When springtime rolled
around we decided to go to a work-party to escape. Mem wanted to go to a party
which consisted of Jews in the British Army. I swapped over with one Herbert
Fellner, I think he came from Birmingham. We went to a large camp at Katowitz.
This was a huge coal producing area on the Polish border. There was Beuthen and
Hindenburg on the German side and Katowitz and Sosnowitz on the Polish side. The
whole area was undermined by coal tunnels.
Our camp had a parade square
surrounded by our individual huts, cookhouse, etc. There were about twelve men
to a hut, it was quite comfortable after Lamsdorf. Our food was communal,
everything including Red Cross parcels went to the cookhouse. Some astute
trading of coffee and cigarettes greatly helped the bulk of food available, and
strangely enough, in this Jewish camp I had my best rations during captivity.
The Germans treated us like other British POWs but if you escaped and were
caught in the vicinity you were generally shot, always with the same story, shot
while refusing to surrender, etc. Mem and I got jobs working over ground as
it would have been much more difficult to escape if you were working as a miner
underground. I was cautioned never to complain of being sick, as there was a
German midwife who examined you and if you looked physically able to work
underground you went. Over ground we would do odd jobs carry rails, timbers,
etc. The Jews were a frustrating lot for the Germans to get any work out
of. They would always argue and squabble amongst themselves. So if four men
were carrying something it was never a simple matter of picking it up and going,
an argument would follow which men should go to which end. Then once you got
going someone would stop and complain his partner wasn't carrying his full
share. They were full of tricks and dodges and actually accomplished very little
work. At noon we would stop for a lunch break. We had a tin shelter and when you
were in there it was a noisy cacophony of Hebrews, they all seemed to speak at
once. There was an Australian Airforce swop over there as well, so we would bang
the tin sides and they would be quiet for a few moments then start all over
again. The Jews were from all over Europe. Most of them didn't look very fit and
few of them had done manual work before the war. They were a quarrelsome lot,
squabbling amongst themselves with the occasional fist fight. Many of them did
not like the work-party and were always trying to get transferred back to
Lamsdorf. Some even resorted to drinking benzene so their heart would race and
some filled a rubber hose with sand and would try to break their arm. The German
woman midwife who checked medical complaints would accept the racing heart but
unless the broken arm was externally visible then the POW was back on the
work-party, often with a hairline fracture.
One fellow named Talk was
from Vienna and he was always meeting guards from there. He even got one guard
to take him to a local brothel. Talk and the Australian chap, Bill Reid, did
escape and got back to England. Another one I recall was an Arab Jew. He was a
happy go lucky type and he managed to get some raisins from the Red Cross
parcels at the cookhouse. Sunday was a day off and he was distilling the raisins
into alcohol but the pipes he had scrounged for distillation were coated with
benzene so the alcohol was undrinkable, he was most disappointed in the result.
This was the time of the "Great Escape from Sagen, which was made into a movie.
The authorities were very angry over the Great Escape and a circular came to all
camps, essentially saying that any POW caught escaping would be shot. In fact
they weren't, but our camp commander was fearful of Mem and I getting shot so he
informed the Germans about us.
We were sent to an International Camp at
Teschen, Czechoslavakia for a few days. This camp was a transit camp and had
Italians, Russians, French Foreign Legion Spaniards, a few British and other
odds and sods. The Italians were in a great dither, the Germans told their erst
while allies that they had to go and fight with them on the Russian front. The
Spaniards, who were all Communists, said they would cut the Italians throats if
they agreed to German demands. Every afternoon an Italian Padre in a red robe
would gather them into a hut and they would all be talking at once deciding what
to do. Fortunately for them, the Germans eventually figured that as fighters the
Italians would be a liability, so they sent them out to work-parties.
Mem
and I were sent back to Lamsdorf and after the usual two weeks in the bunker,
everything was back to normal. It had been an interesting excursion to see how
the German war effort was being maintained in spite of all the shortages they
had. Also to work with the civilian "slave workers and German civilians who were
all old or crippled in some way. We also saw the Jews with their pyjama like
cloths with the Star of David on the back. They were all old men, children and
women and they looked to be starving and in desperate condition. At Teschen the
resistance fighters would come down from the hills and harass the Germans,
almost on a nightly basis. They would kill any German soldiers they could
overpower.
