Dancing Under the Red Star (30 page)

Eighteen

SIBERIA: DESPAIR AND HOPE

T
he unrelenting harshness of labor-camp life wore down the human spirit in ways unimaginable. One day a Ukrainian girl (who was not a member of our troupe) was notified by the authorities that she was being sent to another camp. She was ordered to gather her belongings immediately, but she resisted leaving her friends, who were deeply dedicated to one another. The group helped her burrow into a very deep snowdrift on the camp premises. Her accomplices supplied her with warm food and drink for three days, but then the inevitable occurred.

The authorities made all of the inmates leave their barracks and stand outdoors at attention in the fierce cold until finally one of the girl’s friends could bear up no longer. She broke down and disclosed her friend’s whereabouts. When the guards found the missing girl, she was flogged in front of the entire camp. They marched her through the premises to demonstrate the results of her bad decision. She and her friends, including the informant, were then sentenced to an additional five years of imprisonment and shipped out to different camps the next morning. They paid a great price for the human relationships they valued so highly, but it was one of the few aspects of life in the Gulag that actually gave prisoners hope.

Friends and food were some of our most important resources. By bribing the guards, we were able to cook in the drying room every now and then. One time my mother sent me a package containing fresh potatoes and onions. We immediately cleaned and sliced all of the onions, at least three pounds of them, and fried them in a large pan. They were the most delicious food we had eaten in months! Every time we were blessed with potatoes, I prepared a gigantic pot of potato salad, a dish we traditionally ate on my birthday. Other women donated ingredients such as eggs, mayonnaise, and bacon. Such luxuries were bartered for, received as favors from the camp authorities or from friends, or exchanged with neighboring camps for rarities acquired through a particular camp or specific work assignment. Potato salad was the food I desired most of all. Or perhaps it tied for first place with a special Hungarian pastry dish of my mother’s—
kipfeln,
an apricot-jam-filled pastry. All my friends eagerly anticipated the next package of Mama’s kipfeln. They came very seldom, but each package was enjoyed more than the one before.

Mama’s financial resources were very limited, and it was expensive to make and ship these cookies, so she could only send them on rare occasions. She denied herself in order to give me hope. I always knew that someone who loved me was outside the camp, waiting for me to come back. Nothing could ever substitute for that inherent knowledge. My mama’s love for me was a constant reminder, a driving force, and all the motivation I needed to one day live again.

I remember another time when a friend gave me food for hope. One day a Russian girl called me over to her barracks, telling me she had a surprise for me. Marina Minkova knew I was an American, and she shocked me when she pulled her hands from behind her back and handed me a genuine peanut-butter sandwich made with American peanut butter! “What do you think of that?” Marina said with pride, her eyes smiling as she handed me the sandwich.

“Wow,” is all I could say as my eyes nearly popped out. “How did you get this, Marina?”

Marina said her father had a great job in the Russian army’s supply department and was therefore able to send her many gifts and food items, including Spam, powdered eggs, milk, and other such rare treats. I was so grateful to Marina for her thoughtfulness that it made me cry. Peanut butter may be one of life’s simple pleasures, but on this day it was much more for me. What an incredible delight, this taste and texture and smell. I had not eaten peanut butter in years. In fact, I had almost forgotten there was such a thing. That peanut-butter sandwich tasted like America! And someday I was going to be there again.

One winter I became dreadfully ill with strep throat and spent an entire week recovering in the hospital. That following summer I contracted a severe bladder infection and was again hospitalized for a week. No sooner did I recover from that infirmity than I came down with a serious infection in my back from a contaminated needle used to inoculate me against cholera. The acute pain put me in the hospital once again, for two weeks this time. By the time I recovered from all these afflictions, I had lost a great deal of weight, which I didn’t have to spare, along with most of my strength.

To my amazement, the camp doctor prescribed a diet of milk, white bread, butter, ground beef, and mashed potatoes—foods I hadn’t seen in many years. I thought I was dreaming and asked myself,
Is this all I had to do to get this real food again? Did I just have to become deathly ill?
It seemed almost worth the suffering. I remember how good that meal tasted. I enjoyed it as much as any meal I can remember.

Medical care in the camp was minimal but humane. In spite of the intensive surveillance by the guards at the work details and guard posts, some women managed to get pregnant, and it was possible to have a somewhat ordinary pregnancy and a healthy delivery. Considering our surroundings, facilities for mothers nursing their children were modest, certainly strained, but decent. These were, after all, prisoners—political or otherwise—having babies out of wedlock while imprisoned in Siberian labor camps. These children were, nonetheless, well taken care of in a separate building at the camp: the children’s home. The nursing mothers were allowed to care for their babies every four hours, and they received special authorizations to work only within the confines of the camp.

Though a certain amount of medical care was provided, I saw more death during the years I spent in the various Siberian camps than one person should have to witness. The overall camp conditions were unbearably harsh and unforgiving. Prisoners received grossly inadequate food rations and insufficient clothing, which made it hard to endure the severe weather and long working hours. Camp inmates often were physically abused by the guards and officials. The death rate in the camps was extremely high due to exhaustion and disease. Tuberculosis and dysentery were the most common “natural” killers.

