Authors: Slavomir Rawicz
Between us and the surrounding forest were the typical defences of a prison camp. Looking from the inside, the first barrier to freedom was an unbroken ring of coiled barbed wire, behind which
was a six-feet-deep dry moat, its inner side cut downwards at an angle of about thirty degrees and its outer wall rising sheer and perpendicular to the foot of the first of two twelve-feet-high log
palisades presenting a smooth surface inwards but strongly buttressed on the far side. Both outer sides of the two wooden walls were protected by rolled barbed wire. The space between the two
provided a well-beaten track giving access from the main gate guardroom to all four control towers, and was regularly patrolled by armed sentries accompanied at night by police dogs, who shared
kennels near the west gate with a pack of sled dogs.
Mingling diffidently with us that first morning were about a thousand men, a large proportion of them Finns, who were already installed when our bedraggled crowd of some 4,500 arrived. They came
from four big huts at the eastern end of the compound. These log-built prisoner barracks were about eighty yards long by ten yards wide conforming in situation with the general plan of the camp
itself, the doors, facing west, in the narrow end and protected from the direct blast of wind and snow by a small covered porch with a southerly opening. It was obvious that there was no
accommodation for us newcomers.
Speculation was cut short by orders from the troops to line ourselves up for food. We shuffled along in line to the open window of the kitchens, one of the buildings to the left of the main
gate. There was the usual issue of ersatz coffee and bread. Each man drank up as quickly as he could and returned his tin mug through another window. There was plenty of hot liquid but a shortage
of utensils. This shortage remained all the time I was in the camp and applied also to the wooden bowls in which soup was dished out.
Into the middle of the parade ground soldiers carried out a portable wooden platform. Around it, under orders from junior officers and N.C.O.s, they formed a ring. We prisoners were then hustled
to form ourselves in a big circle around the troops, facing inwards towards the platform. Accompanied by a small armed guard, two Russian colonels walked through the ranks to the foot of the
platform. One of them stepped up. From my place in the front row I eyed him closely. He was tall, slim and distinguished looking, his hair greying at the temples, a typical example of a
professional soldier in any army. His small grey moustache was carefully trimmed, his lean face showed two deep lines etched from a firm mouth into a strong chin. He carried his head slightly
forward and I was struck by his air of detachment, that indefinable quality of effortless authority that any man who has served in armed forces will have met in professional commanders. He was
facing a hostile audience, a mob of ill-treated humans whose bitter hate of all things Russian was almost a tangible thing, but he gave no sign. He stood perfectly relaxed with no movement of
hands, feet or body. From the assembled prisoners there was a hum of comment. The Colonel turned his head slowly to look at us all. There was perfect silence.
He spoke clearly and crisply in Russian. ‘I am Colonel Ushakov,’ he said. ‘I am commandant of this camp. You have come here to work and I expect from you hard work and
discipline. I will not talk to you of punishment since you probably know what to expect if you do not behave.
‘Our first job is to provide shelter for you. Your first task, therefore, will be to build barracks for yourselves. How quickly you get inside out of the weather depends on your own
efforts. It is up to you. In all communities there are those who will let others do the work for them. That kind of slacking will not be tolerated here and it will be to the benefit of all of you
to see that everyone pulls his weight.
‘I expect no trouble from you. If you have any complaints I will always listen to them, and I will do what is in my power to help you. There are no doctors here but there are trained
soldiers who can administer first-aid. Those of you who are now too sick after your journey to work will be accommodated in the existing barracks while the rest of you get on with the new
buildings. That is all I have to say.’
He stepped down. Immediately the other Colonel took his place. He did not step up so much as leap forward in eagerness. There was nothing relaxed about this man. If there was a sense of
restrained authority about Ushakov, this fellow wore his power like a flaunting banner. He was better dressed than the Commandant. He wore a sheepskin jacket, his well-made high boots were of soft
leather, brightly polished. He was young enough to have been Ushakov’s son.
If I ever knew his name, I do not remember it. He was the political officer and we never called him anything but the Politruk, the short title by which all such officials were known. He stood
for fully a minute just looking at us, faintly smiling, eminently sure of himself, a picture of well-being and arrogance. The men stirred uneasily and stayed quiet.
