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Fifty
Years After
Part 1 /
Part 2 /
Part 3
By George Kaiser,
Düsseldorf
Published in the
Heimatortsgemeinschaft Semlak Heimatbrief,
July 1994, Vol. 13, Pages
19-25]
Many thanks
for Henry Fischer for his translation from German to
English.
Up
until the departure of the train from Arad, I still hoped
that I would be released because I was too young. It was
midnight and January 30, 1945 had begun with us packed
inside the cattle car. It was my seventeenth birthday. I
had become seventeen years old and now officially old enough
to be deported. The fact that many others were in the same
position was of little comfort to me. The way things worked
out, the matter of age was actually secondary, the real
issue was achieving the quota of deportees that had been
set. Only the sisters Eva and Susan Herber were released in
Arad because they were ill clothed to face the gruesome
winter ahead of us. In all likelihood they had a guardian
angel whose outstretched arms protected them.
During the last call for
those boarding the train the suitcase of Nikolaus Poth, the
baker, called “Uncle Bäck” by everyone, went missing. That
was a hard blow for him for it meant that he had lost all of
his clothes and food. Even though this was reported to the
sentry, his suitcase could not be found in the darkness.
Uncle Bäck was dependent on the kindness of his fellow
villagers during the following long journey and was never
abandoned by them.
When all of the men were on
the train a group of Soviet soldiers reported in. They
seemed very young to us, between 14 and 16 year olds. They
were children without parents who had been raised in
Stalinist orphanages. They wore fur coats, felt boots and
thick bindings wrapped around their lower legs. The Russian
caps they wore had large earflaps and there was a large red
five-pointed-star sewn at the center. They were armed with
machine pistols.
After the doors of the
cattle car were locked from the outside, they took their
post in the area around the braking apparatus at the far
end. These children were to be our guards on this long and
tortuous journey towards uncertainty.
Following the sound a shrill
whistle the locomotive shuddered and we experienced the
train getting underway. The long endless train set out on
its long endless journey, whose final destination was
unknown to us.
Some time next day our train
drove into Rimnicul-Sarat, a city in Moldavia along
Romania’s eastern border. We all had to detrain here and
take our luggage with us. This was the cause of a faint
glimmer of hope for we thought this meant we would remain in
Romania and not be sent to work elsewhere.
We were set up in rows and
columns of men and women and were led through the city to a
camp. Our guards were to our right and left and onlookers
stood on the sidewalk, most of who were men with large black
hats and long flowing beards. We were scolded and spit upon
by them and some were successful in landing a good kick at
one of us. They called us Hitler’s swine and pieces of
plaster and rocks were thrown at us. Our Russian guards
tried to clarify to the Jews that we were only Antonescu’s
stooges, but that did not help much. This went on all of
the way to the camp and when we got to the entrance there
was a hostile group awaiting us screaming, “Heil Hitler!”
As we stepped into the camp
yard we were met with the steam from huge boiling kettles.
They were filled with bean soup and smoked ham. It was our
first warm meal and we received cold rations for the next
day.
On the same day we were once
again loaded into Russian cattle cars in the same groups as
before. The guards also remained the same.
In the interior of these
Russian cattle cars there were bunks set up at both ends,
far too few for 82 persons assigned to the car, so that we
only got to lie down on them to sleep, once every three
nights. The others spent the night sitting on their
suitcases or other luggage. There was also a tin furnace in
the car, but there was no wood or anything with which to
make a fire. Beforehand, these cattle cars brought Russian
soldiers westwards to the Front, but we were now traveling
eastwards with them.
Before the train got
underway we heard the sound of dogs barking outside and the
sound of steps on the hard frozen snow. It was the last
security check making certain that all of the doors were
locked. A salvo of shots was the signal that the security
procedure had been concluded and that the train could get
underway.
On January 31st,
we arrived in Iasi (the capital of Romanian Moldavia) and we
were parked on a secondary track. Next to the track was an
open field, where we could relieve ourselves. Inside the
cattle car we had to form columns of men and women in order
to be counted and then we had to take a step to the right
and be counted again and both lists had to be handed over to
the Russians by the Romanians. During this count it was
discovered that three persons were missing. The count had
to be taken several times, but the result was always the
same. We had to detrain again and an officer counted each
one of us personally. It was futile, there were still three
persons missing. Even after several warning shots our total
count did not increase. We had to board the train again.
