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Continuation
��� Just like before, each
day was divided into parts by three meals: breakfast (bread and tea), lunch
(watery soup) and evening tea. The soup that we were to have half a liter
each was a bit thicker than in Holm: besides turnip or kohlrabi they used
to put unpeeled potatoes into it. For quite a while I could not get used to
the smell and the taste of potato peelings: they were so strong you could
not feel any other smells or tastes in the soup. Twice a week, however, the
soup was made of groats, usually millet or oatmeal. Such a soup was more
nourishing so we looked forward to the days when it was cooked.
��� At due time a group of
carriers was sent to bring in the soup, and a little later the whole
barrack watched them come back The carriers had poles on their shoulders on
which pans with soup were hanged. If the pans were steaming it meant there
was watery vegetable soup in them, otherwise � a thick soup made of groats.
The carriers were rewarded for their work: in the cook-house they were let
to scrap the pans clean, so they could have scraps of food left on the
pans� walls and bottoms.
Each brigade got a pan, and an authorized person poured out equal portions
of soup into the dixies. The art of pouring the soup so that it was neither
too thick nor too watery was of great value, and the one who had mastered
that art was highly respected by all. Still, after the dixies were filled,
they were always raffled off. We put the dixies together, one of us stood
with his back on them, and another one asked him pointing to the dixies in
turn: �Who do I give this to?�, and the first one said: �To Peter�, or �To
Ivan�, or �To yourself�. Our brigade held an aged tailor for such an
authorized person; his name was Ivan Spiridonovich and he spent all his
time sewing something.
��� Distribution of bread was a
still more important task. We did this task in turn as the one who was in
charge of it, no matter how hard he tried, was a target for everybody�s
criticism and even insults throughout the whole procedure. And, indeed, it
was a big procedure. First, the one whose turn was to distribute the bread,
put the loaf on the paper it was wrapped in, cut two heels off the loaf and
cut them into 12 pieces while the other eleven members of the brigade kept
watching him closely and giving him all kinds of advice. Then he cut the
loaf into twelve equal pieces checking their weight on self-made scales.
These were a small wooden balance-beam hanged on a thread passed through a
little hole in its middle; two other threads were passed through the holes
on both ends of the beam, and two pointed pegs were tied to these threads.
The man in charge of the distribution pinned one of the bread pieces which
was taken to be a standard on one peg and, holding the scales by the thread
in the middle, pinned other pieces in turn on the other peg thus checking
that they were of equal weight. The crumbs that were always left after the
cutting made a good makeweight. Finally, the pieces were raffled off like
soup portions.
A doctor, one of the Russian war prisoners, came every day after breakfast.
He brought a bag with medical instruments and dressing materials. We stood
in line waiting for our turn to be examined. The medical supplies he had
were the same as elsewhere: paper bandages and antiseptic solution. When
the doctor was changing my bandage for the first time, I saw that my wound
had begun closing up.
The barrack lead quite a busy life in the hours between these regular
events of the day � meals and the doctor�s visits. �Commercial people� ran
to and fro in the aisles and offered reels of thread, secondhand razor
blades, needles, buttons, spoons and other valuable items of a soldier�s
property. Pinches of tobacco and bits of daily bread ration served as money
of exchange.
��� �Non-commercial people� gathered
in groups and spent time telling stories and recalling events from their
pre-war life. There were two �storytellers� who knew how to catch and hold
the listeners� attention. Indeed, they were masters of the art of
storytelling, and the people were always willing to sit down beside them
and listen to their stories. The characters from their tales were very true
to life, they all had vivid personality and look. To kill the time I also
began retelling the books I had read, and soon won steady interest of a
group of listeners. The books I used to retell were those by Jack London,
Jules Verne, ancient Greek myths, and tales of Sindbad the Sailor. The
trilogy running about the adventures of Captain Nemo and the novel about
Captain Grant were among the most popular, and I used to retell them over
and over again.
��� I was surprised by the
business initiatives my mates displayed in this small isolated world. There
appeared craftsmen of all kinds. Our brigade-leader, tailor Ivan
Spiridonovich, was one of them. His clients were the Germans from the camp
guards who, in their turn, acted as agents between the tailor and the
citizens and had their commission. The services of a professional artist
from a neighbouring barrack were also in good demand. He drew portraits
from photographs which brought him handsome profit in the way of food and
bread. With the food he got for his work he bought himself good clothes and
shoes, had a watch on each hand and a pocket watch. In our barrack we also
had two men who wove nice baskets out of thick coloured cords and then
decorated them. The lance-corporal who was kind of warden in our barrack
did a little weaving together with them, and he also sold the baskets and
provided materials � woolen cords - for new ones.