He spoke like a sergeant-major, strongly, harshly and insultingly. ‘Look at you,’ he said, hunching his shoulders and placing his gloved hands on his hips. ‘You look like a
bunch of animals. Just look at yourselves! You are supposed to be the highly civilized people who fancy they can run the world. Can’t you now appreciate what stupid nonsense you have been
taught?’
Fortified by his anonymity in the restless crowd, one brave man had the temerity to answer back. His voice shocked the silence of the pause which the Politruk had allowed himself for dramatic
emphasis after his opening onslaught. ‘How can we look any different? You won’t let us shave, there’s no soap and no clean clothes.’
The Politruk turned in the direction of the voice. ‘I’ll get your food ration stopped if I am interrupted again.’ He was not interrupted again.
‘After a time here,’ he went on, ‘and under the guidance of Comrade Stalin, we shall make useful citizens of you. Those who don’t work don’t eat. It is my job to
help you to improve yourselves. It won’t all be work here. You can attend classes to correct your way of thinking. We have an excellent library which you can use after working
hours.’
There was some more in the same vein. Then, briskly, ‘Any questions?’ A prisoner asked, ‘When does spring come here?’ Replied the Politruk, ‘Don’t ask stupid
questions.’ The meeting ended.
The first few days of building the new prisoners’ barracks were chaotic. All were willing enough to work but it was most difficult to direct to the work for which they were effective the
men with the best qualifications. The position sorted itself out smoothly enough after about three days. There were teams of architects and surveyors to plan out the ground and mark with stakes the
plots for each hut. There were teams of young labourers hacking away at the frozen earth to make deep post-holes for the main structural timbers. There were builders, men skilled in the use of axes
to rough-shape the virgin wood from the forest. The main labour force issued forth from the camp gate every morning at eight, in charge of armed soldiers.
I joined the forest workers. The camp was awakened by a bugle at 5 a.m. and there was an early morning procession of half-asleep men to the latrine trenches inside the wire behind the building
site. Then would follow the line-up for breakfast. Tools were issued from the store on the left side of the gate, carefully checked out and as scrupulously checked in again at the end of the day.
As we marched out of the gate a tallyman checked our names against his lists.
The forest was mainly of pine, but there was also an abundance of birch and larch. I worked in a felling team, handling one end of a heavy, cross-cut, two-man saw. Occasionally I was able to get
some variation by lopping with an axe the branches of the trees. Since the days of my boyhood on the estate at Pinsk I had always been handy with an axe and I enjoyed the work. I found my strength
coming back daily. I became absorbed in the bustle and activity. There was a glow of pride and satisfaction in being able to use my hands again. At 1 p.m. we went back to the camp, man-handling the
timber we had cut back to the builders. We received a midday issue of soup and returned to the forest to work until the light faded. Each day the line of huts increased in length.
A fortnight after our arrival the huts were finished. They lay in two lines with a wide ‘street’ between each line of ten huts. I was allocated a bunk in one of the last half-dozen
to be completed and I well remember the wonderful feeling of shelter and warmth, protection and comfort I felt the first night I came in out of the chilling night into my new home. The air smelt
deliciously of fresh-cut pine. Down each long side wall of heavy timbers were fifty three-tier bunks, simply made of planks laid out within a strong, four-post framework. Three square, sheet-iron
stoves equally spaced out down the length of the room blazed red into the gloom, fuelled by short pieces of sawn log, of which a supply was brought in daily by the forest working parties. Following
the example of those already installed in their huts we had brought in as much moss as we could carry in our
fufaikas
to spread on the hard boards of our beds. There were no chimneys for the
stoves; the smoke issued from a short length of stackpipe and curled away through vents in the roof. The smell of wood-smoke mingled with the scent of the pine. I lay on my top bunk, hands clasped
behind my head and listened to the talk of the men around me.
