Tag #155351 - Interview #103735 (Nikolay Schwartz Biography)

Once I addressed a passer-by in a small town. He didn’t like my accent and called a policeman. I didn’t have any documents and they took me to a militia office. Of course, they didn’t have any proof that I was a spy, but where there is a will, there is a way. I had a nail sticking out inside my shoe injuring my foot. I had cheap paper backs in Hungarian in my back pack. I folded up one of those books and put in onto the nail under my heel in my shoe. This book got so ragged in my shoe that it was impossible to read one letter in it. When they undressed me in the militia and found this book they decided that it was very suspicious. They said that I was probably a spy, took me to a cell and locked the door. I was kept there for ten days. Ten a military came in and told me they would take me to a camp. We walked to the railway station and took a train. The military had a weapon, but understood that it didn’t make sense to try to escape anyway. We reached Voronezh [Russia, about 500 km southwest of Moscow] where there were other prisoners-of-war waiting for departure to a camp. There were many SS officers and Hungarians among them. We were kept in the quarantine few days, and when the group was big enough they took us to Usman [about 400 km southeast of Moscow]. There was a camp for prisoners-of-war in a former monastery.