After the end of the Great Patriotic War In different cities Soviet Union German prisoners of war worked. They worked, among other things, at the construction sites of residential and industrial buildings.

Over time, their activities became overgrown with legends. Almost all low-rise apartment buildings built in the first years after the war began to be called "German" (in some parts of the country they are also called "Finnish"). Indeed, they sometimes cause surprise with their architecture - many exterior elements have no analogues in the later Soviet residential development.

But how was it in reality?

How many prisoners worked

According to German data, the USSR captured about 3.2 million servicemen of German nationality, of which just over 1 million died in captivity (mostly during the war years and immediately after it). A significant part of the captured Germans was recorded in the USSR as "servicemen of other armies." The Germans themselves aspired to this, since the captured Italians, Hungarians, Finns, etc. the attitude of the camp authorities was better.

The vast majority of prisoners were released before 1950. By March 1947, almost 800,000 Germans had been repatriated. Until the end of 1949, about 900 thousand more were returned to their homeland, and in 1950 - more than 400 thousand. Only 13 and a half thousand prisoners of war remained in the USSR, who were convicted as war criminals. The last of them were released in 1956.

Both ordinary German prisoners and those convicted of war crimes worked at construction sites. In relation to most of them, trials and sentences were held in absentia and collectively.

Persistent myths about German builders

It is clear that the total proportion of skilled construction workers among the prisoners was small. But two circumstances played a decisive role in the broad involvement of the Germans in post-war construction projects. The first is the persistent Russian belief that the German, by nature, is a jack-of-all-trades and "does everything well." Secondly, work on construction involved a significant simplification of the regime for keeping prisoners of war, the issuance of a monetary allowance and the opportunity for the Germans to feed themselves.

Feeling this, many Germans immediately began to say that they were masons, or plasterers, or roofers, etc., although most of them had never worked in such professions before the war. Thus, the recruitment of those wishing to rebuild the destroyed Soviet cities was successful among the prisoners.

Fuel to the fire, they say, was added by Molotov's phrase that not a single captured German would be released home until the destroyed Stalingrad was rebuilt. And they say that it was the Germans who restored Stalingrad. Both are, of course, legend. Because the process of mass repatriation of prisoners began immediately after the war. And Stalingrad was basically restored in the very first post-war years, and without the participation of the Germans. The proportion of prisoners in the construction sites of this city was no higher than in the whole country.

The Germans built mostly cheap cinder block barracks

So, not all post-war houses in the USSR were built by captured Germans (or their former allies). And the features of the architecture are not a sign that allows you to determine that they were built by the Germans.

The fact is that all post-war residential development was carried out according to standard projects drawn up by Soviet architects. After all, the Germans were involved only as a labor force.

We are surprised by the appearance and design features of the houses of the first post-war years - their low-rise (from two to four floors), attics, bay windows and other elements that give them some kind of "Gothic" look, as well as typical variety. German builders have nothing to do with it. In the Soviet Union of that time, it was customary to design houses in a similar way. And before the start of the mass construction of "Khrushchev" in the late 1950s, it was given great importance urban aesthetics.

Residential development of that time also varied greatly. Capital "Stalinist" residential buildings built in the 1940s-50s. and to this day considered elite, in many Soviet large cities, they were erected, as a rule, by the forces of selected Soviet workers, whose qualifications were not in doubt. The forced labor of prisoners of war was used to build mass cheap housing, mainly in working-class neighborhoods and towns.

On this basis, it can be assumed that the post-war barrack-type house could have been erected by captured Germans. It is not always built of brick, but more often of cheap building material(cinder blocks). The ceilings inside are wooden, the ceilings are no higher than in the later houses (in the “Stalinka”, for comparison, 350 cm). Multi-room apartments in these houses were originally communal.

Engineering support of such construction also left much to be desired. For example, the haste in their construction and the lack of quality materials subsequently led to subsidence of the foundations. Now many of these houses, where they are still preserved, are in disrepair.

Outward opening windows

Local residents can show some of the objects erected by captured German builders - in Leningrad, Minsk, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Kharkov, Lugansk, in many smaller cities. These are not only residential buildings, but also hotels, hospitals, etc. However, in many cases, the admiration of modern residents of "Stalinist" houses that they were built by the "Germans" is an imposed stereotype. As already noted, most of the captured builders did not have the appropriate qualifications and skills.

As the captured Wehrmacht major Rolf Grams, who fought near Stalingrad and then rebuilt the city in 1950-1953, recalled, the language barrier between the prisoners and the guards allowed the Germans to independently report on the work and present inflated indicators of their labor productivity, which the camp authorities still did not could check. The Germans thus received full rations, salaries and even bonuses.

