On July 15, 1942 (I very well remember that cursed day) we met peasants in the forest and asked them for some food. We were literally dying of hunger. The peasants did not give us anything, but told us, that residents in a nearby village (Kolodezi or Istruby) had food they had looted from state warehouses. They also told us that there were no German troops in the village. It was a small village with an individual house with a barn standing in front of it. We knew that Germans always sent out sentries in the villages they occupied. We were observing the village from the forest for a long time but noticed no sentry. One of my men quietly sneaked to the first house along the fence and reported that the house was empty. Then we carefully walked out of the forest and headed for the village. We barely made it to the first house that we thought was empty, when German soldiers rushed out of it, shouting and shooting their submachine guns. They cut off our route of retreat into the forest. We were trapped. I only made it to shoot my pistol once, when one of my men grabbed my hand and shouted: “Don’t shoot, they will kill us!” Germans grabbed me, started to beat me with rifle butts, knocked out my pistol from my hands, and when I fell down, started to beat me up with their boots. I did not understand everything that they were shouting, because I had other things to mind. Besides that, they were speaking too quickly and did not pronounce the words till the end; they kind of swallowed the endings. But alas, I could well understand the general meaning: “It was him who was shooting! We should kill this swine! But not here, let’s do it behind the barn, there is a hole there.” I had enlisted men’s overcoat on me – I put it on over my officer’s uniform so that I would not stand out among my men. So, now they pulled me by this overcoat. Where? Apparently, to that hole behind the barn. The overcoat got unbuttoned. Germans saw my officer uniforms, belts, my Lieutenant’s insignia and my field map case of yellow leather. They stopped pulling me and started staring at me.

"Du bist Komissar?" ("Are you a commissar?") I barely managed to answer: "Nein, ich bin Oberleitenant". ("No, I am Senior Lieutenant".) Germans bent down and continued examining me, while I was lying on the ground, weak and indifferent to my own fate. The Germans quietly talked to each other. Then one of them, apparently, an NCO, said: “He is not lying. This is an officer. We should take him to HQ. There is an order that if we get an officer, he should be brought to HQ”. They did not beat me anymore. They helped me to stand up and took me somewhere, sometimes pushing me in the back with a rifle butt. I walked, although I could barely move my feet, weakened by the starvation and the beating. I saw everything as if through a fog, I felt dizzy. It all looked just like a bad dream, which was not even happening to me, but to another person. It seemed to me that I was no longer there, that I was already dead lying there at the edge of the village. It felt like the Germans were taking someone else to their HQ.

I do not remember how long it took to get to the HQ. I do not remember how long we walked. My men were no longer with me. They were taken away somewhere, and I never saw them again. They brought me to another village. As I learnt later, its name was Razboynya (Burglars’ place) – a quite fitting name. Next to the village, in a clearing, I saw rows of tents of some German military unit.

Soldiers took me (or better said dragged me) into some tent, apparently, a staff room, which had a large table and stools. They took off my overcoat and webbing, took out all things from my pockets and put it all on the table. German officers arrived. They carefully looked through all my belongings, papers and pictures. Luckily, my Communist party ID and Officer Id with the number of the regiment were hidden in my high boots, and Germans did not find them. One of the German officers went on to interrogate me in very bad Russian, often switching to German. The first question was whether I was a Commissar or not. In order to check my negative answer, they thoroughly examined sleeves of my tunic in the places, where political officers had their sleeve stars. Were there traces of stars there, maybe I just ripped them off? Then they asked me whether I was a member of Komintern, whether I was a professional officer or drafted from reserve; what is my ethnic group, and I a pure Russian; where is the General the Division commander. How on earth could I know? I could barely answer the questions, I felt very dizzy and weak. They were curious about my pictures. They paid a special attention to the picture of my wife sitting at a window. I told them that the picture was taken in my flat in Moscow. Then they mockingly asked me: "Is this the only window in your flat?" I answered them that there were other windows as well. They took away all my gear, the belts, gun holster with my pistol, my map case and compass. After the interrogation they took me to some place, fenced with barbed wire. Behind the barbed wire I saw pitiful shelters made of boxes and sheets of rusted iron. Russian prisoners of war, who were working for German unit, lived there. These men met me very warmly. They went to the German canteen and brought a pot of porridge and a loaf of bread for me. They also warned me that I should be careful. There was one German guard, who was searching among the prisoners for anyone, who looked like a Jew. Then he would take them to a forest and shoot them. Other Germans disliked him but did not prevent him from doing so. It turned out that the guard had already asked about me from the other prisoners, as my dark hair seemed suspicious to him. But guys managed to convince him that I was Russian. Soon this bastard saw me across the barbed wire fence and started to ask provocative questions. I barely talked myself out of him.

