Cveja Jovanović, Krvave staze (Bloody Paths), Belgrade, Prosveta, 1959
VI
Bergen, early July
I have always loved to travel.
As a child, I remember well, I “travelled” very often from one end of the room to the other: “by train” — in an inverted bench, or “by ship” — in a wood box.
Later, as a primary school pupil, I expanded this world with trips to my native village’s surroundings. On humpbacked
horses, I flew kilometres with my little group, to the neighbouring villages, effortlessly, without feeling tired… We were carried by the durable wings of imagination and desire for new, unknown, experiences, for “discoveries”. The little islet in Guščji Rit (Goose’s Swamp) was — a lonely, desolate island in the ocean, and I was Robinson Crusoe.
I have always longed to cover distances, for new, unknown places. I fantasised about long journeys across troubled waters, to uninhabited islands, about primitive life and returning to my homeland thanks to a strange, lucky escape. I dreamed of journeys fraught with danger, through rainforests and across deserts, through the scorching regions where our migratory birds spend their winters. But, surprisingly, my imagination never took me to the North, to the regions of eternal snow and ice, to countries where the sun does not set for months and where, at the same time, the sun is so longed for.
When I used to learn about the long northern, white nights at school, I never thought that I would be able to experience this natural phenomenon myself. And now…
Here I am in the land of white nights, the midnight sun and the Aurora Borealis! Here I am in the northernmost country of Europe, without wings of imagination, against my will, several thousand kilometres away from my homeland in Norway. – I’ve gone such a long way!
And how long am I yet to go?
Our “hearse” sailed into the port of Bergen shortly before midnight. At exactly midnight, the disembarkation began. To our mind, it is an time of dense darkness, silence and mystery. Midnight. It is the time when everything is enveloped in an opaque cloak of darkness and takes on strange and terrible forms, dead of night when there is no voice, no movement, no ray of light from anywhere…
Midnight is around us.
Darkness? No, there is so much light that you can read. The sun, not so long ago, set — you can’t see it at this time here in southern Norway. We are not yet in the areas of the midnight sun. It’s midnight, and it’s visible just like at first dusk or at dawn at home. Farther from the pier, everything is deserted and quiet. Midnight in the white night.
The great encounter with this natural phenomenon passed without our loud admiration. Well, we are not tourists, who, among other things, should also voice their admiration. All around there is truly nocturnal, midnight peace, silence and desolation. This noise around us is just a small island of unrest in a sea of silence.
From the deep, dark hull of the ship up the high stairs, each loaded with their belongings, we emerge through the rectangular opening onto the decks one by one… Then across the deck, running through the thick trellis of the “Feldgendarmerie” down the steep bridge, to the shore – and there – we line up in a column of three and wait for everyone to disembark.
There is a buzz on the pier. The wooden boots stomping, the guards snarling, the cranes creaking, the lanes humming. — all that mixed into one general din, noise… The coldness of the northern spring night creeps into the bones, insults the dreamy eyes, breaks the sleep, irritates… The desire for warm food and a comfortable bed, deep, peaceful sleep and rest, spawns visions that come and go before the open eyes through a thin network of black threads that cannot even remind us of our nights at this time of the year.
The Viking nights, twelve centuries ago, were just like this, when from these same shores, on their ships — “sea wolves” – the old Vikings would sail off, those fearless pirates, despoilers and robbers before whom both London and Paris trembled. The population of the coasts of France, England and Italy fled in wild fear when only one ship with a gilded dragon’s head on the prow appeared in the misty distance.
Such were the nights, white and silent, when, from these very shores, the shores of Bergen (Bergen did not exist then), in the Middle Ages, entire fleets of Rollo the Viking set sail, to whom, for the sake of peace, a French king gave the entire province of Normandy.
Centuries have flown past. The descendants of the Vikings became hardworking, peaceloving, civilised people who as such serve as an example to many peoples in the world. Today, their docks are teeming with ships of the modern pirates — fascists — who fly flags with a swastika on their masts, and wear an alliance with one god on their belts.
The old Norse pirates — the Vikings — had hundreds of their gods as allies. Today, with modern pirates — fascists — there remains only one: Hitler’s bandits have only one god left, and it is enough for them because these sea and land pirates have firearms, airplanes, tanks — and that is more useful than an alliance with a hundred gods.
I remember how the small and unprepared Norwegian army put up strong, bitter resistance to the fascist war machine for two months. I read (or listened?) how Bergen was defended by the world-famous Bergen archers: several dozen Bergen archers resisted an enemy twenty times stronger so cold-bloodedly and accurately that several hundred Germans remained forever on the outskirts of Bergen, each of whom shot right in the middle of the forehead. It is not the first time the Germans have come to these shores.
About six hundred years ago, German merchants and artisans conquered the market of Bergen, Oslo — all of Norway. Even today, this shore, on which we are still standing and waiting, is called the German Bridge. These buildings, the narrow streets of this part of the city, are the same as they used to be, in the Middle Ages, when the Germans lived here.
In Norway, the vast majority of houses are made of wood. In all the of Norway’s towns, all the wooden houses from the Middle Ages burned down a long time ago. Bergen also burned several times, but the German Bridge was always rebuilt the same as it was, only the houses were built higher and bigger than before. Next to those old German houses, witnesses of the former German commercial lordship on these shores, we stand right now, in the middle of a white, strange night, and we add some more bloody lines to the most recent history of this ancient city. And its history is tumultuous, more tumultuous than the history of other cities of this northern country. Bergen is one of the oldest trading cities in Norway. Raised on a Viking nest, Bergen was the largest Norwegian city until the 5th century (now it is the second largest). In the Middle Ages, Bergen was known as one of the richest cities in Europe. Through its shores, the plague entered Norway in the Middle Ages, killing three quarters of the population of the city itself (and one third of the population in the entire country). Fires and droughts and years of famine often ravaged the city. But it remained, trade always elevated it — the Bergen people are known as traders.
I also remember that I once read somewhere about an uprising of peasants and fishermen in Norway in the eighteenth century. Bergen was the centre of that uprising which was caused by the enormous taxes that were imposed on the population in favour of the king’s coffers, and especially the “extra-tax” on every resident over 12 years of age. Copenhagen (Norway was in union with Denmark at the time) had to satisfy the demands of the insurgents, and the leaders of the insurrection were sentenced to life imprisonment.
I am jolted out of my thoughts by the blow of a rifle butt and the roar of the Feldgendarmes. Lined up in a column of three — we’re start. Behind us there remains in the bustle, clatter and banging, the dock with ships, many fishing boats, sailing ships with bent sails, fishing nets and several balloons at various heights — it is a “barrage” against airplanes. The hideous muzzles of the fascist field-gendarmes, with helmets and rifles at the ready, are closely surrounding our column.
The white night around us is silent and watching. The silence is broken only by the clattering of wooden boots and the muffled hissing of the gendarmes. The streets are deserted. Shutters or heavy curtains are drawn over the windows of the buildings. The sleeping city looks strange and terrible in this white night: as if all life had died out in the middle of a cloudy day. We often notice the curtains swaying behind the windows and hands waving. We see sleepy faces through the curtains.
As if in a dream, we cross bridges, squares, alleys… We pass through the city centre. From a tavern on the corner, a group emerges noisily: German officers, a few civilians, two women in fur coats. In these small hours, late at night, they are in a noticeable tavern mood that seems so stupid and ridiculous, disgusting and odious to us. What kind of men are they and those… women? And the white night around us and around them is silent, watching and remembering.
