Six Who Came Back

Four years after war's end, Soviet Russia still keeps more than a million German and Japanese in her slave labor camps. Not all of them were taken as prisoners of war; many are civilians, including women taken from Eastern Germany. Little is known in the West about their fate; only an occasional carefully phrased postcard message reaches their families. But some have been released, and in its current issue the British Medical Journal published a memorable report on how such prisoners fare.

The report was a cold, painstaking case history of six German women, taken to Russia in 1945, who were released last summer and made their way to the British zone of Germany. They were Ida and Elli, both 21; Hanna, 24; Margret, 26; Agnes, 32 and Emma, 37. Cambridge University's Dr. Reginald Dean, engaged in nutrition research in Wuppertal, took down their stories. Excerpts:

Go Kaputt. "Shortly after the [Russian] occupation Elli, Hanna and Margret were visited by [Red army] soldiers, who told them to go away with them immediately for three days' work ... Agnes would have been taken in the same way, but the Russians who came for her were apparently unnerved by the screams of the children who saw her going. Next day, however . . . she was arrested . . .

"It was usual for the women to be collected in cellars or other safe places. When the numbers were sufficient they were either marched or taken by lorry to a railway center . . .

"Elli had a very hard journey. Her party was forced to walk for the first two days, and many of the women broke down and were left by the wayside, and Elli does not know their fate . . . The officer in charge said: "If you cannot get along, stay here and go 'kaputt'. . ."

Ohne Kraft. "The camps [in Russia] usually consisted of collections of wooden huts [sheds], which were in a filthy condition and overcrowded . . . Elli said that 18 of the prisoners with her died in one day . . . The women were classified according to their capacity to work . . . They were put in four groups . . . Those in the fourth group, called O.K. (ohne Kraft--without strength), were unfit for anything except cleaning and other chores in the camp . . .

"Agnes was put to work in a lime kiln . . . Ida and Margret . . . worked in a peat field . . . Elli worked in a coal mine . . . Emma was put to work in a tile factory. All the women stated that a specific amount of work known as the 'norm' had to be done each day ... In most cases good work guaranteed better food. All the women said that they were worked to their utmost capacity . . .

"All the six women except Elli said that they were always hungry. They usually had three meals a day, but Hanna and Emma had only two . . . The staple items of diet were cabbage soup, bread and Brei, which was a kind of soup made principally from cereal... As a rule, one pound of sugar was issued once a month, but many months passed without it. Ida said that the younger women often ate the whole pound straight off. She also ate stinging nettles which she had gathered on her way to work. They were eaten raw after she had rubbed them in her hands so that they might not sting her tongue . . . The women were asked if they craved for any particular food . . . Ida longed for potatoes and meat, etc.; Hanna for potatoes and something sweet. Emma wanted milk and butter, Margret and Agnes wanted 'proper' whole potatoes, Broetchen mit Wurst [rolls and sausage] and cake."

We Did Not Worry. "Twenty to thirty women occupied one room ... All the six women except Agnes had blankets, but she had to use her coat instead. Ida and Emma complained about the bugs, which disturbed their sleep ... All the women agreed that they could maintain a reasonable standard of cleanliness. Emma, Margret and Ida said that they were examined for lice once a week but that hair was shaved only if lice were actually found . . .

"Elli thought that the women who died were those that let themselves go too much, who were very depressed and did not put up a fight. Some women, who were beyond caring, drank stagnant or polluted water . . . Some women actually went mad . . . Fatigue parties took out the corpses at night to bury them. Wolves came and dug up the corpses and ate them, and Hanna was with a party which was sent out to rebury the bodies.

"The women were usually confined to the barrack precinct, but in the last year

. . . Elli, Ida and Margret could go to the nearby village alone, and Agnes was allowed to go into the woods sometimes to gather mushrooms and berries . . .

"Most of them appeared to have accepted their fate . . . [They said]: 'We had to be contented'; 'We did not worry much--it was no use'; or 'Was sollten wir machen? [What could we do?].' "

Good Clinical State. "All the women agreed that the danger of rape was over as soon as they were 'verladen' into their cattle trucks [in Germany]. (The word verladen, which is always used by the women when talking about their train journey, is normally never used for human beings but only for cattle and goods.) All the women except Margret were able to avoid rape . . . Margret said she had been raped 'only twice'; she did not enlarge on this statement . . .

"Release, when it actually came in July 1948, was sudden and unexpected . . ."

Concluded the report: "The women were in good clinical state on their return."

The report did not say how many women stayed behind in Russia. The German Socialist Party, however, recently estimated the figure at 200,000, all of them presumably in equally good clinical state.

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