I must say thanks to the Russian prisoners who gave me food and let me stay in one of the shelters overnight. The next morning I woke up and first could not understand, where I was. But pain in my entire body from the beating the day before reminded me about the tragic event – I was a prisoner! Hospitable hosts, the captured soldiers, were taken away for work somewhere early in the morning. However, they did not forget to leave a pot of porridge and piece of bread for me. Thank you, comrades!

I could see the German base through the barbed wire fence. Beautiful tents were set in perfectly straight rows. There were flowers planted in front of the tents, and German steel helmets were lying in perfectly straight rows in front of them. There were some colourful tactical symbols and flags hanging everywhere. As if there were no war, but it was a peacetime military base. They did not move a thumb to camouflage their base. They could afford such a peaceful life only because we did not have air force, or armour, in this sector of the front, and our weak forces in this sector were surrounded. All this glittering beauty and order for show were totally strange to the surrounding Russian landscape: the forest, the fields, the Russian village huts. I felt that all this “German order”, which came here so violently, would not be able to stay here for long.

Soon I was put into a batch of prisoners, who were taken to the west. Before my departure I accidentally saw one of the German officer who was interrogating me the night before. He had my favourite map case of yellow leather attached to his belt – the map case that I bought in Red Army store in Moscow. What could I do? I was in such a position, that any German could take everything he wanted from me, including my life. One should note that Germans were in generally hunting for Soviet leather map cases. The mean bastards Polizei (Polizei – a name that was given by Russians to the other Russians, who co-operated with the Germans and became members of police), who tried their best to prove their loyalty to their new masters, were especially known for that.

So, captivity. We marched under heavy escort. Those who were wounded or exhausted and could not walk, was always under threat of execution. In some places, on the edges of the roads, in ditches we saw decomposing bodies of Soviet soldiers. We were lucky to be captured in the summer. Those who were captured in wintertime told us, that during their march German guards would take away their felt boots. They would knock a prisoner down and take his boots off his feet. Comrades would give him some rags to wrap his feet it, but it did not help for long time. Such a prisoner without boots would start freezing, falling behind, falling, and guards would shoot him. Germans were also taking away nice fur hats and sheepskin coats. Remaining in the cold undressed meant a pneumonia and death. After several shifts of march we were taken to a large ROW camp in town Sychevka.

POW camp in Sychevka. Crowds of hungry and unshaved men behind barbed wire fence. Barracks and warehouses, in which wounded, sick and healthy are all lying together on hastily made bunk beds. In the camp we saw gallows, which still had pieces of ropes hanging. Prisoners who had been in the camp for a long time, told us, that executions had taken place shortly before our arrival. The first thing they did to us was searching. They took away all remaining papers and burnt them in our eyes. Why? So that any person would feel as “Ivan without name”, a being deprived of any rights, which was fully in the hands of German Kulturtraegers. At the same time they took away watches, pocket knives, bandages, money, rings – all that the Polizei could like. On the day of our arrival, during the night, two-level bunk beds collapsed under weight of the sleeping prisoners, crushing those who were on the first level. All these things happened in complete darkness, as there was no light. Crushed and suffocated men were dying in complete darkness without any medical help. Here I met one of my men. Our group was being taken along a barrack, where captured soldiers stayed. All of a sudden a soldier shouted to me, that he was happy to see me alive and thanked me that I had not left my men like other offices and stayed with them till the end. I recognized the soldier. I used to be tough on him due to his lack of discipline, and his kind words here, in German captivity, really touched me.

