The following text represents abstracts of the rememberances of the former Kraslag prisoner (1941-1951) and Lithuanian school-teacher Antanas Krizhanauskas. He was arrested together with tens of thousands of other people during the mass that overran all Baltic states on the 14th of June 1941, got separated from his family, which was sent into internal exile. He himself was taken away to the Kraslag, where he had to wait half a year for his trial (which turned out not to be a trial at all) - together with many thousands of other inmates. Nowaays, such Special Boards that administered in absentia sentences are admitted illegal, and on the basis of this recognizance Krizhanauskas and others were rehabilitated. However, he had to spend ten hard years in the camps, at the time of the war, was separated from his family and later inter-nally exiled to the northern environs of the city of Kansk for an unlimited period, until he was released from there in 1956.
It might be interesting for readers of the magazin "Yenissey" to become familiar with the unaffected story of a man, who once happened to get to the surroundings of Krasnoyarsk, a region that was well-known to many people at that time.
One evening, after an exhausting three-weeks' trip, our prisoner transport passed Reshoty station, turned to the left and finally stopped at Nizhnaya Poyma station. On the neighbouring tracks wood was loaded on goods waggons. The loaders were guarded by soldiers. To the right izbas (log-huts; translator's note) were scattered over the hill in disorder, to the left there was a big area enclosed by a fence with watch-towers at each corner. In the distance slightly sloping wooded hills. The train started moving again. The sun was already disappearing behind the forest; just one beam shone directly through the little windowon the left - and this meant that we were going to the north. Monotonous buildings passed by, and as soon as somewehere in the taiga appeared a forest glade, we could get a quick glnce of a camp - and again a forest glade - and another camp. And then rose the warm sun of the 6th of July 1941.
"Get off! Take your belongings with you!"
One could hear the grinding of opening doors, the trampling of the soldiers' boots, screaming, scolding.
While our train (comprising 60 waggons altogether) was being unloaded, I looked a little around. In front of us, to the east, the area sligtly dipped towards the edge of the woods, and within this area there was an enclosed territory of about 6-8 hectares, with watch-towers at its corners (of the kind we head already seen before). Behind the embankment, towards the west - a dark wall of wood. The whole area where we were now asked to get off the train, was surrounded by a tight chain of soldiers. Sheepdogs were barking. We had to sit down on the ground. It was comfortable to stretch out one's legs and catch some fresh air. An enormous number of people sat there on the ground - a few thousand.
On the waggons there had been a motley crowd of company, and I had been completely unable to define, which might have been the criteria for our arrest. Today living in freedom and often meeting with acquaintances or people who I know by hear-say it becomes evident that they had brought together arrestants, who had shown themselves with national self-confidence. Activists of the independent Lithuania. Why did they refuse to adept themselves to the building-up of a new Socialist society - this little Lithuania to the large USSR? But at that time consideration did not get that far.
There was a roll-call, a count over, a search, as a result of which they confiscated all more or less valuable objects, and towards evening we passed through the big gate of camp No. 7 near the settlement of Reshoty. They had bot yet thought about whether or not it might be appropriate to put a sign with Dante's saying above the camp gate: "Do not give up hope, you, who walks in here".
Dong, dong, dong - the long-drawn-out sound caused by blows on an iron rail signal wake the camp at six o'clock in the morning, and this is when the work day starts. The give us one hour for the reveille, breakfast and gathering for the march-off to work, including the formation into brigades of seven prisoners each at the camp gate: at first the felling of trees, later road construction, work for a lumberyard and others. On the dot of seven the gate opens and we find ourselves beyond the camp zone. Guards draw near immediately and start over again with the same old story: "One step to the left or right ..." (and you will be shot; translator's note). Our lumberjack brigade is to clear the way for a railroad line through the taiga. At the beginning we did our job clumsily. To cut down bushes and fell pinetreees did not seem to be such a difficult task, but to work efficiently by making use of the available technologies - this was what we did not succeed in. We met with huge pinetrees, huge larches. In such places we ran busily to and fro, wasting a lot of energy, and when it was time for lunch our strength already failed us. The guards curse and swear, but we are hardly able to move. In the evening we are informed that we only fulfilled 40% of the set work norm, and the food ration for the next day depends on the output, on the amount of work done.
