All monuments to dm karbyshev. Unbroken

The courtyard of house 34 on the 7th line of Vasilyevsky Island is decorated with a bronze monument to Vasily Korchmin. The brave bombardier, engineer, major general, associate of Emperor Peter I greets guests in a welcoming pose with a cigarette holder in his hand. Sculptors Lukyanov and Sergeev created the image of a commander seated on a cannon barrel. The dashing warrior’s gaze is directed forward – to the bright future of the Great Country.

The gun carriage is decorated with the head of a lion with a ring in its mouth. The Spit of Vasilyevsky Island is decorated with the same architectural images.

Great strategist and master of the art of war

It is not surprising that the monument was erected in this historical part of the city. Korchmin stood on the defense of St. Petersburg from the first days of the city's foundation, defending it from the naval invasions of the Swedes. Peter I, without fear or apprehension, continued the construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress during the Northern War. He was sure that he had a reliable rear behind him - a bombardment regiment led by Lieutenant Korchmin. The commander's battery in those days was based on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island. When sending dispatches and orders to the western fortification, Peter put on them a simple signature “To Vasily on the island.” Legend has it that it was then that the island acquired its famous name.

Although some sources attribute the formation of the ethnonym in honor of the Novgorod governor Vasily Selezny, executed by Ivan the Terrible. But this historical legend did not take root; it is believed that it was the image of Korchmin that was immortalized in bronze.

From the horrors of battles to victorious fireworks

The hero of the monument is famous not only for his battle skills, the creation of cannons and flamethrowers, new waterways and military enterprises. Knight of the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, Korchmin was the chief pyrotechnician at the court of Peter the Great. He staged grandiose shows on the occasion of the capture of enemy fortresses and new military achievements. The most enchanting was the two-hour fireworks display in honor of the victory in the Northern War and the coronation of the Emperor.

The creation of a monument to the “founder” of Vasilievsky Island was timed to coincide with the celebration of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. On May 24, 2003, the monument was opened as a tribute to memory and respect to one of the most prominent and representative characters in the history of the city.

The Mauthausen concentration camp was founded in 1938 near the Wienergraben granite quarry. Gray granite mined by the labor of prisoners was used to pave the streets of Austrian cities. But the architectural ambitions of the Third Reich required huge quantities of natural stone. Granite was mined by hundreds of thousands of death camp prisoners. In inhumane conditions, they cut, polished and dragged granite blocks, creating a one and a half kilometer long shaft in the solid rock.

After the liberation by Allied troops, a “Memorial Memorial” was created on the site of the concentration camp. It became a common, collective tombstone over the symbolic grave of one hundred and twenty thousand prisoners. The center of the memorial complex is the “Altar of Memory” - a monument made of gray Mauthausen granite. Around it are located two dozen memorial monuments citizens of different states who became victims of fascism. These outstandingly expressive monuments made of granite, marble and bronze embody the historical memory of peoples who united in the fight against the brown plague.

In this series, a special place is occupied by the monument to the outstanding military engineer, Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev, created by sculptor Vladimir Tsigal.

By the end of the 1930s, Dmitry Karbyshev was considered one of the most prominent experts in the field of military engineering not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the world. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, General Karbyshev worked on the creation of defensive structures on the western border.

But on August 8, 1941, Lieutenant General Karbyshev was seriously shell-shocked in a battle near the Dnieper River, and was captured in an unconscious state.

However, very soon the Nazis discovered that Karbyshev was a tough nut to crack. The 60-year-old general refused to serve the Third Reich, expressed confidence in the final victory of the Soviet Union and did not in any way resemble a man broken by captivity.

