CHOLM: HEAPS OF SKULLS
543
prisoners are coming up for medical inspection. Here they stand,
fever-racked yet stretching out their hands for a crust of bread or a
mouthful of hot tea. A seventeen-year-old lad, touching in his youth–
fulness and in the nobility of his features, waits for me every morning
and seizes the small packet of sandwiches which I bring him. His
thanks are still ringing in my ears when he has disappeared to swallow
his food in some furtive place, unobserved, in so far as that is possible,
by his companions. But others come up to us to cadge and beg; the
handouts become smaller and smaller. Some others do as I do, and
soon this pitiful charity becomes a source of annoyance to the subal–
terns, who look on this sympathy as false sentimentality. "Sentimen–
tality" in a prisoner-of-war camp! How ridiculous! Humanity. How
absurd! All is in vain. Already the fate of these people has slipped from
man's hands, it has become independent of man's will. Chaos rules.
The prisoners who have been called to sick-quarters stand in
.long lines on the hill of Calvary. No doubt something dreadful has
happened; and the next day my fear is confirmed. Dysentery has
broken out and is spreading with incredible speed from block to block,
from national group to national group over the whole camp. The
burial squad, composed of Jews, is very busy; soon one detachment
is not enough and more have to be called on. All the efforts of the
doctors to check the epidemic by increasing the food ration are
frustrated by the idiocy and inefficiency of the military machine,
which is utterly unprepared for this crisis. The food of the prisoners
is bad, 100-150
gm.
of bread, with sawdust in it, daily, no rations of
fat, 10-20
gm.
of margarine, on occasions a little rancid cheese, and
water soup, soup on which not the smallest drop of fat has ever
floated. The prisoners get still more emaciated: and the epidemic
advances. Quarrels break out near the windows where food is issued,
each prisoner snatching eagerly at mouldy morsels of bread. The
specter of death is everywhere, and none wants to die.
In a narrow space enclosed by barbed wire a man is crouching,
a man scarcely recognizable as such who is being punished in accord–
ance with the orders of the camp authorities·. From his face all hope
has vanished. His eyes are empty of light, blotted out as if by the
merciless strokes of an iron pencil.
Innocent, unjustly punished? Evil words! They still echo in the
ears of the company leaders, cracking like a whiplash, when one of
the prisoners broke ranks and suddenly shot these words at them.
Innocent, punished simply for speaking out?
If
all together or if only
a considerable minority had been able to protest, to rebel, their