Lying on his side facing me on one of the adjoining top bunks was a man of about fifty. We talked about the huts. We complimented the builders on the excellence of their workmanship, we were
magnanimous enough to compliment the Russians on their efficient stoves. We talked about each other. He told me he had been a schoolteacher in Brest Litovsk and a sergeant in the Polish Army
Reserve. The Russians came and he lost his job to a Communist who had taken a fortnight’s ‘short course’ in teaching in the Soviet style. The mothers still brought their children
to him, someone complained, he was arrested, interrogated and sentenced to ten years. I sympathized, even as I thought, ‘Ten years; you’re lucky, my friend.’ He was still talking
as I fell asleep, my first real sleep for months.
We had to spend many hours in our huts. After 6 p.m. all prisoners had to be back in their own quarters. A certain amount of movement in and around the huts was allowed as long as there was no
standing about in large groups. Both lines of barracks were under close supervision from the towers at the eastern end of the compound, but as long as prisoners obeyed the strict order to keep well
away from the wire, the guards took no action. There was nothing much to do in the huts. There was nothing to read and no light to read by. The only permitted activity after the 6 p.m. deadline was
a visit either to the Wednesday night lecture by the Politruk or to the library, the other Politruk-controlled enterprise. I began to think a browse among the books would commit me to nothing and
would break up the long nights. On an impulse I sought permission to go to the library one evening. It was readily granted.
The library was housed in half of one of the administrative buildings on the left of the gate and farthest away from it, about twenty yards from the wire on the long south side. About two
hundred books were set out on plain wooden shelves along one side of the room and I moved about picking them out at random. There were a number of works by a man named Mayakovski. Some fifty books
were all of a series of
Russkaya Azbuka,
illustrated primers for children. On this and other nights I spent some time reading the
Azbuka.
It was an ABC, the text in simple verses,
extolling the virtues of Soviet aeroplanes and pilots, Soviet tanks and tankmen, the Red Army, Soviet heroes like Voroshilov, Soviet statesmen like Lenin and Stalin, Soviet tractor-drivers and
kolhoz
workers, and all the rest of the glories of the U.S.S.R.
But the pride of the collection was the
History of the Great Communist Party of Bolsheviks
in two well-bound volumes, and a complete version of the Russian Constitution. I spent some
interesting hours with both works and concluded there was little danger that, even in twenty-five years, I should be converted to Communism of the Russian or any other brand.
It was a lively, cynical and entertaining Czech occupying a bunk near me who persuaded me to go along to one of the Politruk’s Wednesday night talks, compulsory for all off-duty troops.
The Politruk made no secret of his pleasure at seeing us and addressed a few special remarks to us before proceeding to deal with his military class. He spoke of the might of Russia, of her
dominating place in the world (with asides at us on the decadence of the evil Capitalist system). Soldiers asked questions and the Politruk answered with the dogma of Marx and quotations from the
speeches and writings of Lenin and Stalin. He was smiling as we left He would not have been smiling a few minutes later had he watched the Czech put on a magnificent show for the benefit of the
prisoners in our hut of the Politruk’s education of the Red Army. I joined in the uproarious laughter. The Czech was a born actor and mimic. He wound up by asking for questions from his
vastly entertained audience and answered them in an acidly-clever distortion of Marxisms, Leninisms and Stalinisms. The rest of the prisoners agreed that our visit to school had been well
worthwhile.
There was a diversion of a different kind a few nights later. In our hut was one of the handful of prisoner priests, mostly Roman Catholic, but with a few Russian and Greek Orthodox also. We
were lying and sitting about late in the evening when our cleric, a Roman Catholic, walked slowly down the long aisle between the beds asking quietly if anyone objected to his holding a short
service. Some did not answer, no one objected. He stood in the middle of the room and carried through a simple service, the Latin words striking strangely in this place. I peered at him through the
faint light given out by the stoves and thought it odd to see a Catholic priest in a long black beard. Then he prayed for our deliverance and I climbed down from my bunk and fell on my knees. Many
others did the same. Holding in his hand a silver birch crucifix, he called a blessing down on us. He was beanpole thin, tall and slightly stooped, his black hair tinged with grey, although he was
probably not more than 35. I never knew what brought him to Siberia. He never talked about himself. His name was Gorycz, which means in Polish ‘bitterness’. No man could have been more
unsuitably labelled.