Authors: Slavomir Rawicz
‘I never saw the blow coming,’ he went on. ‘After a year’s work, the Russians, without any move from me, doubled my salary, which had been fixed by contract, to show
their appreciation of the steady progress that was being made with the work. From then on I thought I was well in with them.’
Smith was in his flat with the girl after midnight one night in 1936 when the N.K.V.D. called in force. They were quiet, determined and most efficient. Smith and the girl were both arrested. He
never saw her again. Other occupants of the flats probably never saw or heard a thing. When dawn came Smith was occupying a cell in the Lubyanka – it was to be his home for the next six
months. Repeatedly they brushed aside his demands to be allowed to see someone from the United States Embassy.
‘What a transition,’ mused Mister Smith. ‘One day a successful engineer, the next a professional foreign spy. It seems that apart from keeping a general watchful eye on my
activities they had been opening my mail home. The main charge against me was that I had been sending out information about Russia in my letters to my folks in America.
‘The trial was secret and farcical. I got twenty years, as I told you. They confiscated my car and all my possessions, so perhaps they got back most of the extra salary they had so
generously awarded me.
‘I was digging for diamonds in a mine in the Urals. I told them I could, by modern engineering practice, substantially increase efficiency and output. They weren’t interested. They
kept me on manual labour.’
Makowski broke in. ‘Have you ever thought about escaping?’
‘I have been thinking of how it could be done ever since I was first sent to the Urals. I decided I could not do it alone.’
Then he questioned us closely about our plans. He wanted as clear and detailed a picture as we could give at this stage. He questioned shrewdly about the distances involved. Had we realized it
would be a thousand miles of foot-slogging to the borders of Mongolia alone? We talked, almost in whispers, for a long time, as other occupants of Hut Number One came in past us, stamping snow off
their boots, calling out to friends, standing in groups round the three red-hot stoves. I told him we would help him make the move from his hut in the middle of the line to this one. I urged that
time was short.
He stood up, nodded thoughtfully. ‘Goodbye for now,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, gentlemen,’ he answered, and walked out.
The others readily accepted the seventh and last recruit to the party. There was the practical consideration that he would be useful when we got to the English-speaking world. And Zaro told him,
‘I would like to go to America when we are free.’ Said Smith, ‘I would like to have you all come to America.’
By the end of the first week in April we were all in the same hut – a triumph of preliminary organization. We were gathering an impressive store of skins, most of them pulled off the wires
by Kolemenos on his frequent trips to pick up the birch logs for the ski shop. On the grindstone in the ski shop I flattened and sharpened a six-inch nail into an instrument that could be used to
cut and pierce holes in the tough pelts. Our final collection included sable, ermine, Siberian fox and, a real prize, the skin of a deer which one of the officers had shot for the pot. We cut long
thongs of hide for lacing up the simple moccasins we fashioned in the nightly gloom of the hut. We plaited thongs together and used them as belts. Each man made and wore under his
fufaika
a
warm waistcoat with the fur inwards to the body. To protect the legs, we made fur gaiters.
Our acute fear at this time was that we might be betrayed. Our feverish efforts were bound to attract some attention. Had a word been dropped to the Russians, the informant would have been well
paid in extra bread and tobacco. But there was no Judas. Those who suspected what we were up to probably thought us mad and left us alone to the disaster they were sure we were inviting. For the
more casual observer there was nothing odd about pilfering skins from the Russians and using them to the best advantage. We kept apart as much as possible in the hut and most of our serious
planning was done on trips to the latrine trench.
I told Ushakova that I had found six friends. She did not ask me who they were and I do not think she wanted to know. She handed over to me a gift that was to be of inestimable value – an
axehead. ‘That will be on my conscience all my life,’ she said. ‘It is the first thing I have ever stolen.’ I made a handle for it and Kolemenos wore it for safe keeping
inside the back waistband of his trousers.
One other priceless article I made in the ski shop was a fine three-inch-wide and foot-long knife. It was originally a section of broken saw blade which I heated in the workshop stove, hammered
into shape and ground on the grindstone. The handle was two pieces of shaped wood tightly thonged together by long strips of deerskin. As Kolemenos became the keeper of the axe, so did I take over
the custody of the knife. These were perilous possessions inside the camp. The discovery of either would have wrecked the whole scheme.
