Soviet troops that were surrounded, there are significant discrepancies. The Germans say that 103 thousand people were captured.
At the same time, from the Wehrmacht, the losses amounted to about 4.5 thousand people killed and more than 15 thousand wounded.
Soviet prisoners of war were placed in a concentration camp, which was created on the territory of a quarry near Uman, and they began to call him the Uman Pit. Due to poor conditions, many prisoners died after a short time. In addition, in the camp itself and on the battlefields, the Germans and their accomplices organized mass executions of commissars, Jews, Communists, severely weakened and wounded soldiers.
The Uman Cauldron is considered the most devastating defeat in the history of the Red Army. Currently, this is one of the tragic and at the same time white spots in the study of the Great Patriotic War.
Concentration camp
The concentration camp of Uman Pit was a transit camp. It was located on the territory of the quarry. In German reports appears under the name Stalag-349.
The Uman Pit was a clay quarry about 300 meters wide and about one kilometer long. The height of the sheer walls reached 15 meters.
There are photos of the Uman Pit, which today amaze with cruelty and inhumanity. Several tens of thousands of prisoners were driven here, many of whom died simply because of poor conditions. The total number of deaths in this tragedy is still unknown.
Conditions of detention
Those who managed to survive said that this camp, according to rough estimates, could be designed to support 6-7 thousand people. In it were several tens of thousands.
There were no buildings in the quarry, except for low and small canopies, originally intended for storing bricks. As a result, most prisoners had to spend the night in the open. Two huge iron barrels were installed in the camp, in which they prepared food for prisoners. Even in the conditions of round-the-clock work, they could supply food to no more than two thousand people. From 60 to 70 people died every day from malnutrition. In addition, executions continued throughout the day.
Seriously ill prisoners were collected in the hostel of the former brick factory, but they were not given any treatment there. The dead were buried in mass graves. They rested in ditches, and the corpses were sprinkled with lime.
Data on the dead
Extensive work has been done by historians and researchers to establish victim data. One of the most famous lists of victims in the Uman Pit was compiled by Grigory Uglov. During the Great Patriotic War, he was a doctor of the 2nd Infantry Regiment, which was part of the 44th Infantry Division, named after Shchors.
With the permission of the German authorities, on a daily basis, he put heavily curled paper sheets into the bottles, on which the names and surnames of the victims were indicated. These documents also contained information on their dates of birth, hair color, camp number, military rank, and nationality. If possible, fingerprints and addresses were provided.
Thanks to the painstaking work of the Corner, it was possible to restore about three thousand fates of ordinary soldiers.
Autopsy of graves
After the war, a commission was established to investigate crimes committed by the Nazis in the Soviet Union. Part of the mass graves was then opened. Also, several burials were discovered during excavation works after some time.
In these graves were the very bottles with the coordinates and data of the dead soldiers. The lists were transferred to the Ministry of Defense. Until recently, they were stored under the heading "Secret", which was removed in 2013.
Of course, this is only a small part of the victims. The lists include only those who died in the hospital in a concentration camp. The names of most of the remaining prisoners are likely to remain unknown.
Memoirs of Eyewitnesses
Eyewitnesses who visited this terrible camp claim that the prisoners were initially given neither food nor water. In recollections of the Uman Pit, prisoners of war say that people drank all the puddles in the quarry, and then began to eat clay. In the stomach, clay clumped into a lump, which caused a person to die in terrible agony.
Meals were organized only a few days later. As soon as the kitchens were working, the prisoners started rushing towards them, the Germans opened fire from machine guns at the crowd.
When one day it began to rain cold, many began to dig small holes in the walls in order to somehow warm themselves. Since the entire quarry was made of clay, they soon began to crumble. People who could not get out were waiting for a terrible death.
The camp was surrounded by barbed wire, mounted towers with machine gunners. The orderlies constantly gathered around the camp, who collected the bodies of the dead. But they could not cope. Within a few days, the bottom of the pit was strewn with the bodies of the dead, which no one cleaned.
According to German chronicles, epidemics soon began in the Uman Pit.
Hitler's visit
In August 1941, Adolf Hitler arrived in Uman along with his associate, the leader of the Nazis in Italy, Benito Mussolini.
Some sources mention that after the solemn triumphant parade they visited this camp.
Book in Ukrainian
A book about the Uman Pit, entitled "They Are Not Oblivious," was released in 2014. It was published in Ukrainian.
Researchers were very interested in the fact that it published the names of approximately 3,300 Soviet soldiers and officers who died in the hospital in this Nazi camp.
At the same time, many of them up to this point were considered dead in captivity or missing.
Identification Issues
The personalities of the victims in this concentration camp were restored just according to the book of Grigory Uglovoy, who put notes with the names of the victims in bottles. But there are certain problems with them; accurate identification of the dead remains difficult anyway.
Even at the stage of compiling these lists, some surnames were changed almost beyond recognition. This was due to difficulties in recording, repeated translation from one language to another and vice versa. Because of this, it is not possible to establish their true spelling. However, the researchers still did everything possible.
After the initial establishment of the name of the deceased prisoner, his data was checked on the basis of information that was created by the Ministry of Defense. The generalized Memorial database is currently available on the Internet. At this stage, soldiers were found who were not even in this base. This means that previously nothing was even even approximately known about their fate.
Finally, difficulties in determining the identities of the deceased arose due to the fact that not only family names were corrected beyond recognition, but also the names of settlements due to the constant translations from one language to another.
All this greatly complicates the work of researchers, but they do not despair. The data of the victims of this terrible concentration camp continues to be established until now. It is hoped that after some time this page of Russian history will cease to be called a white spot.