The situation was queer and wild. It was an ultimate freedom for the criminals. Theft and the right of the stronger prevailed. Most of prisoners were depressed by captivity and could not resist the attacks of bandits and Polizei. In such situation people were starting to look for friends, brothers-in-arms so that they could jointly protect their interests. Here I met Boris Smirnov, who also had not managed to break out of the encirclement. There I met Nikolai Loktev and Nikolai Semenov. I had already mentioned Smirnov, who was a professional officer. Loktev was an officer from reserve and had served in the Army staff. His civil profession was engineer of geodesy. Semenov was also officer from reserve, former school principal from Kursk. We were all from Artillery Corps and Senior Lieutenants. We decided to stick together and support each other till the end, whatever this end would be.

People, who had been recently captured, yet could not apprehend how all this could happen. Was such a catastrophe only in our sector of the front? Or did this happen everywhere? What does this all mean? Is the war lost? Is the German rule coming? Why did the leave us in the encirclement and left us for the Germans to slaughter us? All these questions were deeply bothering all prisoners, regardless of their will. There were a lot of spontaneous heated discussions, sharp statements and arguments. We tried to realize our situation, and create some kind of attitude to the events. We criticized our command and our Russian lack of discipline.

Some guy with a beard was telling anti-Soviet speeches. Apparently, it was some former member of left Social Revolutionary party (the party itself ceased to exist in the party battles in the 20s - translator's note), who was preaching some kind of “peasant people’s power”. He was shouting that only here, behind the barbed wire fence, did he get freedom of speech. I could not take this and started an argument with him. My comrades who were nearby, told me that I should shut up and leave as soon as possible, because this guy already started to call me “a Bolshevik Commissar”.

German spies were working hard. Some talkative individuals were all over the place, seeking for those who had worked for defence industry before the war. When doing so, they shouted that these defence experts would get nice employment in German military industry with wonderful catering and in better conditions than the rest of the prisoners. Some were deceived. Their personal information was recorded, and then these prisoners would be taken away for interrogation, where they were forced to give out detailed info about their factories, draw maps and layouts of the factories with reference points on general maps. Apparently, these data was necessary for air raids. Some prisoners returned beaten from such interrogations, while others did not come back at all.

There was sometimes an older person in German officer uniform among the prisoners, but from his speech we could hear that he was definitely Russian. On his tunic, besides the regular German eagle and Hakenkreuz, there was an unusual badge with letter “D” in old Slavic. What did this mean? A former White officer from Denikin’s Army? This man held friendly talks with prisoners, was asking about everything, portrayed compassion on his face, and wrote down something, saying that it was in order to improve the situation of the prisoner. Apparently, it was a special type of intelligence data collection. Germans could not send this White Guard Officer in order for him to just sympathise with his former countrymen. I personally did not see this man.

If situation of most prisoners was awful both morally and physically, the situation for Jewish prisoners was even worse. They were doomed to extermination. In camp in Sychevka they were subject to all kinds of mocks and tortures. Part of them was chased under low bunk beds in the room where Polizei and Ukrainians lived. When they were sent to town’s prison from the camp, they were undressed to their underwear, while their clothes were thrown into the crowd of prisoners, and shameful fights for those clothes ensued. I saw how these poor people were taken to the prison, barefoot and in underwear. In front of the procession were walking two young girls, who were hugging each other – apparently they were former Red Army medics. The executors were too shy to undress the girls and take away their shoes. Or maybe, some German officer’s conscience was awakened and they ordered not to undress the girls?

