Tag #154380 - Interview #90535 (Leonid Kotliar)

Soon I fell ill with dysentery and couldn’t go to work any longer. I was almost dying. A young soldier from administration of the camp gave me a handful of brown pills. I ate them and felt better next day, but I still wasn’t able to go to work. Ukrainians were standing behind and I stood in their line. One of them said that Ukrainians living on the right side of the Dnieper were allowed to go home. Those who were willing to go had to come to a hut behind the lines. This was Tuesday. I understood that Germans would do the checking, but I was almost dying of dysentery and could die of typhus and I decided to give it a try. On Wednesday morning I stood in a line behind the others and then I went to the hut. There were many Ukrainians there. I came on time since everybody coming later was told to go away. Then we were taken to a white house where the commandant was sitting.  We were lined in fives. I waited there all day. Prisoners went in through the front door, but they didn’t come out going to the camp across the corridor fenced with barbed wire. The interpreter told us that we had to come to the desk with ceremonial step and salute. If a commandant thought you were a poor soldier he would not let you go. It was finally my turn. I came in a saluted.  There was a big map of Ukraine on my right. 2 German majors were sitting at the desk. A German soldier was writing on the left. A major asked me: ‘Your name?’ – ‘Kotliarchuk Leontiy Gavrilovich’. – ‘Where did you live?’ – ‘In Kiev’. – ‘Profession?’ – ‘I finished school and was taken to the army. I have no profession’. I used the legend that I plotted on the way to Nikolaev. I said that I lived with my mother in a hostel and gave him a different address. My father died of typhus. My mother worked in a hospital. When the war began my mother was taken to the front and later I was recruited. They burst into laughter: ‘Ha-ha-ha, Bolsheviks send schoolchildren to the front’.  They nodded to the soldier and he gave a red sheet and said: ‘Come here on Friday. You will get your pass and you will go home’. I put this sheet in my pocket, turned away, salute and hear one German saying to another: ‘He looks like a Jew’. I keep marching toward the door… The interpreter yells: ‘Stop!’. I turn around, make 3 steps, salute, drop my hands and try to have a smile. One German said: ‘No, it’s a mistake’. I turn around and head toward the door. In the end of the barbed wire corridor a Tatar man was waiting for me. He said: ‘Here is 300 grams of bread and a cotton wool jacket. Give me your overcoat. Germans would take away your overcoats anyway and we will need them in winter. They won’t take a jacket’.  I believed him and besides, I was tempted by 300 grams of bread. I ate it. It turned out there were lots of lice in his jacket.  On Friday morning I came to the white hut and stood in line. A soldier made a speech in German. He said that German commandment and Fuhrer and the Third Reich trusted us and had hopes for us. Do you promise to serve the great Germany faithfully? Of course, we promised. He called us by our names and gave us our passes. We got one loaf of bread each and another loaf for five of us. We were walking along the barbed wire corridor and there were hands stretching to us begging for bread. I gave pieces of my bread and left only a piece of 300 grams for myself. A group of us heading to Kiev went on our way. I decided to not go to Kiev, but stay in a village. Everybody in Kiev knew I was a Jew. I took a back road that was safer. I went from one village to another. Once a group of men stopped me. One of them inquired whether I was a zhyd.  I said ‘no’, but he persisted. I said: ‘Germans released me from a camp and gave me a pass. Do you think they are more stupid than you?’ It was strong argumentation and they let me go.