16
At dawn, Ralph’s cell was opened. Along with half a dozen other prisoners from solitary cells, he was marched out to where a guard was pointing at a two-metre-square wooden box with an open top. Pick it up, he told them, and no talking. The prisoners knelt to lift the box and proceeded out of the camp under guard. Soon they reached their first stop: the Zollschuppenlager.
Ahead, in the middle of the yard next to the shed, was an enormous soup pot giving off a foul smell. It was no soup fit to eat, made of mouldy and rotting vegetable peel and ground straw.1 Inside the wire, a group of German guards wielding batons stood by the customs shed. They opened the door and out poured hundreds of Soviet prisoners, skeletal, emaciated figures with bulging eyes. The Soviets surged forward, and the German guards on both flanks set on their captives with batons, making the prisoners run towards the soup while cracking skulls and shattering collarbones. There were no bowls or cups. Once the Soviets reached the pot, the guards backed off and left the prisoners to claw at each other over the food. In the doorway crawled the stragglers, now being trampled by their comrades. Men starving and collapsing, without even the strength to fight over food.
A gate in the wire was opened. A guard gestured to Ralph and his companions. While the Soviets were in the yard, Ralph was ordered into the shed to collect the dead. The German guards held handkerchiefs over their noses and gestured Ralph to get to work. Pick up the bodies, and put them in the box.
Inside the shed were dozens of corpses lying on a sheen of urine, excrement, and blood. Not yet thinking about what he was doing, Ralph grabbed a corpse by its hands. He didn’t notice the frostbite on it. As he heaved, the skin from the deceased’s fingers tore off. Ralph tripped backwards into the filth that saturated the floor. The guards kicked Ralph to get up, but did not shout: opening their mouths would let in the stench. Ralph lurched forwards but continued to dry heave even as he dragged bodies away. He and the other prisoners filled the box, then lifted it and marched out of the shed, gasping for fresh air as they emerged. The guards told them to put the box on a waiting horse cart. They followed it out of the camp, up the steep hill behind. At the top was a fresh pit. The box was laid down next to the trench and tipped on its side. The bodies came tumbling out with thuds and cracks as limbs snapped. The guards checked inside the mouths of the dead, then wrenched any teeth with gold fillings out with pliers.2 Then they kicked the bodies into the pit. Ralph was handed a shovel to throw quicklime and dirt over the corpses. Then it was back to the shed to fill the box again.
Ralph saw a new group of Soviet prisoners arriving. They looked much as Ralph had done after Corinth and Thessaloniki: gaunt and almost broken. In the cold of winter, the Soviets stood clinging to their friends, some even holding hands in the pockets of greatcoats shared between two for warmth, a small reminder of their humanity.3 There was a desperate glimmer of hope in their eyes. Here in Maribor, the suffering might end.
It would end in the Zollschuppenlager, but it would get much worse first. There was no sanitation, no water, and the food was more likely to kill than nourish. Soviet prisoners were not processed into working camps. They were not supposed to be: they were supposed to die. The Nazis murdered for the simple reason that they did not believe such lives should be preserved. Balt, Jew, Roma, Slav, gay, or Communist – in the Nazi plan, all had to die. To anyone with a sober mind and an inkling of what was happening, one truth was clear: this was a war of survival. If the Nazis won, they would enslave and kill every non-German from the Reich to the Ural Mountains. The customs shed was now an extermination camp: one of Europe’s first.
Starvation and the journey had banished all strength to fight or resist. Only a base instinct to survive remained, and this would not last long. Colonel Ulbrich sent Soviet prisoners under guard on forced runs through the snow.4 Hundreds died every week, and hundreds more would arrive by train to take their place.* This was the opening salvo of Generalplan Ost. In a little over six months, almost 5,000 people were murdered in Maribor.5
Survival was more likely in Stalag XVIIIA Wolfsberg, the next-nearest camp; the administration there was not as sadistic as Ulbrich. British Empire prisoners were better treated, which enabled them to organize. They pooled their Red Cross resources and began a smuggling operation into the Soviet Section. It kept alive scores who would have starved to death. In return, Soviet prisoners smuggled back valuables and trinkets as a small sign of solidarity.6
Despite these efforts, thousands died in Wolfsberg. Thousands more died in every POW camp across the Reich and German-occupied territory. A new chain of camps sprang up for Soviet prisoners. The Germans killed prisoners in forced marches, transit camps, trains, and camps, not because they could not care for them – the Reich needed the labour force – but simply because they believed those men should be murdered. As the majority died in POW camps, this genocide was carried out primarily by the Wehrmacht and not the SS.
Ralph and the others on punishment duty went back into the shed with the box. They returned time after time until the bodies were gone, and the shed was empty. Then they were sent to their cells for the night, and the following day were sent back in with the box. Dozens more had died, and the nightmare continued.
After days collecting Soviet corpses, Ralph was sent to a special punishment camp,7 the standard sanction for escape attempts like his and other infractions. He was put to hard labour somewhere near Maribor. Though it is in his POW record, the trauma of the customs shed had so wracked Ralph’s mind that he never remembered this. He had thrown away his only support network, and would never see Gerry or Wal again. A few weeks later he escaped once more – walked off the job, was immediately recaptured, and returned to solitary confinement.
As he was being led through Maribor, Ralph noticed something strange. The Soviet prisoners were being processed into Arbeitskommandos. After eight months of it, the slaughter was over. The war might not yet be lost: if Soviet prisoners were now needed for work, perhaps the outcome was hanging in the balance. In fact, desperate and determined resistance on the Eastern Front had indeed led Germany to reconsider its policy. It needed a workforce, and it needed to encourage the Red Army to surrender. Generalplan Ost and the murder of Soviet POWs would have to wait until the Soviet Union had been defeated. Even so, by the time the Nazis decided to delay the genocide, over two million had already been murdered.8 Although Red Army and Partisan force of arms had halted Generalplan Ost for now, a greater force would be needed to end those designs forever.
The Jewish and Roma peoples of Europe were not so fortunate; their murder continued. Many of the camps built to murder Soviet POWs were converted into the first death camps of the Holocaust.9 POWs were so neglected in Soviet history that many families have only in the last few years learned what happened to their loved ones. Valentina Oreh’s father was a Soviet prisoner murdered in Maribor. She described concisely her family’s experience in searching for him: ‘Mother was left alone with six children. Father sent only two messages, then disappeared. We have been looking for him for seventy-two years.’10
Ralph spent seven days in solitary confinement in Maribor. Then he was taken under guard to a cold, furnished room. Before him sat an older, concerned-looking Austrian major and a clerk. Ralph looked and smelled a mess. He’d slept and eaten little in the past two months. The Major looked at a file, then at Ralph. When he spoke, Ralph had learned enough German to understand. ‘Mr Churches. This was your second escape attempt in as many months. What did you hope to achieve?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Ralph whispered.
‘Normally, we’d send you to a camp in Poland. Nothing but plains and no hope of escape. The duties required of you here have been difficult, I know. But, believe me, you do not want to go there.’ The Major rose from his seat. ‘You seem a reasonable young man. So I’m going to give you this final chance. I will assign you to a new work camp. But you will pull yourself together, keep your head down, and stop this nonsense.’
The Major ordered Ralph’s release from solitary confinement, and his return to a normal Arbeitskommando.11 Ralph was aware of his good fortune: thanks to the Major’s kindness, he was out of Maribor.