7 July 1921 Die Welt Post

Huck, 7^th of March 1921.

I hardly believe, that you can imagine and I cannot describe it to you in any detail. Everything is terribly expensive. Prices are rising by the hour. You can hardly buy anything for money and if you can you don’t need to leave the house with less than a million. Yesterday two men were shot in Huck. They were the leaders of a group breaking into a cellar, in which 1000 Pud (1Pud = 16.38 kg) were stored. Since January the army is here. The soldiers move from house to house and take everything: corn, flour, cabbage, potatoes, Schnitz (?), wool, leather, hides – in one word everything. If they find anything hidden they confiscate all movable and immovable assets. There is great starvation. Many people die from starvation. Typhus has broken out and is very widespread. In Messer and Grimm it is particularly hard. Every day the people there move around and try to trade their clothes for a piece of bread, but nobody is able do give some to them. The harvest was rather good but everything is taken. In the Russian villages there is still corn, in the region of Utkarsk. Many people go there to fetch some bread, but only two percent manage to get across the border. From most of them the bread is taken away. We receive monthly 12½ pound wholemeal corn, 4 pound meat, ½ a pound fat and ½ a pound salt, obviously only the working people. A sack of flour costs between 350,000 and 400,000 ruble. Meat 2000 rouble per pound, an Arschin (1 Arschin = 71.1 cm) cotton 5000 ruble. For a cow you can almost fetch a million ruble. Everybody thinks about their stomach, that is their only concern and it takes a lot of effort and time. The teachers take the sledge into the woods to fetch some wood. They also go to the Russian villages with their sledges to get some potatoes, which cost 12,000 rouble per Pud. There are no lessons, as the school is closed due to a lack of heating material.

(this letter was not signed)