With God in Russia

by Walter J. Ciszek

  At length, the guard walked away seemingly unconvinced. A little later, though, two other guards came to the door and the leader handed them the bundle of my clothes. After our next stop, he began to lean out the door anxiously, sticking his head through the bars and straining around, looking up and down the corridor for the two guards with whom he’d made the deal. At last they came down the corridor with their arms full of bread, bologna, fish, tobacco, a few packages of cigarettes, and some butter.

  Immediately, clean jackets and shirts appeared miraculously from nowhere. They were spread on the bench to keep the food from getting dirty. The leader sat down, took out a knife (strictly forbidden), and began to cut the bread up into assigned portions, with a little bologna or fish and some butter for each. He himself got the lion’s share, naturally. Nobody looked in my direction; there was no sign that I so much as existed.

  After they had devoured everything in sight, they began to yell for a bucket of water. A guard brought it. The leader himself took the tin cup which came with the bucket, then handed the bucket around so the rest could drink from it. Afterward, some of the men took out cards and began to play, settling down into little groups. The leader, as he lit a cigarette, happened to look at me over the flame. Then, as if performing a great act of mercy, he picked up a piece of stale bread and sent it to me by messenger with the remark, “Give that to that dirty Fascist!” By this time I was so mad I would have liked to refuse, but I was also famished. I took the bread and ate it, greedily enough. They all laughed, then ignored me completely.

  It was gradually getting dark now, and I sat in the corner staring into the dim light, partly fascinated by the novelty of it all, yet uneasy among this gang of thieves. Torn by the twin emotions of anxiety and curiosity, wondering what would come next, I began to pray. Again, I put my trust entirely in God. I finally dozed off, tired and hungry after a day of strange experiences, with the thieves still swearing loudly at one another over their card games.

  Early the next morning, the train halted somewhere in a railroad yard. We sat listening to the clanging and banging of trains, the sharp hisses of steam and air-brakes, the constant hustle and bustle of the yards. Suddenly, we heard the sharp slap, slap, slap of soldiers marching in the German goosestep style. Immediately, the thieves knew where we were. “Here they come,” they said, “the guards of Vologda!”

  The troops came along at a smart pace, in snappy khaki uniforms with special decorations, high leather boots, and round kepis with blue tops and red rims. Within moments, they were on the train and an officer spoke in stern, commanding tones: “Prepare to detrain, keep order and absolutely no talking! You will be transferred under guard, and any violation of these orders while under transfer will be severely punished!”

  We were marched off the train in single file through the station, until we came to another cordon of Vologda guards standing, with rifles and machine guns at the ready, in the station courtyard. As we were being formed up, a prisoner from one of the other cars noticed that I had no shoes. He slipped me a pair of hemp slippers, whispering, “Here, put these on!” While I was tying them up with the string, the order was given to march. The road itself was rough, especially near the railroad station, and I was grateful for the slippers. We were marched off almost at a trot, and the guards, some of them with dogs on leashes, held us to that tempo all the way to the famous Vologda transit prison, an old building in a city which itself is a very ancient town.

  The check-in procedures at Vologda were different from those in Moscow prisons. The guards of Vologda were completely sure of themselves. Once they took a group of prisoners, they never bothered to count them again; they just handed over the group and the documents to the prison authorities. According to prison lore, these guards had never lost a prisoner. Many had tried to escape, and were either hauled down by the dogs or shot. The guards at Vologda, therefore, were a byword among the prisoners for their efficiency and professional methods. They weren’t cruel, but they were jealous of their reputation and meant to see that it was maintained.

  The transit prison at Vologda is made up of big cells down in the basement, damp and dark, with walls as thick and slimy as the dungeons in old Hollywood movies. When we reached the basement, we were checked in against the documents the guards handed over to the prison authorities. We were asked our name, surname, the year we were arrested and where, the charge against us, how many years we had received in sentence and who gave the verdict, whether the verdict was rendered in court or was merely administrative. Then we were asked if we had any complaints—about the trial, about the sentence, about the treatment we had received, and so forth. Finally, we were asked if we wanted a physical. Here at Vologda the medical examination was given only if requested; your name was taken and you’d be called out later for the exam.

  After we were checked in individually, we were sent off to another room and collected into groups. As soon as twenty men had been collected, we were taken to our cells. These were large rooms, perhaps 100 feet long by 30 feet wide, with six windows, fitted with the usual iron bars and shields, high up on a long wall opposite the door. There was only one door in the room. It had a barred opening halfway up, but this had also been covered with a tin shield. The cell was a dismal-looking place, with a floor of loose wooden planks which creaked and gave way under foot.

  Four big wooden beams ran down the center of the room, supporting the crossbeams of a very high ceiling. The walls were plastered, and completely covered with carved and written scrawls as high as a man could reach. There were written the names and dates of those who had been here before, when they came, when they left. There were also pathetic little notes: “If you see so-and-so, tell him you saw this name”; “If you get to such-and-such a place, look up so-and-so, and tell him his son was here.” To this latter note was added in another hand “and his daughter, too.” The walls, in effect, were the prisoners’ perennial bulletin board. Just about everyone, sooner or later, spent some time in Vologda en route to his fate. Therefore, the messages included notes like “so-and-so died in Lubianka,” so that his friends or relatives might somehow be informed.

