Chapter 11
The severe blows of fate and the profound spiritual turmoil they caused, affected Braina’s sensitive nature.
In 1940, the third year of her imprisonment, Braina’s health deteriorated. Her nerves completely gave out, she began to experience sudden bouts of weakness and dizziness, and her hands were frequently subjected to debilitating aches and pains. Though the doctors at the camp sanitary unit rendered urgent aid in case of acute attacks, they simply did not have the means to treat the disease. The pain in her hands grew worse, it became more and more difficult to hold a knife when cutting bread, and as a result, after several reprimands from her superiors, Braina was dismissed from the bread-cutting service. She was now listed as a handywoman and was to be used wherever extra hands were needed.
At first, she got into a sewing factory, where she had to embroider patterns on women’s dresses. This work required skills which Braina did not have, and without them the required rate of production was unattainable. In addition, holding a needle in pained hands was even more difficult than a knife, so very soon she had to leave this position as well.
After that, Braina was entrusted with the post of janitor and liaison at the same time. She worked in the commandant’s office, responsible for keeping the surrounding area clean, and when she had to summon someone or pass something on, she set her broom aside and went to her destination. But she did not have to work in that position for long either.
In mid-1940, the special women’s camp where Braina was held began to be disbanded. The women were sent to other places of detention in phases. Braina was in a group going to the large camp center “Burma,” located on the outskirts of the city Karaganda.
From the railroad station, a convoy of prisoners, surrounded by armed guards, moved through the city streets. The citizens went out from their houses to gawk at the “criminals”. Behind and to the sides of the column were boys. They teased and threw pebbles at the convicts; it was embarrassing, saddening, insulting…
The Burma District Camp Center was located in a vast area and consisted of several sections that were not isolated from one another, in each of which the male and female barracks housed criminal and political prisoners. Only one section for the most dangerous criminals, the so-called “sub-convoy,” was fenced off from the rest with barbed wire. This is where the newly arrived group was placed.
The women were greeted in a manner that was not only unfriendly but clearly hostile. Insults, threats, and filthy swearing came from all sides. Later Braina accidentally learned that such a reception had been specially organized by the camp administration, which had warned “local” prisoners in advance about the arrival of the wives of “traitors and enemies of the motherland”. Henceforth these misfortunate, guiltlessly convicted, mostly educated, intelligent women were to be among real criminals, such as prostitutes, thieves, swindlers, and murderers with their customary profanity, meanness, and lies.
On the first night in the new place, Braina’s warm socks were stolen. They were so cleverly pulled down from her feet while she slept that she did not even feel it. Many other women were also robbed; some more, some less. To go looking for the items or to report them as missing was not only useless, but also unsafe. To be known as a snitch was to condemn oneself forever to subtle abuse or beatings by the mafia that ruled every barrack.
When the new arrivals began to be assigned to their jobs, Braina overcame her fears and doubts and introduced herself as an experienced bread cutter with more than two years of experience. Fortunately, there was an urgent need for a bread cutter at one of the stations due to a sudden serious illness of the previous worker. But since such a position was very highly valued, the personnel officer who was assigning people decided to hold off appointing Braina to see if there was no other, perhaps more suitable, candidate.
Braina was sent back to the sub-convoy, and for several days she was busy cleaning the barracks, waiting for her fate, almost not hoping for luck. But Lady Luck smiled on Braina this time. She was transferred to the central station, where the canteen, bakery, bathhouse, clubhouse, repair shops, and warehouse were located. The administration kept out the worst criminals from this area, fearing for the safety of food and materials, so it was chiefly the specialist prisoners who worked there. It was they who received their daily bread rations from the hands of Braina.
She was placed in a women’s barracks where most of the prisoners were political ones. This was another lucky thing, because the living conditions there were relatively peaceful, especially the nighttime rest. Working conditions were somewhat easier than they were in Akmolinsk. Here, Braina was alone in the bread cutter room, her own proprietress.
She had to receive about 30 loaves of bread a day in the bakery, cut them for rations, and distribute them to the convicts working at the station according to the coupons they presented. Braina also distributed lunch coupons to the other sections. Although the bouts of general weakness recurred and the pain in her arms did not go away, Braina did not show it, endured it, and managed her work well, conscious that only a happy accident had saved her from an incomparably heavier, more dangerous, and humiliating fate.
