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» Deutsche Version

September 16th, 1941
Dear Ones,
So you will hear from me again, I will take up my pen and give you some signs of life. I realized today that I haven't written you in eight days. Time is going too fast, at 7 pm it is already dark here, so by 7.30 you are already in bed and that gives you no time to write a letter.
Life is more varied than in Hagenbach. We can't leave this place by ourselves. Each day a different group of men, twenty or so go to the theater or to a show or to cinema in town. We also go for a swim. The whole group, four units, is stationed in a camp. The work in this camp is done by Jews and POW's only, people - I can say this to you - even worse than gypsies.
We are stationed in a former tank camp. When I cleaned up the few houses with my unit, I found lots of books and propaganda materials, and I must say, that in this way the Russians are rather well equipped. I also found some German books. With the help of a French-Russian dictionary I taught myself some Russian words. First, you have to learn the Russian alphabet, and its characters.
When the Russians were constructing this camp, they thought of everything, athletic fields, etc. They only forgot one thing, and that is the place to clean up. Well I am still looking for it. We wash up here with old buckets; that, at home, be tossed in the trash. Sunday I did my laundry. I boiled my wash in an old iron kettle, if you could call it that, and so I got things more or less clean. In the afternoon we had some rain, so I was forced to hang my clothes in the barrack room. Today they are not yet dry, but they will be.
The duty roster here is the same for the whole unit- roll call and things like that. We have them here too.
For today, warm greetings
Your Karl