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The Price
Chapter 6

Prisoners of the Third Reich

Looking for food again, I stumbled into a camp of Russian POWs whose guards had deserted.
Summary
For hard labor, Karl-Heinz was sent to a labor camp where he spent all day cutting peat "so that it could be burned for fuel." The warden took a liking to the boys, and got them jobs in the tailor shop, and eventually Karl-Heinz became a valet, of sorts, for the main guard there.

He ran a paint shop that was outside the prison wall, and was even allowed to walk alone to a place an hour-and-a-half away, to paint a kitchen for someone. "Running away was out of the question," he informs us. "I knew they'd punish my family for it."

Most of the other prisoners there were murderers, including one man who'd killed his own mother with an axe, which made things uncomfortable.

As the Allies attacked Hamburg, they could see and hear what was going on. The warden had been in the city, and told them their neighborhood had been destroyed. They didn't know if their families had escaped. Thankfully, the author informs us that he later learned that they were safe.

Later, those with longer sentences were sent to labor in Poland. The warden was transferred there, as well. They worked in an underground aircraft factory. The Polish workers were kind, and even offered to help him escape into the Polish underground. However, he was concerned about what would happen to his family in retribution by the Nazis.

Eventually, the Russians broke through into their area, and they evacuated the factory. They were forced to walk two hundred miles in deep snow. They were joined by refugees, mostly old women and children, also escaping the Russians. They eventually numbered in several thousand.

They passed abandoned farms, so Karl-Heinz took a horse and sleigh from one, onto which he put his belongings. Some of the guards also used the sleigh for their belongings, which started "a kind of lifeboat friendship."

Karl-Heinz also was allowed to go out foraging for food from the farms, and was almost shot when he was discovered by some SS soldiers. Thankfully, one of the friendly guards showed up just in time.

He speaks of taking food to the warden and his wife at the end of each day, as they were not well, and of a mother whose two children froze to death. One night, while sleeping in a school auditorium, he discovered that the man next to him was dead, and had been for several days.

They finally made it back to Hamburg, only to have the military recruiters come around looking for "cannon fodder." Rudi still had several years hard labor to serve, and their friend Gerhard had frozen his feet on the walk, so only Karl-Heinz was taken.

On his way to the train station, he was able to go by his old home, His parents were living in their garden house. He had not seen them in three years. His father was at work, but his mother was home. She suggested that he sneak off and disappear into the rubble, but he declined, thinking to play things safely. "This decision meant that for me the war was to last another four years rather than four weeks."
Analysis
It is interesting how relationships can form, even during hardships such as that which Karl-Heinz experienced. His kindness, however, even to the Nazis guarding him, undoubtedly saved him on several occasions.

In this chapter, Karl-Heinz mentions an "underground aircraft factory." This must have been enormous, since they dismantled broken down planes and used the parts to make new ones. The fact that governments have such underground facilities is not well-known to the general public, but the Nazis had such facilities more than seventy-five years ago.

In our day, these things still exist, and there are even underwater bases. Political commentator, Joel Skousen, has reported for years that the Soviet Union did not actually collapse, and that the Russian Soviets have simply hidden their tanks, missiles, and other weaponry, inside hollow mountains and underground.[1]


References:

[1] The Russians "are building huge underground nuclear bunkers and weapons production facilities in the Ural Mountains, clearly intended to function during a nuclear war." (https://www.joelskousen.com/) See also MORE CRUCIAL EVIDENCE THAT THE "FALL OF COMMUNISM" WAS A DECEPTION.
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