[The day came when I noticed there was no crowd at the service hatch... I understood what that meant; there was no food in the warehouse. It was the moment I realised that stories about two thousand Chinese who crossed the border in search of rescue from the foul-up at the Chinese Eastern Railway and all died in this camp are neither a phantom of the diseased imagination nor delirious ravings. Spaniards who fled from Francisco Franco also died here.
But that time our hour hadn't stricken yet; the hand of fatal clock was brought to stop by a brave woman from far from heroic Tribe of Israel, Doctor Sarah Abramovna Gordon appointed the chief of the medical unit not long before.]
Our camp nag dragged along the flooring of logs thrown into not frozen marsh. The logs moved foundering into the marsh and Sarah Abramovna wavered over the horse tail like a dirigible. Life or death of eight hundred perchers depended on success of her mission. Naturally all of us spilled on a little hill in the camp despite the ban. Our most ardent prayers accompanied the brave woman who, for the first time in her life, took a horse, actually a nag that usually only brought the dead to the camp graveyard, and and set to go 35 kilometres off the road. And she succeeded! That very night around four sacks of flour were thrown from the train only lowering its speed.