  When our group reached the cell, there were already more than 150 people in it, sitting or lying on the floor, for there were no benches. At Vologda, there were all sorts of people waiting to be shipped elsewhere. In our cell, they were mostly political prisoners, but there were also forty or fifty of the thieves or criminals, bunched up together as usual in one end of the room. In fact, the large cell was really a series of little ghettos. Each nationality huddled together in one section, and the newcomers moved around until they found a congenial welcome—the Lithuanians with Lithuanians, Russians with Russians, the Caucasians and the Poles and the Lats each in their own little group.

  Here at Vologda, the guards paid little attention to us. We were transients waiting for transfer elsewhere, so the discipline wasn’t too strict. Groups might stay here anywhere from a day to six months, depending on when they arrived. For it was here at Vologda that the étappes, or work brigades, were formed for the various camps and various regions. Sometimes, if an étappe was something special, it might take a long time to form. On the other hand, it might be formed within a day of a group’s arrival.

  Such conditions of constant turnover and lax discipline were tailor-made for the thieves, who had an organization all their own into which they were welcomed everywhere. Half an hour after we arrived, five tattooed thugs from the far end of the cell made a tour of the place. “What have you got there? Let’s see!” they said, as they inspected the newcomers and made us open our luggage, almost as if they were customs clerks. If anyone was wearing good clothes, he would be told to take them off and exchange them for old clothes. But if a newcomer was wearing old clothes, the thieves would insist on seeing his bag.

  It was hot in the prison, and everyone was standing around in shorts or trousers, stripped to the waist, trying to avoid the least exertion. The heat, and the consequent lack of inte
rest on most people’s part to take any action, made the thieves’ job just that much easier. As they approached me, I looked around for assistance; my neighbors looked away. So this “commission” took what the thieves on the train had missed, and by the end of their tour of the cell they had collected quite a pile from the newcomers.

  This day, however, they were in for a surprise. A stocky young fellow rose up, soldier-like, in the middle of the cell and called out in a commanding voice: “Bratsi! (Brothers!) Let’s remember who we are and who we have been! I was a major of a tank division, not afraid of bombs, or enemy guns, or any danger whatsoever. I’m in here now, but I’m still a man! You, most of you, are soldiers from the front. Are you going to let yourselves be scared by these thieves, these bandits? All of you who have been robbed by these jackals, and are men enough to follow, come with me! Now!”

  In one spontaneous movement, the crowd followed him down to the thieves’ corner and backed the criminals up against the wall. “Come on, now,” shouted the soldier, “everyone get his stuff!” At that, the thieves jumped in to save their plunder and a fight broke out. Shouts filled the air, curses and cries of pain, and immediately the guards rushed in with drawn guns, then more guards, and finally the commandant himself.

  When order was restored, the commandant ordered everybody to line up along one wall. When he asked what had happened, the major described heatedly and vehemently the treatment we newcomers had received from the thieves. The other prisoners chimed in their agreement. To his credit, the commandant immediately sorted out the thieves’ ringleaders and herded them out. Under the major’s charge, the belongings confiscated by the thieves were returned to their owners. Finally, the command of the room was taken over by the major and other political prisoners, instead of the thieves.

  We were all the gainers. Formerly, as usually happened, the thieves had been in charge of distributing the food and had taken the lion’s share. Such things went on everywhere, to judge from the prisoners’ stories. The thieves, always organized, would terrorize the unorganized political prisoners in any situation, unless they were stopped.

  Here at Vologda, even more so than elsewhere, conversation and the exchange of information were the order of the day. With the constant turnover of prisoners, everyone hoped that if he himself didn’t meet friends at his destination, someone in the room at least would be able to pass the word of his whereabouts. One of the greatest talkers, though, was an officer named Bulatov who had served with General Vlasov, the defender of Leningrad who went over to Hitler along with his whole army. Bulatov smoked a pipe from morning until night, and the more he puffed the more horrible his tale became. When he got started, everybody within earshot listened.

  He told us one day, how, after Vlasov’s army had deserted to Hitler, they appealed to the Führer for a free hand in fighting against Russia. Hitler wouldn’t agree. Instead, the troops were sent into Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkan states as punishment (revenge) brigades to subdue prisoner insurrections. They were also used as executioners in the penal camps, especially against the Jews.

  Bulatov’s tales of horror, however, were never finished. They were cut short, as was our stay at Vologda, by the announcement that we were to prepare for an étappe. Immediately, everybody collected all his little possessions and tied them into a bundle. There were last-minute farewells and hasty messages to other prisoners. We were off on a ride to nobody knew where, but we were certain it would be a long one. Many might never come back.