At first, the inmates regarded the new bread cutter with mistrust and suspicion. They did not doubt that she would, like her predecessor, profit at their expense. At first, all Braina heard was rudeness, recriminations and threats. Almost everyone demanded the ration be re-weighed in front of their eyes. And how surprised people were when they were shown that the weight of the bread was even a little more than the norm! This was Braina’s personal achievement.
By being particularly careful to keep the bread from drying out, she was able to make good use of the small allowable shrinkage margin that was legally allowed when fresh bread was received in the bakery. None of the prisoners could have imagined that Braina’s own ration often consisted of small bread scraps and crumbs, and she took it last, just in case of an unforeseen situation.
The prisoners were sure that they could always get bread from her. Therefore, one or another of them would come up to Braina in secluded places and offer warm clothes, soap, and tea in exchange for bread, but they were met with a categorical refusal to even start such a conversation. So little by little an opinion spread among the convicts that Braina the bread cutter was just obsessed with honesty, behaved like a “dog in the hay”, and that no “geshefts” could be done with her. This opinion was reinforced after an action Braina took, which was incomprehensible to them.
It happened on one of her normal workdays. Braina was finishing cutting her rations when she suddenly found out that there were still several whole loaves of bread on the shelf. She was astonished, horrified, and rushed to check the scales, the rations, check the order, count the coupons… Everything was in order as usual, but on the shelf, nevertheless, there were six extra loaves.
Without thinking, Braina rushed to the bakery and reported this. It turned out that the weigher had mixed up the weights and had not noticed that she had given Braina more than she was supposed to. The whole bakery team could have seriously suffered due to this and they were sincerely grateful to Braina for her vigilance and honesty. Since then, when releasing Braina’s bread, the weigher did not forget to add a small extra portion to her “for shrinkage”.
But in the barracks, not only did none of the inmates approve of Braina’s deed, but they considered it a great folly, regretting the opportunity she had lost to help herself and others.
Gradually Braina got the hang of it to such an extent that she knew each of her “clients” by name and knew by heart the weight of the ration they were given. And the prisoners, convinced that Braina never gave them less than required, didn’t have any favorites and always gave them bread on time, stopped cursing and being rude, and sometimes they were even generous with words of gratitude and praise.
At the end of the workday, having summed up for the report and cleaned the room, Braina could quietly reread Lena’s letters, which were stored in a secluded place. Informative, interesting letters, filled with the sincere warmth of a daughter’s love, care, sympathy, and dreams of a longed-for meeting, were invaluable and life-saving means of comfort amid the bleakness of the camp environment for Braina. This encouraged, sustained and strengthened her hope of a return to her family, to the normal human life she longed for.
At times Braina even managed to carve out time to read fiction from the meager camp library. Forgetting everything else, she was joyfully immersed in the wonderful world of books, so beloved since childhood, from which it was so not easy to return to the reality of the camp.
Sometimes, on Sunday evenings, Soviet films were shown at the clubhouse, which Lena praised in her letters, such as “The Fighters” (Истребители), “Late for a Date” (Девушка спешит на свидание), “The Foundling” (Подкидыш), “The New Teacher” (Учитель). Braina tried not to miss them, and, looking at the screen, vividly imagined her children in the orphanage club watching the same movie; she felt that they were near her, together again… This illusion briefly caused a sweet sense of peace.
The dull camp routine dragged on day after day. In the spring of 1941, Braina unexpectedly met Mishin, the former deputy head of the Akmola camp, whose decency she remembered forever, in the bakery.
Mishin had come to Burma on official business and dropped into the bakery to familiarize himself with the organization of production there. Braina rushed towards him as if towards a relative, briefly reminded him of herself, and once again warmly thanked him for his sensitivity and fairness. Mishin was obviously touched by this sincere impulse, but replied coldly, in a flat voice, that he was merely performing his duties, immediately turning to his attendants and continuing his rounds.
This behavior saddened Braina more than a little. She had expected her idol, if not to sympathize with her, at least to say a few kind words. Alas, she was also disappointed in the one member of the camp staff whom she had up to that moment considered a decent man.
Summer came. At the end of June, the news reached the prisoners that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. The news was received quite calmly; it seemed from afar that the Red Army would easily defeat the fascists and the war would be short-lived. But in July, all of a sudden, correspondence was again completely banned for all prisoners. By inertia, letters from the outside continued to arrive for a while, but each day they became more and more disturbing.