by Albert Holl
IN THE PUNISHMENT SECTION OF CAMP 7100/2
Conditions have now reached such a low point that on the 9th of May there is to be a work strike followed by a hunger strike. The team leaders have been informed. I myself hold back completely passively as on principle I do not want to be a group leader or anything like that.
Today is the 8th of May. It is very windy and working at the conveyor belt is not very pleasant, as the sand keeps getting into our eyes. An engineer has already reprimanded us for not working exactly as he wants. He does not seem to realise that prisoners of war would naturally oppose him. He will report it to the camp administration. Again I hold back, as I know that spies are at work here.
With Rudi Haber I go over the possibilities of progress in the Soviet Union, a discussion that is conducted in an entirely cynical tone and is unrecognisable as irony. The reason for this discussion was a story told to us by a Nuremburger who visits Rudi in the barracks in the evening from time to time. This man reported that during the last days of April he experienced an incident only possible here in the motor factory right behind the main camp. A young pregnant Russian girl went down to the toilets. He had already seen the girl several days previously staggering through the area and pointed her out to his comrades. On the day of the girl’s confinement he saw a large number of men standing around the toilets. A Panjewagon had already appeared in which the young mother was laid down and covered with some cement sacks. The newly born child was wrapped in cement paper and laid beside its mother. Finally the wagon got under way. The traces left behind were strewn with sand and the ‘Land of Socialism’ had a new citizen.
That evening my friend Ottel and I enjoyed a special treat; we were able to purchase an egg each and cook them. Tomorrow is Sunday, which I want to greet with a breakfast of bread. It is already dark and I think about 2200 hours. Then a messenger comes and tells me I must get ready and come with all my kit. Five other men apart from me have received a similar summons: Eichhorn, Hindenlang and Kreise, the last two having been in Block VI, plus Putfarken and Jenatschek. It is immediately obvious to me that this is the result of a denunciation by one of the spies. I suspect Beltmann, a Baltic German who often acts as an interpreter and is much employed by the Russians. It is rumoured that he works for the NKVD.
Without being told where we were going, we were taken by truck to another camp. The Russian camp commandant and the NKVD chief personally saw to it that we were securely guarded. The truck stopped after a journey of about ten minutes. The guards took us to a washhouse and we discovered that we were in Camp 7100/2. All six of us were taken into a special zone and we now belong to the Punishment Section of Camp 7100/2, Saporoschje. Our commander is the former concentration camp inmate and Communist Hannes Schuster. We were not the first to have been delivered here, for sixteen officers from Camp 7100/4 were already here. We were moved in together and lay down to rest for the night, but the fleas prevented us getting any much-needed sleep.
Next morning saw us already at work at the ‘Gorodok’ building site. It lay immediately next to the camp and had a special fence around it with watchtowers. Here we could restore things. Eichhorn’s conduct gave cause for a special inner amusement. He is upset and disturbed by being now in isolation after his year-long work with the administration. ‘I will no longer take or lead a blind Red Army soldier to the shithouse!’ he growls in his deep voice, the tall, gaunt cavalry captain with the obsessive desire for attention.
Being on a ten-hour shift, we regime inmates do not return to the camp. When I look at the men here in the Punishment Section, most of them for theft, my heart sinks. And I am unable to help! Little more than skin and bones, they slink about like predators, constantly concerned with getting hold of something to eat or smoke. Only extreme hunger and inhuman treatment can reduce normal men to this state. Many will find it difficult to find the right way again upon their return to Germany. Beatings by the so-called supervisors are part of the daily routine for these men. Especially hateful scenes occur at the gate in the mornings if one of them is late. This results in the whole camp waiting half an hour before the columns arrive to join the escorts for the three-kilometre march to the combine harvester factory.
I think back over the first day in the Punishment Camp. How our fate alters from day to day! As long as we still bear the designation prisoners of war it cannot be otherwise and we will get no peace. I have become like a rabbit locked in a cage and I have to hop wherever those people knocking against the wire want.
I can hear the noise through the thin wall. There are voices I know there. I immediately recognise Second-Lieutenant Ostermann, who tells me that Hoffmann and Geisberg are also there.
There was a strike in the main camp today, followed by a hunger strike. Altogether thirty-two men regarded as ringleaders were taken out and brought here to the Punishment Camp. They are of the opinion that the strike will not be successful, as the Russians have already identified the elements that gave them a helping hand. It is always the same. Denunciation!
I am waiting for the camp commandant to appear so I can formally protest about my transfer to the Punishment Section. That it will be unsuccessful is clear to me from the start. Schuster is careful and correct towards us, but not so much towards the men.
With pleasure I learn that the camp experts are known by the name ‘Specker’. Little liked is the camp doctor, Dr Heinrichs, who ruthlessly sends the prisoners of war back to work, not writing them down as sick even when they can barely crawl. Like a cruel joke, a sign reading ‘Work liberates you!’ hangs over the Punishment Section. Whenever Mindak, the senior activist of the Anti-fascists, appears at the workplace we might almost think we have a catwalk model in front of us – he cuts such a figure in the various suits that he has made to measure for him in the camp tailors’ shop, in contrast to the rags of the prisoners. There is a canteen in the camp under the supervision of the Anti-fascists, from which it is obvious where ‘Herr’ Mindak gets the money to buy a watch, for watches are expensive and valuable objects in this paradise. The conditions in this camp seem to me to be a small and poor imitation of the Soviet Union as a whole.