We walk between houses made of brick, stone, and most often of wood: multi-coloured, with large windows, green creepers, huge, half-empty shop windows. I’ve seen colourful wooden houses like this before! Yes, in our country, in Slovenia and on Divčibare mountain near Valjevo.
Norwegians make up for the lack of colours in nature by colourfully painting houses and outbuildings, fences. The short spring gave way to summer, which… is longer and warmer here, more lush than elsewhere in Norway. While in the hills and mountains around Bergen, tree branches are just beginning to bloom with swollen buds spotted like knots on wet fishing nets, meanwhile, down there, in Bergen, everything is in full leaf; but there are no vivid colours: black soil, grey rocks, green forest, blue sky – these are the most common colours in nature. And white! — that white colour dazzles the eyes of northerners the longest, there are eight or nine months of snow, snow, the blinding whiteness… That long winter, uniformity in nature, inevitably creates uniformity in the life of the inhabitants of this country in the far north of Europe.
At the opposite end of town, we stop at a long, narrow onestorey barracks. In it, on the first floor, we are all accommodated – nine hundred exiles. The barracks is over a hundred meters long. The windows are very small and often fit with dense wire nets — lattices. It is, as we soon learn, part of a workshop for making ship ropes.
On the other side of the street, parallel to the barracks, there is a high stone wall, and behind it, on a gentle slope, a cemetery. This is, one can see, one of the side streets in the city.
– We have all the comforts and — a nice view across the street! — says Trivun. We are deploying, setting up, we greet acquaintances whom we did not notice before in the crowd or who were on other ships. We arrange the bunks next to each other, feet towards the middle. One row to the left, one to the right — and in the middle runs a narrow passage, our “street”.
We are divided into dozens — that is how we will receive and distribute food while we are here. The black command takes positions at the beginning of the barrack, near the door, from where the Germans – officers and guards – come. This is a temporary abode on this long journey of ours; so, I guess, that’s why the “power” of the black command is not felt much.
We walk along the “street” between the beds, we look for familiar comrades, we get to know others, we exchange thoughts and impressions, forebodings and assumptions, hopes and encouragements, we smoke a few halves of a cigarette in which there are more shavings of a wormwood column than tobacco from the “butts”.
I also meet some people from Užice: Mlađa Kovačević and Adam Mićić, teachers, Dragan Nikolić, Ljubomir Purić… I also find others by the last name of Rađevac. There is Brana Marković, Stevan Kovačina, Ivan Ivanov “Vanjka” – all boys, almost children. Along with all of them are Nedeljko Tadić, Živorad Radulović, Vasa Jovanović, Borivoje Ćelić, Dobrivoje Janković, two Nikolić brothers…
We left the ships alone in the night. On the way, through the city, we become fully awake. It is now exactly two in the morning – we conclude from the changing of the guard. There is still a long way to go until the “dawn” — until “daybreak.”
— Wake me up at dawn! – says Trivun and covers himself with a blanket over his head to make it dark. Somehow these names for the end of the night and the beginning of day sound funny to me, now, in this night that hasn’t turned dark, so there can be no dawn. Nobody feels like sleeping, Trivun just rolls over. — Who can fall asleep when it’s visible like this?
The “street”, however is calming down little by little, like a newly populated beehive, so this northern night descends on its new guests – the white wings of sleep. The following day, we wake up and look through the thick bars on the small windows. We are pleasantly surprised. This side street next to the cemetery became very lively, like a promenade on holidays. Cyclists are riding in the middle, back and forth, and young men, women, people, women, boys, girls, children are walking by the cemetery wall, on the footpath, and on the road. It’s immediately clear to us that it’s because of us, because everyone walks up and down this alley all the time. They walk with their eyes fixed on the barracks, on the small windows, they smile, secretly wave their hands or handkerchiefs, skilfully making sure that the guards in front of the barracks don’t notice.
On this side of the wire mesh, we respond to greetings, wave, salute with our fists resting on the mesh so that the walkers can catch a glimpse of us. They return our greetings lively and skilfully, deceiving the guards, bringing a handkerchief to their face as if they wanted to wipe their nose or mouth, pointing with making a sign of V (sign of victory — Victoria) with their fingers, nodding their heads, raising their eyebrows… Cyclists steer with one hand and with the other, pretending to arrange their hair, they wave at the same time.
All of us are overcome by some excitement and mood as if we were among our own. We forget about hunger, the thousands of kilometres that separate us from our homeland, and all other troubles.
The guards are furious. Every now and then they “hunt down” some of the walkers who greeted us too conspicuously, bring him into the ground floor of the barracks and order him to perform squats with a thick, heavy iron bar in his hands — to “pump up” — several dozen times. We see it through the cracks in the floor.
There are also many Norwegians behind the high cemetery wall. The guards cannot see them like we can from the floor of the barracks. From there, they freely wave and greet us, sometimes with a fist, and smile at us And they express their sympathies towards us in other ways and through us towards the partisan movement, the uprising in Yugoslavia.
The Germans and the Black Command are hunting us, from behind. But who can control nine hundred people inside and even more out there!
VII
The people of Bergen delighted us and won our hearts that day. We noticed, for example, a boy, blond like almost all the boys there in the North. He keeps spinning around the concrete pole of the electric line, right towards the little window where I am with Trivun, the “Fakir” and the others, taking turns. From a slight distance, our faces against the wire mesh, we can see him quite nicely. Freckled nose, slightly upturn, ruddy lips constantly stretched into a smile as he looks this way and clenched angrily if a guard or another German passing by appears in front of him. Hidden behind a pillar, he often puts a small fist to his right temple and greets us. He either waves his hand, or nods his head, raises and lowers his eyebrows… From time to time he stomps angrily in place, looking grimly at the nearest guard
and finishing this “sign” with a broad, cheerful child’s smile addressed to us.
One guard, however, “caught him and went to him, but he, like a cat, using steps on a concrete pillar, climbed the cemetery wall, quickly moved over and – he disappeared… A little later he appeared on a small hill in the middle of the cemetery, saluted once more with a small fist, threw up his colourful hat with a tassel, caught it in goalkeeper style, waved it to us and disappeared through the gate on the opposite side.
Our dear little friend! Do you know how much in these moments you warmly illuminated our first day in slavery on the soil of your shackled homeland? Do you know how deeply you have engraved yourself in all of our hearts and how much we have come to love you, and through you, all the proud, brave and freedom-loving boys of Norway.
On the same day, a few moments later, we witnessed a wonderful scene that revealed to us the greatness of national pride and the depth of the hatred of this small nation towards the enslavers. Three young girls, walking in step, hand in hand, with a bright, unforced smile on their face, facing the barracks, us. Three German soldiers were walking towards them, doing their rounds or having a walk, and, thinking that the smiles of the girls were meant for them, they started smiling seductively from afar. When they noticed that, the three girls suddenly, as if on command, angrily pursed their lips, raised their eyebrows and turned their heads in the opposite direction, towards the cemetery wall. That’s how they passed by the Germans, and then turned their smiling faces towards us again.
While passing by the German soldiers, the middle girl dropped an open red flower from her hand which fell to the ground. One of the German soldiers quickly came up, picked up the flower, approached the girl and put it in her hand just as she, smiling, noticed that the flower had fallen out. All this happened so suddenly, unexpectedly, quickly…
And then…
We saw how the other two girls lookеd at their friend as horrified as if a snake had wrapped itself around her arm. They stopped – as if they were expecting her to do something herself, to throw away, erase from herself that touch of the German, the enemy, to show him that she despised him and did not accept his help. And she… Look, there, she jerks her hand just as quickly and lets the flower fall on the path and; while the German raises his hand in greeting with a kind smile, she, with tears in her eyes, tramples, tramples, tramples that red flower so furiously that the sand from the path sprays far around. Then, her face full of hatred, she sized the German, turned abruptly, took her friends by their arms, and then, smiling again, turned her face to us and continued walking.
