A coward hides from danger and saves his life, the brave one boldly goes to meet her and dies, delighting people with his heroism … Most often it happens like this. But there are exceptions to any rule. I want to tell you a story about a man who, thanks to his exceptional courage, conquered death, survived in conditions where the more cautious and cowardly died. He deliberately abandoned the instinct of self-preservation and eventually won.
I want to cite an excerpt from an essay by journalist A. Stas about the prisoners of the fascist Mauthausen concentration camp. Former prisoner of this camp Vasily Rodionovich Bunelik, telling a journalist about his life in Mauthausen, told him an almost fantastic, but nevertheless real story about Alexander Dmitrievich Morozov - a man who conquered death itself.
“I will never forget that day, April 17th. In the evening, at the end of the work, Bachmeier, surrounded by guards, appeared in the quarry. Excited, from under the visor of his cap he looks at us in an unusual way, with a smile, which has never been noticed behind him before. None of the prisoners wants to meet with his eyes: he shot from a parabellum at people just like that, for the sake of entertainment, for the sake of whom he stops his eyes. And here - a smile! We immediately understood that he was up to something, grinning badly. He walked, waving a glove, stopped. The translator immediately ran up to him. We see that the same translator who understands Russian.
“Now you will be shown an interesting sight,” Bachmeier's voice rang out, and in the twilight that was rapidly gathering in the quarry, the bright beams of two searchlights immediately flashed. It became clear as day. - Watch carefully! Everyone to watch!
We looked at each other without understanding. And a minute later they saw. A gray mass, some shadows, surrounded by a dense ring of SS men, appeared and moved towards us in the strip of light. Everyone around froze. Even before that, I had to see such that the hair stood on end, but what happened in the quarry cannot be conveyed in words. We were all exhausted, but the people who were chased by the guards seemed to us the dead who had risen from the ground. The searchlight beams seemed to shine through their bodies.
These people, wounded, bloody, half-naked, moved slowly and inaudibly, in a tight crowd, hugging and supporting each other. Each of them individually could not stand on their feet. They only held on because they were together, as if merged into one whole. Rags hung from their shoulders. Looking closer, I saw our Soviet tunics …
- Halt! Bachmeier shouted, choking, and the ghost people stopped. We looked at them in horror. The campers seldom cried. And here many were crying.
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Bachmeier turned to us - he admired his own voice, which rumbled in dead silence.
- Gentlemen, let me introduce you … Is it clear to everyone? Please come closer! Closer still. Like this. Do you know who is in front of you? Don't you guess? Well, take a closer look. Handsome men, aren't they? So, these are those famous Bolshevik commissars that the homeland is proud of. - He laughed, spun on his heels, stepped forward. Unhurriedly, several times he stretched out his gloved hand to his tattered tunics. The SS men immediately grabbed those he pointed out.
- To the crematorium!
The four silent figures, hanging in the arms of the stalwart guards, disappeared behind a strip of light. They were dragged to the camp, to the stoves that smoked between the kitchen and the bathhouse. The captives were silent. And we were silent too.
- I want to ask you, - standing in front of the staggering bunch of bodies in tunics, Bachmeier took a pistol from his holster and raised his voice, - did you like being commissioners? Were you happy with the red stars on the sleeves? Silence is a sign of consent … Good! In that case, maybe there is now at least one among you who will find the gift of speech and tell us out loud that he was a communist and commissar? What? - the head of the camp put his hand to his ear. - I can not hear! Shut up? Yes, now you even forgot how the word "communist" is pronounced, I understand …
Bunelik closed his eyes, his fingers gripping the edge of the table. And suddenly from the crowd of people illuminated by searchlights, a man slowly emerged. In the bluish light, I could see his face, dark and cheekbone. He, limping, approached Bachmeier and did not take his eyes off him. He came almost close, swayed, but stayed on his feet and said hoarsely, okay, clearly pronouncing each word:
- Do you want to meet? Well, come on. I am Alexander Dmitrievich Morozov, a member of the Communist Party and a Bolshevik military commissar! - slightly turning his head in the direction of the detained translator, added: - Translate for him, you carrion! Translate word for word. I was a communist, I remain a communist and I will be a communist even after death. What else interests you, fascist scum?
Have you ever heard the silence, such as when time seems to have stopped? I heard such silence. She stood at that moment in the quarry, only, it seemed, crackled steam that escaped from thousands of lungs.
The man who introduced himself as Commissar Morozov was still looking at Bachmeier's face without stopping. A movement began in the crowd behind the man. The prisoners parted, and another came out, young, tall, in a cap.
- I am Ponomarev, a communist and a red commissar! Then two at once:
- Commissar of the Red Army, communist Fedulov! Repeat?
