Reading "Southern Barracks" on Qingming Night
Author: Zhao Fushan
Abstract: A literary and historical material "South Barracks" is dipped in the blood of martyrs, writes a national tragedy, and sings the heroic song of the Chinese military and civilian war of resistance! The past does not forget the future, as the location of the Shijiazhuang concentration camp - Ping'an Park, now surrounded by green trees, solemn, is an ideal place to pay respects, pay tribute, and carry out various patriotic education activities, the Shijiazhuang concentration camp is a monument to the compatriots who were martyred, let us always remember that period of humiliating history.
On the night of Jiachen Qingming Festival, a round of bright moon in the sky, a few old tears were dripping, and I once again read the literary and historical booklet "Southern Barracks" compiled by the Shimen Anti-Japanese War Culture Research Association. On the occasion of Qingming Festival, many citizens of Shijiazhuang will spontaneously come to Shijiazhuang Ping'an Park to pay tribute to the monument to the compatriots killed in Shijiazhuang concentration camp.
There is a sacrifice for the soul, and tears mourn it. Hatred will not be extinguished, and the people will wake up. Wake up and don't give up, lie down and taste the guts.
The inscription is meaningful, and the bones are not withered. The husband is also nameless, and the song mourns him. Mourning, eternal mourning.
On the eve of the Qingming Festival, I saw that in front of the monument to the compatriots killed in the concentration camp in Shijiazhuang Ping'an Park, there were red scarves of young pioneers collectively offering flowers to pay tribute.
Look for two concentration camps in the north and south of Shijiazhuang
"Southern Barracks" introduces that during the Anti-Japanese War, there were two concentration camps in Shijiazhuang, both of which were garrisons of the National Army and the Japanese Invading Army. The North Barracks is located in the north of Daguo Village, Xinhua District, and was later the Fourth Aviation School of our Air Force. The South Barracks is in the area of today's Ping'an Park. The Southern Barracks is known by scholars as the Auschwitz concentration camp in northern China (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, also translated as Auschwitz concentration camp), which was the main concentration camp and extermination camp established during Nazi Germany, located in Auschwitz, a small city 60 kilometers southwest of Krakow, Poland.
Jews from more than 30 countries, including Germany, the Soviet Union, and Poland, were imprisoned here. Strong-walled, surrounded by a dense power grid, with outpost stands, gallows, gassing baths, crematoriums, used to exterminate the Jews of Europe, Hitler's genocidal policy was carried out, and Auschwitz is a historical witness to the heinous crimes committed by Nazi Germany against humanity.
More than 80 years ago, there was such a concentration camp in Shijiazhuang. At that time, the children were just sensible, and they always listened to the adults reprimand the naughty children, "You are disobedient, send you to the South Barracks!" What is the place of the South Barracks, I didn't understand it at the time, I just didn't understand it, I just didn't understand that it was a terrifying and scary place.
I learned a little later that Nazi Germany had established concentration camps in Auschwitz and other places in World War II, but I had never heard that the Japanese army had also built prisoner of war concentration camps in China, and later learned that the so-called southern barracks were prisoner of war concentration camps established in Shimen, an important town in North China, during the Japanese invasion of China.
In early spring, I went to Ping'an Park to make a film, but I accidentally found the monument to the martyred compatriots in the Shijiazhuang concentration camp, "looking for him thousands of times", but unexpectedly found the "South Barracks" here in the downtown area.
Ping'an Park, located on Yuhua Road, the provincial capital, is today a good place for people to relax and recreation. Eighty years ago, it was the South Barracks of Hell on Earth, which was full of horror and death, and it was the prisoner of war labor camp that the Japanese army had opened in China for the longest time, the largest number of prisoners, the most persecuted, and the fiercest struggle.
During the occupation of Shimen by the Japanese invaders, due to the large number of troops stationed here, the military camps inside and outside the city were dense, and the fortresses were numerous, and the characteristics of Shijiazhuang military city were prominent.
Due to the increasingly prominent function of Shimen military city and the expansion of the status of military facilities, in order to meet the large demand for building materials, the Japanese army also built a military smelting yard in Shimen.