Shortly afterwards we heard loud swearing and screams of,
“Come quickly!” The door of our car flew open and two young
people, actually children, were thrown inside. They were
siblings, the boy was about twelve and the girl was fourteen
and they said that they were Italian. Right afterwards an
older man was lifted up into the car because he was unable
to do so alone. He had a long flowing white beard. He was
a Romanian railway worker and was called Vitovsky and spoke
German quite well. The two children were sent home about a
month later on a military train.
We received food to eat at
Iasi, it would be the last meal we would eat in Romania: a
sentry opened the door of the cattle car and ordered that
two men get off the train to go and get some food. He
pointed to me and said, “You Fritz. Come here.” I jumped
out of the cattle car and landed on my stomach. After much
effort Heinrich Gottschick stood next to me. We had little
trust in the young soldiers because they swore at us so
much.
While we were being counted,
another cattle car was attached next to ours and had a sign
designating that it was “the kitchen”. That is where we got
the food: 80 liters of greasy soup with mutton and a lot of
paprika. We dragged the food to our car in tin tubs. In
order to stir the thick brew we found a stick on the railway
tracks. There was enough soup because only a few attempted
to eat this unfamiliar fare, because we still had enough
fresh sausage from home in our suitcases.
From a distance we saw some
people standing by a well and drawing water. After several
requests we were allowed to go to the well in the company of
two guards. We were allowed to stay for a while. In order
to wile away the time, the soldiers showed us their guns.
Using their machine pistols they shot the glass transformers
on a telephone post that shattered into thousands of
pieces. We were then allowed to look through their field
glasses to show us how easy it would be to shoot us. One of
the Russians took off my fur cap and pressing his thumbs
against my temples laughed and said, “If you try to escape,
your head will shatter just like the transformers and you
will never see Russia.” A man with a wooden leg had to
translate that from Russian for us.
On the night before our
departure we received warm unsweetened tea from the Russians
as part of their “official welcome to Russia”. We left Iasi
on February 4, 1945.
The doors of our car were
locked and as long as the train remained standing still, the
cold was unbearable. The people wrapped themselves in their
covers and wore their coats and extra clothing. As soon as
the train got underway and it became night, the icy winds of
Russia blew through the windows that provided air in the
cattle car. The people sat packed together on the floor and
you could hear people praying out loud or quietly, “Dear
God. Loving God help us. Save us.” One would have to ask
oneself where all of these gods suddenly came from. Even
those I knew well, who had never acknowledged God, were now
calling upon Him for help. Others called out for their
left-behind-loved-ones. It was all a great clamoring of
misery and weeping. We all now knew that it would be a long
time if ever before we would see our loved ones again.
After a short silence, in another corner Swabian catholic
women prayed the rosary and began to sing their familiar
Marian songs. This would happen every night and at the same
time our guards pounded against the wooden walls of the
cattle cars with their rifle butts to drown them out, along
with Russian curses and a steady flow of swearing.
After we had traveled for a
day and night we were put on a railroad siding and unhitched
from the locomotive and train. Only military trains heading
for the front lines traveled on the main track. Soldiers
and munitions were now the priority. At some point the
doors were opened and we were allowed off of the train to
meet our bodily needs. In the deep snow, in the bitter
cold, women and men, the told and the young, were packed
together in the open field watched over by the soldiers. We
were allowed to empty the bucket we used on the train. When
the train was moving there was no other alternative except
to use the bucket, as two people held up a cover to give
some privacy. At first this was very difficult for us, but
after a few days it became rather normal and routine. The
biggest distress it caused was the overwhelming smell that
we had to learn to live with and eventually we even got used
to that.
