The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (19 page)

"These aren't pilots," another called. "They look like prisoners. My God, I think they're Jews!"

Then another voice called down, "Halt! Do not move! You are surrounded! Drop your weapons!"

Boris and his men looked up from the bottom and sides of the gorge. Confusion gripped them as they looked into the muzzles of fifty two automatic weapons trained down on them.

A long second passed. Then Boris yelled, "Run for cover!"

At the same moment, the Major who had screamed the commands fired his pistol.

There was little cover to run for. Most of the Jews were still on the walls of the cliff, climbing down the difficult face when the Germans opened fire. Most were unable to return a single shot. The few men who reached the bottom were able to duck into the wrecked train for momentary protection. In a few minutes, when all their comrades had been shot off the wall, they found themselves the target of overwhelming odds, four men and a woman under the guns of fifty two Germans.

For the next few minutes, high caliber ammunition showered the remnants of the train-the remnants in the train. Most devastating were the grenades dropped into the wreckage from above. When the partisans tried to return fire, they only disclosed their positions and invited a new barrage.

Finally, no gunfire returned from the wreckage.

There were nineteen dead partisans and one severely wounded. Then a single shot rang out-Boris Spovinski finished what four German bullets had not quite accomplished.

That evening, in the officers' club, the Germans celebrated the deaths of a hundred Jews from Warsaw, thirty six unfortunate Polish collaborators and train crew and twenty partisans.

No one knew, yet, that all the partisans were Jews.

The exact facts did not get back to the family camp until Gregor took a newspaper from Kiev to Father Peter, who took it to Ivan, who in turn carried it to the family camp. Until then, the partisans knew only that their brethren had not returned to the second camp.

Moshe, Uri, Solomon, Dovka, Rachel, Ivan and several others sat in the main meeting hut, mourning. Twenty of their friends were dead-among them Boris.

"God has given us good fortune until now," Uri said.

"Yes," Moshe agreed. "But that makes this all the more painful. We've had few injuries and only three deaths. I guess this was bound to happen sooner of later."

"But how did it happen?" Dovka asked. "They were waiting. We stepped right into their trap. Do you suppose Gregor informed on them?"

Ivan dreaded this question. He'd asked it himself. After all, it was he who persuaded the Jews to take another gentile, an entire gentile family, into their confidence.

"But how did they know where we would strike?" Sol asked. "That decision wasn't made until after our people returned from Kiev. Gregor knew nothing of that. No, this was more than simple betrayal. We betrayed ourselves by forgetting our enemies aren't fools." He paused thoughtfully, "If it wasn't a trap from the beginning, why did the train have no pilots-only Jews on board? It's like the newspaper says..."

"They could have changed their plans after finding out," Dovka interrupted, arguing, "and Gregor could still have been in on it!"

"I know how you feel about gentiles," Ivan said, "and especially Gregor. But I think he was not involved. Gregor has no idea of how many of us there are or that we have more than one camp. Father Peter and I and Sosha would all have been arrested already. The Germans were clever, yes-but I think they acted without Gregor's help."

The others were not convinced.

After a short silence, Sol spoke, "We are not victims of Goering's ego, but our own. Our motives were stupid. This was a mission of vengeance, not necessity."

"In these times, vengeance is a necessity," Rachel angrily interjected. "And would we feel any better if they had died for another reason? We have a right to grieve, but let's keep a proper perspective. The world has condemned our people for centuries of not fighting back-now you would condemn us for our retaliation. You have no right to add guilt to our grief!"

"And what of the Jews on the train; are we to feel no guilt over plunging them to their deaths?"

"May I ask you, Solomon," Rachel replied, "where do you think they were headed. Yes, I grieve for them, too. But we did not kill them! The Nazis could have trapped us without filling the train with Jews. That was their sick little joke! They probably made wagers on whether they'd make it to Babi Yar. Think of the terror and pain we saved them. Sol, you know what that trip into the ravine would have been like for them. Would you wish that on anyone? Would you go through that again for an extra few hours of life? Do you have any doubt that they were headed for the same thing?"

Rachel was being purposely brutal. Everyone in the room was headed toward the same depression as Solomon. They had been shocked into it-they would have to be shocked out of it. Rachel was sensitive to the complications of grief turned on one's self.

