Dog's heart

The story of one of the prisoners of the German concentration camps:
... Now, when more often we turn to the past than to look into the future, I recall the parental home before the war.
We lived in a small Belarusian town. When the war started, the Germans entered there very soon. Our village was burned, and the inhabitants, loaded into wagons, were driven to labor camps. Someone was sent to Germany, but we were taken to Latvia, where we were put in a concentration camp. Although I was a child then, but I remember a lot very well. Especially hunger and constant fear. By the end of the war, the Germans had tightened their ranks even more. There was no food at all in the camp. I remember that all my childhood thoughts of that time were aimed at finding at least some kind of edible piece. I was glad to slops, garbage - everything that could be called food.
Sensing their end and the inevitable moment of reckoning, the Nazis began to intensively sweep the traces of atrocities. Every day a column of prisoners gathered in the camp, which was led in the direction from which no one was returning.
Once this fate befell our family. I was in such a column with my older brothers. We didn’t have the strength to resist, we didn’t even have the strength not to go (although walking is hard to call), even towards death. On the way, I saw a doghouse near which a shepherd was sitting. But she didn’t attract my attention then. Near the booth I saw a bowl of dog food. I glared at this vision and realized that the bowl was actually standing. I could not stand it and rushed to her.
I can imagine how my older brothers froze in fear, realizing that after some moment I would be torn to pieces by this beast. I didn’t care. But the furious-looking shepherd did not even budge, continuing to sit and calmly watch her daily portion disappear. By this time, the convoy where my relatives were located had already passed, and the guards simply returned me to the hut. So in my seven years I was left completely alone.
The next day, the Germans apparently decided, on the one hand, to conduct an experiment on the behavior of the service dog, and on the other, to once again make fun of the unusual picture. I was again in the convoy, and when we approached the booth, the SS man gave me a bone for a dog. I went to her, laid the bone beside her, and I attacked her food. A crunch was heard behind him, a dog gnawing a bone.
Today, recalling that moment, I understand: the performance expected by the guards did not work. They returned me to the hut again and did not touch it for three days. On the fourth day in the morning, when I was already standing in the convoy, some uncle from a cordon pointed a finger at me and said in Russian that because of me "the dog is not eating at all." I was pulled out of the column and taken to a booth. Next to her was a bowl of food I already knew. Without thinking twice, I pounced on her. The dog slowly got out of the booth and watched my actions. When the bowl turned out to be empty and licked by me almost to a brilliance, the shepherd grabbed me, a seven-year-old chick, who at that time was more like a skeleton than a normal child, by the collar and stuffed into a booth.
And then I saw how she herself crawls through the same hole inward. I don’t know why, but without any fear I pressed against my savior. She harshly smelled of dog-dog, but what then did I have to smell! Having warmed up, I fell asleep. How many slept then, I still can not determine. I know - for a long time. Naturally, I could not see what happened during this time outside the doghouse. When I opened my eyes and didn’t want to sleep anymore, there was no dog near me. In its place lay a crust of bread. I instantly hid the gift in my bosom and, on all fours, getting out of the booth, I began to look around.
The German guard was not visible. And suddenly I heard someone scream:
- “Look, baby!”
I was picked up by the Red Army soldiers who liberated our concentration camp while I was sleeping. So I was among my own.
It is unforgettable for me that I survived only thanks to the dog, which, unlike its owners, had a human heart ...

© Elena Puzanova
City of Luga, Leningrad Region.