Once due to exhaustion and
cold I could not tell if I was awake or asleep. For a short
period of time reality seemed to escape me and I dreamt that
I was helping my mother preparing the bake oven. I saw
myself as a child standing in front of the red-hot bake
oven; I watched the rising flames and could smell the
burning cornstalks. In my dream I ate her fresh
cheesecake. How true the old proverb: hungry geese dream
of oats.
As I awoke from my dream I
saw a large group of men standing close together. By
looking more closely I noticed that a flask of raki was
making the rounds. Only when I was really awake did I learn
what had really happened. George Brandt, better known as
Juri Bacsi, was the man who had brought out the flask of
schnapps from under his coat and he probably had very little
difficulty coaxing the others to join him so that the
Russians wouldn’t get it. To ward off the cold the men
reached out for the flask and after less than three rounds
it was empty. The raki was all gone and Juri Bacsi said,
“He who gives little honor, isn’t worthy of any himself.”
He was priding himself of his generosity.
Because our luggage was
close by, my father crawled around looking for it and
eventually a three-liter jug put in an appearance, which
naturally contained more raki. My father then challenged
him and said, “We all know that you are stingy. You can’t
satisfy the whole bunch of us with one liter of raki.”
There was a lot enthusiastic laughter, which unfortunately
caught the attention of the guards at the door of the cattle
car and they were quickly in the midst of us and they tried
to find out what had been going on. None of the men dared
to answer. After a quick search of several men they got a
good whiff of the smell of schnapps and one of the sentries
asked if we had any vodka. Actually one of them screamed at
Nikolaus Poth and he replied in great fear, “Not vodka.”
Then my father took the risk and said in Russian, “I have
some vodka.” Hearing that the Russians were really angry
and called my father an old devil because he had not ever
mentioned that he spoke Russian. “Because of that you will
get a well earned punishment,” they said. At that moment we
heard a loud blast of whistles. The sentries had just
enough time to jump off of the train and lock the doors of
our car. Our train was in motion once more.
An uneasy silence followed
and everyone thought about the threatened punishment, until
someone came up with the idea that we could bribe the
Russians with some of the raki.
After a long night and
ice-cold journey our train came to a sudden halt and made
the brakes squeal. We could not see anything through the
wooden slats that formed the wall of the cattle car, but we
were very much aware of a lot of noise, and concluded that
we were at a large railway station or depot. We could hear
many voices and above all a host of orders and commands. On
the neighboring track there was another train that was
heading in the opposite direction than we were, heading to
the Front either in Hungary or Romania. A group of soldiers
came towards our cattle car and we could hear the crunch of
the snow under their boots as well as their singing and
swearing, a tell tale sign that they were all drunk. The
sentries opened the door to our car and ordered my father to
get out. We were all very scared. As he jumped off of the
train at the door, he lost his fur cap, which greatly amused
the Russians. One of them held up the cap and said, “Put it
back on, before your ears freeze, before you even get a
chance to experience a cold Siberian winter.” It was only
now that it dawned on us that they had come for my father to
act as an interpreter. The Russians boarded our train and
offered to exchange their Russian money for any Romanian
currency we had. But we were too distrustful of them. It
was only when they offered us cigarettes that we cautiously
took out our money. We believed we actually made a
favorable trade with them.
The little Italian boy who
had been left with us, cried bitterly and his whole body
trembled. The women had clothed him in whatever they could
spare themselves. When the guards saw him, they asked him
how he was doing. He simply said, that he was very cold.
The older men offered some schnapps to the Russians, but
they only drank once my father had first drunk some. They
were afraid that we might poison them. Their tongues became
loosened as they drank and said that they would give us some
firewood if we would give them one of the girls. It took
awhile for us to realize that they were just joking.
Eventually they left and climbed down from our car and told
us to behave ourselves. When they returned and opened the
door I happened to be standing directly in front of them.
They ordered me, “Get down here with another boy.” A train
loaded with wood stood nearby. Our guards unloaded six
planks, about three meters long and carried them along with
us to our cattle car.
An old blackened tin furnace
stood inside our car, presumably left behind by the Russian
military, but we had not had a fire because we lacked wood.
We were instantly rich: we had firewood! What do you do
with three-meter long planks without a saw or an axe? The
guards wanted to deal with us and buy tobacco and we asked
for an axe in exchange. Shortly after that we had an axe.
