by Albert Holl
However, the Russians apparently have something else lined up for us, as unexpectedly we are taken out into the yard. There we are subjected to yet another thorough search, in which medicines, identity discs and pay books are all taken from us. Finally everyone who has been searched is given a haircut. It was a shameful feeling for me to have my head shaved by a woman, but I am too ill to protest.
All over the yard there are heaps of shit that show diarrhoea already has a wide grip. 20, 50 and 100 Mark notes have been used for wiping clean, even individual pages from pay books have been used. The state of my health is not improved by the sight. I have had a temperature for days. My diarrhoea has not diminished, and I feel weak and miserable. It is fortunate that everything in this world comes to an end. This is also the moment when we are queuing up for delousing. We are led through the camp that I had only had a brief glimpse of until now. My route keeps taking me to the toilet and back again into the warm accommodation. Next we are brought some soup. We can lay aside those things that we do not need under the assumption that we will get them back later. I only give up my second bread bag as I have nothing else. Finally we are taken to the bath. It is in a shallow shed leaning against the nunnery wall.
Pressed close together, we stand in a small room and freeze. Our clothing is hung up on iron rings and put in the delousing oven. Every time the outside door opens cold air forces its way into our room and the great difference in temperature becomes visible as a white cloud. In the room immediately next to the furnace a badly dressed woman is operating as a barber. One could describe her clothing as a rag bag. Her face shows reluctance and disdain. Horrified, I realise that this woman shaves off the hair from my comrades from under the armpits, the chest and the genitals.
Some refuse to be shaved in such parts by a woman, but in vain. I had never gone through such a procedure before. Anger and shame overcame me but my protests made no difference. As I later discovered, the woman was a prisoner from the town gaol. Finally the head, armpits and all formerly hairy parts of the body are smeared with an evil-smelling paste against the lice, as we were told! Now we were in the bathroom, a small room with seven benches. There are wooden grids on the floor and the washtubs are also of wood. The floor is slippery and we can only move carefully. The room is almost invisible because of the hot steam. The damp lies heavily on our lungs. Everyone gets a bucket with warm water and a small piece of soap that is not quite sufficient for a full body wash. Shame that there is so little soap! If only there was not such a long wait for our clothing. We had finished washing for quite a while but our clothing was still hanging in the delousing oven. I am freezing. How gaunt we are already. Will the food be any better in this camp? We can only wait and see!
At last our clothing is ready. There is some confusion until everyone has found his own clothing. How comfortably warm it is, only the smell is not so good. It comes from the sweat, the burnt nits and the lice. The eggs have become quite brown. I press down with my thumbnails. Yes, the bugs have been destroyed. Were all the lice burnt too?
A Russian is waiting outside to take us to our new accommodation. We now go to another building, called No. 1 Block. After some coming and going I am at last lying in a room. We are divided up by rank. The hunger hardly bothers me. I wander about as if in a dream, racked by a high fever.
How did the night go? I do not know but my state of health has not improved. A Russian appears and speaks to a comrade who knows Russian; the latter tells us that we have to go through delousing again. Some lice have been found, and delousing will continue until the last louse has been destroyed. People are already saying that some prisoners have been taken to the town hospital with typhus.
We have to parade in front of our building with all our belongings. A Red Army soldier who speaks a bit of German, and gives the impression of being an officer, leads us out of the camp. As a Russian woman comes towards us he says, ‘There Russian madam, you officer, not good’, and an interpreter says something which translates as: ‘Comrades, you must pull together and not ridicule the Russian women!’ And here, tottering through the streets, are forty sick men, enough to make one weep, but these men are warned to behave!
We stop in front of a large building that is surrounded by a high wooden fence with a barbed wire fence around it. Everything is closed and at the corners stand high wooden towers manned by armed guards. The windows are covered from the exterior with wooden blinds that look like air shafts. A little wooden flap in the door is opened and a face looks out. Our escort speaks with the guard and shortly afterwards the door opens for us. It is immediately shut again once we have passed through. Now a second door is opened. Going through the second door I notice another sentry standing to the right. We are immediately led to the bathroom and go through the same delousing procedure. The personnel here have also had their heads shaved and from questioning I discover that we are in a prison. Now I understand the security.
