Russian POWs captured after battle of Kharkov in Spring of
1942-Barwenkowa camp?
From this time also dates the letter of a young Russian. Addressed to
a friend, it was found in his pocket, unfinished, when he was killed
near Dorogobuzh. It is quoted here for all those, wherever they may
be, who lost friends in the war. It may even be that its reproduction
decades after it was written will enable it at last to get to its
addressee. It reads:
longer alive. This letter will be sent to you only in the event of my
long this letter will remain in my pocket, crumpled, but sooner or
later it will reach you to remind you for a last time of your
schoolmate. I feel an urge to say a great deal to you on this final
unfulfilled hopes, to communicate to you my fear of this unknown
death.
I do not know how and where I shall die, whether I shall be hit by the
bullet of a German machine-gunner, torn apart by an aerial bomb, or
me equally. I have seen hundreds of men killed. I have repeatedly
heard the rattle of death in the throats of comrades with whom I had
cheerfully eaten a meal out of the same mess-tin a little while
before.
I have met death face to face many times. Once a shell-splinter tore
my cap off my head. Another time a bullet went through my mess-tin so
that my soup ran out and I was left hungry. But never before have I
been so afraid as now.
smiling upon you, when your heart pounds with joy because of a bird's
song or the gentle caress of the moist spring breeze. . . .
It was spring when this letter was written. It was found on his body
by a German soldier, unfinished."
.........Hitler Moves East by Paul Carell
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