Hans Von Luck - Panzer Commander

by Unknown

  To that extent our threat to write to Moscow was taken extremely seriously.

  “If work good, you get reward,” was the answer of the deputy Russian camp commandant.

  So next morning we were collected by one of the guards. It was still winter. Snow lay in the mountains. We marched off without knowing where we were going. The snow reached up to our chests. In single file we started to climb, for five hours each of us taking it in turns to open up a way through the deep snow.

  Suddenly we heard a shout from our escort, “Stoy, stop!” The guard pointed to a stack of wood covered with snow and intimated that we were to take it down to the valley.

  “Have you got the money with you?” I asked him. “Otherwise nothing's going to happen here.” To my surprise he pulled out a bundle of ruble notes from his pocket. Our warning had obviously been effective.

  We cleared the snow off the stack of wood. The timber was in lengths of about five meters. It was valuable mahogany. Each of us tucked a length of wood under his arm and we slithered in our tracks down to the valley. This time it took only two hours.

  It had become clear to me in the meantime that an illicit sale of valuable timber was involved here, on a considerable scale.

  There was no doubt that the commandant had received a handsome sum for assigning prisoners to the job, and the guard too would certainly have received his share.

  Somewhat apart from the entrance to the town two trucks were waiting, on to which we had to load the lengths of timber. We then drove to the railway station. Here a single truck was standing, on to which we loaded the wood, but only after we had received our rubles from the guard.

  At the same time the guard warned us, “You seen nothing, and say nothing.” We marched dead tired back into the camp, where a special portion of soup was waiting for us. Once again we were warned by the Russian officer to remain absolutely silent.

  Through our German truckdriver, Fred Sbosny, who often had to drive to Kutaisi and Tiflis, we heard the continuation of this story.

  A highly placed functionary in Tiflis had commissioned the “transaction.” First the state forest officer had to be bribed, who was responsible for the cutting and extraction of the valuable timber. He accounted for the absence of a stack of wood as “sabotage,” the way of putting it in cases of corruption, if these are ever exposed. Besides us, the guard and the truckdriver had to have their palms greased. Then there was the station master to be considered, who had provided an empty truck. One must know also that there was a customs and guard house at the town boundary of Tkibuli, where every train with coal had to stop and be registered. So the..customs post" had received its share too. So far all the bribe money was paid by the camp commandant, who had previously received abundant rubles for the purpose.

  At Kutaisi, the provincial capital, the truck was hooked on to a train for Tiflis, unregistered of course, for which gesture the stationmaster had received his due. A further payment then became due on arrival in Tiflis, where the “client” was finally able to take possession of his goods. Th I ere he sold off the wood at vast prices to high, well-to-do functionaries, who had furniture made from it by joiners who had been “detailed” for this from state firms. The func Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 297 tionaries have plenty of money, but they can buy nothing with it except on the black market.

  Normally all building projects and the fulfillment of norm schedules are checked by commissions that appear irregularly in all concerns. But they too have no objection to little presents, and then report “sabotage” to their superior authority, if they discover shortcomings or that allocated material is missing. But if the case is so blatant that it can no longer be glossed over with “sabotage,” a culprit has quickly to be found. What happens then is that some innocent little overseer disappears to Siberia for five to fifteen years.

  Such unfortunately was the experience of a sympathetic Russian engineer who had now become the superintendent of our concrete brigade for an important project. Somewhere in the Ukraine he had been designated the “culprit” in a led “economic crime” and' exiled for five years to Siberia, north of Vladivostok. Without ever being able to get in touch with his family, he had to work in the Siberian forests. After that, for probation and so that he could get used to normal conditions again, he was sent to the Caucasus for two years.

  I quickly became friends with this poor man, whose first probationary job was the supervision of a proposed foundry. The foundry was supposed to be built below our camp at the edge of the town Tkibuli, and our brigade was supposed to lay the foundations.