In general, prisoners of war, who turned into builders on the go, were engaged in what in Russian had long been called “hack work” and “fraud”. The consequences of such construction could only be felt in a few years, but by that time the Germans expected to be in their homeland, which they did.

So, if today you see a post-war house of “German” architecture, this does not mean at all that it was the Germans who built it. Perhaps the only sign can be only windows (where the original window frames are still preserved) - the Germans made them habitually, that is, opening outward. As a result, according to the Novosibirsk writer Igor Maranin, our people, accustomed to windows opening inward, sometimes fell out into the street.

Captured Germans in the USSR rebuilt the cities they had destroyed, lived in camps, and even received money for their work. 10 years after the end of the war, former soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht “changed knives for bread” at Soviet construction sites.

For a long time it was not customary to talk about the life of captured Germans in the USSR. Everyone knew that yes, they were, that they even participated in Soviet construction projects, including the construction of Moscow skyscrapers (MGU), but it was considered bad form to bring the topic of captured Germans into a wide information field.
In order to talk about this topic, it is necessary, first of all, to decide on the numbers. How many German prisoners of war were on the territory of the Soviet Union?

According to Soviet sources - 2,389,560, according to German - 3,486,000. Such a significant difference (an error of almost a million people) is explained by the fact that the count of prisoners was very bad, and also by the fact that many captured Germans preferred to "disguise themselves" as other nationalities. The process of repatriation dragged on until 1955, historians believe that approximately 200,000 prisoners of war were incorrectly documented.



The life of captured Germans during and after the war was strikingly different. It is clear that during the war in the camps where prisoners of war were kept, the most cruel atmosphere reigned, there was a struggle for survival. People died of hunger, cannibalism was not uncommon. In order to somehow improve their share, the prisoners tried in every possible way to prove their non-participation in the "titular nation" of the fascist aggressors.

Among the prisoners were those who enjoyed some sort of privileges, such as Italians, Croats, Romanians. They could even work in the kitchen. Distribution of products was uneven. Often there were cases of attacks on food peddlers, which is why, over time, the Germans began to provide their peddlers with protection. However, it must be said that no matter how difficult the conditions of the Germans' stay in captivity, they cannot be compared with the conditions of life in the German camps. According to statistics, 58% of captured Russians died in fascist captivity, only 14.9% of Germans died in our captivity.

It is clear that captivity cannot and should not be pleasant, but there are still talks about the maintenance of German prisoners of war that the conditions of their detention were even too mild.



The daily ration of prisoners of war was 400 g of bread (after 1943 this rate increased to 600-700 g), 100 g of fish, 100 g of cereals, 500 g of vegetables and potatoes, 20 g of sugar, 30 g of salt. For generals and sick prisoners of war, the ration was increased. Of course, these are just numbers. In fact, in war time rations were rarely issued in full. The missing food could be replaced with simple bread, rations were often cut, but the prisoners were not deliberately starved, there was no such practice in Soviet camps in relation to German prisoners of war.

Of course, prisoners of war worked. Molotov once said the historical phrase that not a single German prisoner would return to his homeland until Stalingrad was restored.
The Germans did not work for a loaf of bread. Circular of the NKVD of August 25, 1942 ordered to give prisoners monetary allowance (7 rubles for privates, 10 for officers, 15 for colonels, 30 for generals). There was also a bonus for shock work - 50 rubles a month. Amazingly, the prisoners could even receive letters and money orders from their homeland, they were given soap and clothes.

The captured Germans, following Molotov's testament, worked on many construction projects in the USSR and were used in public utilities. Their attitude to work was in many ways indicative. Living in the USSR, the Germans actively mastered the working vocabulary, learned the Russian language, but they could not understand the meaning of the word "hack-work". German labor discipline has become a household name and even gave rise to a kind of meme: “of course, it was the Germans who built it.”

Almost all low-rise buildings of the 40s-50s are still considered to be built by the Germans, although this is not so. It is also a myth that the buildings built by the Germans were built according to the designs of German architects, which, of course, is not true. The general plan for the restoration and development of cities was developed by Soviet architects (Shchusev, Simbirtsev, Iofan and others).

German prisoners of war did not always meekly obey. There were among them escapes, riots, uprisings. From 1943 to 1948, 11,403 prisoners of war escaped from Soviet camps. 10 thousand 445 of them were detained. Only 3% of those who fled were not caught.
One of the uprisings took place in January 1945 in a POW camp near Minsk. The German prisoners were dissatisfied with poor food, barricaded the barracks, took the guards hostage. Negotiations with them led nowhere. As a result, the barracks were fired upon by artillery. More than 100 people died.

