JOURNEYS Mennonite Stories of Faith and Survival in Stalins Russia, John B. Toews, 1998

d by evening or during the night. Righteousness and justice did not exist. We Germans were among the most cautious and minded our own business as much as pos¬ sible. Few of us were ever robbed. We faced a difficult day — it was time for bathing and disin¬ fecting. Instead of our own clothing we were issued state [prison] clothes, which were usually in terrible condition. Our own clothes vanished. In order to obtain clean clothes we had to line up at an open window and present an authorization. We stood there na¬ ked and were happy for anything we received. We were learning what communism meant, and the quicker one got used to it the better. Once more we acknowledged by our signature that we had received a ten-year sentence .... Yes, we thought about who had betrayed us, of the accusa¬ tions which resulted in a ten-year prison term. How well we un¬ derstood the methods which the authorities used in those days to declare us an enemy of the government. Now [at the onset of our imprisonment] I saw the document with the allegations against me and a familiar signature which I would have recognized among a hundred others .... How often I thought back [to my arrest], I never really carried a grudge against my betrayer, but I never for¬ got him .... Ten years was a long sentence .... We rested for several days. We were free to move around and stretch instead of being confined to a railway car. It felt good! One gloomy October morning we were lined up. Accompanied by heavily armed guards we marched to the front gates of the com¬ pound. Many [local] citizens walked alongside us. In normal times they would have greeted us with bread and salt, but any attempt to approach our line was rudely repulsed. We stood qui¬ etly, lost in thought. We remembered our wives and children, we remembered our homes. After a long march through the streets of the town we came to the outskirts. Here stood a massive crowd of people surrounded by soldiers and dogs .... Groups of a thousand persons stood next to one another. Some ten thousand men stood in an orderly fashion. For a few brief moments we constituted the last group, MEMOIRS OF ARON WARKENTIN 183 then other columns followed us. Who knew all the people and names from all the republics and regions of Russia who stood here on the killing fields? One had to see it to believe it. A massive, mad and ruthless mobilization of humanity — tormented people whose numbers included many women .... These too left their families at home, these too were useful, nurturing members of society .... Now they stood here with the many thousands — homeless, helpless, freezing, sometimes sitting, sometimes stand¬ ing. Pushing and shoving the crowd moved towards the barges, hoping to get on board before nightfall. Up to one thousand peo¬ ple were crammed on to the barges normally used to transport cattle or other materials. Tugs pulled the barges northward dur¬ ing the last days of fall. S