Get to know your territory, find a water source, keep your clothes dry, do not get cold ... Good advice from survival specialists can be put into fairy tales, when after many weeks you leave the cattle wagon with the last of your strength and hear from the Bolshevik:you are making rye, a crate you won't fall.
The extreme survivor Bear Grylls says that even in the harshest places, you can do something to make yourself a little more comfortable.
How to keep yourself and your loved ones alive in the exile hell? How to do it with minimal resources and skills, not knowing your environment and not being a master of survival? Here are some useful tips.
1. Make friends with the locals
Imagine that you suddenly had a family of several people forcibly quartered. She comes from an unknown country, has completely different customs and traditions, dresses weirdly and, in addition, adheres to a foreign religion. From today on she will live under your roof. You wouldn't be happy with that, would you? This was the situation in which Kazakhs and Uzbeks were placed, to whom many Polish families exiled deep into the USSR went.
Several exhausting weeks in such a wagon and we are ready to go straight to work (photo:Albert Jankowski, public domain).
In addition, NKVD persuaded the local population that all Polish women are prostitutes … Because they wear underwear. Kazaszki or Uzbeczki could not afford this garment. It is not surprising that the inhabitants of Central Asia hostile to the deportees from Poland.
It had to be proved that the differences of faith and customs do not have to divide, and all the rumors spread by the Soviets were a pile of nonsense and slander. The locals soon learned that the deportees were normal people. As Grażyna from Augustów recalls, when they saw with their own eyes that Poles prayed, relations improved significantly and they managed to make friends with some of the women.
Poles trusted the Kazakhs so much that the family of Barbara from Lviv chose flats only with them, and never with the Russians. She did not want to live with them under the same roof. Moreover, as we read in her memoirs in "Girls from Siberia" by Anna Herbich:
Kazakhs were very interested in us. Their customs, language, lifestyle. For us, visitors from Europe, they were a complete mystery. We became friends with them quickly. [...] The Kazakhs invited us several times for a roasted ram. I loved the tea they drank after eating. Come on served with milk. Kazakhs also added… sheep fat to it. Of course, I was never persuaded to do so.
Poles also seemed exotic to the locals. Barbara remembered that her mother, while cooking, was always accompanied by a Kazakh friend who watched everything carefully. They watched each other during their daily activities, talked to each other, although they did not understand each other at all.
Exiles often lived in such "houses" (photo:Mick, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Barbara's family were also friends with the Crimean Tatars, who had several Fryderyk Chopin records and a piano in their hut . They were very wealthy and despised the Russians, considering them stupid and ignorant.
2. Learn new skills
Playing the piano, tennis and French conversation were of no use either in the labor camp or in the kolkhoz. You had to quickly acquire specific skills that would give you a chance to survive. One that could be converted into money or food.
Alina, a former oil heiress, quickly learned, among other things, how to change the field in the room. She diluted the clay with kiziak, i.e. cow dung, and spread it evenly. A lady from a good home did not abhor churning dung with her bare feet. She was doing her job as best she could.
Initially, Grażyna was also involved in the production of bricks from cow dung with straw, who at the age of only eighteen became a stove fitter. It all started with assisting in erecting a stove for her own family:she was arranging stones with the hostess, tamping the hearth and helping to put in the grate. She learned that broken glass should be added to the clay to make the structure stronger.
" For putting up the stove - although it was a terrible hardship - of course I did not get any money "- recalls in" Girls from Siberia ". - “People paid with food. A handful of groats, a bowl of soup. Today such a payment may seem ridiculous, but for me it was a fortune back then. ”
A solid profession in hand ensured the girl survived in exile, although friends joked about her occupation for many years. And the exchange of goods or skills for food was for many exiles the only possibility of ensuring the existence of the family.
How to get food if you can't hunt with the golden eagle? (Photo:David Baxendale, CC BY-ND 2.0).
The exiles not only learned new skills themselves, but also taught the local people. Barbara remembered that when real coffee beans appeared in the local store, Polish women were overjoyed and took whole bags. Kazaszki bought it too, but had no idea how to prepare it properly. They cooked the beans just like beans are cooked. Only Polish women taught them to brew coffee.
3. Don't waste your most valuable resources
Animals in collective farms and state farms were an extremely valuable resource. They were grown not only for meat, but also for work. Unfortunately, the authorities did not always seem aware of their role. Due to neglect and human stupidity, the livestock was not properly cared for, and its fate could be tragic.
The Soviets ordered Kazakhs to breed pigs for which these animals are unclean, and their faith forbids them from contacting them. As a result, in a certain Kazakh chamber next to which Janka, exiled from the Białystok region, lived, all the animals died of starvation, because no one could even feed them . The terrible squeals of suffering animals had long haunted her and her sister.
Alina also recalls the typically Soviet stupidity and mess that caused the collective farm authorities to waste all their cattle one year. Winter hay was not harvested and all animals were starved. " They were lying frozen in a pile and only in the spring began to decompose and smell terribly. What a stench that was! Finally they were poured with gasoline and set on fire. It was a tremendous waste. " - we read in Girls from Siberia Anna Herbich.
In a workers' paradise, the bride could not count on a wedding in such a rich outfit as at the beginning of the 20th century (photo by Sergey Ivanovich Borisov, public domain).
4. Watch out for the admirers
If you want to settle down in exile, you can take the risk and marry a local. Pros are relative peace from the Soviets and a roof over your head. Cons - It's hard to know what awaits you after marriage.
When Danka, who came from Vilnius, ended up in a kolkhoz in Uzbekistan as a child, one of the men proposed to her mother and he could not understand why she rejected his offer. After all, assured that he would not be in poverty with him, because he has a bed, a bag of grain and a glass for a kerosene lamp and she preferred to sleep in a kolkhoz on the bare ground.
Later, they were transferred to another kolkhoz, this time in Kazakhstan, where they lived with local farmers. They became very close to them, but the story repeated itself:just before Christmas, the drunk host proposed to the heroine's mother, who felt a pang of fear that when the hostess found out, she would throw them out of the house. It turned out, however, that the honest host had too much alcohol in his head, because after a while he knelt in front of the painting hanging over the bed and confessed his love also to Our Lady.
Grażyna, in turn, inadvertently tried to marry her own sister. One day, a Kazakh met by chance looked wide at the beauty of the girl, and Helena offered to make a deal. She wanted to sell her sister to his wife. Kazakhstan was pleased with the proposal. When he found out that Grażyna would only cost a piglet, he was ready to make a purchase immediately. Negotiations were a joke for only one of the parties. The girls had to run away.
Don't get broken (photo:public domain).
5. Don't get broken
All the heroines of Girls from Siberia they have one thing in common - they adhered to the basic rule of survival:do not get broken by anyone or anything. Because there are really no rules in the art of survival. Determination and the will to fight will allow you to survive the worst tortures, the hardest work, the most difficult living conditions, hunger and extreme environment. After all, the final stake is life, and life is the most precious thing. And it is worth fighting for them, even if only with the last of our strength.
Source:
Anna Herbich, Girls from Siberia , Znak Horyzont, Krakow 2015.