Prisoner of Mauthausen, D.M. Karbyshev accepted a heroic death in February 1945. Exhausted by torture, the general was taken to the camp parade ground and poured with ice water until he turned into a block of ice. The unparalleled courage of the general
prompted the sculptor to design the monument. Based on real events, the author created a monument of enormous expressive power. The monument is made of a single block of light gray Ural marble. The figure of the hero, shackled by the icy immobility of the stone, symbolizes perseverance and heroism. Sparkling and deep-colored marble perfectly conveys the essence of the author’s artistic metaphor. The marble monument is placed on a wide, polished granite slab. On the black granite slab, the inscription “To Dmitry Karbyshev. To a scientist. To the warrior. To the communist"

The monument was erected in 1980 at the intersection of the boulevard named after him and Marshal Zhukov Avenue.

From the history

D. M. Karbyshev was a Soviet general and engineer. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he was captured.

He was offered to cooperate, but he refused. Karbyshev was kept in German concentration camps: Zamosc, Hammelburg, Flossenbürg, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen. I have repeatedly received offers to cooperate from the camp administration.

Despite his age, he was one of the active leaders of the camp resistance movement.

On the night of February 18, 1945, in the Mauthausen concentration camp (Austria), along with other prisoners (about 500 people), he was doused with water in the cold and died. It has become a symbol of unbending will and perseverance.

Description

The monument to General Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev was opened on May 7, 1980 on General Karbyshev Boulevard.

The monument is cast entirely from bronze, in the form of 8-meter forms directed upward, symbolizing ice blocks on which a cube with a portrait of the hero is mounted.

The following is inscribed on the memorial sign:

“To Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev, Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops, Doctor of Military Sciences.”

In February 1946, the representative of the Soviet mission for repatriation in England was informed that a wounded Canadian officer in a hospital near London urgently wanted to see him. The officer, a former prisoner of the Mauthausen concentration camp, considered it necessary to inform the Soviet representative of “extremely important information.”

The Canadian major's name was Seddon De Saint Clair. "I want to tell you about how I died Lieutenant General Dmitry Karbyshev“,” said the officer when the Soviet representative appeared at the hospital.

The story of a Canadian military man was the first news about Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev since 1941...

Cadet from an unreliable family

Dmitry Karbyshev was born on October 26, 1880 into a military family. Since childhood, he dreamed of continuing the dynasty started by his father and grandfather. Dmitry entered the Siberian Cadet Corps, however, despite the diligence shown in his studies, he was listed among the “unreliable” there.

The fact is that Dmitry's older brother, Vladimir, participated in a revolutionary circle created at Kazan University, together with another young radical - Vladimir Ulyanov. But if the future leader of the revolution got away with only expulsion from the university, then Vladimir Karbyshev ended up in prison, where he later died.

The building of the Omsk Cadet Corps, which graduated from Dmitry Karbyshev. Photo: www.russianlook.com

Despite the stigma of being “unreliable,” Dmitry Karbyshev studied brilliantly, and in 1898, after graduating from the cadet corps, he entered the Nikolaev Engineering School.

Of all the military specialties, Karbyshev was most attracted to the construction of fortifications and defensive structures.

The talent of the young officer first clearly manifested itself during the Russian-Japanese campaign - Karbyshev strengthened positions, built bridges across rivers, installed communications equipment and conducted reconnaissance in force.

Despite the unsuccessful outcome of the war for Russia, Karbyshev showed himself to be an excellent specialist, which was noted with medals and the rank of lieutenant.

From Przemysl to Perekop

But in 1906, Lieutenant Karbyshev was dismissed from service for freethinking. True, not for long - the command was smart enough to understand that specialists of this level should not be thrown away.

On the eve of the First World War, Staff Captain Dmitry Karbyshev designed the forts of the Brest Fortress - the same ones in which thirty years later Soviet soldiers would fight the Nazis.

Karbyshev spent the First World War as a division engineer of the 78th and 69th infantry divisions, and then as the head of the engineering service of the 22nd Finnish Rifle Corps. For bravery and bravery during the storming of Przemysl and during the Brusilov breakthrough, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and awarded the Order of St. Anne.

