Joseph Balinki was confined in a prisoner of war camp in
Zakyna by the Nazis for turning a picture of Hitler to the wall during a scripture
lesson. Zakyna was in the mountains of South Poland. In Chapter One he escapes by
knocking out a Nazi guard and stealing his clothes. He walks out of the prison camp as
one of the guards.
Chapter two opens with Joseph walking
through the village. He is challenged by a drunken German soldier who wants a
cigarette. Joseph ignores him and keeps walking. He starts to run and the German runs
after him. As he reaches the edge of the village, he notices a mail truck. Joseph
dives behind a wall of snow and waits. He jumps in a crate without wheels and hides.
Crates are loaded on top of him and around him and covered with a tarpaulin ---- a heavy
cloth. He then feels the crate moving. He lifts back the tarpaulin and finds that
he is in a type of cable car made with pulleys; its purpose is to transport mail and
luggage from one side of the steep valley to another. Suddenly the cable car stops, and
he is headed back to the road where he started. When it stops, he hears men put on
another crate. It banged against his foot, causing pain, but he kept his mouth shut.
Then the cable car started off again and in a few minutes, the balance lift, which is
the descending car which balances the weight of the car he is in, was seen gliding
past. That meant that he was halfway there. He didn't know if there were soldiers on
the other side. He didn't have a weapon, and he knew that there was no way he was going
to escape detection. So, he threw back the tarpaulin and waited for the cable car to
come to the end of the trip.
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