There is an aspect of the North African campaign of 1940-1943, which "fell out" of the attention of researchers, did not find their proper assessment. This is E. Rommel's use of Soviet prisoners of war in fortification works to support combat operations: in the African theater of operations - more than 20 thousand people, in Italy - 10 thousand people.

Key words: North Africa, Rommel, Soviet prisoners of war, repatriates.

Arriving at the front, Rommel quickly became convinced that the personnel of the troops entrusted to him could hardly bear the African heat and the mercilessly blowing ghibli wind - a sandy drift that not only covered the eyes, ears and lungs with fine dust, but also made the optics opaque, and all military equipment unusable. The creation of any military infrastructure facilities in such conditions was out of the question. The soldiers didn't even have the strength to dig basic trenches, let alone equip combat positions. Rommel reported this to Berlin and asked the Stavka to select and place at his disposal more or less healthy Soviet citizens or prisoners of war who were in concentration camps or had been taken to Germany.

E. Rommel's request was granted. In a short time, more than 20 thousand of our captured compatriots were transferred to the north of Africa, who began to build for Rommel's army everything that the war required: from trenches to deep-echeloned fortifications in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. "Russian slaves," as the Bedouins called them, were placed in sand ditches or hastily dug holes covered with tarpaulins. They were buried in sand, they died of hunger and disease, but under the muzzles of machine guns they did what was required of them, although every third person found their grave there.

Field Marshal Rommel might not have lost the battle of North Africa so quickly if Berlin had not taken the best divisions from him and moved them to the Eastern Front, to Stalingrad. After the defeat at El Alamein, the fascist troops rolled back. Rommel, retreating, left his Italian charges to their fate, but did not abandon the remaining Russians - they retreated to the west together, and the Russians were now a pulling force for the Germans.

The superiority of the British was growing daily, and it became clear that the war was lost. The Germans and Italians began to surrender to the mercy of the victors in whole columns. And the Russians? They "went on the run" through the desert and oases, wherever they could, and in this they were helped by local tribes of Libya and Tunisia. The end of the war for our captured compatriots was sad. Those whom the Western Allies managed to capture, first

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They were interned, then, at the request of the Soviet command, sent by sea to Novorossiysk or by rail through Iran.

The fugitives hiding in the desert adopted Islam and Arabic names and "disappeared" among the Bedouins so that nothing is known about their fate until now. Moscow tried to find them in the "hot pursuit" immediately after the victory. So, during the work of the UN Survey Commission on the territory of Libya (when deciding on the fate of the former Italian colonies), representatives of the USSR really wanted to attack at least the traces of their fellow citizens, but in vain. Ours did not "stick out", and the desert kept its secrets. It is quite possible that this is the reason why the then representative of the USSR to the UN, A. A. Gromyko, at one of the initial stages of discussing the role of the great powers in organizing the administration of the Libyan territories, proposed, along with Great Britain, the United States and France, the participation of the Soviet Union in the guardianship of Tripolitania [Pelt, 1970].

While working in Egypt (1965-1971) and Libya (1974-1980), the author of these lines had to repeatedly visit the sites of past battles. English, Italian, and German cemeteries have been built near El Alamein, Tobruk, and Benghazi, where those who fought in North Africa, either in the name of the German Reich or for the glory of Western democracy, are collected and reburied. The names of the dead are stamped on the stone slabs, and many graves have flowers that never fade. But no matter how much we tried to read the tombstone inscriptions, not a single word was mentioned about our compatriots. Not those who were in German captivity in the desert with Rommel, nor those who provided British sea transports in the Mediterranean (and this was also the case), not to mention the defectors who managed to escape from Rommel and fight as part of the British expeditionary force against a common enemy... It was sad to state this once, and it is even more painful to write now.

Meanwhile, for example, according to the front-line writer Sergei Borzenko, who published the novel "El Alamein" back in the 70s of the XX century, only about two hundred Soviet people participated in the defense of the Tobruk fortress. Among them is the hero of his story, Colonel Khlebnikov, and twelve fellow tankers who escaped from German captivity. They marched through the desert, fought and died at El Alamein as part of the British 8th Army.

