24. August 1948
24 Aug. Again 2 accidents during loading. One of them suffered a hernia, the other broke two toes. - One comrade was asked by the politruk during interrogation: “Well, when are you coming back with the Americans?”
While stacking wood on the ramp, I lost my balance and fell backwards off the stack. I actually only fell 1 m, but hit my rump on a protruding log end of the neighbouring stack. I was just able to lie down on the ground and then fainted. After a while, with the help of my comrades, I struggled to my feet and shuffled back to the camp, accompanied by a guard. I lay in the infirmary for a week with a spinal sprain.
An SS man was taken from the cot at night in all secrecy and transported away.
The Soviet Union missed their big chance in 1945. They could have made millions of Germans their friends.[1] Instead, they bullied them to death. I am almost certain that the ministries in charge of the prisoners of war made many reasonable orders regarding our treatment, working conditions, etc. But they were sabotaged by the subordinate and subordinate agencies. Why was everything so much better on inspection days? Why were the camp commanders so afraid of everything that had to be reported to Moscow?! But it’s like everywhere else in the world: the leadership often doesn’t know what’s going on among the people.
We have to buy light bulbs by ourselves. And when we have them, the Ivan takes them away. - Our vaudeville team performs a sketch about “tramps”, and the Russian already suspects something about “running away”. - In the evening I stand on the camp’s large square and look up at the wonderfully clear stars in the night-dark sky. An Ivan comes by and sends me back to the quarters in an unfriendly manner. He suspects me to scout out escape opportunities.
At night, many men now sleep outside in the yard. It is unbearable in the house because of the heat and the bugs. I, too, lie in the courtyard on the bare earth, and above me sparkles and shines the Vega in the constellation of Vorlage:Wen:Lyra. Its glittering twinkle is comforting and reassuring. All the little everyday hardships become unimportant in the face of this sense of eternity. Because of its bright light, Carola and I noticed the Vega above our heads already earlier during our holidays. We then agreed on a certain time when we would look up at the star, and I know that Carola is also looking up at “our” star at this moment, and that our sights now meet in this glittering celestial light. It is a comforting feeling. - Towards morning it gets too cool. Then I retreat back to our digs.
While the big privy with the latrine seat is in the far corner of the camp, the den for smaller needs is close to the quarters, right next to the barbed wire fence. With all the watery soup food, these needs occur more often, especially in the morning when we get up. Then the hut is not enough and the prisoners of war stand outside next to the hut, while in front of them, separated only by the wire fence, men and women go to work, and they have yet to step over the rivulets that trickle through the fence from our overflowing pit.
The large privy pit is emptied by a special detachment. Equipped with long poles with tin cans attached to the end, they scoop the contents of the pit into a kind of liquid manure carriage. They call their scooping device the “honey extractor”. For their work, they get a second helping at dinner.
The Russian camp commander has turned a small piece of the camp area along the fence into a potato field for his private use. This is inadmissible. The small field is also looked after by a prisoner of war. That is also inadmissible. That is why the politruk wants to make a report. But he can’t because he himself gets a loaf of bread from our bakery almost every day. That is also inadmissible, and the commander knows about it. So they both don’t do anything against each other, because they both have a skeleton in their closets. And that’s how it is everywhere.
Our Landsers have invented a potato peeling machine: A rough, rotating millstone that scrubs off the skins. So the unpopular after-work potato peeling will be a thing of the past.
The Soviet Union promised before the world public that it would release all prisoners of war by the end of 1948. But it is becoming increasingly clear that this will not happen. So far only a few repatriation transports have left, and even these consisted almost entirely of sick and men incapable of work. With the well-known sluggishness of the Russian bureaucracy, it is utterly impossible to remove the mass of prisoners of war, numbering in the millions, before the end of the year. Apart from the fact that the Russians don’t even want it. Unrest is therefore spreading among the prisoners of war. The fear that they might not come home at all drives some weak characters back to treason and denunciation. There have always been Judases among us who have betrayed their comrades for a water soup. Now their number is increasing. In the hope of ingratiating themselves with the Russian and thereby perhaps getting home sooner, they denounce their comrades. The meanest among them even accuse their comrades of remarks or deeds they did not at all commit. The interrogations by the NKVD are increasing.
On the ramp, 2 Russians form a crook duo. There is a stack of boards guarded by a girl. While one guard distracts the girl by pleasuring her in a quiet corner, the other steals the desired boards.
The “electrostantsya” on the ramp is looked after by Anjuschka. The petrol stored in an earth bunker is also under her supervision. She is a cheerful girl and is always harmlessly teased by the Landsers. - A report on Russian reparation claims against Germany says that the Germans destroyed several hundred Russian electric plants. I wonder how many the size of our board shack were among them?
I’m working on the saw gate at the moment. We use up a lot of saw blades, because there are a lot of shell splinters in the logs, and when the saw hits them, the teeth break away with a ringing screech like tearing iron. Sometimes we don’t have enough spare blades. Then we just keep sawing with the damaged one, or we take out a blade and cut the log into thick planks. Here in the plant, everything is made of wood. Instead of notepaper, wooden boards are used here.
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- ↑ similarly Cartellieri p. 336