They had confiscated it from the next car that was a
kitchen. They also brought some boards and slats, but they
gave strict orders that we only chop the wood during the
journey so that the commander would not become aware of what
we were doing because if discovered the wood would be taken
away and the soldiers would be punished.
We were able to do well with
selling our schnapps, and we wanted to buy cigarettes with
our money, much of which was actually worthless. At least a
third of it had expired as legal tender.
The six wooden planks took
up a great deal of space in our cramped and packed cattle
car. So we set them in such a way that as many people as
possible could sit on them. Now that we had an axe, we
chopped a hole in the floor of the car and using some
blankets we set up a privacy wall around it and used it to
meet our sanitation needs. This greatly bothered the
Russians because they were afraid we would use the hole to
escape.
The longer the journey
lasted, the deeper we went into Russia and the colder and
more frigid it became. The snow kept getting deeper. At
times we thought the snow was smoke, but we knew that if we
saw smoke there must be a village consisting of a few houses
and only the stone chimneys were visible in the deep snow.
To the right and left of the train tracks all we saw was
snow and destroyed military equipment: tanks, cars, canons
and then more snow.
Our train seldom halted and
as a result we received less tea and warm food. Instead, we
received cooked, cold, heavily salted beef. Out of hunger
we ate it. But it was not the hunger that was bad, it was
the thirst that followed after we ate. There was no water,
the wells along the tracks were frozen. So it was the snow
that covered the roof of our car that was our only source of
moisture. We stuck our hands out of the windows as far as
we could reach and would scratch as much snow as we could
and ate it. When the train came to a halt once more, we
filled our dishes and containers with snow and drank it
after it melted if we could wait that long.
Once the train halted
somewhere we heard ship sirens wailing. It was snowing and
we had no idea where we were. We had the idea that now we
would be loaded on board ships. When it was daylight our
train started out slowly and we crossed a wide expanse of
water. It was on March 1, 1945. We did not know what kind
of enormous river this was. When we asked the guards about
it they sang the Volga River song.
Gradually it was becoming
warmer outside and our cattle car was more bearable. The
train halted less and less and we went on and on. And
always the same sound of the locomotive wheels buzzed around
in my head…I am taking you away.
But our sense of well-being
was about to be disturbed as each one of us, one after the
other became restless. A strange sensation vexed our bodies
and we had to scratch constantly. At first we were ashamed
to do so in front of one another, but we finally had to
admit that our underwear was filled with lice. One morning
our train had halted somewhere and the sun shone through the
windows of the car. I took off my shirt and held it up
close to the window to catch the rays of the sun. Like
little white pearls the lice eggs glistened in the
sunlight. From them would emerge the many-legged creatures
that tormented us and I found three thriving lice that I
crunched between my fingernails. It was much the same for
my father. People formed a line and waited for their turn
in the sunlight and carried out the same procedure. As I
write these words now, I can feel the sensations running up
and down my spine as if I was back there. I took off my
shirt and held it in the sunlight and exclaimed: Thank God
there aren’t any now…”
At first we threw the lice
infested clothes in the hole in the floor, but we soon
realized it was useless because the lice reproduced rapidly
from one day to another, so that we simply had to accept it
and live with it.
We could not determine where
the lice had come from. There was a quick verdict some of
us came to, that the source was several young men, of German
origin, like ourselves who had been in the Romanian Army and
had been packed into our train while we were still in
Romania. Among them was Michael Gottschick (Linkert-Gottschick)
who was assigned with us from Semlak in the same cattle
car.
Our journey was long and we
endured a lot that was unpleasant. On March 7, 1945 our
train halted once more and we did not know where we were,
but we had arrived at our destination, deep inside of
Russia, in the far and distant Ural Mountains. And it
snowed and snowed. The thick snowflakes flew into our eyes
and we had to cover them with our hands so that we could
see. We stood out in an open field and the wind whirled all
around us. We stood there rooted to the spot facing the
unknown in this unending, white wilderness that awaited us.
Part 1 /
Part 2 / Part
3
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