Eyewitness Testimony Luigi Poggioli

Luigi Poggioli Camp 7 The Story of My Interrupted Youth From the Italian by Henriette Martin January 2008 With notes by the translator in the footnotes Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth The Turnip Less than three days after arriving at Camp 7, the already weak optimism that had come over us when we left Camp 1 had completely disappeared. We encountered the hardships that the new camp presented to us, and a tormenting anxiety about the immediate future spread among all of us. It was no longer just the mere psychological and physical suffering caused by the hard labor we were subjected to; even the healthiest among us, a group to which I belonged, increasingly realized that the limit of survival chances was almost reached. When we were still in Camp 1, the return from work was accompanied by curses and insults against the methods of our tormentors, from which a still lively spirit of rebellion spoke. Now, upon returning to Camp 7, silence prevailed from exhaustion, and only occasionally was the subdued remark made: "They really want to kill us with the efforts and deprivations," which sounded in my ears like the last justification before surrender. One evening – we had just passed the camp of the former I.M.I.1 soldiers – I decided that I had to stop giving in to my fatigue. Seeing myself only as a victim would bring me no advantage. If the situation had suddenly worsened, it was inevitable that I would have to come up with something new to face it and at least make it bearable. When I arrived at the lake by the sawmill, I looked across to the opposite shore, which at that moment lay somewhat in darkness; with the help of the varying heights of the towering pine forests2 outlined against the starry sky, I could make out its features. On the morning of our transfer, when I had taken in the new view with my eyes, I had noticed the disturbed earth of the field. It indicated that the harvest was already over (potatoes or turnips), but up in a corner at the edge of the forest, some rain-wet bunches of broad, green leaves glistened. After eating the soup, I sat away from the stove on the bunk so as not to be numbed by the warmth. I spent about an hour like this, then I put a carpenter’s claw in my pocket and went out without telling anyone anything. After running around the last barrack of the camp, I jumped over the little stream and the simple barbed wire fence and then entered the forest bent over, in a direction I thought was right. I advanced only with difficulty, due to my limited eyesight, which hindered me in the darkness, but also because of the rather thorny underbrush. My heart beat fast; not because I was afraid, it was probably more the excitement – because I was running away at night for the first time to steal – and certainly the worry that all the effort might be in vain. After less than ten minutes, I reached the desired spot and congratulated myself on my good sense of direction. The moon illuminated not only the lake and the sawmill but also some bunches of turnip leaves. With the help of the carpenter’s claw, I dug five turnips out of the ground: the first was a normal, quite shriveled fodder turnip, the others – probably cooking turnips, as I had never seen them before – were round and of a very light yellow-brown color. I devoured the smallest one on the spot. Its strong yellow, firm but not hard flesh tasted excellent. While returning to the barracks, I also ate the fodder turnip, which tasted sweeter and juicier but was at the same time hard and fibrous. While walking, I constantly kept my hand on the bulge that the largest turnip, measuring at least 20 centimeters, caused in my carrying net. In my head, I calculated how many days the treasure I had found that night would secure my survival: certainly five days, perhaps even a week. I no longer remember his name, which is also because everyone affectionately called him Scopolo. That was the name of the place he came from, in the upper Ceno Valley in the province of Parma. He was small in stature, and his head looked disproportionately large on his very thin neck, so that anyone meeting him for the first time was initially speechless. His face was round with high, prominent cheekbones. His beard and mustache were gray and scruffy, his eyes close-set but impressively lively. He wore very sturdy shoes and garments whose primitive workmanship, however, betrayed his rural origin – a peasant life burdened by backward poverty, as was typical for many families living at that time in the middle Apennines near Piacenza and Parma. He was a decent guy, very reserved, very cautious towards others, spoke very little but always listened with great interest. His longest speech was at the Verona train station, in the shadow of the freight cars, as we waited for our departure and many feared a mad journey in these cars, which had already been used for deportations of Jews and prisoners of war in general. In his Bedonia dialect (from Bedonia), he told us that he had been a prisoner in Austria during the First World War (1915-1918) and that the real danger of captivity was not the discomforts of the journey, the hard work, the mistreatment, or the bombings, but solely hunger. Indeed, more than half of his fellow prisoners had starved to death. He had survived and hoped that, through the experiences he had had then, he would also come through alive this time. When we arrived at Camp 7 and took possession of our bunks – old men below, young men above – he shyly asked me if he could have the lower bunk under mine, as he would never have managed to climb to the upper one. When I – naturally – agreed, he showed an unusual joy, as if he felt honored by my consent. --- 1 Internati Militari Italiani (Italian Military Internees). 2 Poggioli mentions pine forests several times clearly.The two smaller beets that were left I ate raw in the following days in small portions. But I still had the largest one, which I always carried wrapped in a napkin in my net bag and never took my eyes off. In the evening before going to sleep, I put the bag and my other things into the jute sack that I used as a pillow. One night I had a nightmare: I dreamed, or rather I thought I was dreaming, that my neck was lying not on the pillow but on the bare boards of the bunk, in a very unnatural position much lower than my body, which made it extremely difficult for me to breathe and I thought I was suffocating. A dream? No way! My head was actually on the wood, because the beet was gone. I jumped off the folding bed and ran to turn on the light. Everyone was asleep, exhausted from the daily effort. Only Scopolo was awake and looked at me with eyes wide open in fear. I accused him harshly, then begged him, rummaged through his bed, and insulted him. But it was all in vain: he neither closed his eyes nor opened his mouth. His facial expression only changed when I got tired of searching every corner of the barrack and said to him: "Keep the beet then. May it do you good. You are destined to die sooner than I anyway." I have been ashamed of these words my whole life. The poor guy was fighting for survival with all means just like me. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth Bardugoni’s Death Bardugoni was the first from our group to die. Actually, the first was Giovanni Balderacchi from Casa Ratti. He died in a hospital in Kahla, where he had managed to get admitted in the first days after our arrival in Kahla. Tegoni was also with him and was able to tell us everything afterwards. Giovanni Balderacchi was simply killed by an injection administered by a nurse on the orders of a medical team after they had consulted at the patient’s bedside. Tegoni confided in me only several days after his return under the condition of utmost secrecy. At first, he seemed truly speechless. He was restless and suspicious, and I could not connect this strange behavior to a possible illness. I only understood that he had left the hospital on his own responsibility, or rather, that he had escaped from there. Bardugoni was a farmer and lived in Cagregorio, a few kilometers from Farini. However, I first saw him in the town hall, where the Germans had gathered us before sending us further to Bettola. He was hard to overlook: a tall and strong man with red hair and a large red mustache, both slowly graying. He had arrived with rolled-up shirt sleeves and his cloth jacket under his arm. His face was sunburned despite the hat with the wide brim. He immediately showed an unusual obsession in searching for someone who would send him home again, since his wife was now alone with the small children and only he could take care of the started mowing work. He did not understand our fate and his excessive drive never left him, not even during the forced labor to which we were condemned. Neither good advice nor later pleading requests nor finally harsh reproaches from comrades, all intent on slowing his efforts that would otherwise have destroyed any hope of survival, helped. If he was not systematically controlled, he devoted himself to work with a zeal and stubbornness that even frightened Kapo Franz, who disapproved of Bardugoni with a meaningful shake of his head. He was always in a hurry: in a hurry to arrive, to eat, to finish the work. As if he were convinced that the sooner one finished, the sooner one would be allowed to return home. One early afternoon I was just working on my winch when I heard Kapo Franz call loudly for me: "Poghioli. Come, quickly." In the hut he handed me permission to leave the construction site and said: "Send Bardugoni immediately to the barrack. Quickly, he is already dead. Hopefully he will still get there. I could not convince him. He fears he will get no food. I cannot make him understand." I stood there for a moment, somewhat undecided, because I thought I had misunderstood him. But he immediately added: "Look into his eyes. Death is written in his eyes!" It took me some time to persuade Bardugoni: despite the approving affirmations of the workmates, he only agreed when I told him a lie: "Show this permit in the kitchen as soon as you arrive at Camp 7. Then they will give you your bread ration immediately." Then I had to accompany him to the SS checkpoint and explain to the soldier that the "camarat" Bardugoni had permission to return to the camp earlier because he was very ill. When the barrier lifted, he started walking without looking at us. He walked in the middle of the street and as he moved away he kept calling: "I have permission... I have permission..." On the morning of the lecture he had been at the end of his strength and had been noted during the medical inspection. But he was declared fit because he was actually only more tired than usual and as hungry as usual. For this reason, he had not been able to collect his bread ration the evening before and the next morning he was not allowed to eat his daily soup either. When we returned to the barrack in the evening, we found that he was not yet there but believed that he had been admitted to the infirmary. With the incorrect spelling of his name, Poggioli tries to reproduce the incorrect pronunciation by the Germans. The correct (Italian) pronunciation is approximately Pòddscholi. In some places, Poggioli tries (more or less correctly) to incorporate the respective German expressions into the text. These are not always adopted in the present translation in the spelling he used. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted YouthInstead, he appeared a few minutes later, in a coma. Some former IMI boys carried him in. They had found him near the entrance to their camp, where he was lying at the edge of the road, the same road we had walked along shortly before without seeing him, because at that time we always returned to the camp only after dark. The poor boys were shaken; partly from fatigue, but above all because they saw a man die who could have been their father. Oh dear, they had no idea that almost all of them would follow him within a few months. We had met the IMI boys around the end of August at a construction site on the hill. They came to us because they had heard that we were the countrymen who had most recently arrived in Kahla. They all longed for news about the situation in Italy and asked us countless questions about it, which we could not always answer. But every little detail delighted and moved them. Only a few days later, they came to us again and almost apologized. They asked us to understand if they had signed up to become workers instead of prisoners, but the food in their camp was so bad that they would all starve there. Most of us showed understanding and tried to calm them by assuring them that we would have sold our souls to the devil to survive. But some were brutally honest. They told them that they had chosen the wrong place to work, as the food here was the same and their bodies, already weakened by a year of imprisonment, would not survive the brutal work they would be subjected to in the upcoming hostile season, even though their clothing (complete uniform with gray-green wool coat) was a dream for us. We had not even asked which camp they had been assigned to. Only a few days after our transfer to Camp 7, they occupied Camp 5, which was a few hundred meters before our accommodation. I had never seen a dead adult up close before. Despite the confused state I was in, I took a stool and sat by his deathbed. While I looked at his rigidity, his large mustache, and his face, which suddenly seemed to have lost all its emaciation, I wondered what I should tell his wife when I returned. Meanwhile, the deep silence in the barrack, which always preceded the arrival of the bread rations, was interrupted. Gallini had learned who was supposed to fetch the food that day and expressed the suspicion that the two had already eaten Bardugoni’s share. The silence that followed was even more oppressive. As soon as Baldi entered the barrack holding the bread container, followed by Rossi carrying the food, he loudly said in his typical dialect: “Guys, Bardugoni is dead. They didn’t give me his ration.” A terrible punch hit him right in the face, the bread basket flew into the air, and the bread rations scattered into every corner. Thus, an incredible brawl broke out, involving almost everyone—some with blows, others trying to separate the fighters, but all equally screaming. Among them, I recognized Capretti’s voice shouting at everyone to stop because they were behaving like animals. As one of the few not involved, I noticed poor Rossi leaning against the wall near the entrance door, crying helplessly. I was disturbed and did not move from my stool. I only thought about what they had made us into here. The discussions completely ceased when Tegoni approached Bardugoni and then stated: “Now he is really dead, you can stop. He must be removed immediately. Get a ladder. We will distribute the rations later.” In this way, everything dissolved, orderly and in deepest silence. The next day, I asked Kapo Franz if we could attend the funeral of poor Bardugoni so that I could later show his wife and children the grave. Early in the afternoon, he gave me written permission for myself, Gaio, and Gallini. Halfway from Camp 7 to Kahla, we slowed our pace briefly to admire the most spectacular and numerous formation of aircraft we could ever have imagined: hundreds of formations of air forces, flying in beautiful order and sorted by colors from silver to black, filled the sky from south to north within minutes, and above them sparkled countless pursuers. Over Jena hung an immobile black cloud of smoke, constantly renewed by the explosions of anti-aircraft fire. It obscured the bombers flying into it, and we saw at least four of them crash in flames. Immediately after all the planes had