Fortunately there are also some respectable people here. I get to know new comrades, such as Laschtowitz, Stepat and Schurawa, who have become good friends. As they have already been in this camp for a long time and hold good positions in the factory, they help me when they can. I got to know them through my friend Otto Götz, who soon followed us into the Punishment Section because he had expressed ideas for escape. Karl Schurawa was a typist in his signals company and now, after more than five years, we meet up again by chance. My connection was also quite close with Fritz Laschtowitz, a Silesian second-lieutenant, who was taken prisoner after the capitulation in Czechoslovakia. Fritz is the eldest so has the nickname ‘Father’, while Wolf Stepat, the youngest, is known as ‘Son’.
The cobbler for whom Fritz works gets us out of the Punishment Section occasionally in the evening. In long and anxious conversations we talk about the fate of our so heavily tested fatherland. We do not know how things are back in the homeland, despite the postal service, for hardly anything gets past the censors. We have not lost faith in our people, even if there are sufficient signs available to keep us doubting! Even the Russian propaganda is unable to influence us in our position. It is obvious to us that in difficult times we must continue straight and unwavering on our way without turning either to left or right. We know only one party, and it is called Germany! Only through unselfish work for the whole German people can we recover from the wounds that this unfortunate war has caused!
Without my knowledge, Fritz was able to get me into the Lowag Plumbing section. I am now working as a driller, which gives me the advantage of being able to remain in the camp.
Directly next to the Punishment Section stand some summer tents stuffed full of prisoners of war. One of the tents is set up as the workshop. Here, with trained plumbers and locksmiths, we prepare items for the combine harvester. Every
eight to ten days these items are taken away by truck. The pay is good. I am like Croesus when I get 150 roubles for my first month’s work. With my friend Otto Götz, who had joined us somewhat earlier, Korff, who had been the camp senior in Xiltau, Fischer, Selmer, Günther and Franke we form a small society that works well together. But we also get on well with the other work comrades. The (for me) unusually high rate of pay enables me to recover my strength a little, as I can buy things to supplement the food. It is certainly effective, for as soon as my stomach ceases to be empty, the world looks quite different.
Part of my earnings I use to buy English learning material printed in Moscow. An issue of Greetings from the Front, translated by Bernhard Isaak, is worth noting. On page 171 it describes how a female tractor driver had torn up some German graves after the inhabitants had been expelled from a village. The bones of the dead were strewn in all directions by the population and even the dogs played with them. When the tractor driver ploughed the land, she did not follow the straight lines of the fields but instead ground up the bones lying around everywhere with the caterpillar tracks.
Dysentery has reigned in our camp for more than two weeks, spreading more and more, so that the female Russian doctor is obliged to set up an isolation block. When one thinks that we are already living in 1947, two years since the war ended, then one asks oneself instinctively how can this be! Having already been forced to live here for two years, it is not difficult to puzzle it out. The insufficient and poor-quality rations mean that the prisoners of war can, without exception, be described as undernourished and they suffer chronic feelings of hunger so that they are constantly searching for supplementary foodstuffs. They thus come to the most absurd ideas that only a sick body can produce. There, where others perform their necessary functions, they pick weeds and grass with which to thicken their soup, imagining that it will satisfy them. They try to barter for fish, which in the warm times of year are very difficult to catch and are full of salt, and gulp them down. Their ensuing thirst is quenched with the usual unboiled tap water, or if that is unavailable, they will drink from almost anywhere, even in the most unlikely places. The unhygienic conditions in the kitchen considerably increase the danger of infections. Then there are the eating vessels, mainly made of zinc from the ‘Sawod Komunar’, that the prisoners bring with them. Although a considerable number of dysentery cases have already died in the town hospital, the food for the sick has nevertheless still not improved. The female Russian doctor, trying hard to ensure that none of the sick die in the camp, gives the sickest an injection that stimulates the heart for a short time. This means they die in the vehicle taking them to the hospital, but not in the camp!
The number of those succumbing to the epidemic increases every day. The healthy men all have their hands full at night trying to prevent their sick comrades from being driven out to work by dragging them into camp. In the mornings one can see as many as seventy men standing by the ambulance. When the time comes to break off work, the tall chief of the Propaganda Section, Lieutenant Makarenko, who makes a brutal impression, drives the pitiful cases to the camp gate with kicks and blows from his fists so that they do not escape!
This epidemic lasted almost a quarter of a year, carrying off many prisoners of war, and was reminiscent of the episodes in 1944 and 1945 in which ten thousand German prisoners of war died in the Saparoschje camps. The survivors then lasted longer than those affected by this current epidemic, who, like old men, weak and fragile, are merely shadows of their former selves.
