Hans Von Luck - Panzer Commander

by Unknown

  In fact only one single person managed to get away, through the toilet hole during a stop. Whether he ever reached home I would venture to doubt. Control over the vast empire was too perfect and the danger of denunciation too great.

  Days and weeks went by. Even the destination of our journey was kept from us. We went on, further and further to the east. At one of the stops, when we heard the word “Brest-Litovsk,” we knew that we had arrived at the frontier between Poland and Rus Capture and Deportation 271 sia. Here we changed into Russian 18 ton wagons each loaded with 48 men. Here again many diseased were sorted out and left behind.

  Suddenly we heard German voices. "Kameraden, we're on our way home. We were taken prisoner at Stalingrad and come from a camp in Siberia. Throw out slips of paper with your addresses.

  We'll tell your families." Before we could do so, the guards had chased our friendly helpers away.

  And on went the journey. We were in fact still unaware of the extent of what was in store for us. The situation was too new.

  We tried to organize ourselves as well as we could. Many tried to keep fit with exercises, while others lay apathetically on their bunks. Because of my rank on the one hand, but especially because of my knowledge of Russian, I was appointed leader. To relieve the monotony, at least for a while, each of us related something of his life. One of our number was my later friend Harald (Hally) Momm, a well-known German equestrian and Derby-winner. Because of his “defeatist” remarks about Hitler, he had been demoted from colonel to lieutenant and transferred to the notorious “Dirlewanger Brigade.” He told of his encounters with prominent people from Hitler's entourage.

  The longer the journey lasted-we had been traveling for more than four weeks-the more accustomed we became, of necessity, to the ever-repeated daily routine. It was inevitable that discussions arose about why the war was bound to be lost. Some, mainly the older ones among us, saw Hitler as the guilty party, who by his, assault on Poland, and encouraged by his blitzkriegs in Poland and France, thought he had first to conquer Russia, so that he could then dictate his terms to Britain. The incapacity of the German generals, for not having put him in his place, was condemned. It was felt that Hitler had shamelessly exploited our “loyalty to the oath.” Others, mostly younger ones, could not or would not grasp that National Socialism was played out. They saw the loss of the war more in our materiel inferiority and even put some of the blame on the German generals, who had failed to support Hitler's ideas and had even stabbed him in the back with the assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. The longer their captivity lasted, the more they too came to recognize the fatal consequences for Germany of the socalled

  “Third Reich.” No one, however, disputed that the German soldier had fought bravely and had tried, even in a hopeless situation, to defend

  home and family. This consciousness determined the behavior of the so-called ordinary frontline soldier even in captivity in the years that followed and earned the respect of the Russian guards and officers.

  Already on the transport we had our first deaths from malnutrition or resignation. We had to witness the bodies being thrown out of the truck by the guards the next time the train stopped. No one will ever find their graves.

  Day after day we traveled through endless steppes and it was only during the short stops for the issue of food that we could tell from the position of the sun that we were traveling in a southeasterly direction, hence not toward Siberia. Suddenlyer nearly five weeks of travel, during which we had never left the truckcame a longer stop. According to those who knew the area, who had fought there, we must have been in the vicinity of the Crimea or the Sea of Azov. Parade for delousingl Truck by truck we were taken to a delousing station. The Russians had a mortal fear of epidemics, so not only the prisoners but even the Russian soldiers were shorn to the scalp and the houses were periodically disinfected and whitewashed on the outside. The delousing was certainly an unpleasant procedure, but a welcome break in the monotonous oumey. Our clothing, and the few possessions that remained to us after all the frisking, went into a separate room, while we had to go naked through the delousing. It was like a gift from heaven to be able finally to soap oneself. At the end of the procedure we had to search out our clothes from a huge pile of rags.

  During the whole procedure, our trucks and the delousing buildings were surrounded by Russian soldiers with tommy-guns, and we could see from their faces that they were obviously still afraid of us. T'hat was for u&-and probably still is today-a remarkable fact. More than a thousand emaciated prisoners of war, for whom any attempt at escape would have amounted to suicide, still seemed to the Russians to be a potential danger.