We worked a lot, hard labour, till nightfall, but somehow we were not able to manage these 100%. Once, before the march-off to work, the camp officer deigned to appear in person:
"The Lithuanian brigades do not fulfill their daily work norm. They pretend it is fixed too high. They sabotage work! You know, nobody will reduce the norm for you. Who fulfills it, will receive a good food ration, those who don't - well, may they kick out ...!"
And they began to kick out. Soonafter, the provisions which had been taken along from home ran short. The camp ration became more and more disgusting. They also did not distribute the rancid soap any more, which we had not been able to swallow during the first days. We now received salted water instead, spiced with bear's garlic. Bread - from rancid flour, moist and heavy. Each of us received 400grs. In case of a 100% fulfillment of the work norm they gave out 500 grs, in case of 110% - 600 grs, 120% - 700 grs, and in the evening a little piece of herring or 70-80 grs of stomach muscles from a horse or cow, badly rinsed and often spoiled by unboiled, ruminated forage or even dung. The people grew considerably weaker. Now we had to support the most feeble and exhausted brigade workers under their arms when returning to the camp from work. Due to the poor and insufficient feeding the prisoners started to suffer from diarrhea. Its first victim was the eldest man among the farmers. When we learned about his death in the evening, we, the yet healthy ones, agreed to make a coffin for him and the bury this poor guy in accordance with our customs and oractices. But where to inter him? The camp administration did not want to listen to our plans. We were chased away to work and the dead body was transported away beyond the camp zone on a bunching buck-rake torn by a young bull. Where he was buried and who did this remained unknown.
During the first winter, when the dying of people in large numbers set in, the dead bodies were not intered, but piled up at the camp enclosure until spring.
This is how it would happen in winter, but now it was summer. Our tortures upon felling trees got worse by all the mosquitos and sawrms of midges. Who has never been to the taiga is unable to imagine, what a scourge of God these insects mean for people and animals. This kind of bloodsuckers can also be found in Lithuania, but they fall upon you one by one; it bites you, you kill it with the flat of your hand it is dead, and you wait, until the next one bites you. In the taiga they attack you in swarms. You just touch a tuft of grass and it feels as if someone would be throwing a handful of sand directly into your face. The insects creep into your nose and eyes. Within a couple of minutes all body orifices turn into wounds. The only rescue from this situation was smoke, which we finally ran into, after we had completely lost patience. We laid a smoke screen round ourselves. But this effort was worthwhile.
Late in October the prisoners in the camp started suffering from real hunger. Hundreds of them became unfit for work and prowled the zone all day long, in search for potatoe peels and cigarette stubs. The infirmary barracks were over-crowded and the heavy, typical smell of diarrhea was in the air - everybody suffered from dysentery, the first symptom of a serious deficiency disease, of malnutrition. Among the Lithuanians there were nine physicians and some medical assistants. They were all called in to help treating the sick persons, and they cured all kinds of ailments by manganese preparations. But hunger can only be cured by food, and food was not available. Even in such cases the doctors tried to help by occasionally releasing the sick prisoners from work. As soon as it became evident that a prisoner had been released from work without any sufficient reason, the physician, as a consequence, was assigned to do gang labour, and he and the prisoner, as well, were punished with a yet samller food ration on the next day - each of them only received 300 grs of bread. Doctor Velanishkis had to suffer in particular. He was an utterly goodhearted man, who had already been punished several times before he was finally sent away to do gang labour; and late in 1942 he was sentenced to maximum penalty (execution; translator's note).
In our camp there was a general regime. Therefore we were allowed to write letters more often, receive parcels and have up to 100 rubels with us; apart from that the barracks remained unlocked at night and they were not equipped with latrine buckets inside. But on the other hand they kept political prisoners together with criminals in this place. From the very first day they stole from us, robed us and beat us up. The criminals could mainly be found among the personal of the camp service (the so-called pridurki). The camp had become a home for them. They kept up relations to free employees, were well-fed and strong. We. the Lithuanians made up about 80% of the camp contingent. We were all shortly before kicking the bucket; there was a lack of unity. Not once we were able to meet the hardened professional criminals with the necessary resistence. Although we weremore than 2000 and in spite of the fact that there were former officers, high-ranking functionaries -up to a president - among us, a leader for the organization of a self-protection group could not be found. This disorganization was the reason for why many of my compatriots suffered an early death. We were quite simple at that time and had not got accustomed to the unwritten camp law yet: "You die today - I will tomorrow!" The camp authorities were interested in our humiliation and responded to any kind of complaints by scorn and derision only. "It is not our business; we wil keep out of this!"
