The author was taken in 1942 from near Krzemeniec to forced labour at a railway repair yard in Bremen‐Hemelingen. He was 23 when the following took place.

In the middle of 1944 I received a summons to the police HQ in Bremen. I was then working on the night shift. I washed myself carefully and dressed as best as I could before going there. Whilst there I was informed that I was accused of leaving the camp without permission and black market trading in ration cards. It was true. I lived in a closed guarded camp and did not have permission to leave. I was taken out to a wooden, temporary barrack and put in a cell. It was around ten square metres. Half of the space was occupied by bunks with wooden planks, about 70cms from floor level. There was nothing else in the cell. When we needed to use the toilet we were taken there. Twice a day we were brought soup which was not too bad. We slept on the bunk covered by our own clothes. It looked like a horrible waiting room at a forgotten railway station.

There were four of us, two Poles and two Russians. I was there for seven days. On the sixth day, someone came and read from the corridor what my sentence was. I had made illegal purchases and this was treated like black market speculation. I was sentenced to six weeks in the punishment camp at Arbeitserziehungslager Bremen‐Farge.

The word Farge sounded very bad. As soon as I had arrived in Bremen, I had heard of it. Twice I had seen people return from the camp. They were walking skeletons. They weighed less than 40kg.

We were taken there in a six person group, handcuffed in pairs. Farge is a small town on the Weser river, around 40km from the centre of Bremen. For the journey, our money and documents were returned to us. I managed to get my money out of the wallet and put it into my sock, around 100 marks I left in the purse. I was handcuffed to a Soviet POW, a young boy who had been in the AA defences. He was a handy person to have around. I spent the full six weeks in the camp with him. No‐one told him how long his sentence was for – and most people in the camp were in his position. Late in the evening we got to the camp which was located in an empty field, at least 2km from the nearest village. We had to spend the night in the washroom, on the bare concrete floor, huddled close to each other. It was just over one week before Christmas.

In the evening I was able to contact a Russian from our factory who had been here for three weeks. I threw him my jacket.

In the morning we had to strip and hand over all our things for disinfection. We then ran to the shower. First it was terribly hot, then lukewarm and then freezing cold. This pointless exercise of washing without soap went on for nearly one hour, that is to say as long as it took to kill the insects in our clothing. Then we were told to carry out clothing to the camp clothing deposit and then collect camp uniform. In the corridor of the second barrack we had to stand naked waiting to exchange our clothing, they would punch us in the face for insubordination if we tried to cover ourselves. The exchange of clothing lasted an average of thirty minutes per detainee. I got green trousers, perhaps something a POW had once possessed, underwear and a striped camp jacket that offered no protection from the cold. We could keep our own shoes as there was no footwear in the camp. Then there was a personal interview with the camp commander, the Lagerführer, a very tall bully in the black SS uniform who would punch a prisoner in the face for an answer he did not like.

Once this was completed, we got our camp numbers. Mine was 12804 and this was my name for the next six weeks. In order to stop prisoners from making escape attempts, we were shaved with a 5cm strip across our heads. Around 16:00 we were let into the barracks and at 18:00 when everyone had returned from work we were given soup.

I had spent one week at Bremen in the remand prison where I had been fed, maybe not the best food but better than nothing. Then we had not been fed on the journey‐2 days. The soup they gave us in the camp was from turnips and it smelt so bad that I was unable to touch it on the first day.

The barrack had a 2.5 metre wide corridor and was at least 40 metres long. It had quite wide three storey, wooden bunks with mattresses but without covers. There was about sixteen of them. In the middle of the room there was an iron heater about 50cm across and about 150cm tall. The fire burned for as long as the inhabitants of the barrack could find fuel to burn in it during the day. Sometimes the fire went out after one hour, sometimes it went out earlier.

The barrack was locked at night and some containers were left to act as toilets. These containers were not sufficient and prisoners who were too weak for normal work were used to clean up. This is how they spent the last days of their life.