Another colleague of ours, Pavel Demchenko, with whom I worked in Egypt in the 60s (he was a correspondent for Izvestia) in an English military train traveling from North Africa, found a whole battalion formed from former Soviet prisoners of war who spoke Russian. One of them asked where to get boiling water. People were going home, even though they knew that by Order No. 270 of August 16, 1941, issued by J. V. Stalin, they were considered traitors and had to go to court-martial. These and other details of the tragedy of Rommel's slaves were published by our colleague V. V. Belyakov in the book "Africa Sheltered the Firebird" (Belyakov, 2000). He, a correspondent for Pravda (since 1986), then Trud (1996-2002) and the magazine Asia and Africa Today (until the beginning of the XXI century), found among the 11,945 English graves of El Almein in sector B-16 the name of our compatriot Junior Lieutenant Ivan Dmitrievich Zvyagintsev, who died on 28 December 1941 Then V. V. Belyakov also came out to the commander of a 23-man sabotage squad, Vladimir Penyakov, who fought as part of the 8th British Army and made autonomous raids into the enemy's rear near El Alamein. A. B. also mentions it. Podtserob [Podtserob, 2009]. V. Penyakov's group destroyed the airfield near Tobruk, destroying 20 enemy aircraft, blew up fuel depots, and released prisoners of war. In particular, after learning about the brutal executions by the Italians of Libyans suspected of collaborating with the British (they were hung by their jaws on a hook and left to die in the sun), V. Penyakov sent a letter to the commander of the Italian troops in Cyrenaica, General Patti, warning that for every tortured Arab he would shoot one Italian officer.

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And the executions stopped. Escaped Russian prisoners of war in 1941-1943 were seen and received by A. A. Shirinskaya [Shirinskaya, 1999], who had lived in Tunis since 1920. she died). "Although they were called "Russians", there were Ukrainians, Tatars, and others... groups of 10 people."

When E. Rommel arrived in Italy, he ordered for his troops a "new batch" of Soviet prisoners of war - 10,000 people. They were doing what their fellow prisoners in Africa were doing. But after the war, they were collected and sent to their homeland via Egypt, where there was already an embassy of the USSR and where they were all taken into account.

On May 13, 1943, after finishing the fighting in Africa, the Allies in July-August 1943, having crossed the Mediterranean Sea in the opposite direction, captured Sicily, and on September 3 launched an operation in Southern Italy, freeing it by the beginning of 1944 from the fascist troops commanded by E. Rommel who had fled there. On June 4, 1944, Rome was taken, and by the beginning of 1945, the Nazis controlled only the northern part of the country. The Allied victory was approaching.

It was then that the European stage of the liberation of prisoners of war of various nationalities, including Soviet ones, began. The British authorities decided to send them first from Italy to Egypt, and then repatriate them home from there via the Middle East and Iran. This is evidenced by the correspondence of the British Embassy in Cairo with the USSR mission that opened in Cairo in November 1943. In 1944, according to British data, 5,694 former Soviet prisoners of war were brought from Italy to Egypt, housed in eight transit camps where Russian refugees already lived in 1920-1922. They were located in the Suez Canal zone and in the desert between Cairo and Alexandria. There, our compatriots were "filtered" by representatives of the Soviet special body-the department of the Commissioner for prisoners of War and internees under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, created on October 23, 1944.Then they were sent home by sea to our Black Sea ports, by trucks to Tehran via Palestine and Iraq, in heat cars to Baku and on other routes. The resulting confusion led to the fact that by February 1945, In addition to the 5,694 people officially delivered by the British, there were twice as many people in the camps (11,292 people) due to the 1943 repatriates who came out of the desert and were released by the Allies during the military operations in North Africa (Belyakov, 1994).

By April 1945, the Soviet mission in Cairo had left without making a full report on them, which is why the GARF archives are still unavailable. The sad fate of Rommel's "Russian slaves" would have remained a secret had it not been for those who remained alive to tell the truth about themselves and their dead comrades, from whom fate and the Motherland had turned away. Haggard and old, they confused many things, but unanimously confirmed the facts of the unprecedented "Russian presence" in North Africa during the Second World War. The saga of Rommel's "Russian slaves" has not yet been written. Researchers will have to further study the German, British, American, Italian and Russian archives (as well as the archives of North African countries), and if we do not have time to do this, we will bequeath it to our descendants... [Belyakov, 2001; Belyakov, 2003; Belyakov, 2004]. Someday, we hope, our archives, Western, Arabic and others will become available.

