226

p Vesprem, on Lake Balaton, Hungary
16th March, 1945

p ... I feel my release from captivity is near at hand. At a time like this I feel like describing the whole of my life, recalling everything. I feel like describing all the terrible things the Germans did to the people they conquered. I feel like describing all my hatred towards the enemy. I feel like describing all my love for Russia, which I feel so keenly at this moment. I can just imagine how lovely life will be after the war, how people will respect one another after these terrible trials of war. People will really value one another... .

I have Russia. I belong to her with all my very being, and my life is for her. And over there in Russia lies my homeland -Siberia and the beautiful village of Ushur, and there lives my beloved with the simple Russian name of Masha. There aren’t any apples or grapes there, but they do have nuts, all sorts of berries, and we will plant orchards there. Wherever I’ve been, I have never forgotten Siberia. Her riches, the taiga-golden forests and furry animals, and her fields-a second Ukraine. What a marvellous future ahead of her!

p April 1945, Austria 

p Only half of us left-the rest have all been slaughtered. For two days now we haven’t had anything to eat and we work more than all the others. We’re working day and night. My strength is running out.

Oh, my native land! If only I could see you as I see you in my dreams. Oh, my native Russia, my invincible homeland. A word of greeting I send you from my dingy prison. In thought I walk about the Siberian expanses, but my strength is running out. . . .

227

p Minsk
Baranovichi
Lublin
Uzhgorod
Budapest
Vesprem
Sharvar 

p That is my hard trail. I’ll try to remember everything, all the places, all the indignities, the whole back-breaking trail. And I’ll describe it all, everything, if I live I’ll write a book In Captivity. Right at this moment some thing or other comes back to me. I recall one date. That was January 17 or 18, 1942. I received a bad head wound near the village of Oskui, Leningrad Region, Chudov District. I came to my senses and well remember Minsk, a prisoner-of-war camp. I remember sitting next to a student in horn-rimmed spectacles, Kostya, and an interned soldier-either a Kazakh or a BashkirBisinchakeyev. Then the gates flew open and an old man was pushed in. He staggered forward, his arms flapping, lips trembling, wanting to say something, but apparently unable to do so. Blood trickled down his long, grey beard and on his bald head there was a raw and bloody wound-a fivepointed star had been carved out. He took a few more steps and fell, stretching himself as after waking up, and then died with his eyes open. We ran up. "Professor!" cried Kostya and began to sob. He told me he had been one of his professors.

In Uzhgorod I met a nicely dressed Russian girl—Nina Morozova from Gomel. She begged me to kill her because she was being forced at gun-point to live with a German officer. Instead of killing her I got her to change into soldier’s uniform, and she lived with us as a captured soldier. She lived like that for a long time, then one day the guards noticed she was a girl, and a German soldier raped her and slit her throat before our very eyes.

Boris Nozdrin, born 1921, war taken prisoner, as his notes indicate, in January 1942 after being wounded in the head during fighting near the village of Oskui. He saw many war camps. When Soviet troops advanced into Hungary and Austria, the nazis decided to wipe out all Russian prisoners. Nozdrin was shot together with thousands of other Soviet people in early April 1945. His diary was noticed in the pocket of his service jacket as Soviet soldiers were burying the mutilated corpses of their fellow countrymen.