The problem of making fire was one we already had the answer to. Here, where matches were counted a luxury, there existed an effective, if primitive, method which made use of a thick fungoid
forest growth which the Russians called
gubka,
literally sponge. It could be tugged off the trees in sheets. It was then boiled and dried. The fire-making equipment was completed with a bent
nail and a piece of flintstone. The dry
gubka,
a supply of which we all carried stuffed into our jacket pockets, readily took the spark from the flint and could be blown into a red smoulder.
We all became experts in its use.
The word reached us that in a week’s time it would be Easter Sunday. It fell in 1941 on 13 April, I have since discovered. The Sunday before, 6 April, marked the end of our preparations.
Our escape wardrobe was then complete with the making of seven balaclava caps of fur with an extension flap down the back which could be tucked into the neck of our jackets. We were all tense and
ready to go, worried about our valuable new possessions – the skins, the axe, the knife, the store of dehydrated bread – and fearful that at this point some of them might be stolen.
And on that day Ushakova sent for me and said, ‘My husband has gone to Yakutsk. That is why he did not attend the parade today. I have made seven bags out of provision sacks. You will have
to take them out one at a time.’ She was perfectly calm. My heart was hammering with anxiety. When she handed me the first of these bags I saw that she had provisioned it, too, and I wondered
how possibly we could hide it. I tucked the bag under my arm inside my jacket, stuck my hands in the deep pockets and walked back to the prisoners’ lines hunched up and bending over like a
man in deep thought. Six times more in the next few days I made that hazardous trip, knowing each time that if any Russian discovered what I was carrying disaster would be sudden and complete. We
made pillows of them, covering them with bits of animal skin and moss, and every hour that we were away from the hut we sweated in apprehension.
We acquired in those last few days a discarded and worn soldier’s sheepskin jacket. I told the others of an old poacher’s trick in which a sheepskin was dragged along behind to put
the gamekeeper’s dogs off the human scent. We could try the trick ourselves, I suggested. The others agreed.
We watched the weather, so essential a part of our escape plan. We wanted snow, big-flaked, heavy-falling snow, to screen our movements. Monday was cold and clear. On Tuesday there was
wind-driven, icy sleet. Mid-morning on Wednesday a lead-grey and lowering sky gave us the boon we sought. The snow thickened as the day went on. It began to pile up round the untrodden
no-man’s-land between us and the wire. At the mid-day break the seven of us met briefly. The word went round. ‘This is the day.’ At about 4 p.m. I left the ski shop for the last
time with my
fufaika
bulging with my hoard of bread and the knife-blade cold against my leg in my right boot. We drank our evening mug of hot coffee, ate some of the day’s bread issue
and walked back to the hut in ones and twos.
There were frequent walks to the latrines as we tensely talked over the final plans. It was Smith who advised that we must not start our break too early. The camp must be allowed to settle down
for the night before we moved. Midnight, he thought, would be a reasonable time to run for it. Meanwhile we must try to keep calm. And the blessed snow kept falling in big, obliterating cotton-wool
flakes, covering everything.
Zaro it was who had the preposterous idea of attending the Politruk’s Wednesday evening indoctrination. We laughed at first and then Makowski said, ‘Why not?’ So we went, all
seven of us, leaving our precious, moss-camouflaged bags on our bunks and telling ourselves that now, on this last night, nothing could go wrong. We sat ourselves at the back and the Politruk
beamed a faintly surprised welcome at us. We smiled right back at him and tried not to fidget.
It was the most exciting political meeting I have ever attended, although the element of excitement owed little to the speaker. The Politruk, now the camp’s senior officer in the absence
of Ushakov, was in good form. We heard again about the miracle of the Soviet State, about the value of toil, of self-discipline within the framework of State discipline, of the glorious
international ideal of Communism. And what did Comrade Stalin say to his comrade workers on the State farms in 1938? An eager soldier leaps to his feet and quotes word-for-word two or three
sentences of this epic appeal. The Politruk gave us it all – Soviet culture, capitalist decadence and disintegration and the rest of it. It was, as far as we were concerned, his farewell
speech, and we enjoyed it accordingly.