The German, defeated and embarrassed, retreated to the undisguised sneers of the walkers who were watching all this. The little heroine of this event provoked the admiration of all of us who saw this through the bars in the barracks windows. Then, and for a long time afterwards, I thought about this wonderful expression of pride, contempt and hatred at the same time. With how much love and attention that beautiful red flower must have been nurtured in this cold northern land. It was cultivated so that its bright colour would bring joy to the monotony of colours, so that its fragrance would be someone’s interpreter of love in these spring days. And it was picked up unexpectedly today, to be shown to us as a sign of solidarity and sympathy, as a symbol of victory and freedom.
How much we admired the little Norwegian girl! How grateful we were to her that she shone like that with the full beauty of national pride! How much we have come to love this small, but freedom-loving people even more through her. And we too felt the fragrance of the delicate red flower trampled on the path as a great sacrifice picked for us and – trampled for us.
We are on our feet all that day. We want to see as much as possible, to see everything, not to miss a single detail. In the evening, a river of passers-by gradually declines. In an instant, alley remained almost deserted – the curfew began.
That evening and that night, as white as the previous one, we rummage through the impressions of this unforgettable day.
The clock shows that it is already eleven – in the white night. It is visible and light. That light is already insulting, tiring our eyes, it hurts…
We ought to sleep, but sleep never comes. Impressions? thoughts of worry — they are stronger than the desire to sleep.
Around us — the white night.
And there, far away, in our native lands, it is now a dark, warm, summer night. Partisan couriers, patrols, units sneak through the darkness, under the stars, through secret paths… I see them…
They creep up, they attack, destroy…
There is no sleep in these nights for the enemy who has robbed our mothers of sleep! There is no peace for those who disturbed the peace of hard-working farmers! The vengeful eye lurks behind every stone, behind every tree in the leafy forest, behind every corner in the city, behind every window in the village…
Still, as the sleep, slowly and warmly, spreads its wings through this white night, I hear a sigh nearby — is it a dream or am I awake? — I don’t know, but it seems to me that it is my sigh: If only I were a bird and had wings!
The eyelids fall under the weight of the white night that silently watches and remembers.
The next day – our alley is empty, obviously the Germans have forbidden all traffic on it. Several dozen were taken to work early in the morning. Trivun also left with Aleksa. We couldn’t wait for them to come back, to talk to us — we knew there would be new impressions.
When they came in the evening, they had to recount everything from the beginning several times. One of them was at a quarry not far from the city — the Germans are testing our ability to work, they should hire us to a German company as labour. Others were at the train station — unloading cement.
What did this white night see? Only it knows that, and we, and them — the Norwegians: some people, some children, some women — passed by those workplaces, turned over stones, stared at the rails and wagons, looking for something. Dozens went back to work. There, at yesterday’s workplaces, they found packets of food and cigarettes in the wagons, next to the rails, under stones and in other hidden places.
When leaving and returning from work, they met individuals and groups of Norwegians who watched them, followed them and secretly greeted them. After that, not a single group was sent to work during our further stay in Bergen.
The SS men are asking all those who are sick and unable to work to come forward. The criminals are spreading the news that all the sick will be returned to Yugoslavia. It’s stupid to believe it. The trick is obvious, we warn each other. However, some fall for it – about twenty-five comrades came forward.
VIII
Mid July
They separate one group for transport. I am among the separated four hundred. There are also Mlađo, Dimko — Dragomir Dinić, Dragan Nikolić, Ilija Mrdalj and a few other less known comrades. That’s how I’m separated from Trivun, Kosta the “Fakir”, Milan, Živan… They remained in the second group of five hundred that will go to another place.
On the fifteenth night upon arriving in Bergen — our group is on the move. We say goodbye to known and unknown comrades. Who knows if we will see each other again. Who could know that… Some joke about it:
-Farewell in — hell!
We are boarding. What a boarding it is! A wild egging on across a narrow bridge, across the deck, through a guardrail of gendarmes, and finally being thrown into the ship hull, along with the belongings, upside down, through that rectangular opening. They used to board us in a similar way in Szczecin, I remember.
Trivun remained, and if he were here now, I know he would say, like in Szczecin when he flew like a sack through the window opening and fell on a pile of things at the bottom: “It’s not easy – but never mind!” We are boarding.
We are missing those twenty-five who reported as sick with the hope that they would be brought back… They were egged on in front of us when we left the long barracks for the pier. The streets of Bergen were as empty as the night we arrived, fifteen days ago.
From one person to another, rumour goes that those twenty-five comrades were shot a little further away from the city, in the lush forest on the coast. That’s how the SS heal!
We already know that, but, still… Among those shot was Đoka Popović, a lawyer from Čačak – we learn from Dimko, who knew him well. The warm summer is in full swing here as well. It is a gift of the mild coastal climate that reigns around Bergen. In Norway, spring is a short period of ten to fifteen days, in which nature suddenly and exuberantly develops its beauty, and becomes summer, short and warm, only to, again suddenly after two months, enter, through a short autumn, the long, northern winter.
Spring and summer do not visit all parts of Norway at the same time. The southern parts of the country and those areas that are washed by the warm Gulf Stream, which means all coastal areas, are the first to welcome spring and summer. The northern regions, the deeper interior and the mountain belt, wait for spring longer, have a shorter summer and sink into the winter early.
The Bergen surroundings are all in dense greenery. There, somewhere in the middle of these ancient forests, Edvard Grieg created his immortal musical works. This great Norwegian is known all over the world for his best work — the music for Ibsen’s drama “Peer Gynt”. “Peer Gynt” is by Ibsen and Grieg.
Standing on the pier, still waiting for my turn to board, in the bustle of the port, amid the savage roar of the fascist gendarmes, I experience a sound hallucination: It’s as if I hear, coming from the depths of those centuries-old forests, the sounds listened to, learned and performed in the long-ago school days, sounds from Grieg’s “Peer Gynt”, the song of little, faithful Solveig. In Norwegian, Solveig means: the Sun’s path. Oh, what a lovely maiden name! Solveig… singing through the forest, I hear her so well in this white night. Quiet, and quieter… Then: as if through the whistling of a snowstorm, I hear the bell of the winter cart… the endlessly sad tones that speak of Ase, Peer’s good mother’s dying…
Grieg’s music emerged from these forests, like a singing torrent. Anyone who has heard Grieg’s music at least once can hardly forget it. It is not for nothing that his music is said to be the most Norwegian of Norwegian folk music.
Norway’s giant forests are still ruled by Hamsun’s forest god of love — Pan. He’s still alive, and Knut Hamsun won the Nobel Prize for literature, he died for this nation on that day in nineteen forty when, in the most difficult days, he became a traitor, when he joined the fascists, the occupiers of the homeland. Fifty years before that, Hamsun created works that were published in Norway in two and a half million copies. And now…
I remember a Radio-London show from that time: For all Norwegians, the news that Hamsun had sided the enemy was much more difficult than all the hardships and horrors, terrors and sufferings inflicted on them by the Hitlerites and the Quislings. But this freedom-loving nation kills such traitors with contempt and oblivion. Having made a statement of solidarity with Hitler, having joined the enemy of the homeland, Hamsun was left completely alone on his estate not far from Oslo. Alone, terribly alone, surrounded by the contempt of the people whose great pride he once was…
He was visited only by the postman every day. That only connection with the occupied homeland brought him day after day packages of books, his books, his works… The Norwegians sent the despised ‘literary-traitor’ back his works, without accompanying letters, without a single accompanying word with such mute and yet eloquent contempt. The house, the shed, the yard… everything was full of parcels with books. The old writer, once the pride of his people, is now all alone, almost buried by thousands of parcels of books returned to him by men, women and children who know how to love and appreciate, but who, even more, know how to — despise and punish those who betray them.
