Panzer Commander Part 22

In time the theater and orchestra group acquired such fame that members of the opera in Tiflis, who came to our performances, asked whether the "prisoners' ensemble" might not be allowed to appear in their own opera house. We felt very honored, but unfortunately this went beyond what was practicable for the Russians. What would the consequences have been if prisoners had given a guest performance in a state opera house? Instead, our ensemble was sent to other camps including those of the Hungarians and the j.a.panese, and everywhere its success was a.s.sured.

The jazz band, of course, was particularly popular. Willi Glaubrecht, the drummer, is still alive today. Since any kind of jazz was forbidden in the Third Reich as "alien" and decadent, and since listening to Western transmitters was punished by concentration camp, interest in this music was particularly great. But no one was familiar with it.

As a Glenn Miller fan, I had found my way in Paris, during the time of our occupation, to a Negro band in a secret place, in a cellar, and there I had soaked up Glenn Miller's "In the Mood." So I sang the melody note for note to our arranger. He'wrote it down and arranged it so the band could play "In the Mood." Georg Vieweger was the reciter of the cultural group. Cabaret evenings were organized with Karl-Heinz Engels, and they were always monitored by our Russian politruk, Black Nena. She be Kuhura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 291 longed to the NKVD and was responsible for kultura; she was illnatured and by no means well disposed toward us. On one occasion the band had rehea.r.s.ed and put on its program, which bad always to be presented first to Black Nena for approval, the march "Open Fire."

"Niet," was her reaction. "All you want to do is fire, nix Krieg." Next day the t.i.tle "Fire in the Camp" was presented to her.

"That is good, we -Russians like camp-fire," came the approval.

It was the same march, only the t.i.tle had been changed.

The Russians have a special relationship with kultura, as they call it. On the one hand they are very musical and allow their creative people special rights, provided they stay true to the party line. On the other, they have realized that music and other cultural, delights motivate people and make them forget for the time being how bitter reality appears to them.

At the same time as the introduction of "cultural life" for the prisoners, the Antifa was also set up in the camp, an anti-Fascist group that was attached to the German camp commandant and watched over and "re-educated" by Black Nena.

It was joined by a few long-standing German Communists and also by some opportunists who hoped for alleviations and privileges through their membership. With the rest of us, the Antifa held no interest. The names of some of its particularly zealous supporters were remembered, and many of them were well and truly beaten up when we were released.

Besides the official activity of our orchestra and theater group, all the rooms had evening lectures by fellow-prisoners, among them doctors and scientists, who read papers on selected subjects or spoke of their experiences.

A particularly active member of the theater group proved to be Boris von Karzov. Born in Yaroslav in 1894, the son of a well-to-do family, he had even attended the tsarist cadet school in St. Petersburg, modern Leningrad, before he had to flee with his two brothers after the October Revolution. His brothers had chosen Paris and Madrid as their places of exile; Boris on he other hand went to Germany. He first attended a drama school, although the theater in the difficult years after the First World War was a waste of time. So he switched to industry, married and had a daughter, Tamara. She lives today in north Germany and has since told me much about her father and placed letters and photographs at my disposal which have provided a nice contribution to what I experienced in common with her father in our Camp 518.

Karzov spoke five languages fluently and for that reason was enrolled in the army at the start of the Second World War as an "interpreter special-commander." I have a press photograph before me which shows Karzov with German and Russian officers when the "demarcation line" was drawn, after the Polish campaign in 1939, which was to part.i.tion Poland anew and bring so much suffering once more to the tormented Polish people-this time from both sides.

In the course of the Russian campaign, when the famous "Vla.s.sov Army" was formed from captured and "liberated" officers and men, Karzov was employed as interpreter with a Cossack unit.

Photographs show him with Cossack officers in their distinctive uniforms on horseback.

These were units that stood no chance in the murderous battle with tanks. It was obvious that Karzov's activity and his Russian origin were bound to be highly suspect to the Russians.

Both were to prove fatal for him later.

In our camp Karzov remained unmolested at first. The authorities profited from his knowledge of languages and allowed him to take part in the theater group.

