Working Commands
The working commands trade with all possible, also with beer bottles fully sunfloweroil. Our sheepdog at home had it well; always when in the soup swim some meat, I think of him how he growled, came to him to the pot too near fully pearl barley and meat!
It goes off! The barracks-oldest is quoted on a list what wants to work one. How I envy doctors, engineers, craftsmen. What should I only give? I have learnt nothing. Who is able to do nothing, is illicit worket. Thus I can be put down. Dr. Wenzel says goodbye to me. He should come to Estonia to a Plennylager with the oil skew breaks. Maybe he meets Oblt. Hans. Again a resignation. Not yet blunted enough.
On the 8th March, 1946 we are brought, thirty men, with a truck to Riga. Our train comes to the camp 5, renamed later in 8. It lies directly with the Düna. If the posts did not shoot, one could take the water with hands. Dr. Küster and the inhabitant of Cologne Peter Behm with whom we have made friends has also come along. Tomorrow we are sent in the factory " red textile worker ". Early layer of from 6 to 14 o'clock, then without work in the camp. Also not badly. The anti-fa-leader greets us. No political phrases. Only the wish, we may "probably feel in his camp. The captivity is a time of the selfcheck and the preparation on the homecoming in a changed, new native country.
The first surprise! On the wooden fool's wands there lie straw bags! The next - food is tasty and plentiful. I become full! The disappointment about the low outlet which gives way baum-and waste without shrub of the Antreteplatzes which dwindles recollection of the camp similar to park in Salaspils. The Eingangsfilzung was correct. And what the old team reports about the deployment of labour, makes us curious and full of expectaion. After forty minutes of march through badly paved suburban streets, while the posts keep quiet, even if gigantic Pfützen mix up the marching formation, we stand before the gate of the work area " red textile worker". As soon as it has shut behind us we are counted. Then the first posts cover the tower states on the factory wall; as long as we must wait. The old brigades contort on her places in the court and the work departments. The rest of the awake command resigns in the Butka, the awake bar.
We wait for the master, around ourselves vague sums from the building. Some knows steaming pipes the walls break through. A fat, comfortable uncle in grey working coat and blue racquet cap greets us on in German, assigns us the brought Plennybrigadieren. We trip the narrow stairwell behind the iron dor up, before another iron door on the second floor waits the master, until everything is together, then he presses down the handle - an ear-deafening noise receives us. Deaf and silently we are for the moment. The thread spinning mill is a big factory hall with concrete ground and a cover which is supported by heavy steel bearers. Obvious one more machine room about us is. By often partitioned high windows murky light comes in. In two rows one after the other stand the humming spinning machines with 156 spindles. On a shelve about that big reels with prethread are speared. The machines drill the steadier thread threads from the loose, thicker cotton yarn.
Some are divided, the metal boxes which take up the full reels to advance in the Zwirnerei about us and to put empty boxes with suitable black reels before the machine. Others sweep the cotton leftovers together and remove the long Amphibian beards which have retreated everywhere in the cover construction. I am assigned to a machine leader who teaches me, empty reels anzuspinnen. " You take ", the trained Plenny, " a full thread reel between the thighs points, tears off a long thread of her, allows to seize one of his ends of the turning empty reel and leads the other end with a violinschlüsselartigen movement of the right forefinger to the woolly thread of the prethread which reaches down from the big reel on the shelve. Once again: You take ... "
The machine runs in four hours, half a layer, once fully; while then the right hand draws off the full reels from the stopped machine and is in the pocket of the blue apron, the left turns an empty reel from the other apron pocket on the spindle. " The production " is emptied in the metal boxes, the machine, built, by the way, in England, again is started and the empty spindles angesponnen. The faster it goes, the more skilful the fingers work, the more carefully the worker is to avoid tearing off the thread thread, even more fully become the reels.
These are the first machine in our row, twelve all together, is led by a young Latvian. Anna generates the best thread, and works for a long time here. The other row lead girls whom from the Ukraine, God knows, why, were brought here. The thread Anna's and - the prisoner of war takes the Zwirnerei best: It has the slightest Fitz, i.e., it was attached in the least one. The young girls do not pay attention carefully enough to the run of the machine. If a ragged thread is not immediately attached, the thread immediately tears the next and next but one reel from et cetera, and at the end of the layer the reels are only half-filled. Then the old master who checks the boxes on the scales gets angry.
Indeed, everything is new, but makes sense the work, I am sent, and soon drive only my machine. The time passes so fast that I do not note the absence of any break at all. When at 14 o'clock the railroad track jingles, I am able to do the start already to the contentment of the master. I am really proud to have learnt something.
In the stairwell strikes me how fast I have got used to the roaring noise. Only my back hurts; the machines are built for smaller workers. We must work bent down. In the court the command is counted and frisked. Five to five men must step forward. There some linen thread roles, from fearing also already fly vertically in the air thrown, from the rows, and the posts cannot ascertain any more who has thrown them. But also for one which is got it puts no bad results. The posts laugh.
