After the Jews the biggest group of victims was Soviet prisoners of war. They truly are the forgotten ones.
Huge numbers of them were simply penned up outdoors like cattle and starved and frozen. There were instances of US prisoners nearby who were utterly appalled at how the German army treated them and helped where they could. This despite threat of death for throwing food over the fence.
And how bad did it have to be for a US prisoner to part with some hard to come by food?
I feel sorry for a lot of the Soviet prisoners of war. Many were abused by the Nazis in those war camps, and upon return to Soviet Russia, got sent to the Gulags because:
* you’re a bad soldier/traitor if caught
* you might have been unduly influenced by foreigners while in a POW camp
Even sadder was that the most Soviet prisoners of war who survived the Nazis, were killed by Stalin after the war.