by Albert Holl
Christmas is over and the New Year has begun. The holidays were really days of rest for us. What the cooks prepared as additional dishes was consumed with our normal food weeks ago with our consent. Despite the general depression there were some men who took on additional work after the day’s labours in order to get the whole camp community out of their lethargy and forget their misery for a few minutes.
The unhappy brick trip has claimed a victim. Schinnerling died in hospital as a result of the consequences of this trip. That which had originally been diagnosed as rheumatism was in fact blood poisoning caused by a foot wound that Schinnerling had suffered on the brick trip. By the time it was recognised, it was already too late.
I am very sad and still cannot accept that this big youngster with a noble heart is no longer alive. Above all, I think of his mother, a widow now waiting vainly for the return of her only son. I am filled with bitterness but nevertheless we must keep our emotions firmly in check, or we would go crazy. Not only not thinking, but not brooding! We concern ourselves with optimistic things and in this way try to forget our pitiful existence! Rilke gave me much strength at this time, as did Goethe’s Faust.
Today our group is back on duty again to fetch potatoes from Bonjuga. It is going to be a long day. The sky is grey and the trip would be bearable if there were no wind to freeze our nostrils. After half an hour we reach the next village, where some try to exchange their monthly soap ration for a piece of bread. The population are already standing in wait as we march in. We are greedy for that rare item soap, which we need more urgently than unwanted bread. And even if it is only a little piece of several hundred grams, the stomach also cooperates somewhat.
Now we have a lovely stretch ahead of us to the stream from Xiltau to the town on the opposite bank of the Kama. Finally the river bank is reached and once we have crossed the river there are still several hundred metres up the apparently steep hill until we are in the town to collect our goods from the shop concerned. It is just as well that this slope has to be climbed with empty sledges.
Our leader, a cunning old Russian whom we call ‘Egghead’, leads us this way and that through the poor streets. Drawn up at the first collecting point, we wait almost two hours, but in vain. Our morale is already very poor, and dawdling about until dark makes matters worse. We go back with empty sledges after endlessly tramping here and there through the streets of this Tartar town.
Outside the town we stop at a collective farm. At last we can start loading the sledges. What is here exaggeratedly described as ‘potatoes’ is again little more than a frozen-together clump, indefinable and disgusting. Have they not got anything else? But it is no wonder when one sees how the ‘agronomists’ here protect the potatoes against frost.
There is a heap of hips lying in a corner. If we are careful, we can pinch a few, but the manager soon notices and we are obliged to stop.
At last we can set off back. Were we the first to get loaded? The way back down to the bank of the Kama is a problem in itself. First, we have to stop. The rope is taken to the rear so that the sledge is not hauled but slowed as it runs down the hill. Carefully we let the sledge begin to slip down the hill. Soon the speed increases and the sledge driver has his hands full keeping the sledge from racing down the slope. Our crew cannot hold it back. The sledge has a will of its own and races on. Only with difficulty is the sledge team ahead of us able to jump aside. Already the sledge has turned over and the sacks of potatoes have fallen out in the snow.
Only with great exertion can most crews get down this hill in one piece. The loading of the overturned sledges imposes a new delay.
As we start off again, it is already becoming dark. A light snowfall begins and in no time at all it is dark and the track hardly identifiable. Unfortunately it is also a new moon. One man must now go several steps ahead to make out the route. The pulling is even harder and the atmosphere even more irritable. But the complaining makes it bearable. We keep coming off the track, simply not seeing where to go, despite the scout. Constantly the sledges get stuck in the snow and can only be got going again with the help of two or three other teams.
We become stuck in the middle of the wasteland of snow. ‘Egghead’ has already gone ahead in his horse-drawn sledge to the next village to warm himself. He knows that none of us will try to run off. We are much too weak to get up to such tricks, but anyway – Where would we go? We had our last meal this morning at 6 o’clock. Now it is about midnight and we have already been eighteen hours on the way without any food. On top of this we all have cold noses as a result of the snowfall.
At last the last sledge has reached the village and we can set out on the last stage to the camp. At last there are some weak lights visible in the distance that must be Xiltau. But the route is still long enough. As we stagger through the camp gate, the camp senior waiting for us at the gate says that the time is 3.15.
An unaccustomed event has occurred: the whole camp can send home a postcard. They are double postcards with writing in the Russian and French languages. Only the upper half of the card can be written on. With the scepticism I have acquired from experience over the previous years, I write the following: ‘My dear Ilse, after long years of scary uncertainty about you and our loved ones, you can put aside those things about my fate. I am healthy and hope to return home soon. Please greet my loved ones, especially my dear parents. I wish you all the best and am with hearty greetings and heartfelt kisses ever your Adelbert.’
This was the only opportunity I had of playing fast and loose with my name. Should a card really arrive in Germany, then fine; if not then it could not be misused for propaganda purposes. Now we would see what would happen. Today is the 15th of January 1946.