There was about an hour and a half of it before we stood up to go.
‘Goodnight, Colonel,’ we chorused.
‘Goodnight,’ he answered.
Back in Hut Number One the men were beginning to settle for the night. Smith and Zaro, in the bunk nearest the door, were to give us the starting signal. We all broke up and climbed on to our
bunks and lay there. Six of us lay wide awake and waiting, but big Kolemenos in the bunk below me was gently snoring.
I lay thinking and listening to the bumping of my heart. I remembered I had not said goodbye to Ushakova. I decided she would not have wanted me to. The hours dragged by. Gradually the hut grew
quiet. There was a loud snoring from someone. A man babbled in his sleep. Someone, barely awake, got up and stoked the stove near his bunk.
Smith tapped my shoulder. ‘Now’, he whispered. Gently I shook Kolemenos. ‘Now,’ I repeated.
W
E SWUNG
our bags off the bunks by the rawhide straps which we had fitted for slinging them across our backs. We piled the
moss coverings back in pillow form at the head of the beds. ‘Everybody well?’ I whispered. From all around me came the hissed answer, ‘Yes.’ ‘Anybody changed his
mind?’ There was no reply. Said Makowski, ‘Let’s go.’
I dropped my bag near the door and stepped outside. The camp was silent. It was snowing as heavily as ever. I could not see the nearest wire. In the south-east guard tower, our nearest danger,
they could not have had twenty yards visibility. We could be thankful that in this place of no piped water supply and no electricity, there were no searchlights to menace us.
The inner wire was a hundred yards from the hut door and the success of the first part of the operation depended on the observation that the frost-stiffened coils did not faithfully follow the
contours of the ground. There was a dip in the ground straight ahead of us which we reckoned would provide a couple of feet of clearance if we burrowed through the snow and under the wire.
We went out one by one with about a minute’s interval between each. Zaro went first and I prayed he found the right spot at the first attempt. Then the Lithuanian. Then Mister Smith. Then
Makowski and Paluchowicz. Kolemenos turned and whispered to me, ‘I hope they’ve made a bloody great hole for me to get through.’ I watched him run off into the night like the
others, carrying his bag in front of him, ready, according to plan, to shove it through the gap ahead of him. Then it was my turn, and the palms of my hands were moist with sweat. I took a last
swift look round. The men in the hut were sleeping on. I turned and bolted.
When I reached the wire Smith was under it and slowly wriggling forward. Two were through. The rest of us crouched down and waited. Agonising minutes passed as first the Sergeant and then
Makowski squirmed and grunted, bellies flat pressed against the earth, under the wire. The big bulk of Kolemenos went head first into the gap and I held my breath. He was halfway through when the
barbs took hold on the back of his jacket between the shoulder-blades. He shook himself gently and little pieces of ice tinkled musically down the coils of the wire.
‘Lie still, Anastazi,’ I hissed. ‘Don’t move at all.’ Someone on the other side had pulled his bag through and was reaching through over his neck to try to release
him. The minutes ticked by. I was aware that my jaws were clamped tight and I was trying to count the passing seconds on my fingers. Kolemenos lay very still as the hand worked over between his
shoulders. Someone spoke on the other side and the big man went forward again. I let my breath out in a long sigh and followed through. The first obstacle was behind us. It had taken a full twenty
minutes.
We knelt down along the edge of the dry moat and looked across to the loom of the first tall wooden fence as Kolemenos slithered in and braced himself against the steep-sloping near side. We
used him as a human stepping stone, and as we clambered over him he took our feet in his linked and cupped hands and heaved us one by one on to the ledge at the base of the twelve-foot palisade.
More vital minutes were lost in pulling Kolemenos out of the ditch. By standing on his shoulders and reaching out at full stretch, we were able to haul ourselves over the top, and standing on the
lateral securing timber on the other side, lean over and help up the later arrivals.