Here we heard a sad story of the last days and hours of staff of our 39th Army. They were surrounded in a small forest, each point of which was under fire of German mortars. Defence of the forest was held by sub-machine gunners, who were promised that they would be evacuated by airplanes (of course, the promise was not kept). Planes were flying in every night brining in ammo and food, and were supposed to evacuate heavily wounded. But they were mostly evacuating top brass. Army commander Maslennikov promised that he would stay with the Army till the end, although it was practically non-existent. However, on order of Front Commander Konev, he was one of the first ones who flew to Kalinin in order to report on the condition of the Army, and never came back. Nights were short. There were few planes flying in. When a General was flying away, he would appoint a Colonel as a commanding officer. The Colonel would try to leave with the next plane, appointing a Lieutenant-Colonel as a commanding officer and so on. They all tried to save their lives. They realized that the situation was hopeless, and planes could only fly at night. Or probably this plane would be their last chance to save themselves, as Germans might break the defences during the day. When top officers left, discipline and subordination disappeared. All only thought about their own escape. We heard stories of the following scenes. On demand of a doctor, a heavily wounded was being loaded on a plane. An officer came up, rudely pulled the heavily wounded out of the plane and took his place in the plane. He shoved a stack of bills in the pilot’s hand, threatened everyone with his gun and the plane flew away. Others, seeing that “one can do so”, would also start taking seats in the plane by force. Then fights with shooting erupted for the right to get on the plane. Gradually the submachine gunners started to abandon their positions, as they realized that they were cheated. The end of this was that the defence of the perimeter collapsed and all who were there were killed or taken prisoner.

We were sent or taken from one camp to another. From Sychevka we went to Smolensk, from Smolensk to Lesnaya – further and further west. The most awful was the camp next to Lesnaya station in Molodechno area. We were brought there on August 4, 1942. Before the war it was a vegetable warehouse with long wooden warehouses, which were half-dug in. The warehouses were turned into barracks. Each barrack was fenced with barbed wire and was a separate section of the camp. At the entrance to the camp there was a guard’s room and a small guard’s house with a deep cellar, which was for some reason called “bunker”. Those prisoners who were arrested, were put into bunker. The servicing rooms, kitchen, warehouses and steam bath (which did not function anyway) were outside of the camp. The main rule in the prisoners’ barracks was: “divide and rule”. Some barracks only had Ukrainians, others – just Tatars. Both ethnic groups were in privileged position in comparison to the bulk of Russian prisoners. They were better fed and given a right to work outside of the camp. We, Russians, were fed very badly. Two times a day we were given a spoonful of porridge, which was boiled from unprocessed rye. Once a day they would bring a barrel of cold water, which would be immediately emptied. It was hot, and we were all very thirsty. Not to mention washing, which was merely impossible. The camp was guarded by German soldiers and Ukrainian Polizei. The most awful thing about this camp was that it was that people’s fate was decided here: who would live and who would die. It was a total checkup. They were searching for Jews, political officers, military judges, party workers. The interrogations and investigations were carried out in the guard’s room by a Sonderfuerer, a special envoy of Hestapo. He could speak quite good Russian and did not need an interpreter. One by one the prisoners were dragged into guard’s room for interrogation and most of the times they ended up in the bunker. Those ones that were put into the bunker, were undressed, left only in underwear. Their shoes and clothes were taken by the Polizei. Some persons, dressed like prisoners, would hang around the barracks, would join the discussions, and ask provocative questions. After that they would run to the Sonderfuerer and whistle blow for a cigarette, thus dooming people to death. One did not have to be a Jew or a Politruk in order to be thrown in the bunker – an oral report that one is an “agitator” was enough. They were looking for Jews not only according to accent or look, but also through special searches, looking for circumcised ones.

