Read Online The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII by Othniel J. Seiden - Free Book Online

saw a mass of wretched humanity. Most had dull, unseeing, emotionless expressions. They'd soon be reduced to spiritless animals. Draining them of all hope and ambition made control of them easier. Yorgi wondered whether most cared if they took another breath.
    He'd been in other prisoner camps, but none like this. Sixty or seventy thousand men were enclosed by barbed wire in this place. The ground was hard, dry and dusty. There had been an abundance of plant life here before it had been reclaimed as a prisoner compound, but all of that had been picked and eaten by starving men-picked clean, down to the last blade of grass.
    There was a stench common to all such camps of urine, vomit, feces and the odor of bodies not cleaned in days or weeks. At least here it appeared, they removed the dead quickly, so the horrible smell of death did not add to the other disgusting odors.
    Officers, political prisoners and Jews were put into a separate enclosure where their life expectancy was even shorter than in the main camp. Yorgi had made every effort to keep two facts to himself since the Germans had occupied the Ukraine: that he was an officer and a Jew.
    There had been a relatively large number of Jews conscripted into the Russian army. It was a method by which the Russians had tried to assimilate the Jews out of existence. For a Jew in the Russian army, it was almost a matter of assimilate or die. They weren't too eager to assimilate them into their society, but into the military, that was acceptable.
    Few of these Jews had become officers, but Yorgi was an exceptional Jew. He had an appetite and an aptitude for survival. Even now, as he looked around Darnitsa compound for the first time, he thought escape.
    He got up. The warm, dusty ground felt good to his bare feet. From past experience, he knew it wouldn't be too hard to get another pair of shoes. The death rate in such camps was so high that many pairs of shoes would become available every day. Right now, he enjoyed the feel of the earth against his feet. It reminded him of the dirt roads of the village of his youth. A million years ago, he thought. He was a little concerned about the night when it would cool, but that was several hours off, according to the sun.
    Yorgi started a walk around the Darnista camp. In a few days, I'll be like all the other prisoners-unable to help myself-and not caring. I have to escape before they drain my strength.
    Walking, he memorized everything. The entire enclosure is barbed wire. Guard towers at intervals of two hundred meters. It's amazing that most of them are unarmed. Those have Ukrainian guards. Germans don't quite trust them with weapons. Just lookouts to yell an alarm if someone breaks. Armed Germans and unarmed Ukrainian guards walked outside the wire. They joked with each other more than they attended to their business. But if someone made a try for it, they'd have him full of bullets before he got through the wire. But they obviously expected no escapes from these broken spirited creatures.
    The guards were bored.
    It was an ideal situation for escape-when the time is right. Yorgi wondered if he could find anyone here to help in an attempt? "It's got to be soon... Maybe it's better if I keep my plans to myself; don't know who I could trust," he mumbled to himself.
    He walked on and observed, while doing his best to be unobserved.
    There were two single fences around the camp. No electric barrier, no mine fields that he could sense, not even large clearings to cross. Along one area a road passed right by the outside barbed wire. Lines of women stood there on the chance they might catch sight of a husband, brother, father or son taken prisoner. They knew if a loved one were there, he'd be dead in a week or two. Many carried a basket or small bag from which they threw potatoes, turnips or onions over or through the fences. Like feeding animals in a zoo. When the camp first opened the Germans had shot at women for throwing food, killed