Shimen City was not only a base for the Japanese invaders to sweep the surrounding anti-Japanese base areas, but also became a concentration place for the detention of "prisoners of war". In 1939, the Japanese army established a prisoner of war labor concentration camp covering an area of several hundred acres in the Shimennan Barracks, which was used to hold prisoners of war of the Eighth Route Army captured from central Hebei, southern Hebei, western Hebei, Taihang and other places.
The monument to the martyred compatriots in the South Barracks of the Human Purgatory
On August 15, 1997, the Shijiazhuang Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government built this monument to the compatriots who were martyred in the Shijiazhuang Concentration Camp at the site of the concentration camp and in the current Ping'an Park. This is the first large-scale monument erected in China for Chinese compatriots who suffered in Japanese concentration camps in the 60 years since the victory of the Anti-Japanese War.
According to the historical data of "Southern Barracks", there are many sentry posts in the concentration camp and the security is tight. In order to prevent prisoners of war from revolting, the Japanese army set up turrets and lookout posts more than three zhang high at the four corners of the wall, which were guarded by Japanese soldiers day and night.
According to the inscription, from its establishment in 1938 to Japan's surrender in 1945, in the seven years, the South Barracks successively arrested and imprisoned more than 50,000 anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians and innocent people. Of these, more than 30,000 were sent to work as laborers in North China, Northeast China, and Japan, and about 20,000 were tortured to death in concentration camps.
The South Barracks was not only the base camp for the Japanese army to enslave and educate the captured anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians, instigate rebellion and use, enslave and use, and transport laborers, but also a hell on earth for the bloody suppression of the Chinese anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians.
During the Anti-Japanese War, 70 percent of the concentration camps established by Japanese militarism in China were located in North China. There are more than 20 in Shijiazhuang, Jinan, Taiyuan, Beiping, Tanggu, Qingdao and Luoyang, with more than 500,000 detainees.
Shijiazhuang Ping'an Park is located in the central area of the city, today here pavilions, small bridges and flowing water, precious flowers and trees, everywhere verdant green, vibrant, or Shijiazhuang winter swimming enthusiasts activity center. It is difficult for people here to think that this place was once the magic cave of the Shijiazhuang concentration camp, and every inch of land under their feet is soaked in the blood of the Chinese.
In October 1937, after the Japanese army occupied Shijiazhuang, they soon established the South Barracks southeast of Shijiazhuang Railway Station, which gradually developed into the darkest and most brutal Shijiazhuang concentration camp in North China.
The "South Barracks" records in detail that every day the corpse pulling team went to the morgue of the concentration camp to carry piles of corpses, and the naked corpses were stacked on the wagons like straw stacks, and were pulled to the "mass grave" for burial, and the "mass grave" was located in the No. 2 Automobile Repair Plant of the Shijiazhuang Transportation Company on the west side of the west side of the West Dongfeng West Road of Jianshe Construction South Street. At its peak, more than 290 people were killed in one night, and the flatbed cart of the corpse pulling team could not pull it, so the enemy used the car to pull it out.
Concentration camp riots, prisoners desperately resist
The "Southern Barracks" records that before 1943, there were several escapes in the concentration camps, and in addition to a single escape, there were also planned escapes and riots organized by CCP members from time to time. In the spring of 1944, when it became known that they would be sent to Japan to work as laborers, there were several organized riots and exodus from the concentration camps.
The first riot was in February 1944, more than 40 people of the Fuxi Brigade in southern Hebei Province were sent to the concentration camp and were locked up together, among which Zhang Xilai, a member of the Communist Party, and others secretly planned a riot, they used wooden poles and bricks as weapons, took advantage of the darkness in the middle of the night, smashed down the Japanese guards at the door, and suddenly rushed out of the door, and when the enemy fired back, twenty or thirty people had rushed out, seven or eight people were killed on the spot, and a few were wounded by bullets and did not escape, the Japanese army cut off their heads and hung them on electric poles to show the public.