The middle class accepts to me in the least one. Indeed, I also use the morning for the reading, learning. The camp library contains beside the inevitable political literature also Beletristik, but the time is too short. First the early layer books the tables, then the incoming night shift; until I can sit down, is soon midday receipt.
Although I learn English in the machine, I avoid Fitz. The second master, an about 40-year-old Latvian who supervises the girl's side in the general one catches me at the word learning. The next day he waves to me to come on the toilet. With alert care I follow him to jump ready, immediately out of the shed. What does he pull under his blouse out? I do not trust to my eyes! It is Thomas Mc Callum Buch " English learn, a pleasure "! Which recollection! Thomas McCallum has held the English hour on radio Vienna before the war.
The master repulses every word of the thanks. I should say only to nobody from whom I have it - away he is. Few days later he brings me a book. Somerset Maugham's Moon and Sixpence ". I have some books again! Empire I believe myself.
If the machine runs freely from problems, I sit with Norbert Küster on the reel chests. We chat from home, from woman and child what I will probably start. Elementary teacher seems to the old person doubtful; who knows which relations rule at home. He, the judge, means, in the land register I can work. Masters and Brigadier do not look after us, as long as the production is in order. We see Russians the whole day nobody. Sometimes I wander in the block, makes me with the Latvian's women by small helping hands useful. A piece of bread or an egg drop always.
Anna, the Latvian from Riga, has with us middle class, from 14 to 22 o'clock. Daily. But she does not go in the evening home; with other women she sleeps in the cottonroom. Only if it is getting light, she ventures on the street. But one morning when we come to the early layer, it crouches with exhausted face and bleeding nose in her machine. It has been attacked and been robbed. The worse could prevent them because it hit we crazily around herself and shouted - nobody has helped to her. Thus she fled again in the factory. The superfluous question who has been it she answers only with a shrug.
How may it go for our women at home? Over there in the weaving mill an old woman puts the reels for the little weaver's ships on a nail-larded board. Sometimes I help her. She sits only in a space without door, everybody can see, when I am with her. In the weaving mill works her daughter, possibly of my age. She has still danced during the war in the Rigaer opera, and I tell to her, I have seen during the study vacation, after my second wound, here the ballet the Swan Lake ". She sighs, means and, there she must probably have danced together. Now, however, it does not go any more, she has injured herself.
Mother and daughter speak very good German. They are Russians from here, from Latvia. The mother has been a grammar school teacher for Russian and German. When the war was to an end, they put the Soviets as members of the " old intelligence " in the factory. The posture of both women is exemplary. Without pension, with a labourer's salary, as him also the daughter receives, they fight through, Zubußen of the black market are prohibitive with him a little wage. Also they spend the night in the cottonroom. " We will also get over this time! " I sit with pleasure with her. " But you may not visit my daughter! There is Zuträger ". She is glad because I love Tschaikowsky. She thinks up actions if she hears such music. To Rachmaninow 's "Les Preludes" she sees herself in a gigantic cathedral, an immense domed building, hidden behind a column. Monks enter, sing Choräle, incense wölkt. Music roars by the dome. The more and more passionately crossing monks solve the Cingulum and begin to castigate. But also the abbot, before the icon wall standing, castigates and asks his cobrothers to support his coach striving. Now the monks on her head hit, more and more wildly the abbot, in the end, under her load burying, him suffocating.
To Easter we want to play in the camp theatre. Scenes from the "fist"! The teacher who will speak the fist invites me to take over the role of the famulus Wagner. While the machine runs, I learn and declaims - in the noise nobody hears me anyway. In the evening it is rehearsed on the small stage in the dining room. Also in the song quartet I act with. The Antifaleiter unearths cardboard and glazed paper, we glue Girardihüte together. Pirmayr, the Bavarian who spends himself as an Austrian puts the voices which sextons, I and a teacher Hans from nice mountain in the Kamp to us divide.
The old Russian tells to me how the women with the Plennies celebrated the last Christmas . The stream often precipitates. Then we must line up - especially with early layer and night shift - in the court, are counted, and are allowed again to the workplaces when the light begins.
Also in the Christmas Eve the prisoners stood in the court, it was snowing when the Latvian women with a small Christmas tree moved up, four or five little candles lighted and sang for in Latvian " quiet night, holy night ". And the Plennies joined in. The convoys looked, because the orthodox Christmas falls only on the sixth Jänner, but they did not hinder the women... To Easter the kitchen bakes even a little bit like a crumb cake! The quartet and the wine bar songs are a success. Also Easter walk and study room scene who would have thought this! Admittedly, becomes the most successful actor Opfer of his role: A work-free written OK-man had taken over it, with punching it to words " It wölkt itself about me, the moon hides his light ... " firmly from his whistle Machorkarauch to blow. The property puffed and puffed, until him went off and he fell from the scenery.
In the evening we see a film from Vienna of the first days after the taking by the Russians. The Saint Stefans Cathedral burnt-out, the Gloriette and the opera bombs. But before the parliament the Viennese with the conquerors dance the Danube waltz, gladly that the war is over.