536
PARTISAN REVIEW
the east as in the west; blows will fall, panzers will roll, bombers
will drop their loads, Ivan will run, Bolshies will creep into
their
mouseholes, there will be a bloody massacre. But booty? Pleasant
billets? They will blow up the houses, destroy the towns, they
will
drive the prisoners into a camp, leaving them there to perish like
beasts. That is the plan, as every soldier knows. And what he does
not know, another soldier tells him,
his
officer hints in his weekly
reports, and the contents of secret documents of the divisions filter
down to company staffs.
The cars roll.
Not everyone is assigned to earn his laurels in this war, to fight
battles, to force his way deep into the soft parts of the Russian
monster. There are those who have very limited duties, for example,
guarding prison camps, acting as company leader in a war-prisoner
detachment: to see to it that the food is fairly distributed among them,
that the prisoners answer roll call every morning in full strength, that
there is no brawling, that the latrines are kept clean, that the prisoners
are regularly deloused, that no sharp objects are kept hidden such as
knives, forks, daggers, in boots and other secret places; to locate Jews,
communists, and Stalin's agitators among the prisoners; and, in gen–
eral, to record which nationalities- Azerbaijan, Cossack, Caucasian,
Georgian, White Russian, Ukrainian, Pole- are to be found in the
camp. Women will also occasionally be found disguised among pris–
oners of war. That
all
seems most reasonable and there is in it
nothing contrary to the Geneva convention. Since the soldier who
has been taken prisoner is subject to certain laws of disarmament,
detention, and authority, he must be strictly controlled, for he is as
prisoner still a potential enemy, and he must be treated with caution.
The cars roll. Cattle trucks of the German railroad system
from the entrainment station at Kempen-Kempno to the Poles. They
roll eastward through Poland, through Warsaw, Demblin, Lublin,
through ravaged country.
Summer, 1941. Cholm, 1941.
The streets of the eastern Polish town are busy. There is an old
city, a new city. In the old city lies the ghetto. The new city has
modern transportation, districts reminiscent of German districts. The
Russians occupied the town for six weeks when, following the Russo–
German pact of 1939, they entered Poland and, to forestall German
plans, advanced over the Bug as far as Cholm and Lublin. Now the
Germans are again occupying it. On Sunday the gray-uniformed
soldiers stream out of the regular barracks and the private houses
