Resistance (17 page)

Women's escapes into the Belorussian forest were motivated by a mixture of fear about impending death by the Germans, death by starvation, and by varied humiliating pressures on women's daily existence. More so than their Gentile counterparts, Jewish women lived with these realities. Yet most forest women shared the desire to join the partisans, to avenge the cruelties and humiliations that were an integral part of the German occupation.

In most wartime forests, anti-Semitism and opposition to Jewish women's involvement went hand in hand. Some partisans saw all women as “service givers,” there to attach herself to a partisan and to sexually satisfy him. A woman who had no male protector faced grave problems.
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There were differences and similarities in the fate of Gentile and Jewish women who had reached the Belorussian forests. Gentile women were more likely to come to the forests because they wanted to fight the Germans. That is, they were there by choice. Jewish women, on the other hand, escaped into these forests to avoid being murdered. For many of these Jewish women, acceptance into a partisan unit was contingent upon their willingness to become mistresses of partisan commanders. These partisans' ability to accept women into their unit depended on the amount of power they had. In the forests only the powerful partisans could acquire mistresses. Most women did not qualify as mistresses. Some were accepted into a partisan detachment because they were good cooks, nurses, physicians, or simply morale-boosters.
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Nonetheless, male partisans had little respect for women, and Jewish women were less respected than Gentile women. Since Jewish women were often the cooks, men who wanted to be fed well had to treat them kindly; but all women had less power than men and were treated with less consideration.

In part, a woman's status depended on the position of the man to whom she was attached. For example, a woman married to a doctor had a higher status. This was apparent in Mina Volkowisky's case, whose husband was a physician. The Volkowiskys came to Belorussia because of their families. As a recent graduate of the French medical school in Paris, Dr. Volkowisky found work in a
hospital close to the
Å»
yrowice estate. Several villages and patches of forests surrounded their temporary dwelling.

For Mina and her husband, the 1939 Soviet acquisition of half of Poland came as a surprise. Even more unexpected to them was the German attack upon the Soviet Union. Confronted by a rapid German expansion, the Volkowiskys relocated to Slonim, to be closer to their families. Shortages of physicians facilitated the doctor's employment in a local clinic. Mina and her husband moved to her parents' home, only to be relocated again to the newly established ghetto. This in turn was followed by an Aktion. Among the victims was Dr. Volkowisky's brother, who left behind a young wife known for her intellect and communist leanings. She, too, moved into the modest home shared by Mina's family.

Dr. Volkowisky worked in the ghetto clinic, as did Mina's mother, a dentist. For a while her father continued to run the family's tannery. Except for Mina, all the adults were employed. Mina wondered why the Slonim Jews refused to accept the obvious—that the Germans were determined to destroy them. As the only one in her family who was not working, Mina closely observed her surroundings and was surprised how detached the Slonim Jews were from the circumstances around them. For example, Mina's mother met a Jewish woman who had survived a recent German execution by managing to crawl out of the collective grave. She reached the hospital, begging for help and telling whoever would listen about what had happened. Her freedom did not last. Denounced, the woman was arrested and never heard from again. Despite the rising tide of human sufferings, the ghetto inmates continued to dismiss what they were facing.

Mina noticed that some of the people who left the ghetto for outside work failed to return. When Mina shared her observations with her husband, he tried to reassure her. As a doctor he was extremely busy and overwhelmed by the suffering he saw around him and by his inability to improve the situation. Still, with time, he was comforted by the limited help he offered. Mina learned that her beautiful sister-in-law had worked at the Beutelager and suspected that she had supplied newly emergent partisan groups with things she stole from there. One day this sister-in-law left the ghetto, only to resurface after the war.