Many prisoners had brought along from home various kinds of belongings, their best suit, a coat, a sweater, shoes, a shirt. Some had managed to keep their golden engagement rings or medallions, as they used to call "eternal penhoulders" at that time, which were often fitted with gold-plated nibs. Even I had been able to smuggle a wrist-watch through the shmon (search; translator's note). Such objects represented a rarity not only in the camp, but also among the free workers. We were called foreigners.
Those among us, who still disposed of some energy to fight for survival, hastened to exchange these objects agaianst something to eat. All our belongings could soon be found either in the travelling bags of the "camp bourgeoisie", the pridurki, or - by their intervention - with the free employees; and for this mediatorship we even had to pay. Thus, only a few tiny things remained with the owners. For my high-quality wrist-watch I received a loaf of underdone bread and two vouchers for an evening camp meal. During the first years the camp admini-stration conscientiously looked out that not a single printed word reached our hands. However, we were forwarded newspapers by the assistance of some train drivers. For a single issue we had to pay 30 rubels. According to the camp tarif this amount was the equivalent for 100 grs of bread, a box of matches or a package of makhorka (tobacco; translator's note). This newspaper was usually torn into pieces and used to roll cigarettes; in this way we succeeded in smuggling it into the camp zone. There we put the parts together and started to read. It did not matter at all that a newspaper had already been issued two weeks earlier - for us time had come to a standstill, anyway.
There were also a couple of clergymen among ourselves. Towards the month of December one of them had grown so weak that they had even ceased to chase him to work. He lay in the goners' barracks (individuals who were on their last legs; translator's note) on one of the lower plank beds. Now not only the weakened prisoners addressed to him asking for moral support, but also the workers. Each of them was warmed by his good words and the heartiness of his view. He used to cut his 400 grs ration into small slices and give them away to those who visited him. What a strength of mind he must have disposed of, in order to prove such a generosity!
One day, at minus 40 degrees, one of my comrades, the former school-teacher Antanas Chernyavichus had an accident. We had just finished sawing an oaktree, when the top of a tree just felled beside us covered him - the area within the forbidden zone was not very spacious and it was always dangerous to stay and work there. I got off with a mere fright, but Chernyavichus was groaning all the time. They took him away and placed him near the campfire, where he remained till the evening; he was then transported back to the camp by sleigh. The whole night he ws lying in the corridor of the infirmary barracks and was only examined by a physician the following morning. The upshot was only logical - this kind of treatment resulted in gangrene, so that one of his legs had to be amputated. After his recovery the invalid A. Chernyavichus worked as a breadcutter, which helped him to survive the years of famine.
My staying power, too, did not last for a long time. In the middle of winter I was also onmy last legs. I was compeltely exhausted, lost my conscience. As in a dream I remember the instructions, which Doctor Dakinyavichus gave to the medical orderly:
"Carry him over to the barracks and administer him camphor. Maybe he will come through till tomorrow". And I came through and was even able to sit on my plank bed. When the medical orderly saw me sitting there, he morosely made a grimace and reached out my bread ration and the soup, which I had already confidently hoped for.
I did not succeed to swallow my food, when it suddenly - happened to be in my pants. I was suffering from diarrhea. As far as I understood, this was not dysentery, however, but merely an extensive feebleness and exhaustion, accompanied by a serious vitamin deficiency, which did not allow the organism to digest the intaken food. As usual the physicians would make the following diagnose in such cases: dystrophy II, dystrophy III. And these weakened persons were then fed with anything that turned up. Once they gave us moulded wheat. All through the night they had cooked cereals for soup and porridge, but nevertheless the grains remained hard as small shot. Of course, such kind of food eneded up undigested in the latrine bucket. There were a couple of cunning heads, which considered from every angle how to strain off, wash, dry and grind these remainders, and then, illegally, sell them to the workers, when they returned to the campf in the evening, whereby they pretended "to having got hold of these products in the horse stables".
My neighbours, who also suffered from dystrophy,died peacefully. They did not suffer great pains. Their lives were extinguished like the going out flame of a burning down candle. Thus, peacefully passed away my former teacher colleagues, which had their plank beds just beside me: Banzaitis, Y. Baltakis, I. Mikshis, Y. Kanapetskas. One of the teachers from Biyutishkis, Y. Rinkyavichus, called me out in the evening and asked me to take away a fine winter coat from the head of his plank bed and give it to his wife in case I survived! The next morning already I could not find him any more - he had already been carried away to the mortuary. I lived to see the last days of colleagues, which I had often met during teachers' meetings: D. Savitskas, K. Dinkyavichus, D. Lukoshyavichus and hundreds of other fellow countrymen more or less known to me.