��� Others made
cigarette-cases out of aluminum dixies and then struck patterns and
monograms on them. We had a master who turned silver coins into rings.
Silver coins issued in 1921-1922 had been in circulation in Russia before
1961. They were quite rare in recent years, still I managed to collect a
full drops-tin but unfortunately it was lost when we were moving to the
flat we now live in. As for the pre-war time, silver coins of ten, fifteen,
twenty and fifty kopecks were not at all uncommon. These were used to make
rings. I took interest in the process and offered my help to the
ring-maker, and soon mastered this art myself.
��� First you should punch a
hole in the center of the coin. Then the coin was put on the thin end of a
cone-shaped metal rod. And then you should carefully tap on the coin with a
little hammer round the rod, slowly moving it down its thick end. Finally
the coin turned into a wide ring which was to be polished with the use of
ashes and a piece of cloth from soldiers� overcoat.
��� Such masters did not suffer from
hunger as their craft brought them enough food. Others, including me, had
to be contained with the daily ration from the Germans. Keen hunger
tortured us at any time of the day. The men coped with it in different
ways. Some lost control over themselves and devoured potato peelings. As
for me, I always tried to distract my mind by talking to my mates.
��� From those who had been
taken prisoners when the war had started (they were very few) I learned
that a camp like ours was a health resort compared to those organized at
the beginning of the war. Millions of people were taken prisoners at once
at that time; fascists fenced open areas with barb-wire and drove crowds of
prisoners � unarmed, hungry and desperate � into those areas where they
were left to die of cold, hunger and diseases. From my mates I heard about
the most infamous camps: Umanskaya Yama and Salaspils.
��� However, there were other
camps in the Ukraine where fascists released prisoners, sometimes for a
ransom, to women who occasionally came to the camp and claimed they were
their husbands. Thus, some soldiers who were ransomed in such a way lived
in families for some time till Soviet troops were brought into their
village; then they were mobilized for the second time.
��� To be taken for works to
a Bauer - a German landlord - was a stroke of luck. Though you had to toil
like a slave there, you also got enough food. The Bauer knew: unless his
worker was properly fed, he wouldn�t work hard. I heard stories about
prisoners who, while working in German families in that way, became almost
one of their members and took the place of a landlady�s husband who was
somewhere in the battlefields or had been already killed.
��� Most war prisoners were
peasants. They liked to talk about their country life in collective farms
(kolkhozes) and before collective farms were started, and I enjoyed
listening to their stories.
��� There were also lots of
Asians among us. They used to gather in groups and discuss something in
whisper. At times one of them gave out a cry, and, in obedience to this
cry, they all sat down in the same position - legs bent under themselves,
palms up in front of the faces like an open book - and passed the hands
over the faces all together as if washing. My Tajik neighbour told me a lot
about their old Moslem customs, the nature and field works, and the exotic
fruit that grew in his mother country. In general, all the members of our
barrack society were rather friendly to each other; I don�t remember any
big conflicts though they are said to be inevitable where people live
together in large groups. The only thing that was practiced for that matter
was a savage punishment of thieves. The one who was caught stealing was
beaten unmercifully, sometimes to death, unless a German lance-corporal
interfered.
��� We learned about
situation in the world and at the fronts from a paper titled �The Sunrise�
that was issued specially for war prisoners. I don�t know where it was
printed or who was its editor but, originally meant for Nazi propaganda, it
contained articles written in such a way that anyone who could read between
lines got to know about the real state of the German army that was close to
its crushing defeat by that time. From that paper I learned that by the
beginning of summer 1944 Soviet army had liberated the whole territory of
USSR and entered the territory of Poland, and that the western coast of
Germany was under the threat of invasion of our allies who were fighting in
Italy occupied by the Germans after Marshal Badoglio had stirred up a
rebellion and announced concluding separate peace.
Monotonous life of the people in the barrack was disturbed by two events.