In May 1944, 500 people from the Li Peiyu Brigade of the former puppet army Xin Ji suppressed the Communist Brigade and were sent to the concentration camp to be incorporated into the labor team, and they also secretly discussed the riot. The initiator was Wang Qiuchang, a Communist Party member from Gaoyang, Hebei Province, who agreed to break the power grid, cushion trenches, and beat the doormen, using coughing as a signal, but because of the leakage, Wang Qiuchang and three others were arrested, and their heads were cut off by the Japanese army and hung up for public display.
In December of this year, the weather was cold, hunger and cold, and dozens to hundreds of people died in the concentration camp every day. One night, while the Japanese puppet personnel were eating, they smashed doors and windows to make weapons, and rushed to the gate with sticks and bricks. The Japanese army guarding the gate blocked the gate with machine guns, and the fence was also blocked by the watchtower with guns and bullets, and the North China Special Garrison was transferred to surround the concentration camp.
According to the person's recollection, more than 10 people were electrocuted to death and dozens injured that night. The next day, more than 50 people were found, and after interrogation, more than 20 key elements were found, and several Communist Party members were killed by the Japanese army in the concentration camp. After the failure of the uprising, the Japanese garrison was expanded to more than 100 people, and the collective uprising became more difficult.
Around the Spring Festival of 1945, the Allies dispatched 48 planes (times) to bomb the Japanese army in Shijiazhuang. Every time a plane flew over the camp, the POWs ran out of the prison cells to cheer, while the Japanese were so nervous that they were ordered not to move.
It is recorded in the book "South Barracks" that spring has arrived, and rape flowers have begun to spit fragrant again. After the surrender of the Japanese army, the Shijiazhuang concentration camp was taken over by the Kuomintang advance army, and most of the prisoner of war laborers were forced to join the Kuomintang army.
During the eight years that the Japanese army was in Shijiazhuang, they drove prisoners of war and local migrant workers to build five barracks, two airfields, dozens of military projects, thousands of pillboxes, and dozens of kilometers of blockade ditches. As long as we look at such a large amount of work, one can imagine how much work the prisoner of war laborers did in Shijiazhuang and how much they suffered.
In addition to heavy labor, the Japanese fascists often tortured our party members and prisoners of war. All kinds of tortures were inflicted by the Japanese devils, such as hanging, beating with sticks, sitting on tiger chairs, pouring chili pepper water, branding with soldering irons, biting with military dogs, locking up dungeons, and putting red-hot briquettes into the mouths of prisoners of war laborers.
Once the Japanese Shaozo got a new knife, and in order to test its sharpness, he pulled out a prisoner of war laborer from the dungeon and interviewed the knife in front of the Japanese soldiers. With a single slash, the innocent laborer's body was in a different place.
Prisoners struggle, says an expert on the history of the Anti-Japanese War
"If the German fascists slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews in Auschwitz and were the executioners who disregarded human lives, then the Japanese fascists were the executioners who slaughtered prisoners of war and laborers in China. Experts on the history of the Anti-Japanese War said.
Old photos of the prison cells in the Shijiazhuang concentration camp, female prisoners fighting fiercely in the Japanese devil's cave, in Shijiazhuang and the concentration camps in North China where Chinese anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians were imprisoned, there were the most brutal deaths and the fiercest battles. The book "South Barracks" has a graphic record.
High walls, power grids, turrets, and patrolling sentinels walked around, and the warrioress Mayo was escorted into a large, empty room, and before she could stand on her feet, a pungent potion sprayed at her head and face. "Come in here, everyone has to disinfect first. She couldn't open her eyes, only to hear someone shouting at her. After the poisoning, Mayo took a cloth badge with the number 907. Since then, she has become a prisoner codename.
It was an afternoon in early October 1941 in the Shijiazhuang concentration camp, a few days earlier, the Japanese army had surrounded a village in the Lingshou Mountains, arrested Mei Ou, a reporter from the Jinchaji Daily, who was recuperating in the village, and imprisoned her there.