Towards the middle of winter the mortality rate increased so dramatically that they even organized two burying brigades, who intered the unfortunate departed in ditches, which were dug incessantly.
Contrary to the prognosis made by the physician I survived by eating the leftovers of the deceased, "earning" from time to time a few crumbs with services to those who needed my help, by wiping the kitchen floor or collecting all kinds of edible things I could find in the infirmary barracks.
Once the teacher Y. Tsimbolaitis, who was known to me, approached and told me a sensation: they had summoned him to the staff barracks not long ago, during the night, where he happened to meet A. Guzyavichus (A. Gudaitis-Guzyavichus, the later minister of the Lithuanian KGB, who was also engaged in writing). He and Y. Tsimbolaitis had been class-mates at the Ukmergsk gymnasium and had become friends.
"I stood in front of him, this NKVD general - an unfortunate prisoner - and thought about the changeability of human fate".
"One should have told him about our miserable situation, about hunger, death and all the separated families".
"That is what I did. Guzyavichus promised me help, and about the others he said: 'Man is the mans's wolf!'" (His help found its expression in the fact that Y. Tsimbolaitis was transferred to a farming camp in Nizhne Ingash, where he happily served his 10 years' sentence).
In January 1942 I received the first letter from my wife! Where this postal chain startted and how the relatives managed to establish contact with eachother again - I do not know, but early in winter the first letters arrived in the camp. Thus, we learned that our families lived as special settlers in the Republic of Komi, in the Altai region, the region of Tomsk or in Yakutia, prohibited from leaving the assigned settlement area.
My wife wrote that she was also working for the lumbering industry, that is for one of the forestries in the Altai region. Since she was unable to fulfil the work norm, she received 500 grs of bread and meals in the canteen; and my parents, both old and sick, were permanently disabled and received a bread ration of 400 grs each. During the summer they used to additionally eat all kinds of herbs, but know, in winter, the situation was really serious. My wife, who was very infirm, had never held an axe in her hands before. What norms did they have there? But she was good as a teacher.
For more than a year we had been in the camp by now; half of those, who had come with us, had already died. Everywhere in the world, even in the most rigid and severe social orders, they nevertheless try to base this on some law and order - even thought this might just be in pretence. When someone was punished, this happened by order of a court and for some concrete crime or deed. Here, however, they were arrested, locked up and tortured - and we do not have the slightest idea what for.
In the autumn of the year 1942 three internationalists arrived at the camp, representatives of the NKVD, investigating officers, who were to "nail down" our case: two Letts and a Jew. The investigation started; they always fetched us during the night, of course, since we had to work in the daytime. And then we would usually sign the protocol. For the entirely recalcitrant camp inmates they organized the BUR (disciplinary barracks; translator's note), which were never empty.
In the middle of December it was my turn. I was found guilty of having been a teacher and member of the shaulis (organization of civic guards), who had educated his students in a nationalistic spirit and supported the Fascist power of Smetona (A. Smetona, last Lithuanian president).
In January 1943 they pronounced the judgement: a Special Board, an in absentia administrative court of the state security organs, sentenced me behind my back to 10 years for having actively struggled against the working class and the revolutionary movement ...
Against the revolutionary movement ... Against such a movement I could not have fought, by no means, for the simple reason that in the villages and smaller towns, where I had given lessons, such movements had not existed, after all. In fact, nobody had even noticed them. The farmers had complained about the fact that the goodstuffs produced by them had to be sold at such low prices and thar manufactured goods were comparatively expensive, and the merchants and dealers had uttered their annoyance that there were only few buyers and no money. The primary school teachers lamented over lots of work, but little salary (The monthly salary of a primary school teacher amounted to 300 Lit. The price for 1 kg of butter = 2 Lit, a pair of shoes = 20-40 Lit). But not a single person had ever started any revolution.
In those cold nights of January all Lithuanians were read out the judgements pronounced by the Special Board: 5, 8, 10 years of camp detention.
The wolf from Kruglov's fable had spoken his word to the lamb ...
