With God in Russia

by Walter J. Ciszek

  Nestrov was assigned to office work. I was less lucky. All through that summer of 1940, until October, I worked as an unskilled laborer in a mixed brigade (men and women), hauling logs from the river and stacking them in long rows over 6 feet high and some 30 yards in length. It was rough work. The rows were higher than I was, so the last few logs had to be heaved into place above my head. I had no gloves, and worked barehanded with the rough bark until my hands bled.

  The pay scale depended upon how many cubic meters of logs you stacked in a day. For the first month or so, I earned very little. Often enough I was assigned to the position at the head of the line, where I worked half in, half out of the water to hand up logs to the rest of the crew. Sometimes I had to dive underwater for a sunken log, and trying to manhandle one of those water-soaked beams, 6 feet long and perhaps 2 feet thick, with my feet slipping in muck and slime, could be murderous.

  Nestrov and I pooled our salaries for food, but since he was a newcomer to the office, he wasn’t making much either. Sometimes we had only enough to buy a loaf of rye bread. There were nights we couldn’t even afford that, since we also had to pay for our lodging in the barrack and that was deducted before we even saw our paychecks. The second week we were there, our money was gone. I finally sold a fur coat I had brought along in order to get money for food.

  The oldtimers were friendly enough, but there were bonuses for extra work and they saw nothing wrong in taking advantage of the newcomers—who soon got smart the hard way. If you weren’t careful, the number of logs you stacked might be put down on someone else’s tally at the end of the day. I learned to make sure I was on hand when the tally was made and double-checked to see that the work I’d done was reported as mine. Gradually, my hands grew tough and I learned the ropes. Nestrov and I soon came to be accepted by the oldtimers in the barrack.

  Remembering Metropolitan Shepticki’s instructions, however, we were very cautious at first. We never discussed religion with the men, but we kept our ears open trying to discover how they felt. There were enough professed atheists and Communists in the group who would bring up the subject of religion from time to time, and we watched the various reactions all about us. The oldtimers were mostly peasants who clung to religion as they did to other memories of their former life. In time of difficulty they would yell out “Gospodi! Gospodi!” interspersed with a few hair-curling oaths. They meant no more by the one than they did by the other, nor did they ever practice any religion openly, for this was a Communist camp and religion was the “opium of the weak.”

  Sometimes, though, after one of the atheists had ridiculed religion, we’d sit down in a corner with a few others and try to sound them out. We were very careful in all this at first. We had been sent to find out whether it was possible to work as priests, not to be discovered as priests.

  It was impossible to say Mass in the barrack, of course. From time to time, however, Nestrov and I would take a walk into the forest, when we were free from work, and say Mass there. We used a big stump as our altar, and while one of us offered the Holy Sacrifice the other stood guard on the road. It was an experience I’ll never forget. In the heavy silence of the thick forest, you could hear the chipmunks running and the birds gathering overhead. Suddenly, you seemed very close to nature and to God. Everything seemed beautiful and somehow mysterious, all dangers were for a time remote.

  At other times, if we had an hour alone, but couldn’t leave camp to say Mass, we would take turns reciting and memorizing the prayers of the Mass until we knew them all by heart. We were always aware that the Mass kit might be discovered, and we would lose our book and vestments, but we were determined that as long as we could get bread and wine we would try to say Mass.

  Such high ideals and moments of closeness to God didn’t blind us to reality. The living conditions in the barracks, the constant nagging fear of discovery, the propaganda speeches against religion by leaders at many workers’ meetings, the seeming indifference of the men in the barracks—all this made our “mission,” our dream, seem useless. It was easy to become discouraged and to brood on the hopelessness of really accomplishing anything.

  Yet many of the people, we knew, were religious at heart. They, too, prayed in secret. Many at least said they wished there were a church where they could have their children baptized. (We told them how to baptize the children themselves.) In times of discouragement, Nestrov and I consoled ourselves with thoughts of God’s Providence and His omnipotence. We placed ourselves and our future in His hands, and we went on.