I will never forget the sessions when he read aloud the works of Pushkin and Dostoyevski. Even the Russian officers and NKVD functionaries frankly admitted, "Karzov speaks a wonderful Russian, such as we no longer know today. Our language has become simpler." At the request of many, Karzov translated Pushkin's Eugen Onegin, and in doing so tried to retain the melodiousness of the Russian language even in German.

Karzov was very popular with everyone. We had some fine evenings together when Karzov told us stories of old Russia and gave us an understanding of Russian culture, music, and mentality. In contrast to the former SS and police officers, who were constantly being interrogated, Karzov to our surprise was left in comparative peace.

Then suddenly, one summer night in 1948, Karzov was removed from the camp. We had forebodings of something terrible.

His daughter Tamara has since confirmed to me what we came to know at the time through secret channels: Karzov had been transferred to a special camp near Smolensk, where he became Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 293 seriously ill.

As a result, he entered a military, hospital near Roslavl, south of Smolensk. According to a report by a German doctor, after his release from the hospital Karzov had been thrown into prison and attempts had been made to extract "confessions" from him.

Since nothing could be proved against him, he was taken to all the places where he had fought during the war in Russia and put on public display there. When he was released from prison in an extremely weak state, the same doctor again restored him to health.

According to the information of the Red Cross after the war, Karzov is supposed to have died in July 1949 in Smolensk. Thus the treatment, which he had bravely resisted for as long as he could, had probably in the last a.n.a.lysis meant his end after all.

Karzov's fate resembled that of the many who perished in punishment camps, former members of the SS and police, and the German soldiers who had fought against partisans.

After the first hard years in the camp there were now a few signs of improvement. From the radio sets taken out of Germany by the Russians and pa.s.sed on-to him for repair, our radio mechanic had succeeded in removing enough parts that in the course of time he was able to construct a transmitter and receiver of his own, without rendering the Russian radios unusable. Other camps, too, had apparently hit on the same idea.

Naturally, only a few people could be let in on the secret of the existence of this set, which enabled us to listen to the West on shortwave and thus keep ourselves informed about the situation at home and in the rest of the world.

To prevent our set from being discovered, we packed it in a plastic cover and lowered it by day into the latrine. No one would look there, we hoped. Then at night we brought it out.

Until the day of our release the Russians were unable to solve the mystery of why we were always so well informed.

Probably the hardest psychological burden for us during the first years was the lack of any contact with our families at home. No one knew of the other, whether they were even still alive.

Then-probably through pressure from the Western powerswe were allowed at last to write a postcara once a month, which was permitted to contain 25 words, including the address. It was not much, but it was at least a sign of life which one could send and receive. Then, later, we were allowed to write a card with an unlimited number of words. This condition brought forth true artists in minute writing and compet.i.tions were held to see who could get the most words on a card. From the spring of 1948, we were then allowed one letter every three months. This chicanery too, for that was how we saw it, had to do with the Russian mentality.

The postal system is marked by the slackness and disinterest of the officials. But the vast distances in the great empire, this side and beyond the Ural mountains, as well as the ponderous system, also make normal communications almost impossible. In addition, the Russians have no feeling for time and s.p.a.ce.

These are for them abstract concepts. How often in answer to our question about when we would finally be allowed to go home we were told, "What do you want? Russia is a big place. You can find bread, work, and women here. Why don't you want to stay here? Your wives at home have long since found other men." With our different way of thinking what was there to say to this att.i.tude to life?

The Russians with their fatalism put up with these conditions, the more so since they do not know how things are elsewhere or how much we in the West depend upon our means of communication.

I have known of Russian workers who have been taken from their beds at night somewhere in north Russia, put in a truck, and brought here to the Caucasus to work. To our question about what their wives had to say about it and what they would now live on with their children, the usual answer was, "Nitchevo, wife will work and perhaps get a man too, who will feed her and the children. I must see to it that I get by here." Following on the "liberalization" through the kultura program and the activity of the Antifa group, a community had gradually formed which could offer resistance to the bad treatment and the food, which was as wretched as ever. Our activity as "German specialists" had made us indispensable in many fields, which we exploited wherever possible for our own ends. Nevertheless, the treatment was often cruel.

