After Stalingrad

by Albert Holl

  As we know that shirking work can only bring more harm and is pointless, Ruprecht and I always go out. I am already so frozen through at the guardroom that I am simply no longer able to think anyway. It is as if my brain is frozen. Despite the winter clothing and the padded gloves, which are not very good, I am frozen to the bone. The cold gnaws at my body and I realise that I have never been so run down as now since the time I had the fever. I haven’t felt so bad since the time in the Xiltau Woodland Camp.

  Quite automatically I clasp the spade under my arm, or hang the pickaxe over my shoulder, and trot after the others. At the workplace I am worthless for the first few hours. Only when one of the prisoners lights a great fire and I can warm myself for a while do I discover that I am still a human being. The contrast between the fire and the cold is so strong – especially with the wind – that one’s skin is singed in front while the part away from the fire is ice-cold. The Japanese winter gloves prove to be good, and better than the Russian ones. They are also preferred by the Russians. Nobody wants to leave the fire, and we all huddle as close to it as possible until the brigadier drives us back to work. Our hands are stiff and ice cold, hardly able to hold the pickaxes. I am also not in good enough condition to work intensively enough for my body to warm itself with the movement. My strength is insufficient. It is the same with the others. I freeze too often.

  Even if a prisoner proves that he has been frozen, he gets an increased sentence for sabotage. For me these hours of 30 to 40 degrees below freezing are absolute hell. Ruprecht is no different. Again and again we run back to the fire for a moment to warm ourselves. Even if the brigadier and his assistants, who crouch around the fire, chase us away from the fire with curses, we reappear after a few minutes. Exhausted and dog tired, we creep back to camp in the evening, but the few hours of night in the densely occupied accommodation give us no respite.

  Our camp is now overpopulated as never before. Some 1,200 prisoners now live in the three and a half barracks. The railway track layers of the 208th Colony have appeared here and are to lay the lines in our sector in the next few days. Rüping and Plinta, our comrades from Charkov Prison, are among them. They bring us news that we can hardly believe, but is of considerable significance if I is true. Plinta says that a Russian, whom he takes to be utterly reliable, had heard a radio message in November at the 206th Colony whereby all German prisoners of war who had not been sentenced under the political paragraphs would be given amnesty. Our two comrades are so convinced about the truth of this news that they expect to be home by Christmas. I am basically more sceptical, as this news is being circulated by a Russian. Our camp also has a radio and we have not heard any such report. For us it means waiting and not relying too much on optimistic hopes. Nevertheless I can imagine how it would be.

  The first train has driven past our camp. More are following. Even wagons with supplies have arrived. In the supply camp, which lies outside the camp zone not far from the railway line, the supplies for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Detachments of the ‘Angarlag’ have been stored. From now on the individual detachments will receive their supplies by truck, as the railway line in their sectors is not yet ready. Only after a few weeks do the 4th and 5th Detachments change location.

  Our brigade has the pleasant task of unloading two wagons loaded with flour. I am able to get some flour and take it back to camp. But where can I rest my swollen leg? When the medical orderly, an emigrated Jew from Romania who is very friendly, sees my leg and takes my temperature, he writes me off work. The nights are terrible as the pain does not ease off. In fact, it gets even worse. My legs are thickly swollen and I can hardly walk. In a visit to the barrack, the medical orderly orders my transfer to the sickbay of the ambulatorium. It is the 16th of December.

  The little sickbay has five beds. In comparison to the beds in the barracks, they look clean and have blankets as well as straw mattresses and pillows. I have not known such luxury for months. I have been lying fully clothed on the floor or on the wooden planks of the bunk beds because I did not want to lose my clothing. After delousing, it is a relief for me to lie in clean clothing in the whitewashed room and fall asleep. Fortunately the fever soon dies down, but the swelling remains.

  There is a ‘flesh show’ on the evening of the 17th of December. When my brigade is mustered, I am taken to the examination room. I am written down as unfit for work for a month.