  Fearpecially of the Germans- is deerooted among the Russians and runs through all social classes, as I was to find confirmed indeed time and again in the following years of captivity.

  Every attempt to relieve them of this fear was to no avail.

  Back to the truck. The journey continued. The short break had done us good..It was October; the temperature slowly rose.

  Clearly, we had already come a long way south. We were tormented by thirst, but the water ration remained as small as it had ever been.

  Capture and Deportation 273 We were climbing; the air became thinner. We appeared to be crossing the Elbrus mountains. Behind them lay the Caucasus.

  Finally, after exactly 35 days of travel by rail in a closed truck, we were at our destination, a small town on the southern slopes of the Elbrus.

  Our journey lasted from 15 September until the end of October, 35 endless days. Only twice did we leave our wagons, in Rostawi for delousing and in Kutaisi for climbing coal-transport wagons, each with 100 standing men, in order to reach Tkibuli, the “local town,” as it was called.

  In the Coal Mines of the Caucasus Mountains The mountains of the Caucasus, which means “snow-covered,” separate the north Caucasus from the south-Caucasian tropical lowlands. The Elbrus, at 5,629 meters (18,481 feet), is the highest peak. Along its southern edge runs the ancient military and trade route to Persia and Turkey. To the south, the valley, 1,300 kilometers long, is closed by the mountains that rise toward Turkey and Persia; Ararat is the highest peak. The southern Caucasians (Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaidjanis) were regarded even in antiquity as freedom-loving peoples.

  Prometheus is supposed to have been chained to a rock here and Jason to have searched for the Golden Fleece.

  By the fourth century A.D. Christianity had become the state religion; in about A.D.800 Islam began to spread. Under David 11 in the twelfth century, the kingdom of Georgia experienced its highest flowering; he made Tiflis (nilisi) the capital city.

  His successor, Queen Tamara, is still revered today. Later, Georgia was occupied by the Mongolians. Under pressure from the Turks and Persians, the kingdom collapsed in the fifteenth century. Protection was sought in the north. The Russians all too gladly concluded a “treaty of friendship” with the Georgians. Catherine II could realize Russia's old dream of opening a way to India. In 1801 Alexandertreaty of friendship or not-incorporated Georgia into the Russian Empire. Russian became the official language.

  An uprising of the Caucasian peoples was suppressed with much bloodshed in 1860. Many withdrew into the inhospitable mountains. After the October Revolution in 1917, the Caucasus was bolshevised, again after heavy fighting, and incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Today I cannot help thinking of the comparison with Afghanistan, where a freedom-loving people want to spare themselves a similar fate.

  Because of its tropical climate, the southern Caucasus was reprded even in tsarist times as a favorite spa or holiday resort, which it still is today. Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tolstoy all lived there at one time or another and described the paradise and the In the Coal Mines of the Caucasus Mountains 275 freedom struggles of the Caucasian peoples. Alexander Dumas dedicates his book Caucasian Journey to these peoples.

  The atmosphere is very oriental. In contrast to Russian women, who all look the same in the
ir padded jackets, and who frequently do heavy men's work, the thoroughbred girls of the Caucasus, often very beautiful, take great delight in pretty clothes. Many of the men, we noticed, had a long nail on the little finger of the left hand, a sign that they did no physical work, we were told.

  All tropical fruits grow in the lowlands and most Russian tea is also grown in this region. The slopes of the Elbrus mountains are the source of highly prized timber. The delicious wild strawberries are not even picked. After the opera houses of Moscow and Leningrad, that of Tiflis takes third place.

  In spite of all its troubles, the Caucasus enjoyed an economic boom at the beginning of the twentieth century through the opening up of the oil deposits on the Caspian Sea and the great coal and mineral mines in the area of Tkibuli. This prosperity more or less disappeared under the Bolshevik regime.