As soon as it was dawn, the camp was awakened by the sharp sound of bells. It was cold on the playground, and some of the male refugees tied cement bags to their bodies with straw ropes to keep out the cold. Looking down, there are shoes with open toes and heels everywhere. The sun flag and the flag of the Wang puppet regime were raised to the sound of music.
At the end of the group run, the managers brought over a large wooden box containing sorghum rice and rotten vegetable leaves. Some people used canned food boxes thrown by the Japanese soldiers as bowls, and most of them did not have bowls and chopsticks, so they used wooden sticks to grab them with their hands, and quickly snatched up the food.
The day's servitude began. The male refugees worked in the workshops and farms of the concentration camps, digging trenches, building bunkers, and building military works. Mei Ou and other female friends went to do laundry, make shoes, and sew clothes.
After dinner, the fellow refugees dragged their tired bodies to participate in political studies. "So-and-so is in this happy stone gate, spending a happy life together, and even remembering the friendly army. These sentences, which often appear in the pseudo-"Shimen Xinbao" and "Xinmin Daily", are what everyone is forced to learn. On the first day of Mayo's camp, she was asked to learn to sing Japanese pseudo-songs such as "East Asian March" and "Song of the Labor Training Institute".
In August of the following year, the 110th Division of the Japanese Army moved from Baoding to Shijiazhuang, and established a concentration camp called the "Prisoner Shelter" in the South Barracks.
1941 was a turning point, and in August of that year, the camp was renamed the Shimen Labor Training Center, which was a change for two reasons. From 1941 onwards, the Japanese army repeatedly "sweeped" the four districts of central Hebei, southern Hebei, Taihang, and Beiyue in the two major base areas around Shijiazhuang, and the number of anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians who were cleared and arrested increased exponentially.
On the other hand, it was the need of the Japanese Kwantung Army's northward strategy. In April 1941, the Kwantung Army and the North China Front agreed to send prisoners from North China to the puppet Manchurians as special workers to meet the needs of the Japanese army's fortress construction, and at the same time send them to Japanese mines.
Shimen Labor Education and Training Institute is directly under the leadership of the 110th Division Headquarters and the Second Staff Division of the North China Front Army.
The Japanese army adopted the strategy of "using China to contain China and treating prisoners with prisoners", and selected "prisoner of war cadres" from among the captured personnel for management, including squad leaders, section chiefs and other cadres. Each section of the cadre class manages the ordinary class. Ordinary classes include shoemaker class, barber class, sewing class, vegetable garden class, old man class, women's class, sick class, cooking class, and so on. Mayo and more than 20 other female prisoners of war were placed in the women's class.
The women's class was small and lived in separate cells, where everyone could barely lie down, while the male prisoners of war were not so lucky. Dozens of people are often crammed into a cramped wooden room, with a few mats spread on the floor, bricks used as pillows, and a few torn quilts for everyone to pull around while sleeping.
After each "sweep", the number of people in the camps skyrocketed. If the wooden house could not be lived, there were some mat sheds around it, and five or six hundred people slept in a 30-meter-long mat shed. Many people have nowhere to sleep, so they can only sit and nap, or lie outside the shed.
Hell on earth is brutal and heinous
"Southern Barracks" records with historical facts that due to insufficient food and poor physical fitness, many people participated in labor with injuries and illnesses, and if they worked slowly, they would be reprimanded and severely beaten by the supervisors. Some people passed out on the ground and died.
In addition to heavy labor, prisoners of war were often tortured by the Japanese army. The small prisons of Unit 3909, the prison of Unit 1417, the prison of the Shimen Gendarmerie and the prison of the Shimen Police Station were linked to the concentration camps.
Mayo entered the camp and registered as a rural woman, but it didn't take long for her identity to be revealed. She was pressed down on a stool, her limbs tied to the four legs of the stool, her head hung down, and thugs carried water bottles into her mouth and nose. When I couldn't hold back and wanted to inhale through my nose, a stream of cold water poured into it, and the pain suddenly burned from my nose to my chest.
