Escape attempt

Again an escape attempt. This time from the infamous cement camp which one sees of our camp over there beyond the Düna. A refugee becomes, if still possibly, brought back again in his family camp, badly prepared, as a deterrent example. The oil command who gathers with brigades from other camps tells, the seized has would been hit with square wood up to unconsciousness, then has been put in a cage-like shed on the place Antrete to the show. The gangrene would have come to his body, and the poor man has been dead after two days.

One night, the layer is not yet past, jingles the iron rail like mad. Hastily we must line up who become machines, almost full of water, put down, the production remains to the day shift. The stripe posts have discovered outside from wall and fence tracks! Counting, and once again counting, it keeps to it - two men are absent. They are earned by the place part which comes round in the whole work area and also money. We are done in the camp, on the march we have to laugh nothing. The place part is locked up, the men are heard by the blue on connivance, are removed the Brigadier. We are not allowed at all in the barrack. The soldiers churn up the fool's wands and around. As after a bomb attack the lodging looks. In the evening the runaways are there again. With her sight pass to an escape thought.

I have earned the first money of my life by work! 45 roubles are paid out to me, this is four Buchanken bread or two bottles sunflower-oil! On the camp stock exchange it is traded what one can bring in from outdoors. We of the textile factory thread and linen thread. I do not approach linen thread. Thread brings a little. A thread role misses twelve centimetres in the diameter. From a string loop which I lead between the legs by and over the shoulder - in the body of course - I do with the help of a bread bag carbine a Tragevorrichtung. Thus I can hang to me a thread role between the legs.

We know the single posts as they frisk. If one really reaches between the legs, I pull down, as if I scratch, the string in the breast, and the role walks the backs up. Mostly, however, the posts feel the body only under the upraised arms. If I have luck, a thread role brings a Bulotschka, a reveille. Norbert, the judge, cannot steal. 2 or three times I hang to me two roles between the legs. I must pay attention only to the fact that my way looks not too slow.

Has who blabbed on us? Does it become too coloured to the economic officer of the factory? Today the posts frisk after the early layer as moved. Every Fünferreihe must step forward three steps, unbutton the shirt. They reach under the cotton jacket, feel the back and - touch between the legs by! And the thread and linen thread reels already fly away by the air, somewhere, only! A few caught already stand in front in the Butka and are reprimanded by the economic officer. I tug as obsessedly, but in vain, in the string. Now in the awake bar I stand before the Hünen whose blue racquet cap stands in odd contrast to his olive-coloured officer's uniform now his working garment. He carries rank badge none. In silence we are confronted. " You Affizer? " - Where from he knows it? The reel lies on the table, I button up the cotton trousers again. " Why you stolen? " He is a Jew, I notice. I am quiet. " Do you have hunger? " I see to him in the eyes. A person! "Yes", I say halting as if I must be ashamed to the position in which I have been brought. He still looks at me. Go! And because I stand there, some expecting, once again, " Dawei, camp " ...! In the column they whisper to me to: " What was? " I twitch the shoulders. In the camp they will probably lock up me. In the gate, after the counting nothing happens. Also after food I am not got to the blue. With the armed forces it was cleverer, one announced an offence immediately. But the Antifaleiter says only: " If he had indicated you, you would already be in the detention cell! " A person. Do I be grateful? Do I be ashamed? Who knows what he has experienced during the war.

Antifamann is in order. Quite differently than the unplausible Politruk from Graz in the main warehouse Riga. But before the other one must take himself in eight, before the "Wojenno-konvois", the camp police from our own rows. They have the eyes everywhere, are the messenger boys and of the Russians, do not work, however, receive double catering. They accompany us beside the Russian post on the march and supervise us, also at night, not only in the camp but also on the working place.

How have they been recommended for the always distrustful Russians for such position of trust? Who knows! In the next camp they have the same preferential post again. A suitable "official description" in her act must accompany them.

Nobody knows whether the neighbour on the fool's wand, in the brigade is "real. But one learns to be on the care, observes behaviour patterns with others which deviate from the own and developed 1 g ` feel, just that "watchfulness" which is beaten into the Russians from an early age, as pioneers, members of the Comsomol, at school. This ubiquitously straight generated mistrust, itself to everybody deeply in the subconsciousness einfrißt, is one of the depressing signs bolschewistischen - and probably every dictatorial - system. Has the old master not looked around round the spinning mill three times when he bought the fountain-pen from me? And as carefully was the Latvian who brought me the English books. There is the barbed wire, the watch-towers everywhere, invisibly.

Thus can roar of the NKWDist with the examination: " I know everything! " and " you lie! ", and then he beats. He has an instinct for whom he can make soft, who is to be lost because of fear, put back by the next transport not to be repatriated a good post or to be broken simply by the Plennijalltag. Yesterday we were got by the camp policemen by force and menacing truncheon without taking into consideration layer and night work of the fool's wands to hear a talk of the political officer by means of interpreter about the Potsdam conference in summer, 1945. In Paris the Foreign Secretaries of the winners together sit. Half an east Prussians to the USSR, other half in Poland! In Poland also Eastern Germany up to Oder Neisse line!