  I quenched my desire to sleep in the first few days. Now I work on my recorded vocabulary. It is very cold outside. As bed neighbours I have two prisoners who like me are happy not to be chased out into the pitiless cold. Mornings and evenings we can hear the moaning and groaning of the sick who appear in the treatment room, often exaggerating their symptoms to deceive the medical orderly. But he knows his way around. With other means too the Russians try to avoid having to work in the cold. With ham, tobacco and other desirable items, but also with money that some get sent from home, they try to persuade the medical orderly to write them off as sick. The longed-for success is not impossible, for what Russian can resist?

  Ruprecht now has my headgear while I am in hospital. I am sorry for the young chap. Even Wolf has it better because he is in a brigade working in the potato cellar.

  Some days later the Russians are released from the sickbay while I remain in the room. Through the window I can see how cold it must be outside. Here inside one notices little of it except when one leaves to go to the toilet, wearing shirt and underpants, plus felt boots and headwear. The swelling makes me think that I must have the only frozen clubfoot.

  The wood supply for the heating is irregular, however, and so it happened that on the 22nd of December, when it was 40 degrees below zero, I was lying in a cold room. Because of this the male nurse, a Tartar, covers me with all available blankets (five) and two straw sacks. So I survive, thankful that I do not have to be in the barracks.

  On this day the whole camp does not have to work because of the cold. On the 23rd and 24th December the cold is so intense that, except for a small brigade collecting wood for the heating, nobody has had to go out to work. It is as if nature has died. Thick fog lies over the valley so that even at midday the sun is unable to break through. Everything lies in the deepest silence. The smoke from the chimneys is kept low by the fog.

  From our money, which we got in December and have kept until now, despite the danger of theft, we have been able to buy some flour, sugar and fat. In the laundry Oskar baked some little flour cakes that he sweetened. I cannot go to the Christmas celebrations in the barrack, but at least Oskar, Ruprecht and Wolf sit there together to chat over old times.

  That evening Wolf appears and reports that my brigade now has to go out on a catastrophic duty. Ruprecht is also outside. I shiver as today we have the severest frost yet – 56 degrees below freezing. Poor Ruprecht, how endlessly long this night will be. Hopefully he will not freeze. This is typical of the Russians. First they insisted that the railway line must be completed, but now there has been an accident and the trains are iced in.

  For the next two days Ruprecht again has the bad luck to be on night duty with our brigade at the accident spot. He gives quite a depressed impression. I thank God that I am lying here sick in the hospital and so exempt from this martyrdom. A new record: the lowest temperature reached was minus 58 degrees last night, and those poor men had to go out in it. If I had told this in central Europe, no one would have believed me.

  New Year, 1950. I am still lying in the sickbay. The swelling has gone and bodily I am quite well recovered, because my Tartar sickbay attendant looks for food in the kitchen for me. I am very grateful to him as my body takes everything in and looks full, like a dried-up sponge that has been thrown into water. Fortunately I am a good food consumer and have a healthy stomach. The frost period continues, but less severe. We now have between minus 35 and 40 degrees, much to the disappointment of the prisoners, who would prefer more than 40 degrees. In fact, one hardly notices a difference between 35 and 40 degrees of frost.
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  AS FACTOTUM IN THE AMBULATORIUM

  On the 13th of January I am deemed to be recovered and am released from the sickbay and assigned to Working Group 2. A little stronger, but with a greater fear of frost, I return to work with my brigade. My brigadier, who in his own way has considerable respect for the Germans, is very lenient about my work. Our brigade is still breaking up gravel and demolishing an embankment so that the railway track can be widened by two metres, but the work proceeds only slowly because of the frost. The stones and clumps of earth are taken on a tipper to a narrow dyke about 300 metres away and shaken out.

  The 15th of January sees a small change in the camp as a group of undesirable elements go off to a punishment column. Two men go from our brigade. For the last two days Ruprecht and I have gone to the ambulatorium to saw wood. In payment, the sickbay attendant brings us a bowl of porridge, which we eat together. Our astonishment is great when a little time later we discover that this attendant is no longer working in the ambulatorium. Pavlik, the nurse from the Donez area, asks me if I would stand in for him, as I probably already know what the job entails. I gladly agree. I do not have to be outside in the cold, and I will receive better food and thus can support my friends. The job is not easy because Pavlik is a very difficult person, for whom one can hardly do anything right. But nevertheless I will try. Every day that I spend here brings me closer to the spring and can be regarded as a success.