General Dmitry Karbyshev. Photo: Public Domain

During the revolution, Lieutenant Colonel Karbyshev did not rush about, but immediately joined the Red Guard. All his life he was faithful to his views and beliefs, which he did not renounce.

In November 1920, Dmitry Karbyshev was engaged in engineering support for the assault on Perekop, the success of which finally decided the outcome of the Civil War.

Missing

By the end of the 1930s, Dmitry Karbyshev was considered one of the most prominent experts in the field of military engineering not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the world. In 1940 he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general, and in 1941 - the degree of Doctor of Military Sciences.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, General Karbyshev worked on the creation of defensive structures on the western border. During one of his trips to the border, he was caught by the outbreak of hostilities.

The rapid advance of the Nazis put the Soviet troops in a difficult situation. The 60-year-old general of the engineering troops is not the most necessary person in units that are threatened with encirclement. However, they failed to evacuate Karbyshev. However, he himself, like a real combat officer, decided to break out of Hitler’s “bag” together with our units.

But on August 8, 1941, Lieutenant General Karbyshev was seriously shell-shocked in a battle near the Dnieper River, and was captured in an unconscious state.

From that moment until 1945, a short phrase would appear in his personal file: “Missing in action.”

Valuable specialist

The German command was convinced: Karbyshev among the Bolsheviks was a random person. A nobleman, an officer in the tsarist army, he would easily agree to go over to their side. In the end, he and the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) joined only in 1940, apparently under duress.

However, very soon the Nazis discovered that Karbyshev was a tough nut to crack. The 60-year-old general refused to serve the Third Reich, expressed confidence in the final victory of the Soviet Union and did not in any way resemble a man broken by captivity.

In March 1942, Karbyshev was transferred to the Hammelburg officer concentration camp. It carried out active psychological treatment of high-ranking Soviet officers in order to force them to go over to the German side. For this purpose, the most humane and benevolent conditions were created. Many who suffered hardships in ordinary soldier camps broke down on this. Karbyshev, however, turned out to be of a completely different cloth - no benefits or concessions could “reforge” him.

Soon Karbyshev was assigned colonel Pelita. This Wehrmacht officer had an excellent command of the Russian language, since he had served in the tsarist army at one time. Moreover, Pelit was a colleague of Karbyshev while working on the forts of the Brest Fortress.

Pelit, a subtle psychologist, described to Karbyshev all the advantages of serving great Germany, offering “compromise options for cooperation” - for example, the general is engaged in historical works on the military operations of the Red Army in the current war, and for this in the future he will be allowed to travel to a neutral country.

However, Karbyshev again rejected all the options for cooperation proposed by the Nazis.

Incorruptible

Then the Nazis made their last attempt. The general was transferred to solitary confinement in one of the Berlin prisons, where he was kept for about three weeks.

After that, a colleague, a well-known German fortifier Professor Heinz Raubenheimer.

The Nazis knew that Karbyshev and Raubenheimer knew each other; moreover, the Russian general respected the work of the German scientist.

Raubenheimer voiced to Karbyshev the following proposal from the authorities of the Third Reich. The general was offered release from the camp, the opportunity to move to a private apartment, as well as full financial security. He will have access to all libraries and book depositories in Germany, and will be given the opportunity to become acquainted with other materials in areas of military engineering that interest him. If necessary, any number of assistants were guaranteed to set up the laboratory, carry out development work and provide other research activities. The results of the work should become the property of German specialists. All ranks of the German army will treat Karbyshev as a lieutenant general of the engineering troops of the German Reich.

A middle-aged man who had gone through hardships in the camps was offered luxurious conditions while retaining his position and even his rank. They didn’t even require him to brand him. Stalin and the Bolshevik regime. The Nazis were interested in Karbyshev’s work in his main specialty.

Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev understood perfectly well that this was most likely the last proposal. He also understood what would follow the refusal.