When the bunker was full, a special vehicle would arrive from Molodechno. It was a regular truck, which had an insulated large box with a door. Germans and Polizei would pull out half-naked and barefooted prisoners from the bunker, and push them into the box with their rifle butts. The whole camp was then hanging on the barbed wire fence, looking, where the truck would go. If it went to the left, then it went to Molodechno, to the prison. If it went to the right, then it went into a forest. Tatars, who were in the barracks next to us, told us across the barbed wire that they were often sent to the forest in order to dig large graves and bury the dead there. If the truck went to the forest, then the exhaust fumes from the motor were directed into the box with prisoners. When the truck would arrive in the forest, everyone in the box would be already dead. They were thrown into a grave and hastily buried. The Tatars also told us, that there had been cases, when some prisoners were still alive when they were pulled out of the truck, but they were anyway buried together with the dead. So, Sonderfuerer was personally deciding, who was to be killed immediately in this death truck, and who should be sent for additional investigation and torture to the prison. There was some person in German uniform functioning as assistant to the Sonderfuerer. He was always kind of in a shadow, kind of shy, was very polite with prisoners and spoke good Russian. I heard rumours that he was one of Germans who had lived in Soviet Union before the war, a former Soviet citizen. He was apparently ashamed of himself and of all things that were happening in the camp.

If in the previous camps there were heated political arguments, in Lesnaya camp everyone became silent. Even those who criticized the Soviet state, were silent. We all saw a very real threat to our lives, death was taking us one by one, regardless of the topic that a person was discussing. He was an “agitator” and that was sufficient for such a person to be sent to the bunker and further on to the other side. When the camp became fully silent, the Sonderfuerer thought up another trick to loosen people’s tongues. Some provocateurs would walk up so a person in officers’ barracks and would ask a friendly question: “Did we really lose the war? Is Russia doomed?" and so on. The result was the same, the bunker was always full.

Contacts between prisoners from different barracks were forbidden. It was also forbidden to pass or exchange belongings between barracks. What were Germans afraid of - conspiracy, escapes, or an epidemic? Violations of these prohibitions were severely punished, up to public beating, while the role of executors was normally given to Tatars. Prisoners from the barrack of the punished person had to stand at “attention” for several hours.

Once at yet another drill of entire camp the Sonderfuerer all of a sudden asked: “Where is the dirty Jew this and that (he called the last name)? I had warned him that he should stop his propaganda, but he did not listen to my warnings.” The poor fellow walked forward and murmured something, trying to defend himself, and in stress said “comrade”. The Sonderfuerer shouted: “There are no comrades here! Seize him!” Two Polizei grabbed the poor guy and pulled him to the bunker.

Once a high-ranking General from some supply department of German Army visited our camp. The translator told us that he was leading a “supply” detachment. The General visited our barrack, where officers were living. He was escorted and guarded by our local camp administration. He was attentively looking at our faces, apparently, trying to apprehend the mysterious and evil “Russian soul”. He was asking some of the prisoners questions about their rank, name, from which city they were from. After that he shortly described the situation at the front, saying that the German Army was winning on all fronts and soon the war would end with German victory. I remembered one sentence: “River Don has been reached and crossed in many places ".

German soldiers would walk up to the outer double barbed wire fence and for pieces of bread exchange the last remaining valuable belongings of prisoners. They were asking for watches, rings, coins, tea and pocket knives. My comrades sometimes asked me to translate during those outrageous deals. I had a silver 50 kopek coin with portrait of Alexander the Third, which our battery commander (he was killed later) had given to me as a gift. After some starvation, I decided to exchange the coin for bread, although the coin was very precious to me. A German soldier, with whom I negotiated, told me: “throw the coin to me across the fence. I need to see it. ". "Why should I trust you?" "I am not a Jew", - he answered proudly. Indeed, he was not a Jew. For a silver coin he threw me a piece of black bread. However, having determined that the coin was indeed made of silver, he promised to bring more bread the next day. I wish you knew how much I waited for the next morning! But alas, the next morning, September 24, 1942, we were woken up at dawn and were taken to railway station in order to ship us to Germany.