Shops of a new pipe plant in Nizhny Tagil, a concrete goods plant and an enrichment plant in Asbest, a concrete plant and a rubber goods plant in Sverdlovsk and many other industrial facilities in the cities of the Sverdlovsk region, as well as roads, schools, hospitals, residential buildings and neighborhoods ... These objects are different in their purpose one thing unites them: they were all built in the 1940s and 50s by the forces of prisoners of war of the Second World War. More than half a century has passed, but until now the appearance of many Ural cities is determined by "German" buildings.

How it was

Prisoners of war began to arrive in the Urals from May 1942. While walking fighting, it was the most convenient place to create camps for prisoners of war of the enemy armies.

From 1942 to the beginning of 1956, there were 14 camps on the territory of the Sverdlovsk region, which housed about 100 thousand people (about 65 thousand Germans, the rest were Hungarians, Romanians, Italians and even Japanese).

What was this contingent? Not all were ordinary soldiers and officers. Real war criminals were kept in the Middle Urals. Many of them served in special punitive units: the infantry division "Das Reich", the third tank division SS "Dead Head", 5th Jaeger Division "Grossdeutschland". Staff members of the Gestapo, Abwehr and other special services served their sentences here. All of them were convicted by the Soviet court under the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 19, 1943 "On the criminal liability of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices."

Prisoner of war camps were located near Kirovgrad, in Nizhny Tagil, the village of Basyanovsky, in the Monetki region, in the Nizhne-Turinsky region, in the village of Antonovo, in the village of Kedrovoe and other places. Several camps were located directly in Sverdlovsk. One is in the vicinity of Lake Shartash, the other is in the city of Nizhne-Isetsk (today it is the Chkalovsky district of Yekaterinburg).

Since 1943, the "special contingent" began to be attracted to different types works. Under heavy guard, detachments of prisoners of war worked in peat extraction, felled forests, built houses and roads. The working day lasted 10 hours. During the first year, prisoners of war did not have the right to correspond with relatives and did not receive wages for their work. In subsequent years, a small salary (10-25 rubles) was paid, depending on the production rate. With this money, one could buy food and some basic necessities in the camp stall.

After the end of the war, most of the prisoners of war were repatriated to their homeland.

Only war criminals remained in captivity. In 1949, a special special regime camp No. 476 of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs was created for this contingent in Sverdlovsk. Its branches were located in Asbest, Degtyarsk, Revda and Pervouralsk.

After the war, the conditions of detention of prisoners of war changed significantly. They were given food rations according to the norms of the NKVD troops. They had the right to receive parcels from relatives, in addition to which they were regularly supplied with parcels by the Red Cross.

Conscientious work is a national habit

In the Middle Urals, there is probably no city in which there would be no "German" buildings. All objects were built with high quality and in a short time. The prisoners of war also made a significant contribution to the construction of the Ural capital. Dozens of large objects were erected in Sverdlovsk by the forces of the "SS builders" (one of the "popular terms" of those years). Among them are the Central Stadium and the Metallurg Stadium, the building of a fire-technical school, a public bath on Pervomaiskaya Street, a bridge over the Iset along Belinsky Street, a government dacha in the village of Maly Istok (now the suburban residence of the regional governor is located here).

The Germans almost completely built up the Chkalovsky and Oktyabrsky districts, and the residential buildings they built on Lenin Avenue (from the Ural Polytechnic Institute to Vostochnaya Street) are rightfully included in the "golden fund" of Soviet neoclassicism. And they also have a lot of typical residential, public and industrial buildings.

No matter what facilities the prisoners of war worked at, they always worked with high quality, conscientiously. Ideal order was maintained at the construction sites - it was not allowed that scraps of boards and bricks were left lying around unattended. There is evidence that German builders, even under the threat of execution (!), refused to accept low-quality mortar for brickwork. So it is not surprising that these buildings have survived to this day not just in tolerable, but sometimes in excellent condition.

How was the work process organized?

Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of a professor Yuri Vladimirsky, one of the first architects - graduates of the construction department of the UPI, who took part in the design and construction of the Central Stadium:

“On the construction of the stadium, and it was a complex, multifunctional facility, the main workers were captured Germans. Healthy, short-haired, naked to the waist in the heat, look self-confident, even arrogant. They examine you, point a finger, mutter something in their own way, smile enigmatically.

This whole team - 200-250 people - was brought every day from Nizhne-Isetsk by eight in the morning on special covered trucks with a reinforced convoy. The stadium under construction was surrounded by a high three-meter fence with watchtowers. As soon as the "contingent" appeared at the construction site, the guards took up their positions on the towers around the perimeter of the construction site.