However, the courageous general said: “My convictions do not fall out along with my teeth from a lack of vitamins in the camp diet. I am a soldier and remain true to my duty. And he forbids me to work for a country that is at war with my Motherland.”

The Nazis really counted on Karbyshev, on his influence and authority. It is he, not general Vlasov, according to the original plan, was to lead the Russian Liberation Army.

But all the plans of the Nazis were dashed by Karbyshev’s inflexibility.

Gravestones for the Nazis

After this refusal, the Nazis put an end to the general, defining him as “a convinced, fanatical Bolshevik, whose use in the service of the Reich is impossible.”

Karbyshev was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was subjected to extreme hard labor. But here, too, the general surprised his comrades in misfortune with his unbending will, fortitude and confidence in the final victory of the Red Army.

One of the Soviet prisoners later recalled that Karbyshev knew how to cheer up even in the most difficult moments. When the prisoners were working on making gravestones, the general remarked: “This is the work that gives me real pleasure. The more tombstones the Germans demand from us, the better, which means things are going well for us at the front.”

He was transferred from camp to camp, the conditions became more and more harsh, but they failed to break Karbyshev. In each of the camps where the general found himself, he became a real leader of spiritual resistance to the enemy. His tenacity gave strength to those around him.

The front was moving to the West. Soviet troops entered German territory. The outcome of the war became obvious even to convinced Nazis. The Nazis had nothing left but hatred and the desire to deal with those who turned out to be stronger than them, even in chains and behind barbed wire...

Execution

Major Seddon De-Saint-Clair was one of several dozen prisoners of war who managed to survive the terrible night of February 18, 1945 in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Mauthausen Museum (current state): Appelplatz (roll call square) and barracks. Photo: Public Domain

“As soon as we entered the camp, the Germans forced us into the shower room, ordered us to undress and launched jets of ice water on us from above. This went on for a long time. Everyone turned blue. Many fell to the floor and died immediately: their hearts could not stand it. Then we were ordered to put on only underwear and wooden stocks for our feet and were kicked out into the yard. General Karbyshev stood in a group of Russian comrades not far from me. We realized that we were living our last hours. A couple of minutes later, the Gestapo men, standing behind us with fire hoses in their hands, began pouring streams of cold water on us. Those who tried to evade the stream were hit on the head with batons. Hundreds of people fell frozen or with their skulls crushed. I saw how General Karbyshev also fell,” said the Canadian major.

The general’s last words were addressed to those who shared his terrible fate: “Cheer up, comrades! Think about the Motherland, and courage will not leave you!”

With the story of the Canadian major, the collection of information about the last years of General Karbyshev’s life, spent in German captivity, began. All collected documents and eyewitness accounts spoke of the exceptional courage and perseverance of this man.

On August 16, 1946, for the exceptional tenacity and courage shown in the fight against the German invaders in the Great Patriotic War, Lieutenant General Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Monument to General Dmitry Karbyshev in Mauthausen. Photo: RIA Novosti

In 1948, a monument to the general was unveiled on the territory of the former Mauthausen concentration camp. The inscription on it reads: “To Dmitry Karbyshev. To a scientist. To the warrior. Communist. His life and death were a feat in the name of life.”

Dmitry Karbyshev was born in 1880 in Omsk. He had a noble origin: his father worked as a military official. When the head of the family died untimely, the child was only 12 years old, and caring for him fell on the shoulders of the mother.

Childhood

The family had Tatar roots and belonged to the ethno-confessional group of Kryashens, who profess Orthodoxy, despite their Turkic origin. Dmitry Karbyshev also had an older brother. In 1887, he was arrested for participating in the revolutionary movement of students at Kazan University. Vladimir was arrested, and the family found themselves in a difficult situation.