A long search preceded our departure. There were endless examinations with long standings in formation and searches. Under threat of execution we were ordered to turn in pocket knives, razors and scissors. When they were searching me, I showed small scissors that I had and asked for a permission to leave them. The German rudely grabbed the scissors from me, murmuring, that we were sent to Germany for work, not for “cutting our nails”. Then they took away all remaining leather belts, all leather shoes. We had to put wooden sabo shoes that Germans brought and piled up in the yard. One could not run and walk for a long time in this footwear. It was in this moment that traitors surfaced. Those who had a German “pass” leaflet, i. e. surrendered voluntarily, had a right to keep their leather shoes. I should say that in a huge batch of prisoners there were only two or three traitors.

On the way to the station we were guarded by a large German unit, which was armed not only with submachine guns, but even with light machine guns. They were probably afraid of a rebellion or escape en masse. We were taken westwards, while the sun in the east was rising and shining onto our backs, as if it were saying good-bye to us. Next to Molodechno we were taken by a Jewish ghetto. It was a whole block of poor huts, surrounded by a barbed wire fence. There was a huge red-haired guy standing next to the entrance to the ghetto, an obvious mentally underdeveloped person – he looked like an orangutan. He had a lash in his hand. A Jewish girl was cleaning the platform. On her breast and her back there were David’s stars made of yellow fabric – a sign that Jews had to wear.

We were loaded into dirty cargo wagons, which were not at all equipped for transportation of passengers, so we had to sit and sleep directly on the floor. Small windows were covered with barbed wire and the door was always shut and locked from the outside. I can no longer remember how many of us were there in the wagon, but we could not all lie on the floor at the same time. Loktev, Semenov, Smirnov and me stuck together, and even here, in this awfully crammed wagon, stayed together, supporting each other both morally and physically. The train started moving. They were taking us abroad. What an irony of fate! How many times was I dreaming to go abroad as a tourist or on a business trip. And now I am taken abroad as a prisoner, by force!

An accident took place in the beginning of our journey. Our train was passing through a forest when we heard rifle shots. The train abruptly stopped. German soldiers ran back and forth along the train with curses. After a while a single rifle shot was fired and the train moved on. Later we found out that prisoners cut a hole in the floor of one of the wagons. Several prisoners managed to escape through the hole before the German sentry who stood in the last wagon of the train, spotted them and opened fire. All those who stayed in that car were searched. They found a knife on one of the prisoners. They took him out of the wagon and shot him. That was the single rifle shot that we heard. We admired those brave men, envied them and wished them luck.

We did not know where we were taken. In order to apprehend where we were going, we drew a map of Poland and Germany on a piece of plywood with a piece of a pencil. From the names of the cities that we were passing through we tried to draw our route. We gradually started to realize that we were taken through Poland into south-western Germany. One or two times a day we were taken away from the wagon on some large station for catering. Here they poured some foul soup into our canteens – just to make sure that we would not all die from hunger. When we were out of the wagon, the train was searched. I saw a German soldier finding our map and showing it to his Unteroffizier. I heard the Unteroffizier saying: “These swine also can be industrious.” I remembered Volkovyssk station. On that station the German cook who was distributing the foul soup, was “selective”. If a prisoner was blonde, he would get a full canteen of soup. If the prisoner had dark hair, then he would get half a canteen or even less. Those days I had dark hair and so I also got only half a canteen. This was racial theory in practice in understanding of the German cook. Our train would often stop at stations or just in the open. Once a military train with Italian military unit stopped on the opposite track. The train was going east. Italian soldiers opened the door of their wagon towards us and were telling us something in a friendly manner. We were also waving back at them from a small window of our train. Then Italians arranged a concert for us, playing mandolin and guitar. It was clear that they had no hostile feelings towards the Soviet country, against which they were going into war. On the contrary, they had friendly feelings towards us. The concert was interrupted by an Italian officer, who shouted at the soldiers and apparently ordered them to shut the door. He had a blue band put across his shoulder, apparently, this was a duty officer. We saw small donkeys being taken away from the Italian train for giving them water. Italians had buckets made of transparent plastic, which we saw for the first time.