Again follows an hour of washing, shaving and waiting for our deloused clothing. Many of us are lacking items of clothing. I do not get back my armless fur waistcoat that I wear next to my skin. My purse has also been robbed. We are too weak and miserable to protest strongly about it. We are driven out to the entrance with swearing and abuse. It is obvious to me that the prisoners did this on the guards’ orders.
Stretched out in our room, I lie down on my bed with all my limbs shaking. It was too much. I simply cannot take any more. Towards evening a small, dark-haired woman comes into our room and asks something. I do not really know what happened. As if at a foggy distance I see the woman say something to my comrade, who leads me out of the room somewhere. I follow him like a sleepwalker.
TYPHUS
Where am I? Why is my head so hot, my throat so dry? What stinks so much here? I open my eyes and look slowly around me, not fully conscious. I am lying in a small room with some others. I count seven men lying like me on the floor in the small room. We are all still in our uniforms. The only thing to be heard from outside is the hoarse sound of crows and rooks flying around. There must be a lot of them. I feel very listless, try to get up and collapse. What stinks so much? A penetrating smell is rising and makes me realise that it is coming from me. With difficulty I manage to unbutton my trousers. I realise that they are full of shit that has run down my legs. I am overcome with indescribable disgust. How long have I been lying here? Are there no orderlies that could help us? My eyes wander around, but the pitiful figures lying on the floor are incapable of helping me. My eyes widen with shock. They are all dead! The man next to me is no longer living! His open eyes show this quite clearly. A feeling of unspeakable abandonment overcomes me. Should I remain lying on the floor here like my comrades and die? Tears roll unstoppably down my sunken cheeks. No, that cannot be! I am not going to die here!
I force myself up, clenching my teeth. My clothing has to come off! My body has to be cleaned of this shit! I am able to do this using an old razor blade that I find in my bread bag. Using all my strength I get my uniform trousers off, cutting away the underpants with my razor blade, pulling the trouser legs off one by one so I can roughly clean the still unsoiled parts of my body.
Whether it takes an eternity, I am unable to say. My stomach is grumbling, for I have not eaten anything for days. How long have I not eaten anything? Have I actually eaten something? My eyes look around and find some properly sliced bread lying around. So someone must have come here from time to time. There is a knock at the window. Through the thick, dirty glass I recognise Captain Crainer. I wave to him. Soon he is in the room with my divisional comrade Captain Michaelis. They ask me how I am. I tell them what is wrong with me, the tears coming to my eyes. Crainer asks if there is anything he can do for me, and I ask for some hot tea. He promises to prepare some for me.
‘What is the date today?’ I look at both of them questioningly.
‘It is the 25th of March.’
‘Then I have already been lying here for five days and only woke up an hour ago!’
‘It
is obvious that you had a fever. We must go now, typhus is contagious!’
When my comrades leave I feel more confident. I give them my bread as I am unable to eat it myself. Shortly after the two of them have gone a Russian woman comes into the room. She examines all those lying on the floor and vanishes again. A little later two soldiers appear with a stretcher. They put the dead men on it and take them out. The Russian woman took the dead men’s possessions with her.
What is going to happen now? Must I keep on lying on the bare floor? The pressure in my stomach indicates that something is about to happen. I raise myself up with difficulty and crawl to the bucket standing by the door. It is dirty but, nevertheless, I have to sit on it. What happens now I have no idea, but blood comes out all the same! So on top of the fever I now have typhus! But I am not going to die! I will not!
Completely exhausted, I lay myself down again in my place on the floor. A small woman enters the room. It is the same one who came to me when I had the high fever. She seems to be a doctor. I can now see her clearly and realise that she is a Jewess. She examines every sick person without any change of expression. In poor German she asks anyone that can speak how they feel, goes to them and listens. She feels the pulses of the sleeping ones. On her instructions I get from the sister, the same one who had the dead removed, two powders wrapped in papers. One I have to take immediately, the other one later. To the question how much longer I must remain lying on the floor she replies: ‘Everything will be better tomorrow!’