The Germans worked well, all the tasks were carried out with high quality. According to the project on the Western Stand, it was planned to make high-quality plaster in the form of “diamond rust” 30x30 cm in size along the edges. The Germans brilliantly coped with the task by hand with ordinary trowels. I checked their work and was surprised that there were no errors even in millimeters.

And yet, once managed to "catch" the Germans on the negligence. On the East Stand in one of the rooms of the hotel, the cornice under the ceiling was extended in waves. Our foreman invited the senior German brigade and pointed out poor quality work. The German looked angrily and grabbed an axe. We even got scared. And he seemed to fly up the stepladder to the ceiling and began to furiously cut down the still fragile plaster plaque. Then the foreman told us that the German was terribly offended by the fact that a Russian had made a remark to him related to inaccuracy in work. It probably goes without saying that the cornice has been carefully redone.

When lunch was brought to the construction site, the Germans sat down at a common table, and each unfolded his own napkin, and after eating everything was carefully cleaned up after themselves. True, they often neglected these state dinners. It was felt that they received rich parcels from their homeland ... ".

Among the prisoners of war were various specialists, including engineers, builders and even architects. They tried to use their knowledge and experience for their intended purpose. Before the start of the construction of each object, the design and estimate documentation was carefully studied by a German engineer, and if he found errors, he corrected them. Sometimes knowledgeable assistants from among the prisoners of war were appointed to help the superintendent.

“Practical practical proposals were often made by ordinary workers. At one of the sites, the prisoners offered to use for construction a stone mined by them in a quarry, instead of brick, which was chronically lacking. True, the consumption of the solution increased at the same time and the walls turned out to be wider than those designed, but it was economically profitable. And at one of the construction sites, three generals, on their own initiative, were engaged in pulling and straightening nails from dismantled shields. Norm - 5 kg per day ". (From memories M.A. Egorova, who worked in Sverdlovsk until 1955 in various senior positions of special camp No. 476.)

Cinema and the Germans

Many rumors and legends are connected with the captured Germans. One of the well-known Yekaterinburg tales is about mysterious crosses on the lining of the City Hall building. Until 1944, this structure was lower, smaller and in line with the constructivist style (there was also no turret). They decided to reconstruct the building with the involvement of cheap labor - the Germans helped with the cladding. When the scaffolding was removed, it turned out that the prisoners of war depicted some kind of Lutheran-Teutonic symbols on a beautiful example of late Soviet neoclassicism.

According to another version, the swastika on the facade of the Yekaterinburg City Hall was hidden behind the coat of arms of the RSFSR. After some time, the coat of arms had to be removed in order to be slightly repaired, and it was then that it was discovered that a Hakenkreuz flaunts under it. And since everyone was so taken aback by surprise that they did not immediately guess to cover up sedition, for some time the main square of Sverdlovsk looked like the center of some Bavarian town of the 30s.

According to rumors, the fascist symbol was also imprinted on the building of the UAZ recreation center in Kamensk-Uralsky. The cunning "Hans" who built the local "center of culture" allegedly laid out slate on the roof in the form of a swastika, but this could only be noticed from the height of the aircraft. They say that it came to the partial dismantling of the roof, and our construction manager was shot.

And here is a case from a series of "horror films". There was a rumor in Nizhny Tagil that during the construction of the hospital, the Germans killed their compatriot, a traitor-informer, and the corpse was walled up. Later it turned out that the wall was getting wet, they opened it, and found ...

But these are all tales, but there are also reliable facts - all in the same genre of “cinema and Germans”. In 1954, a major scandal erupted over the construction of the Central Stadium. And it was like that. Under the entire playing field of the stadium there was a tunnel for the city water supply, the height and width of which allowed a truck to pass. It was in this tunnel that the local priestesses of free love got into the habit. They penetrated there at night, which was not difficult: when the Germans were taken away, the military guard was removed, and the construction site was guarded only by an old watchman. "Night butterflies" waited for the morning, and with the arrival of the Germans, they arranged dates with them for quick love - in exchange for chocolate and canned food. The next night they got out of the dungeon. In the end, "moths" were caught, security was tightened. What punishment these desperate women suffered for their connection with war criminals, history is silent ...

According to the laws of big politics

The stay of captured Germans in the Urals ended much earlier than expected. Most war criminals were sentenced to the maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. That is, they should have been released in the late 1970s. But history, or rather politics, decreed otherwise.

