Author’s note: the following piece is fiction based on an event I actually witnessed as a prisoner during World War II. For a special exercise during the Memory Project writing workshops, we were asked to tell a story from a different perspective and to fictionalize it. This piece is a product of that exercise.
It was dark in the barrack where more than a hundred Russian prisoners of war were kept.
About a dozen of them gathered in the dark to finalize the plan to escape.
They have been planning it for months, checking all kinds of possibilities.
Now the time was ripe. They have been working at the airport where it was possible to hijack a plane. If they could just get rid of the guards. They needed a volunteer willing to risk his own life to save all of his comrades. One of the prisoners came forward and offered to be the one to do the job. The plan was for the volunteer to grab one of the guards by the neck with the hope that all the guards would come to his rescue. If they could just get the guards in one place they would jump them and take away their guns. The other possibility was to hit the guards with the shovels and picks that they worked with. They observed before that plane came in every day at noon. The prisoners figured that this is their only chance to escape. Many of the war prisoners were expert flyers.
The next day when the Russian prisoners came to work they were ready for the escape. At noon the plane landed, the passengers got off the plane, the cleaning crew came to clean and the time was right. The signal by the leader was to start the mission.
The prisoner that volunteered jumped forward, grabbed the guard by the neck, and started to choke the German. The rest of the guards rushed to rescue the guard. As planned the prisoners started to hit the Germans with the shovels and picks. Some of the guards fell injured, some dead. Many of the prisoners were killed, but many succeeded to get on the plane and escape to Russia.
The prisoner that volunteered to help his friends to escape paid with his own life. He was ordered to dig a hole in the ground and get in it and was buried alive up to his neck. The pressure of the earth was so strong that it killed him.
We the Jewish prisoners who worked across the road were ordered to witness the punishment. The head of the guards made a speech telling us that this is the punishment if anyone hurts a German guard. On the ground the prisoner lay dead with his eyes open looking up to the heavens hoping that the Lord guided his comrades to freedom.
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