Thoughtfully I look at the door through which she has disappeared. She was a representative of the race that we fight in Germany.
The next days bring considerable improvement. Wooden beds are set up, straw mats laid and blankets distributed. Before we can get into the beds we have to take everything off. Our clothing is bundled up and removed. Two comrades who still have some strength take us on stretchers to the banja. A whole lot of people must have been carried in on the stretchers as the floor is very wet. The cold assaults me in the yard, taking my breath away. My teeth are chattering when I am placed in the bath. How comforting the warm water is, though. If only I was not so dizzy. I can only move slowly and with extreme care over the slippery floor. Ever more comrades as sick as ourselves are brought in. We all look like ghosts. I examine my arms, which are as thin as a child’s. My skin is wrinkled like that of an old man. It reminds me of parchment. Then the stretcher bearers bring in a sick man who can no longer stand. He had hardly sat down on the bench when he lay down. Another one prods him: ‘You have to wash yourself!’ He looks more closely at him and says: ‘He is dead!’ He lies there motionless with his limbs stretched out, a little bag of skin and bones. Two minutes ago he was still able to sit and lie down, but now his heart has given up beating. We are all so deadly sick that we cannot assess the current tragedy. We look on indifferently as the dead man is taken out on the same stretcher that we were brought in on and finally return to our sick bays on. When was I last able to put on clean clothing? I am unable to give myself an answer. I have been here so long. But what short shirts are they giving us now? They only reach to the navel! They are something for infants and not for grown men. The linen laundry that we now get into is narrow and cold on our bodies. Pressed close together, we crowd round the stove which exudes only a little heat. Then we are taken back to our wards one at a time. We learn from the stretcher bearers that already a third of the camp prisoners have died from the fever or typhus, and that the whole camp is like a hospital. When I look at my body I am not surprised. How can this emaciated, run-down body resist after starving for weeks? I have already been lying a long time in my bed and am still frightfully cold.
Days have already passed. Together with Captains von Reibnitz and Pfeiffer, I have been taken out of the little rooms that were only intended for hopeless cases. We are lying with the less serious cases in a large room that I saw during my first days here. My place is right forward on the stage, where there are five beds together side by side, mine being in the middle. I am pleased to be here. I tenderly caress my water bottle. It is my life saver. When I wake up the morning after my bath the chap in the bed on my right has died. On the window sill stands a water bottle and a small coffee spoon. I must take them before the sister comes round and confirms that he is dead. One grasp and the water bottle and spoon have vanished under the blanket. Shortly afterwards the sister comes and has the dead man removed. The water bottle is now in my possession, and when hot water is brought in I fill the bottle with it and lay it as hot as it is against my stomach. I am now doing this mornings or evenings whenever hot tea or water is available. I noticed an improvement after a few days. The fever subsided and my stomach also improved. My bowels gradually became normal, but the water bottle still lies on my belly.
The little Jewish lady doctor comes again. She goes to every bed and listens to what the sick have to say. I wonder about her. The means available to her have been reduced and are no longer sufficient by far, but she is constantly on her feet. A small woman with thin arms and equally thin legs, dark eyes and a small dark mole on her nose, we address her as ‘Frau Doctor’. Now she is standing beside my bed, feeling my pulse, giving me powder wrapped in old propaganda leaflets about Goebbels and Göring. I feel that my crisis is over, but I still have a fever. If I sleep or lie semi-conscious on my bed then it seems to me that I am flying. I have not really flown, but now it seems as if I am sitting in a Ju [Junkers]. At times we are thousands of metres up and the earth is far below us and only vaguely to be seen, then we roar close to the earth’s surface and I fear that the aircraft will hit the tree tops. Oddly we always fly westwards!