Mina was good friends with a communist sympathizer named Dr. Slonimski. From Slonimski Mina heard that her sister-in-law had joined a group of Soviet partisans who she had over time
supplied with valuable goods she stole from Beutelager. Mina confided in Slonimski that she was also eager to join a Soviet partisan detachment. The doctor discouraged her, arguing that she and her husband would not fit into a partisan unit because they were too bourgeois. He advised her, instead, to find a safe place with a peasant who would hide her and her husband for the duration of the war. But Mina was not interested in hiding. “I had too much life in me.” She goes on:

Another friend told me about a relative of ours in the woods who, if we would reach the Andrejewskie forests, would help us join his group. . . . This appealed to me. . . . Later on a policeman I knew suggested that we should leave the ghetto and join partisans who would protect us. He was willing to help. When I shared this information with my family they were angry with me. They were convinced that in the end this policeman would denounce us. Slowly, in contrast to these reactions, my husband went along with my ideas. What helped us also was the news that a group of partisans attacked a small town, Kosovo, released some Jews, and brought them to the forest. This was a known and positive incident.

The loss of her father during an Aktion convinced Mina and her friends—a group of seven, two women and five men, most of them young people who worked at the hospital—to leave the ghetto. They planned to come back later for her mother. They had been told that a Russian doctor made arrangements with a farmer to pick them up and waited for him at the designated place. It became dark and no one came. None of them wanted to return to the ghetto. “We walked towards the Andrejewskie forests and met two men on bicycles. These were Belorussian partisans who were a part of the Chapajev brigade. They wanted to take my husband and me to the brigade, but they had to get permission first. They arranged for us sleeping quarters. The rest of this group, they advised to go for help to the local partisan center.”

In the morning, these men came back to the Volkowiskys with an invitation from Chapajev, the commander of the brigade, to join their unit. They accepted this offer and almost immediately the Chapajev brigade was attacked by the Germans. Soon the injured partisans had to relocate to safer places. Dr. Volkowisky had to accompany those who depended on his aid. This meant that Mina was separated from her husband. When the situation appeared more
dangerous, Chapajev gave the order to split his brigade into smaller parts. Mina ended up in a group that included Krysia, who was Chapajev's mistress, and a number of his best fighters.

Krysia and Mina woke up one morning and discovered that Chapajev had disappeared. Absent also were his fighters. Left behind, in addition to Mina and Krysia, was a woman who was a cook, her teenage son, and two more partisans who were not seasoned fighters. Krysia and Mina were showered with complaints and a range of anti-Semitic accusations by the remaining Chapajev partisans. In response Krysia and Mina detached themselves from this group.

Krysia and Mina could easily pass for Gentile. Mina suggested that they approach some peasants who could help them. They seemed to be moving in circles. But Krysia was mistrustful of the local population and refused to seek their help. Next the two women met several partisans who seemed suspicious of them. When one of these men inquired what their nationality was, Mina automatically identified herself as a Pole. One of the men then recognized Krysia as Chapajev's mistress. Of the two, only Krysia owned a small gun. These partisans had promised to return promptly with an answer from their commander on what to do with them.

Left alone, the two women soon heard people approaching. Mina had guessed that these were the Soviet partisans. Krysia disagreed, suspecting they were Germans. Krysia grabbed her gun and disappeared into the woods. Mina was right; the partisans who asked them to wait had returned. Although surprised by Krysia's absence, they asked Mina to join them. As they moved around in a group, Mina was impressed with these men's sense of direction. They also knew how and whom to approach for food. Before long, news reached them that Krysia had been shot by Russian partisans.

The partisans who took in Mina treated her well. Together they would visit all kinds of different Soviet groups and their headquarters. During some of these stops, Mina heard horrible stories about the mistreatments of Jews in these forests. Russian partisans liked to repeat their accusations that if caught, Jews would divulge all and any military secrets. Many partisans blamed the Jews for all and any misfortune.

One of these newly encountered partisan groups included a Polish woman who knew that Mina was Jewish. This woman partisan shared this information with others, which radically changed their attitude toward Mina. In fact, some of Mina's so-called
friends would openly refer to her as “the dirty Jew.” Eventually, their anti-Semitic attitude dominated Mina's entire existence. With the winter rapidly approaching, Mina's partisans were ordered to divide up into smaller groups. None of the groups were willing to share their place with Mina. The woman who had identified Mina as Jewish felt sorry for her. She advised Mina to go to the headquarters and to report that she was looking for her husband and that she needed help to find him.