Time and again individuals would be taken away at night for interrogation, either to prove them guilty of atrocities during the war or to extort from them statements about members of the SS and police who were in the camp.

Thus Ernst Urban, with whom I often spent the evening sitting by the camp fence, was taken away one night to the NKVD. He was accused of atrocities which one was supposed to know about. His name, place of birth, and other details were held up to him as proof that they knew all about him. When he protested his innocence, he was placed between two red-hot stoves and a bucket Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 295 cold water was poured over him. Black Nena thought that this would force him to confess. It was not until hewas able to make the Russians see that on the basis of his date of birth he had not yet been twelve years old at the time of the atrocities that it became apparent that there must have been a confusion over names. We heard of many similar cases time and again. The Russians tried again and again to blackmail us anew through psycho-terror.

But to return to corruption. I met with a cla.s.sic case through my concrete brigade." One evening the deputy of the Russian camp commandant came to see me and said, "You tomorrow not to work, have special job for you. Find yourself twelve men who don't work in the mine. Fscort will fetch you." I suspected that some deal was being done here and scented a chance for us. So I said, "If it's a special job, you'll have to pay, otherwise I'll write to Moscow about your schemes." The Russians knew only too well that a few people had previously managed to smuggle cards or letters out of the camp and send them by normal mail to Stalin personally or to the Supreme Soviet. They contained complaints or merely a simple inquiry about when we would finally be released in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. As we learned through our "secret channels," a few cards had arrived and had subsequently been delivered back to the camp commandant endorsed with directions.

To that extent our threat to write to Moscow was taken extremely seriously.

"If work good, you get reward," was the answer of the deputy Russian camp commandant.

So next morning we were collected by one of the guards. It was still winter. Snow lay in the mountains. We marched off without knowing where we were going. The snow reached up to our chests. In single file we started to climb, for five hours each of us taking it in turns to open up a way through the deep snow.

Suddenly we heard a shout from our escort, "Stoy, stop!" The guard pointed to a stack of wood covered with snow and intimated that we were to take it down to the valley.

"Have you got the money with you?" I asked him. "Otherwise nothing's going to happen here." To my surprise he pulled out a bundle of ruble notes from his pocket. Our warning had obviously been effective.

We cleared the snow off the stack of wood. The timber was in lengths of about five meters. It was valuable mahogany. Each of us tucked a length of wood under his arm and we slithered in our tracks down to the valley. This time it took only two hours.

It had become clear to me in the meantime that an illicit sale of valuable timber was involved here, on a considerable scale.

There was no doubt that the commandant had received a handsome sum for a.s.signing prisoners to the job, and the guard too would certainly have received his share.

Somewhat apart from the entrance to the town two trucks were waiting, on to which we had to load the lengths of timber. We then drove to the railway station. Here a single truck was standing, on to which we loaded the wood, but only after we had received our rubles from the guard.

At the same time the guard warned us, "You seen nothing, and say nothing." We marched dead tired back into the camp, where a special portion of soup was waiting for us. Once again we were warned by the Russian officer to remain absolutely silent.

Through our German truckdriver, Fred Sbosny, who often had to drive to Kutaisi and Tiflis, we heard the continuation of this story.

A highly placed functionary in Tiflis had commissioned the "transaction." First the state forest officer had to be bribed, who was responsible for the cutting and extraction of the valuable timber. He accounted for the absence of a stack of wood as "sabotage," the way of putting it in cases of corruption, if these are ever exposed. Besides us, the guard and the truckdriver had to have their palms greased. Then there was the station master to be considered, who had provided an empty truck. One must know also that there was a customs and guard house at the town boundary of Tkibuli, where every train with coal had to stop and be registered. So the..customs post" had received its share too. So far all the bribe money was paid by the camp commandant, who had previously received abundant rubles for the purpose.

