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Josef
Nowak: Rhine meadow camp of Rheinberg
Chapter 10: No lice
but hunger
Lice and DDT -- no animals
-- distribution of potatoes -- meal in the night --
torture with raw beans and peas -- mass murder without
food -- soap and toilet paper -- milk soup and quarrel
about noodles and raisins
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)
[The feeling of time is lost]
Had passed two or three weeks now since we had been in the
imprisonment? For us the time was only morning, lunch time
and evening and night. We had no date any more. We did not
need it either. It was not important if it was raining on
May 5, 6, or 7. It was just not important either if we were
thirsty on April 25, 26, or 27. At best we were interested
in facts but not for any date on which the fact occurred.
[Lice and DDT]
One day I was walking in the morning sun around the camp.
Just near the wire fence a specially dirty warrior could be
seen sitting in a cross-legged position. His shirt was as
gray as old tin. He had taken his shirt over the head and
has spread it over his lap. He was searching his shirt with
fast fingers. Until that day I never had seen any living
body louse and I knew this animal only from rumors. But here
was working a hunter and butcher. He had a rich pray using
his thumb nail as a guillotine. He was producing just a
massacre. I got sick of it when I thought of my shirt which
had only one dweller - me - but was also as gray as his one,
and in the future my shirt would also suffer such an
invasion of lice.
But the American army - God bless it! - was the best
civilized in those days [p.98] on Earth. They did not only
brought the fast Mosquito air plane, the four-engined
Fortress bomber and the atomic bomb, but they had also
brought the best lice powder of the world in their luggage,
and there was enough of it for disinfecting the whole
European continent with it. [Hitler had also had DDT since
1943 but he did not apply it because it had been invented by
the "enemy". Wehrmacht and some concentrations camps had
short wave delousing devices since 1944 from Siemens]. But
it would be unjust to conceal that the effect of the powers
was not only affecting the lice, but any little animal on
the body was killed. It was really a modern mean of mass
murder. To a Hindu the hair had stood on end when he had
fallen into the hand of these American hunters for head,
bodies and exterminators.
There was no order in our camp and there was even no
counting of the cattle [of the inmates] In the camp of
Rheinberg. Our shapeless groups had to present themselves,
had to split into groups of hundreds and in these formations
the food was distributed. During these days we had eaten
already and we were taking a rest from the stress of the
meal when we were roused once again. This time we were not
parted into groups of hundreds. We had to present ourselves
in a queue of eight which was moving for hours in all
directions and curves. ON the front of the queue two guys
had been installed. One had nothing in his hands. He was
only watching executing the police authority. the other man
had a huge injection in his fist, but not with a liquid but
with a powder like flour. Any prisoner was giving his cap or
what he had as a [p.99] cover of his head and he got a shot
of powder into his hair amidst into the felted hair. The
second charge was blown into the neck. Then the trousers
were opened and the third cloud of dust was shot into the
lap.
First we were smiling a little bit as if we were feeling
proud or pitiful, but we learnt the magic force of this
chemistry soon. At least all fourteen days this painless
procedure was repeated. The effect was astonishing. Those
lice I had seen in the shirt of the warrior I depicted above
were the only one in whole Rheinberg. No, there was no
vermin here, if we were - and I am sure that this had been
the case at least in the beginning - considered as vermin.
Lice had no license. Praise the will of destruction of the
American army!
[DDT has the effect that birds are only producing eggs with
thin egg shells. DDT is also under the suspicion to provoke
cancer and therefore is only permitted for emergency cases
since the 1970s].
[No animals in and over the camp of Rheinberg - in the
coal mine there were rats at least]
Additionally it was strange. In the whole giant camp there
was no fauna, not one animal as it seemed. All had been
extinguished. There was no cat, no rat, no mouse, no mole.
One did not see any bird, not even a poor hungry sparrow.
There was no crow, no pigeon were crossing our camp. Perhaps
the animals had an idea that they would be hypnotized with
the first move and after the landing they would have been
eaten raw. The food was so scarce, and really I missed the
animals because humans turned often out as really doubtful
society members here [p.100]. Even in the coal mine when I
was a brakeman at the slope going down 700 meters deep at
least I had succeeded in taming two rats as far as they were
coming to the breakfast on my box. Here in Rheinberg there
was nothing to tame. We were even evaded by the animals.
Lice we did not have, but hunger we had.
["Captains" are allowed to distribute potatoes - little
fire places]
During the first time the Americans gave us half of a
breakfast ration daily yet. Then they had found a big load
of potatoes somewhere. Now they were throwing with potatoes.
