(S+) Soviet female soldiers: »Women in uniform are to be shot«

Up to eight percent of the Red Army soldiers were women.

After a few weeks of training - here is a staged photo from 1941 (digitally colored) - many of them went to the front.

Photo:

akg images

Amidst the misery in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, Soviet prisoners composed new verses to a Russian folk song:

»Not far from Berlin... We live on

a piece of earth surrounded by water

behind the Wall

on which stands the Ravensbrück concentration camp...«

The women, many of them captured Red Army soldiers, sang courage to each other with the last verse of the song:

“Encourage the heart, Russian women!

Remember you are Russian!

Keep in mind, soon we will see

our Russian soil again!"

Between 800,000 and a million women fought on the Soviet side in World War II, making up eight percent of the Red Army.

The soldiers of the Wehrmacht reacted to the uniformed combatants with excesses of violence.

Notwithstanding the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, many Red Army women were shot while they were being captured.

If they were left alive, very few of them ended up in prisoner-of-war camps.

They were enslaved with forced labor or deported to concentration camps.

Like Antonina Nikiforova.

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