The newsreels from those years show impartially piles of small bodies covered in snow. Adults were buried alive standing in their graves.

During the excavation a terrible scene was found, and its photo later shocked more than one generation and was called "The Salaspils Madonna" – a mother buried alive, holding a baby at her chest.

There were 30 barracks in the camp, and the biggest of them was the children's.

The Extraordinary Commission found that about 7000 children were tortured to death here, and in all, about 100 000 people died, more than in Buchenwald.

No one. With Hitler's. Symbols. On their bodies. Or in their minds. Can. Call. Themselves. Human.

Or expect others to see them as human.

They all must kneel in front of the Eternal Fire and ask forgiveness of those children from that blood factory in Latvia. Among many thousands of little ones cruelly tortured to death by the Nazis.

And then mom turned up. She had been driven away to Germany as a captive, it turned out. We started gathering together.

I remember meeting mom in every detail.

One day I looked out of the window. I saw a woman walking, she was tanned. I shouted: "Someone's mom came. She'll take them home today". But for some reason I started shaking all over. A door to our room opened, the instructor's son came in and said: "Nina, come, they are making a dress for you there".

I came in and saw by the wall, by the door, on a small stool a woman sitting. I passed her by. I walked to the instructor who stood in the middle of the room, came close to her, cuddled up to her. And she asked me: "Do you recognize this woman?" I answered: "No".

Mom could not endure. "Nina, daughter, I'm your mom", she said.

And my legs stopped working, they almost gave way, they were like wooden. They wouldn’t obey me, I couldn’t move. I kept nestling up to the instructor, and couldn’t believe my own happiness.

"Nina, daughter, come to me", mom called me again.

Then the instructor led me to mom and seated me at her side. Mom hugged me, kissed me, asked me questions. I told her the names of my brothers and sisters, the neighbors who lived near us. That's how we made sure we were really family.

Mom took me from the orphanage, and we went home, to Belorussia.

Horrible things had happened there. At the edge of our village there was a threshing floor. Grain was threshed there. The Germans gathered all the villagers who stayed and didn’t escape, like we did. People thought the war wouldn’t last long, and they'd endured the Finnish war and World War I, the Germans had done them no harm. But they didn’t know the Germans had become very different. They drove all the villagers to the threshing floor and poured gasoline over them. And those who stayed alive were burned alive with flame-throwers. Some were shot in the square, where before that people were made to dig a pit. My own uncle's entire family died that way: his wife and four children were burned alive in his house.

And we were left alive. I have granddaughters. And I would like to wish happiness and health to everyone, and also that all would learn to love their own Homeland. As it should be.

Hitler's soldiers burned the archives, but those who saw their atrocities with their own eyes are still alive. Another prisoner of the camp, Faina Augostane, recollects: "They started taking blood from children when they allotted all of us to our barracks. It was scary, when you walk in the fog and don’t know whether you'll return. I saw a girl who lay in a passage, she had a piece of skin cut out on her leg. She was groaning, covered in blood". Faina Augostane is outraged by the official position of today's Latvian authorities who state there was a re-education through labor camp here. "It's a disgrace", she said. "Blood was taken from children, children were dying, and their bodies were piled up. My younger brother went missing. I saw he was still crawling, and then on the second floor they tied him to a table. His head hung to a side. I called him: "Gena, Gena". And then he was gone from there. He was thrown, like a log, into a grave, which was filled to the top with dead children".

A labor camp – that was the official designation of that dreadful place in Nazi papers. And those who repeat that today repeat the phrases of the Nazis and Hitler.

Immediately after the liberation of Latvia in 1944 according to a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR an Extraordinary State Commission for investigating the crimes of the German Nazi invaders was created. In May 1945, after examining just one fifth of the territory of the death camp (54 graves), the commission found 632 bodies of children aged approximately from 5 to 10. The bodies were laid in layers. In all their stomachs Soviet doctors found pine cones and tree bark, traces of terrible starvation could be seen. Some children got the injections of arsenic.

We were let out to walk outside. Of course, we felt like crying and screaming. But we were not allowed to do that. Another thing that helped us hold on was that we knew: beyond our barracks were the barracks with prisoners of war, our soldiers. We would stand furtively with our backs to them, and they would say to us softly: "Kids, you are Soviet children, be patient for a little longer, don’t lose heart. Don't think we are abandoned here. They will free us soon. Have faith in our victory".

We wrote it in our hearts that we must not cry and groan.

The most terrible thing was when the Germans came into the barracks and laid out their white tools on the tables. Each of us was laid onto a table, we held out our arms willingly. Those who tried to resist were tied down. Screaming was useless. That's how they took blood from children for German soldiers. 500 gram and more.

If children couldn’t walk on their own, they carried them and took all their blood without mercy, after which they took them outside. They were, most likely, dumped into a pit or taken to a crematorium. Stinking black smoke rose up day and night. That's how bodies were burned.

After the war we came there with a tour, it still seemed as if the ground were groaning.

In the morning a Latvian warden would come in, a tall blonde woman wearing a field cap and tall boots, with a lash. She shouted in Latvian: "What do you want? Brown bread or white bread?" If children said they wanted white bread, they were pulled down from their bunk – the warden would beat them with the lash until they passed out.

Then we were taken to Jūrmala. It was a little easier there. There were beds, at least. The food was much the same. We were taken to the canteen. We stood at attention. We had no right to sit down until we said the Lord's Prayer and until we wished Hitler health and quick victory. We were often punished.