At Kutaisi, the provincial capital, the truck was hooked on to a train for Tiflis, unregistered of course, for which gesture the stationmaster had received his due. A further payment then became due on arrival in Tiflis, where the "client" was finally able to take possession of his goods. Th I ere he sold off the wood at vast prices to high, well-to-do functionaries, who had furniture made from it by joiners who had been "detailed" for this from state firms. The func Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 297 tionaries have plenty of money, but they can buy nothing with it except on the black market.

Normally all building projects and the fulfillment of norm schedules are checked by commissions that appear irregularly in all concerns. But they too have no objection to little presents, and then report "sabotage" to their superior authority, if they discover shortcomings or that allocated material is missing. But if the case is so blatant that it can no longer be glossed over with "sabotage," a culprit has quickly to be found. What happens then is that some innocent little overseer disappears to Siberia for five to fifteen years.

Such unfortunately was the experience of a sympathetic Russian engineer who had now become the superintendent of our concrete brigade for an important project. Somewhere in the Ukraine he had been designated the "culprit" in a led "economic crime" and' exiled for five years to Siberia, north of Vladivostok. Without ever being able to get in touch with his family, he had to work in the Siberian forests. After that, for probation and so that he could get used to normal conditions again, he was sent to the Caucasus for two years.

I quickly became friends with this poor man, whose first probationary job was the supervision of a proposed foundry. The foundry was supposed to be built below our camp at the edge of the town Tkibuli, and our brigade was supposed to lay the foundations.

On our first day on the job the Russian engineer showed me a working drawing sent from Moscow, which served as the standard plan for all similar projects.

"Take a look at the plan," he said. "I can't understand it all; I'm not sufficiently trained for that. Can you tell from it how the foundations are to be laid?" I felt sorry for him, but nothing surprised me any more. I consulted our only specialist, therefore, the bricklayer. The site of the building had been fixed by the mine administration, which was also to have control over the foundry. So we started by marking out the limits of the foundations in length and breadth and gathered from the plan that they were to be laid three mleters deep and of reinforced concrete.

On the basis of painful experience I strongly urged the engineer to take care of the materials, since he was the one who would otherwise be in trouble. Then we began to dig with picks and shovels, until we struck groundwater after just over one meter.

So we took a break, to consider what to do. I went to our guard and said, "Give me your machine-gun for a moment. Here's a few rubles. Go and buy some maize cakes for us all over there in the market, for you too and for the engineer." He handed over his gun without hesitation and was happy at the prospect of extra food.

"There's groundwater here already," I told our helpless engineer.

"You must go on digging. The plan from Moscow must be carried out," was his convincing answer.

So we went on digging. When we were finally up to our ankles in water, I called a halt to the work.

"We can't go on like this. How shall we ever get down to a depth of three meters?" I had seen from the plan that heavy traveling cranes were to be installed later, for which the three-meter foundations were indeed necessary. The engineer promised to get us rubber boots and pumps if only we would go on working. We said nothing further to this amusing idea.

But the next day pumps really did arrive. And we got the promised rubber boots. But after two more days we were already 16 inches deep in water. I refused to go on.

"Do you want to pump away all the rivers of the Elbrus?" I asked the engineer, now really annoyed. "It's pointless. We won't work under water."

"I speak to natchalnik, we see tomorrow." The decision was as simple as it was senseless.

"Natchalnik understand problem. Stop digging. Lay reinforced concrete, even if only 1.30 meters deep." It was obvious to us that with these weak foundations the whole building would collapse, if it ever got finished and came into operation. So we mixed the concrete in the correct ratio of one to seven, tied down the steel rods, and ended our part with an inadequate foundation.

And that was how it remained. In the months that followed nothing further was done at the building site. When I left the camp at the end of 1948, 1 could still see our steel rods sticking up in the air. The rest of the materials, already delivered, were rusting away, if they had not been stolen in the meantime. I have no idea how the mine administration explained all this to Moscow or what became of the poor engineer.

Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 2" With this project my activity as leader of -the concrete brigade came to an end. I received a new job.

