Selected text
Thus, my roaming on the way to Malmyzh started. It was a horrible time. I was to take the train to Sverdlovsk from Leningrad. People were given a ration depending on the durability of the trip. I got bread, but my cellmate told me to eat the ration before leaving otherwise it would be taken away from me in any case. The prisoners took the train to Sverdlovsk, but I did not reach the destination as I was told to get off the train in Kirov and was sent to prison. I was starving. I stayed for a month in Kirov prison. The prison warden didn't know what to do with me. There was no train to Malmyzh from there and they didn't want or couldn't send me there by ship.
After Kirov I was sent from one lock-up ward to another. In each of them I had to wait for them to collect a couple more people to send me to another prison by train. It took time. A scarce prison ration consisting of 400 grams of bread and half a liter of soup was ordered one day in advance. When I arrived at the next prison I remained hungry as the ration was not ordered for me. The morning after, when I was supposed to get my ration, I was to leave on the train with another group of prisoners, who were transferred to another prison. The story would repeat itself at the next prison: the ration was not ordered for me on the arrival date. Maybe because of that I ate very skimpily for a month. When I was in Tallinn I weighed 56 kg and I lost 8 kg within a month.
I was lice-ridden. The prisons were relatively clean, but the trains and lock-up wards were teeming with fleas and lice. There was famishing. A human being can get used to anything. I remember what happened to me in Urzhum prison. At 2 o'clock in the morning the door of the ward was unlocked and a turnkey pushed a scary-looking creature. It was an old man with a sack on his back. He was very ill-kept, with a tattered beard. When the door was locked, I asked him how old he was and he said that he was 100. The old man said that he was incarcerated because he killed his granddaughter who didn't give him food. I didn't believe him and considered him to be a dotard. I asked if he had some food with him. The old man said that he had bread that he made himself: flour mixed with sawdust and dried herbs. He pulled a loaf of bread from the sack and divided it in two halves and gave me one half. At that time I paid attention to his hands, with a coat of filth. I was so hungry that I was not grouchy. Then I studied his hands closely and saw that they were really covered by clotted blood. I hungrily ate the bread and went to sleep. That bread, given to me by the bloody hands of a murderer, did taste good!
After Kirov I was sent from one lock-up ward to another. In each of them I had to wait for them to collect a couple more people to send me to another prison by train. It took time. A scarce prison ration consisting of 400 grams of bread and half a liter of soup was ordered one day in advance. When I arrived at the next prison I remained hungry as the ration was not ordered for me. The morning after, when I was supposed to get my ration, I was to leave on the train with another group of prisoners, who were transferred to another prison. The story would repeat itself at the next prison: the ration was not ordered for me on the arrival date. Maybe because of that I ate very skimpily for a month. When I was in Tallinn I weighed 56 kg and I lost 8 kg within a month.
I was lice-ridden. The prisons were relatively clean, but the trains and lock-up wards were teeming with fleas and lice. There was famishing. A human being can get used to anything. I remember what happened to me in Urzhum prison. At 2 o'clock in the morning the door of the ward was unlocked and a turnkey pushed a scary-looking creature. It was an old man with a sack on his back. He was very ill-kept, with a tattered beard. When the door was locked, I asked him how old he was and he said that he was 100. The old man said that he was incarcerated because he killed his granddaughter who didn't give him food. I didn't believe him and considered him to be a dotard. I asked if he had some food with him. The old man said that he had bread that he made himself: flour mixed with sawdust and dried herbs. He pulled a loaf of bread from the sack and divided it in two halves and gave me one half. At that time I paid attention to his hands, with a coat of filth. I was so hungry that I was not grouchy. Then I studied his hands closely and saw that they were really covered by clotted blood. I hungrily ate the bread and went to sleep. That bread, given to me by the bloody hands of a murderer, did taste good!
Period
Location
Russia
Interview
simon rapoport