Pigs Eat Potato Skins

Pigs Eat Potato Skins:

From the life of Ludmila

     As five-year-old Ludmila bid her friend farewell, he shoved Miska, Ludmila's stuffed bear, into Ludmila's arms.  The little girl skipped home, pleased the baby-sitter had given her some time away from the house.  She entered her home to find newspapers piled down the side of the long hall.  When she curiously picked up some papers, to her horror she discovered a bloody body.  That was how Ludmila became aware of what war truly meant.

     Born in 1935 in Moscow, Ludmila lived in a little village on the outskirts of Moscow.  The family moved several times following her mother's career as a physician.  Her father was a draftsman.  The month before, the child's family had been intact.  Since then, all the men had been killed in the war.  Her mama told her that her father, uncles, and playful cousins were all dead.  She knew this stranger was dead also.

     The bombings were close to her village.  People from neighboring communities brought wounded and dying soldiers to her mother.  Sometimes they even brought children, but usually they delivered men into her mother's care.  Today, the injured came in such numbers Mama had no time to remove the bodies before Ludmila came home.

     Russian winters were so cold the houses were built with air locks, long halls to warm the bitter air as it traveled toward the building's interior.  They were wide and spacious enough to house visitors in the summer, but this winter the air lock was always filled with dirty, bloody, mangled bodies.

     Suddenly there was a large explosion nearby.  The little girl was too preoccupied to hear the bomb's approach, but the sound of destruction shattered her concentration.

     Ludmila had learned to run toward falling bombs like the other villagers.  She was accurate at judging where to throw her slight body -- too far made one the target of the fountain of dirt and shrapnel, too close made one part of the crater -- blown up!

     Her six-year-old friend joined the wounded in Ludmila's mother's office.  Both of his legs were blown off below the knee, but he was in such shock that there was no bleeding.  Her mama said hot metal from the bomb melted the blood vessels together.

     At her mama's request, teachers dismissed class and took the children to the fields to look for healing herbs.  'Plankton' (spelling?) drew infection out of wounds, other plants had different uses.  Lumila's special job was to find leeches that could suck clots from injured limbs.

     Finally, German soldiers took over the town.  The men were usually nice and were always clean.  The first day, Ludmila noticed that, when the soldiers were wounded in battle, they washed and sewed their uniforms immediately after their bodies were sewn.  They polished their boots and shined their brass.  Noticing that, she offered to do those chores for the soldiers in exchange for a piece of bread, or whatever they'd give.  She refused to eat garbage.

     The peasants were made to give the Germans food and other supplies as a tax.  The more people there were in a family, the more tax they had to pay.  Still, the villagers didn't seem to mind much since the soldiers were usually nice young men.  Most of the captives were very young or very old, since everyone else was killed in the first assault.  The infantry treated townsfolk like they would their own grandmothers or grandfathers.

     Men in the green-gray uniforms told the old folks that they didn't like the SS.  The statements meant little to the group until the SS visited them.

     It had been about a year when the soldiers told her mama the SS wanted to talk to people.  She went for the mayor, who called everyone together.  Forty-eight-year-old Alexandra Belova interpreted, since she spoke fluent German.  Her daughter, Ludmila, listened with the rest of the town to the new edict.  Her mother said the SS would demand three times as much tax.  The people finally understood why the soldiers were so nervous around the SS.  They were cruel.  It was impossible for them to give more than was already being given.  With the new tax increase, the SS virtually told them to make do with garbage for their nourishment.  Ludmila watched her neighbors scanning scrap cans for the evening meal.  Right then, she made up her mind never to eat potato skins.  Potato skins are for pigs, she decided.

     Sometimes that year she went for three days without food.  She'd shine boots, wash floors, or even eat cattails, but she wouldn't beg for food, and she wouldn't eat potato skins.  Cattails grew near the lake in the summer and she found them delicious.  They looked like scallions, but tasted sweet.

