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PARTISAN REVIEW
ing of pains in the stomach, the head, arms, and legs. The Jews came.
Nearly all of them spoke German and on that account they served
as interpreters for the company leaders. They asked: When are we go–
ing to Germany to do more suitable work? Many of them seemed
anti-Bolshevik . . . Was one to tell them that in the end their fate
would prove to be worse than that of their fellow prisoners? And even
if one had told them so they would not have believed it, since in spite
of almost ten years of Nazi anti-Semitism the German people still
lived in the imagination of these eastern Jews as a chivalrous nation,
as the people endowed not only with an advanced industrial technique
but also with spiritual worth and moral decency.
Clouds over Cholm. Damp rainclouds which slowly fill the
whole sky and give the sun a livid ghostly air. It is still dark when
we march out of our barracks in the morning and tum into the
camp. Nothing stirs there. It is still as the grave. The prisoners don't
come out of their huts until the prescribed time; they lie crouched
together in the earthen huts, not wishing to leave the warmth of their
fellows. But they will be driven from the huts with loud shouts, they
have to stand side by side for roll call and woe to him who is
even a hand's breadth out of line ! The stick of the sergeant-major
will descend mercilessly and swear words will rain upon the head of
the German company leader, words which are just as painful as the
blows of a stick to the prisoners. The sick who have remained behind
in the huts are dragged out and now lie ready to be counted. The
company is never at full strength. The camp statistics never tally
with the report of the company commander.
Word comes from higher up that carrying of sticks is to be
abolished, that under penalty no soldier is again to be seen with a
stick in the camp. But already a stick is descending on the fingers of
a far too nimble youth who, breaking the column of march, snatches
at a discarded cigarette butt. Isn't that proof that the banning of sticks
is without authorization? The sticks remain. At that time Adolf Hitler
issued a report on the Russian campaign, in which he spoke of the
"lower race of men" which was to be destroyed. Immediately a
great many of the soldiers were spurred on to see nothing but chosen
victims in the prisoners. Haven't they said that it is a little dung to
die? It is a fine thing to die for the Fatherland; isn't it equally fine
to kill, too? By God, perhaps the Germans have forgotten that when
a man dies gladly he learns in the end to murder gladly too. And if
the State is made sacred, if it is set up as the highest instrument of
