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Captured at age 16 while trying to escape from Soviet-occupied Poland. 
A whisper rippled along the marching file: "Look right." On the
ridge of a gentle slope I saw the silhouette of a Soviet soldier standing
still. His black outline, topped by the soft gathered spike of a cloth
budyonovka hat was clearly visible against the dark blue sky. So was the
long bayonet at the end of his rifle. He was no more than fifty yards from
us. With our faces turned towards him we kept marching forward. He
remained motionless as if mesmerized by the sight of the long line of
people passing him in an orderly file. Then several soldiers emerged from
the lower ground beyond
him. They ran in our direction but didn't come any closer than the first
soldier. Rifle shots and cries of "Postoi!" Stop! rang out together. We lunged forward. Our guide fired one shot from his revolver at the soldiers and quickly blended with other scattering runners. The Soviets kept firing. Irka, who was running in front of me, fell face down. So did her brothers. Somebody running on my right followed suit. I was next. A moment later when I lifted my head I could not see anybody running or standing--only the Soviets coming at us and still firing. A soldier stopped a few yards from me. I saw him aiming his rifle down at me. He fired and a bullet hit the ground near my face raising a small plume of snow. He kept his stance, still aiming at me. I was moving my head, shielding it with my little gas-mask bag, and trying to make it a less easy target. Four more shots and four more plumes of snow around my head. He stopped firing when he finished the clip. By then they were all over us. |
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Passing time in a big communal dungeon cell at Chernigov. 
In spite of the dripping ceiling, overcrowding and half-starvation, we
kept our spirits up. Joke-tellers were always in great demand and the
cavalry squad held sway in that field. Because our dungeon was far away
from other cells we got away with singing. The guards had nothing against
it as long as it wasn't too loud. The Ukrainians took advantage of it and
sang to their hearts content all day long. Harmonizing was part of their
heritage. They crooned lengthy dumkas, folk songs in which sadness and
gaiety mingled freely. A very popular game in which almost everybody in the cell took part was known either as salonowiec (The Dandy)--named probably to mock the game's lack of finesse--or dupak (bum-whacking), which was more descriptive of that uncouth entertainment. An umpire chosen by common consent--usually an older or frail man whom no one wanted to hit--would sit on a bench or the edge of a bed and select the first "Dandy", otherwise called the "whackee". The victim would bend over and place his head on the knees of the seated umpire who cradled the victim's head while covering the man's eyes. That way he could not peek at the players/whackers who were standing in a semi-circle a couple of steps behind him. When one of these whackers slapped his bottom hard, the whackee would quickly turn around and scan the faces and the stances of the men standing behind him to try to guess who hit him. If he didn't name the right one, the game continued with the same whackee. If he did, the guy who hit him had to take his place. The whackers sometimes hit lightly, sometimes they really whammed one, making it difficult to guess whether the feeble smack did indeed come from the delicate hand of the advocat from Prague or the stunning thump from the bread-loaf sized paw of Ziola, a hotel porter from Zaleszczyki. The game was crude and painful at times but played in a friendly spirit. It caused a lot of laughter, especially from watching the expression on the face of the fellow who had just received a mighty whack but was pretending that it didn't hurt a bit. Even the turnkey would open the hatch in the door and laugh his head off watching us playing "The Dandy". The Bukovinians were almost addicted to this game but it seemed that they never fully grasped the idea of it. As the game progressed people would get tired of it and, rubbing their sore rumps, would start drifting away until only two players were left--both Bukovinians--who continued to slam and thump each other with glee. "Bend over Vasil. Now is my turn!" "Ugh! And now it's yours!" Wham! Slap! "Ha, ha!" Someone told me how one cell got even with a sneaky stool-pigeon they had discovered in their midst. One day he joined the game and became the whackee. Winking to each other, his cell mates conspired against him. Whether he guessed correctly or not, the crowd all told him he had it wrong. The next few nights he spent sleeping on his belly. |
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Two of our Soviet guards in Chernigov were women.  There were four regular guards/turnkeys who worked in shifts. We were more
than astonished when we found that two of them were women, both of them in
their late twenties. They took guard duties in their stride and seemed to
have no problems in maintaining order and discipline among their charges.
