Free Journeys with My Mother by Halina Rubin Page B

got up and jumped to the other side.
    â€˜Back!’ ordered the guard. ‘Keep on moving! Crawl you bastard!’
    Władek jumped to the other side again.
    â€˜Crawl! you bastard.’
    â€˜Mister commandant, sir, which order do I have to obey? To crawl or to swim?’ Władek asked, standing to attention.
    â€˜You son of a bitch, I am going to show you, you lousy scoundrel!’ The guard was aware of many eyes watching his authority being shattered. ‘What’s your name?’
    â€˜Bąk number 634.’
    â€˜Well, number 634,’ the guard said, slowly removing his automatic revolver from its holster and placing it against Władek’s temple. ‘I am counting to three. If you do not crawl through the fucking ditch, I’ll shoot you like a dog.’ Then he began to count slowly: ‘One, two …’
    Władek wanted to make a point but that was going too far. He dropped to the ground and, hands first, submerged himself in the water. By the time he reached the other side, his clothes were thoroughly soaked.
    â€˜Mister commandant, sir, I demand to see the chief commissioner,’ Władek said, standing to attention once more. ‘I’d like to lodge a complaint about mister commandant, for acting against regulations. Swimming across the watercourse is neither work nor exercise. It’s against the law.’
    Needless to say, Władek did not have the upper hand. Before he could utter a word of complaint, the chief commissioner ordered: ‘Detainee Bąk, seven days in karcer , right now!’
    As long as he was moving, indignant, planning his next move, the cold did not bother Władek too much. But once inside the cell, his shivering became uncontrollable and he began to worry. It dawned on him that to stay there in sub-zero temperatures, in wet clothes, could spell his death sentence. He needed to do something drastic, something not done in Bereza before – a hunger strike.
    As the hours passed, he dreamt of developing a raging fever, of pneumonia or some other dreadful sickness; he fantasised about being transferred to a warm hospital bed, or at least of returning to his usual dormitory. Meanwhile his clothes, which at first formed a frosted armour around his body, began to steam.
    The following day, the cook escorted by the guard brought him food which he again refused. Neither did he eat on the following day.
    Three days passed without food, or pneumonia. On the fourth, the chief commissioner himself – cleanly shaven and bristling with insignia – paid him a visit. To listen to his complaint.
    â€˜The guard behaved correctly and the arrested is to spend seven days in karcer ,’ was the clipped answer. Yet on the next day Władek was released and taken to a cell inside the barrack. There he remained for the term of his punishment. It was just a cell but it was warm and the inmates working in the kitchen ensured that he got the choicest bits of food.
    For all that, the immediate way out of Bereza was always at hand. All one had to do was sign a declaration not to engage in political activity of any kind; better still, to leave the country. Yet despite threats and intimidation, for many inmates this was out of the question. It was a matter of principle not to be complicit in one’s own moral downfall. Władek signed nothing.
    If the aim of the camp was to break down the resolve of the detained, to set ethnic groups against each other, it failed. In the century in which, all too often, the main line of defence was: ‘I was only obeying orders,’ none of them followed the call to torment another person. They left the camp in a sorry condition – famished, their health ruined – but unrepentant.
    Some were taken directly to another prison, and a few really unlucky ones were sent back to Bereza again. Salek Jolles, the red-haired giant, remained in the camp for nine hundred days, mostly in the karcer .