  The guards led us out into the courtyard, where we mingled with prisoners from other cells, looking for familiar faces or news of friends. I searched the courtyard for news of any other priests here at Vologda, but no luck. I did meet a number of Poles, though, and I was chatting with them when I was accosted by a Russian official. He seemed quite friendly, but he was less interested in me than in my valise. He asked me outright whether I’d sell it to him. It was the one a fellow Jesuit had given me in 1934 when I left for Rome, but it was still in excellent condition.

  The Poles around me began immediately to jabber away in Polish, offering advice. “It’s a good valise; you ought to get a lot of bread for it on the way. Don’t sell it now.” The Russian waited patiently for a lull in our Polish consultations, then said, “What about it?” I appreciated the advice and I was sorely tempted to hang onto the valise for the bread it might bring on a long journey eastward, but I also thought about the train ride to Vologda and how my bag and bundle had been snatched by the thieves and ransacked. I knew the same thing could easily happen again; this time I might not be lucky enough to get it back. “But if I give you this,” I asked the Russian, “what will I use?” “We’ll fix that,” he said. “Just wait here a minute.”

  He disappeared into one of the prison buildings, and came back with a canvas sack with canvas handles. “How about this?” he said eagerly. “Okay,” I said. “Fine,” he said, “how much do I owe you?” I knew that he could simply have taken the valise if he wanted to, so I appreciated his offer. “It’s all yours,” I said. “You don’t owe me anything. I’d probably lose it anyhow.” “You don’t want any money?” he asked. “No, what would I do with money? They would just take it away from me at the labor camp, anyway.” “Wait!” he said, holding up his hand, “wait right here a minute.” He dashed off with the valise into the building again and came out with a full loaf of bread. He apologized for not being able to get more, then thanked me again for my generosity. And so, there at Vologda, my American Jesuit valise enlisted in the Russian Army; from that time on, I traveled light.

  Instead of saving the bread for the journey, I broke it into pieces and passed it around among the group of friendly Poles. They accepted the bread gladly enough, but remonstrated with me for letting my valise go so cheaply. “Ah,” they said, “why did you do that? That suitcase might have been worth at least half a dozen loaves of bread on this trip.” “Well,” I said, “what’s done is done. Now I won’t have to worry about having it stolen.”

  As soon as we arrived at Vologda, I had applied for a pair of shoes. It was only now, when we were ready to leave, that they brought me a pair—old, and three or four sizes too large, but shoes nevertheless. As I knelt down to tie them on, I heard the guard shout “Stanovis!” (Line up!). The lines were already moving and someone handed me my canvas satchel as I caught up. Off we marched, waving to those still in the prison, who stuck their heads and hands through the windows to wave and shout encouragement to us. The guards of Vologda were again our escorts, and once more we were hustled through the streets of Vologda at a trot and down to the railway station.

  The siding was lined from end to end with a long string of boxcars. We could tell the cars in front were already loaded, for the guards were stationed around them and the doors were closed. Our group was lined up along the siding to wait for the officials to assign us. The sun was terrifically hot for the middle of June; even the dogs with the guards felt the heat. They stood there with their tongues out, slobbering and panting heavily, but still on the alert. If a prisoner stooped to put down his luggage, or shifted from foot to foot in the line, the dogs would immediately swing around on the leash to look at him. At last the officials came, called us out of line by name and assigned us to our cars. One by one, we picked up our precious little bundles of spare clothing or crusts of bread and climbed into the cars.

  These were strictly prison cars, used for the transfer of prisoners from Vologda into Siberia. Basically, they were boxcars with beams nailed across the car at both ends and covered with planks to serve as bunks. There were two decks, one above the other, and you had to decide quickly whether you wanted an upper bunk so you could peer out one of the four little windows at the top of the car, or a lower bunk so you’d be near the floor and able to move around more freely. There were also double-decker bunks, much narrower, along the walls on either side of the car doors. In the center of the car was a little stove with a chimney through the roof, which we definitely didn’t need in
the June heat. The only other furnishing in the car was a parasha near one of the doors. On both ends of the car, outside the prisoners’ section, were small platforms for the guards who would accompany us the whole trip.

  In the cars, the prisoners sorted themselves out, trying to find traveling companions or acquaintances, if possible, and picking out a place to settle down for the long road ahead. Of the thirty persons crowded into the car, ten were common criminals, the rest were political prisoners. But the orderly for our car, assigned by the guards, was a criminal named Volkov. The thieves always seemed to be a privileged class—at least in the sense they had the guards buffaloed—so they generally wound up in command of the situation.

  Volkov passed on the instructions he had been given: if there were any attempts to escape, or any signs in the car of an attempted escape—loose planks, a loosening of the wire screens over the window, or any tampering with the door—the guilty parties would be punished. The punishment was not specified, but presumably it meant another prison sentence or perhaps a longer stretch in the labor camps. The rest of us listened to the instructions half-heartedly; such warnings were so common they hardly bore repeating.

  All during the sweltering afternoon, the train sat on the siding. As soon as we were inside, though, the doors had been closed and by now it was stifling hot in the car. The men were soon sitting around in various stages of undress. I chose a place on the upper berth at the opposite end of the car from where the thieves had gathered. My traveling companions were three young soldiers who had been arrested in Germany for going AWOL.