Pouring cold water, hanging, beating, sitting on a tiger chair, pressing a bar, overpowering, branding with a soldering iron, biting with military dogs, and closing the dungeon...... These tortures have become commonplace for prisoners of war. The more cruel Japanese soldiers put red-hot briquettes into the mouths of prisoner laborers, and used a soldering iron to burn the genitals of male prisoners of war.
After Li Fengming, a member of the Communist Party of China and magistrate of Luancheng County, was arrested and put in an ice cage in a small prison, the enemy asked him to write a "Letter to the People of Luancheng County" to persuade the common people to submit to the Japanese army, but he insisted on not writing, and was severely tortured by the enemy 24 times, tortured to the bone. Later, he committed suicide by breaking his stomach with a razor in protest.
And sometimes the Japanese army arbitrarily mutilated prisoners of war without even looking for a reason. The most cruel thing was to use the injection of carbolic acid water to mutilate the anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians. In March 1944, the Japanese military police in Handan sent 100 so-called prisoners, more than 30 of whom were underground workers of our party who had broken into the puppet organs.
Mayo was lucky. Soon after she entered the camp, she was rescued from the sea of misery by underground Communist Party members in the name of asking for female workers.
The cramped space in the prison was crowded with hundreds of people, with lice, fleas, and bed bugs. In such an environment, disease and plague threaten everyone.
In 1942, a ward was set up in the Shijiazhuang concentration camp. The so-called sick house is a wooden paved floor with a thick layer of lime, where patients with dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and scarlet fever are isolated.
At the west end of the ward, there were two wooden huts, which were the morgues of the concentration camp, where the daily deaths were carried and pulled out by the corpse pulling team in the town of Humen. Every evening, the corpse pulling team entered the concentration camp, and after the Japanese doctors in the concentration camp conducted an autopsy and verified by the gate guard, the corpse was pulled to the "mass grave" in Xiumen Yidi for burial.
Zhao Ju was a member of the corpse pulling team back then. According to him, at first the coffin was used to carry the dead outside, and it was used repeatedly, and then the coffin was not enough, so it was rolled with a mat. Later, when the mat was insufficient, the corpse was pulled out on the cart like a stack of straw.
In 1944, after the Battle of Luoyang, the Japanese army sent more than 10,000 Kuomintang prisoners of war to the Shijiazhuang concentration camp in a short period of time. At most, more than 290 people died in one night, and the flatbed truck couldn't pull it out, so they used the car to pull it out.
The little eight-way vigilant battle in the murderous demon cave
"South Barracks" records that Wang Mingsan, a member of the Eighth Route Army's anti-traitor team, was only 16 years old when he was captured, and was imprisoned in the detention field of the 110th Division in Shijiazhuang. In June 1941, the Japanese army went to various prisons to look for administrators. Wang Mingsan and others were anxious to escape from the clutches of the devil, so they pretended to agree to work as instructors in the labor training center, and became the first batch of prisoner of war labor managers recruited by the Japanese army.
These prisoner of war cadres, with the exception of a few people, did not really do anything for the Japanese army. On the contrary, they encouraged and admonished each other in private, not to forget that they were the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army. When it was discovered that military and local leaders had been captured and put into camps without revealing their identities, the POW cadres tried every means to change their confessions, fabricate false identities, and provide them with protection and care.
Some prisoner of war cadres even carried out activities to treat some prisoners as old and disabled persons and release them on bail. Wang Bosheng, the former secretary of the five prefectural party committees in southern Hebei, did not reveal his identity and secretly carried out party activities under the protection of the administrators of the handling section, and then fled out of the camp ahead of schedule and returned to the base area.
Some party members and prisoners of war always thought about fighting against the Japanese army, but the way of struggle was different. Every day at roll call, the enemy forced the prisoners of war laborers to shout slogans, some resolutely did not shout, some only opened their mouths without pronouncing them, and some only raised their fists without opening their mouths. When you go out to work, you can drag it out, consciously break the tools, create small accidents, delay the construction progress, and reduce the quality of construction.
