Surviving the Gulag by Ilse Johansen

Author:Ilse Johansen [Ilse Johansen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781772122909
Publisher: The University of Alberta Press

On the Move Again

IT IS MARCH by the time we get ready to leave. There is another search and anything useful is kept. They don’t take anything away from us women.

A Ukrainian who organizes the work details and cooperates with the Russians in a friendly way has a new suit made (with whose money we don’t know). The Russians take it away cold-bloodedly. The man has served their purpose; now he is disposable. I have encountered this sense of justice many more times among Russians. They use despicable characters as tools. They let them rise high but then one day let them drop into nothingness. All too often they get their rear kicked to kill their spirit. To us it gave hope that there is still some justice in the world.

We have to march forty kilometres. This doesn’t bother me. I feel strong again and enjoy the freedom of walking through the romantic woods. Many of the men, however, have great difficulty toward the end of the march.

Along the way we encounter the prisoners of war leaving the camp to which we are underway. It is a long column moving on the railroad embankment. In front are strong, well-dressed figures. It is easy to see, it is the elite of the camp. The work brigades that follow are poorly dressed and thinner.

Questions are shouted back and forth: “Do you have men from Danzig with you? Do you know a tailor from Königsberg? Where are the women from?” but the guards don’t want to let us talk and drive us to move on.

We come to what appears to be a small village, a tidy street with ditches along the sides. In front of it rises the gate of the infirmary camp, Rezh. Even in Russia a camp can look like this! But only if it has been occupied by German prisoners of war. Clean paths with birch trunks along the edges, stairs and benches, carved road signs and even a Lili-Marlene lantern made of wrought iron. Is this still Russia?

Our amazement doesn’t end. They have planted many plants and trees: firs, birches and wild roses; next summer we are to discover real garden flowers. The dorms also hold a hundred men, but the rooms are painted and there are pleasant pictures on the walls. In every barracks they have made a comfortable seating corner with benches around a table. In the dining room they have wainscoting and carved wooden chandeliers. When we see the kitchen we barely dare to step inside, the floor is so clean. The infirmary is exemplary. There is a club room in which one could think oneself at home were it not for the pictures of Stalin and Lenin looking down from the walls. In four big barracks are the camp workshops: the locksmith and metalwork workshop, the cabinetmaker’s, the painter’s and the tailor’s shop. There is even a watchmaker’s shop. People work here tirelessly and produce objects which couldn’t have been made any better at home. This kind of work earns money for the camp.

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