Nevertheless, Dmitry Karbyshev was able to graduate from the Siberian Cadet Corps thanks to his talents and efforts. This educational institution was followed by the Nikolaev Engineering School. The young military man also showed himself excellently in it. Karbyshev was sent to the border in Manchuria, where he served as one of the commanders in the company responsible for telegraph communications.

Service in the royal army

On the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, the junior officer received the military rank of lieutenant. With the outbreak of the armed conflict, Dmitry Karbyshev was sent to reconnaissance. He laid communications, was responsible for the condition of bridges at the front and participated in some important battles. So, he found himself in the thick of it when the outbreak broke out.

After the end of the war, he lived briefly in Vladivostok, where he continued to serve in the sapper battalion. In 1908-1911 The officer was trained at the Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy. After graduating, he went to Brest-Litovsk as a staff captain, where he took part in the construction of the Brest Fortress.

Since during these years Karbyshev was on the western borders of the country, he found himself at the front of the First World War from the very first day of its declaration. Most of the officer's service was spent under the command of the famous Alexei Brusilov. This was the Southwestern Front, where Russia fought a war with Austria-Hungary with varying degrees of success. For example, Karbyshev took part in the successful capture of Przemysl, and also spent the last days of the war on the border with Romania, where he was strengthening defensive positions. During several years at the front, he managed to get wounded in the leg, but still returned to duty.

Transfer to the Red Army

In October 1917, a coup took place in Petrograd, after which the Bolsheviks came to power. Vladimir Lenin wanted to end the war with Germany as quickly as possible in order to redirect all forces to fight internal enemies: the white movement. For this purpose, mass propaganda campaigning for Soviet power began in the active army.

This is how Karbyshev ended up in the ranks of the Red Guard. In it, he was responsible for organizing defensive and engineering work. Karbyshev did especially a lot in the Volga region, where in 1918-1919. the Eastern Front ran. The engineer's talent and abilities helped the Red Army gain a foothold in this region and continue its advance towards the Urals. Karbyshev’s career growth was crowned with his appointment to one of the leading positions in the 5th Army of the Red Army. He ended the civil war in Crimea, where he was responsible for engineering work in Perekop, connecting the peninsula with the mainland.

Between world wars

During the peaceful period of the 20s and 30s, Karbyshev taught at military academies and even became a professor. From time to time he took part in the implementation of important infrastructure defense projects. For example, we are talking about

With the outbreak of the Soviet-Finnish war in 1939, Karbyshev found himself at headquarters, from where he wrote recommendations for breaking through the defensive. A year later, he became a lieutenant general and a doctor of military sciences.

During his journalistic career, Karbyshev wrote about 100 works on engineering sciences. Many Red Army specialists were trained using his textbooks and manuals right up to the Great Patriotic War. General Karbyshev devoted especially much time to studying the issue of crossing rivers during armed conflicts. In 1940 he joined the CPSU(b).

German captivity

A few weeks before the start of the Great Patriotic War, General Karbyshev was sent to serve at the headquarters of the 3rd Army. He was in Grodno - very close to the border. It was here that the first attacks of the Wehrmacht were directed when the blitzkrieg operation began on June 22, 1941.

Within a few days, Karbyshev’s army and headquarters found themselves surrounded. The attempt to escape from the cauldron failed, and the general was shell-shocked in the Mogilev region, not far from the Dnieper.

Once captured, he went through many concentration camps, the last of which was Mauthausen. General Karbyshev was a well-known specialist abroad. Therefore, the Nazis from the Gestapo and the SS tried in a variety of ways to win over to their side an already middle-aged officer who could convey valuable information to German headquarters and help the Reich.

The Nazis believed that they could easily persuade Karbyshev to cooperate with them. The officer came from the nobility and served in the tsarist army for many years. These features of the biography could indicate that General Karbyshev is a random person in the Bolshevik circle and will gladly make a deal with the Reich.