My birthday has already passed – it is the fourth that I have endured as a prisoner of war. By general decision every birthday boy in the camp gets a whole loaf and a small portion of sugar, as well as a double helping of warm food. In some camps there was even a work-free day for the birthday boy. For every prisoner the greatest wish is at least once a year to have a whole loaf and to be able to eat more than the few hundred grams we get daily. I dreamt of this weeks ago. It is a similar feeling to what a little child gets before Christmas.
From newly arrived prisoners we discover that Nunnery Camp has been cleared of Germans apart from a few exceptions, and that Japanese, our former allies, are being accommodated there. There has been a rumour going round for several days that we are going back to Kama Camp and that the Japanese will replace us here. It would be so good to get out of this bone-crusher that few of us dare believe it.
The arrival of spring has already passed, according to the calendar, though ‘General Winter’ still holds the sceptre. But on the 1st of April 1946 quite suddenly it has become warmer. The warmth starts a general melting of the snow and driving with sledges along the Kama is no pleasure any more. If it goes on we will soon see the ice melting and the river running again.
BACK TO THE MAIN CAMP
This morning the order comes quite suddenly for the whole camp to march off. It is the 7th of April 1946. Only a few will remain here to advise on and hand over the equipment. It is mainly members of the League of German Officers who now, in the haste of the break-up, cheat us of the items we have been saving for Easter. But that is our least concern. We are lucky that we can now take the sledges over to the other bank. If the Japanese come in the morning they will have the problem of very cracked ice.
We reached Kama Camp in Jelabuga after a very strenuous march. As we went past Nunnery Camp we could see for ourselves that the Japanese prisoners had arrived.
Once we have gone through the obligatory delousing, which is conducted for every arriving group, we go to Block 8 as preliminary accommodation. God be thanked, now we can rest for a little. Full of pleasure, I see again trusted faces in a row of comrades and establish that they are the same old crowd.
To my great regret I discover that the defender of Veliki-Luki, Lieutenant-Colonel von Sass, who
was taken to Moscow several weeks before the closing down of Block VI, has been hanged by the Russians. Captain Knauff, who was in the lieutenant-colonel’s regiment as a company commander, was sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour. A show trial demanded its victims yet conceals the fact that a single reinforced German regiment was able to resist several Russian divisions for several weeks and inflict heavy losses on them.
I have even met a person from back home: Captain Karl Kriebel, who was captured at Königsberg. As children we lived on the same street and now we meet here like this, far from our homeland, thousands of kilometres from our loved ones. Despite everything, the world is so small. A year ago I met Senior Corporal Karl Meier here, whom I also knew from my childhood. He brought me indirect news of my wife, whom he had seen on his last leave. At the moment he is on a collective farm commando near Kasan.
Hereus has done it again! He is a doorkeeper at the kitchen. His glutted face shows that it brings him something.
The cultivation of the land has begun like last year, the only difference being that it is conducted on a still bigger scale. No wonder, as this year the main organisers are experienced League of German Officers members, who presented themselves as farmers and provide great assistance to the Russians. New spades have been produced by the hundred. But also the old valued pulling of ploughs and harrows has been brought out to humiliate us. This time they even call out the weakest, that is the men of Work Group III, who are harnessed to the plough in teams of twenty-five men and are referred to as the ‘Emergency Standard’. And so one can see the unusual picture of an old colonel next to a young second-lieutenant, who from his undernourishment already looks like an old man, sharing the work with the sling around the neck or the stick on a rope in front of them.
Dr Schuster, the long-trusted camp doctor for ‘restoration’, deals here in many different cases not in the interest of his fellow prisoners, but rather for the Russians, who could otherwise relieve him of his post.
For offences against the order – i.e. stealing food or the incorrect planting of seed potatoes – the punishment is the lock-up.
And how does it look for the Japanese? They too go to work in small columns to fields a bit further from us, but still within sight. They perform their work in a leisurely way. There is no urging them on by their own people. When a Russian once failed to hit a Japanese sentry, the team leader, a Japanese colonel, gave the order to do it, despite the offensive cursing and threatening by the sentry at the baffled Germans watching.
How the marches can change. In the mass quarters of Kama Camp, in which even the corridors serve as accommodation, and the beds in the hall are stacked three high, a bad atmosphere prevails overall. The cause of this atmosphere is the demoralising work of the activists.
The friendships that have been made here are doubly valuable, despite the hunger and the mental outrages that are repeatedly attempted. Many were already thieves because they miss the nicotine or because they can see pieces of bread lying about. Thus everyone knows that no comrade has more than he himself, with the exception of certain ‘experts’ of the League of German Officers who hoard resources and profit at the expense of the community.
IN SELONI-DOLSK CAMP
I have been waiting for two days now for the call for transport in the Kasan direction. The precise objective is not known by any of us. Our transport commander is Cavalry Captain Eichhorn, who has been an Anti-fascist for years. His need for admiration always gains him a good position. The Russians are naturally touched by the cooperation of such ‘gentlemen’.