Every child had sores that would bleed if you scratched them. Sometimes boys would get some salt. They gave it to us, and we carefully, with two fingers, so very carefully, gripped those precious white grains, and started rubbing the sore with that salt. You couldn’t let out a squeak or a groan. Suppose an instructor was nearby. It would be an emergency – where did you get the salt? There would be an investigation. We would be beaten or killed.

We were freed in 1944. On July 3. I remember that day well. The instructor – the kindest of all, she spoke Russian – told us: "Take your things and run to the door, on tiptoe, so there would be not a rustle". She took us to a bomb shelter at night, in the dark. And when we were let out of the bomb shelter, everyone was shouting "Hurrah!" And we saw our soldiers.

They started teaching us to write the letter "A" on a newspaper. And when the war was over, we were transferred to another orphanage. We were given a kitchen garden with vegetable beds. There we started living like human beings.

They started taking photos of us, find out who was born where. And I could remember nothing. Only the name Korolyova village. One day we heard that Germany surrendered.

Soldiers lifted us by our armpits and threw us up into the air, like balls. They and us both cried, that day gave life to so many of us.
We were given papers: we were referred to as the first category of victims. It was written in brackets "medical experiments". We don’t know what the German doctors did to us. Maybe, they gave us some drugs, I don’t know. I only know that I'm still alive. Our doctors are surprised that I live without any thyroid gland. It disappeared. It got thin as a thread.

I had no way of learning where exactly I was born. Two girls I knew were taken home from the orphanage. I sat and cried. The girls' mother looked at me for a long time and remembered she knew my mother and father. So she wrote my address on a small piece of paper. I banged at the instructor's door with my fists and my feet, shouting: "Look where I was born".

And then they persuaded me to calm down. In two weeks a reply came – no one left alive. There was grief and tears.

Salaspils, Latvia
Most children didn’t stay long in Krasnoberezhny camp: their blood was needed in the west. They were sent in tarpaulin-covered trucks to other camps. The nearest was Salaspils. This concentration camp was created by the Nazis in 1941 in the Latvian territory. That's where they brought children from Belorussia, and Pskov and Leningrad regions, that were taken during punitive operations. Its official name was the Salaspils Police Prison and Re-Education Through Labor Camp. Young prisoners were kept there and used by the Nazis for their medical experiments. In the three years that Salaspils Camp existed, over 3500 liters of children's blood was pumped out. Often young prisoners became 'full donors'. That meant that their blood was taken until they died. The bodies were destroyed in crematorium furnaces or dumped in disposal pits. In one of those a German woman found by accident a Belorussian girl Zina Kazakevich who barely breathed: after her blood was taken again and again, she fell asleep. She was taken for dead. She woke up in the house of the compassionate German woman: the Frau passed by the disposal pit, noticed movement, got the girl out, and nursed her back to health.

Nina Antonovna Matsulevich recollects: "When the war began, I was 6. We grew up very quickly. I can see several motorcycles in front of me, submachine gunners. We were scared, and ran at once into the cottage, to mom. We tried to escape the police roundup, mom hid us in a cellar. At night we left. We wandered for a long time in a wheat field, hoping to find someone we knew. No one thought the war would last so long. In the forest the Germans found us. They attacked us with dogs, pushed us with guns, led us to a road and brought us to a railway station. It was hot. We were hungry. We were thirsty. We all were tired. In the evening a train came, and we all were stuffed into a railway car. There was no toilet. There was only a small hole cut in the right side of the car.

The journey was endless. So it seemed to me. The train kept stopping. At last we were ordered to get out. We found ourselves in a camp near Daugavpils. We were pushed into cells. From time to time seventeen-year-old girls were snatched from there, and then brought back beaten, injured, violated. They were thrown onto the floor, and no one was allowed to get near them.

Our younger sister Tonya died there. I don’t remember exactly how much time passed – a week or a month. Some time later we were again led into a prison yard and stuffed into cars.

We were brought to Salaspils Camp. The Germans called it unofficially 'blood factory'. Officially it was called a re-education through labor camp. That's what the Germans dubbed it in their documents.

But what re-education through labor could there be when there were three-year-olds and even babies there!

Tags were placed around our necks, from that moment we no longer had the right to say our names, but only our numbers. We didn’t stay long in the barrack. We were formed into a column in the square. Two of my sisters were named by their tags and taken away. Some time later we again were formed into a column in the square, and this time my mom's number was called. We were left alone. When my mom was taken away, she couldn’t walk any more. She was led by her arms. Then they took hold of her arms and legs, swung her, and threw her into a truck. The same was done to others, too.

https://t.me/KatiaTxiLive/2891

I often think about the things that have been happening in the last few weeks in Latvia around the memorials to the liberating warrior, the attitude towards the people who honor the memory of those who died in that war…
Latvia, have you forgotten? This text should be translated in many languages and sent to all Latvian official structures…

https://tube2.solari.com/videos/reset-in-ukraine-with-karel-van-wolferen-1080p-hls/

#18+

The whole world must see this footage so they realize that this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine, which is supported by the NATO countries, but the war between good and evil.

In this video Ukrainian soldiers shoot Russian prisoners of war in the legs and afterwards give them a severe beating. At the beginning of the video, there are Russian POWs lying on the ground with bullet wounds in their legs, some of them have got leg bones broken. It might give the impression that the Russian military were captured after having been wounded. But that's not the case. At the end of the video, we can see Ukrainian soldiers shooting all the newly arrived prisoners through their legs. Many of them are dying from shock due to the pain right on camera. And all of this is being filmed by Ukrainian soldiers themselves. They have been treating the captured Donbass defenders the same way throughout these eight years.

@neoficialniybezsonov