The 60-year-old officer was brought several times for explanatory conversations with the relevant authorities, but the old man refused to cooperate with the Germans. Each time he confidently declared that the Soviet Union would win the Great Patriotic War, and the Nazis would be defeated. Not a single action of his showed that the prisoner was broken or lost heart.

In Hammelburg

In the spring of 1942, Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev was transferred to Hammelburg. It was special for captured officers. Here the most comfortable living conditions were created for them. Thus, the German leadership tried to win over to its side high-ranking officers of the enemy armies, who enjoyed great authority in their homeland. In total, 18 thousand Soviet prisoners visited Hammelburg during the war. Each of them had high military ranks. Many broke down after they left and found themselves in comfortable and convenient places of detention, where they had friendly conversations with them. However, Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev did not react in any way to the psychological treatment of the enemy and continued to remain loyal to the Soviet Union.

A special person was assigned to the general - Colonel Pelit. This Wehrmacht officer once served in the army of Tsarist Russia and was fluent in Russian. In addition, he worked with Karbyshev during the First World War in Brest-Litovsk.

The old comrade tried to find a variety of approaches to Karbyshev. If he refused direct cooperation with the Wehrmacht, then Pelit offered him compromise options, for example, working as a historian and describing the military operations of the Red Army in the current war. However, such proposals had no effect on the officer.

It is interesting that initially the Germans wanted Karbyshev to become the head of the Russian Liberation Army, which was eventually led by General Vlasov. But regular refusals to cooperate did their job: the Wehrmacht abandoned its idea. Now in Germany they expected at least that the prisoner would agree to work in Berlin as a valuable logistics specialist.

In Berlin

General Dmitry Karbyshev, whose biography consisted of constant moving, was still a tasty morsel for the Reich, and the Germans did not lose hope of finding a common language with him. After the failure in Hammelburg, they transferred the old man to solitary confinement in Berlin and kept him there in ignorance for three weeks.

This was done specifically to remind Karbyshev that he could become a victim of terror at any moment if he did not want to cooperate with the Wehrmacht. Finally, the prisoner was sent to the investigator for the last time. The Germans asked one of their most respected military engineering experts for help. It was Heinz Rubenheimer. In the pre-war period, this famous expert, like Karbyshev, worked on monographs on their general profile. Dmitry Mikhailovich himself treated him with a certain reverence, as a respected specialist.

Rubenheimer made a significant proposal to his counterpart. If Karbyshev had agreed to cooperate, he could have received his own private apartment and full economic security thanks to the treasury of the German state. In addition, the engineer was offered free access to any libraries and archives in Germany. He could pursue his theoretical research or work on experiments in the field of engineering. At the same time, Karbyshev was allowed to recruit a team of specialist assistants. The officer would become a lieutenant general in the army of the German state.

Karbyshev's feat was that he rejected all the enemy's proposals, despite several very persistent attempts. A variety of methods of persuasion were used against him: intimidation, flattery, promises, etc. In the end, he was offered only theoretical work. That is, Karbyshev did not even need to scold Stalin and the Soviet leadership. All that was required of him was to become an obedient cog in the Third Reich system.

Despite health problems and his impressive age, General Dmitry Karbyshev responded with a decisive refusal this time. After this, the German leadership gave up on him and wrote him off as a man fanatically devoted to the disastrous cause of Bolshevism. There was no way the Reich could use such people for its own purposes.

At hard labor

From Berlin, Karbyshev was transferred to Flossenbürg - a concentration camp, where cruel orders reigned, and prisoners without breaks ruined their health at hard labor. And if such work deprived the young captives of the remnants of their strength, then one can imagine how difficult it was for the elderly Karbyshev, who was already in his seventh decade.

However, during his entire stay in Flussenbürg, he never once complained to the camp management about poor living conditions. After the war, the Soviet Union learned the names of the heroes who did not break in the concentration camps. Numerous prisoners who shared the same jobs with him spoke about the general’s courageous behavior. Dmitry Karbyshev, whose feat was accomplished every day, became an example to follow. He inspired optimism in the doomed prisoners.