- Tikhonov, battalion commissar and, naturally, a communist! What I am proud of.
Bachmeier did not back away fearfully, no. He took only one and a half steps back, but that was enough - even the guards understood what had happened. They silently, with superstitious fear, looked at the people who, one after another, stepped forward, towards the muzzles of the machine guns, uttering a few words with broken lips that split the silence. Even these uniformed butchers, these murderers, were affected by the challenge, calmly and without hesitation. The head of the camp looked around as if seeking support from the SS men. He, too, realized that there was nothing to fix what had happened. Nothing! Even if you mow down all those standing in front of him in bursts, burn or bury them alive in the ground. And Bachmeier screamed inaudibly, like an animal. He rushed into the group of prisoners that grew up beside him, trying to push the people back into the crowd again.
And then Morozov's hoarse voice was heard:
- Why are you mad, bastard? Death is terrible for cowards, and you are afraid of it! Not us, but you!
Bachmeier soon pulled himself together. He stood with a parabellum. Then he said:
- Courage is good. The brave ones will be the last to be shot. To do this now is too much of a luxury for you brave gentlemen!
They were left in the quarry. Sixty-eight people. These were our army political workers, yesterday's regional committee members and regional committee members, some of them, older, did indeed carry the ranks of commissars, but there were many young officers, graduates of political schools among them. But they all remained commissars for us. They only lived with us for a short time.
Once, on the day of some Hitler's holiday, on Sunday, the SS men drove them all to the shooting range, where officers from the camp guard practiced shooting almost daily. The whole camp became silent and froze in anticipation of trouble. And soon the nightmare really began. It seemed to me that I was losing my mind: before our very eyes something was happening that was scary even in Mauthausen's conditions. The commissars were tied to poles in the shooting range, and the SS officers, walking back a few steps, unloaded pistols at them almost point-blank, competing in "accuracy" on a bet.
Morozov was standing there, at the shooting range, his hands were twisted with wire. Without stopping, he looked at his comrades who were dying under the bullets. Two guards were holding him. Bachmeier trembled like an epileptic and shouted to him:
- See? Well, see, communist? - he reloaded the pistol, aimed at the next victim and growled frantically: - This I shoot in the bridge of the nose, the next I will pierce the ears, and then the throat … Watch, you're brave!
Morozov's face turned to stone. Shots rang out, groans were heard, and the fascists rattled furiously. And Morozov stood … Cheekbones protruded even sharper, veins bulged on his forehead, his hair slowly turned white, as if covered with frost, blood oozed from his clenched teeth …
Morozov stood there for several hours. Parabellums, Walthers and Sauers cracked incessantly. Powder burn, not having time to evaporate, ate his eyes. And in the blocks, inmates sobbed, covered their ears, pounded the walls and locked doors with their fists. Finally, four commissars remained - those who were the first to emerge from the crowd of prisoners: Morozov, Ponomarev, Fedulov, Tikhonov.
- Your turn! - Bakhmeyer pointed his pistol at Morozov. -To his post!
Morozov's eyes were riveted to the head of the camp, as if he wanted to remember this hated face. Bachmeier raised his hand with the pistol and suddenly shouted shrilly:
- Put your head down! Turn away, damn you! Close your eyes, do you hear!
- Are you afraid? asked Morozov dully. “I’ll make you look me in the eye, you bastard! Learned to kill, but to look straight - the gut is thin? Why did you turn pale? I'm attached. Shoot!
Three times Bachmeier raised his pistol and three times met the gaze of a man who looked at him contemptuously and without a shadow of fear. Sweat poured from the camp commander, and his hands began to shake. Poking like a blind man with a pistol in its holster, he suddenly turned his back on Morozov and walked out of the shooting range, accelerating his pace. Then he almost ran, bending over, clutching the stones with his boots. The SS men frowned after him, lowered their submachine guns, and nervously smoked. Then one of them went to Morozov and hastily began to untangle the wire."
Then Morozov was only thirty years old. He served as the commissar of a separate paratrooper detachment carrying out a special mission behind the Germans' lines. During the next raid behind enemy lines he was wounded and taken prisoner unconscious. Originally from the Kirov region from the northern village of Ima. After that incident, Bachmaier left Alexander alone, and the rest of the SS men were so generally afraid of him, shunned like devil incense, fell silent when he passed by. After that memorable episode in the shooting gallery, the Germans looked at Morozov with almost superstitious horror.
Then Alexander Morozov took part in the work of an underground anti-fascist organization operating in Mauthausen. After his release, he returned to his homeland, to his village of Ima. He worked there as a foreman of lumberjacks. After the war, he had six daughters.
Here's a story …
From the book "The Psychology of Fear" by Yuri Shcherbatykh