Those who could tolerate the cold and the lack of food often succumbed to heart sickness—the emotional and spiritual symptoms of an irreparably broken heart, for which there was no cure. The entire Russian system was cancerous, claiming innocent victims by the millions: prisoners and their families, nationals or otherwise. The best anyone could do was to endure. The challenge was to maintain a semblance of personal peace and to override bitterness and anger of the soul. More prisoners weakened from this not-so-physical disease of the heart than from anything else.

Suicide took on epidemic proportions throughout the Siberian Gulag, affecting some areas and some camps more than others. In Siberia it was easy to give in to hopelessness and despair, to become consumed with the thought of ending it all. That all-too-real tragedy hit close one day. I had a good friend, Sasha, from southern Latvia. I didn’t know her entire background or the story of how she had arrived here, but she had been falsely arrested and then separated from her small child and family in her Latvian home. She was having great difficulty coping with camp life, becoming increasingly despondent. Then, at a time when she appeared to be getting better, she hanged herself from the doorknob of a small shed behind our barracks.

In those terrible times there was much time to think—perhaps more time for that than anything else. I could not easily escape the dark and desolate notions of my mind or those voices always whispering in my ear, “This is too impossible, too insane.” But I had reason to continue; I had made plans. So I did not entertain the option of suicide—for longer than the split second of a fleeting thought.

I refused to consider killing myself. Instead, I gained a new motivation that defiantly refused to give up, no matter what the conditions. Or was it the grace of God that gave me a reason to continue? I did believe that
he
had a purpose for me and for my life, although it was hard to see. I knew I was going to live, but I had no idea when I would get out of this wretched place.

During one of my earlier stays in the hospital, I had noticed a particular ward that contained about twenty women who were diagnosed with severe mental illness. There was a higher percentage of such patients in the men’s camps. I’m not sure of the reasons for this, but I strongly believe that women survived the Gulag’s brutal conditions better than the men did. I saw several possible factors. First, the women were more instinctively able to keep themselves occupied with chores, such as laundry, sewing, and knitting, and by attending to their appearance.

We often organized clandestine religious ceremonies on Easter and Christmas and were able to conduct modest religious services on Sunday—another way to keep a hopeful perspective. The men were certainly under more physical demands and pressures than the women, but both sexes experienced unfathomable emotional and mental pressures, such as had to be experienced to be believed. Still, in general, I observed that the women were more successful than the men in combating their depression and controlling their inner demons. I saw it time and again in the cruel and stark reality of life in the labor camps.

After I had finally recovered from this round of illnesses and was regaining some strength, I was more than a bit chagrined when I fractured my left ankle. While rehearsing a wild Greek folk dance for an upcoming performance, I fell off the stage and landed in the orchestra area. No more dancing for a while. This not-too-comical exploit put me out of action for about six months, but the real pain stemming from this mishap was not in my ankle. The ultimate pain was not being able to dance and perform!

I was still limping quite badly from my injury when a girlfriend from one of the work brigades handed me a note. It read, “My little Maidie, I am here to see you. I miss you so badly. Try to meet me tomorrow if you can. But don’t do it if you don’t think it will work, okay? I do not want you to be in jeopardy. I love you so very much! Your loving Mama.”

I was flabbergasted! How could Mama be here? I was beside myself with joy and could barely control my elation as I frantically quizzed the girls for more information. Mama had arrived in Inta the day before and had secretly solicited the help of my friends in arranging to meet me. There was nothing I wanted to do more than to see my precious mother right now! At that moment I would have traded another five years of imprisonment for just a few minutes with her—to see her face, to hear her voice, and to touch her again!

There was only one way we could possibly meet, and it would be very dangerous and difficult, a radical gamble at best. I needed help, accomplices—several willing accomplices—and the support of true friends. Fortunately, throughout this labor camp at Inta, my reluctant home, I had many of them. The leader of the girls’ brigade said she could dress me up as one of them and sneak me out of camp with them on their next work assignment. That sounded like a good plan to me, if some surprise or unforeseen detour didn’t derail us. I wasn’t forecasting doom, but I knew how strange things would come up when you least expected them. A standard camp policy, a habit or a routine, would be done the same way every day for a thousand years, and then, out of nowhere, a sudden diversion would thwart your plan.

The next morning it was raining, which I hoped would provide a natural distraction. I wrapped a borrowed shawl around my face and shoulders, leaving only my eyes visible, and marched out of my barracks with the brigade. With my heart pounding wildly, I managed to pass inspection at the camp gate undetected. To conceal my obvious limp, my dear friends and accomplices formed a moving shield, like a barrier around me, so I wouldn’t be noticed as the group tramped slowly, in close formation, through the mud. I feared that limp might give me away and seal my fate.

We walked over a mile to our destination, and my ankle was threatening to collapse as we arrived. But I couldn’t stop now! The brigades assigned task was to shovel a huge pile of garbage into wheelbarrows, then haul the loads into a waiting dump truck, which was manned by two camp guards. It wouldn’t be easy to meet anyone here; at first glance, it appeared impossible. But when the truck was finally filled with the trash, the guards would leave, so that was step one.