Because of his leadership qualities, the general was transferred from one camp to another, so that he would not disturb the minds of other prisoners. So he traveled all over Germany, being imprisoned in a dozen “death factories” at once.

Every month the news from the fronts became more and more alarming for the German leadership. After the victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army finally took the initiative into its own hands and launched a retaliatory offensive in a western direction. When the front approached the borders of pre-war Germany, the urgent evacuation of concentration camps began. The staff brutally dealt with the prisoners, after which they fled inland. This practice was widespread.

Mauthausen massacre

In 1945, Dmitry Karbyshev ended up in a concentration camp called Mauthausen. Austria, where this terrible establishment was located, came under attack from Soviet troops.

SS stormtroopers were always responsible for the protection of such objects. It was they who led the massacre of prisoners. On the night of February 18, 1945, they gathered about a thousand prisoners, among whom was Karbyshev. The prisoners were stripped and sent to the showers, where they found themselves under streams of icy water. The temperature difference led to the fact that many people’s hearts simply failed.

The prisoners who survived the first torture session were given underwear and sent to the courtyard. The weather outside was frosty. The prisoners huddled together in small groups. Soon they began to be sprayed with the same ice-cold water from a fire hose. General Karbyshev, standing in the crowd, persuaded his comrades to strengthen themselves and not show cowardice. Some tried to escape from the ice jets aimed at them. They were grabbed, beaten with batons and returned to their place. In the end, almost everyone died, including Dmitry Karbyshev. He was 64 years old.

The last minutes of Karbyshev’s life became known in his homeland thanks to the testimony of a Canadian major who managed to survive the fateful night of the massacre of Mauthausen prisoners.

The fragmentary information collected about the fate of the captured general spoke of his exceptional courage and devotion to his duty. In August 1946, he posthumously received the country's highest award - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Subsequently, monuments in his honor were opened throughout the entire socialist state. Streets were also named after the general. The main monument to Karbyshev is, of course, located on the territory of Mauthausen. At the site of the concentration camp, a memorial was opened to the memory of those killed and innocently tortured. This is where the monument is located. The heroes of the Soviet Union of the Second World War deservedly have this indomitable general in their ranks.

His image was especially popular in the post-war period. The fact is that it was difficult to make heroes of the country out of the numerous generals who ended up in concentration camps. Many of them were forcibly deported back home, and a dozen were also repressed. Some were hanged in the Vlasov case, others ended up in the Gulag on charges of cowardice. Stalin himself really needed the image of an unsullied hero who could become an example for future generations of the army.

Karbyshev turned out to be exactly such a person. His name often appeared on the pages of newspapers. Dmitry Karbyshev was popular in literature: several works were written about him. For example, Sergei Vasiliev dedicated the poem “Dignity” to the general. Another Mauthausen prisoner, Yuri Pilyar, became the author of a fictional biography of the officer, “Honor.”

The Soviet government tried in every possible way to immortalize Karbyshev's feat. At the same time, declassified NKVD documents indicate that the investigation into his death was carried out hastily and on orders from above. For example, the testimony of the Canadian Major St. Clair (the first witness) was confusing and inaccurate. They did not learn from him the numerous details that Karbyshev’s biography later acquired.

St. Clair, whose testimony revealed the fate of the deceased general, himself died a few years after the end of the war from poor health. When Soviet investigators questioned him, he was already terminally ill. Nevertheless, in 1948, the writer Novogrudsky completed an official book dedicated to the biography of Karbyshev. In it he added many facts that St. Clair never mentioned.

Without detracting from the courageous behavior of this general, the Soviet leadership tried to turn a blind eye to the fate of other high-ranking officers of their army, tortured and killed in the dungeons of the Gestapo. Almost all of them became victims of Stalin’s policy of oblivion of “traitors” and “enemies of the people.”