We rarely see the sister; apparently she comes only when food is being handed out, when she stays for a short time, or when the dead have to be removed. Two cases interest me in particular: one a lieutenant wearing a black tanker’s uniform, the other a specialist. The specialist even still has a watch. He speaks with a Hessian accent and some people address him as ‘Herr Becker’, while the lieutenant is apparently a Berliner called Lohmann.
As far as my condition allows, I help when I can. The misery around me is considerable, most men being weak. Many drink themselves almost to death, forgetting the warnings. Finally they crawl to the buckets standing right at the entrance to the room and a disgusting smell emerges.
Five men have died immediately next to me in the past days. Most of them lacked the necessary energy to live, no longer taking any food, lying in a high fever until their hearts stopped beating.
The Russian sister often comes by when a victim is dying, never missing the moment when she can take their property. She is especially there when items of jewellery are involved and there is no one else in the vicinity.
My immediate neighbour but one on the right has given up. I try with difficulty to make him eat, speaking to him like a mother, or with a commanding military voice, reminding him of his family, but all in vain. He eats too little. He is removed the next morning. Many go this way. Every day the stretcher bearers carry out their sad burdens. As I have discovered, the dead are loaded on the carts at night and then taken out of the prison and the camp. Where are they taken?
Right next to me lies a young second-lieutenant, a big, blue-eyed blond boy. He talks lovingly of his home and his parents.
The lady doctor was here again just now. The first convalescents are to be discharged today, making their beds free for others. I am one of them. This evening I will be lying in a bedroom. In the late afternoon the sister brings some things in and throws them at us. My uniform is not there. I protest and refuse to take the scraps of clothing. I am put off with the hopes that they will give me my things next day, but the stores are now closed. Reluctantly I draw on the clothing which is far too big for me. I look like a clown in uniform. After our evening soup we leave the hall. There are four of us and we have been allocated to Block III, Room 31, for accommodation. In the darkness of the night we feel our way forward carefully and uncertainly through the long corrido
rs out into the yard. We stagger like drunks. I feel weak. A comrade with a long coat cannot see and staggers here and there holding firmly onto me. I am happy that I am now in a position to be able to help him.
A figure comes towards us out of the darkness. We ask for Room 31 and are told where to go. Feeling our way carefully, not knowing where we are walking, we go up a small wooden staircase. Coming to a corridor, we go at random into the next room and ask for Room 31 again – and find ourselves in it. Here too everything is dark. I can only make out that there is a long row of double bunks in front of us, without mattresses, only covered in wooden planks that have wide joints. From somewhere a voice comes out of the darkness that we should lie down and cover ourselves with whatever we have, for there are no blankets or mattresses. My night-blinded comrade, who meanwhile has introduced himself as Technical Inspector Heinz Lutter, lies down with us on a bottom plank bed and we cover ourselves with his blanket. Soon fatigue wins and we sleep until the cold wakes us up again.
Where am I? I look around. The beds and comrades lying near me bring me back to the present. It must now be early in the morning. Most are lying down curled up under their tunic or coat. Lutter has also woken up. We get up, one supporting the other. The way to the toilet is too far so we go into the corner of the building. The crows are flying in swarms, cawing loudly to announce the coming spring.
‘What is the date today?’ I ask Lutter.
‘I believe today is the 12th of April!’ comes the reply.
Chapter 2
The Emigrants and the National Committee Freies Deutschland
It is a sultry August day. The sun sends its pitiless hot rays over the dried out, fissured earth. Storm clouds stand on the other side of the banks of the Kam. The wide river acts like a weather shield. It holds back the black rainclouds and forces them to give up their life-bringing moisture before it reaches the town and its surroundings. I sit on a bench in front of the outpatients department, the shade of the birches protecting me from the sun’s rays. It is now too threateningly oppressive to bear. Here in the open air one can at least muse along with one’s thoughts a little. One can hardly take a step without stumbling over a prisoner of war. I am happy to be somewhat undisturbed here. Today is the 16th of August, so we have been here in this camp for five months. How the camp has changed in this time! The atmosphere has become oppressive and unedifying, just like a storm cloud over the prisoners of war. How did that come about?