The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (6 page)

"I remembered the drop-off had been to my right when we marched in. Now it was at my left. I began to crawl slowly, stopping often to listen. At last, I reached one of the large dirt mounds. I crawled to the opening between the two and dared to stand up. Again I listened. Silence! I looked back. I couldn't see into the dark pit. I realized I was totally alone in the world. I thought, my God, everyone, my family, my friends the only people I really know and can trust are in that pit... I can only be sure of enemies out there... I've just been reborn out into a hostile world-naked-without anything-anyone... Alone!

"I escaped into the field where we'd been made to undress. I could see a little better, but that brought with it the fear of being seen. I stayed in the shadows and looked around. There was no sign of life. Then I saw what I hoped were piles of clothing. I rummaged through a pile near me putting on anything that looked like it might fit. I found two shoes, not a pair, socks, trousers, I put on two shirts and found a coat. I felt warmer.

"I crossed the field toward where I remembered some woods being. Passing under the branches, I could feel the terrain steepen. I didn't dare stop climbing. Fatigue pulled at me and the climb was slow. Many times I fell, ran into trees or tumbled into brush that tore at my skin, but I had to keep climbing.

"Finally, I was out. A clearing let me look back. From where I stood, I could see across the ravine. On the other side, the entire sky was lit by the fires of the Kreshchatik. Babi Yar was a deep black hole. There were a few fires below where, I assume, German and Ukrainian soldiers camped or maybe other Jews waited for tomorrow's 'deportations.' My fatigue caught up with me. I found some underbrush, crawled beneath it and fell into deep sleep."

Sosha interrupted, "Perhaps a little more tea?"

Sol nodded.

Ivan picked up the chinik and felt it. "This has cooled off." He walked to the samovar and filled the chinik from it. The hot fluid steamed as it ran from the spout into the teapot. After all the glasses were refilled, Sol drank and then went on to tell how he awoke with a start the next morning. It was the sound of machine gun fire that brought him back from sleep. He couldn't see the pit, but knew what was happening. Twenty seconds of firing, a few minutes of silence and more machine gun firing. How many would die today? He peered out of the bushes. No one was in sight. He crept out and stood up.

Looking across Babi Yar toward Kiev, he could see people sitting on the other side, looking down into the ravine. Some had picnic baskets and blankets; many had families with them.

"They had a wonderful time watching the slaughter of the Jews of Kiev." Solomon said with bitterness.

Sol ran across the small clearing at the top of the ravine and into the woods. He ran until he was exhausted. He tripped over stones and stumbled through the underbrush. Finally, he fell headlong into the wild growth. He lay there breathing deeply for a long time, while his senses returned. This would not do. He had to move with caution. What if he ran into Germans? He would be right back in Babi Yar. Maybe they would shoot him on the spot. He decided that if he were captured he would try to escape and force them to shoot.

Getting up, he leaned against a tree. From the sun and shadows and the distant sound of shooting, he determined which way he wanted to go. Babi Yar was surrounded by Kiev and farms. The least habitation was to the west. He put the sun to his back and started to move with caution. He stayed in the woods as long as they lasted. He came to a sparsely populated area. He avoided the roads by cutting across fields or gardens. Soon he had passed through the only populated part of his escape route.

Now he had large, uninhabited areas to cross. Again he took to the forests, to ditches. When there were fields, he crossed only unharvested ones so the crops could offer him protection from view. He followed hedgerows and windbreaks. Occasionally, he would glean potatoes, onions or beets from the edge of a field.

Thus he traveled into the night.

Suddenly a realization came to him. Where am I escaping to? Where is there for a Jew to go? In all directions - there is no refuge... Exhausted, thirsty and near shock, he fell into a deep ditch. It was the second time in two days he was knocked unconscious by a fall into an opening in the ground. There he lay until Ivan found him at dawn the next morning.

