Having heard rumours of our impending journey, we became impatient. Each day seemed interminable. We discussed plans for escaping but the only possible exit was via the coal chute and we knew that a 24-hour guard patrolled close by. It was late afternoon when they finally came for us, the sound of the key in the lock filling us with expectation.
Four Red Army soldiers entered the cellar, recoiling immediately when the stench hit them. Trying not to breathe, they issued their orders and we were herded out of the cellar into the open air. Twenty other people, obviously from the prison, were waiting outside the headquarters, among them the Jews with whom I had shared the boat on that fateful night. We were formed into a column, a soldier at each corner and ordered to ‘Poganiaj’.
My lungs began to fill with the fresh clean air and the cold wind stung my eyes, making them water. We were all in a similar condition, tired, hungry, filthy and sick since conditions had not been much better in the makeshift prison. For an hour we marched, the guards treating us like animals, hurling abuse at us as they tried to hurry us to our ‘collection point’. This turned out to be a disused stable at the side of the railway track. The windows had been boarded up so that only the occasional gleams of sunlight penetrated the room. Iron bars were secured on the outside of the boards. The floor was of bare cobblestones and I couldn’t resist making the comment that if we had been horses at least we would have had some straw. We were ordered into three stalls, ten or more prisoners being squeezed into a stall big enough for one horse. This was to be our home for as long as it took the other prisoners to arrive. Once my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see other stalls, all completely full, each person trying to get some sleep in the cramped conditions.
The cattle train was already waiting for its human cargo, but we were told we could not be loaded until sufficient prisoners had arrived to fill all the wagons. The soldiers’ intention was to fill each truck with thirty to forty people in a space designed to carry approximately eight cows, travelling comfortably. The rationale behind the cramming in of bodies was that, sooner or later, many, perhaps most, of the prisoners would perish owing to the strenuous physical pressures in the camps, in particular the hunger and cold of the Siberian winter. By keeping them under these conditions on the trains, the weakest would expire before they reached the camps, thus making room for the stronger prisoners. Millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, not to mention Russians, lost their lives in this way during Stalin’s rule.
Prisoners continued to arrive all through the night and by morning I estimated that roughly 800 people were in the cramped barn. At first light we were confronted by a squad of Red Army soldiers. These were the ‘segregators’ who passed among us, placing us in groups. Prisoners who had confessed to their crimes, most of them innocent but unable to withstand the rigours of interrogation, were grouped in batches of thirty to forty. The political prisoners and those who had not confessed to any crime, myself included, were put into groups of twenty. Obviously, given more room, we were expected to survive the journey to Moscow whilst the common prisoners, having confessed, had already sealed their fate. If they survived the overcrowding, they would not survive the cold, stark, Siberian forests. The old, infirm and disabled were segregated into a corner of the barn whereupon they were ordered to wait for ‘special treatment’.
The guards began to load the human cargo, starting with the groups of common prisoners. As in the barn, the windows in the trucks were heavily boarded and barred. In the centre of the floor of each truck was a large hole to enable the truck to be cleared of cattle dung. Over the hole had been placed an iron plate with smaller holes bored into it. This provided us with our only form of sanitation.
The next group to board were the political prisoners, or spies, who had confessed or had been found guilty by the Soviet authorities. They too were journeying to the Siberian labour camps, their fate sealed by their confessions, their punishment a minimum often years in the camp. In these camps, in places like Pechora, Vorkuta and Kolyma, hardly anyone survived for more than five years. A ten-year sentence was equivalent to a death penalty. Since the Communists did not want their prison tactics revealed to the world, they made sure that no one came out of those camps alive.
It was while we were waiting to board the train that a huge army lorry arrived. I still remember it vividly. The thirty or more ‘rejects’ were ushered out of the barn and loaded into the lorry. Those that could not climb of their own accord were literally picked up and thrown in by the soldiers as they chanted ‘Fine Polish soap, fine Polish soap’. When the last person had been manhandled into the back, a heavy tarpaulin was thrown over them and fastened down with strong rope. The lorry drove away. It was an incident that still lives in my memory. The soldiers were sent at regular intervals to pick up these poor unfortunate people and to end their lives. The words ‘fine Polish soap I haunted my dreams and thoughts for many years.
I was still watching, horror-stricken, when I realised we were the next to be boarded. We were the prisoners heading for the Lubianka prison, the stubborn ones who would not confess. We knew what awaited us: interrogation, torture, shootings in cold blood. A confession or a guilty verdict would mean a Siberian labour camp for the rest of our lives.
