CHOLM: HEAPS OF SKULLS
547
In despair the Commandant waves his slate pencil over the figures
which force him to ever new calculations. There is an endless flow
of papers across his desk, dotted with crosses. There they lie, the
exhausted forms stretched on piles of bodies which have become as
stiff as boards. Polish farmers are ordered to bring up their wagons
to haul away the corpses. Delousing stations are held in readiness
from morning till night. The German soldiers go into the camp with
the certain feeling that they, too, will be stricken. The camp
is
full
of groaning men; and Hitler is still fighting his titanic battle against
a power that is mightier than he. A crazed, alcoholic captain, who
whips and bullies the prisoners, is demoted .and transferred to a
transport command. Other officers arrive. The office is crowded with
petitioners; now·at the eleventh hour they come to beg for the release
of their relatives from the camp. From every part of eastern Poland
they come, for the dreadful story of the prisoners' deaths in Cholm
has spread through the land.
Death speeds through the huts of the town. Here and there
someone has deserved well of the German army; yet even he is not
spared. The health officers are shielded from death by the serum,
but to the end of their lives their hearts will not beat as of old, there
will be an odd glint in their eyes, consumption and other diseases will
ravage their bodies. At this hour the angel of vengeance walks step
in step with almighty death. There lies the n.c.o. who refused to
deliver to the prisoners the extra packages which somehow arrived
for them. His head burns, his limbs shake; .and just as the patient
seems to be on the road to recovery the last convulsion seizes him
and in wild delirium he throws himself down from an upper story.
Thirty-eight thousand dead lie buried in mass graves in the
forest cemeteries of Cholm.
Night, deep night over Cholm. The Camp Commandant must
fulfill the instruction, handed down from above, of banishing this
force of nature which has broken loose
in
a way not foreseen by men.
In the last days the crisis has reached a standstill. At home,
in
the
Austrian garrison, he had better luck. There they demanded that
he shoot 120 officers who recognized Russia as their Fatherland, all
simple men 'from artisans to schoolmasters. Did he do it? He shot
them; and the shots still echo grimly.
