White Nights. The story of a prisoner in Russia by Menachem Begin

Author:Menachem Begin [Begin, Menachem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: antique
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

THE TRIAL

THAT is how we lived, with the kasha and the cabbage, with the «telephonists» and the «telegraphists», with the lectures and the courses, with the discussions and the arguments, with parcels of clothing bearing silent greetings from home— until the 1st of April. That day the N.K.V.D. gave us a «surprise».

On the last night of March, 1941, our telegraphists were very busy. «Telegrams» flashed down from upstairs, and were passed on horizontally. In the cell the excitement mounted. «What is it? What is it?» many clamoured to know. Many of them refused to believe their ears. But the telegrams continued to arrive. The contents kept on being repeated. There was no longer any doubt of their authenticity. The telegrams were short. They gave the names of prisoners, and next to them— the number of years to which they had been sentenced. In most cases the figures eight years or five years appeared. Only occasionally was the figure three years mentioned.

«When did the trials take place?» we asked the central bureau by way of the water-pipe, with the aid of dots and flashes.

«There were no trials, these are the sentences,» came the reply.

For a while we were unable to continue with the exchange of telegrams. The news of the sentences arrived only in the evening. The bedtime whistle put a stop, as usual, to the operation of the telegraph service. We lay on our mattresses, still trying to explain, to understand the latest news. Each remembered his interrogator's promise that there would be a trial, so where was it? Some thought that the prisoners who were sentenced without trial must be exceptions. They said: «We will certainly come before a court, and in any event we won't get eight years....» It was impossible to continue even this whispered conversation. The warder opened the door and ordered us to stop all talking. That was the rule.

Next day our doubts were dispelled.

«Everyone into the passage, walk in single file! Keep in line!» That was the command that rang out in our cell at dusk on April 1st 1941.

We did as ordered. We were conducted along a route that we knew, to a place that we knew, to the widening of the corridor from which we used to go to night-interrogation. There two men in civilian clothes were seated behind a small table. While one prisoner went up to the table, all the others stood some distance away and could not hear what was being said. They could only see that a small piece of paper was handed to the prisoner, which he signed.

My turn came.

«Your name?» asked the man sitting in the centre seat at the table.

I replied as I was by now used to replying, giving my patronymic between my first name and my surname.

The man seated at the end of the table began to flick through one of the bundles of papers in front of him. He did it rapidly, as if he were counting bank-notes. Without any difficulty he

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