D
<<     >>

Josef Nowak: Rhine meadow camp of Rheinberg

Chapter 9: A tin of water

Daily rain in the camp -- Nowak in 1943 in Hohn (Germany) 6 weeks without water -- shaving with coffee -- 16 hours making the queue for a cup of chlorine water -- sandy earth does not form puddles -- mud torture with water pipes without drainage -- NS press during the defeat of Stalingrad 1942 and 1943 -- flak in Bemerode in 1945: the staff should march -- one cup of water

from: Josef Nowak: Seeded on the field. War prisoner in the home land.
(German: Mensch auf den Acker gesät. Kriegsgefangen in der Heimat)

translated by Michael Palomino (2013)

Teilen / share:

Facebook

Twitter

[Daily rain in Rheinberg]

Water did not exist in Rheinberg but the daily falling rain from the sky. Did they want to dry us, to kill us by thirst? Not possible, such a malice one should not think in real. It was just military bureaucracy installing such a camp. Calling for an Olympic competition of bureaucracy of idiots on earth then the palm of the military would be sure for them.

[Here Nowak is wrong: the hard conditions in the Rhine meadow camps were deliberately installed by Eisenhower to kill as many Germans as possible after the war. This was not only just a mistake in the bureaucracy but it was a deliberate lethal bureaucracy].

[Nowak as an NS soldier in Hohn in Germany in 1940 - 6 weeks without water - 1943 in Hannover without drinking water again - shaving with coffee]

When in 1940 I was the first time in the gray German army uniform being a recruit in the troop camp in Hohn [near Kiel in northern Germany] between Rendsburg and Husum, this military site was really ridiculous against any common sense. 6,000 or more warriors were drilled there without having one drop of drinking water during six weeks. It was suspicious of typhus. The human of Stone Age - as I was reading many times - only was settling where drinking water was available. IN the projects of the general staff such primitive conditions did not play any role. When in 1943 I was a second time a soldier, this time in Hanover and it's surroundings, we were ordered once again to be afraid of water. In the location of Ahlten [near Hanover] we were shaving only with coffee during two years. It was not advisable to use the bad water from the bottom using it for shaving coming into the little cuts in the face. Some [p.91] hundred meters more far in the north and in the east there had been drinking water without end. But between the water department and the housing department of the general staff there was no correspondence. It can be presumed that the American strategists did not want to be better than the German strategists concerning lack of wit. Just therefore the camp of Rheinberg was without drinking water already.

[It was even worse: the camps without water were the mass murder strategy of Eisenhower killing as many Germans after the war as possible - this was the Morgenthau Plan].

[Rheinberg: 16 hours making the queue for a cup of drinking water from the water lorry - no puddle forming because of the sandy earth - chlorine water]

But if there had to be hindered a mass murder under these dreadful conditions, then water for 250,000 persons had to be brought here. The third or fourth day of our stay the business opened. A local water lorry could be seen at the horizon. Coming to our camp we were taking our tableware which was almost only consisting in tins with the volume of one cup and then we were making the queue. In the morning at 10 o'clock a curved snake was formed. People leaving their place could begin at the end again as number 30,000. Who was sitting on the floor and sleeping was packed and taken forward not loosing his right. After 16 hours I arrived the crane. My little tin was filled. I was giving the content into my throat, was stopping again, but then I was pushed forward with a kick as many others before.

In the coming night there was only a medium rain. We had liked to lick in the puddles like [p.92] the dogs. But there were no puddles. The ground was too sandy. Additionally one has to mention that the water which was given by the American Army Command had a great taste. It was with chlorine thus one was going to throw up with it. But the Americans were hardly becoming anxious about our health. They were more anxious about infectious illnesses, even more than from fire bombs or explosive bombs. Their anxiety was even childish.

[Water torture is becoming a mud torture: 1 liter water bins - English installing a water pipe without drainage - no counter for complaints]

When it came out that the needs could not be satisfied with one water lorry the Americans were constructing water bins with impregnated tissues. Now it was possible to get one liter of water. But later when the English had taken over the camp administration the commander even had the great idea to install a water pipe. This water pipe had some dozens of water taps, but there was no drainage. Coming to the water was an ugly matter now because people was in the mud up to their knees, coming dirty there and coming back like a swine. For the Army Commands of all nations it's not especially flattering that we could honor these circumstances just in a military way.

Within these 16 hours when I was waiting for a mouth of water with all my patience I was speaking sorrow to myself. Certainly the supply was not the best one. But we had even learnt in the Wehrmacht by heart that the soldier should not complain about food, clothes or housing. The Americans were relying [p.93] on that how we were trained in this aspect. There was only the possibility to complain at the superior making a complaint at the army (Kommiss). But it was not advisable. IN Rheinberg we had not known how one should do it either to complain about an American officer. This had really been the last thing that Germans would think about to complain about a man in an allied uniform. What for had been the victory then? It was not so bad at all. When I considered other events.