     Children began to join the resistance.  Until then, people were deluded by Hitler's propaganda.  He promised to take them away from Communism, but they began to wonder what to?  Youngsters unscrewed bullets on the hinges of the doors of their homes.  They took out gunpowder, filling bullets with a chemical and one drop of water.  They could aim the bullets at a target, and a chemical reaction would propel them toward the target.

     Soon, word came that the Germans were retreating.  The next thing the people knew, the SS was back.  They brought extra servicemen.  It was the middle of the winter.  One day they burst into the house and aimed their rifles at a frightened Alexandra and Ludmila.

     "Put on heavy clothes.  You're leaving!"  they ordered.

     The soldiers pointed to things Alexandra could take and nixed others.  She put on her new coat, the one Papa was delighted about.  It touched the floor and was perfect for icy Russian winters.  The lining was full of pockets, so she slipped her Icon in one.  Mothers handed down this Icon to their daughters for 400 years in her family.  The communists didn't like it, so she'd had to hide it from them, too.  It wa a painting of Mary and Jesus.  Alexandra was very religious.  She would have died for her faith.

     "Put your food in the mat and roll it up  Take this.  Leave that.  Take that."

     Mama slipped Miska into her pocket without the soldier's noticing.  The bear was a gift from her brother to Ludmila.  "Put you heavy coat on, Ludmila.  We're going on a trip," she said.  There was no hint of anything unusual in her voice.  She always insisted on calling her little girl by her full name.  Ludmila was the name of a friend of hers, a Russian princess.  It meant, "nice to people," a trait Alexandra held dear.

     Outside a truck waited.  Other townspeople were on it, crying softly to each other.  Soldiers burned the entire village while they watched.  Flames warmed the numbing cold air as they drove and were herded into boxcars.  There was standing room only.  Cattle went in one car, Russians in another.  They found they weren't considered human any longer.  Their classification was Untermenshen, below men, subhuman.

     Ludmila's mama said the trip was an adventure.  She told her they'd see new lands and customs, and everything would  be fine.  Ludmila never contradicted her mother, but it was apparent that they were prisoners.  The child vacillated between believing she'd spend the rest of her life in jail and expecting to be killed.

     They were given food once a day from a big pot.  Every four hours the train stopped and the soldiers allowed people to get out to go to the bathroom.  They pulled dead bodies off the car so the young and old war criminals could resume their journey.  At the beginning of the journey, they took turns to lie down.  Ludmila could lie on her mother, so they were considered one person.

     The trip lasted several weeks.  There was always crying, moaning, and dying.  When they reached Lithuania, everyone had room to lie down at the same time.

     They were moved from camp to camp.  Sometimes, they stayed only one hour, sometimes twenty-four, sometimes weeks or months.  Years passed by with the same dreary sameness.

     The train pulled into one more camp the summer of Ludmila's eighth year.  They hadn't eaten that day, so it wasn't noon, but midday was close, although outside it looked like dawn.  The day was gray, dismal and drizzling.  They arrived at a long cement dungeon with no windows.  This one felt somehow different from the other camps.  Barbed wire surrounded the eight-foot fence, which stood fifty feet from the train.

     Fifty feet to the door of the building, they marched.  A soldier put his hand on Ludmila's shoulder and marched her farther into the place than they took her mother.  She went down a long corridor to a dim room full of children.

     Guards stopped and talked to each other.  The children also talked to each other.  The ones who were already there told the newcomers there had been other children with them, but they were taken out an hour before and never returned.  They said their own parents were no longer at the camp.  They wondered what would become of them.

     Lumila thought about those things for five minutes.  Five minutes felt long enough without her mama, but she took the last maneuver as a personal insult.  She hadn't considered being separated, although she'd accepted the possibility of dying.  However, she wanted to be with her mama and die and the same time that her mama did.

     "I'm going over that fence and back on the train."  Ludmila declared.

     "I thought of that," a boy told her.  "They've dogs out there."  He nodded toward the yard between the structure they occupied and the barbed wire fence.  She watched through the crack in the door as soldiers put people back on the train.