We leave the city of the most temperamental and cheerful Norwegians. Sailing direction — probably north.
All along the coast, through the channels between the mainland and the islands, our “ship of the dead” is again passing through – I see this in my imagination, because, strangely enough, I remember so well what the Norwegian coast looks like in general. I know that it is the most rugged coast in the world: islets, islands, rocks, peninsulas, bays, fjords… For a hundred or more kilometres, the sea creeps into the land, into rock, into a wooded narrow valley, into a canyon — these are the Norwegian fjords. These bays without a flat coast, fjords, are world famous as places of natural beauty.
Morning..
We slipped between islands and islets studded with bunkers.
We are in the open sea. They let us on deck.
Far from the shores on our right, we hardly notice that we are moving. To the left — the open sea of the Atlantic, endlessly turbulent. On the waves, our ship dances as if it were a fishing boat and not a ship of five thousand tonnes. We are fast approaching a large island. The ship is heading straight for the rocky shore — now it’s going to crash on the rocks! But the ship safely enters the calm water of the channel that cuts through the island. In fact, it is not one island, but two, separated by a channel, which we did not notice until we entered the strait. The shores of these two islands are so close that it is a real miracle that we still cannot reach with our hands the branches of those trees overhanging the water.
Everything is thick-green, including the water. The rocks are overgrown with lush moss and grass. When, after a long journey, we set sail from that sea channel, we saw to the right, not so far away, the coast of a small island: only a narrow strip of flat coast surrounds the islet. Steep rocks behind this belt rise like a wall that holds the hilly terrain under dense forest. A fishing boat lies stretched out on the flat shore, and a little further away, under a vertical rock, lies a wooden cabin. And no house anywhere near! This kind of loneliness in a vast expanse, facing the turbulrnt open sea: and the long, months-long northern nights, winter nights, is incomprehensible to us.
This country in the far north of Europe is generally sparsely populated. About 320,000 square kilometres, as I recall, is home to close to three and a half million inhabitants. This means: nine in one square kilometre. Isn’t that, too, loneliness in this expanse where distances are measured in ten kilometre miles!
The Norwegians overcome this loneliness – just like all other troubles in their poor country. In the long winter nights when you don’t leave the house or outside the yard, they read, talk, read… They read other people’s experiences, tell their own, recount, work, learn. Older people teach the young. Older people learn from younger people. It is known that there are no illiterates in this country, even though the houses are often miles apart. There are very few close-knit villages. But they have a centuriesold learning system. Reading, writing, arithmetic and the rest – the younger ones learn from their elders, in those long northern, winter nights. And traveling teachers visit remote villages and settlements and spend the winters there teaching children in their “mobile schools”.
Again, our ship passes between islands and islets, green or bare, rocky, with a house or two on the shores, behind outstretched fishing boats, or with stylish villas on the highest points. And so it goes: islands, islets, pieces of land, eroded and jagged rocks of strange shapes, white, black, overgrown with dark green moss, lie calmly in the middle of the turbulent water that crashes into ripples and breaks into billions of tiny droplets.
Very often, we pass lighthouses on narrow, narrow rocks that barely protrude a meter or two from the water. We are sailing.
Days and nights, days and nights pass — we already don’t know how many days and how many nights, we already don’t know whether they are days or nights. They let us stay longer on deck. Where are we? We only know that we are in a ship, on the water…
What degree of northern latitude are we at? Geographical degree — it is a measure of vastness!
I remember that Norway is located between, approximately, 8 and 71 degrees north latitude, Narvik is somewhere between 68 and 69 degrees (I remember, I followed the events that led to the occupation of Norway), Belgrade is approximately at 4, degrees, and we now… How far we have come and how far we will sail north, who knows!
Below, in the ship hull, we cannot orientate ourselves in time or space. We don’t know when it is day or night, nor how many days have passed since we left Bergen. Nobody has a watch, of course, and it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish night from day, especially if it’s cloudy, if we’re sailing further north.
Toilets are on deck. When someone goes to the toilet (at a specified time!) he can surreptitiously observe the surroundings for a few moments, on the way there and back. But if the guard notices someone looking around, he immediately punishes him with “push-ups”: leaning on his hands and toes, he has to go up and down several dozen times.
The guards invented also other “fun things” to amuse themselves and torture us. For example, they invented, among other things, hurdle-jumping: they strung a rope one meter high in the middle of the toilet, so everyone who goes to the toilet or comes back, has to “properly” jump over that hurdle. He must, even if he repeats the attempt a hundred times or until the guard shows mercy. Is it the degree of their culture or… How can I explain all the abominations they performed with us, with us, starving skeletons!
Mlađo returns from the deck.
— Did he skip? I ask him, expecting to go myself.
— I managed to bypass it. All the guards gathered around a comrade from the other room, poked him with bayonets and forced him to – masturbate!
Did I hear correctly?
Oh, how can this be!
We stay longer at the Bode pier. A “commission” of SS and Todt members singles out the sick. They take them to the shore. “To the hospital” -— they say. Later we hear from a small criminal who was constantly hanging around the deck; around the ship’s galley, that those twenty-five sick people were shot there, on the shore; in a stone quarry. These are the first victims of our northern group. Blood follows and sprinkles abundantly our distant paths.
We sail on, to the north. We stay in Narvik for two days and one night. They let us onto the deck and into the toilets only in the morning of the second day. It seems that one of their larger battleships was in port. Between the boards with which the toilet is fenced, you can look at the shore without the guards noticing. For a few minutes I looked around the small harbour of Narvik, through a crack in a plank.
In clouds of smoke, thick smoke, a long composition of freight cars slowly entered the station. Northern Norway has only this railway, which is an extension of the Swedish railway from the Kiruna mine. Through this port on the Atlantic, Sweden exports its world-famous iron ore. Narvik is about thirty kilometres (three Norwegian land miles) away from the Swedish border — that’s the length of the railway.
It is quite lively at the coast. But the small, compact settlement seems somehow gloomy. I guess it’s because of the grey, rugged backgrounds. The far north of Norway, it is the far north of Europe. The monotony of the karst and vegetation provokes unhappy moods, especially in us. Everywhere you look, you see only stone, dark, sooty stone, moss, birch or fir and pine. In winter, of course, it’s all under the snow. Eight months under the snow!
At this time, the whiteness of the old birch trees and the blush of the young ones refresh the view of the Narvik coast, which in places looks like petrified lava.
IX
Far North
Last days of July
Towards the evening of the second day, the ship’s engines made a loud noise. We continue sailing further north. -Well, could there be more of Norway beyond Narvik! — wonders little Bora Dubljanin.
– If we continue like this, we will soon reach the North Pole! — says someone behind us (we hardly recognise each other in the crowd and semi-darkness).
“Now we are closer to the Pole than to Belgrade,” adds Ilija Mrdalj (I know his voice).
– We will disembark in a minute and continue on foot across the ice! – jokes Mlađo, my bunk neighbour.
More than two months have passed since we left our homeland, and our journey is not over yet. Where will we stop?
On the fourth, fifth, sixth… day (who could know exactly!), in the evening, we know by the clock of the
bragging guard and also by the sun, we disembark in a small dock that barely accommodated the huge ship — the manoeuvring took quite a long time. When the ship’s engines have calmed down, we exit the
“ship of the dead” into the night light! The sun is still over the horizon. Low, about to set.