From the beginning of the 1950s, the political pressure on Moscow from the FRG regarding the repatriation of the last "prisoners of war" noticeably increased. The Soviet Union, in turn, needed to establish diplomatic relations with Germany in order to avoid isolation. Each of the parties managed to achieve their goal during the visit to the USSR in 1955 of the German Chancellor K. Adenauer and his meeting with the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N. Khrushchev. The Soviet Union entered into diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany and signed secret agreements on the return of prisoners of war, who by that time had served less than half of their sentence...

The last POW camp in the Sverdlovsk region N476 was liquidated on February 16, 1956. The Germans were unescorted and even allowed to move freely around Sverdlovsk for three days before being sent home. People were outraged, taking it as a personal insult. But it was forbidden to speak on this topic: such was the "policy of the party and government."

During 1956, the last German prisoners of war were taken out of the territory of the USSR.

Well, in the Urals, life went on as usual: it was the Soviet workers who had to complete the “German” construction sites (at the time of the departure of prisoners of war, there were 27 of them) ...

P.S.

More than half a century has passed since the first acquaintance of the Urals with German quality in construction. But it didn't end there. Today, developers in the Urals widely use German technology, and the use of building and finishing materials made in Germany has long been a guarantee of high quality construction.

Well, as for the workers, now at our construction sites the German word guest worker (literally guest-worker) is called, as you know, people from completely different lands. It remains only to dream: oh, to invite a German construction team, they would have taught a master class!

The ability to forgive is characteristic of Russians. But all the same, how striking this property of the soul is - especially when you hear about it from the lips of yesterday's enemy ...
Letters from former German prisoners of war.

I belong to the generation that experienced the Second world war. In July 1943, I became a soldier in the Wehrmacht, but due to long training, I ended up on the German-Soviet front only in January 1945, which by that time was passing through the territory of East Prussia. Then German troops no longer had any chance in confronting the Soviet army. On March 26, 1945, I was captured by the Soviets. I was in camps in Kohla-Järve in Estonia, in Vinogradov near Moscow, worked at a coal mine in Stalinogorsk (today Novomoskovsk).

We have always been treated like people. We had the opportunity to spend free time, we were provided with medical care. On November 2, 1949, after 4.5 years of captivity, I was released, I was released as a physically and spiritually healthy person. I know that, unlike my experience in Soviet captivity, Soviet prisoners of war in Germany lived in a completely different way. Hitler treated most of the Soviet prisoners of war extremely cruelly. For a cultured nation, as the Germans are always imagined, with so many famous poets, composers and scientists, such treatment was a shame and an inhuman act. After returning home, many former Soviet prisoners of war waited for compensation from Germany, but never did. This is especially outrageous! I hope that with my modest donation I will make a small contribution to alleviate this moral trauma.

Hans Moeser

Fifty years ago, on April 21, 1945, during the fierce battles for Berlin, I was captured by the Soviets. This date and the circumstances accompanying it were of great importance for my subsequent life. Today, after half a century, I look back, now as a historian: the subject of this look into the past is myself.

By the day of my captivity, I had just celebrated my seventeenth birthday. Through the Labor Front, we were drafted into the Wehrmacht and assigned to the 12th Army, the so-called "Army of Ghosts." After 16 April 1945 Soviet army launched “Operation Berlin”, we were literally thrown to the front.

The capture was a great shock for me and my young comrades, because we were completely unprepared for such a situation. And we didn’t know anything about Russia and Russians at all. This shock was also so severe because, only when we were behind the Soviet front line, we realized the full severity of the losses that our group had suffered. Of the hundred people who entered the battle in the morning, more than half died before noon. These experiences are among the hardest memories of my life.

This was followed by the formation of echelons with prisoners of war, who took us - with numerous intermediate stations - deep into the Soviet Union, to the Volga. The country needed German prisoners of war as a labor force, because factories that were idle during the war needed to resume work. In Saratov, a beautiful city on the high bank of the Volga, the sawmill was back in operation, and in the "cement city" Volsk, also located on the high bank of the river, I spent more than a year.

Our labor camp belonged to the Bolshevik cement factory. Working at the factory was unusually hard for me, an untrained eighteen-year-old high school student. The German "cameras" did not always help. People just needed to survive, to live to be sent home. In this endeavor, the German prisoners developed their own, often cruel, laws in the camp.

In February 1947, I had an accident in a quarry, after which I could no longer work. Six months later, I returned home to Germany as an invalid.

This is just the outer side of the matter. During the stay in Saratov and then in Volsk, the conditions were very difficult. These conditions are often described in publications about German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union: hunger and work. For me, the climate factor also played a big role. In the summer, which is unusually hot on the Volga, I had to shovel red-hot slag from under the furnaces at the cement plant; in winter, when it is extremely cold there, I worked in the quarry on the night shift.