     "I'm with you," each of the children said in turn.  One of them was only about three years old, but he looked Ludmila in her eye and announced, "I'll go with you, too."  There was no mistake of his intention.  His maturity was scary and his words a command.

     Seven children were already in the compound when Ludmila and her six brave companions arrived. All 14 youngsters eyed the guards.  They tensed their bodies for the dash.  The thought of repercussions that would follow their move made their little bodies shake in anticipation.  Suddenly they bolted as one toward the door at the hall's end.  Their shoes sounded like a dozen little hooves on the stones.  Six soldiers managed to outrun them before they got to the fence.  They drug them back inside, but not before Ludmila clearly saw her mother enter the same boxcar they had arrived in.

      Their captors held them firmly and tried to call for reinforcements, but when the soldiers' grasps loosened the slightest bit, the tiny convicts took off again.  Once more the solders corralled them and forced them back to the dark fortress.  None of the children cried.  Not one of them spoke.  All at once, they violently twisted from the grip of their enemy and ran for their lives.

     "I won't eat potato skins,"  Ludmila chanted to herself, "and they can't do this."  She ran in front of the other children.

     The older children had to run in zigzag fashion, since the soldiers went for the oldest children first.  They let the little ones go until last.  The smallest children ran straight for the fence, but older ones had to run around the soldiers first.

     When the three-year-old fell in the yard, Ludmila grabbed his wrist.  The corner of her eye caught the movement of new soldiers.  They wore different uniforms, and the dogs were with them.  Faster, faster legs!  Their small bodies hit the fence and the momentum of her speed smacked their bodies against the fence forcefully.  If there was pain, neither runners felt it.

     Ludmila readjusted the puny hand in hers.  Her thumb and little fingers held the boy's fingers while her index and middle fingers grabbed for holes in the fence.

     The boy kept up with her.  They were the first to the top of the fence.  The two childen jumped and cleared the barbed wire.  When they hit the soft grass, she stared at the train in panic.  For the first time she thought, I can't make it.  I forgot there were soldiers on either side of the train.

     Storm troopers inside the fence screamed wildly to the ever-present train brigade.  Inside the fence, several children cried out in pain as dogs' teeth sank into their faces, legs, and arms.

     The sound gave her new resolve.  "At least I'll decide where and when I die."  She got up, still clutching her companion.  She ran as fast as possible.  The train started and moved farther than she'd thought it could in that amount of time.  The little boy made his legs stiff so when he came down on them, he'd bounce back up in the air.  It was faster than running with Ludmila.  He seemed light to Ludmila as the adrenalin pushed her forward.  She fixed her eyes on the back of the flatcar, the last car on the train!  As she drew closer, she surveyed the train regiment.  They always stared directly at the train.  Now they stood, the only time she ever remembered, with their backs to the train.  It was impossible they hadn't heard the racket of the dogs, the children, and the commandos.

     A hand grabbed her elbow.  Someone pulled the girl and her charge onto the train.  They lay panting as six more passengers boarded the same way.  No one talked.  Everyone sat waiting.

     At the first stop four hours later, Ludmila found her mother.  The little girl sat beside her as her mother cried.  She told Ludmila she had heard the German soldiers tell each other that installation was where they experimented on children.  Before the train pulled into the camp, her mother asked God not to let that happen to Ludmila.

-This story came from an interview with Ludmila when she was a supervisor of an ICU/CCU at an area hospital.  It was fashioned into this narrative by a writer with the last name 'Murphy'.  This freelancer submitted the story to Reader's Digest, but it was not accepted for publication, apparently because at that time they did not think people wanted to hear these kind of stories, whatever that means.

-I, Ludmila's daugher, found this story in my attic with my mother's things.  My brother told me it existed, but I hadn't recalled seeing it.  If you think it is unbelievable, you need to learn more about the Holocaust so your imagination can be stretched by the things human are capable of, both positive and negative.