Several months after the end of the war the Russians brought trainload after trainload of furniture, food, clothing and equipment from Germany: they called this action “reparations.” We saw Russian women dressed in the uniforms of Nazi officers, the stars and medals still on, obviously enjoying what they considered an attractive style. We found the spectacle ludicrous. As we marched our daily route to work, we found that the train station was loaded with all the furniture from Germany, now the property of the State, which made no effort to divide it among the people, leaving it at the mercy of the elements.
The Russian officials declared that we were no longer prisoners of war, giving us instead the title of “reparation workmen.” There did not seem to be a great deal of difference. We lost all hope for our return to Germany. Nobody in the world could enforce our return. Most of the prisoners had died, no records kept of their passing, and now we were reparation workmen. The free world could only conjecture as to how many men had been captured and how many remained alive.
At Christmas, 1945, each one of us was permitted to send a postcard home. It was a propaganda move only, designed to show that Russia made no secret of its captured soldiers. We tried to contact our relatives, but nobody knew where they were living now. I wrote every month to my parents, but never received an answer, nor was my card returned. Few among us had made contact with our families, and most had abandoned hope of a reunion. Somehow I could not relinquish the hope. Perhaps I will find them when I get back, I comforted myself—but when will it be? One year had passed since the end of the war, and our lives had not changed for the better.
In August, 1946, there was great excitement in camp. Russia had decided to send home the first prisoners. We wondered who would be among them—the sick, the dystrophic, the older men? It was a question for which we found no answer. Nobody had any idea as to how the selection was to be made, but every one of us had hopes of being chosen. The list, when it was made public, sealed our disappointment, for only fifty men were being sent home, and those fifty were so ill as to be nearly dead. However, the mere fact that any were being sent was reassuring; surely Russia had to release more of us. Then the free world and the government of Germany would learn about the numerous prisoners still alive in Russia and would claim their return. Unbreakable faith in the humanity of the free world gave us the strength to carry on and the will power to live.
Soon after this another transport was planned, and I was among the three hundred men selected. We were issued new clothes and fed well for almost fourteen days, happily waiting for the time to come when we would march to the train station. It seemed certain that the new clothes had been given us to make a good impression on our return to freedom, but after six days of riding in the train we stopped at Zelenodolsk on the river Volga, our destination. The guard told us that we had to do reparation work for at least two more years. It seemed the final blow to our spirits, which now lapsed to a point of hopeless acceptance of the inevitable.
From now on we were on our own. The cost of our living was set at five hundred rubles a month for each of us, and we had to work very hard to meet our expenses, since there were some fifty men working inside the camp whom we were compelled to support. We alternated between two factories, one a paper mill and the other a wartime ammunition plant which was now producing aluminum. Our daily fixed quota was so extremely high that we could never fulfill it. I worked for some time in the paper mill, then inside the camp and, in the wintertime, on the river Volga, which was the hardest job. We had to break open the ice upon the river and fish out the logs which were floated in the summer but which were now frozen, pulling them out with long chains. Cold and wet, our clothes frozen to our bodies, we had to work doubly hard in order to keep warm. Many of us suffered frostbitten noses and ears, our hands and feet numbed by the intense cold.
While I was working in the paper mill I made friends with some Russian civilians, asking them about their way of life and how they felt about the Communist party. They would talk to me only when we were alone, fearing to be overheard by the Communists. I discovered that the Russian people were waiting for something to free them, but it would have to come from outside. I consider this to be true even today, regardless of the statements coming out of Russia. State-owned cooperatives (Kolkhozes) are not satisfying the people. The politburo has trained the people to work as industriously as if each individual was an owner, but personal interest in one’s work is entirely lacking. The rule is: He who is not working shall not eat; therefore, every human being must work regardless of what kind of work he does.
The same applies to family life: children of a certain age have to join the youth movement, and are taken away from their parents, to be trained in the communistic ideology and in the profession which seems most vital to the welfare of the nation. A citizen who makes the mistakes of talking against the Communists is tried before a political justice as a criminal against the security of the State and sentenced to hard labor far away from home, his partner in marriage deported in the opposite direction. There is no opportunity for such a family to be reunited, and the marriage is therefore annulled. Such is life under communism. I was born and raised in a good Christian family, where I learned about capitalism, democracy, and national socialism, and now, in Russia, I was living under the Communist system. I went through this “paradise for laborers” with open eyes, but I was unable to find one respect in which the system was not repugnant to freedom-loving people. Nobody owned private property; even radios were to be found only in the office of the political instructor, who listened only to what he was permitted to hear. In the apartments were loudspeakers, through which the occupants could listen only to what the instructor had tuned in. Cars and all other practical equipment were the property of the State. People in certain positions were permitted to make use of these cars, but nobody owned them. Who takes care of something that is not his own?
Farms and vital factories are the property of the State, all such institutions compelled to produce a quota which is fixed by the Department of Agriculture. The supervisors of these farms and factories are Communists, who shift the workers at will, to the places where they are most needed. If all the farms in one state produce only wheat, and all the farms in another state grow only potatoes, they still cannot exchange their product without permission from the authorities.
One incident which astonished me is indicative of the manner in which these people are treated. We were working on a new road and couldn’t fulfill our quota by a fixed date. One day before this date there appeared a truck filled with cleanly dressed women from the next town to lay the asphalt on the new road. I asked several women, “Why do you come here to work with asphalt in your good clothes?” The answer was shocking to me: the women had been in town, waiting in line for their groceries, when the police came and picked up all women on the street and brought them here to work. Their responsibilities as wives and mothers were of no concern to anybody; what was important was that the street be finished on time. Such incidents made me more determined than ever to keep alive the hope of returning to my own country, though when it would he was a question we could not answer.
I had to work in turns in the paper mill, in the aluminum factory, and on the Volga. We could thank the Lord for the fact that the time goes quickly even during periods when it seems that the food shortage will kill you. For two years we worked as hard as our physical constitutions would permit, never once reaching the prescribed quota. In mid-1947 about 50 men—those with some injuries and frostbitten limbs—were selected to be transported home. We were happy for them, because their lives were in danger under the conditions prevailing in Russia, but whether they reached their native country nobody knows.