  In effect, our work had to be our prayer. We used to grin wryly sometimes as we reminded each other we were truly being “contemplatives in action,” doing everything we did, as St. Ignatius says in his Spiritual Exercises, for the greater glory of God. We were working not only to get food to stay alive, or to be accepted by the men, but because for the time being work was our “vocation,” our “ministry.” We were workers.

  The Stakhanovite in our brigade was a powerful young Russian about twenty-five years old who was always out to break his own record for the “glorious revolution.” Stakhanovite derives from Alexey Stakhanov, a Donets Basin coal miner and hero of the early 1930s, who reportedly bettered his assigned quota by 1400 percent in one shift in the mines. He is praised and immortalized in Soviet legend much as is Paul Bunyan in the lumber camps of the American Northwest or Joe Magarac in the steel mills around Pittsburgh. I decided that if he could do so much for the glory of Communism, I could do as much for the glory of God.

  Of course, a little fellow like me couldn’t really compete with that young Russian giant. But I gave him a run for his money. Week after week, he would set the camp record with 58, 59, 60 cubic meters of logs stacked in one shift, and Wladimir Lypinski’s name would be right behind his on the list with 53, 54, or 55 cubic meters. The competition got to be a standing joke in the barrack, and the oldtimers would egg me on to beat the strapping Russian.

  My reputation as a worker, however, didn’t allay the suspicions of our friend, the judge. One night a barn caught fire about a mile away from the barracks. Even before the alarm reached us, the judge was there to see if Nestrov and I had been out that night. He was sure we had set the fire. It wasn’t until he had questioned the men in our barrack and been told we hadn’t so much as set foot out of the building that he finally got around to telling us about the fire and ordered us out to help fight it.

  As the summer of 1940 turned to autumn, I applied for a job as a truck driver. By now I was a trusted worker (to just about everyone but the judge) who had merited a promotion, so I was sent to Chusovoy to take a driver’s test and apply for a license. I passed the test with flying colors. I even made “Driver, First-class,” the best rating possible. So back at Teplaya-Gora I was given a truck. It turned out to be a broken-down old pick-up that might have served Henry Ford as the inspiration for the Model T, and it was to give me some rather bad moments. Nestrov also won a promotion, and moved up to the dispatcher’s office. On the strength of our new jobs, we also got a private room which we shared with two other drivers, a pair of Russians from the town of Magnitogorsk.

  About this time, too, we also got Russian passports. In the evenings at the barracks, it was a regular thing for various Party members to lecture us on our work or politics, on Communism or atheism. One of them said one night that it would be an advantage for us volunteers to have Russian passports. With them, he said, we could move more freely about the country, whereas with only our working certificates we would have to stay where we were assigned. And a Russian passport, he claimed, would make it easier for us to get jobs wherever we went.

  Nestrov and I talked it over. Russian papers might make it more difficult to leave the country. On the other hand, if they made it easier to travel about, they might make it easier to return to Lvov. When at length we decided to get them, there was no trouble at all. We simply handed in our identification cards and working permits, filled out a form, and in about half an hour had the passports.r />
  We also wrote a report to Metropolitan Shepticki at this time, as well as a letter to Makar. Makar wrote back almost at once, telling us he hoped to join us in the spring. By now, too, we were growing bolder in our attempts to talk about religion. I had made friends with many of the children in the camp and used to ask them from time to time what they had been taught in school about God. Still, we had to be discreet; one time a Komsomol (Communist Youth) heard me talking to the children about God and told them later to stay away from me. They could get in trouble, he said, talking about such things.

  I found the teenagers, especially, interested in religion. They had heard it discussed and ridiculed so much in school they wanted to know more. Under the pretext of picking mushrooms or huckleberries, we would arrange meetings in the forest after work at night. There, behind a hillock or in some sunken spot, we would talk for hours about God, and man’s relation to God and his fellow man. They were full of questions, eager to learn. Yet, at the end of such a session, they would make me promise not to tell anyone what we had talked about, and we would return to camp by different paths.

