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“Arbeit macht frei”, work sets you free, reads this phrase at the entrance to Auschwitz. This ironic expression really opens the door to one of the darkest Nazi extermination camps, with so-called swimming pools for the “workers” to bathe, stoves for heating when it’s cold, one in each “shelter” in the boarding school (although they never knew firewood), so-called model apartments in the gypsy camps, which were eliminated once and for all when they no longer needed to be inspected… All this hypocrisy was born in my associations. I visited these extermination camps in June, and this was the moment in my life when I felt the closest to the conditions experienced by many victims of Nazi-fascism, although at a considerable distance.
I will never forget that terrible night of November 30, 1993, when we arrived at the Boom 400 of the EJT. It was an unforgivable transgression on my conscience that I had already compromised. In June, I finished my pre-university studies and received a scholarship to study Information Sciences at the University of Havana. The only drawback was that to enter the university, after the entrance exams that I had worked so hard for, not everyone passed, it was not enough to just get a degree. He had to complete a year of active military service (SMA), otherwise there was no career. All my friends or colleagues who, like me, had pre-university studies and obtained a degree, without exception, were recruited in August at the latest. Some ended up in the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), others in the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), and I certainly did not envy them anything, but what was wrong with me?
Having not received any ticket for the entire September, I no longer had any doubts, I had the same religious status since I entered preschool at the age of five, although the same as when I was in ninth grade. My academic performance was not enough to allow me to be an “integrated” student and to qualify as a “flag bearer of the year 2000”. I had understood that due to my physical condition, thank God, I was fit to be in the SMA, but due to my social situation, I belonged to a marginalized group and did not deserve to be trusted as a soldier of the country, there was no other option for me, more important than the EJT, I had to wait for the first call to come, even if they could not exploit me for a whole year and had to release me before the beginning of the school year in September of the following year. This was despite the fact that the head of the Western Railway Regional Headquarters, Colonel Pedro Duardo Mendez, said that “the troops were composed of SMA soldiers who generally had economic or family problems”, as quoted in the article “At the Foot of the Line”. Patricia Cáceres, in an article published on August 2 in the newspaper El Juventud, points out that my conditions are the same as those of my “deferred” companions who have already enlisted, only the criteria for compulsory enlistment to join UMAP in the 60s are applied here.
And so, I finally received the first summons to take me to the EJT on October 7. Until then, I had problems in responding to the call, a question of conscience. Gradually I understood the situation of my exclusion and the readings I had chosen during the holidays: in addition to the Bible, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, which had a great influence on me. Therefore, they made me decide not to show up that day, risking not only the loss of the right to study at the university, but also the possibility of being prosecuted and sentenced.
The fear of the consequences for me in my family and society was so great that I begged the Municipal Military Commission for a second chance and they made me promise to attend the next call. Perhaps the most powerful force that made me give up at that time was my mother’s tears, and although I warned everyone that they were asking me to act against my conscience, I compromised.
The result was that terrible November night. Complete total blackout. No dinner at ten o’clock at night. Our “platoon” was positioned in the center of the square, and around us marched different “companies” that had been there for weeks in the military training known as “previa” in Cuba. The panicked looks of the young men with shaved heads, who formed these squads, each forced to sing or shout a different political slogan in the dim light of torches, was a Dantesque spectacle that made me feel like I was in one of the Nazi concentration camps he had read so much about. In the nearly eight months he survived, he had experienced an extreme lifestyle, forced to work long hours and abide by imposed standards that few people could; not to mention the disgust that had to be endured “in order not to lose our university degree” or “in order not to go to prison”, the theft of our wages and clothing allowances or personal hygiene products. This was undoubtedly as hypocritical as the “work makes you free” posters, only without the posters.
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