Tag #154387 - Interview #90535 (Leonid Kotliar)

A day later we boarded a freight train in Peremyshl and went across Poland. We saw Jews with yellow stars [Editor’s note: fascists forced Jews to wear yellow stars for Jewish identification in all ghettos and concentration camps] through the windows on the way: exhausted men, women and even children. They were doing earthwork. We didn’t get any food on the way. I had some food that the kolkhoz gave me: a piece of pork fat, a bottle of honey, some bread and sunflower seeds. Few days later we arrived in Germany. We arrived in Nurnberg. There was a huge makeshift toilet built on a platform. Then they gave us food that we ate right there on the platform. They poured me some good pea soup with pasta in my pot. This was the first and the last time when we had a decent meal in Germany. From Nurnberg a train took us to a transit camp in Bittingen stuffed with prisoners. We went through another sanitary treatment and then they began to count us like they would count cattle. We, a group of 300 people, were taken to Stuttgart on 15 December and were put in Sleutwitz camp in a small forest. There were long barracks for Slavic ostarbeiters. There were rooms for 24 tenants with wooden two-tiered beds in two rows and shelves between them. On the morning of 16 December we went to work from the camp. We walked for an hour. My boots fell apart and I walked barefooted. Ivan and I were taken to a joiner shop. I noticed village guys doing earthwork near the shop. I said to Ivan: I don’t want to get wet in the rain. Let’s tell them we are joiners’. He obeyed. Master Gaimsh came wearing a yellow robe, glasses, thin, about 75 years of age with a gray crew cut on his head. There was a joiner test to be done: Master Gaimsh placed a cut of water pipe in a holdfast vertically and gave me a file. I was to level the edges of the pipe. He said: ‘That’s ok’. He turned the pipe horizontally and gave Ivan a hacksaw. Ivan did what he was told and the test was over. Our German supervisor took us to the shop to sort out transmissions. He saw me standing barefooted on the dirty floor and gave me his worn boots on a wooden sole and tarpaulin upper. Soon there was a bell ringing for breakfast. We had nothing to eat and went to the yard. There were French prisoners-of-war sitting there talking cheerfully. I understood one word ‘Stalingrad’. It meant that Germans were retreating and there were combat actions near Stalingrad.  

This was a radiator plant. We received robes with the sign ‘OST’ painted with white paint on the chest. If somebody wanted to wear different clothes they had to sew on this sign. We got up at 6 in the morning. Our working day lasted 12 hours and on Saturday we worked 5 hours. Sunday was a day off, but we were often taken to do various jobs on this day. There were 3 old Germans working in our shop. Gliazer, the youngest, Shachtu, over 70 years of age and Singer, way over 80. I often assisted him since it was hard for him to bend. At first all of them gave me errands, but then Gliazer made me his assistant. We were given a loaf of bread for four of us every day.  They also delivered a few containers of coffee in the evening: it was sweet and delicious and it was still warm in the morning.