Page 174 - LEIBY

174 Leiby – Border Smuggler

myself fall into the Germans’ hands.

“Vladimir smiled. ‘And by the way, here in the camp, I met my
brother Igor,’he chuckled.‘He’s been found guilty of abandoning
injured soldiers. The interrogators informed him that he should
never have deserted his post in order to save himself.’”

The stranger who was walking with Leiby took a deep breath and
continued. “The security around the camp was comparatively
quite relaxed, and the wardens had a hard time coping with the
prisoners, whose numbers just rose from day to day. One dark
night, when all the guards were drunk, I took the opportunity
and succeeded in pulling out one of the bars on my cell window.
I crawled out and managed to slither under the barbed wire
fence. I was free!” The man’s face lit up for a moment, but his
eyes immediately darkened. “But it’s too early to rejoice, as long
as we’re still in Poland…”

“You still haven’t told me your name,” Leiby observed.

“Hersh,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.

They approached the border. A large, menacing black guard dog
began barking furiously at them, but quieted down after Leiby
threw him a piece of meat. Leiby glanced around in search of
a gap in the security surrounding the border that would allow
them to cross over undetected. Eventually they found the way
and the pair began racing towards the border. Hersh continued
speaking, evidently used to talking while he was running.

“You understand, under the Stalinist regime there’s no point in
the whole trial procedure. My crime was that I didn’t commit
suicide and let myself be taken captive. The Russians prefer
their men either dead or missing, so that they can lament about
all the lives lost on the battlefield. And to think that before the
war I was a staunch communist! What a fool I was!”

“Shhh…” Leiby hushed him. “We’re nearing a public zone.
From now on – not a word!”

It was early morning; they had crossed the border safely and