Since the groups of the stronger men have unloaded the ship, we leave, accompanied by the guards, of course, loaded with our belongings… We go on foot, on a path that leads deeper inland; to the south. Not far from the coast of this small fjord, a little south of the pier, we come across a small camp in the middle of a sparse grove of stunted, deformed birches, northern birches, on the bare rocks. The young birch leaves are flickering restlessly and timidly. The breath of spring arrived here a little before us.
Mosquitoes, swarms of mosquitoes are buzzing all around us. At the camp gate, a German guard with a rifle on his shoulder, a helmet on his head and with a dense mosquito net over the helmet and face, up to the shoulders.
Are we in the far north of Europe?
Incredible!
Mosquitoes don’t let me open my eyes, they swarm, they criss-cross, they fly around, they attack… In the camp, we see people in Russian uniforms — Russian prisoners. One asks us something in Russian. Someone from our column answers. The guard threatens with a rifle and shouts, beaming with his wide-set eyes.
— Beware of this one! He looks evil! Bora winks.
– Don’t challenge him! — warns Nikola Lukić, -— He could shoot at you and kill me!
The white night around us is silent and watches us with its huge, bloodshot eye – the sun at its midnight unset, it watches and remembers…
After half an hour of slow walking, the guards stop us in a rare birch wood to rest. We, too, sit on sharp stones that seem to have grown out of the ground. We take out the mouldy bread and rancid marmalade, which they gave us upon disembarking, to have something to eat. No one separates the mould from the bread. The smoke comes out of everyone’s mouth as if holding a pipe between their teeth.
I spread rancid marmalade (they say it’s made from beetroot) on a piece of mouldy bread. In the blink of an eye, a thick layer of mosquitoes is caught on the marmalade. The same with the others. What should I do now? If I take them off, the marmalade goes too. I take a bite hurriedly… So do others…
– Well, you didn’t even tell them to put their legs together to make it easier for them to pass! – laughed Mlađo, swallowing a large bite with mosquitoes.
— Well, my friend! The things I swallowed in my life! – And the ones you are yet to swallow!
I look around. I think: if I stay alive — so that I can tell.
We conclude that we are somewhere in Lapland. More precisely: in the Norwegian part of Lapland, because this vast area is shared by Norway, Sweden, Finland and the USSR.
The surface of this land is, by all accounts, stone. Frequent rainfall leaves abundant water that remains for a long time on smaller and larger areas, creating puddles, ponds, lakes… But in such swampy land, mosquitoes have, due to the short and warm summer, unusually favourable conditions to develop.
One guard, who is sitting near us, takes out a watch, stares at it, then turns it to us: it was exactly twelve. Midnight!
Then he gestured behind us, to the bay. We turn around, mute before the magnificent sight: we see the sun exactly at midnight!
Far away, low on the horizon, a huge circle of the sun, with a cold, red glow, descends gently and perceptibly towards the surface of the sea. In a moment or two, the circle touches the calm line of the horizon with its lower edge, pauses a little, and then begins, just as slowly, to rise, to the right, diagonally, almost parallel to the horizon.
The midnight sun! It didn’t set at all, and here it is: it’s coming out, it’s being born! The bloody river stretched from the horizon, across the high seas, to the shore, right there, under our feet. It springs from a distant red ring, as if from a huge burning crater, and flows, as it were, to the shore, playing with shimmering, ruddy waves.
A greenish reflection, like an echo of a distant, bright light, dances sluggishly, dreamily, between the stones and on the surface of the sea where thousands of seagulls look like large, white flowers in a meadow on the banks of a red river. The light becomes fresher and clearer.
That unusual light is now already ruddy illuminating the whole view: the water, the islands in the distance, the valley in front of us, the woods, the rocks… And under it – everything seems asleep, dead, petrified.
An unprecedented beauty for us… Like a dream on this summer, white night.
The Lapps, the inhabitants of these vast areas, compare the beauty of girls to the midnight sun – I remember this from somewhere. What a comparison!
But we don’t have the strength to admire out loud, as tourists do, necessarily. “Midnight sun…” whispers someone watching indifferently.
It is quite visible. Like an early, sunny morning in our country, in our latitudes. But the peace of the night reigns all around us. The river of light across the darkened, bluish-green surface of the sea, becomes redder and redder.
The sun has just come off the horizon.
In these regions, at this time — during the summer period — the sun does not set for two and a half months. and the day lasts almost six months. Then everything is oversaturated with light, exhausted and longing for darkness and sleep.
The road winds between smaller and larger lakes bordered by thick moss and rare, stunted birches. At an intersection on a road sign pointing west, we read: Hammerfest — 70 km. Now it’s clearer to me where we are!
From Narvik we sailed through the narrow sea channel between the Norwegian mainland and the smaller and larger islands… straight to the ‘north-northeast’. Thus, we passed by Tromso, then Hammerfest, sailed around North Cape, the northernmost point of Europe, then turned south through a deep fjord. In this way we went deep into the land from the north, to the south, and found ourselves east of Hammerfest, which we sailed around from the west.
Hammerfest is the northernmost European town. In the wide area around this city, to the north and further south, the sun never sets for two and a half months of the year, and for the same amount of time it never rises (December-January). In this whole area, starting from the North Pole (Arctic Circle), the day lasts six months as well as the night.
We are not far from Finland here, and probably not even from Sweden. If only I could look at a very small map of Norway or Scandinavia, to orientate myself more accurately… Everything that I am looking at, that I am thinking about and concluding seems to me like a wonderful dream, but dim, unclear, undefined and – terrible, as if at a great height with a wonderful view, I am hanging on cobweb threads. At the same intersection, on the road sign showing the direction of our movement — south, I read: Lakselv… mileage deleted.
After two months of uncomfortable, inconvenient lying down, especially in the ship, we find hiking extremely difficult. We make frequent stops, rest. The guards do not push us, because they themselves cannot endure a long hike without rest. And it seems to be about 3 kilometres to Lakselv.
Some comrades who speak German are trying to find out from the guards where we are and where we will stop, what we will do, how long we will stay… They answer stiffly: – You will see! The black command quite easily “makes a connection” with the guards.
The sun is again approaching the distant horizon. So it’s close to midnight. And we are still walking, dragging… The column stretched out, without order, creeping, stopping, moving… A small group after a small group, one by one, two-three by two-three… In the distance we saw a village: many scattered, colourful wooden houses with a small church in the middle. At the end of the village barracks, warehouses, storehouses, camps can be seen… At the entrance to the village we read: Lakselv.
It is immediately apparent that this is a larger German supply base. I think; like others, that we will finally stay here.
In Lakselv, we get haircuts, baths, we get our clothes steamed— we are temporarily freed from lice. After a short rest, they are loading us into the trucks again, so we haven’t yet reached our destination.
The road, like the one to Lakselv, curves between smaller and larger lakes. It is often so narrow that two trucks could not pass each other, like a bridge. Lakes, lakes, lakes — as far as the eye can see, there is more water than land. Now what is this? Are we already in Finland — the land of a thousand lakes? Or is Lapland also rich in lakes?
Before long, the convoy of trucks leaves the lake zone and begins to push up increasingly large climbs. The road now leads over hilly mountain terrain. We are not in Finland after all! As far as I remember, Finland does not have such high altitudes. This is, most likely, the Norwegian part of Lapland. The land is still covered with thick moss, low blueberry bushes, stunted birches, firs, and pines.