  On our first day on the job the Russian engineer showed me a working drawing sent from Moscow, which served as the standard plan for all similar projects.

  “Take a look at the plan,” he said. “I can't understand it all; I'm not sufficiently trained for that. Can you tell from it how the foundations are to be laid?” I felt sorry for him, but nothing surprised me any more. I consulted our only specialist, therefore, the bricklayer. The site of the building had been fixed by the mine administration, which was also to have control over the foundry. So we started by marking out the limits of the foundations in length and breadth and gathered from the plan that they were to be laid three mleters deep and of reinforced concrete.

  On the basis of painful experience I strongly urged the engineer to take care of the materials, since he was the one who would otherwise be in trouble. Then we began to dig with picks and shovels, until we struck groundwater after just over one meter.

  So we took a break, to consider what to do. I went to our guard and said, “Give me your machine-gun for a moment. Here's a few rubles. Go and buy some maize cakes for us all over there in the market, for you too and for the engineer.” He handed over his gun without hesitation and was happy at the prospect of extra food.

  “There's groundwater here already,” I told our helpless engineer.

  “You must go on digging. The plan from Moscow must be carried out,” was his convincing answer.

  So we went on digging. When we were finally up to our ankles in water, I called a halt to the work.

  “We can't go on like this. How shall we ever get down to a depth of three meters?” I had seen from the plan that heavy traveling cranes were to be installed later, for which the three-meter foundations were indeed necessary. The engineer promised to get us rubber boots and pumps if only we would go on working. We said nothing further to this amusing idea.

  But the next day pumps really did arrive. And we got the promised rubber boots. But after two more days we were already 16 inches deep in water. I refused to go on.

  “Do you want to pump away all the rivers of the Elbrus?” I asked the engineer, now really annoyed. “It's pointless. We won't work under water.”

  “I speak to natchalnik, we see tomorrow.” The decision was as simple as it was senseless.

  “Natchalnik understand problem. Stop digging. Lay reinforced concrete, even if only 1.30 meters deep.” It was obvious to us that with these weak foundations the whole building would collapse, if it ever got finished and came into operation. So we mixed the concrete in the correct ratio of one to seven, tied down the steel rods, and ended our part with an inadequate foundation.

  And that was how it remained. In the months that followed nothing further was done at the building site. When I left the camp at the end of 1948, 1 could still see our steel rods sticking up in the air. The rest of the materials, already delivered, were rusting away, if they had not been stolen in the meantime. I have no idea how the mine administration explained all this to Moscow or what became of the poor engineer.

  Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 2" With this project my activity as leader of -the concrete brigade came to an end. I received a new job.

  But back to our camp. All of us who had the chance to earn ourselves some extra money or bread on the outdoor detachments tried to see that our weaker fellow-prisoners, who stayed behind in the camp and had no such opportunity, receive
d something through purchases in the market. Our guards, whose poor pay and meager diet were insufficient to satisfy their appetite, also received something from us as a gift, or else they bartered tobacco with us for food. We did in fact receive a small tobacco ration every day, but this was only machorka, the stringy bits of leaves that are left over from the making of papyrossi. MacHorka can only be smoked if one twists oneself a little cone of newspaper, fills it with chopped-up machorka, twists the cone to at the top and then lights it.

  All over Russia machorka is the “tobacco of the poor.” Russian newspapers are designed for smoking in this form; they contain no size, and the saying goes that Pravda is the most widely smoked cigarette in the world. Matches too are scarce in Russia. Only once in four years, in my experience, did an allocation of matches from Moscow arrive in the little town of Tkibuli. And the ration disappeared very quickly into one of the functionaries' shops. So we fell back on our-ancestors' way of making fire; lighters were made from flints and fuses.

  Signs of humanity were not lacking in the camp. There was in the first place Natella, the “angel of Tkibuli and Camp 518.” She, came from an old, Georgian, princely family and helped the German maladois, the sick, wherever she could. At the risk of her life she procured medical supplies that were intended by rights for the Russians. Then there was Dr. Kamdelaki, a woman doctor in the camp hospital and, responsible for all six camps.

