31. August 1945
31 Aug 45. A transport of prisoners who are sick and unable to work leaves for home. Shortly before departure, one of them dies. We give the returnees short messages to our relatives, which we write on slips of paper or torn-off newspaper margins. All this is forbidden. Nothing written or printed is allowed to be taken, and the returnees risk being sent back to the camp if such things are found on them. It is the Russian's innate distrust or even his guilty conscience that causes him to keep everything that happens in his country secret. But the comrades take our greetings with them. I have given such vital signs to several men. One of them was comrade Bohndorf, lance corporal in our Corps Machine Gun Battalion. Short greetings on a piece of paper. They got them all through to the homeland. Bohndorf was at my parents' in person[1], and others contacted Carola in person or by letter. Völz and Adamiets are still in my memory. In this way, Carola received the first sign of life from me after half a year of uncertainty.
We are put into a vacant house. A small hall with three-storey wooden cots without straw. We sleep on the bare boards. The only abundance is the masses of bedbugs. During the vaccinations, they shoot such quantities of serum into our bodies that I have a fever for three days.
One day a "veteran prisoner"[2] told me: "The worst thing about imprisonment is not the Russians, but one's own comrades". I kept thinking of this sentence later, because it was unfortunately all too true.
We are led into a hall for (re)education by the "Antifa".[3] In the so-called Antifa, with Russian support, all those who want to actively oppose fascism are united. They are communists, socialists, naive Christians, hangers-on and clever minded timeservers. The leadership of this bunch is of course in the hands of communists, and the training is pure communist indoctrination with anti-German effect. It begins with the attack on fascism, then against the officers as prolongers of war and helpers of fascism. The arguments are so false, mendacious and naive that it is downright ridiculous. It gets restless. Heckling interrupts the agitator. There is a real riot. Since then we have been discredited as the "fascist battalion".
After all, church services are held, hosted by the Christians among the Antifa, and by both denominations. The masses are packed, about 600 participants.
120 men have escaped. 100 of them are recaptured, 32 of which are dead. The camp has to line up. The Russian camp commander declares that in case of recurrence a "warning example will be set." There is an unwilling murmur in the ranks, because this is against international law. The escape of a prisoner may only be punished by disciplinary action. The 32 dead were certainly shot "on the run", as these murders can be paraphrased.
Rations (on paper!): 600 g bread, 200 g nutriments, 70 g meat, 40 g sugar, 15 g tobacco. According to the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war receive the rations customary in the rear units of the country of detention. But since the ration rates of the Red Army provide for higher rations for officers than for enlisted men, we here in the Soviet Union receive - at least on paper - better rations than our enlisted men. In some camps we actually received it.
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- ↑ He then also wrote a letter in favour of the author.
- ↑ Altgefangener: who had already been imprisoned during the war
- ↑ Antifa means acc. Keßler (p. 43, 48, 58) "Antifascist Aktive" (p. 70: "Antifascist camp group", acc. Reinhard Rurup (Ed.): Война Германии против Советского Союза 1941-1945, Argon, Berlin 1991, para Nationalkomitee „Freies Deutschland“: "Antifascist camp committee"; these were organised by the National Committee for a Free Germany. The author uses "Antifa" in this sense only; the modern term Antifa for the autonomous political Left had not yet been coined.