The three men were Ukrainian soldiers, Jews who had been conscripted into the Soviet Army. They'd come from various units captured by the Germans. The first thing the Germans did was separate the Jews from the rest of the prisoners of war. They were loaded onto trucks, under guard, to be taken to an execution point. All three had been on the last vehicle of the death convoy, along with about fifty other Jewish prisoners. Suspecting they were headed for execution, they decided unanimously to try escape if an opportunity presented.

There was a motorcycle and sidecar with a machine gunner following the convoy. Each truck carried four Germans: two in the cab and two armed guards, one at each rear corner of the truck where the prisoners were packed in. The captives had been told that anyone talking would be shot, but there were too many in the truck for two soldiers to watch. In very discreet whispers, they made their plans. Approaching the Kiev vicinity, headed for Babi Yar, they passed through a series of forests. The road twisted and curved quite severely. It was probably the best chance they would get. At a predetermined signal, they made their move.

Their actions were lightning swift. They hit the two guards who had been lulled into carelessness by the long, boring ride. Stripping their weapons from them in seconds, they threw the flailing bodies off the back of the vehicle into the path of the motorcycle, which had been following too closely for a long time. In the reflex swerving and braking of the motorcycle to avoid the bodies, its riders were sufficiently distracted to let the prisoners get off the first bursts of gunfire killing the cyclists and fallen guards. At the same moment, the other prisoners jumped over the sides of the truck, slowing to make the sharp curves of the road. Most of the prisoners were off and into the woods before anyone up front had a chance to know what happened. As the truck bed emptied, a burst was fired into the cab.

The first fugitives off the trucks ran to the dead cyclists and guards and confiscated the rest of their equipment, weapons and ammunition. In all, the whole escape took less than twenty seconds. By the time the convoy got stopped, the men were out of sight and the Germans couldn't go after them for fear of losing the rest of their prisoners. The getaway was very smooth.

Most escapees separated, but thirteen stayed together. The weapons and munitions were in their possession-three machine guns, two pistols and a small supply of bullets. With those, they decided to carry the war to their enemy.

For the next three, days they moved continuously through the forests. In running from the Germans, they came across a band of Ukrainian partisans. Their paths crossed purely by accident and both groups considered it extremely good fortune. The partisans numbered about thirty and the thirteen Jewish escapees wanted to join forces with them.

The Jews were still in their Soviet Army uniforms and the partisans realized these men were probably well trained-battle seasoned men. Many questioned the Jews-over and over-about their escape and all they had gone through before and after. They were finally satisfied that the fugitives where what they claimed-escaped prisoners of war, Jews, who wanted to join in the fight against the Nazis.

Not until they convinced the Jews that they believed their story did the partisans ask them to turn over their weapons. "We would be proud to have you with us, but we must ask that you turn over your weapons until we return to our camp. It is a precaution we must take. And beside that, we will distribute weapons when you go out on raids."

Overjoyed that they had been accepted into the organization, the Jews did not hesitate to relinquish their arms.

They were taken to the encampment.

"Now," the leader of the partisans began, "we must get you out of those uniforms-what's left of them. Follow this man to our supply cache. He will get you other clothes and show you where to bury your uniforms."

They were led off into the woods.

Moshe Pinsker, an orthodox Jew who had been the brunt of Christian anti-Semitism all his life and was sensitive and skeptical of all non-Jews and strangers, told his companions, Boris and Uri, "I feel uneasy, don't ask me why. I kept the pistol and bullets I'd taken off the Germans. The further we walk with that partisan, the less I liked it. I feel the pistol under my shirt. I'm glad I kept it. It has a full clip of bullets in it and I have one extra clip in my pocket. It makes me feel a little better, but not enough."

They'd been near the front of the group when starting into the forest; but as the feeling got stronger, they started to slip further back, whispering Moshe's fears to others as they passed. Most paid them no mind. After covering a little over a kilometer only these two, Boris and Uri had lagged back with Moshe. Now at the rear of the group, they turned off the indistinct path. They followed the sounds of the others, but at about thirty yards to the rear and side, Moshe repeated his fears, whispering, "I tell you there is something terribly wrong here. I would think the trail to their supplies would be frequently traveled. That path shows no sign of heavy traffic. And I cannot believe they would keep their supplies so far from their encampment. I don't trust them, but I don't know how to convince the others."