Every four weeks a so-called Medical Commission took place – or, as the prisoners expressed it, a flesh exhibition. Many think like me that they are to blame, these women who call themselves doctors; they must be completely devoid of evidence when writing the prisoners off to Work Group I although they are not at all fit. I still do not succeed in appearing before the commission, as I have to report progress in front of these female deputies. This slave market is just like in the Middle Ages, determining what the slave prisoner of war is still capable of doing. Any differences of opinion among the commissioners on the work capability of those standing before them is then discussed. Typical ‘evidence’ for this is the crease in one’s bottom and thigh!
Except for those working on production, the prisoners receive a very poor wage. Those in reconstruction can be pleased if the foreman, with cunning and malice (and nothing is without fraud here), drives the whole group for a few roubles. At least the group earns something, and the foreman constantly allocates some men a higher role than they actually performed. The rest get less. At the end of the month, the foreman shares out the money at his discretion, whereby he naturally gets the lion’s share. Only very few foremen share out the money earned evenly.
But even the prisoner gets his 200 grams of bread and a cooked lunch so that he records a better percentage. In this way we are already doing up to 500 per cent of our work quota!
A new building is being constructed in the camp itself. Here work all those men who are not allowed to leave the camp because they are thought likely to try to escape and those awaiting sentences from the war tribunal.
There are two informers in the camp working for the NKVD, who have already delivered several comrades to the Russians at knifepoint. Foremost is the laundry supervisor, who wants to be a sergeant. Suspects are allocated to him and by listening to their harmless conversations he gets to know who eventually to report to the authorities. Often prisoners of war from other camps are sent straight to the laundry to sound them out on specific matters. The pinnacle of this dirty work came when the supervisor brought his best friend Rudi, a Saxon from Dresden, before the war tribunal and gave witness against him. Rudi was sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour. Many went the same way as Rudi, but even in the Tribune newspaper that we got from the eastern sector of Berlin, and other sources, the dirty sentiments of the alleged journalist were obvious.
A similar role was played by ‘Herr’ Lukviel, who purported to be a machine engineer. Through crafty conversation he tried to learn something about his victims so as to inform on them to the Bolshevists. A prominent job in which he was not pressured was his reward, along with other advantages.
The men were involved with the construction of the new building until dark. Anyone who resisted was driven on with clubs and other implements. Even on Sundays the men working on the new building were told: ‘Get out and regain your honour!’ Not only there but also in the factory there was work for us, and they liked it when the prisoners of war came on Sundays to clean up. It often seemed that Moscow did not take four days off a month!
Since I have been in the Lowag my health has improved a lot. It makes a considerable difference when one can buy supplementary items. The other members of the brigade also do not look bad. It is years since I had a feeling of gratification. I cannot say ‘satisfaction’, for which I must concentrate and eat fancy food.
The time flies for me as a drill operator. That I have to do this work standing up for hours without a break does not hinder me, for I get through it with a splash of water in my face and on my legs.
The conversations I have with the comrades of my brigade are interesting. There is hardly one that speaks well of the Russians. They care little for the ‘Kanacken’, as they call the Russians, but they can still adjust and feign interest if one of the Anti-fascists appears. I have to smile when Karl, a railwayman from Görlitz, recounts what he imagined about Russia. He says that he was formerly a Communist but had now had enough of it. The radio and literature he had been exposed to had presented the Soviet Union quite differently from the reality of it. When he arrived as a soldier in Ukraine in 1944 he was already disillusioned. He had always tried to find the roads but saw only country tracks. And for ‘club buildings’ he had looked for big structures but found only wooden hovels. A year ago, while in hospital for a stomach operation, he had been ‘progressively’ handled – he pulled his hands out of his pockets and showed me a wide scar on his stomach, some twenty centim
etres long and eight wide – and now he had to do heavy work again. He need not tell them anything more back home.
There were also some German nationals from Hungary and Romania in the team. They had lost contact with their families and were unable to get any news from home.
As an assistant, Mindak has found a newly important political educator, Eugen Kaiser from Karlsruhe. I believe he will soon have a leading role in the camp.
THE HEROES’ CELLAR
The new building is ready in its raw state. As it is quite cold in the tent at night, we have moved into a cellar right next to the newly constructed workshop. Although the room is only 2 by 4.5 metres, it is nearly 2.8 metres high; it has no window, but we have set it up quite pleasantly. We call it the ‘Heroes’ Cellar’ as it reminds us of a bunker. After our time in the punishment unit, Götz, Putfarken, Hindeland and I have already been released for three months, having been reprieved on the Bolsheviks’ ‘Day of the Great Socialist October Revolution’ on the 7th of November. Only this way was it possible for me to join our comrades in the ‘Heroes’ Cellar’.
Whatever we lacked in comfort was made up for in our workshop from the material delivered by the Sawod Komunar. Everything is available, from ovens to wall lights. It is astounding to see how the prisoners of war manage to lighten their lives whenever they have the chance. Unfortunately things do not go as well in the camp as they do for us and the accommodation is very crowded. Even with us it is tight but, with only six men sleeping in the cellar, it is not so bad.
We often have friends in as guests in the evenings. The only disadvantage is the dampness of the walls and floor, making it uncomfortable, but as we are otherwise completely undisturbed, this is no real handicap.