Before summing up the results of my stay in the Soviet camp, I would like to describe here some more of my experience in captivity. And there were many impressions. I will cite just a few of them.

The first is nature, the majestic Volga, along which we marched every day from the camp to the factory. Impressions from this huge river, the mother of Russian rivers, are difficult to describe. One summer, when the river rolled its waters wide after the spring flood, our Russian guards allowed us to jump into the river to wash off the cement dust. Of course, the "guards" acted against the rules in this; but they were also human, we exchanged cigarettes, and they were a little older than me.

In October, winter storms began, and by the middle of the month the river was covered with ice. Roads were laid along the frozen river, even trucks could move from one bank to another. And then, in mid-April, after half a year of ice captivity, the Volga flowed freely again: the ice broke with a terrible roar, and the river returned to its old course. Our Russian guards were overjoyed: "The river is flowing again!" A new season of the year has begun.

The second part of the memories is the relationship with the Soviet people. I have already described how human our overseers were. I can give other examples of compassion: for example, one nurse who stood at the gates of the camp every morning in a bitter cold. Whoever did not have enough clothes, the guards allowed him to stay in the camp in the winter, despite the protests of the camp authorities. Or a Jewish doctor in a hospital who saved the life of more than one German, even though they came as enemies. And finally, an elderly woman who, during a lunch break, at the railway station in Volsk, shyly served us pickles from her bucket. For us it was a real feast. Later, before leaving, she came and crossed herself in front of each of us. Mother Russia, which I met in the era of late Stalinism, in 1946, on the Volga.

When today, fifty years after my captivity, I try to take stock, I find that being in captivity turned my whole life in a completely different direction and determined my professional path.

What I experienced in my youth in Russia did not let me go even after returning to Germany. I had a choice - to erase my stolen youth from memory and never think about the Soviet Union again, or to analyze everything I had experienced and thus bring some kind of biographical balance. I chose the second, immeasurably more difficult path, not least under the influence of the supervisor of my doctoral work, Paul Johansen.
As stated at the beginning, this hard way I look back today. I reflect on what has been achieved and state the following: for decades in my lectures I have tried to convey to students my critically rethought experience, while receiving a lively response. I could assist my closest students in their doctoral work and examinations more efficiently. And, finally, I established long-term contacts with my Russian colleagues, primarily in St. Petersburg, which eventually grew into a strong friendship.

Klaus Mayer

On May 8, 1945, the remnants of the German 18th Army capitulated in the Kurland pocket in Latvia. It was a long awaited day. Our small 100-watt transmitter was designed to negotiate terms of surrender with the Red Army. All weapons, equipment, vehicles, radio cars, and joy stations themselves were, according to Prussian accuracy, collected in one place, on a site surrounded by pine trees. For two days nothing happened. Then Soviet officers appeared and escorted us to two-story buildings. We spent the night cramped on straw mattresses. In the early morning of May 11, we were lined up in hundreds, count as the old division into companies. The foot march into captivity began.

One Red Army soldier in front, one behind. So we walked in the direction of Riga to the huge collection camp prepared by the Red Army. Here the officers were separated from ordinary soldiers. The guards searched the things they had taken with them. We were allowed to leave some underwear, socks, a blanket, crockery and cutlery. Nothing else.

From Riga we walked in endless daytime marches to the east, to the former Soviet-Latvian border in the direction of Dunaburg. After each march, we arrived at the next camp. The ritual was repeated: a search of all personal belongings, the distribution of food and a night's sleep. Upon arrival in Dunaburg, we were loaded onto freight wagons. The food was good: bread and American Corned Beef. We drove to the southeast. Those who thought we were going home were greatly surprised. Many days later we arrived at the Baltic Station in Moscow. Standing on trucks, we drove through the city. It's already dark. Did any of us manage to make any notes.

In the distance from the city, next to the village, which consisted of three-story wooden houses, there was a large prefabricated camp, so large that its outskirts were lost behind the horizon. Tents and prisoners... A week passed with good summer weather, Russian bread and American canned food. After one of the morning roll calls, between 150 and 200 prisoners were separated from the rest. We got on trucks. None of us knew where we were going. The path lay to the northwest. We drove the last kilometers through a birch forest along a dam. After about a two hour drive (or longer?), we were at our destination.