The day began with reveille at 5:00 a.m. Fifteen minutes later we were lined up in threes in front of the barracks, orders were given as to where we would be working. Numbers called left the line up to form a work party. Then we were given food. It was almost one litre of boiled turnip without any fats or other vegetables. After this breakfast, which lasted several minutes, the work party was taken by an SS man to work. I think for the first five or six days, I was taken with three others to unload coal for ships at the port of Blumenthal which is around 5km from Farge. It was very difficult work somewhat similar to torture. We were taken to the ship to the coal store and had to speed up the mechanical loading. The loader was about eight by eight metres and not very deep.

The following week I was part of a group of 100 people which worked on V2 rockets. I stayed there until I left Farge. The construction site was in a forest, about 10km from the camp. The whole 100 person work party walked around 3km to a station where we got into a specially reserved wagon. We went for two stops and then at least 3km to the construction site. The journey took around ninety minutes.

The column was headed by a guard and behind him four prisoners carried two poles each which held a box with our lunch. There was black bread, two slices around 2cm thick, 20gr of margarine and a total of around three of four kilograms of ersatz coffee which was prepared in a 100 litre kettle. During the half hour break, one needed to have a container in which to drink the coffee such as an empty tin. However we were sure to get the bread and margarine. Despite the difficulty with the transport, the advantage of being in this work crew was that as there were so many people, we could hide and avoid work a bit, even standing near to the guards. However there were disadvantages too. There were Italian POWs on the site nicknamed ‘Badoglio’. There was a small group of Germans too. The camp was guarded but the forest was an incentive to escape. During the thirty plus days I was there, there were four escape attempts. Once a prisoner asked permission to go to a ditch to go to the toilet and he started to run from the ditch. He was quickly spotted. Rather than run to the forest, he stupidly ran through a meadow with no cover. The guards started shooting as though at a wild animal. He got maybe 100 metres before the fifth or sixth shot hit him.

Another prisoner was seen trying to escape. They shouted at him to come back and he did so. They beat him up in the forest and he was put in the bunker of the camp for one week.

The other two escape attempts were successful.

One day I realised that I had a fever. I told a guard who told me that I needed so see a doctor in the evening. When I repeated that I was ill, he hit me in the jaw and I fell into the snow. I got up quickly, realising that I could just make myself worse by lying there. The guard did not give up. He ordered me to be one of the four that carried the food. That saved me. The other three carried not only the food but also me, as I gripped the rods with my hands. I understood how dangerous illness could be. Nine times out of ten, illness meant death in this camp. I attempted to put as strong a psychological discipline as I could on myself. I was still only 23 and thought that I could put up with a lot.

Apart from the fever, I had diarrhoea. I could not eat anything, not even a piece of bread. This was serous. A Russian advised me to get the leftovers from the ersatz coffee. I ate these left overs for three days and my health improved.

My advantage was that I knew how long my sentence was for and I could count the days. At last the last day came and at the morning roll call it was announced that 12804 could go home that day. I did not go to work that day but they did not release me either. I was put into a party of those that could no longer go to work and were left on camp detail (“Muselmänner”). We had to load turnips. There was a lot of them, many tons of turnips. We had to remove the soil from each turnip, put them into baskets and load them into a lorry. The work was not hard but it was difficult from a psychological point of view as how could one be so close to them and not try to eat them? The guard shouted but they shouted non stop from morning to night. One guard noted that a prisoner had eaten something. He chose one of the biggest turnips he could find and then placed it in his mouth and told him to stand at attention with the turnip between his teeth. This was not enough to frighten the others as they were so hungry. I was caught biting a turnip and I received the same punishment. I stood there with this turnip in my teeth for nearly an hour and this was about the worst torture I have received in my life.

In the afternoon I got my documents and clothing back and was taken to the railway station. When I got to the main station in Bremen, I weighed myself. I was 38kg. I had lost 32kg in the camp, that is nearly 46% of my normal weight. There was a small eatery near the station where they sometimes served food without a ration card. I went there and ordered something. They brought turnip soup. I tried to eat it but despite my hunger was unable to.