One of them was dark haired and dumpy. More than that, her figure was
bursting out of her tight uniform and according to [Dr.] Weissglass, she
was a living copy of the Heidelberg Venus.Hearing that, [the innkeeper] Spiegel, who was eyeing her, turned quickly to Weissglass. "What did you say? Venus Heidelberg? Was she Jewish?" Weissglass's denial did not diminish Spiegel's interest in the "Dumpling" as he called her. Nor was he interested in Weissglass's explanation that the Heidelberg Venus was a pre-historic clay figurine of a grotesquely buxom cave woman, probably a fertility fetish, unearthed by archeologists near Heidelberg. Like all guards on night duty, Dumpling had to bang the iron bars in the cell windows with a wooden mallet in order to check if they had been filed through by would-be escapers and if they were still firmly embedded in their frame. The wooden mallet had a long handle but not long enough for the short-legged Dumpling to reach the barred window. To bang the bars she had to climb the bed next to Spiegel's. When confronted with her derriere, Spiegel's face would turn even redder, his nostrils would dilate and we could hear him panting heavily. . . . We could not see the fields and the meadows stretching beyond the prison walls but we could smell them. The fragrance of the new grass and the wild flowers wafted into our cell with the gentle warm spring breeze. The sweetest aroma I could remember. When a guard brought into our cell a broom made of young birch twigs which still had green leaves on them we gazed at it and sniffed it, burying our faces in the green bouquet. We marvelled at the design of leaves, their serrated edges and their delicate veins as if we had never seen them before. Just as being cut off from the outside world had heightened our appreciation for nature, so the months of hunger had sharpened our ability to smell food. We could smell fresh bread even before it was unloaded in front of the prison gate from the van which brought it from a bakery in town. |
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With young criminals in a Kiev labour colony. 
More consistent than the attempt at academic classes were the public
lectures, variety shows, films and plays arranged by the Cultural and
Educational Section. These were held on Sundays and attendance was
compulsory. The prisoners scorned the lectures on productivity and the
communist work ethic. Instead they treated the event as a social
gathering, changing the auditorium into a vast gambling den. The players
and the kibitzers swore loudly, often confusing the lecturer with
exhortations like "Cover it with the ace, you asshole!" Slightly more interesting were the propaganda talks by the Heroes of the Soviet Union. In one of them a bemedalled Soviet pilot explained how, in a skirmish near Khalchin-Gol in Mongolia, he scared a Japanese pilot into crashing just by flying close to him and shaking his fist at him. But his war story was spoiled by his wooden, monotone recitation that made boys around me yawn. The film show repertoire was limited to half a dozen movies. But the Russians didn't mind watching the same films again and again. Among them were Lenin in 1918, The Battleship Potemkin and Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin which seemed to be the only foreign film shown in those days in the Soviet Union. The Russians loved it and many a youngster would adopt the Chaplinesque gait as his usual way of walking. But the real treat for inmates was the occasional visit by theatre groups and variety shows, mainly because they brought with them live women, not just actresses but also female singers, dancers and musicians. Unlike the female workers in the factory [of our labour colony] or even the office workers from outside, these women on stage were flashily dressed, wearing heavy make-up and high heels. The zhuliki [criminals], who fought among themselves to get into the front rows, sat through the entire performance ogling the actresses. The young criminals couldn't have cared less about the plot of the piece or the words uttered by the players. They just sat there transfixed by the sight of the women, commenting loudly on every aspect of female anatomy--albeit covered--of the artistes and on what they would do to them and how, if given a chance. These remarks were greatly appreciated by the rest of the audience who would reward the most inventive quips by a short round of applause. Such an appreciative audience would make the ears and the necks of the actresses turn red. The blushing of their faces could not be seen under their heavy make-up. Every play, with the exception of a period piece from the time of Peter the Great, had the same plot. It went more or less like this: In a factory, kolkhoz, ship or city council a spy planted by a foreign power tries to sabotage their productivity. A hard-working Party member uncovers a plot set up by the "capitalist encirclement". The spy is arrested. The workers promise to work harder in order to make up for the losses created by the enemies of the people and send a telegram to Dear Iosif Vissarionovich (Stalin) paying homage to his leadership and wisdom. According to the theatrical conventions set up by the Cultural and Education Department, the spy wore capitalist clothes--Homburg hat, spats, flashy tie and glasses. His make-up was what you'd expect for a sadistic strangler, made even more threatening by his twisted lips and throaty voice. The well versed audience spotted him the moment he appeared on the stage, unlike the clods in the cast who took three long acts before unmasking the culprit. |
