Boy 30529 by Felix Weinberg

Author:Felix Weinberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

8

The Longest Walk, the Coldest Train Journey

Once again I had no concept of where I was or where we were heading until I searched through the documentation now available on the web, sixty-four years down the line. It transpires, we walked via Kole – Neustadt – Glucholazy – Neisse – Otmuchow – Zabkowice Slaskie – Schweidnitz – Strzegom until we, the survivors, reached Gross-Rosen concentration camp, twelve days later. Many gave up and fell by the wayside, knowing that would end their lives. Everybody has a breaking point when, no matter how strong the spirit, the body and brain give up. Thanks to my youth and history, I had not quite reached that stage, but was not far off. I learned later that some 800 of us died or were killed en route. The bodies were piled high on horse-drawn farm carts which brought up the rear. We walked through forests, along roads, across fields, all covered in snow.

We may not have known where we were heading but it was perfectly clear what we were fleeing from. And we were not alone. We were being overtaken by smaller, faster parties of POWs in smart air force and other allied military uniforms. They had fewer guards and actually had some personal possessions, which they pulled along on small sledges.

Every now and again we had a special treat: a fast-moving convoy of the retreating German army would force us into a ditch. When leaping into a ditch, one hoped fervently that it was frozen all the way to the bottom and did not contain liquid water or mud. But for us, the indignity and discomfort was well worth the spectacle of seeing the frozen, exhausted, dejected, ashen-faced soldiers, their limbs swathed in bloody bandages, of that beaten army as they swept past us on their gun chariots. In our situation, and remembering their former swagger and the atrocities they had perpetrated, it would have taken a heart of stone not to be filled with joy at the sight. Appropriately, our feelings could be described by the German word ‘Schadenfreude’. Maybe we were witnessing the dawning of some justice, unlikely though we were to see it come to fruition. There is a famous nineteenth-century painting by Adolf Northern entitled Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow. Different uniforms and no motorized transport, of course, but the facial expressions of dejected, humbled arrogance are identical. It should act as a dire warning to any little man with overweening ambitions not to presume to take on the Russian winter.

Our progress was called a march but, truly, it was more of a trudge, a shuffle, a limp. At night we were locked in farm outbuildings, barns and sheds. On one occasion I bedded down on what looked like a comfortable pile of white powder, only to wake shortly afterwards to a burning sensation along my back; I must have chosen a heap of some chemical fertilizer for my bed. More often it was straw.

Occasionally it was possible to find something to eat.

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