Boris interrupted, "'I think you are overly suspicious, Moshe. I think we should catch up with the others."

It was at that very moment that the three heard voices. The others had come to a clearing and there found three more partisans waiting for them with the automatic weapons they had taken from them earlier. Creeping closer they heard one say, "All right, you Jews, get your asses over there. Men, let's make this fast. We have their equipment. There's no reason to burden ourselves with these Yids any longer." If there was anymore said, it was drowned out by the noise of guns. When the firing stopped, all they heard was the laughter and joking of the Ukrainians.

Moshe, Boris and Uri ran.

Rachel was from Minsk. She was the only child of a third generation rabbi of that city. Her mother had died in 1939 of cancer; and though the orthodox tradition encouraged a widower to seek a new wife after a reasonable period of morning, her father had not been able even to consider it. Rachel ran his household and filled in the duties of rebbitsin for the congregation whenever she could.

When the war broke out between Russia and Germany in June of 1941, Minsk had a Jewish population of 90,000-about one third of the city's population. On June 28th, 1941, just three days after Rachel's nineteenth birthday and the announcement of her engagement to a young local merchant, Avraham Rakitch, the Germans occupied Minsk.

Within days, the city's commandant ordered all males between the ages of 15 and 45 to "report and register." Both Rachel's father and Avraham were included in that group. Since evasion was punishable by death, an estimated forty thousand men reported. The mass of humanity marched to a field at Drozdy, just outside the city. There the forty thousand men were divided into three groups: Soviet military men caught up in the occupation, Jews and non-Jewish civilians. For five days, they were kept in that field for processing, during which time Rachel had no news of her men. On the fifth day, all the non-Jewish civilians, who could prove they were neither military personnel nor Communist party members, were allowed to return to their homes.

After release of the non-Jews, the Germans commanded all of the Jewish lawyers, dentists, physicians, educators, rabbis and professional men to make themselves known. Several thousand men qualified, among them Rachel's father. From that group only the physicians were taken aside. The rest were marched to a nearby forest where they were machine-gunned to death-but not before they were made to dig their own mass grave.

The remaining Jews were crammed into Minsk prison. It took several days before news could be smuggled out to Rachel and the other Jewish mothers, wives and daughters as to the fate of their loved ones.

Rachel set aside her own grief, comforting many of the hysterical women in her murdered father's congregation. Not until August 20th did the Germans release the imprisoned Jews. Thousands had already died. Upon his release, Rachel's fianc e, Avraham Rakitch, went directly to her and demanded she prepare to leave the city with him. Earlier that day, the city commandant had issued an order establishing the Minsk Ghetto, declaring that all Jews had to move into the confined area.

"These Germans are not human. They are not the civilized people we have been led to believe they are. Get together what you can carry - take nothing you don't absolutely need. We are getting out - now! Tomorrow may be too late. You can't believe how they treated us in that prison. They hate us Jews worse than the Russians do!"

"But, Avraham, I have a responsibility to..."

"Your responsibility now is to salvage your own life, Rachel. It will do no good for you to die with those foolish enough to stay. And believe me, many are going to try to escape. It's all we talked of in prison. Now get your things together. We leave as soon as it gets dark."

Rachel and Avraham fled the city that night and became forest people-a new, growing society of Jews. They traveled through the forests by night, heading south in hopes of finding some partisans to join. After five nights of travel, they crossed the border into the Ukraine. Though still behind German lines, they were getting closer to the front. But the front was now moving to the south and east faster than they were.

After two days travel into the Ukraine, they finally came across a partisan band. The couple was in the forest, lost-exhausted. She was falling asleep when Avraham shook her awake. He hushed her before she could speak. "Someone is coming," he whispered. She could hear footsteps through the dry brush on the forest floor. Avraham motioned her to follow him into some high weeds. There was no trail. If these were Germans the only hope was to be under cover. It sounded like a whole army approaching. No effort was made to quiet their steps. Certain that they were the Nazis, the couple was frightened.