Having made the ascent, the descent over the pass began on an unsafe, serpentine road. Far below, under the green sea of forest below us, a narrow strip of a river shines white and on its banks – a village.
X
Karasjok—Lapland
1 August 1942
Along a winding, serpentine road, through the dense smell of fir, a column of trucks descends into the river valley. We stop on the left bank in the middle of a whole settlement of German barracks, workshops, garages… They push us on, on foot through the forest, on a newly cut, soft road from which not even all the stumps have been removed. A kilometre and a half from the Karasjok river (we learned that this is the name of both the river and the village) on a hill, on a fresh clearing – a small camp: there is a large, long and wide barrack and field latrines in a double, dense fence of barbed wire, with high towers at the corners (the guards with machine guns are already up there!). In front of the entrance gate – a guard barrack, and a hundred meters further, to the east, several residential barracks – for the command of the camp, guards, Todt members and for two veteran companies from the front, here on vacation.
Forest is all around us. Birches, pines; firs, stunted bushes, low blueberries…
The barrack for us is divided by a corridor along the middle. The entrance to the left is the kitchen, to the right is the food storehouse, and further, left and right, are doors leading to two huge rooms. Four hundred of us are forced into that barrack. How many will leave this camp alive? When?
Will any of us stay alive here? In this Europe’s northernmost camp!
The next day we learn that we will stay a little longer at this stop of our journey — “the great majority forever” — as someone from the black command said, stressing that only ten or fifteen of us will return home, “and you, you motherfuckers, you loved the forest — and you will stay in the forest forever!”
We will build, they say, the road to the Finnish border – about 15 kilometres. The guard around the camp will be kept by policemen, gendarmes (whatever they are!) who accompanied us from Bergen, under the command of SS officers. We will be guarded at work by soldiers from two military companies who are here on vacation. No one officially communicated these last data to us, but we learned from some of our own who went to arrange barracks for guards and officers.
One of them found a small map of Norway somewhere, and brought it secretly. When I saw it, it was as if the pale images of a recent dream suddenly became clear to me. With a small map, we find our way here and determine our exact current place of residence.
The village of Karasjok is located on the right bank of the river of the same name. This river is a left tributary of the Tana, a border river between Norway and Finland. The Tana flows into the Barents Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean). It is really not more than fifteen kilometres to the Finnish border, down the river, through the valley. The chances of escape are minimal.
Fleeing to Finland, which is on Germany’s side in the war, would be madness. Neutral Sweden is far away; and in order to reach it, you have to cross the border twice: if you go south, it is over a hundred kilometres to the border, then you have to cross about a hundred kilometres through Finland to the border with Sweden (since here the border makes a big bend), so: two hundred kilometres through Lapland! Any attempt to escape from here would be hopeless. because Lapland is very sparsely populated and roadless. Which, it seems, is the worst — the days are bright and the nights are white! And when the six-month dark night comes, the earth is covered with snow, then the mercury in the thermometer here drops to 45 degrees below zero.
The village of Karasjok, like all the rare Norwegian villages in the river valleys or in the plains, is grouped, compact… Here, too, a small wooden church rises in the middle of the village, and around it, in no particular order, houses and cabins are scattered – all made of wood. Most of them are log cabins. A smaller number of houses are made of sawn wood, painted on the outside in various colours, usually red. Only the big houses, the houses of the wealthiest, were coated with grease paint on the outside.
On the roofs of log cabins and other single-storey houses (only two have one floor), there is a permanent thick layer of soil from which thick, tall grass has sprouted. That layer of soil under the grass keeps the roof warm in the winter.
The windows on all houses are large and there are more of them than on our houses. It is certainly for the sake of light and solar heat. The houses are beautifully decorated on the outside, and probably on the inside as well. Passing through the village, next to the houses, you can see, through the large open windows, part of the interior of those small, comfortable houses. The walls are clean, coated with greasy white paint, the furniture is preserved, tastefully arranged, and it’s all decorated with flowers, wonderful, multicoloured flowers in small pots. Each garden is also beautifully landscaped, fenced with ordinary wire attached to properly hewn posts. The outbuildings’ exteriors are almost indistinguishable from the house.
The inhabitants of this village are mostly Lapps, then half-breeds (Laps-Norwegians), and there are real, pure Norwegians, only very few (the merchant, the priest, the teacher, the doctor, the postman…) In mid-18th century, there was a plague in Lapland – I read about it in “Laila”.
Here, in this very village, and in this environment, the story of the movie I watched long ago and the “Laila” novel I read even longer ago took place. My memory flashes: Karasjok. Keutokeino – the nearest settlement… fifteen miles… Fifteen Norwegian land miles, ten kilometres each! Is it possible to escape from here? Here, for days and weeks, a person can move in a circle through birch, pine and fir forests, across treacherous swamps, between lakes and ponds, through pathless grass glades…
The land around Karasjok is flat — along the river. A kilometre away from the village, low hills rise that gradually turn into higher ones. The river valley is overgrown with thick and lush grass, which is mowed three times in the short summer period, and the hills are decorated with low blueberry bushes, groves of stunted birch… And the hills are already dominated by pine and fir forests, grass glades and impassable thickets.
— If only we were cows, we could graze the grass! – said someone whose humour does not leave him even in these moments.
After a day or two of arranging the camp, the organisation was established: the internal and the external – working one. During the journey from Bergen, the black command of our camp was formed, certainly on the recommendation of the Bergen black command, and, of course, with the blessing of the Germans. The camp warden is a criminal – a man called Vlada, an ex-convict. The main interpreter is also a criminal – Jova. Assistant interpreters are also criminals or people from Ljotić’s movement: the Romanian, Radeka, Branko Jezić… The head chef is a criminal — Dragi, Vlada’s brother. Other “positions” and “departments” are also occupied by criminals.
These camp “gods” are constantly surrounded by a group of their like-minded people, criminals, small-time crooks or accidental companions of the partisans who quickly collapsed under the horrors of fascist terror. There were only a few of the latter – you could count them on your fingers.
Fascists have good and faithful assistants in all the members and supporters of the black command. On the orders of the SS, and even more often on their own initiative, they beat the rest of us, ordinary, “forest bandits” to the point of unconsciousness. We already had the opportunity to feel this along the way.
I remember leaving Belgrade. It was not entirely clear to us when the criminals were put into our ships; what will they do with us! We thought it was because the Germans and Nedić put us in the same category. But along the way, we became more and more convinced that this move by the fascists was well calculated: the criminals among us were supposed to divide our ranks, to spy, to beat, inform, kill – to rule the camps and make any organised resistance impossible.
The rest of us, “forest bandits” as Vlada (by title: “uncle-Vlada”) usually called us, were divided into dozens of working groups. Each working group has an interpreter who is not obliged to work, but is obliged to make the others work. If he didn’t want to or didn’t have to, the black command, with the blessing of the Germans, replaced him and “picked on him”. Unofficial interpreters, unrecognised by the black command, appear at work, and some of our own, among whom Ilija Mrdalj has already been “picked on” by the camp “gods”.People withdraw into themselves.
Distrust towards little-known and unknown people is growing. It creates groups, communities. The basis of a collective is camaraderie from a unit, acquaintance from abroad, trust gained in the recent past, in camps in Serbia, Austria, Prussia… Collective members help each other, comfort, encourage, advise…
Mlađo is with me. He is lying next to me on a bed made of a thin layer of mouldy straw. On the other side is Bora, from Dubalj in Mačva. Further on, little Pavić from Ševarice. That’s our little collective. It is actually a spiritual, moral collective, like all the others that are… When we are alone, we talk freely. We revive our partisan past, speculate about the development of events and partisan struggles in the homeland, comment on events in the camp, consult each other…
– This won’t be long either…
– One has to endure! It must be endured!
