| Albania was a godforsaken country. The
group was taken to a prison camp in Kavaja, on the west
coast of Albania, where they remained for three
months. The Montenegran prisoners of war were
placed in an adjacent camp and were treated worse than
the Serbs because they had fought back against the
Italians. No one was killed in the camp. Barbed wire surrounded the camp. The
prisoners from Split were kept in one large room and
could shower but once a week. The beds were triple
deck bunk beds with open wooden slats. One night,
Alex and Vera found a hole in the wall, behind which they
discovered blanket storage; even though the blankets were
flea-ridden, they distributed them to the other
prisoners, which made things a bit better for
sleeping. The mice were everpresent and Vera
would wake up knowing that they had been crawling around
during the night. She vowed to stay awake all night
because she didn’t want the mice running over her,
but after three nights it didn’t matter what ran
over her! Vera has subsequently had a lifelong
aversion to and hatred of mice.
The food was atrocious, with the Italians
cooking what was left of the rations they didn’t
steal (about half), so Adolf spoke to the Italian camp
commander and convinced them to give the rations directly
to the prisoners so they could cook meals
themselves. He was also able to secure additional
rations from the Albanians.
All
writing for presentation had to be approved by the camp
commanders. To try and lighten the oppressive mood,
Adolf wrote a script in Yugoslavian that made fun of
everyone in camp (both the Italians and prisoners).
In order for it to be approved, he split the script and
when two people read it separately, it was totally
innocent; yet, read together it poked fun at the Germans
and Italians. When it was presented, no one knew
that he wrote it, not even his family.
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