Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(127)

Alexander knew that the Germans spared their lives only because he came to them bearing not weapons but woundedGerman men. The Germans thought the Soviets were worse than animals for letting their own soldiers perish of wounds on the battlefield. Alexander, Ouspensky and Demko were spared because they acted like human beings and not like Soviets.

Pasha had told Alexander the Germans had two kinds of POW camps, and he was right. This one was divided into two parts--one for the Allied prisoners, one for the Soviets. In the Allied camps, the prisoners were treated according to the rules of war. The text of the 1929 Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners was proudly displayed in those camps. In the Soviet camps, separated from the Allies by barbed wire, the prisoners were treated according to the rules of Stalin. They weren't given medical attention, they weren't given food beyond bread and water. They were interrogated and beaten and tortured and finally left to die. The other Soviet prisoners were forced to dig graves for their fallen comrades. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Alexander didn't care how he was treated. He was near Germany, a few kilometers from the Oder river, and he was with Pasha. He waited patiently for the Red Cross nurses to come through the camps and was surprised and slightly disheartened when they did not. There were soldiers sick and dying even on the Allied side. Yet even for the French and the English there was no Red Cross. No one would give him a clear answer as to why, not even the major who interrogated him, not even the guards who manned his barracks. Pasha said something must have happened to make the Germans forbid the Red Cross access through their camps.

"Yes, they're losing the war," said Ouspensky. "That's bound to make anyone less agreeable to the rules."

"No one was talking to you," snapped Pasha.

"Oh, God, the both of you!" exclaimed Alexander.

"Lieutenant," said Pasha to Ouspensky, "why can't you leave us alone for just a moment? Why are you always at our side?"

"What do you have to hide, Metanov?" asked Ouspensky. "Why such need to be alone all of a sudden?"

Alexander walked away from them. They followed him. Pasha said, sighing with resignation at Ouspensky's presence, "I think we should try to escape. What's the point of staying here?"

Alexander snorted mildly. "There are no floodlights and no watchtowers. I don't think it can be called escaping, Commander," he said, pointing out a hole five meters wide in the barbed wire fence. "I think it's called leaving."

He himself did not want to run at first, hoping for the IRC to come through. But as weeks went by and the conditions in the camp deteriorated and the IRC was nowhere in sight, he concluded they had no choice. The barbed wire had been fixed. They used wire cutters, found in the engineer's tool shed, to cut through another hole and run. The three of them were picked up four hours later by two guards from the camp who came after them in a Volkswagen K?bel. Upon their return, the commandant of the camp, Oberstleutnant Kiplinger said, "You're crazy. Where did you think you were headed? There is nowhere to go, there is just more of this. I'll let you off this time, but don't do it again." He gave Alexander a cigarette. They both lit up.

"Where is the Red Cross, Commandant?"

"What do you care where the Red Cross is? Like they ever come for you. No packages for the Soviet men, Captain."

"I know that. Just wanted to know where they were, that's all."

"New decree. They're forbidden to inspect the camps."

Alexander kept as clean as he could, shaved scrupulously, and made himself useful by offering to work for the commandant. Kiplinger, against the rules of the Geneva Convention and in accordance with Alexander's wishes, gave him a saw, nails and a hammer and let him build more barrack housing for the prisoners. Ouspensky helped him, but it was too hard for him in the wet winter with only one lung. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Pasha volunteered to work in the kitchen, and that way managed to steal enough extra food for himself and Alexander, and reluctantly for Ouspensky also.

That was at the end of November 1944. December came and went, the camps filled up. Alexander couldn't build the new barracks fast enough in the freezing weather. The barracks in both the Allied and the Soviet camps normally held a thousand men. Now, stretched beyond limits, they held ten thousand.

"Lieutenant Ouspensky," Alexander said, "I find it ironic that they should have so many Soviet men here when the law against surrender is so clear. I just can't understand it. Can you explain that?"

"They're obviously renegades like you, Captain."

There was not enough food or water for everyone. Soldiers remained filthy and bred disease on their soiled bodies. The barbed wire came down, the camps became as one. The Germans were clearly unable to figure out what to do with 5,000 Soviet POWs. Aside from the Soviet contingent, there were Romanians, Bulgarians, Turks and Poles.

There were no Jews anywhere.

"Where are all the Jews?" one Frenchman asked, in broken English, and Alexander in Russian replied dryly that they were all in Majdanek, but the Frenchman and the Englishman didn't understand and stepped away from him. Ouspensky was nearby, and Alexander did not want to arouse suspicion by talking in English.

"Captain, how do you know there aren't any Jews in this camp?" asked Ouspensky as they walked back to their barracks.