— Fascists will surely fail in the end…
— We must not lose faith in the victory of the fight we started in our homeland…
– This is the continuation of the fight…
— Now the most important thing is: the fight for survival, for the preservation of the dignity of man, comrade, partisan… The fight for the preservation of the spirit, morals, will, desire to live… All this is said in a whisper, in the ear, under the blanket on the bed.
All this is discussed at work, in groups of two or three. News about the fascist defeats on the Eastern Front is retold again and again, news that still reaches us through some channels. Some old news is dressed in new clothes, it is elucidated from another angle, commented on… And all of that feeds hope, all of that raises morale, gives new strength to a weakened spirit, weakened will, dulled desire…
In the early morning, they make us go to the river to bathe and wash clothes, those who have any… There, on the shore, they order us to strip completely naked, to step into the river up to our waists and to dive three times. Then they quickly drive us to the shore to wash our clothes, handkerchiefs or whatever we have, naked and wet, in the harsh morning wind.
Dimko shows something to the medical non-commissioned officer; he explains to him using few German words he knows to say that he has rheumatism, so… that he shouldn’t get wet; but to wash clothes while he is dry. The officer answers something vague, Dimko takes it as approval and sinks his underpants without one pant… But a Norwegian-Quisling guard flies up and hits him on the head with a butt. Dimko dives in the shallows, near the shore… The water around him becomes cloudy and bloody, the guards are laughing loudly.
On the other side of the river the Lapps—men, women, and children, gathered in a silent crowd — watch this bathing of bare skeletons, and nod their heads in sympathy. Because these shores and this sky have never seen such a bath in cold water and blood, in a sharp north wind.
Some of them haven’t even managed to wet everything they brought to wash, and already the order is coming to get dressed and get ready to return to the camp. Still wet, we race under a rain of blows, along a sandy path through clouds of dust…
We arrive at the camp as soiled as if we were rolling in mud, and in the camp – a roll-call! Inspection of washed laundry. All those who didn’t manage to at least wet their clothes get twenty-five lashes for being “dirty and messy”. Twenty-five lashes to the bones!
On the third day after our arrival, they make us work on the road. Workplaces… are lined up from the village and further down the river valley. That road existed before as an ordinary dirt country road. Now the Germans want to expand and repair it so that trucks can use it. That road is the only land connection
between northern Norway and Finland, therefore it is quite important for the Germans to supply the Finnish front. Most of the working dozens work on the road. Several dozen work in German barracks, workshops… They are in a more favourable position because they can get more food, and working under a roof in the lee is far more tolerable.
The work groups are slowly being dragged from the camp towards the river and across the bridge through the village. From behind the curtains on the windows, curious faces can be seen fearfully and worriedly watching us – horribly thin people whose bones creak and rattle as we walk, people dressed in rags like scarecrows with wooden shoes on our legs.
At the door of the merchant’s house, the biggest house in town, several Lapps and Norwegians are standing and watching us with interest, friendship, and sympathy. One of them approaches the guard of our group and asks him in German if he can bring us something to eat. The officer haughtily replies that it is not necessary since “prisoners receive regular and sufficient food in the camp.”
Regular and sufficient — it shows on us!
Regular — yes, but — sufficient?
Five people share one loaf of 750 grams and that’s what they get for the whole day. In addition, everyone gets margarine weighing one cube of sugar, one teaspoon of marmalade, in the morning half a litre of bitter, black, hot water, which is still called coffee, and in the evening, after hard work, half a litre of broth in which one cannot find as much as three-four spoons of substance. And that bread — as if it were made of sawdust! And the broth — five or six cod in the cauldron for four hundred of us.
Unlike us, the black command and interpreters, as well as the rest of “them”, get as much as they want, from the bottom of the cauldron — the contents. To tell the truth, the Germans issue more “rations” for us, but the black command steals as much as they want… But even if they gave us everything the Germans gave — it wouldn’t be enough. The work is hard: breaking and rolling, carrying stones, digging earth, shifting, loading, unloading, felling the forest, carrying logs… And diseases, scabies, lice and daily beatings at work and in the camp take away our strength.
Guarding the groups at work was taken over by soldiers from the “Wehrmacht”. It’s more tolerable. But control is still the responsibility of the SS. And there are also masters – the Todt members. And worst of all, it seems to me, there are the interpreters, “grupen-fuhrers”, Ruman, Radeka, Mile the railwayman…
And in the bunk rooms, we are divided into dozens — in the order as we lie. I am a the group corporal. Corporals receive rations for their dozens. Everyone participates in the distribution to individuals. There are scales, primitive but precise, made of a board and cardboard. We divide everything down to the last crumb… That is the demand of the majority.
They say that those scales were invented by two brothers in slavery. I have the opportunity to see brothers, or a father and son – dividing bread or margarine using those scales.
That’s how we all share. And when everything is measured, then one turns and when asked, names in turn who the measured part is for.
– Who is this for?
— For Bora.
– Who is this for?
For you! And so on.
We share the crumbs, and Hunger looms and grins over us. After that, someone cuts thin slices with a sharpened piece of tin – divides them into meals. Someone, such as Nikola the Medic immediately liquidates everything: — I can’t think about that piece all night.
XI
Karasjok—Lapland
First half of August
At work, “Gruppen-Führers” and Todt members note very zealously the “Faulenzers” — lazy people. In the evening, after the “roll-call” — counting, the camp commander, an SS guy, or some other officer orders that all the lazy people be beaten and that no dinner be given to them.
Since the wretches who get beaten, defend themselves and shield themselves with their hands; the commander of the camp orders to make a special backless chair — for beatings. The slaps I read about in Janko Veselinović’s books must have looked similar.
Mlađo is standing next to me in line, at the evening count. We both fear for ourselves and for each other… Who knows, maybe someone was watching us from the side and noted us… We are not called. Mlađo mutters: -These are late with their “cultural” invention. They lag behind Prince Miloš by over a hundred years… I stand on his leg, I warn him to be quiet, here, now… Mile from Leskovac, a railway worker (he is still wearing his railway overcoat) most zealously reports the “Faulenzers”, idlers, saboteurs… He always reports one or two after work, whom he has already thrashed with his own hands there, on the road. With a smile on his lips, he pulls out his notebook, a “Gruppen-Fuhrer” notebook made from scraps of paper cement bags. At the same time, he takes out a piece of pencil and calmly submits the report. Without a blink, like a dog at its master, he looks at the SS man expecting a reward: a double portion of food or half a loaf of bread, or both.
For zealous service!
We are ashamed, we grit our teeth in exasperation, we are afraid, we are silent, we suffer and, above all, again: we are ashamed because that “Gruppen-Fuhrer” was a partisan, we heard. We are ashamed and — we remember. All of us who are ashamed remember, and someone will probably stay alive.
– One, two, three… twenty five! — Mile counts and beats and surely thinks that he will get bread and a double portion of food when, now that he reported and carries out the punishment himself.
— Eins, zwei, drei… he is controlled by the “Oberscharfuhrer”, a dwarfish SS man (we call him “screw” for short) while the double chin jumps as if he were a frog. This is how each of our working days ends.
Mlađo and I always go to the field toilet together. We take each other. We are afraid to fall in alone. Weakness, exhaustion, anaemia, lack of sense of balance — all this makes us feel like straws in the most ordinary wind that blows us away if we have no support.
