Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

“My name is Zigurd Kruminsh,” he said in English, shaking my hand. Since handshaking was something my Russian captors never did, this should have been a clue. But I missed it.

I tried to pronounce his name, failed. “Sorry,” I apologized, “but I’m still having trouble with these Russian names”

“I’m not a Russian” he barked. “I’m a Latvian!” He said it less in anger than in pride.

The major said something, pointing to Zigurd’s beret. This time his reply was angry, and defiant. I asked him what the major had said.

“He told me to remove my beret. I refuse to do so. They have cut off all my hair, and until the day they let me grow it back, I shall wear this. Because of my self-respect.”

I liked him immediately.

While still at Lubyanka I had been asked whether on arrival at my permanent prison I wished to remain in solitary confinement or to have a cellmate. Knowing all too well that loneliness was my worst enemy, I had replied that most definitely I would like a cellmate; then, tempting my luck, I had requested one who spoke both English and Russian. This would eliminate the need for an interpreter, and I could learn Russian at the same time. My request had been granted. Zigurd Kruminsh (pronounced Zoo-gurd Crewmage) I now learned, was to be my cellmate. He not only spoke and read English and Russian, but Latvian and German, knew considerable Esperanto, some French, and was currently studying Spanish.

After I had been searched by one of the guards, the two of us were taken to the second floor of the building to our cell, number 31.

It was twelve feet long, eight feet wide. The floor was wooden. The walls were painted a dark gray on the lower part, the upper portion and ceiling white.

Having become “stir wise,” one of the first things I checked, once the guard had locked us in, was the window, to see if there was any way to look out. There were two. The glass in the upper section of the window was clear. From the floor you could see a bit of the sky. Standing on one of the beds, or the cabinet directly in front of the window, you could see a great deal more. But this, I presumed—correctly—was zahpretne, forbidden. However, in the lower section, there was a narrow crack, with a tiny hole in the end. Looking through, I could see the tops of several buildings passed on the way from the administration building, the wall separating our building from the rest of the prison, and the arched gateway. It wasn’t exactly the kind of view one would pay a high rent to enjoy, but it had a distinct advantage. I would be able to see at least some of the other prisoners, whenever any were escorted through the gate. And that in itself was a big improvement over Lubyanka.

Looking through the hole, I noticed a few other things. The first sheet of glass was opaque. Behind it was a dead-air space about six inches deep, another window, this one clear glass, another space of about six inches, heavy bars, then about a foot to the outside. From this I was able to estimate that the brick walls were at least two feet thick.

In front of the window was a small cabinet. We could store our bread ration and extra food there, Zigurd told me.

The beds stretched alongside the two walls, separated by a space of about two and a half feet. I tried mine, the one on the left. Had I checked into a hotel in the United States and been given such a bed, I would have complained immediately. But compared to the iron slats at Lubyanka, it was comfort personified. I was rapidly learning that pleasures are relative.

At the foot of each bed was a cabinet and small wooden stool. The top of the cabinet could be used as a desk or table, the inside as storage space for underwear, socks, towels, cigarettes, toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving gear—which just about completed the inventory of our personal possessions.

At one corner near the door was an old-fashioned radiator. At the other, on Zigurd’s side, a five-gallon can. I didn’t have to ask what it was for.

The lighting arrangement was similar to that at Lubyanka—the night light an unshaded hundred-watt bulb over the door, the day light an identical bulb in the ceiling. But we had one item in our cell not in the earlier prison. On a shelf on the right-hand wall was a squawk box. From six A.M. to ten P.M., with a silent period between 2:30 and four P.M., it broadcast Radio Moscow. It offered music—folk, opera, classical; news; and lots of propaganda. You could turn the volume down but not off.

The door, complete with peephole, was similar to the one at Lubyanka, with the exception that in the lower portion there was a smaller door, about a foot square. At suppertime I learned its purpose: unlocked from the outside, it folded down into a shelf; when we slid our tin plates and bowls out, the serving woman would ladle our meals from a huge vat, and pass them back.

Supper the first night consisted of one item—boiled potatoes.

You could hear the serving woman moving the food cart from cell to cell. Later I counted them. There were ten on our side of the cellblock, twelve on the opposite side.

Of the four floors in our building, Zigurd told me, there were cells on the first and second, the third vacant, the doctors’ and dentists’ offices and the hospital on the fourth. Until a few days prior to my arrival, Zigurd had occupied a cell on the first floor. Building number 2 housed the worst political prisoners—those who had committed serious crimes against the state: for example, writers and intellectuals who had dared criticize the Soviet regime publicly, and people who had attempted to overthrow it.

Zigurd belonged in the latter category. Convicted of treason, he had received the maximum prison sentence, fifteen years. Of this, he had already served more than five, the first three in solitary confinement.

He was not reluctant to tell me his story. Rather, he seemed excited at the prospect of having someone to talk to.

What did I know about Latvia?

Very little, I admitted.

He described it—its forests and trees, its little villages, its people, their fierce nationalism—with an eloquence that could arise only out of deep love for one’s homeland.

In 1940 Latvia had been overrun by the Russians, who had incorporated it as the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. Only thirteen at the time—he was now thirty-three, two years older than I—Zigurd had, like many of his countrymen, nurtured a hatred for the Russians stretching back through centuries of invasion and annexations. In 1941 Germany had invaded Latvia, driving the Russians out. To many of the Latvians, to whom German was a second language, this seemed less a conquest than a liberation. In 1944, when Russia again attempted to reclaim Latvia, Zigurd had joined the German Army, over the opposition of his parents, in order to fight the Russians. What followed was one continuous retreat, while the Red Army pushed their unit back into Poland, then all the way into Germany. By this time it was apparent even to the troops that Germany had lost the war. Many conscripts from Latvia, Poland, and other occupied countries were willing to battle the Russians, but they felt no animosity toward France, Britain, or the United States. Ordered to fight the Allies, they deserted in great numbers, Zigurd among them. Knowing that if he was caught by the Russians he would be shot as a traitor, he headed west, trying to make his way to the American lines. Before reaching them, however, he was captured by the British and placed in a POW camp. There, and later, in a displaced persons’ camp, he had learned English, which enabled him to get a job as guard at one of the British bases. While working there, he had been recruited by British intelligence, who flew him to England and put him through a special agents’ school. Trained to operate and repair radio transmitters, he was eventually returned secretly to Latvia by boat, where he went to work in the underground, transmitting messages, helping to smuggle people in and out of the country, and working to overthrow the Soviet puppet regime in Latvia.