Every captain of a group of hundred was given a hip of raw
potatoes on the ground. This captain had to classify the
potatoes according to it's shape and then he was
distributing the potatoes. One of the captains was me.
Two hundred angry eyes were watching me during my business.
Two hundred fee were following me with any step. It was
every time as if a carnivore had a lamb in his mouth and was
encircled by other carnivores taking attention rigidly that
the owner of the pray would not begin to eat. It had been
impossible to put a little potato into a pocket also when it
only had had the shape of a hazel nut.
It was prohibited to make a fire. This prohibition was not
important for any prisoner, mostly because there was neither
paper nor firewood nor match, to the other ones because they
had such things and then they were beginning to bake and to
roast soon. Where was no fire [p.101] the potatoes had to be
eaten raw. Possibly a fast reporter was giving the news that
he had seen with his own eyes that the Germans had eaten the
potatoes like boars in a raw way. The man did not even lie
but he did not write the truth either.
[Vegetables and feeding with some spoons]
After the short potato period it seemed that the Americans
had detected and robbed a provision deposit. Now the captain
of the groups had a canister of tomatoes this day, the other
day a canister of sourcrout, the day after tomorrow a
canister of green beans, red cabbage or spinach. Most of the
prisoners were without any flatware, and no one had any
tableware. There were some spoons with the hundreds of
thousands of prisoners which had not been confiscated. But
the Americans were very afraid of knives and forks. These
tools were rated as dangerous like automatic guns, machine
guns, pocket knives and nail files. But two or three spoons
could normally be found in a group of hundred. Now the
captain took the canister in one hand and the spoon into the
other hand. He was marching his group up and down row by row
and was giving to any mouth a spoon of beans or tomatoes.
Doing it artistically he could have a spoon for himself at
the beginning and at the end of every row. But mostly the
guardsmen were accompanying him by foot and they forced him
[p.102] feeling it as a duty suppressing his joy.
[Food distribution in the night]
When the Americans were not in the mood during the day then
they were giving the canisters in the night. In those cases
the intake of food was especially impressive. Sometimes
there was no lamp [moon] in the sky by which Earth is
accompanied since millions of years now. But when moon was
shining then the old people could have thought that they had
not seen all on Earth already. These people are just
performing new things presenting their capacities in a new
way, and there are many testimonies of these events.
[Criminal "Americans": torture with raw beans and peas -
dreadful stomach and intestine cramps]
Suddenly this cold kitchen had come without being announced,
and suddenly it had left one day. Then the Americans were
changing the food giving us legumes. The captains had new
tasks distributing yellow peas, white beans, brown beans, of
course nothing was cooked of course. And now a big theater
was developing counting the field crop thud every authorized
person got 37 beans or 49 peas. This was new, at least as an
experience for the own body.
I had studies these procedures with other bodies already.
The Russians of my flak battery [at the flak tower at
Bemerode near Hanover] mostly got only potatoes, without
meat, without vegetables, and without any fat. But one has
to say in honor of the German Wehrmacht that the potatoes
were always cooked. And then they were around the table,
Semjon, Iwan, Dimitri and how their names were. They With
flaming [p.103] glances and with deformed lips they were
rating and weighting and exterminating the potatoes, were
shifting them back and forth until this mean balance of
justice had been reached to which they were forced by
hunger. Now we ourselves were as far, we supermen or upper
men, we the members of the master caste in which we had been
rated without having any wish or will for it. There we were
now on the ground, majors, cadets, staff sergeants, writers,
singers, pastors, local judges, lawyers, merchants,
teachers, and now we were counting legumes with the only but
justified sorrow that the other could get three or four peas
more than he had the right for it by calculation.
What were we doing with this food? We had no water to
develop these legumes, we had no tableware but dirty tins
with rotten remaining food in it. We had no fire, no salt,
nothing. Therefore we were eating these legumes rawly and
then we had stomach and intestine cramps for days.
[Criminal "Americans" committing systematic mass
murderer: cookies - reduction down to 0 - food to die]
After this course with dry legumes the secret power to which
our appetite was delivered was changing to baby food. We got
per day twelve cookies per person, fourteen cookies, ten,
cookies, eleven, cookies, nine cookies. A system could not
be made out. It had been lovely to play a lottery of
numbers. Suddenly and unexpected like a thermometer in May
[after the German capitulation after Eisenhower had decided
that POWs would be Disarmed Enemy Forces DEF] also the
number of cookies was reduced to seven, to five, to four, to
[p.104] three, to two, to one cookie per day and person. The
lowest measurable unit was half a cookie per day and person.