Twenty of us were manhandled into the truck. It was cramped but did not smell as bad as the cellar. When the door was closed and bolted we were thrust into darkness. We each tried to claim a little bit of space but there was no light or ventilation and very little room. I thought about the other trucks with thirty or forty people inside and shuddered.
The train began its slow, laborious journey. With my back pressed against the side of the truck, I managed to slide into a sitting position and stretched my legs out in front of me. Beside me sat a young soldier roughly the same age as me, named Tadek. By taking it in turns to lean on one another, we managed to catch a few hours’ sleep. Ventilation was the biggest problem. The prisoners in the centre of the truck slept curled up in a ball, their noses pressed to the bore-holes. This hindered the ventilation for the rest of us and caused heated arguments. It was not until one of our party died of a heart attack owing to lack of oxygen that they agreed to move and use the bore-holes for their original purpose. Eventually, fearing that we might all die of the same plight, we managed to prise off a small piece of the boarding, enabling more air to circulate.
The ritual that was to last for almost two months began. Each morning the train would stop, each truck was opened and the dead were dragged out feet first and deposited in the mortuary truck at the end of the train. We had been issued with two buckets per truck, one for water, the other for our daily supply of herrings and bread. On the order ‘Prepare buckets!’ we had to hold them at arm’s length outside the truck in order to have them filled. If, for any reason, they were not forthcoming, we would go hungry and thirsty for that day. At each large station, provisions and water were taken on board. These were kept in the specially-prepared carriages with full home comforts that housed the soldiers and members of the NKVD. Needless to say, they were spared the overcrowding and the absence of sanitation which we experienced. While supplies were being taken on board, the mortuary truck was uncoupled and replaced by an empty truck.
The journey was extremely tedious. Some mornings we would stop for our daily rituals only to find we had been shunted into a siding to give priority to a passing goods or passenger train. Whole days of travel were lost in this way. The guards’ priority was security. Anyone attempting to escape was shot and we cringed every time we heard the echo of a single gunshot nearby.
Tadek became a good friend. He had been arrested 100 yards from the border of German-occupied Poland. The new frontier between Germany and the Soviet Union divided him from his girlfriend, she being in the German part and he in the Soviet. Twice a week he would pit his wits against the authorities and sneak across the border to spend a few precious hours with the girl he hoped to marry. His luck eventually ran out one night on his return. Lone trespassers were usually shot on sight but he was lucky. He surrendered, put his hands on his head and waited for the bullet to pierce his chest but it did not come. Instead he was taken prisoner and treated in much the same way as me. Hence his long journey to the Lubianka.
Tadek was very clever and not afraid to risk his life. He got away with things on that terrible journey that most people would have been shot for. During one stopping period, whilst waiting for the guard to fill our bucket, he jumped out of the truck, scooped up the fresh white snow and distributed it among our group before the provisions soldier reached our truck. The virgin snow tasted like nectar compared with our usual drinking water, which was sometimes mixed with oil from the locomotive.
Though living with the knowledge that he would probably never see the girl he loved again, Tadek managed to keep our spirits up during the journey. He told jokes about the Russians and organised silly guessing games to keep our brains from stagnating totally. He cajoled those of the group who were ready to ‘end it all’ and prophesied better things to come. We all knew he was dreaming, but his light-hearted approach to life helped us to keep our sanity and saved many from sinking deeply into depression.
It was late December when rumours began to circulate that we had reached Moscow. We halted in a siding. Outside, the snow was knee-deep and through the hole in the boards we could just make out a station and what appeared to be a ‘centre of activity’. When the door of the truck opened the icy blast of the blizzard made us recoil into the shelter of the truck. Confronting us, clothed in huge fur overcoats, medals pinned on their lapels, stood three members of the NKVD.
One of the men, a captain judging from the three stars on his lapel, addressed us. He had a list of names and began his roll call. Each person, when his name was called, stepped forward and was ordered to sit in the snow either to the right or to the left. Occasionally the name of a dead person was called. On hearing the word ‘deceased’ from one of the soldiers, the name was struck off the list and the person’s papers were destroyed. My name was called and I stepped forward. I was ordered to the left. Tadek squeezed my hand and wished me good luck. When his name was called, he was ordered to the right. We looked across at each other knowing that we would never meet again.
We on the left, fifteen in all, were to go to the Lubianka for further interrogation under Article 58, for alleged spying and other counter-revolutionary activities. We were ordered to ‘poganiaj’ through the knee-deep snow to the black high-sided lorry waiting to take us to the dreaded prison.