  She too came from an old, princely family and was thus no friend of the Russians, who had occupied her country and robbed her of liberty.

  Others were Nastasia (I have changed her name, since she is probably still alive and I would not want to cause her trouble) and her friend Sina. Nastasia was a great-grandda)jghter of Lenin's. The two young women were engineers and had been exiled to the Caucasus for fifteen years.

  It is thanks to Nastasia that there are a few photographs of the camp and of our cultural group, which she took at risk of her life and which Jupp Link, with whom she had become friendly, was able to smuggle out of the camp under the cockade on his cap.

  Link, who today lives near Munich, has spoken to me about these girls, who liked us Germans, and about the sad parting when he left the camp, the last to go, and Nastasia begged him to take her with him.

  What may have become of all these women who helped to preserve in us the faith and hope of human kindness?

  The time passed and we had learned to come to terms with the wretched conditions. It had become clear to us that apart from the hard work in the mine and in the outdoor detachments, and apart from the cultural activity, something had to be done to keep us physically fit. Jupp Link managed to procure some balls for us and I organized handball teams. Handball was at that time a very popular field game (as against the modern indoor handball) in my north German homeland. We played this game on every free day, to the wonderment of the Russians and cheered on by enthusiastic spectators.

  Next, a football team was set up and matches arranged with the other camps.

  Even Russia's national game, chess, soon enjoyed great popularity. To begin with we carved ourselves chess men in a primitive way. The Russians were so enthusiastic that they gave us chess sets, and guards played chess matches secretly, since it was forbidden to them, against our best players.

  All this may sound like a fun time. But it was not that by a long way. The decisive impulse for it was, rather, the will to survive, which gave us the strength even in these circumstances not to give up. Some of our fellow-prisoners often criticized our activity and maintained that by it we would be supplying the Russians with evidence that we were still strong enough for even harder work.

  In the winter of 1947/48 I received my last assignment in Camp 518/1. 1 became the brigadier of a “coal-seeking detachment.” Above our camp, on the slopes of the Elbrus mountains, the Russians had begun to look for new coal deposits with the help of drilling machines supplied from Sweden.

  A Russian detachment had already come upon a rich seam at a depth of about 800 meters, and a great effort was now being mounted, in three shifts, to trace the seam and mine it.

  My brigade was to take over a day shift. It was distributed over six boring sites and given precise instructions by the Russian bripdier. Although spring was close at hand, much snow still lay in the mountains and it was bitter cold. Each morning-accompanied by Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 301 our escort-we climbed up through the snow, into the mountains, where we relieved the night shift, who would be sitting freezing around a fire.

  My job consisted of visiting the individual boring sites during the course of the shift and solving whatever problems arose. By rights our guard was supposed to check the individual boring sites and see that work was going on everywhere. But he usually preferred to seek out the best place by the fire, lean his machine-gun against a tree, and go to sleep. If I spoke to him about this, his reply was: “Polkovnik, you good brigadier, you have propusk and can see everywhere if work good. I freezing, stay rather by fire.” In spite of the backbreaking work to be done with the.heavy boring machines, and in spite of our often inadequate clothing, we experienced a.little bit of freedom up there in the mountains, with a view over the little town and our camp. It was inevitable that we had our fun. Once we hid the guard's machine-gun, for instance, while he was asleep.

  “Kamerad, give my gun back. Not say I sleeping, or I in glasshouse. Here, have some machorka to smoke.” Spring came, the snow melted under the hot southern sun, and the first flowers came out. The work became more bearable, and we even savored the unique beauty of the south Caucasian landscape.

  Sweet-tasting wild strawberries, wild pears, and all sorts of herbs, which the guard showed us, were a welcome source of extra vitamins, which we had gone without for three long years. And whenever possible we provided some also for our sick in the camp.