  During the First World War, the Georgians made one last attempt to win back their independence. They placed their territory under Germany as a protectorate. With the help of Gerrnany's ally Turkey, the German General von Kress managed to gain the sympathy of the Georgians, which we prisoners of war came to feel even 30 years later.

  In 19 1 8, after Germany had lost the war, the British took over the “Georgian Protectorate,” mainly to prevent Russia from extending her sphere of influence too far to the south, thereby threatening the dominion of India. They even forced Russia, weakened by the disorders of the Revolution, to recognize the independence of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaidjan.

  It was not until 1921 that the Russians marched into the southern Caucasus again and this time stayed for good. The tragedy of history would have it that it was a Georgian, Joseph Stalin, who made it possible for the Caucasian peoples to be finally incorporated into the Russian Empire. Stalin was at the time People's Commissar for National Questions in Moscow and thus shared responsibility for the fate of his own people.

  Even in 1947 there were Georgians working with us in the coal mines who in 1936 had tried for the last time to shake off Russian rule. Today the KGB, through an ingenious system of spies and informers, knows how to suppress all opposition. So our few at tempts at escape, which were supported by Georgians, also came to naught.

  Of the beauty of Georgia we Germans, about 1,500 emaciated officers in closed trucks, saw nothing as our train rolled slowly through Kutaisi, a provincial city in the valley, and then climbed the mountains to reach Tkibuli at a height of 1,500 meters-the destination of our 35-day journey.

  This little town exists from the mining of the vast deposits of bituminous coal. Around it camps had been set up in which Russian convicts and prisoners of war were quartered as work force.

  Our camp 5 1 8, later 7518, consisted of six camps, with the main camp 518/I and camp 518/11 in Tkibuli. Besides the German camp 518, which consisted of Tkibuli and one near Kutaisi, there was another camp in our area for Hungarians and a further camp for Japanese prisoners. In addition to these one of the notorious saklutchoni camps, which is as much as to say “the enclosed,” was in the area. Here criminals and political opponents lived under the severest conditions, without knowing whether they would ever regain their freedom.

  The most astonishing thing to us were the camps containing Russian soldiers, who had marched into Germany with the Russian army and were now supposed to “forget” in two years in camps all that they had seen of “Western decadence” in “capitalist Germany.” In return for having helped to achieve victory, these men were now locked up for two years before they were allowed to go home, “all Russian soldiers who had become prisoners were punished by staying in special camps.” In main camp 518/1 there were 1,500 of us officers and some 2,000 rank and file soldiers, who received us with curiosity and suspicion and shouts of “It's all up now with giving orders,” and “Now show us if you're as good at being plennis (the Russian word for prisoners) as you were at being officers.” This did not sound very encouraging. Our common fate and the will to get the better of the situation permitted us in the course of time to grow together into a community.

  The camp was about as primitive as one can imagine a camp in Russia to be. It was surrounded by a high fence. At each corner stood a watchtower, from which searchlights at night cast a bright glare over the neighborhood; there heavily armed Russian guards performed their watch.

  Three wooden barracks with some 40 to 60 men per room pro In the Coal Mines of the Caucasus Mountains 277 vided quarters for us 3,500 prisoners of war. Two-tiered wooden bunks with thin straw mattresses, a table, and a few chairs were the only furniture.

  A simple iron stove for the cold winter months in the high mountains nevertheless did give us good service. Further parts of the camp were a kitchen barrack, a room for drying our clothes, a delousing barrack, and a latrine with wooden beams, where about 60 men could relieve themselves, semi-exposed to the elements. Additionally there was a hospital barrack and a kind of dining room used for all kinds of performance.

  Outside the camp compound was a barrack for the guards and a further barrack for the Russian commanders and the camp administration.

  The very next morning we were greeted with, “My name is Jupp Link.” He was the German camp commandant, a wiry young man' of 25 who was responsible for order in the camp and for liaison with the Russian commandant.

  He said that everyone there had to work, even the colonels.

  Moscow was far away-- the Geneva Conventions were unknown here.