And then, a couple of days after this notice, I received a letter from my wife informing me that my parents had died; hard to bear news were in store for me, while I was lying on my plank bed. I wanted to shout out to the whole camp, to the whole world, what an injustice this was! What had they done wrong, these simple, peacable working persons, my little old parents!? Newcomers, who had proclaimed in a loud voice that they had come to free Lituania from violence and injustice; why did they wrong them and extermined unguilty people? It is hard to figure out what a hard life my parents lead as simple grain-growers and how they had to struggle for their daily bread ... And they were called enemies of the people!?
And life went on. The camp inmates died, just like leaves fall down from the trees in autumn. All my neighbours from the environs of Skudutishkis (a small town in Lithuania) lost their lives: Lukoshyavichus, Pinkyavichus, Savitskas, Lautsyus; my fellow students: Rinkyavichus, P. Morkunas, Tuskyanis, Ruzgas; well-known fellow teachers: Kanapyatskas, I. Morkunas and many, many well.known and less well-known persons. And I am stil alive. Men, who had been as strong as an oak-tree, tall, powerful Herculeans, just passed away, and I, of average size, yet disposed of such a staying power. What makes me stay alive - I do not understand myself.
Since long the guards were relieved. Young soldiers with whom we had even felt, strange to say, mutual understanding, who had recognized that they were not only guarding some blood-suckers and fascists,as the camp authorities had explained to them, had been sent away to the front a long time ago already. Their place had been taken over by mobilized old men, who oddly enough, behaved in a much crueller and rougher way. By this conduct they obviously tried their best to avoid being sent to the front line.
In the horse brigade a good-looking guy called Milashyus was working. by the aid of his horse he had to haul wooden beams to the lower lumberyard. Once, when there was severe frost and he warmed himself at the fire-place, the little horse, which he had left behind unattended, was run over by a switcher engine. And then something unusual happened. Milashyus ran off in fright and hid himself. And so they did not find him upon the following change of shifts. Did it mean he had escaped? In the evening I quickly dropped in at the camp hairdresser's, where my comrade R. Strelchunas worked. Here it was possible to work in a cosy warmth, make some money on the side, and sometimes the friend was even willing to share a few crumbs of alms with you.
Ivanov, the dog handler, came rushing into the room.
"Shave and freshen up", he commanded. The whole treatment was always free of charge for him - and the Cologne water was to be prepared by the hairdresser himself. "See, where you get the necessary ingredients from and prepare it as best as you can. If you don't freshen me up, you will have a nice chance to freshen yourself up soon - when we assign you to do gang labour!"
Haveing been shaved and "freshened up", Ivanov proudly announced:
"Today I shot down your fellow countryman. First this stupid guy kills his horse and then he runs away. I set the dog on him. he said he had intended to hide at the 5th camp sector, went on his knees to me, begged for mercy, but I finished him off, so that it will teach everybody else a lesson".
The prisoners who had been employed as carriers reported that they had not found Milashyus in the place, where he had ostensibly been executed. Even Ivanov got frightened about this news. It turned out that Milashyus, already seriously injured, had yet creeped on hundreds of meters and that he had nibbled a small piece of bread immediately before his death, which he had kept from lunch. And so they finally found the poor guy lying beside the guardroom with a tightly squeezed piece of bread in his hand.
The scale pan started to tip towards victory.
Now the ceased keeping away newspapers from us; we were allowed to freely read them in the Culture and Education Unit. A new way of life pervaded the daily camp routine; even the prisoners noticed the smell of omelettes made of American egg powder, dried milk and Canadian flour. They started sewing loose summer overalls from sacks, actually destined for wheat, and mainly distributed them to the free employees of the camp service.
Someone among the "uppers" had realized that the devastated war zones had to be populated again. For this purposes or for the reason of increasing the productivity of labour OPs (rest areas or rehabilitation points; translator's note) were organized in the Kraslag. And in 1944 I also came to one of these OPs, not far from Nizhne Ingash. To this place they would only allow the transfer of young and yet healthy, but weak and exhausted prisoners, aiming to send them again to the felling of trees, as soon as their strength had been restored after a couple of months.
Being transferred to such an OP meant the greatest happiness to a camp inmate. It is true, after all, that they will not give you enough to eat there, either, but at least you do not have to go to work. The feeding, for example, looked like this: for lunch they distributed 0,5 litres of soup and 250 grs of porridge, mostly from oats, a piece of salted flounder or a tiny omelette made of American egg powder, and sometimes a thick pancake from Canadian wheat flour.