We were taken through Poland. We saw a bit of Warsaw. Flags with German Hakenkreuz were hanging on the balconies of houses. But our train quickly entered some tunnels. A Polish railway worker, carefully looking around, approached us in the tunnels ad asked, where we were taken prisoners. Before Warsaw the Polish villages looked poor, wooden huts were covered with roofs of hay. After Warsaw “Europe” started: clean brick houses under tiled roofs. Then came Germany. Among many cities I remembered Chemnitz.

I remember one late night, when it was already dark and our train was standing in a small German station. We were already sleeping, wrapped in overcoats, sitting and lying on the floor of our wagon, which was horribly packed. One could hear people strolling on the platform outdoors, and we heard women laughing. We heard silent music. Warm wind brought us smells of summer herbs. It was all so near and at the same time so far away from us, locked and stuck in our prison on wheels.

On the sixth day of the journey, on September 30, 1942, we arrived to the terminal stop, small town Muensingen in the south-western part of Germany. We were so exhausted by the journey and hunger that we could barely move. But it turned out that we were luckier than the ones who arrived before us. Those who came earlier told us that freight train was on the move over 10 days, and the train was so packed that most time of the day prisoners had to stand. They were not allowed to go out of the train and were given almost no food. Upon arrival a nice “show” was arranged: hungry, exhausted, filthy and unshaved prisoners were lined up on the platform for demonstration to some important German general. When he saw the prisoners, he said: "And these people wanted to impose their culture on us, Germans?"

Small medieval Muensingen with its small Fachwerk houses in Gothic style and pointy tile roofs seemed to be a perfect setting for Faust opera. This would have all been exciting and interesting, unless it was all so sad. We saw a scene from of a past here at the railway station, which fit well with the old architecture. A carriage drawn by two well-fed horses arrived at the station. The horses were run by a groom in a gold-decorated suit. A stiff-looking old lady was sitting in the carriage and was examining us through her glasses in a businesslike manner. As we heard later, this lady was a rich landowner, who came to pick up her share of "Eastern workers".

The town was really a fairy-tale, medieval place. It seemed that a person in opera clothes could walk out from any house and sing his part of an opera. But the camp to which we were brought was not at all an opera place. The camp consisted of filthy barracks infected with insects and fenced with barbed wire. It was a place of awful starvation. They were giving us some soup from half-boiled cabbage and would give one small piece of bread for the whole day. The bread was red from root beets. The whole camp was run by some traitors, Ukrainian and Russian Polizei who looked like criminals. For their entertainment they arranged daily beatings of poor prisoners. For that they would only distribute half the pot of the soup and then announce that it was possible to get “extra soup”. Men, who were mad from hunger, ran to the pot. A fight would follow and then the Polizei would start beating everyone with long batons that they had prepared beforehand. My feet were blistered and bleeding from wearing the wooden sabo sandals and I was dreaming of finding some other footwear. I asked one Polizei about this – the one who did not look so much like a gangster. I still had a pair of wrist watches, which I had managed to preserve only by miracle, one of which I offered for exchange for a pair of shoes. For this watch the Polizei brought me old soldiers’ boots of red leather with cracked soles. But I was still extremely glad to have such boots.