The forest camp consisted of three or four wooden barracks located partly at ground level. The door was low, a few steps down. Behind the last barracks, in which the German camp commandant from East Prussia lived, were the tailors' and shoemakers' quarters, the doctor's office and a separate barracks for the sick. The entire area, barely larger than a football field, was surrounded by barbed wire. A somewhat more comfortable wooden barrack was intended for protection. On the territory there was also a sentry box and a small kitchen. This place was to be our new home for the next months, maybe years. It didn't feel like a quick homecoming.

In the barracks along the central aisle, wooden two-story bunks stretched in two rows. At the end of the complicated registration procedure (we did not have our soldier's books with us), we placed mattresses stuffed with straw on the bunk beds. Those located on the upper tier could be lucky. He was able to look outside through a glass window about 25 x 25 centimeters in size.

We got up at exactly 6 o'clock. After that, everyone ran to the washstands. At a height of about 1.70 meters, a tin drain began, looking at a wooden support. The water descended to about the level of the abdomen. In those months when there was no frost, the upper reservoir was filled with water. To wash it was necessary to turn a simple valve, after which water poured or dripped on the head and upper body. After this procedure, the roll call on the parade ground was repeated daily. Exactly at 7 o'clock we walked to the logging site in the endless birch forests surrounding the camp. I can't remember ever having to fell any other tree besides a birch.

Our "bosses", civil civilian guards, were waiting for us on the spot. They distributed tools: saws and axes. Groups of three people were created: two prisoners cut down a tree, and the third collects foliage and unnecessary branches in one heap, and then burns it. Especially in wet weather, it was an art. Of course every POW had a lighter. Along with the spoon, this is probably the most important item in captivity. But with the help of such a simple object, consisting of a flint, a wick and a piece of iron, it was possible to set fire to a rain-soaked tree, often only after many hours of effort. Burning wood waste was a daily norm. The norm itself consisted of two meters of felled wood, stacked in piles. Each piece of wood had to be two meters long and at least 10 centimeters in diameter. With such primitive tools as blunt saws and axes, which often consisted of only a few ordinary pieces of iron welded together, it was hardly possible to fulfill such a norm.

After the work was done, the stacks of wood were picked up by the “chiefs” and loaded onto open trucks. At lunchtime, work was interrupted for half an hour. We were given watery cabbage soup. Those who managed to meet the norm (due to hard work and insufficient nutrition, only a few managed to do this) received in the evening, in addition to their usual diet, which consisted of 200 grams of moist bread, but good in taste, a tablespoon of sugar and a press of tobacco, and also porridge directly on the lid of the pot. One thing "reassured": the food of our guards was a little better.

Winter 1945/46 was very heavy. We stuffed cotton balls into our clothes and boots. We felled trees and stacked them in staples until the temperature dropped below 20 degrees Celsius. If it got colder, all the prisoners remained in the camp.

Once or twice a month we were awakened at night. We got up from our straw mattresses and drove the truck to the station, which was about 10 kilometers away. We saw huge mountains of forest. These were the trees we felled. The tree was to be loaded into closed freight wagons and sent to Tushino near Moscow. The mountains of the forest inspired us with a state of depression and horror. We had to set these mountains in motion. This was our job. How much longer can we hold on? How long will this last? These hours of the night seemed endless to us. When day came, the wagons were fully loaded. The work was tedious. Two people carried on their shoulders a two-meter tree trunk to the car, and then simply pushed it without a lift into the open doors of the car. Two especially strong prisoners of war piled wood inside the car in staples. The car was filling up. It was the next car's turn. We were illuminated by a spotlight on a high pole. It was some kind of surreal picture: shadows from tree trunks and swarming prisoners of war, like some fantastic wingless creatures. When the first rays of the sun fell on the ground, we walked back to the camp. This whole day was already a day off for us.

One of the January nights of 1946 especially stuck in my memory. The frost was so strong that after work the truck engines would not start. We had to walk on ice 10 or 12 kilometers to the camp. Full moon illuminated us. A group of 50-60 prisoners stumbled along. People became more and more distant from each other. I could no longer make out the one in front. I thought this was the end. To this day, I don't know how I managed to get to the camp.

felling. Day after day. Endless winter. More and more prisoners felt morally depressed. Salvation was to sign up for a "business trip". This is how we called work in nearby collective farms and state farms. With a hoe and a shovel, we dug out potatoes or beets from the frozen ground. There was not much to collect. But all the same, the collected food was put into a saucepan and heated. Melted snow was used instead of water. Our guard ate what was cooked with us. Nothing was thrown away. Cleanings were collected, secretly from the controllers at the entrance to the camp, they swept into the territory and, after receiving the evening bread and sugar, were fried in the barracks on two red-hot iron stoves. It was some kind of "carnival" food in the dark. Most of the prisoners were already asleep by that time. And we sat, soaking up the heat with our exhausted bodies like sweet syrup.