The "holiday-makers" had the privilege of a passive rest, but they were also offered a variety of possibilities to earn some extra wages in kind - in the store, in the kitchen, in the bakery or in the vegetable store. Of course, everybody was aware of the fact that he would have to to back to forced labour after his recovery. Maybe it would be better to remain in the state of a half-dead, scraping one's living in the camp as an invalid. But due to the inexorable sensation of hunger such ideas were soon given up again. On the third day already, I went out with the night shift to dig up potatoes. For this work we received a couple of cooked potatoes. And to yet complete my food ration I ate another 32 raw ones during the first night.
From the frozen potatoes they used to squeeze out the starch; the pressed out remainders lay about in the street, near the store. We collected them and then baked incredibly delicious pancakes from them in the barracks.
This is where I met a messenger of the camp administration on duty, the sixty-year-old former Lithuanian minister of education, Professor K. Pakyanis, who had a good command of several languages and up to this day went around in his pre-war coat, with a rope tied around his waist serving him as a belt, and - the first president of Lithuania, A. Stulginskis, who had taken part in the signing of the Lenin Agreement on the Recognition of Lithuania as a State, together with Soviet Russia in 1920. It was A. Stulginskis' task to go to the Distribution Unit and get the bread rations for the invalids. Having put the rations, including some extra crums, into a special box with utmost accuracy, he collected the remaining bread crumbs from the tabletop and slowly put them into his mouth, as if this were a sacramental act. A sorry sight!
The two months past liked a brilliant dream. And there I was again on the prisoner transort and then in camp No. 3, in Lebyazhe, sawing trees. My way to Golgotha started somewhere, not far away, in the 7th camp sector, in Revuchiy. To saw wood is not what one would exactly call an easy work. Here we experienced the end of the war. many of us were full of hope that life would become easier for us after the victory and that the army, having seen lots of culture areas in the European states, would now say its word. But nothing changed at all, neither the work load nor the penitentiary regime. I started wasting away again. Preparations for a new prisoner transport were in progress. But before leaving we had to pass by a doctor's commission. There you are standing in a row, naked, and if, after pinching the prisoners' buttocks, the muscles go back to their previous position - then you are able-bodied, but in case the imprints do not disappear - then you are suffering from a serious deficiency disease due to malnutrition. I was declared fit and sent away to the north by train, to the 9th camp sub-sector, to the Pokonayevka district. That was a new camp - the barracks built of recently felled trees, which had a smell of resin. They had been erected by the labour army in the past year, by prisoners who had worked in the sweat of their brows - all Volga-Germans. Well, and now the brought all kinds of people to this place, starting with Hungarians and ending with people from Japan. There were also adherents of general Vlassov, West-Ukrainians, Lithuanians, as well as Chinese. But why were they here? I was interested to learn, why they were detained here - and it turned out that they had all been sentenced of section 58! They gave the following explanation themselves: "Either you talk too much" - then they call it anti-Soviet agitation, or "you do not say enough" - then it is espionage.
In 1947 they carried to the spot new prisoners, who had been found guilty of being "interpatriants". They were former Soviet prisoners, who had been in German concentration camps, but miraculously survived, and had then been scattered all over the country by the freak of fate. Many of them settled into their new surroundings, got a job, founded a family. After the war, tormented by homesickness, they allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Soviet repatriant commissions to return to their home country - and there they learned that they were now considered as traitors to their country, having received not less than 10 years of camp detention. The guy, who helped me sawing the trees, Biryukov, came to Reshoty ... directly from the South African Republic!
But what does it mean, after all - from South Africa?!
After my parents' eath, my wife - now living alone - was mobilized to the labour army. She passed by only a couple of kilometers from the place where I lived, towards the east, and came to Komsomolsk on the river Amur, where she also had to work for the lumbering industry.
Lately I have note received any letter from her anymore. I did not know what to think of it, but then, suddenly, a letter arrived! After the end of the war the labour army has been disbanded and my wife, having received the demobilization order, returned to Lithuania, where she is now giving lessons again. My Onute is free and went back to Lithuanian home grounds! Wonderful! In one of her next letters she promises to help me as soon as she has saved up some money. And then another long stretch of time without any correspondance. Finally, about half a year later, I receive a letter from our relatives: Onute has been imprisoned. She is doing time in the Shaulaisk prison. After some time another news: she has been sentenced to 3 years for having "illegally" returned to Lithuania. It turned out that the authorities had pointed out to her that fromnow on Lithuaniawas not her home country any more, but ... the Altai region, Kazakhstan, Siberia - and she was sent to the camp to dig out the Volga-Don Canal. It seems as if the injustices and maltreatments will never come to an end.
