‘A man can be human only under human conditions’. The prisoners of Yercevo were devastated by low temperatures and backbreaking labour, but above all by the plagues of diseases caused by malnutrition. Due to scurvy (lack of vitamin C), the teeth and hair of the prisoners fell out, and pellagra (vitamin B3 deficiency) caused acute dermatitis, diarrhoea, dementia, and ataxia (reduced coordination of movements).
But this was not all. Night blindness was common. More and more prisoners started to self-mutilate, as, as it gave a few days of rest in a hospital bed. With time, due to the massive character of such injuries, they started being considered sabotage. And avoiding work was, obviously, one of the greatest crimes against the state.
In the barbaric reality of a concentration camp, the prisoners had to be either practical or, quite often, cunning, to survive. The author recalled that they handled vitamin deficiency by drinking an infusion of conifer needles called hvoya which, however, did not reduce their permanent hunger:
We were always hungry, but real hunger we called that condition when one looks upon everything around as something to eat.
Therefore, there were situations in which such abstract concepts as respecting the dignity of the dead yielded to demands of everyday life.
During the first few months, when the high mortality rate and the primitive conditions of the camp made it difficult for the guards to keep a careful check on prisoners, frozen bodies were sometimes concealed in the shacks while their rations of bread and soup were collected by other prisoners.
It got even worse when the prisoners themselves were harmed. Ruthless criminal offenders, called the urkas, were a kind of elite among them. Their privileges included hunting female prisoners. The camp guards tolerated the gang rapes they committed. One of their victims, Marusia, became the favourite and exclusive property of Koval, a pockmarked Ukrainian who was the leader of Yercevo’s urkas.
This exemption from the bandit customs annoyed his thugs, who did not hide their irritation. Finally, fear of losing his authority as leader forced Koval to make the so-called only right decision. He said to Marusia ‘in a voice which chilled blood’:
Lie down, you bitch, and off with your clothes, or I’ll choke the life out of you.
Then he ordered: ‘She’s yours, brothers’ – and once again eight urkas returned to their former brotherhood, ‘never again disturbed by the slightest symptoms of human feeling’.