The former Second-Lieutenant Wild, an old prisoner who was given the name ‘corpse-robber Wild’ after meeting the Stalingrad prisoners, is also there. As an old member of the National Committee and as an activist he was naturally a brigadier. Actually one may no longer say ‘National Committee’ and ‘League of German Officers’, as several months after the capitulation both establishments were disbanded. Every camp now has an Anti-fascist committee with a senior activist or so-called propagandist. Naturally the radical leftist prisoners of war were preferred for these posts.
After a two-day journey on a Kama steamer we came to Kasan. In embarking at Jelabuga I saw the Guards lieutenant-colonel for the last time. However, I avoided being seen by him. From Kasan we had to go about another 30 kilometres to Seloni-Dolsk (‘Green Valley’), which lay where the Trans-Siberian Railway crossed the Volga. We were accommodated in a newly erected camp standing in the grounds of a factory. The camp had formerly been occupied by Russian convicts, but for us, with our previous experience, it makes a passable impression.
Right at the start the Minister of the Interior of the Tartar Republic appeared and told us in quite clear words that we had to work. There would be no cases of refusing work and they would only make things worse for us if we tried. I had my own thoughts about this.
Eichhorn put his back into it. As I learned, as leader of the punishment company he put Lieutenant-Colonel Hilsheimer, an old Knight’s Cross holder, to do the dirtiest work.
I tried to explain that the whole camp profit came in one pot, as did the so-called ‘additional supplies’, but he rejected this and sought to attack me openly, boasting of his ‘years long service in the Russian administration’. Literally he said: ‘As others were banging at the door I was already busy in the cause of reparation.’ He remarked provocatively on my troubles in Nunnery Camp at the beginning of May 1945 but I kept quiet and refused to be drawn on the subject.
As a member of the ‘Helmerding Saw’, also known as the ‘Singing Saw’, I was set to work in a group consisting of twelve men. Our work is not easy, as we are part of a continuous work process and a considerable part of the production depends upon our efforts. We move the timber from a conveyor belt to the saw and then cut it into previously marked lengths. Then it is moved on further on another conveyor belt and allowed to fall into a bath.
Until this point I had yet to come across a Russian civilian. The whole factory is guarded. As in the camp, high watchtowers stand at the outermost corners of the grounds with sentries on them. It is therefore not possible to bring something out of the factory without permission. Our guards roam everywhere in the factory and we too can move about freely within the factory. The workers are mainly Tartars, while the manager and leading personnel are Russians. The first are friendly towards us, but themselves are so poor that they are unable to bring us things to eat; nevertheless, the whole sense and purpose of the prisoners is directed at getting something extra to eat.
Our sawing group is very sensible. Some intriguers were cut out right from the beginning and so we are able to ensure that within our sawing group everything is thrown into one pot. Without difference, everything is shared out equally at the end of the month. Unfortunately there is very little and it comes to barely 30 to 35 roubles per month. The so-called ‘normal bread’ is also shared out equally.
The workers told us they had been paid no money for several months, but they receive vouchers for food in the canteen. The rest of their earnings go to compulsory state funds. This was already being done during the war. How the workers were made to take on this compulsory acceptance of obligations they demonstrated with obscene hand gestures.
For several days our group has been working in the bakery. We have to take the flour from the mill, which is about 300 metres away, carrying the 60 kilogram sacks on our shoulders. There were forty-five sacks on the first day for each one of us to carry. The evening found us crawling back to camp exhausted and weak at the knees. But we had been able to carry on for the whole day, and that was the main thing for us. If we only get dry, freshly baked bread, and in the afternoon a pastry made with flour, salt and bran, we get enough envy from those who would have liked to have been with us. But it was because we had achieved this through our commitment that the head of the bakery called for us again. I am happy now to be in a situation where I can support individual comrades. The most impossible hiding places have been devised for smuggling flour from
the mill or the bakery into the camp. If we are the first to get through the searches at the mill or bakery, then we have as good as won, for the camp guard has become friendly towards us. It is actually the first time that a Russian duty officer has dealt with us kindly.
How has the work gone in the mill or bakery in which we have been working for more than ten days already? If a railway wagon comes, we have to unload it. The railway official opens the sealed door and we can begin unloading the grain. On the ramp stands a large decimal scale on which the grain that we shovel into sacks is weighed. The railway official stands as controller next to the scale and notes the weight on a list that finally ascertains any discrepancy that has occurred during the long journey. The mill people try to cheat the official in all sorts of ways. It could be that the wagon has been stopped so that the underweight is shown, or that they have carried away unweighed sacks when the controller was not looking. I would never have believed that it would really work but we have already taken up to 1.5 tons from an 18-ton wagon, making such a row about it that the controller was unable to get it right. The miller and his men put the surplus into the mill. As payment, he then saw to it that we filled our pockets and bags with corn.
In moving flour from the mill to the bakery, we become muddy if the Russian workers who work with us take their sacks to the private quarters instead of to the bakery. Thus a sack of flour goes for the small sum of 200 roubles. It they so wanted – we had not yet experienced it – there were Siberian roubles instead. As payment we got bread from our comrades that they smuggled out of the bakery under their clothes. In addition, they ignored it when we opened a sack of flour in the mill and filled our tiny sacks.