Obviously the American suppliers had the capacity to produce
atomic power and splitting atomic nuclei, otherwise they had
delivered us with micro rations. It also happened that there
was no cookie per day and per day and nothing at all. Now we
knew it. There was a mass murder working, systematically,
cold murder. There were not murderers working, but the
calculated murder was executed by a bureaucratic machinery.
Some trust of brains had concluded to execute us. There was
no bloodshed needed, no cutting of heads was needed, no
gallows were needed. This trust gave us to nature to elect
the strong ones. First the weak persons were taken, then the
resisting persons, and at the end the strong persons. [This
mass murder against Germans in the Rhine meadow camps was
the decision of the Zionist clique with it's Morgenthau
Plan, with Baruch, Lehman, Frankfurter, and Eisenhower as
it's willing servant].
The animals in wild life and even most of domestic animals
have the possibility to communicate the world that they are
suffering by hunger. When they are shouting and crying then
the hope is expressed that they will get some food anywhere.
We were shouting but we were not crying. Common sense was
telling us that it was useless to shout. We knew that nobody
wanted to hear us. We were detecting that we had arrived in
a revenge camp of in an extermination camp. There was no
other explanation for it. The camp of Rheinberg counted
250,000 persons. When [p.105] every prisoners should get
half a pound of food then about 60 tons of food had to be
distributed every day. This should not be possible to
preform for an army which had been able to throw 6,000 or
even 12,000 tons of bombs on German towns every day? This
had been a foolish trial to investigate for supply
difficulties.
[Mass murderer Eisenhower let reject all food aid performing
a mass murder of about 750,000 persons in the "American"
Rhine meadow camps. French occupation forces were performing
another mass murder in the French zone of 250,000 Germans.
Read the book of James Bacque "Other Losses"].
This was not food for life they were giving us, but what
they were distributing in Rheinberg was food for death.
[Curd soap and toilet paper - as notepaper]
I don't know if it was a dreadful irony or only a stupid
procedure of a military machinery when we were given freely
curd soap in big quantities. It was a soap as I never had
had in my hands since six years. Unfortunately it was no
eatable. It could not be applied in other ways either. We
had liked to wash us and we had really granted our shirts a
little bit of joy with this soap. But we had no water. And
additionally the captains of the groups of hundreds received
a roll of toilet paper for the men. But people with only
half a cookie or with no cookie per day did not at all need
these quantities of paper. But yes, I needed this paper
urgently. It was of best peace quality, it was always
delivered. I used it rarely in the beginning, but later for
writing, and at the end of the camp I had the description of
a new comedy. Then I had my written paper - which was
absolutely forbidden [p.106] to have it on the trip home -
as a toilet paper roll bringing it home in this form. Allied
and German soldiers could doubt of my common sense when they
saw how joyful I was pressing this roll of paper to my
heart.
[Milk soup and quarrel about noodles and raisins]
After the era of the cookies there was an era of liquid diet
coming over us. In the middle of every big cage a little
cage was installed by the time, even with a tent. Also some
kettles were installed producing many hectoliters of milk
soup every day. Dry milk was mixed and an almond taste was
added which had provoked us to the strongest power in the
German Wehrmacht already up to the top of the firs where
most of the fir cones are. Additionally there were some
noodles or macaroni or some raising or dried plums in the
soup which had a color something lie cyan. Now the big
battle was beginning as if merls were cutting a rain worm
for their breed. Now the distributer of the soup had to part
one noodle into four or six little pieces satisfying the
prisoners of his group hindering a rebellion. The same case
was with fruits in the soup which were fished out,
appreciated, contemplated and parted.
When there was a raisin often developed a big quarrel and
people were screaming as it could not have been better in a
military camp before Troy when Agamemnon and Achilleus were
quarreling about the beautiful girl Briseis. There was a
quarter liter, maximum half a liter milk soup and nine tenth
[p.107] of this soup was warm water with chlorine. This was
the daily ration for the prisoners, and a raisin was added,
a plum or half a plum, and one little part of a noodle. When
the captain was going to get the food too early then the
soup was without fillers. There was no blame because of
this. But when he saw the eyes of the others then he knew
how that he was rated to be a being of minor value.
No, there were no lice in Rheinberg. Who knows if this louse
powder was necessary for us. Perhaps the poor animals had
starved to die by hunger with us with all the dead bodies.
Compared with us John the Baptist was a lucky men when he
was fasting in the desert yet. He was eating grass hoppers
even with wild honey added. And what the painter Mathis
Gothart Nithard had painted on the altar of Isenheim? On
this picture there was a flying raven bringing bread to the
hermit Antonius! My God, how was the taste of bread? It had
been three or four weeks ago since we had seen none of it?
Bread - was there any bread on Earth yet? [p.108]
^