544
PARTISAN REVIEW
voice might have been heard throughout the German land. But no,
everything is obscured, like· the light of this day which toward even–
ing mLxes with the dun of the earth and then slowly fades into black
night.
Days come which are better, in which hope springs up again
in
the hearts of the prisoners who still ask: "When are we going to
Germany? When shall we have better food?" To a few fate has been
kind. In the kitchens the prisoner cooks and the supervisors are put–
ting on weight. The camp police are recruited from the ranks of the
prisoners and they are apt to knock their comrades about
in
a blind
rage. They go around in shiny boots and wear shiny uniforms. They
are stronger than any possible assailant. Among them there is hatred
and jealousy, also fear that their double dealings will be avenged
some day.
Hitler's death might help! It could free us from this torture which
has become unbearable.
Hitler's death! Can one speak of it aloud? Here and there some–
one dares to discuss the situation with an officer; but the officer is
human, he too is afraid and must knuckle under. Only now and then
the confession escapes his lips: "Here one man betrays another for
a crust of bread."
And with that it becomes necessary to recall the dreadful doings
of the Gestapo, which had built up a spying system in the camp, in
order to deliver to the knife any prisoners suspected of being com–
munists. It began with the shooting of the Commissars, who fell in
a heap without the twitching of an eyelid. Now
Volksdeutch
inter–
preters have arrived.to seek out those prisoners who might have spoken
favorably of the Soviets. Employing all possible ruses, they find such
men and hand them over to the Gestapo. And from time to time a
high Gestapo official appears in the camp, spreading death and
ruination.
The gallows, the shootings, the pre-arranged raids of one nation–
ality on another, all that was the Gestapo's work. And now came the
turn of the Jews. Once they were removed from their posts as interpre–
ters we knew that now indeed they would be done away with. Among
them, as among all peoples, there were both sympathetic and un–
sympathetic types. There were many who with the courage of despair
appealed to us to protect them, as Jews, from the non-Jews, attempt–
ing thus to obtain the help of German soldiers in warding off the
denunciation of them as Jews by their Russian fellow prisoners.
There were soldiers who turned away when such denunciations were