Here they arranged a special green card for each one of us, which contained our personal data. Height, colour of hair and eyes, names of parents and their ethnic group were stated in the card. They were searching for people with at least a small share of Jewish or Gypsy blood. Such persons were to be annihilated. They attached two pictures and fingerprints to the card. Apparently, everything was done the way it was done in German prisons. Each one of us had to wear a rectangular dog tag of aluminium. On the tag there was a 5-digit personal number of the prisoner and number of the camp (Stalag 5a). The dog tag was separated into two by several holes. In case of death the tag was broken, one part remained on the body’s neck and the second was kept for accounting. Everything was arranged with German accuracy. One should say that German soldiers also had such dog tags with a number, but their dog tags were shining oval-shaped ones. Later those prisoners who joined the Russian Liberation Army (i. e. Vlasov’s traitor army) were also issued oval dog tags. This was exactly the reason why we kept our rectangular dog tags as a proof of the fact that we had not been involved in Vlasov’s units.

Because of horrible food in this camp we started to have diarrhea. I had to get up several times during the night and go to the WC, which was far away from the barrack. One night I was walking there. All of a sudden a guard, a short and fat German, stood in my way. I stopped and automatically asked: "Was wollen Sie?" (What do you want?) He cursed at me, and I had to go around him in order to continue my trip. When I was coming back, I heard this guard telling another one: "How do you like this? These swine dare asking us what we want! We just want them all to die!"

After we were “registered” in such manner and our numbers were hung on our necks, they started distributing us in teams in order to send to different jobs. All wanted to get out of this damned starvation camp as soon as possible. Some were dreaming of making it to work at sugar factories, where they could eat at least raw root beets. We four stuck together during the distribution of tasks, as we were all put into one working team of some thirty men. It was considered to be officers’ team, although just half of men in it were officers. Others were privates and NCOs, who thought that they would be in better conditions in officers’ team. No one could check their rank anyway – all our papers had been destroyed.

On October 16, 1942 our team was taken away from the camp, escorted to train station and loaded on a freight train. We were glad to see the change, as we believed as no place could be worse than Muensingen. The day after we were unloaded on a small station called Lorch, in some 35 kilometres eastwards from Stuttgart. A small town with same name as the station was located at the railway. There was a wooden barrack at the railway behind a barbed wire fence. There was a large advertising poster on the roof of the barrack, which read: “Lutz company, construction works under and above the ground”. There was a small river Rems behind the barrack, which, as we found out later, was flowing westwards to Rhine. On the other side of the railway there was a mountain ridge and walls of some monastery.

The wooden barrack was separated into two parts. One part was for the prisoners and the second one was for the guards. In the prisoners’ room windows were closed with iron bars and wooden shutters. Two-layer iron bunk beds were lined against the walls, with mattresses filled with straw. Each bed was covered with two old blankets, one of which served as linen and the second as blanket proper. A small iron stove was standing in the centre of the room. There were also long wooden tables and benches. There was an announcement hanging on the wall, which was done on a typewriter in Russian (but in very bad Russian). It was a list of things that prisoners were forbidden to do. The list started with a paragraph: "any prisoner that raises his hand on a German would be executed”. All other items on the list were similar to the first one.

The other, German part of the barrack, which was a sentry room (for a guard team of an Unteroffizier and four Wachman soldiers) was large, warm and light. They had a stove, one-level beds with clean linens, a special place for rifles and a radio set. In the winter, when our part of the roof was covered with snow, there was no snow on the German part of the roof. They always heated their room during cold days. There was a sign on the door that separated our two rooms in German: “Entrance forbidden”. We never went there anyway. There was a outhouse and a Wascheraum (a room where we washed ourselves and our clothes) in the same section of the yard as our barrack. There was a water tank on the roof of the Wascheraum, which was supplied with water with help of electric pump, which supplied water from the river automatically. First we could wash ourselves once a week. Then some boss came, shouted at our Unteroffizier, and after this we only washed one time in two weeks. They issued us dark clothes with two letters painted on them with white oil paint: SU (i. e. Soviet Union). The letters were on the right knee, left part of the breast, right part of the back and the hat. It was impossible to hide in such clothes. We had work boots with a thick wooden sole, rounded in front and in the back. From the symbols on the buttons, we had military clothes – from Czechoslovakian and French Armies – painted in dark blue-green colour.

They would wake us up at six in the m