Rudolf M. Krueger
SHE WANTED STRAWBERRIES AND LOVE
"This is a true story and contains nothing but the truth.
»
We were coming back exhausted from tree cutting. The
sun was already below the horizon.
It
was getting cool, though it was
just the end of July. We had picked and eaten strawberries as we
worked and even filled our mess pots. There might be the possibility
of swapping some for a piece of bread.
Nobody had to be brought back on a stretcher today. Yesterday
was different. The Slovin brothers had been crushed to death by a
falling tree. And only two days ago, Geranin, while chopping a giant
cedar, suddenly seized his heart and fell dead. The guards, after
their usual" ... a step to the left, a step to the right, will be seen as
an attempt to escape - and weapons will be used without warning
... ," continued to talk to each other. Zyedinsh, walking along
beside me, even sang to himself in a weak hoarse voice:
And so into the evening late
While cutting, sawing, stacking trees
We glare hatefully at the moon
And curse our dreadful, hopeless fate.
We approached the guardhouse of
Prizhim,
our concentration
camp located near the little Ural town of Solikamsk. We went
through the usual
shmon,
the search, and entered the zone. We
quickly went past our barracks heading straight for the mess hall to
fetch our bread and
balanda-
a watery turnip soup.
She stopped me as I went past the womens' barracks and said in
broken Russian, "Let me have your strawberries and
I'll
give you my
bread."
"How much bread?" I asked.
She suddenly switched over to German. "My whole day's ra–
tion. The crusty end. Wait for me behind the corner of my
barracks." She came back in a few minutes, handed me her bread,
Editor's Note : Translated from the Russian by
J.
Gregory Oswald.