  Those who were Unsuitable for outside work had to do camp work.

  Jupp Link, a German noncommissioned officer, as commandant? Was he to be trusted? What part did he play with the Russians? As was very soon to appear, we all had a lot for which to thank him.

  Born as a so-called “Danubian-Swabian” German in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, modern Yugoslavia, he spoke Serbocroatian, Hungarian, and Russian fluently and was suitable therefore as a go-between with the Russians. Here again the typical Russian tactic appeared, namely, of keeping themselves in the background and letting others solve the problems.

  Jupp Link had come to Tkibuli some months before us and had helped to construct the six 518 camps.

  The men in the upper main camp 518/1, about 2,000 of them, had been going to work ever since their arrival as “pit brigades” or as brigades for outside duty. Specialists were sorted out and employed in the camp as mechanics, radio eperts, cobblers, tailors, etc., or were sent down the mine as mechanics. Since the Russians lacked qualified craftsmen, and since those there were did their work in a slovenly way, our specialists had to work in place of the Russians.

  I remember an amusing story which the German watchmaker told. One day a Russian guard turned up in his workshop with an alarm clock that he had brought back from Germany with the request, “This clock too big. You make me two watches from it for wrist.” When the watchmaker tried to tell him that this was impossible, he grew angry and threatened him, saying, “You sabotage. You Nazi swine.” It took help from Jupp Link to calm him down.

  In the days that followed, Jupp Link enlightened us about the work structure."

  “All prisoners are 'hired' by the state mining authority, which is responsible for all work in the locality. For this a certain sum per head and hour of work has to be paid to the camp commandant. From these receipts the Russian commandant has to defray all the expenses of the camp, for provisions, clothing, and the maintenance of the accommodation. Every prisoner has a wage sheet kept for him. From the balance left over each is supposed to receive monthly pocket money; the remainder of the money is credited to him until such time as he may be released.” That was the theory. In practice things were rather different.

  Considerable sums were “privately diverted” by the Russian commandant for himself and one or two familiars. I know of no case in which anyone received pocket money or a look at his account. The best example was our fellow prisoner Oehlschlaeger, a Communist of long standing who had been in a German concentration camp to begin with and had then got into the notorious “Diriewanger Briga
de” on “probationary frontline service.” Although this was known to the Russians, he worked for years on end as a welder down the mine, and the only privilege he received was a double portion of watery soup per day.

  In 1949, when the first prisoners were released and Oehlschlaeger was assigned to a transport home, he tried to get the camp administration to pay him the credit balance for which he had worked. He was told that the transport officer had his money; rubles could not be taken into Germany, so his money would be exchanged at the frontier with East Germany. He never saw a kopeck of it and, disappointed as he was, had himself discharged, not in his old homeland in East Germany, but in the West.

  “I'm fed up with all that I have seen and been'through,” he wrote on a postcard that reached us. “This isn't the Communism for which I went to a concentration camp.” Some fellow prisoners, however, received a small sum credited to them.

  The next morning we all had to fall in on the parade ground to In the Coal Mines of the Caucasus Mountains 279 be detailed for work. The Russian commandant, an army officer, accompanied by the NKVD officer (now the KGB), appeared with Jupp Link. In a loud voice and with much gesticulation the commandant told us that we now had to atone for Hitier's misdeeds and work off all that we had done to the Russian people.

  He then gave the order, “Everyone to the doctor now, the strongest down the mine, others for road building, everyone is to work, davai (hurry up)!” The Russian camp doctor was Dr. Hollaender, who was assisted by his wife. Both were Jews and for understandable reasons not well disposed toward us. Not only had they to make the sick fit for work again as soon as possible, but they were also responsible for the delousing and disinfection of the barracks.

  Dr. Hollaender's standard remark was, “If not clean, you wipe with caps, must all solid white.” We understood his Yiddish, and also that he was not to be trifled with.

  After the examination the detailing began. For those of us who had to go down the mine the simplest clothing was issued.