��� One day a Russian general
from Vlasov�s army whose name was something like Mertsalov was announced to
give a speech. We were brought to a building on the territory of our camp
in which there was kind of a concert hall. Armed guards stood along the
walls there. We sat down on the benches. There appeared an elderly stocky
man on the stage dressed in a German uniform but with wide golden shoulder-straps
typical for a Russian Major-General. He started talking about the amenities
of pre-revolution life in Russia, Bolsheviks� atrocities, the tasks of
Russian Liberation Army of restoring Christian values and setting Russia
free from Bolsheviks. His speech was long and boring. He exhorted us to
join Russian Liberation Army promising that all sick and wounded new
members would be taken care of in a German hospital. However, his call did
not arouse enthusiasm. When he addressed to the audience with the question
�Who is willing to join RLA?�, none of us put up his hand while the German
submachine-gunners who stood at the walls were grinning. Soon an article
was published in �The Sunrise� saying that one and all disabled war
prisoners from Stalag I-A had joined RLA. How could the German censor have
failed to recognize the obvious irony of the article?
��� The other event was a
concert performed by a group of war prisoners. They sang Russian folk songs
which was really good, danced, and a string band played.
��� Warm days set in. I tried
to spend most of the time out-of-doors. It was allowed at daytime; when it
was getting dark we were forced into the barracks. I got acquainted with
the German sentries who, to while away the time, encouraged me in my attempts
to speak German. They told me about themselves and their families, showed
pictures. As a rule, they were members of Volkssturm, that is, men over the
call-up age who had been mobilized by the Führer�s order at the end of
the war.
There was a barrack next to ours where French prisoners serving some
sentences lived. You could always see people here who were crowding along
the barb-wire fence and begging, �Camrad! Camrad! Kuli! Kuli!� (�Kuli�
means �cigarette-butt� in some language).
��� I was surprised to learn
that French prisoners as well as the ones from other countries were getting
support from the Red Cross apart from the German daily ration; through the
Red Cross they were corresponding with their families and getting parcels
from home. More than that, the sick and wounded were often exchanged or
simply let go, and the prisoners had personal bank accounts where regular
compensation was entered, had new clothing, and also got promoted.
��� Once a man from the French
barrack called me and started speaking Armenian. He turned out to be an
Armenian from France and took me for his countryman. On seeing his mistake
he still went on speaking to me in bad German. As I got from his words, he
was born in France in an Armenian family who emigrated from Turkey after
our �friend� Atatürk had started manslaughter there. He said a lot of
Armenians lived in France, and some of them were emigrants from Russia.
��� New dandelion leaves were
the object of exchange between our zone and the French; they used to make
salad of them. They readily gave us cigarettes for those leaves so wherever
you could see a dandelion growing in our zone its leaves were plucked by
someone.
��� Besides the French, there
were also Italians in the camp. They were free to walk inside the camp from
one zone to another. The Red Cross provided them with some pecuniary aid in
German marks that they exchanged for specially issued �camp� banknotes.
Then they bought cigarettes in the shop situated on the camp territory (it
was called cantina) and gave them to our craftsmen for cigarette-cases,
aluminum spoons or list slippers.
��� Time was dragging on. It
seemed we would stay here forever. I wondered if there would ever be an end
to that war and those days would turn to the memory of the past.
However, summer came, my wound had almost closed up, and I could walk with
just a little support of a walking stick. I tried to walk as much as I
could both inside the barrack and around it to exercise my weakened
muscles. The consequences of the shell-shock were gone, too: my hearing had
almost regained, only my right ear was much worse than the left one. But
that has never changed till now.
There came news of a failed attempt on Hitler�s life. The German propaganda
turned this failure into advantage saying that the Führer�s miraculous
escape was a dispensation.
��� Distant thunder bursts
were often heard from the east. We knew the front line was getting closer.
The guards showed more nervousness, and there was some touch of unrest in
the wardens� activity, which was new.
��� One day a formation
command was given without prior notice. I took my few belongings � an
overcoat and a dixy � and came out together with the rest of the barrack
dwellers. We stood outside for a long time while the wardens counted us
over and over again. Then we formed groups of a hundred, 10 armed guards
(one with a dog) closed round each group, and took us out of the camp
territory. We walked to the station where they put us into freight cars.
The doors slid shut plunging us in almost complete dark, and the train
started.
The train often made stops but the way did not take long. It seemed that
already in the following morning we arrived at the freight terminal of Torn
(the German name for the Polish town Torun.)
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