We arrived at our destination early in the afternoon. We could see when we got out of the freight
car that we were in the town of Barth.
We were marched through the town.
People watched us, but they were quiet.
It was now 1945, and the war had been going on so long. The Allies were pressing them, and the
Russians were advancing from the west.
Times were hard for these people.
We were
marched out of the town north towards the North Sea. This was a vast camp with a huge vor
lager. We weren’t being mistreated on
this arrival, but the guards kept marching us around. They kept breaking off small groups and
joining them up with other groups all in a very obvious effort to break up
groups of POW’s. In one maneuver I was
moved out away from my friends. I was dismayed, but in another movement I was
marched right near to them, and as I passed, I jumped over into their
group. It was a crazy thing to do. I could have gotten punished if caught, but I
wasn’t caught and we four marched off together, but not for long. Rudy and I were assigned to the small
barracks and to the same room. Russ and
Gotty were off somewhere else. We could
visit them in the daylight.
These barracks had rooms with the same number of bunks in
them as our last barracks, also a stove behind a low counter and a picnic table
and benches in the middle of the room.
To our dismay the men already in the room talked mainly of food. When sex was no longer the main topic and
food was, you knew hunger stared you in the face.
I got a top bunk.
Rudy had a lower one on the other side of the room. The room was cold. It was getting late, and we received the
usual stew. When the lights went off, I
went to bed fully dressed. After all was
quiet and I hoped most of the men were asleep, I took out one of my D bars and
consoled myself with it. I needed some
support. This was an old camp, and I
knew that food was scarce and that times were getting tough for our
captors. We were coming to some kind of
an end. How would I get back?
This was winter, and we were advised after we had been there
a few days that we would get only four brickettes of coal for our stove each
day. Brickettes were about four inches
long and about three inches in diameter, hard pressed coal dust. Our room held a meeting, and we voted to save
the brickettes until Sunday, and on Sunday we’d have a warm day. So on Sundays we kept a low fire going as
long as we could.
The days were monotonous. There
were no organized activities here. The
room was only a little less cold than outside.
Red Cross parcels arrived, but never one per man, generally four men to
a parcel and sometimes more, even up to eight men to a parcel.
Each morning we each got a piece of sour dough bread. It looked as if it had been baked either
packed in sawdust or sawdust added to it.
The bread was very dark rye bread color and bitter to the taste, but we
ate it.
Some guys from another room found a way to get into the
attic so soon all rooms had access to it.
A democratic plan was formulated.
Attic space above each room and half the space above the hall was
private property not to be invaded by members from another room. All wooden parts of the building construction
not absolutely necessary to hold the building up could be extracted and used
for firewood. As spring came we could
finally feel the building sway in the wind ever so gently.
One of the guys in our room made a small toy-size stove out
of a couple of klim cans. He had gotten
some potato peels from near the cook house where they had been thrown. For fuel he used bar soap from the Red Cross
parcels. It burned nicely without smoke
and was ideal for this small stove.
We had by now been forced into a system of food
partners. You had to have someone you
could trust with your share of food or else you couldn’t leave the room unless
you carried everything out with you. As
it became more and more scarce, food was our most prized possession and
uppermost in our minds day and night.
Rudy and I teamed up.
He was having trouble with one of his feet. He thought it was frost bite, and I could see
how it could happen, it did get so cold at night. So on our team Rudy generally stayed in the
room during this long winter, and I went out.
I had acquired a small box and with it I went out to look for pieces of
paper and potato peels from near the cook house. It was exciting to bring some back and also
exciting when we had a turn at this small cook stove.
The potato skins were a big addition. They weren’t good, but they helped.
The stew was an important event in our day. Two guys would go to get the container. Each day there were a different two men, and
after they divided the stew as evenly as possible, the two who carried the
container to the room had the privilege of scraping the insides of the
container dividing what clung to the sides between them. We all looked forward to our turn.
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