passed, the spectacle ended with a dense white cloud formed from the contrails, covering the perfectly blue sky. When we encountered the green vehicle coming from Camp 7 (which collected the dead from all camps every day), we signaled it to stop, but it did not even slow down. So we continued toward Kahla and, naive as we were, walked to the cemetery. When we arrived, of course, the entrance gate was locked, and we became aware of our absurd demand. I personally was ashamed of my stupidity, and the talk of a mass grave on the eastern outskirts of Kahla suddenly seemed true. The “Excursions”Even while we were in Camp 1, many of us had tried various ways to briefly escape from the camp after returning from work. In the countryside, we tried quite successfully to obtain something edible. At that time, however, the days were long, and even a few hours of daylight allowed us to reach the nearby farms in the hope of making some loot without being suspected of theft. In Camp 7, however, the increasingly widespread physical decline greatly increased the frequency of our excursions, the "going outside," as it was commonly called in our jargon. To have a chance of success, one had to walk very far from Kahla—both during the day, to beg or buy something, and at night, almost exclusively, to steal. To get outside during the day, one had to pretend to have been noticed during the inspection,6 thus accepting the loss of the food token with which one received the daily ration (soup and bread). Therefore, a day on which something went wrong could mean a whole day of zero diet. Going out at night was also a risk, even if one wanted to get something at a safe address, because groups of the Hitler Youth were constantly lying in wait and did not hesitate long. It was almost best if one left the camp with the firm intention of wanting to steal something, but of course, one needed the exact "address" of a still untouched pile of potatoes (or beets) to be able to say with some certainty that it was not guarded. The farmers in the area actually had the habit of leaving a large part of the harvest (beets or potatoes) at the edge of the field. They formed a neat trapezoidal pile from it, which they covered with a layer of dry straw, then laid a layer of fir branches on top, and finally sealed the whole thing with a thick layer of earth, which they shaped well and patted down firmly with a shovel. These piles allowed them to store the harvest fresh well into the spring. The translation of this sentence may not be entirely accurate, as I was unable to find out exactly what the prisoners pretended regarding the inspection. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth For some of us, they were decisive for survival; for others, however, they were the cause of an untimely death. The first time, I went out alone during the day, on a Sunday, since I could say it was not a workday, even though that was not really true. I appeared at all the farmhouses with ten or twelve marks in my hand and asked if I could buy potatoes or any other food. Everyone complained that there were too many prisoners in the area who had to be fed, but only a few chased me away without giving me anything, a very thin slice of lard bread or some potatoes. And even fewer accepted money from me. On the way back, I was tempted at the edge of a small village to knock on the door of a bourgeois single-family house with a garden. The old lady who opened the door looked at me suspiciously for a long time, and only after her gaze fell on my net bag did she invite me in and ask how much it was worth. There was neither a simple nor a short bargaining. I managed to bargain for almost half a rye bread and a piece of bacon, as well as, of course, an old waxed cloth hiking bag where I could put my things—but all only thanks to the almost hysterical admonitions of the daughter, who was afraid of being caught by some neighbor negotiating with a scoundrel of a deported Italian. Often, the decision to go on an excursion was completely unpredictable and unreasonable, just out of a momentary whim. That was the case with my first nighttime theft. Everyone was already going back to their beds when Gallini snapped at us all, calling us cowards because he said he had discovered a potato pit not far from the camp and no one had the courage to help him. Into the general indifference, I asked Tegoni and Capretti to keep an eye on my things, and after putting on Paul's winter jacket, I asked Gallini to show me the way. Before we reached the sawmill, we climbed the embankment beside the road and then steadily advanced uphill into the forest. Two days earlier, it had snowed, and the plants were thickly covered with snow. Fortunately, they stood there only sporadically and quite tall; otherwise, it would have been impossible to walk beneath them. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted YouthAfter about three-quarters of an hour of steady ascent, the terrain sloped gently downward and after a short time we reached a wide open area, brightly illuminated by the moonlight. Not even a hundred meters away, on the left side, row houses began. Gallini pointed to the pile of potatoes, which about thirty meters from the house rose like a snow-covered, indistinct rooster's comb about a meter above the perfectly sloping surface of untouched snow. The houses were all in darkness, the street was empty, and there was absolute silence. After giving Gallini precise instructions on how to warn me in case of danger, I left him about twenty meters from the house, where he was to keep watch. Then I trudged through the twenty-centimeter-high untouched snow. It took me an incredible amount of effort to break through the frozen layer of earth, and it was even worse to get through the crisscrossed fir branches. When I finally managed to stick a hand into the small hole and feel the contents, I recognized the unmistakable shape of a turnip. But I quickly suppressed my disappointment: a shock ran through me when I heard two men approaching, deeply engaged in conversation. I lay down on my right side over the uncovered hole and quickly tried to cover my black jacket with powder snow as best as I could with both hands. I saw them appear and stop between the last two houses. They were still talking. Over the upper edge of the embankment, I could only see them from the torso upwards, but I believed they could see me completely from their position, so I counted on the beer they had surely drunk. Their conversation dragged on for a long time, and it seemed to me that I recognized the voice of one of our occasional supervisors from the underground construction sites at the tunnel. He was a decent guy, but my sweat continued to mix with the snow melting along my neck. When I finally made my way back to the camp, I met Gallini, who was waiting near a large fir tree. I was furious and showered him with insults. He swore he had warned me. Nevertheless, I gave him part of my meager haul. One evening we were just finishing the last piece of bread when one of our supervisors appeared in the barracks armed with a stick and a carpenter's crowbar. Laughing mockingly, he pushed the table aside and tapped various spots on the ceiling structure with the tip of the stick. Then he had someone climb onto the table and urged him to use the crowbar as a lever at a joint between two boards. It didn’t take much force, because as soon as the first nails loosened, a board came loose under an incredible avalanche of potatoes. There were certainly more than two hundred kilograms. The ever more mockingly laughing supervisor had them collected and taken to the kitchen. In this way, we discovered the ingenious hiding place of Fredi’s group, who at night went outside together with compatriots from another barrack. A few evenings earlier, they had set out immediately after work and returned just in time to go to work. They said that the round trip took seven hours of walking. A few days later, Fredi and his group tried to replenish the potato supply, but on the way back his brother, who was walking last in the line, was fatally hit in the back of the head by a projectile fired from a carbine by a Hitler Youth. After Fredi returned from this tragic outing, he became silent and never spoke about what had happened. Only at work did he sometimes let himself go a little, and since we often stayed alone outside the tunnel, he confided in me that he only held on so that he could return home and tell his mother what had happened. He always ended with a question: “How am I supposed to tell her?”; “What am I supposed to say to my mother?” Shortly thereafter, it happened to Paolo, who also came from the Apennines near Parma. He was one of the youngest, modest, but so intelligent that he had been able to adapt well to forced labor and took care to remain physically and mentally capable. He had a good character and always had a joking comment ready for everyone, even though he always tackled certain undertakings alone. One evening he went outside alone and never returned. A few days later, the rumor spread that he had been hit by a shotgun, but only after some time, when he was brought to the infirmary of Camp 7, did we have certainty. We learned that the numerous steel pellets lodged in his flesh began to rust and thus caused an infection. It was said that removing the pellets by the “doctor” was a true torture, which he prolonged as long as possible to express his conviction that he was “superior.” Paolo was discharged from the infirmary in mid-April, just as we were moving from Camp 7 to Camp 1. Hecalled me right after we had crossed the Saale; I had overtaken him because he was walking very slowly and limping, but even after I looked at him, I recognized him only with difficulty. His face was swollen and pale, the skin seemed translucent and was covered with a scruffy white beard. The once black wavy hair was now thin and stood out from his head like nails. More than just white, it had literally become translucent. I tried to encourage him by telling him that the worst was now over and we would soon be going home. Then he stopped completely, spread his arms, and added tiredly: "You go home. Look at me, in what condition I am. You don't go home like this." Gallini and I were better off. Maybe it was because the boys from the Hitler Youth had surprised us in the middle of a residential area and therefore did not dare to carry their dirty game too far. We had left the camp to go to a farmhouse where some reliable friends of ours had been able to buy potatoes, rye bread, and bacon—paid for in marks at a price affordable for us. The place was barely more than a half-hour walk from our camp, and we knew the village well because we had been there several times during the day. We had reached the beginning of the settlement, about halfway along the outer wall around the hospital, and the only sound was the crunching of the frozen snow under our shoes. I was walking beside Gallini when a terrible blow to my back paralyzed me and for a moment, while it still echoed in my head, it took away my voice and breath. When I managed to turn around, I saw two boys attacking Gallini with two rubber tubes. He was lying on the ground whimpering, trying to protect his head with his hands and arms. Only when I managed to let out an incredible scream did the two heroes stop beating him, and Gallini got up. In the meantime, however, a small automatic pistol had appeared in the hands of my attacker, with which he was waving around and thus ordering us to move on, while another three or four heroes appeared from the darkness and lined up to escort us. They took us to the village policeman, who listened to the version of "my" attacker (the pistol had meanwhile disappeared again), then showered us with threats and all kinds of insults and then released our companions to write down what had happened. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth After he had barked three or four questions at us with a grumpy police frown, there followed an almost hour-long friendly conversation full of admonitions to be more careful in the future, as these Hitler boys were very dangerous—they were seven years old and also armed. The police had more trouble with them than with all the deportees from Kahla combined. He told us he was, of course, obliged to forward the report to Camp 7. When he let us go, the youths were still waiting for us and accompanied us to the forest where the path to Camp 7 began. A few times I set out with Tegoni—with varying success—and twice we got lost. The first time it had not yet snowed, but we were surprised by fog in the forest. We were not far from the camp and noticed after a long walk in a rather unpleasant atmosphere that we had been walking in circles because we found ourselves in a clearing where a table with a bench made of logs stood and which was characterized by a peculiar rocky surface. We had already passed there a good hour earlier. The second time there was snow. After we had gone quite far and had not yet passed a house, it started snowing again. We were walking on a wide straight road through an obviously planted forest, the end of which was not visible, also because the falling snow allowed only limited visibility. Suddenly we met two old people, perhaps a couple, both with white hair and bent with age. They were sawing logs of exactly the size that they could load onto a large hand sled. When we passed by, they stood up and greeted us kindly with "Good morning," which we returned just as kindly. It moved me to see them like that, and I thought that they surely lived alone if they were working in this weather. Maybe their sons were fighting somewhere in the world or were—like me—prisoners in some unknown country. I would have liked to stop to help them, but I said nothing to Tegoni. He was already worried enough because we had gotten lost. That day we did very little drifting, considering the long walk through the snow. When we came to a fork in the road—we were convinced that we were walking toward Kahla and thus had at most three kilometers left to Camp 7—the right signpost indicated that we were ten kilometers from Jena. On the other was Hundedorf; it pointed straight ahead to a settlement that could be made out a few hundred meters away. I said to Tegoni that one sign meant we were on the way to the village of dogs, and the other that it was still at least eight kilometers to the camp. He replied with a curse. When we reached the small village, it was already dark. The closely spaced houses and the small, narrow streets leading into the village impressed me. In front of every door or at the yard entrance was a wild dog chained, barking furiously as we passed by. The farmers, who came out one after another to see who was disturbing the dogs, showed just as discouraging faces. When we arrived exhausted at our barrack, the few companions who had not yet gone to sleep told us they had already thought we had been arrested somewhere. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth BabboniI met Babboni (by sight) in the Bibbiano camp. No one knew him, except perhaps Palladini (by sight). He was a young man, barely older than twenty, and had not served in the military, perhaps because of his not particularly impressive physique. He was indeed of innate frailty and ash-pale pallor, which was further emphasized by his jet-black hair, which he wore unusually long for that time and held together at the back of his head with a hairband. Not only his figure but also his clothing attracted everyone's attention. It consisted of a well-tailored double-breasted suit made of the finest fabric, a white shirt, a tie, and very light, shiny black shoes. His delicate and very fine hands suggested that he had never done any physical labor; on the other hand, I never had the opportunity to hear him speak Italian. During captivity, he never made friends or formed a group with others, which probably stemmed from his general resentment against everyone, since at the beginning of our deportation he was always the only one who anticipated me in formulating the various drafts of the more than likely courses of our fate. Both in the barracks and at work, he was not very popular because he never showed even the slightest group spirit, or at least the willingness to adapt to new situations that arose and affected everyone equally. His behavior was often the trigger when certain guards took on many from the group with cruel stubbornness. I was perhaps the only one who understood him, since I – like him – was also the only one who had never done strenuous physical work. For this reason, I often relieved him when I worked at the winch, just as I did with Palladini. At the winch, he acted more reliably and conscientiously than anyone else. It was clear that he exerted himself here because he recognized the physical advantages he gained from this work. Therefore, he also allowed me a few times to give him advice on how he could change his behavior to his own benefit. He then replied to me every time that I was right, but he never changed his behavior. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth In terms of clothing and cleanliness, he was a disaster and never managed to procure or make the bare necessities. When the sun was burning, he tied a handkerchief at the four corners and put it on his head; when it started to rain, he was the first to pull a blanket over his head. Like me, he had wooden shoes, but the only means he took to preserve them was to always stand still – even at work, which drew the wrath of the guards upon him. In short: in terms of behavior, he was the forerunner of those who later reached the point of no return, those destined for the tunnel near the camp 7 infirmary. One evening, it was perhaps the end of January, he returned to the barracks much later than everyone else, just in time to collect his bread ration. He carried a peculiar flour, which he had tightly packed and knotted in his now well-known, dirty handkerchief. He brought half a tin can of water to a boil, which he had scooped from the little stream behind the barracks, and then carefully poured the entire contents of the handkerchief into the boiling water. He stirred and tasted continuously, seemed very satisfied, and did not respond to the many inquiries and guesses about this unexpected soup. This went on for over a month, on average he came every three days with his loot, without ever revealing its origin. Only the second or third time, when he returned and some companions, in an attempt to extort any clue from him, seized all containers, he burst out angrily that he had never interfered in the food affairs of others, so they should leave him alone. He had simply found two large sacks of "bad flour" (bran with rejects from cereal flour and acorns) in front of a shed, which the farmer needed to fatten his pig. If he remained the only one to use this supply, it would last until the end of winter and he, Babboni, would surely survive – even if everyone had already written him off. But if he revealed where he got his flour, it would not even last a week and in this way would help no one save their skin. His angry but quite logical speech convinced some, who immediately, as the water in their containers began to boil, took out their clothes full of – now dead – fleas and nits and gave the empty container to Babboni so that he could prepare his lonely and precious evening soup in it. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth A few very steadfast members of our group continued to keep Babboni under the closest observation on the way back from work, but no one ever uncovered his secret. At the end of February, Babboni returned one evening broken and without his bundle. When I asked him if he had been discovered, he simply replied that the large half sack that had still been there two days before had disappeared in front of the shed and was nowhere to be found. I thought that the pig was probably fat enough and the farmer, as was customary, had made it into sausages and smoked bacon. For poor Babboni, this was a heavy blow, and it was not long before he was admitted to the infirmary. Only after my return home did I learn that he had died exactly in the days of liberation. Ghelfi from Colletta told me that he himself had buried him in a mass grave directly in Camp 7 and was quite sure that it was Babboni. He had recognized him by his distinctive facial features, even though those who died in the infirmary somehow all looked the same: just bones with a little bit of skin over them. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth The BridgeBehind the valley, behind the last camp where the former Italian IMI prisoners were housed, which was probably called Camp 5, the road we took from Camp 7 to work split. To the left, one could reach a nearby agricultural settlement and then the large construction site on the hill. To the right ran the main road to the southern outskirts of Kahla and then to the small, distant construction site northwest of the construction hill. Both roads crossed the Saale River on very peculiar bridges. The one further down in the valley, at the outskirts of Kahla, was a stone structure but with a strongly curved roadway surface that—like the bridges in ancient Rome—almost matched the outward curvature of the bridge arches themselves. The higher bridge, on the other hand, was an extremely long suspension bridge, whose roadway was barely wider than a meter and therefore only suitable as a footpath or at most for one of the very typical wooden handcarts that were widely used in the city and countryside at the time for shopping and transporting smaller items. This bridge was undoubtedly a remarkable technical and architectural achievement: with the two large wire cables hooked onto the two metal pillars, which in turn were anchored on the opposite banks and to which the elastic suspension ropes of the bridge were hooked, it offered not only a brilliant technical solution but also a beautiful overall view. It looked like an excellent miniature of the most famous American suspension bridges. Unfortunately, walking over it evoked quite different feelings, and especially in delicate situations, the bridge seemed to us like a monster that unleashed terrible fears. For indeed, the bridge began to sway when we walked in a line and in step. The elastic hooks of the suspension ropes supported the upward swing with creaking, growing stronger especially in the middle of the bridge span. The unfortunate ones who were right there were forced to cling to every railing grip or to grasp the nearest suspension rope with their arms, trying as best as they could to absorb the movement with their knees to avoid being thrown into the river. Only when everyone—after a series of calls and curses from those most distressed—stood still for a few minutes could one cautiously continue walking. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth In windy conditions, the situation was even worse; or also when every crossbeam of the suspension bridge was covered with a constant layer of ice, rounded and polished smooth like glass. And the worst was when the column of comrades came toward us going to the night shift. The situation became truly dramatic when two or more of these circumstances occurred together. More than once I feared the suspension bridge would flip over and scatter its "load" in the middle into the icy river below. However, as soon as we had crossed the suspension bridge, all discomfort and fears were immediately forgotten, and we continued our way amid the noise of wooden shoes on the cobblestones of the steep alley leading to the large square of the small rural village. Since our move to Camp 7, I almost always took on the task together with the other stronger comrades of carrying my share of fuel for the stove in the barrack. That was some firewood, coal briquettes, or peat that we "procured" at the construction sites near the huts of our overseers. Personally, I preferred the coal briquettes because they were not so bulky and thus easier to steal and hide. However, our supervisors tended to turn a blind eye more often to wood scraps. My load was two to four briquettes: with two, I stuck one in each pocket of the jacket Paul had given me. If there were more, I tied them into a long, flat package that I carried in front of my belly. Under Paul's jacket, I then tightly bound everything with thick electrical cable into a kind of belt, and a loop around my neck held the whole thing. This was a quiet but firm agreement, regardless of which construction site we worked on or which path we took. We always walked silently and with heads bowed. Our eyes searched the street and its edges while walking: for even the most unlikely find of food or a cigarette or cigar butt, whose discovery would at least secure our survival for a few days thanks to the market of the desperate. And our thoughts were always already on the evening ration, which we then consumed in the cozy warmth of the barrack. Over time, the two bridges increasingly became our reference points. When we went over the curved route to Kahla, we knew we had completed half the distance and were only somewhat tired because we had certainly walked about a kilometer more than usual. Having crossed the suspension bridge, we also felt as if we had Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youthalready halfway done (even if that wasn’t true), because the relief of having overcome this obstacle was remarkable and counted just as much as another stretch of the journey. The further the cold season progressed, the harder the marches became for us, and silence while walking became a necessity, as conversations would have been a useless waste of energy. It was almost natural, then, that we held our breath to counteract the shivers caused by the icy wind when it whistled through our worn-out clothes, or worse, when the sleet began running down the back of our necks from the back of our heads. My wooden shoes were also worn out by now—despite the metal parts I systematically nailed back onto the heels and toes again and again. The wood of the sole and the attached upper leather were so worn that the mixture of mud, sand, water, and snow came in at the toe and exited again at the heel. Since I had no socks, during the day at the construction site I looked for an empty paper sack for dry cement, from which I then separated the bottom and the cement-dusty inner paper layer. When we set off to return to the camp, I folded it to the right size and stuffed it at waist height under the jacket of my suit to protect myself from moisture and the icy wind. In the mornings, I bandaged my feet and ankles up to halfway up the shin, covered them with the trouser legs, and tied everything tightly with the “universal tape” of electrical cable. In good weather, when the road was dry and I didn’t have to mix mortar, this protection even lasted until early afternoon. But if it rained or even snowed, I had wet feet after just a few hundred meters, no matter how carefully I walked. The village square of the small agricultural village near the suspension bridge grew narrower and finally merged into the road to Camp 7, where the sidewalk lay about one and a half meters below the cultivated fields. There were also a few vegetable gardens there, fenced with metal nets. At the foot of the embankment stood a display case made from logs and untreated boards, protected by a small roof—also made of wood. To the right of it, somewhat apart, was a kind of grandstand. This too was made of fir boards, forming three levels, on which, in the early days of our evening march past, about twenty small milk cans were lined up. I estimated their capacity at five to twenty liters. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth When I first saw this arrangement, I thought about how delicious milk soup (with roasted barley) was. My mother had accustomed me to eating it every morning since my childhood. And I also thought the farmers of the village must be very optimistic if they played with our undernourishment like that. One evening I tried to avoid some companions about twenty meters behind the display case who were arguing very animatedly and got into my marching path. Suddenly I held a small, already half-empty can in my hands. The unspeakable pleasure of tasting how fresh, sweet, and strong this milk was lasted only a few seconds, because the can was immediately snatched from my hands again, leaving in me an enormous unsatisfied desire. A little further ahead I saw another can lying by the roadside. I expected a fierce reaction from the farmers, but instead they were very understanding and limited themselves to delaying the arrangement the next day. It had already snowed when we passed the display case on another evening. Tegoni, who was walking beside me, whispered in my ear: “Pogioli, the Brocul”7 and pointed to the higher vegetable gardens. I had no idea what broccoli was, but since I saw his excitement, I stayed beside him and we slowed down so much that we almost stopped. I pretended to be tying the laces of my wooden shoes. When the last troop of the column had passed, we jumped up the embankment and went back over the untouched snow to the gardens. There I imitated Tegoni and dug up a few strange stalks with odd outgrowths on them. As I headed back to the camp, I began cleaning this stalk-like mini-cabbage and tasted one. It seemed to me like an unexpected heavenly gift of manna bread. I stuffed two pockets full of it and calculated that the cabbage would secure my survival for more than three days. In December, the wooden sole of my shoes had also been reduced to a minimum in length. One was even broken lengthwise from toe to heel, and to hold the two halves together I had to nail four metal pieces to it: two under the sole and two inside the shoe. The repair was not easy, although Tegoni helped me, but the effects on my already battered feet were even worse. I have tried here to translate Tegoni’s dialectal exclamation into German. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth Fortunately, new shoes arrived in mid-December for those who most urgently needed them. They had been promised to us for a long time. The distribution was carried out after the meal in the barracks, and of course it was preceded by the usual sermon from the well-known interpreter Chiesa, who first praised the good heart of the Germans, who were always ready to satisfy our needs. Then he praised the quality of the product, which was especially suitable for the winter months and would guarantee us dry and warm feet until spring. They were indeed felt boots of Russian origin (at least that was generally said about them). However, they were already very worn and presumably taken from dead soldiers on the Russian front. I was assigned two boots that did not match: the right one was the right size, so it fit perfectly, but was very worn; the left one, on the other hand, was in good condition but at least three finger widths higher and three sizes too big, so I slipped out of it when walking. I tried to stuff it with paper—the much-used cement sacks—but that only offered very limited relief, and at noon I was shuffling again. To reduce the wear on the sole, I began lifting the left foot more than necessary, so that I almost naturally limped. But compared to the wooden shoes, I saw the boots as a true gift from God, and they noticeably influenced my mood.Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth The Hangar and Its Surroundings Chiesa’s announcements about how important the large construction site in the south of Kahla was for the war were immediately confirmed by the other deportees who had worked there before us, and they were gradually confirmed by the events at the construction sites where we were active. Already when we were first sent to work on the slope of the hill, we noticed among us the small train that stood motionless on the embankment of the narrow-gauge railway line. It had several open wagons loaded with various materials, but on the wagon closest to us gleamed the silver fuselage of a fighter plane with elegant and novel contours. The fuselage of the aircraft was rounded and completed solely by the rudder. Later, it was probably early September, we were almost all assigned to work higher up, but on a construction site further south where a large hangar was to be built. For this, one of the steepest slopes of the hill was used. With an almost vertical cut into the rocky subsoil, a kind of step had been created, over ten meters high and over eighty meters long. Above it was a level area more than twenty meters wide. Our task was to build up the outer formwork for the pouring of concrete on the high step. The concrete flowed continuously from about ten concrete mixers at the foot of the hill. Vertical rails were attached directly to the formwork, and concrete carts ran on them past the large mixers. They only stopped occasionally so that carpenters and blacksmiths could continue building the system. Our sector was entrusted to three young German carpenters who immediately promoted us younger ones to their direct helpers and sent the older ones to fetch wood stacked far away for us. The level area formed the natural formwork for the concrete for the floor covering. Here the Russian deportees worked. Their task was to carry and lay the huge double-T beams (about sixty centimeters high and over twenty meters long) on their shoulders (at a distance of about sixty centimeters from each other). They formed the framework for the foundation. The work of these young Russians was already strenuous and dangerous in itself, and on top of that, they were supervised by a uniformed “boss”: brown shirt with swastika armband. He consisted only of muscles and very little brain, and we immediately nicknamed him “Energumeno,” the possessed one. This very man had also decided that the iron beams should be laid side by side starting from the origin side, which meant the poor boys had to step over one more beam each time. Although there were always more than fifty of them, so that one touched the other, and although the chorus of voices set the pace so that the load was evenly distributed, it sometimes happened that someone stumbled, which caused everyone to stagger and distributed significantly more weight on fewer shoulders. We saw more than one collapse with broken bones or crushed vertebrae. And every fallen one had to endure systematically all the scum of insults from Energumeno, which he often reinforced with kicks and blows from a stick. His favorite weapon was a rubber tube with an iron ring inside, but when he was particularly furious, he preferred to swing the handle of a shovel or a pickaxe, as that was better suited to his bestial theatrics. We were at the hangar only a few days. We followed the work rhythm of the three young Germans, which was by no means strenuous and included breaks that even allowed us to make a little friendship. So I have a fairly pleasant memory of this experience, even though I had an encounter with Energumeno that almost cost me dearly. That morning (it was probably already the second day at the hangar), after reporting to the young German carpenters, I had to go back to the camp barracks once more to get some work tools. On the way back, I met Cavanna from Colletta and Costantino Rossi, to whom the “boss” had loaded an enormous round beam on their shoulders. Cavanna trembled, but less from the effort than from fear. Because Rossi was much older and very frail and did not have enough strength, he stood with legs wide apart and wobbled trying to keep the unstable balance. The whole was accompanied by the incitements and shouts of the muscular “boss.” I don’t know what seized me at that moment, but I also began shouting at my companions to drop the beam and that they did not have to obey this boss because we were assigned to other work.When the anxious Cavanna began to whimper in his dialect the usual pleading request ("Be quiet, boy, be quiet! You're going to get us all killed"), I threw my tools to the ground and pushed the large trunk with my open palms so that it rolled off my companion's shoulder and landed on the ground with a dull thud. Energumeno ran off, drew a pickaxe, and charged at me roaring, the unusual weapon raised high. I trembled, not so much out of fear as out of boundless rage that I was not strong enough to wipe out this muscle bundle, this symbol of violence and oppression that I could not bear at that moment. I thought I was lost. I awaited him motionless and threw him one last provocation by encouraging him to hit me and then boast about it to my overseer Hermann Franz. I do not know whether it was these words or the unusual silence across the entire construction site that accompanied one of his misdeeds for the first time, but the pickaxe flew far away and a sharp "Out!" ordered us to disappear. At the same time, that was the instruction to get back to work. A few weeks later, we returned to the hangar to do the same work again with the same three German carpenters. The first concrete layer covering the beams was already finished, and they were now working on the second layer to cover the round iron frame, which was laid tightly to build vertical walls. These intersected in such a way that they formed many adjacent tubs with sides over a meter long. Fir wood boards lay on these cages. They were used as walkways to reach the different groups of carpenters. Additionally, there were rail parts on them, on which tipping carts ran, transporting the concrete. It was still the Russians who had to do this work, and of course, they were commanded by Kapo Energumeno. Whenever I passed near him, he never failed to throw me angry looks. I pretended to ignore them, but to be honest, I was quite scared. Every day, accidents happened to the Russians, who were forced to work with unstable balance, and the senseless violence of their overseer became systematically entrenched. One day, a concrete cart arrived too fast at the end of the rails, and the young man at the brake apparently handled it somewhat clumsily when trying to stop it: the front wheel jumped off the rail, causing part of the very fluid load to spill over and pour onto the poor Russian. The "boss's" anger came quickly and efficiently, and the clumsy Russian suddenly found himself half submerged in concrete, a board pressing down on his neck so that he was in danger of drowning. Meanwhile, the order to dump the entire contents of the cart over him grew louder and louder. Only the indecision of his companions, who argued among themselves about what to do next, gave the boy the chance to cling to the iron and free himself from the board on his neck. We never returned to work at the hangar again. Only after a very long time did we go back for half a day to fetch the boards of the formwork (for parts of the wall and the floor slab) that had been dismantled and stacked nearby. This gave us the opportunity to see the huge cable excavator in action, which had already dug more than thirty meters deep below the large floor level and had cut the rock above so precisely that it looked like an exactly vertical wall. A large cavity had formed. At the moment, it was over twenty meters wide and at least fifteen meters high. For me, it was an unparalleled spectacle to watch this monster at work, and so I stood for a few minutes to observe the huge grab. Guided by experienced hands, it almost carefully loosened the formwork boards that I had installed together with the three German workers. As autumn approached, no daylight was to be wasted and no time lost eating a ladle of hot soup. Thus, the most important construction sites were equipped with enormous pots, always filled with a bland, brownish brew. It was called tea and was supposed to warm our stomachs until we got our soup in the barracks. Thus, the fasting period was extended from morning to evening to twelve hours straight, which was a hard blow for our already weakened bodies. In line with this, the lunch break was also shortened to fifteen to twenty minutes (because at least our overseers had to eat something). With the start of this new regulation, I always moved away together with many Russians along a path — also to avoid the sight of the usual butter or sausage sandwiches, which, like the warm tea, certainly would not have satisfied my stomach's desire. After a few hundred meters, we reached the huge opening of a tunnel, which was untouched by the ongoing work and which the cosmopolitan multitude of deportees in Kahla had turned into an unreal market. In this round cave, with a diameter of several dozen meters, Russians of all kinds slowly wandered about, along with Poles, Czechoslovaks, French, Italians, and Belgians, all offering their meager goods for sale. Only rarely was the price given in marks; mostly it was in possible barter goods. A thin slice of bread, a cigarette, a bag of soft Belgian tobacco, a pack of "Maciorca" (Russian tobacco that looked like large yellow sawdust), a worn and dirty pack of strange cigarettes, an old watch, a piece of smoked sausage, a cigar stub moistened by who knows whose mouth, a filed steel ring, and many other small, useless things. A trade rarely took place, but the murmur of offers never ceased, as if it were a ritual or a basic need to keep the spirit of survival alive and to continue the miserable existence.As the weather worsened, the path used to transport materials uphill became increasingly difficult to traverse, and the two Bubba crawler vehicles finally came to a complete stop. Deliveries of materials became problematic. Therefore, the technicians of the large barrack decided to build an ascending concrete ramp along the steepest slope of the hill. Carts were to be pulled up it by a winch. So we were sent out to dig parts of the foundation here and there. These tasks were assigned to us daily without any apparent logic, after we had been in the tunnel. It was terribly exhausting. But we had long since stopped "thinking" like humans, because our brains often succumbed to a kind of mental laziness that made us act very slowly and like automatons. We passively accepted everything that happened around us. I had completely lost any sense of time: an hour felt as long as a day, a day was a week, and a month was an eternity. By mid-December, if I wanted to climb a step more than twenty centimeters high, I had to grasp my right leg under the knee with both hands and pull it up to place my foot on the higher step. From there, I could pull up the left leg as well. I was not one of the weakest, and the slope of the hill had many very high steps. They were covered with slippery earth and did not become less slippery in frost. December was a very long month, and January as well — even worse, since it had snowed in the meantime and the cold north wind kept the fine snow dust suspended in the air almost the entire month. Thus, even the sight of the smallest piece of sky was denied to us. In other words: Matschorka. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth Christmas In the last ten days of December, cases of acute nephritis slowly subsided, which had affected all of us more or less severely. It had started one morning when Antonio Balderacchi got up from his bunk upon waking and let out a scream: "Children, look how swollen I have become!" He said it as if it were a witty joke, but his voice trembled noticeably and he looked totally shocked. He was completely bloated; it was frightening: his eyes were just two slits, and the bags under his eyes hung halfway down his cheeks. His cheeks, in turn, extended three fingers' width under his chin. His hands looked like two inflated rubber gloves, and his calves were clearly compressed in the pants of his work suit and flopped with every movement like two water-filled hoses. That same morning, this new illness appeared in others, especially the older ones, and within a few days we were all infected, though more or less severely and sometimes with different symptoms. My whole body swelled, but only the calves pressed uncomfortably in the pants of the work suit. In the evening, the swelling subsided, giving me some relief. In the morning, it returned. After a good week, it was all over without me having turned to the infirmary, since many had already been turned away who were visibly worse off than I was, and also because I had no good memories of that facility. Many who were denied admission to the infirmary had to rip open considerable sections of the seams on their pants because they no longer fit their swollen legs. Others had to walk for days with untied shoelaces because their feet were so swollen. The approach of Christmas, however, greatly lifted our spirits, for Christmas has always been the festival of courtesy and joy. Added to this was the certainty that we would not have to work, and we were anticipating a very special meal that, as the interpreter Chiesa had predicted, was to be served to us on direct orders from Mussolini. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth It was a dreamlike day, even though it was terribly cold outside, and those returning from the night shift in the neighboring barrack told us that the temperature at the tunnel construction site had dropped to -30°C. Like all Germans in their offices and apartments, we also had our Christmas tree. Capretti and Tegoni set it up at the back of the barrack by the window. We could not decorate it with goose down or cotton balls, but with the snow that began to fall: by midday, it was quite cozy. Early in the morning, we had washed, fired up the stove, and tidied the barrack. While waiting for the meal, I thought of the cheerful joy of Christmases I had spent with my family, and how we children were shown almond pastries in colorful boxes that we had received as gifts from relatives. I found a piece of paper and drew a peace angel with a pencil, which I would have liked to send home in spirit and to the whole world shaken by war. It was like a prayer for peace, for my senseless and terrible slave existence could only end with peace. At noon, the meal was served in the usual bowl, but the ladle was not filled completely, as the cook considered it a higher-quality dish to be savored: the soup was simply a bit thicker than usual, with some overcooked ribbon noodles floating in it. The taste was by no means better than the visibly meager contents. This was followed, in the same bowl that we had to empty, wash, or lick clean on this occasion, by a dessert of high culinary art that could only have come from our "beloved" Duce. It was a kind of gelatin pudding that perhaps was meant to represent the colors of the Italian flag: it consisted of a half bright red sphere a few centimeters in diameter, which floated in a thick gelatin whose color was somewhere between greenish yellow and egg white. We had eagerly awaited the dessert, ate it suspiciously, and judged it disappointedly, but perhaps our lack of appreciation was solely due to the loss of taste in our palates, which was becoming increasingly apparent. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted YouthImmediately the next morning, a few from our group showed symptoms of dysentery. Some attributed it to that pudding, others came to the conclusion that someone had deliberately tried to poison us. When it became known in the following days that the disease had practically spread throughout the entire camp and affected all groups of every origin, great fear broke out everywhere, because we realized that the infection spared no one. If it did not improve within a few days, it would consume everyone into a completely dehydrated shadow of themselves. After a physical and mental collapse, one ended up in the infirmary after a few days and then almost always in the mortuary tunnel. The green small truck with its usual five coffins on the loading area significantly increased the number of its shuttle trips between the various camps during this time. The disease broke out in me in the early morning hours. It was unusual that I suddenly woke up, and while I was still wondering about the reason, I felt a clear stabbing pain that more or less threw me out of the "loft bed." I slipped into my boots and was in the entrance area after a few seconds, where I stumbled over something hard and thus fell against the opposite wall. Only with clenched teeth did I reach the crossbeam of the latrine, where some comrades from the adjoining room were already "sitting." When I returned to the barracks, I discovered that the obstacle that had caused me to stumble was nothing other than frozen piles of feces. The elders or rather the weakest had "lost" them on the way after waking up too slowly. During the day, these piles were of course cleared away, but for many days in a row, we found the entrance area every morning polluted with such obstacles. At the spot where the two "rows" from the respective rooms met, they were almost a hand's breadth high. Fortunately, with the onset of the first cold spells, a noticeable decline in the sense of smell had also occurred alongside the months-long progressing loss of taste. At that time, I was convinced—perhaps mistakenly (but I do not believe so)—that this was a natural reaction of our bodies to certain exceptional situations. In short: by weakening these senses, Mother Nature gives a hungry person the opportunity to devour food that tastes or smells unpleasant and to adapt to living in places or environments that he would otherwise avoid. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth The dysentery attacks spared no one, and some suffered multiple relapses that only ceased when the severe cold was over. All the old prisoners had to be admitted to the infirmary, and many never returned to work. Gigino Dragoni was also in the infirmary, and one evening on my way back from work, I stopped by to see him. He said to me: "What do you want here? Like everyone else inside, I am just waiting to be taken to the tunnel on the other side of the street. The only 'treatment' they have given us since we have been here was to halve our bread and soup rations. When we are thirsty, we have to take turns fetching water from the washroom, but only a few can still manage that." When I was outside, the orderly Balderacchi confirmed the situation to me and also pointed out the catastrophic hygienic conditions. The next evening, Kapo Franz allowed me to finish work half an hour earlier so I could go to the pharmacy in Kahla. To avoid disputes with the two salesmen in the pharmacy, who had already greeted me with deliberately disgusted attitudes, I limited myself to pointing at the two boxes on the shelf that I needed. They only gave me one of them, and I was satisfied with that. When I had once been there for my sake, I had tried to get medicine specifically against "diarrea"—diarrhea. I had looked up the German translation in a borrowed booklet, but my repeated requests were always dismissed with a dry "no," followed by various insults. So I had to settle for two boxes made of coarse brown cardboard containing a coarse gray powder that tasted slightly like chestnuts. I had already taken the same powder once in August on someone's recommendation after trying to satisfy my persistent hunger with too many plums. I never found out what this powder was actually intended for, but it helped Dragoni, as it had helped me. When I visited him a few days later, his condition seemed good, even though he was even more emaciated. He expressed all his gratitude to me and said that without this "medicine," he would never have returned home. He listed the names of those who had died in those days and added that just the evening before, they had "taken away" the tramp from Montereggio (Giovanni Figoni), who had been lying on the adjacent bunk. Not even a week later, Jean Balderacchi came into the barracks and said that Gigino Dragoni was dying. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth To my incredulous words, he immediately replied very clearly: "You know how your countryman is. He had recovered wonderfully, but he had set his mind on washing off the filth that stuck to his body. I thought I had convinced him not to do it, but when he was alone for a moment, he went to shower. And with the cold water from the washroom. Fatal pneumonia. Nothing can be done for him anymore." I followed him to the infirmary. Gigino was in a coma, but strangely enough, he had regained color, as in Farini. He was calm, and the fine network of blood vessels had returned to his cheekbones, just as it had when I saw him coming out of the tavern with a friendly customer, where he had treated himself to a glass of white wine and enjoyed it. He would never see these friends and customers again, for he had always believed more in providence than in common sense. More than just "from the same country," here it means "from the same place" (i.e., Farini d’Olmo near Piacenza). Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth The small construction site southeast of KahlaWe had already occasionally spent a few days on this small construction site in August. At that time, we were still in Camp 1, so the way to the construction site was quite short. There, a two-story building was being built, not very wide, but several dozen meters long. Our job was to mix mortar and bring it along with bricks and other building materials to the masons. There were four or five masons, all Germans, who worked very quickly but also took frequent breaks, which made our workload bearable. The old overseer did not torment us either, and after giving us instructions, he almost always barricaded himself in his hut. Only rarely did he come out to reprimand us, mumbling something unintelligible and shaking his head a few times, as if trying to justify to himself that he really could not demand more from us. At the end of January, we went back to work there; each time for a few days and alternating with the other construction sites up on the hill. We were given the same task again and the same old grumbling overseer. Unfortunately, due to the work and the long way from Camp 7, we were getting thinner and more ragged. And the already unsuitable and by now torn clothing could not protect us in any way from the continuous and terrible cold. The old Kapo pretended not to notice when we lit a small fire on the ground floor of the first building section, which was already roofed. And he was always lenient, although we took turns warming ourselves there briefly. Never more than two or three stood at the fire at once. At that time, we constantly worked outside in the snow, which either fell lightly in small flakes or continuously in a blinding snowstorm, and the icy wind blew over from the nearby snow-covered pine forests. This small fire was a constant object of desire for all of us; our thoughts were always focused on it as the only lifeline. But it was often very difficult to get the weakest among us away from the fire, who were numbed by its cozy warmth. Thus began a war among desperate people, which often led us to treat each other with extreme harshness. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth Once I had just approached the fire and was scolding Alfredo and some others, instructing them to keep to the agreed times so that everyone could warm up a bit. Suddenly, a terrible explosion lifted a round piece of the floor exactly where the fire was and scattered burning embers and pieces of wood everywhere. After hastily smothering the many burning spots with our hands, which were now also spreading to our clothing, I alone gathered the pieces of wood and removed the largest embers that threatened to set our valuable wood supply on fire. When the old Kapo appeared, I explained to him what had happened. He mumbled something unintelligible, but after carefully inspecting everything, he agreed with me that the cause of the explosion must have been the gas formed from the antifreeze that had been mixed into the cement. He showed me a safer spot nearby on compacted earth where I could light a new fire. Alfredo was a slim and upright young man of 24 years but looked younger. He had only recently arrived to take one of the many vacant places in the barracks left by someone who had been admitted to the infirmary or already taken to the tunnel behind the road from Camp 7. He came from another camp in the area, but it was obvious that he had only recently been deported because he wore good shoes and clean clothes that were not yet worn out, and over them a nearly new one-piece, hazelnut-brown work suit made of fine cotton. He immediately proved to be very polite to everyone but told nothing about himself. And we usually did not ask many questions. At the construction site, it quickly became clear that he was too clumsy for any kind of manual work. But he could compensate for this with his relaxed movements, as he was less weakened than we were. Later he confided in me that he came from Romagna, from the province of Forlì, and was a professional racing cyclist. He was married and father of two daughters, of whom he even showed me a photo. When I thought he had already overcome the worst part of the adjustment phase, he lost his good mood, became apathetic, and increasingly isolated himself. We tried in all possible ways, sometimes very directly, to rouse him, but he never reacted to our provocations. Only during breaks, when we could rest, we sometimes heard him—in his dialect and holding the photo of his two daughters—talking to himself: "I will never see my daughters again." One morning he refused to get up from the bunk. He only told me that he would have himself admitted to the infirmary, from where he never returned. Once, when we were supposed to go to a construction site up on the hill, Kapo Franz held me, Tegoni, and a few others back in the protective tunnel. He said we still had to finish the interior fittings. However, he let me work very little but called me into his office barrack, where he talked to me for a long time. He described the situation at the war fronts and reported on the now collapsing German army and the flight of the population in the northeast, who feared the retaliatory strikes of the Russian army, which wanted to take revenge for the atrocities of the SS against the people. He told me incidents of such cruelty that I could never recount them and ended his report by saying that he hoped the English and Americans would arrive soon.I do not need to emphasize that this conversation clearly kindled the small flame of my will to survive. I immediately thought about running away as soon as the little snow had melted. I would beg, buy, or steal some food from the farmers to survive until the first warmth of spring. Since my clothes were worn through and dirty, so that I would surely have been chased away or reported to the police at the first farm, I set out to find a work suit. That was the only used garment that could be obtained at a reasonable price on the camp market. After several unsuccessful attempts, two rather shady guests who came to trade in Camp 7 one evening promised me a suit. They assured me they would bring it to me the next evening, nice and almost new, exactly as I wanted. Price: fifty marks and one bread ration. I received it almost a week later and paid forty marks and half a bread ration for it, because it had numerous small burn holes below the knee. A few of them were even in the chest area. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth That evening it became clear to me that Alfredo had held out much longer than we had predicted, but that he would never see his “putine”10 again. As the days began to brighten, we had the opportunity at this construction site to marvel at the enormous technical progress of the airplane that was being assembled in the tunnels and then took off on the runway built on the plateau of the hill south of Kahla. Already in autumn, we had heard the first seemingly slow flights at considerable altitude. From the end of January 1945, flights resumed on days when it was not forbidden. The flight altitude was steadily reduced, and thus the speed of the planes apparently increased. One sunny day, while we were working as usual, an enormous fast shadow flew over us, immediately drawing all our eyes upward. Only when we made out the sharp and elegant outlines of a twin-engine plane without propellers under the wings, flying at impressive speed, did a terrible crashing sound ring out. It became clear to me that the rumors that had recently reached Kahla about one of Hitler’s notorious seven secret weapons, supposedly manufactured in the tunnel workshops south of Kahla, contained a significant part of truth. This realization shook me deeply, but regarding the course of the war, I did not worry too much, because the number of aircraft fuselages that the small narrow-gauge railway transported up the hill to the tunnel opening was quite limited. So, if at all, they could only have had a negligible impact on the air power of the Allies. We had often had the opportunity to observe how the clear sky was clouded by the contrails left by the simultaneous overflight of many hundreds of bombers accompanied by several hundred fighters. We never saw a German plane disturbing them. Also, at the construction sites on the hillside, small formations of English Spitfires often roared past us at low altitude, without any reaction from the Germans. But also without any shots fired at us. Instead, we often saw pilots waving to us in greeting. They wanted to show us that they were informed about our situation and respected us. “Daughters” in Alfredo’s dialect. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth The first time, I did not hear them coming because I was just filling a running concrete mixer, which made a lot of noise. Suddenly, our occasional overseer (an old Nazi with a stupid demeanor and malicious character) stared enraptured toward the ridge and announced the approaching German planes: “Deutsche fliger kommenn!”11 But the frontal view of the last plane, still outlined against the sky, revealed the unmistakable, asymmetrically mounted air intake under the machine12. I shouted: “English Spitfires!” and threw myself behind the concrete mixer. From my cover, I only saw one plane that brushed the ridge, barely more than ten meters below me. The pilot cheerfully greeted us by waving his hand. Our Kapo was the only one who had remained standing and seemed paralyzed despite my warning shout. He did not forgive me for making him look doubly ridiculous and threatened me all day with his stick, showering me with insults and vulgar obscenities. At this point, Poggioli’s original wording was adopted. This refers to the rectangular radiator that on the Spitfire is located only under one of the wings. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth Kapo Fritz, the Mean OneWe called him that to distinguish him from the other Fritz, the mutilated one, who came to the tunnel construction site almost daily but rarely lent a hand unless Kapo Franz was absent. The Commoner was a small man who was always quite elegantly dressed, even when wearing winter work clothes: stiff and shiny black boots, riding breeches, a short warm jacket made of thick wool with a fur collar and beret, as well as a pair of earmuffs, also made of fur. He wore glasses and had a wide mouth that never stayed closed and seemed made only to spit out nastiness. He never stopped shouting. He yelled at every worker but showed particular contempt for us Italians. Not a single one of his sentences concerning us ever lacked the word "shit." He reminded me of one of those little mongrels who seem only meant to bark and growl angrily at everyone but only try to snap at your ankle when you turn your back on them. He indeed displayed an unusual cowardice, as he preferred to sink his teeth into the weakest, insulted them without any restraint, and shoved them around in his gloved hands. His malice reached its peak when he began withholding the food ticket from those who, according to his indisputable judgment, had not worked hard enough, a ticket with which one could collect their ration. We were already extremely weakened by poor nutrition and the daily inhuman exertion, so a day without food almost always meant a psychophysical collapse and thus the risk of premature death. Babboni and Palladini were the first to feel this kind of punishment, and others followed. He imposed it on me first thing in the morning. We were at a construction site on the mountain ridge, and I was marking out a rectangle on the hard, frozen sandy ground of the narrow plain with a pickaxe. He stood at the foot of the embankment of the narrow-gauge railway and told me it was out of the question that I should not reach the unfrozen earth by evening. At that time, temperatures fluctuated from minus six degrees during the day to below minus twenty degrees at night. And the ground frost extended over half a meter deep where we worked. Therefore, there was not a single German who did not wear earmuffs and a suitable padded head covering over them. Many even regularly wore a nose protector. In the given situation, I should have actually avoided any effort and worked at a low pace since the punishment had already been imposed. But I hoped a little that the Kapo might reconsider, and besides, there was my personal pride. So I hacked all day as I had never done before. The more experienced friends gave me tips on how to progress best and avoid the frozen sand that flew up with every hacking motion, smearing my face and almost blinding me. Even though I had outpaced the other comrades in terms of "work progress," all effort was in vain. In the evening, I was more exhausted than ever, with eyes half blinded and aching from the sand and the thought that I had to get some food. Fortunately for us, Kapo Fritz fell ill. It was probably the end of January, and we had returned a few days earlier to the small construction site southwest of Kahla. It was an especially cold day, and we stirred mortar by hand, to which antifreeze had already been added. Because the temperature was well below zero, as the steadily growing ice block under the faucet showed us. In the morning, we had unloaded and removed heavy cement blocks, and much of my gloves had stuck to them, along with a lot of skin from the fingertips. Both then hung on the abrasive, frozen surface of the stone. Kapo Fritz kept shouting continuously. He stood a little apart, by the wall of the building, just far enough away to avoid mortar splashes on his boots. He was clearly irritated by our constant attempts to get away (with the excuse of needing to use the toilet). We then took turns running to the small fire in a hidden corner of the building under construction to warm ourselves a little. Thus, he was forced to stand outside in the cold to supervise us. On the other hand, we were no less annoyed because his senseless meanness had disrupted our short "break shifts," which the old overseer responsible for the construction site had always silently tolerated. I was not inclined to endure any kind of arrogance and oppression anyway, and now I also noticed that the constant splashing in the sandy mud of the mortar was affecting the condition of my only still intact boot. So I stood there, both feet wet and sticky. And so it happened that I reacted just as meanly to the umpteenth insult from Kapo Fritz, in which he made sarcastic allusions to the inferiority of the Italians. I threw in his face that it was easy to act like a show-off when one was as well-fed as he was and had such poor starving wretches like us in front of him. He struck back by attacking me and saying that he had an ID for food that was worth as much as our daily ration. I then loudly and very ironically mocked his warm clothing that protected him from the cold and contrasted each of his garments with our miserable rags. And I continued to shout at him very cleverly, as all my comrades, spurred on by Capretti, Tegoni, and Gallini, had begun working like madmen in front of Fritz’s eyes. He now took off his clothes and laid them on a nearby windowsill until he finally stood there bare-chested, chest puffed out and hands clenched into fists on his hips. Mockingly laughing, he looked at his slaves, whom he believed he had finally conquered. The next day, he arrived a little late at the construction site, but after hoarsely giving us a few instructions, he moved off coughing toward the office of the old overseer. He did not come out again until the afternoon to ride his elegant bicycle home. Fortunately for us, he never returned. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth SS VolunteerWe had seen him for the first time when it was still light on the way to and from work. He stood at an intersection on the outskirts of Kahla, and it was clear that he was waiting for someone. With his large figure in a gray-blue uniform, a very long overcoat, and a cap without insignia, his gaunt and determined face, and heavily graying hair, he bore an incredible resemblance to Marshal Graziani, who was already a "recycled" myth of the republican Mussolini government. And so we began to call him by that name, even though at our second encounter on the street he presented a completely unmilitary image: he wore two huge shoes and walked with long strides. He swayed like a mountain farmer, kept his head down, and only raised it at the moment our paths crossed. When I then saw him more often on the street near the tunnel, I thought he was some kind of commissioner for the protection of Italians. But others contradicted my benevolent assumption and told me that this gentleman roamed the camps with the sole aim of recruiting volunteers for the army of the Italian Social Republic, who were trained in Germany and then sent to Italy. Suddenly, I remembered the various military trains of Italian military internees we had encountered during our train journey. Their uniforms were of all kinds, and they were equipped with the most diverse weapons. Especially a terribly long military train of open wagons revealed numerous artillery pieces and heavy machine guns. "Graziani" came to Camp 7 for the first time in November, but he was unlucky because many demanded that he stop his treacherous speech and disappear out of respect for our miserable condition. However, I had kept a little aside and, fascinated by his Tuscan accent, listened to the entire speech: from the moment he introduced himself and revealed that he was from Florence, to the point where he said he came like a good father because he was extremely concerned about our situation and wanted to help us get out of it. He came again around mid-December, at a moment when we were completely exhausted from work and the long march on foot. Moreover, at that time, we noticed on our own bodies how unsuitable our clothing was to face the winter, which was becoming increasingly terrible for us. I was the first to respond to his appeal, even though I secured myself regarding the food, the immediate transfer to Italy after our training, etc. The assurances were so convincing and delivered with such emotion that they immediately triggered the joining of half the comrades – despite the furious and harsh reaction of the usual know-it-alls Tegoni, Capretti, and Freddi. To be honest, almost all the intended volunteers were in a pitifully weakened state that had impaired their logical thinking. With the daily restrictions, which had already reduced my living conditions to those of an animal, and with brain activity limited only to improvising in spontaneous decision situations and with the sole aim of surviving until evening, I quickly forgot this joining. Only around mid-February did an official, accompanied by the usual interpreter, make a round through all the barracks of the camp and call all volunteers to roll call. In our dormitory, only two names were called because the others were declared too old or otherwise unfit. Only I answered the roll call, as the other had long ago been taken to the infirmary and perhaps had already ended up in the tunnel on the other side of the street. We were told to take our blankets, the tin bowl from our equipment, and only the most necessary personal items. And after the whole camp had gone to work, they gathered us in front of the "office" and immediately transferred us to the nearby camp next to the sawmill, which had been cleared by the few survivors. Upon our arrival, a large group of newly recruited men was already lined up on the wide square between the barracks, at the edge of the small stream and on the small road leading to Camp 7. It was as depressing as it was desolate to see these poor human beings, who were only dressed in some uniform parts and otherwise still in their own dirty rags. They would have frightened the toughest, most ragged, and disgusting bum. On the other hand, the trainers – some non-commissioned officers and sergeants as well as a few ordinary soldiers – certainly did not enliven the surroundings either; neither through their patched uniforms nor through their anything but martial demeanor. After our sleeping quarters were assigned, we were also lined up on the square, where a first lieutenant, simultaneously translated by the interpreter, welcomed us and immediately began with the basics of training. Remembering the military parades of the "typical centuries" of San Vincenzo that I had been used to until just under a year ago, I managed quite well, even though the bulky and uncomfortable felt boots I wore certainly did not make it easier to keep pace. The next morning, I was given the first two parts of the uniform. These were a pair of long underpants that reached down to the ankles and a long-sleeved top that I could button up to the neck with three buttons. Both were made of very thin white cotton. The following day, I was given a jacket. It had some patches but was clean. Along with it, I received a cap. Both resembled the uniforms of the airmen stationed in San Damiano, but without any decorations or insignia. Then came trousers and black rubber boots that reached just below the knees. The training continued without pause but also without too much effort. We made short marches and regularly recurring rests along the road to Kahla. I welcomed this lower expenditure of energy with great relief, even though I had to tear my already shredded shirt into two parts to bind my feet instead of the socks we had not yet received.It had not even been a week when one evening at dusk we were gathered on the large square. We had to form three groups that created a square with one side open toward the street. All the instructors and the other German military personnel were lined up in front of us or along the edges of the street. After the formation was complete, a very elegant SS major appeared, walking slowly with his head held high and his hands clasped behind his back, wearing gloves. He was accompanied by his officer’s orderly, who held a beautiful long-haired wolfhound on a leash, and by the interpreter. Someone said the officer was our commander, and behind me another added that the dog was a Siberian wolfhound, but a third disagreed, saying it was a Belgian shepherd dog. As the newly arrived group formed in the middle of the square, everyone stood absolutely still and silent again. Only the tall officer took a few steps or nervously bounced on his toes. These were presumably special units of a military parade. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth Then the first groups of deportees from Camp 7 arrived one after another. They were stopped and led from the square to the edges of the street. Gradually, they were arranged so as to close the fourth side of the square. After everyone had arrived and been formed, two soldiers entered the formation and after a few seconds came out again carrying a young man under the arms. I only knew him by sight. He was known for his worn and indecent clothing. At that moment, however, he was wearing new military trousers. He was dragged on his knees before the major. The major did not give him a single glance and immediately began a speech consisting of a few short sentences, which he delivered in a voice that sounded almost feminine; the interpreter, however, translated simultaneously in a loud voice. He said that this man was a thief and that the forces of Great Germany did not tolerate thieves. Therefore, this man deserved an exemplary punishment. When the speech was over, he gave his subordinates some harsh orders, and from one moment to the next the hound lunged at the unfortunate man’s hands and began systematically tearing them apart. She acted like an expert, while the two soldiers held the victim’s arms firmly so she could work better. All this happened without incident and indicated, if not the professionalism of all the protagonists, then certainly some experience in carrying out this horrendous act to completion. When the hands were nothing but two bloody, dripping rags, another dry command sounded, calling the dog back. The officer’s orderly immediately took control of the leash again. A strange gesture of the two stiff, gloved hands then made all the military personnel step back so that everyone could watch the punishment ordered in the speech by the highest capo. Only then did I realize that the two gloved hands were nothing other than two prostheses. Like in a nightmare and silently, I returned to the barracks like everyone else. The image of the young man, crying and in pain as he looked at what was left of his hands, stayed with me. The next morning I didn’t need an alarm clock. When the sergeant appeared, I was already on my feet. I was wearing my old rags again, and while I pointed to my still incomplete and now neatly folded uniform on the bed, I told him that I did not feel capable of becoming a soldier and wanted to return to Camp 7. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth I did not go out with the others for roll call and waited somewhat anxiously for the marshal, who came about half an hour later. With a kind demeanor and quiet voice, he addressed a few words to me, carefully checked every piece of clothing I handed him, and after the umpteenth “good” gave me a completed permit with all my data on it so that I could leave the camp and which I then had to submit at the office of Camp 7. In the office, the interpreter Chiesa gave me a scolding full of reproaches for my refusal to be drafted. But in the evening, the comrades returning from work welcomed me back to the barracks with great joy, and I was moved when they returned to me within a few minutes my few, albeit shabby, but always valuable pieces of clothing that I had left to the needy before my departure. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth The Punishment SquadIt was March, probably during the last days of winter, which climatically had already been over for us for almost a month, when the snow had melted and the terrible cold that had tormented and decimated us had steadily lessened. Mornings and evenings were still harshly cold, but on the construction site the world seemed changed, because the warmer sun and the longer days tempted us to cautious optimism that the worst was over. These delicate perceptions of possible survival were, of course, also supported by the news about the course of the war on various fronts, which was indirectly confirmed by the suddenly gentler behavior of many of our overseers, who were known as despots. The sudden reduction of our daily ration to one-sixth instead of one-quarter of rye bread and an ever poorer and more watery soup was seen by us as a clear sign of the Germanic disintegration, but also as a last threat to our survival. And so Tegoni and I planned an "excursion." We agreed that we had to push very far beyond Kahla so that it would surely be fruitful. Because all the surrounding agricultural enterprises had already been plundered, not only by raids but also by ongoing sales and gifts to the deportees. On the morning of a beautiful day, before our comrades who were going to work had even left the valley where our camp lay, we departed. We went into the forest to the right of the road and turned north, toward Jena. After several kilometers—we had left the first agricultural centers behind on our left—we approached a small, solitary farm, also because a woman who had certainly spotted us had stopped at the door and was watching us. As we passed about ten meters from the house by an archway, and I was about to offer a respectful greeting, I felt Tegoni whisper in my ear: "Pogiolo, al pisulai dal gogn!"15, without my understanding what he meant or the reason for his great excitement. The couple was very friendly; they invited us into the house and offered each of us a slice of rye bread with lard, which we devoured under their amused looks. When we left the house again, we had four eggs and a few kilos of small apples in our backpacks. They had taken less than half the money I had offered them and had even apologized that with all the prisoners who came by begging, very little was left for them. Tegoni nudged me and we went around the archway, which served as a kind of courtyard beside the entrance. There I saw him skillfully take down something that looked like a piece of pork rind and put it in his pocket. It had hung on a nail driven into a beam of the low roof. Only at some distance from the hospitable farm did he show me the object of desire and explained that it was the penis of a pig that had been slaughtered in winter, and that it had probably been hung there as part of some reconciliation ritual or primitive custom. After shaving the bristles off the rind and scraping it a little, he cut it into small pieces, which we divided fairly. Poorly and vainly chewed, we then quickly tasted and devoured them. The enormous lack of fat forced us to satisfy our craving and with infinite pleasure consume the most incredible foods. In the early afternoon, we were more than satisfied with the fortunate course of the day. We had eaten enough and still had at least six eggs, over one and a half kilos of black bread, four kilos of small apples, some pieces of smoked bacon, and about four dried pig penises in our backpacks, which we would fairly divide before returning to the barracks. We had reached a point where the hilltop was gently undulating. It was a huge cultivation area belonging to a gigantic large enterprise. This, oddly enough, consisted of a single, at least three-story stone building complex, which we saw about five hundred meters away. As we approached, we saw on the left the dragon balloons of the anti-aircraft defense of Jena. One could clearly see all the details, which meant we were over ten kilometers from Kahla and faced a walk of more than four hours back to Camp 7. Unfortunately, the large building aroused our curiosity too much, so the matter ended fatally. Before we reached the entrance, we met a Slav, two Poles, and a Czechoslovak, who finally understood our requests and brought us to a German who was trading in the courtyard. He said he did not want money from us but unfortunately could give us nothing except potatoes. I believed I had not understood correctly, because all day long...we had not seen a single potato. But he led us to a door of the potato storage and instructed an old woman to supply us. Then he began to question us about the course of work in Kahla. When the woman placed a large basket next to us so we could fill our backpacks, we were not even able to touch the potatoes, because the hysterical screaming of another woman paralyzed us. She was young, by her appearance and clothing obviously from the city, and still clearly in shock after the air raids: “Bombers are coming! Everything, everything is destroyed!” were the only understandable words of her screaming, which she uttered with tears and a drooling mouth before she decisively ordered us to be taken to the “policeman.” The nice German who had offered us potatoes tried in vain to calm the hysterical woman, but he soon had to give up. He spread his arms as a sign of apology and handed us over to two German workers and the Czechoslovak so that they could take us to the local security officer. We found him after walking silently over dry land for about ten minutes; he was plowing a field with his draft horse. After the report and a heated argument among the four, the one who was presumably the overseer silenced the others with a harsh command. Then he went to fetch a large pistol in a leather holster with a belt, which the Czechoslovak was to wear. Thereupon the latter swore an oath and took us into his custody. Only when we were far from the company building and thus safe from the eyes of all involved did the Czechoslovak adopt a warlike stance and loudly delivered a series of incomprehensible words—perhaps threats, perhaps advice—that no longer interested us in the slightest, for we had already resigned ourselves to the grim end of such a beautiful day when the crazy madwoman had first let out her hysterical screams. After about an hour-long silent march, we reached a large village. Behind some windows and open doors, lights were already being turned on. In the middle of a long row of houses along the main side of a huge desolate square, the Czech pressed a loud bell. Immediately, a neatly dressed older woman came running smilingly and greeted us politely. After a lengthy exchange of words, the old woman went back inside and immediately a man, probably her husband, stepped onto the threshold. He was certainly the tallest person I have ever seen in my life, and also thin and bony. He wore slippers, pants laced up at the calves, and a gray vest with green trim, unbuttoned. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth After a brief glance, he tried to rearrange his ugly, slack facial features and silenced our companion, who had tried to report, with a brusque “one moment.” Then he withdrew into the house. He did not come out again for over fifteen minutes. Now he was perfectly dressed, wearing his police uniform along with the typical headgear that forced him into an unnatural bow as he stepped out the door and down the two steps. He ignored our greeting and again ordered the Czech to be silent. Then he stood in front of me and scrutinized me for a few moments. Suddenly, he slapped me loudly with his huge bony hand. I was dazed for several minutes and, fortunately, was left speechless. He immediately repeated the same heroic gesture on Tegoni, who gritted his teeth but endured it silently. Then followed the usual ritual of speech with the policeman asking questions and the confused Czechoslovak giving explanations. He obviously stuck to the truth, for after more than ten minutes the policeman released our companion and brought us to the middle of the square. After taking our identity cards16, he locked us in a storage room without saying another word to us and even without searching our pockets. When our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we could examine our prison more closely. It was a chamber about two by three meters in size, approximately two meters high. It was ventilated by a small window (about thirty by forty centimeters), in front of which an open iron grille was fixed. Opposite was the door, not even one and a half meters high. The toilet bucket was made from a tin can and stood next to the door. The approximately 1.3-meter-wide bunk was located in the corner farthest from the door. The floor was completely covered with straw and old paper and various rubbish lay around everywhere. When Tegoni saw all this, he hoped that at least no chemicals were among it, because then we would not have been able to sleep. The next morning, the policeman came by while it was still dark to pick us up and escort us to the train station. There he handed us over to two German overseers. One of them was an assistant at one of the construction sites directly under the tunnel entrance on the hill. I had come to know him as a decent person. Poggioli uses the word “ausweiss,” the German word, which suggests that he does not mean his personal identity card or similar, but a document issued to prisoners in the camp identifying them as forced laborers. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted YouthDuring the approximately half-hour drive, none of our companions or their talkative colleagues spared us a glance or a word, as if we did not exist or were transparent. We reached the technician's barracks in front of our tunnel, and I hoped that we would now be handed over to Kapo Franz, but instead, we were led over the small bridge to the road that led to the upper construction sites. Shortly behind the Belgian SS barracks, our companions stopped at an unguarded entrance and conversed. Beyond that began a flat, straight road through an area fenced with barbed wire, its edges bordered by stones and recently planted shrubs. Tegoni suddenly realized that our destination was the notorious "punishment column," from which one returned a broken man. He ordered me to eat everything, or else they would surely accuse us of theft. He added: "First the eggs, then the rest!" We had just passed the entrance framed by large, debarked fir trunks when I had finished slurping my two eggs. After half the way, about 50 meters, I had devoured all the bread along with all the smoked bacon and pork belly. It took much more time to chew the dried pig's penis and eat the last one and a half kilos of small apples that remained after dinner in our cell. Honestly, we would never have managed if our decent companion had not deliberately walked a bit slower. He knew all too well what awaited us. The barracks, which housed the SS office, stood three or four meters in front of a rock face of the mountain, which was perforated by a series of artificially created caves. These were connected to each other by tunnels dug lengthwise into the rock. Each oval hole corresponded to a cave and was closed up to two meters high with a dense mesh of barbed wire. The entrance to these caves was just behind the second corner of the barracks and thus directly visible from the barracks door, which stood open on the side facing away from us. Immediately after our arrival, an SS man ordered us to enter the cave. To do so, we had to pass a huge wolfhound lying in front of a guardhouse and then go through a passage about sixty centimeters wide between two pillars supporting a dense tangle of barbed wire. Behind that, a steep path led down to the main cave. Poggioli literally refers to the "Colonna di Disciplina" (discipline column). Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted Youth In the semi-darkness, about fifteen deportees of various origins had formed a semicircle. They were all united by exhaustion, their clothing, and their emaciated, expressionless faces. Submissively, they awaited what was to come. At their feet lay a corpse, half curled up, barefoot, hands and feet severely emaciated, head and face swollen and overall incredibly black, which was not only due to dirt. As we approached, a chorus of suppressed but desperate voices rose in all possible languages. They asked if we really had nothing to eat for them and were all deaf to our questions about the circumstances of the young man's death. Gradually, we recognized him: by the gray-green pants of one of the countless uniforms of the Social Republic, although he was severely emaciated and disfigured. He too had been a "guest" in Camp 7. He was perhaps twenty or a little older and had always been in good physical condition. Only after the SS man had the corpse removed by two Russians did an older, very articulate Italian tell us that the young man had been killed by a "daily ration" of beatings. The old man had already found him in the punishment column when he himself arrived here two weeks ago. He also briefly informed us about the rules and procedures that applied in this prison; above all, that the minimum detention period was six days. The new prisoner was given a beating according to the charges against him and depending on the mood of the on-duty thug. Furthermore, he told us that we would only receive food on the fourth day of detention. And on the day of our release, we would be beaten again. Since he was a great expert, he added that perhaps we two would fare better than all the others, because three or four young Polish women had arrived before us, and therefore a greater pleasure awaited our guards there. He also added that our work consisted of building a barracks so that we were somehow occupied. But it was far more important to collect all the leftover wood and bring it into the caves so that a few small fires could be lit at night. Because at night the frost was still unbearable, and there was no way to protect oneself from the draft. When the SS man returned, he had us all line up and gave a short speech directed at Tegoni and me, of which I understood absolutely nothing. Then he sent us all off to build a new barracks. Luigi Poggioli: Camp 7 – The Story of My Interrupted YouthTegoni immediately took the initiative at work, removed incorrect parts, and then put the correct ones back in the appropriate place. I was the only one who helped him. The others wandered around like idiots and almost always installed the wrong components. Our overseers only showed up briefly from time to time; they cast a quick glance at us from the office door. In contrast, the lively laughter of the Polish women reached us much more often. In the afternoon, Tegoni instructed me to bring a pile of small pieces of wood into the cave that he had stacked, and he showed me where I could slip through, as the entrance to the cave seemed completely closed off with barbed wire. Only the caution with which I had to proceed to avoid being torn by the barbed wire and the feces that soiled the path prevented me from stepping on the corpse of the young man we had found dead in the morning. As a final insult, the representative of the superior race had left him in the prisoners' latrine. I was so frightened that after careful consideration, I decided to take the return route through the main entrance, even though this meant risking an encounter with the dog's teeth and possibly one of our torturers. For sleeping, each prisoner had to find a place of their choice. The damp natural floor made of sandstone, covered only by a thin layer of sand from crumbling stones, was the same for everyone. Normally, people lay down in groups around small fires, which I suspected—because they left many black coal stains—that our guards tolerated. That night, however, I was very lucky because I woke up when I suddenly felt intense heat on my back and immediately got up, waking Tegoni as well. The two caves were brightly lit because two completely drunk SS men had