Soviet Museum Display : Survivor Paints Image of Death Camp Horror

This week’s Soviet celebrations of the 40th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II will combine a mood of triumph with remorse for the loss of war dead.

The memories will be especially bittersweet for Mikhail A. Savitski, an artist who spent most of the war as a German prisoner. Remarkably, he survived the death camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

“I could see my own bones,” Savitski said in a recent interview.

But he has more than memories. He has painted a series of 13 pictures dealing with his prison camp experiences, and the paintings are on exhibit at the Minsk War Museum.

Gaunt, Grim Survivor

“Prisoner 32815,” as one picture is entitled, is a self-portrait of the artist as a gaunt, grim survivor in ill-fitting striped clothing, with his numbered red badge sewn over the heart.

His paintings, which were done 30 years after his liberation by American forces on April 29, 1945, present a gruesome and powerful indictment of Nazi atrocities.

Soviet citizens touring the Minsk museum draw in their breath sharply when they see depicted the naked bodies of prisoners stacked like cordwood for burning.

Even now, Savitski says, he is affected by “prison camp syndrome,” and among other things this makes it impossible for him to watch a movie in a crowded, darkened room.

Ulcers, Strict Diet

Also, he contracted ulcers as a result of his experience as a prisoner. Untreated until after the war, they led to surgical removal of two-thirds of his stomach. Now he must follow a strict diet.

However, Savitski was spared the fate of many Soviet prisoners of war who were accused of being collaborators and were sent to prison camps in their own country when they returned.

He said he rejoined the Red Army for a two-year hitch, then went to art schools in Minsk and Moscow when he was released from military service.

Today, at age 63, he is at the top of his profession and runs a studio where young Byelorussian painters may live and work at state expense to develop their talents. It was there, not long ago, that he reflected on his wartime experiences.

Drafted at 19

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1941, he was inducted into the army as a private. He was 19 at the time. His unit was sent to the defense of the besieged Black Sea port of Sevastopol and fought for 250 days, he said.

“We made a last-ditch stand on boulders jutting from the sea,” he recalled. “We fought round the clock; there was no place to fall back.”

After he was taken prisoner, Savitski escaped twice but was recaptured and sent to Dusseldorf to work in a German factory with other Soviet POWs, he said.

There, he said, he contacted an underground resistance network and managed again to escape. With the aid of false documents that identified him and two others as voluntary Soviet workers, he was able to remain out of custody for a year while working in the town of Hilden in the Ruhr industrial region.

Sent to Buchenwald

In time, though, he was recaptured. In December, 1944, he was sent to Buchenwald, where he said he was placed in a unit “marked for liquidation.” He was assigned to dig tunnels for an underground factory where the Germans were making V-1 and V-2 bombs in great secrecy.

Later, he was taken with other prisoners into the courtyard of the crematorium.

“I was prepared to die,” Savitski recalled.

But he was sent to another work detail and then put aboard a prison train bound for Dachau, farther from the advancing American troops.

He said he used a penknife to cut a hole in the floor of the railway car and 22 prisoners escaped, though he did not himself manage to get away. When guards discovered the break, he and other prisoners in the car were stoned. He said he suffered a smashed kneecap and cuts on the head.

‘Horrible Day’

Three months after he arrived at Dachau, the Americans liberated the camp.

“It was a horrible day,” Savitski said.

The Americans were generous and provided a large can of beef stew to every two prisoners, he said, but the food was too rich for them after the meager diet they had been on for so long. What he remembers most vividly from that day, he said, are the screams of those who suffered acute indigestion.

Savitski and others were placed in hospitals, however, and he recovered to some extent. Then he was turned over to Soviet troops in Germany.

New Painting

With the approach of the 40th anniversary of victory, Savitski has been busier than usual. He is working on a painting of the Sevastopol defenders, and he has sent some of his work to Moscow for a special exhibition on the war.

But he has turned aside invitations to reunions with other former inmates of the prison camps.

“Life is very short,” he said, “and in order to achieve something, one must conserve time.”