Despite the experience, some of the returned repatriates took up the pen. So? Suleyman Veliyev, who became a well-known writer in Azerbaijan during the post-war period, published his memoirs in the book "The Way to the Motherland". On December 8, 1944, he was sent from camp No. 307 (from the town of Geneifi, on the shore of the Small Bitter Lake, through which the Suez Canal passes, by train to Suez, from there by steamer to the Iraqi city of Basra, then by train to the port of Bendershah, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and then on the steamer "Turkmenistan" the repatriates were taken to Baku [Veliyev, 1963, p. 234-254]). In the eyes of the Egyptians, S. Veliyev emphasized, the repatriates were representatives of the victorious state in the Great War. "They said that we are the council for them-

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the Soviet people and, expressing their good feelings for us, expressed their love for the Soviet people, for our country" [Veliyev, 2963, p.294]. Another author, N. V. Novikov, a former employee of the Soviet Embassy in Egypt, wrote that the screening of the film "Stalingrad" on May 15, 1944, was attended by the entire Egyptian elite, led by King Farouk, and funds were collected to help the civilian population of the USSR (Novikov, 1976). This was confirmed by the American magazine "Colliers" in its issue of February 17, 1945, which wrote that "the widespread feeling among Europeans that Russia won the war almost alone is also inherent in the Egyptians" [AVPRF, l. 9 vol.].

Our allies in that war had a completely different attitude to what was happening. According to S. Veliyev, the administration of camp 307, where he was held, tried to persuade the repatriates not to return to their homeland, frightened them with Siberia, and for this purpose even sent them former Polish officers from the army of General Anders, but without success, although, unable to withstand such treatment from the allies, one person, according to S. Veliyev, committed suicide (name and place of burial are not named), two died of a heart attack (Private V. Zimbing (8.10.1944) and Sergeant E. Krasin (20.10.1944)). They were buried in a military cemetery in Eastern Kantara on the Sinai bank of the Suez Canal (Veliyev, 1963). Another repatriate, P. Polyan, in his book, said that on August 28, 1945, he was in a group of 2,640 people who were sent from Port Said to Odessa on a Norwegian steamer. According to his data, by February 1945, 11,292 people were repatriated through Egypt, i.e. our compatriots accumulated there significantly more than the British transported there from Italy. Polyan believes that this number also included repatriates released by the Allies during the military operations in North Africa. By the way, P. Polyan himself, apparently, was put on a steamer to Odessa in Port Said together with other cellmates, but the ship was going from some North African country and only made a stop in Port Said [Polyan, 1994]. V. V. Belyakov thinks so, not without reason. There were other assessments that brightened up the behavior of our former Western allies towards Soviet prisoners of war. Thus, N. D. Tolstoy, a descendant of Russian emigrants, very subjectively, on the basis of Western sources, tried to whitewash the anti-Russian activities of British volunteers in Africa (Belyakov, 2004).

History, however, leaves not only archives, but also living witnesses of events, which often add, but also, sometimes, refute archivists. The "Russian slaves" who ended up in North Africa at the behest of the German fascist Reich are no longer alive, but there is still the desert where the drama took place; there are still people who saw it; and finally, there are relatives who would like to know the truth about those who are still listed as "missing" since the Second World War. Together, they could exchange whatever information they have, or even organize a joint search expedition to the places where the war once thundered. I do not exclude that the pathfinders would also be helped by those blond Bedouins whom the author of these lines has met more than once in the Saharan oases (in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia). And suddenly they, the descendants of those "white slaves", will ask themselves: why do they differ from their current tribesmen not only in the color of their skin and eyes, but also in certain manners, and whether their Arab blood is not diluted with Russian patient sadness?

Yes, hope dies last. And we should have some hope that one day we will also find out the truth about our compatriots who have fallen into the Rommel loop of fate.

list of literature

Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVPRF). F. 087. Op. 8. Folder 8.

Belyakov V. V. Priyutila Afrika Zhar-ptitsu [Africa sheltered the Firebird]. Moscow: Classic Plus, 2000.

Belyakov V. V. Russian Necropolis in Egypt, Moscow, 2001.
Belyakov V. V. To the sacred banks of the Nile... Russkie v Egipte [Russian in Egypt], Moscow, 2003.
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Belyakov V. V. From Europe to Europe-through Africa (The Egyptian transshipment base for the repatriation of former Soviet prisoners of war (1944-1945) / / Vostochny Archive. N11-12. Moscow: IV RAS, 2004.

Belyakov V. V. From Europe to Europe-through Africa, Moscow, 2004.
Veliev S. Zhemchuzhny dozhd, Moscow, 1963.
Zhermigina N. A., Sologubovsky N. A., Filatov S. V. Essays from the history of Russian-Tunisian relations in the XVIII-XX centuries. Moscow, 2006.

Novikov N. V. Puti i pereputiya diplomata [Ways and Crossroads of a diplomat]. Moscow, 1976.

Podcerob A. B. Epic of Leclerc // East (Oriens). 2009. N4.

Polyan Pavel. Victims of two literatures. Ostarbeiters and prisoners of war in the Third Reich and their repatriation. Moscow, 1994.

Shirinskaya A. A. Bizerta. The last parking lot, Moscow, 1999.
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