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The Beautiful Zhenya befriends Aleks.  Though her wardrobe was
meagre, she was always well dressed and well groomed. Ever ready for a
good laugh, she could tell a risque joke without batting an eyelid. She
was the darling of the office. Her table was next to mine. When drafting
she preferred to sit or kneel on an ordinary office chair instead of a
high drafting stool. That was fine with me because at times I could peek
at the cleavage revealed by the decollete of her dress. I had no doubt
that she must have noticed my furtive glances but she also made it obvious
that she didn't mind my interest in her Dianesque shapes. Once she brought me a real treat, a handful of fresh strawberries, and, on another occasion, an apple. These were great gifts. In those days such delicacies were rare in Kiev. It was the first fruit I had eaten since my capture. When I received my first parcel from home, among other things in it there was a tiny tin of scented vaseline. I gave it to Zhenya. She was elated with it. She would open the lid and with closed eyes sniff the vaseline as if it were Chanel or Guerlain. |
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Sharing a sleeping loft with six others in a one-room cabin in Northern Russia.  Uncle Misha began scratching himself vigorously all over his body. It was
the sign for bedtime. Our hosts were the first to climb the ladder. They
settled down on balding wolf skins close to the wall of the stove and near
the peak of the roof where there was more headroom. Dionizy and I climbed
the ladder after them and crawled into the far corner of the bunk, nearer
the outside wall, keeping our heads low to clear the underside of the
sloping rafters. The fire in the oven must have kept going for a long time
and for a few hours it was unbearably hot up there. Until the fire died
down, Uncle Misha and his wife slept naked. But as the temperature in the
izba dropped, they would gradually pull on their clothes again and get up
in the morning fully dressed.The izba was a repository of smalls. The background of sauerkraut, wood smoke and dried mushrooms was like a painter's canvas on which dabs of other colourful odours stood out here and there. Each scent had its own source and a well-defined area in which it ruled over the others. The smells served as a guide in the darkness of night. On a moonless night you could tell that you were close to the window and Uncle Misha's workbench by the smell of the pine pitch in which he dipped his cobbler threads. A scent of sage warned you that you were too close to the landlady's dressing table and tippy shelves with pottery bowls and jugs. There was no fear of bumping into the sauerkraut barrel because, though empty, the smell of pickled cabbage would nip your nostrils when you came nearer. The stink of [their cow] Kozukha led you to the exit door. Once there, sniffing out the family's primitive latrine (a hole dug in the clay floor of the stable) was a cinch. The family alarm clock woke us early. The stars were still shining when Dionizy and I reported for work at the TES-2 power plant. We joined the group of newcomers who were huddling together near the main gate of the plant and stamping their feet in the pre-dawn chill. About ten of them were our friends from the camp who, like us, had been released the day before in batches of two or three throughout the day. Some of them had been squeezed into the workers hostel. There they slept on the bunks of those who were working the night-shift. Bastomski, Klein and Magda had been lucky to get an empty cubicle in a house for old women but a couple of others were just let loose and told to fend for themselves. Besides us there were a dozen Russian women and men, all of them civilian refugees from areas near the war front. They were town people dressed in overcoats, shoes with galoshes, scarves and mitts, and they looked out of place. |
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Looking for work and food in "golden" Samarkand. 
I went back to the new Samarkand where I was hoping to find any kind of
work. I still had a few rubles left but not enough to buy even a small
chunk of bread on the black market. I tried every possible place: communal
living quarters where I offered to work as a cleaner for just one meal a
day, workshops and stores, offices and factories, only to be told in every
place "Get out of here--fast!" Samarkand was overrun with
refugees and the chance of getting any job was nil. Passing the entrance
to a large hospital I suddenly remembered that my sister Maria, who was
studying medicine in Cracow before the war, used to say how difficult it
was to find people who would wash and shave corpses in the hospital's
morgue. In a trice I barged into the administration office and told the
astonished office workers that I had considerable experience in washing
and shaving corpses and I would like to work in the hospital's morgue. A
woman sitting at a nearby desk was terrified by my unkempt look and even
more so by my announcement. With her mouth wide open she was poised on the
edge of her chair ready to bolt from the room. Then a man, also
shaken by my intrusion, spoke up in a feeble voice."I regret but we don't shave corpses in this establishment." That was that. Glancing back as I went out, I saw the man looking around at his co-workers. With one hand he pointed at the door I was closing and with the index finger of the other hand he drew a circle on his forehead. |
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