“Nikolai Bobkov, the commander of the Sovieckaja Belorus detachment, agreed to meet me,” recalled Mina. “After he confiscated my watch, he began to ask questions. In the end, he told me that he did not know what to do with me.” Another Russian, a man named Kasian, who knew of her difficulties, was willing to stand up for her. He had known Mina and her husband. “Kasian guaranteed for me,” recalls Mina. “He assured the commander that he knew me and my husband and that eventually we would be an asset to his group. This helped a lot.”

For the time being, Bobkov was willing to keep Mina at the headquarters with him. Still, things were in flux. Next morning the partisans were getting ready for departure. No one said anything about what to do with Mina. “I was standing there and I was too shy to say anything. The Polish woman who told them that I was Jewish urged me to follow them. She must have felt guilty. Fortunately, Bobkov turned around and called me to join them. I did.”

With time, a kind of friendship developed between Mina and Bobkov. The two could even overtly discuss anti-Semitism and the mistreatment of Jews by the Soviet partisans. Sensitive to anti-Jewish prejudice, Mina was surrounded by it. The Soviets took from the Jews whatever they could, including their precious arms. The commissar in Bobkov's detachment, Yasha Gusev, who was in charge of the political policies of this unit, was an avid anti-Semite and a brutal man. Mina saw how Gusev would strip Jewish arrivals of all their possessions and how he assigned them to the most humiliating jobs.

Often the prejudices of the Soviet partisans went beyond humiliation. “In this area the Germans would give arms to villages supposedly so that they could defend themselves against the partisans. The Germans called it self-defense. One day Bobkov ordered his partisans to burn such a village. Among these partisans was a Jewish boy from Byten. He went with them on this mission. In the morning when the partisans returned they reported that they did
burn the entire village but one of the partisans, the Jew, did not want to do it so they shot him. Bobkov explained to me that he could do nothing against this anti-Semitism, which expressed the anger of the people, because Jews were denouncing the partisans and the people took revenge.”

Eventually, Mina was able to reunite with her husband. “When I stayed at the headquarters without my husband, it was unpleasant. Most of the partisans would have liked to sleep with me. They were watching each other. I was relieved when someone brought the news that Dr. Volkowisky was not far from us. Kasian, the man who initially stood up for me, volunteered to bring my husband to the Bobkov detachment.”

After Kasian helped reunite the couple, he himself had to move to the Andrejewskie forests. The Volkowiskys were ordered to relocate to another area. Somehow they lost touch with the Bobkov detachment. Eventually, the Volkowiskys were directed to a central place from which they were supposed to reconnect with their former detachment. “In this place we met Bobkov. He was happy to see me. He had been searching for me . . . constantly asking around for Mina. They brought him several Minas, but he was disappointed that it was not me. He liked me and tried to convince me that he was not an anti-Semite. He also liked and approved of my husband. But his attitudes towards the Jews in general never improved, on the contrary, he seemed to be more anti-Semitic, a fact which he failed to recognize.”

This was the end of 1942, when an order from Stalin came to reunite the different groups. This order saved them. “My husband became the chief physician of this brigade. This is where we stayed till 1944. . . . Bobkov was glad to have us, glad to renew our friendship. He was also proud that his brigade had a well-trained physician. In fact, he never tired of reminding his partisans that a well-trained commander, like he, a pilot by profession, could be easily replaced. But a physician was a rare find, indeed!”

As the war was winding down, the Volkowiskys met twice with General Sikorski, the head of the entire region, which consisted of several partisan groups in Polesie. The first encounter took place several months before the end of the war. “I never met him before,” remembers Mina.

This general came with his entire staff. Our headquarters was assembled there to greet him. . . . Such an ugly man, like an ape, fat,
horrible looking. He sat next to me during the meal and started to talk. He assured me that he liked me and he promised to help my husband advance, even though I didn't ask for anything. He argued that soon the war will end and before this happens, he would like for us to move to his place. I told him that we are staying here with Bobkov and we intend to stay. But Sikorski insisted that with the end of the war, by giving my husband a higher position, my husband would become prominent after the war. The only thing we have to do is move to his place. I said no, that we wanted to remain where we were. But he continued saying that he will extend a formal invitation for us to change places. Of course, knowing how some partisans had a tendency to brag, I did not take it seriously and forgot about it.