When I look at the past tense from the height of the years I have lived, I can say that I have never, nowhere, in any place in the USSR, noticed such a phenomenon as hatred for the Germans. It is amazing. After all, we were German prisoners of war, representatives of the people who, in the course of a century, twice plunged Russia into wars. The second war was unparalleled in terms of cruelty, horror and crime. If there were signs of any accusations, they were never "collective", addressed to the entire German people.

At the beginning of May 1946, I worked as part of a group of 30 prisoners of war from our camp on one of the collective farms. Long, strong, newly grown tree trunks intended for building houses had to be loaded onto prepared trucks. And then it happened. The tree trunk was carried on the shoulders. I was on the wrong side. When loading the barrel into the back of a truck, my head was sandwiched between two barrels. I lay unconscious in the back of the car. Blood flowed from the ears, mouth and nose. The truck took me back to the camp. At this point, my memory failed. I didn't remember anything after that.

The camp doctor, an Austrian, was a Nazi. Everyone knew about it. He did not have the necessary medicines and dressings. His only tool was nail scissors. The doctor immediately said: “Fracture of the base of the skull. There is nothing I can do…”

For weeks and months I lay in the camp infirmary. It was a room with 6-8 two-story bunks. Straw-stuffed mattresses lay on top. In good weather, flowers and vegetables grew near the barracks. In the first weeks the pain was unbearable. I didn't know how to get comfortable. I could hardly hear. The speech was like incoherent murmuring. Vision has noticeably deteriorated. It seemed to me that the object in my field of vision on the right is on the left and vice versa.

Some time before the accident with me, a military doctor arrived at the camp. As he himself said, he came from Siberia. The doctor introduced many new rules. A sauna was built near the gates of the camp. Every weekend, the prisoners washed and steamed in it. The food has also gotten better. The doctor regularly visited the infirmary. One day he explained to me that I would be in the camp until such time as I could not be transported.

During the warm summer months, my well-being improved markedly. I could get up and made two discoveries. First, I realized that I was still alive. Secondly, I found a small camp library. On rough-hewn wooden shelves one could find everything that the Russians valued in German literature: Heine and Lessing, Berne and Schiller, Kleist and Jean Paul. Like a man who has already given up on himself, but who managed to survive, I pounced on books. I read first Heine, and then Jean Paul, about whom I had not heard anything at school. Although I still felt pain as I turned the pages, over time I forgot all that was going on around me. Books wrapped around me like a coat that protected me from outside world. As I read, I felt an increase in strength, new strength, driving away the effects of my injury. Even after dark, I couldn't take my eyes off the book. After Jean Paul, I started reading a German philosopher named Karl Marx. "eighteen. Brumera by Louis Bonaparte" immersed me in the atmosphere of Paris in the middle of the 19th century, and " Civil War in France" - in the midst of the battles of the Parisian workers and the Commune of 1870-71. My head felt like it was hurt again. I realized that behind this radical criticism lies a philosophy of protest, expressed in an unshakable belief in the individuality of man, in his ability to achieve self-liberation and, as Erich Fromm said, "in his ability to express inner qualities." It was as if someone had removed the veil of lack of clarity, and driving forces social conflicts have acquired a coherent understanding.
I don't want to gloss over the fact that reading wasn't easy for me. Everything that I still believed in was destroyed. I began to realize that with this new perception, there was a new hope, not limited only by the dream of returning home. It was a hope for a new life, in which there would be a place for self-consciousness and respect for a person.
While reading one of the books (I think it was "Economic and Philosophical Notes" or maybe "German Ideology") I appeared before a commission from Moscow. Her task was to select sick prisoners for further shipment to Moscow for treatment. "Will you go home!" - a doctor from Siberia told me.

A few days later, at the end of July 1946, I was riding in an open truck, along with several, as always standing and huddled close to each other, through the familiar dam in the direction of Moscow, which was 50 or 100 km away. I spent several days in a kind of central hospital for prisoners of war under the supervision of German doctors. The next day I boarded a boxcar lined with straw on the inside. This long train was supposed to take me to Germany.
During a stop in an open field, one train overtook us on neighboring rails. I recognized the two-meter birch trunks, the same trunks that we massively felled in captivity. The trunks were intended for locomotive fireboxes. That's what they were used for. I could hardly think of a sweeter goodbye.
On August 8, the train arrived at the Gronenfelde assembly point near Frankfurt an der Oder. I received my release papers. On the 11th of the same month, having lost 89 pounds but a new free man, I entered my parents' house.