Thus we once met Dimko. We paused. And he paused. We knew him well. We were together in Zittendorf and Beveringen, Here as well as there? his demeanour inspires confidence. We look at him questioningly, at him, and then at the “slaps” in the middle of the camp circle. “We have to endure everything, comrades,” he says. We still look at him questioningly, He adds:
— Everything should be remembered! And — we need to take care of ourselves! — his voice is barely audible due to hunger and exhaustion.
“Comrades,” Dimko said. It’s been so long since the word seemed so warm to me! What a magic word it is! I look stiffly, beaming, at Dimko and then at Mlađa. What a word! — clicks my gaze. Was it that word that caused a wave of warmth in me and brought tears to the corners of my eyes from somewhere — both for me and for them? Is it that word that awakens the long-dormant, almost numbed forces?
I feel the blood run faster through the half-empty veins, some new strength… It’s not a strength that begs for money, but… It’s a strength born of faith in man? The second… The strength that spawns hope and the desire to defeat the forces of destruction.
“Comrades” — that’s the word that echoed to me hundreds of times in the forests of Cer and Vidojevica, Medvednik and Vlašić… it carried me in raids on the plains of Mačva, at Krst near Tršić… on…
For that word — criminals kill. For that word, a few here have already been beaten with sticks by the Romanian, Radeka, Branko. That word must not be spoken out loud! That word cannot be said to everyone here.That word is expensive!
Before going to work, the SS men ask for: — A song! — screams the officer, Branko conveys the command-desire. The skeletons sing:
“There is an icy seeea in the north…”
It’s not OK! The SS-man does not like it. It’s not in march time! Branko is teaching us a new song, His bass is strong, full… That song, that beat, sharp as in German marching bands that resemble the barking of dogs, that is what the SSman likes. It wears us out.
“To work! To work! Everyone in together now!
Because that’s what life demands from us!”
Skeletons sing. Branko conducts with his right hand. He is leaning on a stick with his left hand. I ask Dimko:
— What kind of song is that?
Dimko swears:
– I only recently found out: it belongs to Ljotić’s supporters!
— I felt it: in fascist time.
Dimko adds: -Well, do you know who Branko is: a Ljotić supporter from Prokuplje. Somehow he got into the Communist Your Association. In the Niš camp – a burglar, and here – you see…
The Black Command does not hesitate to deal with “dangerous” languages. They do not tolerate objections. Threats especially! What you see — you did not see! What you hear — you didn’t hear! If your memory serves you — it should be carefully hidden, now. Otherwise… They accuse them of theft or something similar, and let the clubs on them. And for a skeleton, a few blows are enough, too much.
It can be heard, no one saw: – Branko and the Driver beat two people with clubs! Nobody saw that? but those two are no longer seen either.
– Which two?
“We don’t know yet… Two young men. Yes. I ask: Why? – it’s stupid. And which are they?… If there is an empty bed next to me, on the left – Bora is one of the two beaten youths, and the other… Branko comes in, murmuring an aria in bass. He leans on a thick club. My interlocutor and I switch the conversation to an everyday topic:
— I also have bloody diarrhoea for the third day already!
– Hey, drink water! — I say. -— Eat coffee grounds. Toast the bread…
Branko passes by. He squints his eyes suspiciously. I stare fixedly at his club. I’m looking for bloodstains. Branko is frowning. I look away, I move away… I’m afraid he won’t catch my eye. I’m afraid he will guess my mind.
Sunday.
No work outside the camp this week. We sit on the beds. We patch ourselves up. We are looking for lice. Someone is lying under a blanket scratching a scab. Each preoccupied with his own thoughts and concerns. Swallows landed on the frame of the window without glass.
– Look, a swallow! — a weak exclamation of surprise escaped us.
The bird twitched, got scared, flew away. It flew in again. We lay low, and it felt secure and flew into the barracks. It landed on a beam and started chirping. It filled the room with chirping, as if it were telling us something, talking… I look at it almost breathless. I’m afraid of scaring it.
Like a grain of freedom, like a fragment of a distant dear land, like a ray of warm light in the darkness of slave days, it pins me down and awakens imagination and longdormant desires for flights and chirping conversations with birds.
Hey, swallow!
Bird, from the most wonderful freedom!
Did they see our native lands?
You were there too, you must have been…
Because what are distances for free wings!
That’s what I’m saying, whispering, talking to her. And it chirps as if answering, as if consoling, giving hope…
Then they fly from the beam to the window again, stop there, chirp as if saying goodbye, and – fly away. It did not stay for our hearts to type the messages to the distant, beloved country, to our comrades who are still fighting, to our children who persistently ask: “Mom, where is dad?” When will he come again?
Eh, when will we come! Will we ever come back!… If only a swallow could speak… All the same, hearts are typing messages that, we know, will not reach them anyway: Greet them, swallow! Lighten their days! And kiss our homelands!
I forgot the other verses the next moment, as soon as they were ‘created’, good or bad, they were squeezed out of my heart, spontaneously, like the echo of a swallow’s chirping.
When it flew away, we talked about her for a long time. We all thought the same thing when it was there. Our wishes and messages were the same. In those few moments, our hearts beat in unison and as strongly as before.
There was a period of rain, regular at this time in this area. But we go to work, because “the road must be finished before the snow” – shout the Todt men. It happens to us almost every day that we get soaked through and through with rain five or six times, and the sun and wind completely dry us again.
This climate, hunger, lice, dysentery, hard work and beatings bring us down more and more. Killings on the ground are everyday occurrence. We are not protected by any international regulations. The International Red Cross does not have us in its records. For the fascists, we are just a bunch of crooks
and bandits, without a number or a name.
Our number is constantly decreasing. The SS men kill whom they want and how they want, and with such indifference as if they were killing sparrows. And they are not accountable to anyone in the world. If someone is killed, it is not recorded anywhere: who was killed, why he was killed, and which of his family members should be notified of his death. We don’t even have what the most ordinary prisoners everywhere in the world have — a number on a lanyard around their neck. No number or name!
The gravediggers: Prlić Slavče, Aca “Gluvara” and their assistants, have their hands full and — bread. For each killed or dead person they bury, they receive a whole loaf of bread from the SS storekeeper.
A large tomb in the middle of a forest filled with the scent of ripe hemlocks and hugging birches and pines is filling up fast. Next to it, they dig another, the same size: fifteen meters long, four wide, two deep.
— These two will be enough for everyone! — assures the commander.
— Our bloody paths will flow into these two tombs! — we say indifferently to each other.
We get to know each other. This is the best place to get to know people, comrades. In these sufferings.
Comrades from the same detachments and partisan companies know each other but do not reveal to strangers how they know each other. And there are a lot of unknown people.
We get to know each other all the time. Here the footprints are so clear. You have to be able to read the clues.
You check and trust: one of them; two, three… And they you. You share the bad and… only the bad, because there is no good here. You revive memories, exchange thoughts, share hopes and wishes, warn of dangers, advise each other, encourage each other, lift your spirits… You share the smoke of trampled
cigarette butts, you share crumbs found or crusts of bread you have received.
It’s not snowing to cover the hill, but for every animal to show its track! – says Bora, a villager from Dubalj, a fighter of I don’t know which company of the Mačva Partisan detachment, – The people said it eautifully and vividly…
– Beware of Besarabić! – whispers Mlađo. — Do you know what he suggested to Dimko? “Come on,” he says, “you and I, let’s report to the superiors, let’s say: these are all communists, only you and I are not. Otherwise, they shoot — let’s least save our skin.”
– Look who he proposed to! — I say. – The toughest guy…
— Dimko is a comrade. I asked, – says Mlađo. – He must be a member…
— And Ilija Mrdalj?
– A comrade! – says Mlađo and shows a clenched fist. We get to know each other.