  On the morning of the 16th of January I stay in the camp. I had previously told my brigadier, who had nothing against it. As a nurse I remain out of sight and concern myself with the cleanliness of the small barrack and its catering facilities. Now I get a proper picture of how well the camp experts live at the expense of the broad masses. What I had previously only suspected I could now see for myself. Besides my job of tending to the sick, making the beds and controlling the traffic during working hours, especially ensuring that nothing was stolen, I have to go to the kitchen once or twice a day. Here I get for the doctor the food that the workers should have. That he gets the choice items such as fat, meat, fish, noodles, sugar, meal and dried potatoes is obvious enough. Only a fraction of the stipulated norm is actually received by the workers, the largest part going to the small gang of camp experts. But it is also shared with free persons who have dealings with the camp. Among them is the free doctor, a young lad about twenty-five years old, who comes from the Gorki area and has been sent here on compulsory duty. Every day he appears at the camp and takes part in the meals, during which the senior orderly and the nurses give all their attention to what he has to say, as their jobs depend upon it.

  It is informative to discover how many of these individuals there are, who have already lived in banishment for years and even attained a position. They have become slaves of their passions. Daily they appear to obtain opium, caffeine or narcotic injections in their veins. Men who were once very brutal and unscrupulous behave like small children here if they do not get an injection one day because there are no more ampoules available. They give everything in order to indulge their passion. It is disgusting to see when they become drunk from this, and any means are justified to get them into a drunken state. Here I first discovered that one can get intoxicated on Eau de Cologne or other perfumes. The individuals drink it from a beaker diluted with water. For preference tea extract is used with 50 grams to a litre of water. The nurses and Pavlik are slaves to these vices. Now and then, when the guards are bribed, they are also able to smuggle women into the camp from the women’s camp situated 3 kilometres away. Then the ‘expert’ concerned spends the night with the prostitute in the ambulatorium’s little galley.

  Despite the strenuous duty – often I get no rest for thirty-six hours and then can only sleep for a few hours – I feel well. It would be somewhat different if we were only given watery soup and poor bread, but here my body is given food rich in proteins, which it definitely needs for improvement.

  Whatever I can slip away I give to my friends, who also need it. Ruprecht looks the best of them, remaining all day in the camp and washing for the ambulatorium. Within fourteen days I had made myself indispensable. Nevertheless, because of Pavlik’s consistent grumblings, connected with the worst insults, I lost my patience and answered back. But he called me back again that evening. Sheer anxiety makes this work a burden for me, but I have to carry on, not only for myself but for my friends. How the times have changed. I was running about like a recruit in basic training.

  In the evenings, after the treatment hour, begins my real work as a cleaner. With cold or, with luck, hot water from the laundry I wash the floors of the four rooms of the ambulatorium barrack. At first I scrape the floors clean with a cleaver or glass shard. Then I start working with a rubber scrubbing brush that I had first to acquire. Whatever I do, Pavlik is never satisfied. I have already become used to this, although it has not been easy, and now I continue scrubbing until I am chased away.

  News. It seems somehow to have something to do with our return home. The camp’s cultural worker, who was in the ambulance this morning, told me that Moscow had demanded an assessment about us Germans and that we would soon be going home. I did not want to believe it at first but then the clerk of the cultural section told me that he himself had written the assessment of all who fulfilled 144 percent of their norm on a daily average and were politically faultless. This news triggered off my hopes, although the Russian State has not announced anything yet. It seems almost inconceivable to be going back to a civilised environment, to be able to live again like normal people.

  The days are long for us. My birthday, already my eighth as a prisoner of war, allows me to prepare a small snack for my comrades thanks to my connections with the ambulatorium and the kitchen. At the centre of my good state of health is the question: ‘Will we really be the next to go home?’ We are now all optimistic and believe that our homeland has not forgotten us and is busy preparing for our return home by all possible means. An important factor for all of us is the behaviour of America, England and France. If they combine to demand our liberation, the Russians cannot keep us here for ever. It would not be clever and would only arouse new hatreds.