But back to our camp. All of us who had the chance to earn ourselves some extra money or bread on the outdoor detachments tried to see that our weaker fellow-prisoners, who stayed behind in the camp and had no such opportunity, received something through purchases in the market. Our guards, whose poor pay and meager diet were insufficient to satisfy their appet.i.te, also received something from us as a gift, or else they bartered tobacco with us for food. We did in fact receive a small tobacco ration every day, but this was only machorka, the stringy bits of leaves that are left over from the making of papyrossi. MacHorka can only be smoked if one twists oneself a little cone of newspaper, fills it with chopped-up machorka, twists the cone to at the top and then lights it.

All over Russia machorka is the "tobacco of the poor." Russian newspapers are designed for smoking in this form; they contain no size, and the saying goes that Pravda is the most widely smoked cigarette in the world. Matches too are scarce in Russia. Only once in four years, in my experience, did an allocation of matches from Moscow arrive in the little town of Tkibuli. And the ration disappeared very quickly into one of the functionaries' shops. So we fell back on our-ancestors' way of making fire; lighters were made from flints and fuses.

Signs of humanity were not lacking in the camp. There was in the first place Natella, the "angel of Tkibuli and Camp 518." She, came from an old, Georgian, princely family and helped the German maladois, the sick, wherever she could. At the risk of her life she procured medical supplies that were intended by rights for the Russians. Then there was Dr. Kamdelaki, a woman doctor in the camp hospital and, responsible for all six camps.

She too came from an old, princely family and was thus no friend of the Russians, who had occupied her country and robbed her of liberty.

Others were Nastasia (I have changed her name, since she is probably still alive and I would not want to cause her trouble) and her friend Sina. Nastasia was a great-grandda)jghter of Lenin's. The two young women were engineers and had been exiled to the Caucasus for fifteen years.

It is thanks to Nastasia that there are a few photographs of the camp and of our cultural group, which she took at risk of her life and which Jupp Link, with whom she had become friendly, was able to smuggle out of the camp under the c.o.c.kade on his cap.

Link, who today lives near Munich, has spoken to me about these girls, who liked us Germans, and about the sad parting when he left the camp, the last to go, and Nastasia begged him to take her with him.

What may have become of all these women who helped to preserve in us the faith and hope of human kindness?

The time pa.s.sed and we had learned to come to terms with the wretched conditions. It had become clear to us that apart from the hard work in the mine and in the outdoor detachments, and apart from the cultural activity, something had to be done to keep us physically fit. Jupp Link managed to procure some b.a.l.l.s for us and I organized handball teams. Handball was at that time a very popular field game (as against the modern indoor handball) in my north German homeland. We played this game on every free day, to the wonderment of the Russians and cheered on by enthusiastic spectators.

Next, a football team was set up and matches arranged with the other camps.

Even Russia's national game, chess, soon enjoyed great popularity. To begin with we carved ourselves chess men in a primitive way. The Russians were so enthusiastic that they gave us chess sets, and guards played chess matches secretly, since it was forbidden to them, against our best players.

All this may sound like a fun time. But it was not that by a long way. The decisive impulse for it was, rather, the will to survive, which gave us the strength even in these circ.u.mstances not to give up. Some of our fellow-prisoners often criticized our activity and maintained that by it we would be supplying the Russians with evidence that we were still strong enough for even harder work.

In the winter of 1947/48 I received my last a.s.signment in Camp 518/1. 1 became the brigadier of a "coal-seeking detachment." Above our camp, on the slopes of the Elbrus mountains, the Russians had begun to look for new coal deposits with the help of drilling machines supplied from Sweden.

A Russian detachment had already come upon a rich seam at a depth of about 800 meters, and a great effort was now being mounted, in three shifts, to trace the seam and mine it.

My brigade was to take over a day shift. It was distributed over six boring sites and given precise instructions by the Russian bripdier. Although spring was close at hand, much snow still lay in the mountains and it was bitter cold. Each morning-accompanied by Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 301 our escort-we climbed up through the snow, into the mountains, where we relieved the night shift, who would be sitting freezing around a fire.

