| Len's cousin
Supplying the camp with German goods
M: Talking about security. In Stettin, when I was not in the later kibbutz but in the first kibbutz, I was in another one first, and we were located right next door to the General Staff of the Russian army in the province of Stettin. And we used to go out every morning for exercises. We were a whole bunch of boys and girls, and there were a lot of Jewish Russian officers in the staff. And they were very interested in us, and they knew that we were Jewish people, and they liked the way we were conducting ourselves, and little by little, they started to come Friday night for an Oneg Shabbat to us, and they really used to enjoy it. Until one day, the chief of the staff came in by himself, but I don't know whether he was Jewish or not. He spoke Russian. And he told us that... as I told you before, we had security, our own security, and he told us that from now on, we don't have to waste any time on our own security because he gave orders... the Russian sentries who watch for the General Staff building, he gave them orders to go around our building, too, to take it in to their security zone, so we don't have to go anymore.
And they were watching us. We didn't have to worry anymore.
Len: Were they all Jewish?
M: No, no. They were Russians, but they used to like... They were all young people. We were singing and dancing, and mostly Jewish folk songs, Jewish folk dances. And they just liked it, you know. But there were a lot of Jewish guys there. After a while, they changed, but there were too many people who left the army, and never went back.
In fact, there were a lot of people, a new influx of people came. They came in trains from Russia, with people, and we didn't have enough room... not so much the room, but we didn't have enough furniture for them. We didn't have beds, we didn't have places where to keep them. So, we went to the chief of the Russian staff, and we told him, "Hey, we are getting people. We haven't got enough room. We got no furniture. What are we going to do?"
"Ah," he says, "that's no problem at all." He took the telephone, called up. A couple of soldiers came with a truck, took us to a church a few blocks from our kibbutz, and the church, they made [into] a big warehouse of all the stuff that they robbed from the Germans, that they took away [laughs]. They took away their furniture, everything. There was all kinds of stuff. And said to us, "Here, fellows. Go take whatever you want. Refurnish your rooms and make sure that you got enough stuff"
We took so much stuff, that we used the furniture for fuel for the stoves. We didn't know what to do with it. The old furniture we broke up to make fuel for the stoves. That's how much furniture we got. Every time we needed furniture, we used to tell him, "Come on, go get it." They robbed them everything blind, you know. And after they took everything away, you know what they did? They took away the railway, they took apart the road, the railbed, and they took it away and they sent this to Russia, too.
Len: Yes, I had heard that they had taken a lot of machinery and so on.
M: Everything. They took away whole factories, everything. As a matter of fact, one night we had a fellow who was a doctor. He had no practice, but he finished [graduated] as a doctor, and the war caught him in. So, he was in Russia there in the camps, in the jails, and then he came out, and he was a doctor, and he was now a kibbutz [sic]. And he came one day, and he told me, "I am, you know, a finished doctor, and sometimes for a quick emergency or something, don't hesitate to call me." He says, "I got no license to practice, but I could do it in an emergency." And sure enough, we went to that officer, and he says, "A doctor, good."
He took a boy from our kibbutz and sent away a soldier, went in to a German doctor, and took away all the Roentgen machines and the whole works, and brought it to the kibbutz. He says, "You're a doctor? Here, go practice." You see, the German people were sent out anyway.
Len: What?
M: They were sent out of Poland. The Poles exiled all the Germans. You see, when Poland took away 3 provinces from Germany, the population was all German. And they knew that eventually sometime might come another settlement or some change in politics, and Germany might friend [phonetic] the provinces again. So, they went and made it German-free, all these provinces. And they didn't leave one German. This way, they have no claim on it, you see, because they have no people. So they sent them all out.
There was a big difference between the Americans when they took over their part of Germany and the Russians took over their part. The Americans came, so they brought food, they brought medicine, they brought a little bit of order. When the Russians came in, nothing. When the Russians came in, they took everything away. Everything. Not that it didn't deserve to be taken away from them.
Len: Right. Because the Germans had done the same thing to them.
M: That's right. But the idea of it is, the difference between the two. A difference, you know.
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