about because the college had informed them I had absconded, as I feared at first. Yet had I not finished my studies voluntarily, I would have been safely in the classroom at that time of day.
They took me first to a depot in Hrubieszow, where about twenty other boys of my age, some of whom I knew, were waiting. The following day they drove us to a labour camp on the eastern side of the Bug, close to the village of Krylow. It was here, not far from home, that they wanted us to work, rather than in Germany, as most of us had supposed. On arrival overseers issued us with grey-green uniforms: a tunic and pair of trousers made of rough cotton, which we put on over our other clothing. No one had a change of clothes because we had all been picked up on the street. All we had with us was what we happened to wearing at the time of arrest.
The camp was surrounded on all sides by double barbed wire and guarded by a single tower manned by two soldiers equipped with a swivel machine gun, which enabled them to shoot on all sides in cases of attempted escape. Over the six weeks I was there, several workers, who had either strayed too near to the fences, refused to obey an order or tried to run away while on a working party, were summarily shot. The fences, which measured roughly twelve to thirteen feet in height, bent inwards so that even with protective gloves and heavy clothing it was impossible to climb over them. The camp was small and had been erected at speed, containing only five or six prefabricated wooden huts that served as our barracks and conformed to the standard size for German camp buildings, which can nowadays be seen at the ‘museums’ at Dachau, Sachsenhausen and elsewhere. In Majdanek the size and design of the huts were the same, but they had inserted four rows of bunks rather than three, making conditions more cramped. A small group of prisoners with an overseer could construct and dismantle everything in a matter of hours and then take the barbed wire, tower and huts on to the next site. In the six weeks I was there we were moved only once to another camp built on exactly the same lines; there must have been dozens of similar ones in the area.
At first light, or even earlier as the days grew shorter, they would take us to places near the Bug where, under the supervision of German engineers, we dug foundations for concrete pillboxes. The fortifications all faced east, which meant that already in the autumn of Stalingrad the Germans were preparing for the defence of Poland. Less than a mile separated the line of pillboxes from the dug-outs and little forts facing west towards the Reich the Soviets had erected in similar haste and which they had quickly surrendered in June 1941. In my barracks I met boys who had spent time in other camps where they had been sent to build roads and ammunition bunkers as well as pillboxes. Some camps sounded better than ours, some worse, but no one reported that the Germans tortured the labourers as a matter of policy. Although some guards carried batons the shape of baseball bats and others hit prisoners with the butts of their rifles, our main enemies proved to be the weather and the work rather than the guards themselves.
As winter grew colder and wetter, we worked in gales and snow storms, often knee-deep in water, shovelling up sodden earth to carve out foundations for the military installations. Rain and snow penetrate clothing quickly; chest complaints that led to high fevers, pneumonia and hypothermia laid up a third of the workforce at any one time. A paramedic dispensed aspirins to the sick, as the barracks filled up with those too weak to move, let alone work. Although the conditions were atrocious and regard for our welfare minimal or non-existent, compared with what I later encountered in Majdanek these six weeks shifting earth were a holiday. In a concentration camp they have one object in mind: to kill you. Here at least they had a practical reason for wanting us to stay alive and they fed us enough to keep us going. No one died of hunger. In the evenings we could sometimes light a fire in the stove and the camaraderie of enforced proximity and shared hardship added to the hope that the misery would soon come to an end, kept our spirits from sinking. Yet when they told me that they wanted to keep us there for at least a year I knew I would not be able to take it and resolved to escape and return home come what may. It would take a bit more than this to break my spirit.
The only time that escape was remotely possible was on a work party outside the camp. Any other time would have been suicidal. My example from the beginning had been Uncle Edek, whom the Germans had abducted that summer, along with six of my grandfather’s prize cart-horses and best cart, ordering him to join a convoy carrying shells and ammunition to the front. We had no reason to suppose we would see him again, dead or alive, yet he returned within three weeks, which now made me think there was hope for me.
His account of his escape sounded incredibly simple and required nothing more than a touch of daring at the right moment. He had driven his cart as far as the Pripet Marshes, some 100 miles from Hrubieszow, when his convoy had come under attack from partisan artillery and Soviet aircraft. Edek abandoned his vehicle, dived for cover and, when the bombing had ended, simply slipped away into the bushes. His captors would have been in no mood to check what had happened to him. The conditions of war make possible such unlikely escapes, for after the guns have stopped firing and the sound of artillery ceased to ring in the guards’ ears, no one is inclined to organise a roll-call. Although I was unlikely to end up in the firing-line, I decided to seize my opportunity as soon as it presented itself. This required discretion, patience and at best a partner I could trust and who would not let me down once we had broken out. I approached a friend from Hrubieszow called Mietek and together we decided to make a run for it.
Towards the end of November two lorries with 40 to 50 prisoners between them took us to the western bank of the river, where we were ordered once more to dig into the hard frozen ground, a not quite impossible task since the deeper you dig the less frozen the earth actually is. The site was completely exposed and a fierce wind swept across the plain. As the time of departure drew nearer and the light grew dimmer, Mietek and I hid behind a concrete wall and listened to the others pack away their shovels and clamber into the lorries. This was the moment when success or failure would be decided. The guards usually counted how many of us got into the lorry and would have searched high and low once they had discovered anyone had disappeared. We knew this but had taken a chance because of the harsh weather and the darkness, and because we hoped the guards would think there was nowhere for anyone to hide on the open river bank. We continued to hold our breath as the engines started. They did not count their prisoners and did not come after us. Instead the lorries pulled away while we lay motionless, hardly daring to twitch until the rumble of the engines had died away.
Nearby we discovered an abandoned house where we slept, found warmer clothes and ate what little food the former inhabitants had left behind. In the morning we set off for Mirce, where Mietek’s family lived and where we intended to hide until the dust had settled. Then our objective was to find a partisan unit, either in the immediate area or further afield. I wanted revenge now more than ever. I also wanted to get home to my family, but realised that if the Germans decided to look for me that was the first place they would search.
The trudge to Mirce was not without its perils, and even though we tried to stick to the fields it was impossible to avoid the roads completely. That evening two Ukrainian militia stopped us and threatened to shoot us for leaving our houses after curfew. They both yelled at us, first in Ukrainian and subsequently in broken Polish, calling us dirty Lacki (from Polacki, a derogatory term for Poles). They debated loudly whether or not they should shoot us there and then. When I made a remark in Ukrainian one of them bellowed at me that I should not pretend to be Ukrainian when I was Polish.
‘But what do you know?’ I answered.
‘You’re a Haho [someone from western Ukraine], you don’t speak my language.’
I then tried to sing a song in the east Ukrainian dialect in the hope he would think I came from that region. They listened.
‘For God’s sake, say something in German to them! They won’t dare touch us then,’ I whispered to Mietek. He then gestured to the writing on his tunic, ‘Verstehen Sie Deutsch? Arbeiterabteilung ...’
By now we had succeeded in confusing them totally and the sergeant told his subordinate to let us go, adding that it did not matter
