How blunted one becomes!
How blunted one becomes! During the war I shuddered, I saw or I seized fallen companions who had looked shortly before or had called. Here almost everything is uninterested what begins not immediately. Often one is easy too tiredly to perceive the present, the next one. We are in the mill; but what becomes from us, this grist is probably to be used to nothing.
Where the dead people probably become hingetragen? They are not registered indeed. Whether does the members somebody inform? Now everything is meaningless. But once the big questions will begin. On the wide notice board in the birch avenue the statements of the main war criminals hang before the Nuremberg tribunal. Besides the photos on which mountains of starved from the destruction storage pile up frighten. Who has piled up them metre-high on each other? And the Americans or Russians dazugestellt? The heaps more in the nude, clipped, drained victims and the uniformed, fat extras without reverence wake up around vibration and loathing. In another picture " assortment of naked Jews beiderlei of gender suitably to the statute labour, suitable for soap... To use the children to nothing. Unvalue. Gasifies. If all that should be true, then gnade to us God!
I turn away, and gewahre behind me four ragged, drained figures with sunken faces, OK-people, them a stretcher to the camp gate drag with a "pine branch", concealed under the tent square. Mine just still subsides deeply felt vibration. Nobody more dishonest than the winner who sets himself up as the judge. OK. signifies, by the way, not what we understand by it, but otdychajuschtschaja komanda - " weak command ". Very sudden we must move in barrack one. Hostilely the packed together receive us. With the duty stick the couch space is measured out. Half a metre not even comes on the singles.
Consolation - it becomes not heated also here, however - the barrack has a loudspeaker! If the soldiers on the Butka, to the awake bar, music hear, we listen in. At the New Year's Eve night - for a long time we have got used to the narrowness - the loudspeaker suddenly cracks, and there sounds the Danube waltz! Home sound from a world about which we already do not know any more where she lies. The Danube waltz! We keep ourselves embraced as we lie on the fool's wand, in our fusty rags, hot, unbezähmbares sobbing presses in the throat, and not only I cry, silently, uninhibitedly.
Middle January in 1946 officers are also pulled up for the deployment of labour. Without working clothes to the change, without wellington we must pull out with trunks of the river Düna which flows near behind the former KZ -Salaspils. Few steps which we go from the camp appear a delusive way in the freedom. However, the barking posts wrapped up in Schafpelz recall with the piston fast to the reality. First of all on the shore, behind us the barbed wire, before us the river, they become apparent, crustily, hardly.
But the aurora of the early day, the nicest hoarfrost on the birches, the pale-green sky, the steel-grey river, only in the middle still openly - how nice is the world! Admittedly, the thing soon looks different. We hack the ice on, pull the trunks at land, they stack up in the sand. But the strength is absent, we are neither the strain, also the cold air not accustomed. What is called clothes and footwear, becomes wet, we freeze pathetically. Thank God, also the Russians freeze. Still before midday one says "dawai, domoi !" - lot, home! as this sounds! With the Ausmarsch we were led in the peat camp of the kitchen, now peat bricks disappear under the coats around peat brick. Finally, something which can be used as a loo paper.
Excitement! Before the gate stand new! Everything flows out there. We tear open the eyes! White Schafpelzschiffchen on the head, almost full-length light grey loden coats about good footwear - they come from Sweden! These are an armed forces member who still fled before or with end of the war in the most adventurous way about the Baltic Sea to Gotland. To ship, in the rubber dinghy, in pioneer's landing crafts, by the VW-swimming carriage, around hangs with armed forces canisters, they ventured on lake, the certain captivity the hardly less sure death preferring. Since more relentlessly than the wintry sea there lurked the Soviets, but also - the Englishmen!, on and under the sea on her victims. Of feather reading they did not do with the discovered. Airplanes sink, ships and submarines ram, everything swam what there. Who reached, finally, the island Gotland, his luck did not touch.
Brought from there on the mainland, they were interned and put under the protection of the Red Cross. We can hardly believe that these deserter or Kapitulanten carried in Swede Zivilkleidung, telephone line with the native country had, also parcels might conceive, thus the members in the position were to be sent which, more still, they might leave the camp, won family connection! Just 3,000 believed to have escaped to the destiny, under it about 150 Austrians.
One day the USSR put a delivery desire. Only the Swedes kept secret it, but when the rumour of well-meaning Swedes penetrated, the government denied it, a panic among the internees fearing. In the end, she confirmed the Soviet desire, however, explained, a delivery would not be possible. One morning a red rocket indicates the beginning of the clearing of the internment camp Ränneslätt. What the "Swede's drivers" report to us, is stupefying. All incidents have been filmed by the Red Cross and have been taken down. Some hang themselves, others rush from the windows. A staff sergeant has stood in the minced meat floor and has amputated lower leg. Arteries are cut open, objects are swallowed. The Swedes are, although they had counted on desperation actions, does and helplessly.
The first Russian freight barge is sent back. Degrading. Before a counter at the end of a barrack way the to be delivered are sorted. " Please, go on the right, please you go on the left ". Who speaks in English, or belonged to the SS, is not delivered. All the others from which Swedes suppose that they come through with the Soviets are brought by the train to Trelleborg. In the compartments a policeman sits in each case beside a private. Still some jump by the window.
In the quay sea bags and suitcases are put together, in the face of the "Kuban", later of the "Bjelostroj". " In the Soviet Union officers carry no luggage! " Nobody sees again his having. In Riga the unhappy are disembarked and put in the main warehouse. The fall is awful. What we experienced health resort lands during weeks, crowds together with the Swede's drivers during days. 74 which have mutilated themselves, and sick people have stayed behind. After few days the Swede's drivers any more are not to be distinguished from us. The Russians draw the Swedish uniform pieces, miss to them the same ragged cotton jackets which we carry.
As good it would be, if I could still preserve strength in the water soup. But soon after New Year the "Bummerl work" was put. The doctor not enough fertilely. Every week we are weighed. I have 52 kilos. It means, also officers are included in the "reparation work". Tranquilizer for the envious privates, or manipulation? Since already some considers that a tolerable deployment of labour would be absolutely better, than the dull waiting for the next water soup. Maybe one can also learn something; the captivity will take so fast no end if one stays healthy.
The camp management orders, all books must be delivered. The political officer collects personally them. I get rid of the Odyssey. Too many know that I have them. It hurts to separate me from the book.