  Gradually I extended my “beat.” The bore gangs were working reliably. While they did so, I gathered strawberries and wild pears for them in a homemade basket.

  One spring day, not long before the German Easter, I set off quite early in order to climb a ridge, to see what lay beyond it. Lying in the valley I saw an enchanted little village. It was iffesistible. I climbed down to it and came to a forgotten world. The village, inhabited only by Georgian peasants, had no street leading out of it. Only mules and donkeys could pick a way out of there and serve as means of transport into the normal world, which ended with the little town of Tkibuli.

  Everyone ran together to gape at me, the stranger. I asked for the village elder. An old man came toward me. Skeptically and timidly he asked me in a mixture of Georgian and Russian who I was and what I wanted.

  “I am a German plenni, a prisoner of war. I am working over there in the mountains and have been living for several years in a camp in Tkibuli.” His face lit up. Excited, he called out to me and to the other villagers, “I know Germans from the war. They and the Turks freed our country from the bad Russians. I never forget good Germans.” Clearly, time had stood still for him in the First World War, when Georgia had been a German protectorate.

  “German good. Come, you our guest.” I was taken into a simple but clean house. His whole family gathered there and other villagers thronged the entrance inquisitively.

  As in all the houses, in the middle stood the place for the fire and for eating, made of hard clay; on three sides lay hides for sleeping, for the family; and in a comer there was a space for the chickens and goats. I felt at home there after my years in the barrack and on our wooden bunks.

  Over the fire long iron chains hung down from the roof.

  “You now eat Georgian with friends. Come, sit down.” With crossed legs we squatted around the fire, and the farmer's wife hun iron cauldrons on the chains. One cauldron she filled with water for the tea, in another the maize mash was prepared, and in a third was the goat-meat with every possible herb.

  When everything appeared to be ready, the wife approached us.

  Only the men had taken a place with me. The wo
men stood modestly in a corner. The wife passed us a bowl of water, in which we washed our hands. Then the cauldrons were unhooked, the tea was brewed, and I was invited to start eating.

  There were no forks and no spoon, only the cauldrons with the hot foods. How was I supposed to eat? So as not to show these friendly people my uncertainty, let alone offend them, I said, “Many thanks, farmer, but with us in Germany the head of the house always begins the meal, symbolizing the fact that the food is fit to eat. So will you please begin?” He was impressed. With one hand he took a handful of maize mash from the hot cauldron, shaped the mash neatly into a flat pancake, and with this pancake of mash helped himself to meat from the other cauldron. Skillfully he wrapped it all up into a roll and began to eat. I had come to know a similar way of eating previously among the Bedouins in Africa. So I copied him, and Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 303 although my hands seemed to be on fire, as a hungry prisoner I enjoyed the delicious food and the strong tea.

  Then the wife brought out an earthenware jar with a homemade brandy, whole ingredients of which I was unable to identify.

  Toasts now followed, of the sort customary also in the Arabian countries.

  "I drink to great friendship with good Germans, who are friends of us Georgians. You will convey our greetings to your great Kaiser Wilhelm. I know from the war that he is good, just man.

  We no more Kaiser, or our beloved Tamara. They come back and we, shall be free.“ I did not enlighten the good man that Wilhelm II was long since dead and that we already had the Second World War behind us. I said, ”I wish that your lovely country and the proud Georgians may one day be free. I greet the friendly farmers of this village and drink to the health of the Empress Tamara." The women wept and the men embraced me.

  The atmosphere seemed to me suitable for buying a few eggs cheaply for Easter and for- the sick back at the camp. When I asked about this, the farmer referred me to his wife, “Wife responsible for goats, chicken, and flour. You bargain with her.” I saw at once the sparkle in her eyes at being able to bargain now, like all Orientals, with a buyer. Her first price was far above that of the market in Tkibuli. So I offered less than the market price. She duly gave way a little, at which all the women started to chatter together.