  Winter comes early in the Urals, as it does to most of Russia. Life in the lumber camp became harder than ever. It was not uncommon for the thermometer to stand at 40° below zero (Fahrenheit), but the cold was bearable as long as there was no wind. The work went on even in the snow.

  One night shift, about 2 A.M., my truck stalled in the woods with a clogged fuel line. I had the choice of trying to repair it or perhaps freezing to death. It was pitch dark and I had no tools, but I got the hood up and began to work just by the feel of the motor. I located the fuel line and wrenched at the coupling with my thumb and fingers until they were sore. Finally, it began to work loose.

  My hands by this time were numb from the biting wind and cold metal. The snow was ankle deep and I was wearing just a pair of lowcut shoes. Before uncoupling the line, I stamped about to restore some circulation to my feet, thrashing my arms around to get the blood back into my hands. At last I undid the coupling, pulled loose the gas line, and stuck my thumb into the opening to keep the gas from spilling to the ground. I tried to warm the fuel line in my hands before putting it between my lips to blow it clear. In sheer desperation I huffed and puffed until I finally felt the obstruction give way.

  Now my hands were numb again. I couldn’t seem to get the coupling threaded back on the gas tank valve. I’d try it for a few moments with the gas spilling down on my hands until they were white and frozen. Then I’d have to stick my thumb over the gas tank opening again while I put my other hand in my mouth to thaw my fingers enough to keep on working. It seemed like hours before I got the threads on the coupling to catch.

  The feeling in my hands had disappeared completely. I began to think they might be truly frozen, but little by little they began to tingle, then throb with pain as warmth returned. I stamped about and beat my arms across my body so I could finish before all the gas leaked out of the tank. Finally, I tightened the coupling with aching fingers, closed the hood, and crawled into the cab of the truck. The motor was flooded. There was nothing to do but wait for it to drain. It was dawn before I made it back to the garage.

  I wasn’t so fortunate the next time I had a breakdown. I couldn’t fix it. I had to sit for forty-eight hours in the bitter cold, without food, until another truck came along. By that time, both my cheeks were frozen. The right side of my face thawed out, but the left side, which had faced the wind, remained inflamed from eye to jaw. Eventually, it scabbed over, and the sore spot shrunk to the size of a quarter, but it was only in my fourth year in prison that the cheek healed completely.

  I began to think that perhaps my application to drive this old Tin Lizzie was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. In other ways, though, the truck was very helpful. I often drove supplies to work parties in the woods, many of them conscripts, and I’d have a chance to talk with the men while they unloaded the truck. I could also take occasion on these trips to drop in at the peasants’ homes up on the hills beyond the camp. These were mostly the old exiles, White Russians and Ukrainians, who had been sent here in 1937 at the height of the farm collectivization drive. They lived in huts up in the hills and eked out a meager living by farming, or by working in the lumber camp or pig iron plant, when they could get work.

  They were simple people, and it was easy to talk to them. Unlike the men in the camps or in the barracks, they would talk freely about God and prayers and how they wished there was a church or priest among them. Because I was still feeling my way, though, and very much aware of the Archbishop’s cautions, I didn’t tell them I was a priest.

  About the only ones who did know I was a priest were those I visited from time to time in the hospital at Chusovoy. I thought it might console them more, give more meaning to my promised prayers for their recovery, if I told them I was a priest. I also hoped at first that I might be able to hear the confessions of those who were dying; hospital visits, however, were allowed only in the visiting room, which was always crowded. I never saw the seriously sick or dying, and I felt the risks were too great to attempt to administer the sacraments to the others.