  On the evening of the 16th of February Pavlik tells me that I will have to return to work in the morning. My successor is a small Tartar from Stalingrad called Kaloma, who looks like a gnome.

  Early in the morning I see to the sick for the last time. After four weeks working as a nurse in clean surroundings, the dirt in the barracks repels me more than ever. The brigade is still working in the old place. Discontentedly I look for the stones that I can best smash in the snow on the slope. Every few minutes I abandon my place to warm myself. It must be 30 or 40 degrees below zero. Is it ever going to get warm? Hopefully the month of March will be a bit warmer.

  Chapter 5

  The Journey Home

  I enter the lobby of the ambulatorium. ‘Good evening. Have you any work for us?’ Kaloma comes towards me. ‘Ah, welcome Holl! You can saw up the tree trunk lying outside. You know the lengths. By the way, you are going home tomorrow.’ I look at him suspiciously, but his face is expressionless. It could be a joke, but I am wise to such tricks. I laugh. ‘Very funny! We are going home tomorrow! Ha, ha, ha!’ Kaloma looks at me earnestly with his big eyes. ‘It is no joke, the runner from the guardroom told me so himself. He overheard a telephone conversation between the camp commandant and the detachment. You can believe me, it is really true!’ I still don’t believe it. In the small room nearby are the free doctor, the medical orderly and the nurse; they have overheard our conversation. Pavlik gets up and says to me: ‘Yes, it is true, you will travel to Germany tomorrow!’ The medical orderly nods in confirmation.

  The door opens and a baker steps in. He works outside the camp but is a frequent guest here. As he sees me, he asks: ‘What is wrong with you, your journey home? There is someone waiting for you in the guardroom; he comes from the 211th Column and is also travelling to Germany.’

  ‘That’s me!’ With
a leap I was outside and running to the guardroom. Through the tiny window in the door I looked inside. Immediately in front of me stood Wilhelm Rueping, who had been here in the camp eight weeks ago and had left with the track layers. I start to speak but my words are broken and I cannot think what to say. Soon the door opens and Wilhelm enters the camp, escorted by the assistant work director. ‘Good evening, Wilhelm, what are you doing here?’ Curiously my eyes watch his mouth. ‘Good evening, Bert! This evening I was suddenly marched off here, we are going home!’ Full of happiness, we shake hands. It seems that it is true. Now the assistant work director says I am to inform all the Germans in the camp that tomorrow none of them will have to go to work. How willingly I do that!

  Wilhelm tells me that on his way he saw our friends in the 209th Column, who would be joining us here tomorrow morning.

  The night passes in happy expectation and with the prickling feeling of inner excitement, in which I could hardly close my eyes. Already early next morning the first comrades convicted for various crimes gather in the camp. Prisoners of war assemble here from all the camps in the area. Soon we are able to greet our friends Mütschele, Doerr, Korff and Breske. Still absent are App and Menden. About Kurt App we have had no definite information so far, but Hans Menden has been in the punishment camp of the 203rd Column since May 1949. According to the opinions of my friends, who had been with him originally, the Russians had denounced him. We enquire whether there are any men from the 203rd Column present. Viktor Hildebrand, who was with Menden for several weeks, reports that Hans was taken to hospital on Christmas Eve with jaundice. Impatiently we wait for the arrival of the sick from hospital. Koloch, who was a nursing orderly, and Dr Mueller, who carried out amputations, finally appear. To our questions about Menden we receive the sad reply that Second-Lieutenant Hans Menden died in hospital on the 8th of January this year from jaundice and the freezing cold. This bitter news dampens the pleasure of our impending journey home. We must leave behind us, lying next to our friend Otto Götz on the roadside, our youngest colleague Hans Menden. He was not yet twenty-four years old. Within just seven months two of the ten of us to be sentenced have died. And we still do not know what has happened to Kurt.