A group of Russian prisoners are questioned by their German guards. There will be a reading test. Those who pass will be given clerical work. The illiterates will be given hard labour. But there is a second lesson to be learnt, a twist in the tale. 

 

Mira Hamermesh writes: “The idea occurred to me while reading some account in the Polish press about a Russian who survived a similar situation and returned to the very spot to relive …. What? Something I suppose. Later I ready Malaparte’s KAPUT and among the stories is a very brief, very sketchy account of a similar event. I felt that one of the greatest of all war atrocities was the condemnation of literacy to death.”