Humanity in war: Siberia, December 1944 (Published on 03/01/2024)
Just as surely as war gives birth to death and suffering, it also brings about the emergence of people on all sides who have retained their humanity and who provide help and assistance to others in need, even if they have been declared an “enemy” whose support means danger to their own lives.
Rudi Weit and Erwin Mager report on one such incident from their time as prisoners of war in Siberia in the year 1944 a publication by Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (Weit/Mager – Das Wunder des 24. Dezember, Kriegsgefangenschaft in Sibirien 1944, from: Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V., Weihnachtsgeschichten aus schwerer Zeit [8th ed., 2017], p. 136 ff.).
They write there (translation from German language):
“Outside around the barracks, an icy wind whistled and howled, drifting in from the nearby Siberian steppe and only occasionally drowned out by eerie snatches of plaintive howls from the hungry wolves prowling around the camp.
35 to 40 degrees below zero! That’s why we felt almost safe in the huge barracks, which had been enriched with ‘warmth’ from our own bodies, resulting in a reasonably bearable temperature and a tolerable stay.
Security – did we still know it? Were we not too shaken up inside to feel it at all?
Especially today, Christmas Eve, we hoped that we would be left in the barracks in the freezing cold, especially as it was the weekend. But unfortunately we were wrong. All of a sudden, the officer on duty called out to us: ‘Come out, quick, quick!’
We gathered behind the huge and heavily guarded camp gate. The Natschalnik convoy, a Kyrgyz guard leader, counted us laboriously and grumpily until we were told ‘Khorosho, daway’, which translated meant: ‘All in order – march off’.
The biting cold soon froze the skin, and if you didn’t check each other to see if white patches appeared on your face so that you could immediately rub them with snow, irreparable damage to your face was quickly done.
We didn’t know where we were going. We soon arrived at an improvised building site. There were some wagons there that we had to load with building rubble. ‘Naraboti, daway, daway’, whined the Natschalnik, and we dragged ourselves to the assigned work. Our emaciated bodies struggled in the icy cold, while the Kyrgyz quickly lit a fire and made himself a machorka. He held his shotgun securely in his hand and his cunning eyes constantly peered along the exclusion zone to make sure no one approached the taut wire. He would have opened fire on him unerringly.
About half an hour had passed, which seemed like an eternity to us. The Kyrgyz didn’t like the task assigned to him either. He kept saying ‘daway, daway’, one of the first phrases we had learned in Russian. He indicated that we would be allowed back into the camp when we had finished our work. ‘Skoro na barak’, he encouraged us. We pulled ourselves together again with the last of our strength, even though our stomachs ached with hunger.
And then it happened. While we were laboriously heaving some heavy boulders onto the wagon, some of us saw an old, haggard little mother standing behind the next pile of rubble, her face all too clearly scarred by the cruel war. She beckoned to us, pointing again and again to a messily wrapped ‘something’. She wanted to send it to us. She probably knew that today was Christmas Eve for us. In atheist Russia, there was no such thing anymore.
None of us could venture any closer out of the exclusion zone if we didn’t want to gamble with our lives. The little mother couldn’t be caught either. So good advice was expensive. The older woman kept disappearing behind the pile of rubble if she was afraid of being spotted and caught by the guard. It would have been bad for her in those days.
When she felt safe for a moment, she scurried forward from the pile and hastily placed the package near us. It then disappeared for good, as if it had swallowed the frozen earth. We breathed a sigh of relief, but how did we get hold of the ‘something’?
Our guard, however, had seen the woman long ago and had also noticed that she had put down a package. When he turned to us and we deliberately threw ourselves into the work to avert any suspicion, he called out to us: ‘Daway, idi’ (which means quickly, get it). We weren’t sure whether he meant that one of us should get the ‘something’. Once before we had lost a comrade over a piece of paper in the exclusion zone. Nobody wanted to risk it.
Then, as if by chance, the guard put his shotgun to one side as a sign that he wasn’t going to shoot, and again he called out to us: ‘Daway beri’ (so, quick, get it). That was clear, and one of us ran to the spot and took the ‘something’. As he ran, some of us heard him say ‘beri kushai’, meaning that we should eat the contents of the packet. ‘Prasdnik vasche prasdnik’, with which he made us understand that he knew that today was our highest holiday, in which we ourselves no longer really wanted to believe.
We fraternally shared the piece of bread that the dear little mother had certainly saved from her own mouth. Sour, sticky bread, but it tasted better than the most delicious Christmas cookies at home!
We could not thank the little mother and the human sentry with words. The barriers that still existed at the time were insurmountable. But we still did it by absorbing what had become clear that day as an everlasting memory. There are good people everywhere, and no barriers in the world can stop such good-heartedness.”
Let us keep our faith and trust in humanity and its boundless power. No political slogan and no threat of punishment can overcome it, because it is – in name alone – what defines human beings at their core. It allows every person to be the light they want to bring into the world and no one can stop them.
One single person makes the difference.
(Head picture: Winter scene in Düsseldorf,
December 2022)
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