Page 171 - LEIBY

Chapter 22 171

ruefully. “The Soviet jails are full of former concentration camp
inmates. How we rejoiced when the Soviets came to liberate
our camp! I told them that I had been a partisan, and when
I once went to the Kovno ghetto to try to obtain some food
and supplies for my troop, I got caught up in an aktzia that the
Germans decided to carry out with no prior warning. I had no
chance of escaping, and thus I got caught and sent to the camp.
The liberating soldiers listened to my story without showing any
particular interest. Then they ordered me to get into a car and
informed me that I was going for interrogation. I proudly told
them that I would be glad to be interrogated about my activities
for the Soviet Union – I could tell them about the trains I blew
up, and about the raids we made on German police stations,
and also about how we smuggled food out of the ghetto and
delivered it to Soviet partisan units.

“The soldiers listened to my boasting without comment, their
expressions as frozen as the air that slammed in our faces.

“We arrived at a temporary prison camp. In the courtyard I
could already see German prisoners, looking healthy and fit, and
beside them, scrawny Russian prisoners who had been liberated
from the camps, just like me – like vultures and their prey all
thrown together. High up on the wall hung a massive picture of
Stalin – the so-called emancipator of the Soviet Union.

“I was taken to the interrogator, who wanted to hear everything,
and for five days straight I told them about my life as a partisan,
about hiding in the forest and the desperate battles that we
fought alone against fully armed German forces.

“I showed him my toes, that had frozen during one of the
marches, and the bullets that are still inside my body and
occasionally cause me fever and agonizing infections, reminding
me that I’m in sore need of medical treatment.

“The investigator listened and wrote down every word that
I said. Nothing ever gets forgotten in Soviet bureaucracy –
everything is recorded, black on white, until the white is buried
beneath reams of black.