It was the camp veteran Alexander Vladimirovich Polisanov, prisoner as of 1937, who told me first about the fact that they were building such a canal. The tall, long-nosed old man gave a severe impression. He was the head of the so-called URB (Registration and Distribution Unit). One could clearly feel the experience of a former office bureaucrat and well-known authority - the camp administraton also used to confer with him. We got closer to each other: he told me about his life. He had been a Czarist officer, spending the whole period of World War I with other soldiers in trenches. In 1917 he became a turncoat, changing to the side of the revolutionaries. Then followed his service for the ChK (Extraordinary Commission Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage; translator's note) and his promotion up to the head of the Guard and Regime Administration. And this meant nothing else than that it had been him, who, together with a few other fellow combatants, hade made up the camps and worked out an realized their inner regime in detail. He directly master-minded the organization of the guarding and escorting of prisoners who worked for the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Volga-Moscow Canal, the construction of the Pechora railroad line and the erection of camps in the Republic of Komi. In one word: he knew by heart, how many people covered every single square meter of the bottom of the White Sea Canal, and how many had remained under each single sleeper of the Pechora railroad line. And I understood in which way they had put my wife through the wringer again .
Polisanov himself was being detained in camps as of 1937 and, having consequently lost all his teeth and his health, he was finally compelled to sign all the protocols the interrogator presented to him. He complained that his only son had broken with him and that now, on the brink of freedom, he was without any relatives and did not know where to go. A vivid example of how man might become the victim of a regime, which he had created, fostered and cherished himself. And now he was stung and bitten, regardless of all good relations and his status of being a war veteran, just like a rabid dog would bite his master.
As I have already mentioned, they used to detain in the camps political prisoners together with criminals through many years. The terror practised by the criminals towards the political inmates represented one of the intended methods from the side of the camp administration to break down the will of those sentenced on section 58. We, the Lithuanians, had to suffer from the professsional criminals, too,particularly during the first years of our camp detention. However, after the war, the situation changed. The camps filled with politicals - former front-line soldiers, people, who had gone through water and fire. The people now faced the superior force of the professional criminals. In several camps, among them the Kraslag, a wave of incidents involving bloodshed started to roll.
Soon there were reformatory efforts: from the camps with a general regime they began to transfer all political prisoners to camps with an intensified regime. The politicals from the Kraslag now awaited the "removal" to the camps of Karaganda. And thus, they also transported away the seventy-year-old A. V. Polisanov, who had once been a man of merit to the Gulag and who was hardly alive now, because he had undergone a serious operation just a couple of days before. They carried him to the camp gate on a stretcher. Kochetkov, the surgeon, said: "He won't make it till Karaganda. This is Polisanov's last transport". Well, that's the way it is about the Gulag regime.
Political prisoners from almost the whole Kraslag passed through our camp, the camp that had now become a transit camp. After I had found a job with Polisanov's aid in the Registration and Distribution Unit towards the end of my term, I had the opportunity of gaining an insight into the registration lists and was able to calculate that only 14-16% of the Lithuanians who had been arrested in 1941 had remained alive at the end of the term.
The day of my release drew to a close, as well. Was I looking forward to it? No! Ahead of me was an exile for life. A special term, which had not been defined in further details in the sentence passed by the Special Board. My parents had died somewhere in the foothills of the Altai. Even their graves have not been preserved. My wife is being detained in a camp, digging out the Volga-Don Canal. It is not known, where they are going to exile me to. What am I supposed to do? Where shall I find a home?
The 9th of February 1951 was dawning. Although I already found myself behind the camp zone together with another three fellow countrymen, an armed guard immediately appeared on the scene. We followed him to reshoty station, where we were loaded on Stolypin waggons; and in no time I found myself in the Krasnoyarsk prison, in the overcrowded cell No. 9. Well, that is what they call freedom, after all, the end of your term. Here even the greatest of all optimists would drop his arms. Fortunately, I only had to knock about a few days in this place, and on an extremely frosty day in February I said good-bye to Krasnoyarsk and was transported away with thousands of fellow sufferers, to a new, unknown place within the Stalinist meat grinder, into the cold and hateful internal exile.
Text from the magazin "Pyargale"