  Somehow, though, we must have aroused suspicions. In January 1941, Nestrov and I were suddenly ordered to Chusovoy. No reasons were given. With hardly time to pack, we were simply put on the train and sent to work at the lumber yards in Chusovoy. Perhaps our old friend, the judge, was behind the move, for otherwise it seemed strange that only Nestrov and I should have been singled out.

  In the lumber camp at Chusovoy, Nestrov again worked in the office, but I was back in the work brigade, stacking lumber in the charcoal kilns. Still, there were advantages to the change. For one thing, we could buy our meals in town when we could afford it. For another, despite the suspicious circumstances of our transfer, we seemed to be a lot freer.

  We shared a room in the barrack with a Jew named Valery and two Poles. One of the Poles, Fuchs, was a thin, emaciated man with black hair and tightly drawn lips. He wore a pince-nez on his narrow nose and seemed to be always squinting through them, like a caricature of a scholar. Actually, he was a former railway official from Vilna who now worked as an accountant in the camp office with Nestrov.

  Valery, the Jew, was a big, lively fellow, the center of every conversation and a great talker. He was still a young man, perhaps twenty-four years old, forever recalling his life as an actor and his days in the theater. He had fled from Warsaw when the Germans approached and had come to Chusovoy, but not to work. He and Janocz, the other Pole, were two of the cleverest “con” men in the camp. They would disappear for days at a time, living by their wits, bartering anything and everything, avoiding work at all costs. They returned to the barrack only when they got hungry or needed money. Janocz was a little man with chestnut hair, a former Warsaw businessman, he said, but he was always very vague about the business.

  Valery and Janocz had also discovered how to get a drink in Chusovoy. If you ordered a full meal at a restaurant, the fare included 3 or 4 ounces of whiskey. If you got to the restaurant within a half hour after it opened, a full meal might consist of potatoes, a fruit cup, some beans, custard for dessert, and a piece of meat if you were lucky. If you got there later, a full meal meant a bowl of soup, some cabbage, and a dish of kasha (a grit or oatmeal-like substance), with possibly a piece of caramel or custard for dessert. On Saturday night, after the restaurants had been open an hour or so, Valery and Janocz would pool their money and send me into town. I’d order a meal, eat the kasha, and pour the whiskey into a bottle. Then I’d go to another restaurant, order a meal, collect the whiskey, and repeat the process until my money ran out or the bottle was full. I rarely drank myself, so they felt their money and their whiskey was safer with me.

  In return, Valery and Janocz (if they were around) and Fuchs would stand in line each day at the commissary store to buy our daily ration of bread. While they were gone, Nestrov and I would say Mass in our room. He would stand outside the door while I said M
ass, in case anyone might come, then I’d do the same for him.

  At Chusovoy, we hid the Mass kit in the caretaker’s room. She was in the building all day and could make sure the suitcase was not disturbed. We had become friends the day I told how I lost my wife and children in the air raid. She wept at the story, and I felt a little guilty about it, but it was too late to change my identity or my story. After that, when I came home in the evenings, weak from the alternating cold outside and heat inside the kilns, she would have hot water on the stove for me to wash up, and a cup of hot coffee or soup, and possibly some kasha, for me. In return, I used to teach her little boy to read and write.

  At Chusovoy, too, the workers at the lumber camp were being inducted into the army. War between Germany and Russia, everyone said, was inevitable. We were required to report for training three or four nights a week after work. We had to learn the manual of arms, the usual drills, and how to defend a dug-in position, since we were due to serve on the Leningrad front. We had no uniforms, but just reported for training in our work clothes. The drills might last until 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning.

  In early June, the first rota, or squad, was sent off from the camp at Chusovoy to Leningrad. Leningrad was one of the places that had to be held at all costs if the Germans came. I was informed that my rota would leave for Leningrad on the 19th of June.2 For the first time, it became clear that Nestrov and I were going to be separated, since he had not yet been mobilized. We were not sure what to do. In the end, the decision was not ours to make.