Those who work in the clothing and grain factories and military warehouses deliberately break their bags and break things. Some even brought out clothes and food from the warehouse to give to the victims. Although some people were found and beaten to death, the destruction and resistance never stopped.
Before 1943, more prisoners of war in the camps were fleeing while working outside the camp or on the way to deliver labor. Wang Mingsan's identity was later revealed and he was sent to the Jingcheng Coal Mine to work as a laborer, and soon after he fled the mine and returned to the Jizhong Military Region.
The prisoners of war laborers were unwilling to endure the destruction and bullying of the Japanese army, and were unwilling to go to Northeast China and Japan to work as laborers.
"South Barracks" records: From 1938 to 1945, all the dead people in Shijiazhuang Concentration Camp were buried in the public cemetery of Xiumen Town. In 1951, Li Xiaoke and his wife, who were the grave watchers, told visitors: "There are many devils who have killed us." Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, there are no dozens of deaths on any day. It snowed heavily that winter, and many people froze to death, usually the sun set and pulled it into the ground, but this time the sun pulled it high, a car loaded with 30, four people pulled, pulled three times, and threw it in a pit with a clatter. Later, there was no place to bury it, so I planed and filled in the original burial place. We have been looking at the grave for more than two years, and it is estimated that at least 20,000 people have been buried. ”
A literary and historical material, "The Southern Barracks," is dipped in the blood of martyrs, writes a national tragedy, and sings the heroic song of the Chinese military and people's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression! As the location of the Shijiazhuang concentration camp -- Ping'an Park, it is now surrounded by green trees and solemn, and it is an ideal place to pay respects, pay respects, and carry out various patriotic education activities.
When Jiachen Qingming is coming, I will bring my family and children here again to pay tribute to the souls of the martyrs, and carry out a party history education and spiritual baptism without forgetting the original intention!
Editor's note
In October 1937, after the Japanese army occupied Shijiazhuang, they soon established the South Barracks southeast of Shijiazhuang Railway Station, which gradually developed into the darkest and most brutal Shijiazhuang concentration camp in North China. The literary and historical material "Southern Barracks" records in detail the historical facts that from its establishment in 1938 to Japan's surrender in 1945, the Shimen Concentration Camp successively arrested and imprisoned about 50,000 anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians and innocent people, and about 20,000 people were tortured to death in the concentration camp. The article exposes the heinous crimes committed by Japanese imperialism on the mainland through the fact that the Japanese army brutalized the army and civilians in the Shimen concentration camp as an example, and warns the Chinese people to always remember history, cherish peace, and love China. The past does not forget the teacher of the future, let us always remember that period of humiliating history. Recommended Reading:
About the Author
Zhao Fushan, pen name Luo Zhao. Member of the Communist Party of China and senior editor. After graduating from high school in 1962, he joined the army and served in the 13th Regiment of the Third Division of the Railway Corps, participated in the development of Daxinganling, built the Nenlin Railway, and graduated from the Railway Corps Academy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (now Shijiazhuang Railway University). After retiring from the army, he has been engaged in the party's news and propaganda work for 40 years, and has founded Shijiazhuang Science and Technology News and Entrepreneur Daily. He used to be the deputy editor-in-chief of Yanzhao Evening News of Shijiazhuang Daily, the assistant to the president and deputy editor-in-chief of the Economic Monthly of the National Economic Daily, and the vice chairman of the Shijiazhuang Journalists Association. He is currently the honorary president of Hebei Economic Media Promotion Association. After his retirement, he served as a visiting professor of journalism and communication at Shijiazhuang City College, Hebei University School of Film and Television Arts, and Shijiazhuang Tiedao University Sifang College. He has published a collection of news, literature and military works such as "Hebei Province Entrepreneur Reportage Collection", "Listening to the Tao Collection", "Star Soul", "Soul Covenant", "Blog and Couple Dancing Sunset", "May Dazixiang" and so on. Outstanding volunteer of Hebei Province, chief network commentator of Hebei Civilization Network, lecturer of Shitu Lecture Hall, lecturer of Yanzhao Community Lecture Hall.
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