come up with a new game and had set fire to the rolls of camouflage nets. (This was a thin metal net with colored jute pieces stuck in the meshes.) Both those used as sleeping places and the unused ones were set ablaze and thrown in the main cave at the slowest prisoners who were still shaking off their daze. The next day, a Tuesday, after work, the two worst possessed of our guards came: the simple soldier carried a wooden stool, the sergeant a new shovel handle. After making us line up in the middle of the cave, opposite the entrance, they carefully positioned the stool, and then the sergeant began to scrutinize us with a mysterious expression. I had the feeling that their main attention was directed at me, and I thought it would probably end with me taking a beating, having escaped it the day before. When I saw the index finger pointing directly at me, I felt a strong unease in my stomach. But I stepped forward, only to be immediately stopped by a firm "no!" Then the simple soldier pushed me aside and pulled out a young Russian, tall and thin, by the collar, whom he shoved in front of him and bent over the stool. At the first blow that fell on the back, the shovel handle broke into two pieces. This made the sergeant so angry that he grabbed the longer end and continued beating without pause until his strength gave out. When they ordered the poor boy to leave, pointing to the exit, I thought he would never make it. But instead, he ran off so abruptly that he stumbled over the stool and fell flat. A handful of small white bones fell from his jacket pocket. He could only have stolen them from the guard dog. Now another cruel game began. One kicked him toward the exit, the other had positioned himself at the small passage and kicked him back to the starting point. This "rally" lasted quite a while. Only then was the Russian allowed to leave. And he ran away, although he was doubled over in pain and stumbled every other step. Completely unexpectedly, on Wednesday evening, Tegoni and I were also asked to take soup. Thus began a hectic bargaining with the bowl holders, who also had to stand at the very front of the line (which had already formed when the kettle was brought), because they had to have enough time to finish the soup before the last in line was served. Otherwise, the food distributors would leave again with the pot and its remaining contents. I had to submit to the extortion of the elder, whom we had nicknamed the "intellectual": one third of the soup for me, two thirds for him. It was probably not even malice on his part but simply the only way for him to survive in this hell, where he had been enduring for two weeks. His bowl, like many others, was nothing more than a terrible chamber pot made of enameled iron. It was scratched and rusted, had four holes plugged with equally primitive stoppers. The stoppers were still wrapped with fabric scraps to prevent any leakage. As I ate my agreed third, I had to hold the chamber pot firmly with all my strength because its owner began to tug at it with the first spoonful. The next day, however, the intellectual granted me half the ration—probably out of fear that I might find another container.On Friday evening, Sergeant Tegoni called me to him immediately after work, returned our belongings, and handed us the written permission to return to Camp 7. And he ordered us to disappear quickly. This unexpected release did not please us at all. On the contrary, we were shocked because we believed that the calculation had been messed up for us, just as it had been with the first soup ration. We had been in the column for five days, not six, and therefore feared that our guards would make us pay for their mistake as usual. We thought we were so lucky that at that moment we did not even consider that we had actually been arrested and locked up on Sunday! Therefore, we kept looking back as we hurried along the road toward the exit, afraid that we would be pursued. Only when the overseer at the gate by the technician’s barracks let us pass did we become a little more cheerful and then regained our clear thinking. Arriving at Camp 7, we reported to the office, where the interpreter Chiesa took our pass and gave us a severe scolding. He said that next time we would not get off so easily as in the penal column. Especially I, who already had two offenses (the first when the Hitler Youth caught Gallini and me), would then be transferred to the main camp in Weimar (Buchenwald), from which no one came out alive. The unknown confidence that came over me after surviving the penal column and with spring approaching made Chiesa’s words not affect me much; although I had known for a long time that there was a terrible camp in Weimar. It had been established in the 1930s, and over twenty thousand Germans, opponents of National Socialism, had been imprisoned there. Many of them had died there. The realization that my comrades had plundered all my belongings and that only the bare boards remained on my bunk hurt me much more. Only after meticulous and determined inquiries was I able to recover my old shoes. Their soles were badly full of holes. I also got my blanket back, which I recognized because I had shortened it by a third to make a cap, scarf, and gloves out of the fabric. The unlawful owners thought we had both been killed. Tegoni was luckier with his things because Capretti, his bunkmate, had managed to repel every robbery attempt. The Return to Camp 1 One morning in mid-April, the wake-up call sounded over an hour late. And the usual overseer asked us in an unusually friendly voice to pack our things along with the blankets from our equipment so that we could move to Camp 1. The sick and those who did not feel able to walk could stay because the sick from the other camps would soon arrive in Camp 7 as well. We set off without hurry, the sun already high in the sky. At the mouth of the small valley, the few IMI (Italian Military Internees) who had survived joined us. They had been housed there in that camp (probably Camp 5). We were in good spirits. Because we were going back to Camp 1. Because a full day of rest lay ahead of us. But above all because we felt that something important was about to happen very soon. Even before the curved Saale bridge, we left the road to Kahla and crossed the fields to the river, which was running extremely low. There, two primitive pedestrian bridges had been built, made of fir boards laid over stones protruding from the water. Exactly at this ford, we met a long line of soldiers; they were walking upstream on the bridge, we downstream. Their gait was awkward, their uniforms did not really fit, and they carried heavily the burden of brand-new weapons and ammunition containers. For the most part, they were old men who looked very worried. Among them, we recognized many of the kapos and skilled workers with whom we had worked on various construction sites. But we also saw many young men, dripping with sweat but very cheerful, as if they were happy about a new game. Among them were all the young carpenters with whom we had worked at the hangar, and so we exchanged a few friendly words. Of the various weapons they carried, I was especially impressed by a small submachine gun, whose decorations were very roughly made but whose shape strongly resembled the submachine gun with which some Italian army units had been equipped less than two years earlier. While we were already climbing the left bank again, I said to Tegoni that with the introduction of that very weapon in Italy, the disintegration of fascism had begun. And therefore, this sight could mean nothing other than the prelude to the end of National Socialism in Germany.In Camp 1, we were allowed to freely choose the barracks we wanted. So Gallini and I, along with some others, followed Tegoni, and we settled in the last barrack of the second-to-last row at the very top. The entrance also faced upwards, and the outer edge was only two steps from the camp fence. They had built this fence at the upper edge of a hollow where two large donkeys grazed. Later, Tegoni explained to me that this was the place farthest from the entrance and the office, and thus the least monitored by the guards. From there, we could escape at any time. We would just have to jump over the nearby fence and run down into the hollow. That was the best-hidden escape route in the entire camp. In the morning, the lower part of Kahla was bombed, probably the industrial area, because several chimneys rose from the smoke and flames. Some fighter-bombers skimmed past our barracks as they flew by. And an SS man, who was on guard at the fork in the path to our barrack, fired his submachine gun at them. A few pilots waved to us in greeting. In the afternoon, a squadron of five or six fighter-bombers appeared. After they had descended roughly to the height of Camp 1, they began to circle rather slowly over the plain between the Saale and the valley of Camp 7. After a few rounds, the lead bomber dived toward the camp of the former IMI (Italian Military Internees). All the others followed in a line behind him, but only the last one dropped a bomb and destroyed a barrack. After a few minutes, the individual and methodical attack began. Each plane chose its own target and the best flight path, and with a few flyovers, the camp was leveled to the ground. Of course, we sided with the pilots, but it seemed to us that there was no defense from the new soldiers who had only taken over the camp that morning. On the contrary, we had the impression that the slow circling and the first dive were a kind of warning so that those present would clear out the barracks. Only one thing was certain: the Allies had an excellent intelligence service, because early in the morning the camp was still occupied by former Italian prisoners. The obvious euphoria with which we all outside the barracks watched the bombings ultimately noticeably disturbed the military supervisors who were on duty at the path junctions of each double row of barracks. The next day, the order was issued that it was forbidden to leave the barracks during the air raid alarm. So we limited ourselves to watching the whole thing a bit more crowded from the windows and the wide barrack entrances. On the day of our arrival, we were given the usual ration of soup at noon, which had been reduced by half and was somewhat more watery than usual. In the evening, there was a slice of rye bread, about one-sixth of a loaf. That was not much and was also not very nutritious, but without working and in good spirits, we could manage to survive, even though after three days the soup consisted of only half a ladle of unsalted broth with a few vegetable pieces floating in it, and the bread ration was reduced to an eighth of a loaf. In those days, we went early in the morning and again in the afternoon to the farms west of Kahla, behind the small construction site where we had worked. The farmers were all eager to receive us to get news from the city and its surroundings, from where the noise of the bombs came, but not a single person. However, they were very suspicious of us and even more reserved when it came to giving us something to eat. The little they gave us we received only thanks to our disaster story, which was exaggerated both by the air raids and by the anarchy prevailing in the camp after most of the responsible persons had fled. To be honest, the real reason for these "excursions," anticipating our possible escape, was to obtain matches. These would be essential to cook the newly planted potatoes, which we could easily dig up. When Tegoni managed to get four "Swedish" matches, he was a happy man. Even though the stupid farmer refused him the box (which was indispensable for lighting), fearing we might set his haystack on fire. But we got the box on our second "excursion" from another stupid farmer who handed us the box but not the matches. Of course, we were not the only ones leaving the camp, because despite the official ban, there was soon considerable negligence on the part of the guards, and so they hardly noticed those who discreetly jumped over the low barbed wire. Some prisoners had even run down to Kahla hoping to buy some food. However, they returned disturbed and told us that they had found the main road leading out of Kahla crowded with a long line of detainees whose condition was even worse than ours: they wore striped prisoner clothing made of green and white fabric and were escorted by SS men with dogs. The reporters swore they had seen at the end how an SS man gave a mercy shot to one who had collapsed exhausted, and a well-trained dog then dragged him into the nearby roadside ditch.The air raids by the Allied fighter-bombers continued without pause every day. One surprised us on the way back from our second "excursion," when we were just at the large glass greenhouse that stood right by the road. So we were already almost at the foot of the incline that led us to Camp 1. Suddenly, heavy gunfire from a multitude of weapons tried in vain to stop a plane that, in a dive, dropped two linked bombs on the roof of a huge and beautiful multi-story villa. It stood only about a hundred meters from us. After a few seconds, it was like a big fireworks display; debris flew high through the air. And then, instead of the villa, there was only dust. When we reached the camp, we learned that the military command of the area had been stationed in this villa for a few days. From Camp 1, we also followed the bombing of the entrances to the assembly tunnel on the ridge. To be honest, we had no direct view of it, but since we knew the area well, we judged that the targets had been hit. Because we could observe the huge multicolored flames that continued even after the explosion. We followed these air raids with particular satisfaction, as they at least alleviated our fear, which had been fueled by rumors that they wanted to lock us in these tunnels and kill us there. One evening, Tegoni and I were sitting in the barracks, checking the conditions for another "excursion," when a friend of ours came running, out of breath, and said: "In Diversi's barracks, they have slaughtered a donkey and are eating it right now!" We immediately ran outside to the pasture, where we found that in the middle of the enclosure, only the grayish-white outline of a single donkey emerged from the darkness. We then ran straight to the barracks where the misdeed had been committed; it was the third one behind ours. When we entered the dormitory, we saw amidst thick smoke a multitude of beggars pleading for a piece of fresh meat. Finally, I found Bruno Diversi, from Maiolo, who was just gnawing on his portion of poorly grilled meat, and I made my heartfelt request, although I already knew he would refuse. He told me that it was not even enough for himself, as it was almost all just bones anyway. When he saw that we absolutely did not want to leave again, he added that shortly before, the residents of another barracks had gone outside to slaughter the other donkey as well. Without wasting any more time, we ran back to the fence, where we found that the other donkey had also disappeared. Apart from some disappointed people coming out of Diversi's barracks, the rest of the camp was dark and silent. After we returned rather dejectedly to our barracks, it was necessary to reconsider the situation that presented itself to us in Camp 1, and of course, the prospect of an escape arose again. Tegoni and Gallini were more experienced than I was, as they had already been in the war, and they asked me if I dared to take the risk of crossing the front lines. I answered them that I—either with them or without them—would be at least ten kilometers away from Kahla by sunrise the next day. And in the direction from which, in the quiet moments, the cannon fire could be heard.