My job consisted of visiting the individual boring sites during the course of the shift and solving whatever problems arose. By rights our guard was supposed to check the individual boring sites and see that work was going on everywhere. But he usually preferred to seek out the best place by the fire, lean his machine-gun against a tree, and go to sleep. If I spoke to him about this, his reply was: "Polkovnik, you good brigadier, you have propusk and can see everywhere if work good. I freezing, stay rather by fire." In spite of the backbreaking work to be done with the.heavy boring machines, and in spite of our often inadequate clothing, we experienced a.little bit of freedom up there in the mountains, with a view over the little town and our camp. It was inevitable that we had our fun. Once we hid the guard's machine-gun, for instance, while he was asleep.

"Kamerad, give my gun back. Not say I sleeping, or I in gla.s.shouse. Here, have some machorka to smoke." Spring came, the snow melted under the hot southern sun, and the first flowers came out. The work became more bearable, and we even savored the unique beauty of the south Caucasian landscape.

Sweet-tasting wild strawberries, wild pears, and all sorts of herbs, which the guard showed us, were a welcome source of extra vitamins, which we had gone without for three long years. And whenever possible we provided some also for our sick in the camp.

Gradually I extended my "beat." The bore gangs were working reliably. While they did so, I gathered strawberries and wild pears for them in a homemade basket.

One spring day, not long before the German Easter, I set off quite early in order to climb a ridge, to see what lay beyond it. Lying in the valley I saw an enchanted little village. It was iffesistible. I climbed down to it and came to a forgotten world. The village, inhabited only by Georgian peasants, had no street leading out of it. Only mules and donkeys could pick a way out of there and serve as means of transport into the normal world, which ended with the little town of Tkibuli.

Everyone ran together to gape at me, the stranger. I asked for the village elder. An old man came toward me. Skeptically and timidly he asked me in a mixture of Georgian and Russian who I was and what I wanted.

"I am a German plenni, a prisoner of war. I am working over there in the mountains and have been living for several years in a camp in Tkibuli." His face lit up. Excited, he called out to me and to the other villagers, "I know Germans from the war. They and the Turks freed our country from the bad Russians. I never forget good Germans." Clearly, time had stood still for him in the First World War, when Georgia had been a German protectorate.

"German good. Come, you our guest." I was taken into a simple but clean house. His whole family gathered there and other villagers thronged the entrance inquisitively.

As in all the houses, in the middle stood the place for the fire and for eating, made of hard clay; on three sides lay hides for sleeping, for the family; and in a comer there was a s.p.a.ce for the chickens and goats. I felt at home there after my years in the barrack and on our wooden bunks.

Over the fire long iron chains hung down from the roof.

"You now eat Georgian with friends. Come, sit down." With crossed legs we squatted around the fire, and the farmer's wife hun iron cauldrons on the chains. One cauldron she filled with water for the tea, in another the maize mash was prepared, and in a third was the goat-meat with every possible herb.

When everything appeared to be ready, the wife approached us.

Only the men had taken a place with me. The women stood modestly in a corner. The wife pa.s.sed us a bowl of water, in which we washed our hands. Then the cauldrons were unhooked, the tea was brewed, and I was invited to start eating.

There were no forks and no spoon, only the cauldrons with the hot foods. How was I supposed to eat? So as not to show these friendly people my uncertainty, let alone offend them, I said, "Many thanks, farmer, but with us in Germany the head of the house always begins the meal, symbolizing the fact that the food is fit to eat. So will you please begin?" He was impressed. With one hand he took a handful of maize mash from the hot cauldron, shaped the mash neatly into a flat pancake, and with this pancake of mash helped himself to meat from the other cauldron. Skillfully he wrapped it all up into a roll and began to eat. I had come to know a similar way of eating previously among the Bedouins in Africa. So I copied him, and Kultura and Corruption: The Russian Mentality 303 although my hands seemed to be on fire, as a hungry prisoner I enjoyed the delicious food and the strong tea.

Then the wife brought out an earthenware jar with a homemade brandy, whole ingredients of which I was unable to identify.

Toasts now followed, of the sort customary also in the Arabian countries.

"I drink to great friendship with good Germans, who are friends of us Georgians. You will convey our greetings to your great Kaiser Wilhelm. I know from the war that he is good, just man.