[Remembering NS policy: example of press work with a "tank army" during the defeat of Stalingrad - who is speaking will be murdered by Freisler]

[The following scenery is performed with madness as it's base making war during Russian winter].

It was in November 1942. I had a very hard effort - and there was the help of a friend, a major of a Wehrmacht district command - thus I provided a work station as "indispensable". Now I was the leader of a little review with 5,000 subscribers [unfortunately the name of the review is not mentioned]. In the middle of November we got - as it was normal under the threat of death penalty for garrulity - the first time in the red service of the propaganda department the information that the German Army in Stalingrad had to be considered as being lost. The troop had the honorful task to be a victim for the Führer. But there should not be any information about this luck to the population nor to the army of field marshal Paulus. Thus the same department was sending us the Wehrmacht reports every day since November 15, 1942 until January 29, 1943. In these reports was described that a tank army was on the way to free the Stalingrad fighters, that there would be a pleasant progress - one could imagine their way on the map with little flags - that it would be only a matter [p.94] of days, of hours - - -

In this way the journalists were helping to a big fraud and to one of the biggest lies during ten weeks which has stained a population ever. But as I said before, who was telling something was sent to Mr. Roland Freisler. Every month the editors and the newspaper bosses had to put their red service into the oven with a celebration burning everything, and they even had to sign a protocol about the incineration. This constant existence with the head under the guillotine is yet here nowadays [when this book was edited in 1956]. I know that today nobody will be authorized to execute me after chattering about the red service, but I am not really safe with the matter, above all not in a half sleep or in a daydream. Thus I need sometimes a good while after getting up until it's clear for me that I am in my sleeping room and not in a death cell.

Then in the last week of January of 1943 we got the order for January 30 - this was the anniversary of the NS takeover of power - to create a festivity edition of the newspaper glorifying Wehrmacht and NS party (NSDAP), and especially the party because the party would be it alone - - -

But we had nothing to do than to place prose hymns of the propaganda singers in an effective place. On which side, in which grade of letter, with which title, all this was ordered. On January 27 we were - as all newspapers - ready to edit the ordered special edition [p.95]. And then in the night there came the oral order by radio: "Destroy the complete special edition! Wait for new orders!" On January 29 we were working out the new special edition in a mad rush. Keyword now was: Nibelung loyalty - heroic doom - death march of the Goths!

Hitler had written off his 6th army. Morgenthau wanted to write off the whole German population. The brains are just very similar! But I really had rather loved to be in the camp of Rheinberg in November 1942 already. There was 10 weeks lie, ok, it was following the order, or telling the truth and being shot for it, this had been a hard alternative. Today yet I have the feeling as if I would have some guilt for the Stalingrad fighters and had also been complicit in this doom. No, tin these times I rather had gone to Rheinberg. And thinking of what the mad one had in project for us - - -

[Flak battery in Bemerode in 1945: NS commanders wanted to force the staff for marches forcing them to fight against Russian tanks]

After having blast our battery in Bemerode we should march to the East according to a secret order. The location of the next union should be the location of Gommern near Magdeburg! We never have reached Gommern. Only complete fools could think that staff from a flak battery could be good marching people. What were these people from the general staff thinking principally when they wanted to convert a technical and by military law fully motorized unit into an infantry unit? [p.96] Did they really expect that we would reach Magdeburg before the capitulation like academic soldiers who were understanding more about spheric trigonometry than from a carbine? What was going on here was the strategy of Jakob Kohl from Eibelstadt who was arming his men in the big Fratricidal War in 1925 with agriculture instruments like threshing flails and let them fight against canons of the castle of Marienberg and against the cavalry of Truchsee from Waldenburg. In a similar way we should fight now heavy artillerist, with insufficient infantry weapons, against Russian tank armies. No, so far as we were coming into question, Hitler was hoping in vain to a fabulous Wenk Army liberating Berlin. When we had the choice to die in a Gothic way or being deported to Siberia - with one word, we did not feel well in Rheinberg, but comparing the conditions one could recognize that this was just a limbo and not the hell itself.

[A tin of water is giving new enthusiasm]

The last days there was not so much rain. The coat was not being soaked for a long time, at least for one day. I had even got a little tin of water. This camp could not be a joy for the Americans for much more time. Perhaps they would send us home soon. I had such a goodwill as one could presume with a human being in my situation [p.97]..

<<     >>

Teilen / share:

Facebook

Twitter