Dovka went around the now silent room, pouring fresh tea.

Sol sat looking into his cup. The perplexing, haunting thought returned to him as it had frequently in the past... Why me? Why me? Why was I chosen for life while all those others were murdered? Why me at Babi Yar? Why me instead of the twenty on the mission? Why me instead of those on the train?

Dovka poured tea into his empty glass, snapping him back from his thoughts. He looked up at her.

"Thank you, Dovka."

She smiled back at him briefly and went on to the others.

Solomon's eyes scanned the room. Did anyone else feel guilty? As his gaze traveled the room, he realized that almost everyone here was a remnant. No one in that room had any family left. All of their pasts had been annihilated, murdered, buried or burned by the Nazis. Not because they had been enemies. Not because they had been hostile to the Germans; only because they had been Jews.

Why have we been spared? Why has God done this to us? No answer came. Where is God? Can it be He doesn't know? No answer. His thoughts rambled. And as usual with such thoughts, some were logical and some were not; some were realistic, some not; some made sense, most did not. Are we, the survivors, the fortunate or the unfortunate? Have those who died earned the right to go somewhere better? Must we earn the right to die? Is that God's plan? The faithful would say we have to earn a better world. How hard it is to keep faith in these times! Perhaps God is testing our faith. Will we ever pass the test? My parents, grandpa, my brothers and sister-did they pass the test-or was it failure? Why them and not me? If the reward is after death, why does the Torah tell us, "Choose Life"? God gives us the Law, "Choose Life." Is that why we cling? Are we too obedient to die-or do we lack the faith to die well?

He found no answers.

Someone's sighing brought Sol back to the reality of the room. Everyone was silent with thought-looking into cups, gazing into space-asking themselves their own questions... Were they finding answers?

Why do we choose life? But I didn't choose! It was chosen for me! Thrust upon me! Some of these people are here because they chose and acted. They escaped by their own cunning and action. But all I did was slip. They were killing all of us-and only I slipped. Pure luck! Pure luck? To be one in a hundred thousand-was it chance or was I chosen?

The last thought overwhelmed him.

How presumptuous! How can I think that?

But the thought was there...

It was an overcast day.

A constant, chilling wind blew through Babi Yar, biting hard at the naked bodies of the "enemies of the Reich" still being marched to the pit.

The same wind carried its persistent message out of the ravine, over the woods, to the church of Father Peter. He, too, sat in deep depression, distraught over the catastrophic mission. He wondered if the Jews felt they had been betrayed. He had faith that neither Gregor nor his family had betrayed them, but how could the Jews be expected to believe? He'd come to understand why Jews doubted the good will of Christians. He could not escape the sound of gunfire that drifted to his ears daily.

"Dear God, let that sound drift to the ears of the Holy See... Let the Vatican hear, Dear God. They are silent enough, so they should be able to hear. Let them hear, too! Then, perhaps, they will not be so silent," he muttered through clenched teeth toward the icon hanging on his chamber wall.

He could hold back no longer. Again he wrote to his superiors.

The same wind that plagued Father Peter brought a violent storm to the area. It was nearly the end of the winter, but twenty inches of snow fell on the family camp and the wind drifted it to several feet more in places. It made travel impossible. Ivan was stranded at the family camp. The total isolation depressed the partisans further. A mission would have diverted their thoughts, but the weather kept them confined with their torment.

Solomon was preoccupied with the ghosts of all those who he'd lost. The thoughts drove him deeper and deeper into thoughts of death. Perhaps I've not given the Angel of Death a fair chance to reach me. Have I unconsciously avoided hazardous situations? Have I volunteered often enough? I've never hesitated to go when called on... Why have I been so lucky? Not even a scratch... Or is it more than luck? Death seems to ignore me. Does Death only want those God loves?

Rachel felt his melancholia, his total immersion in survivor's guilt and torment; common among those whose loved ones and friends had perished leaving them the only remaining.

"Solomon, we have an obligation," she said one day. "We've an obligation to those whose lives were stolen from them. I do not believe God has forgotten them-or us. And we must never forget them. We must survive to make sure the rest of the world never forgets them. And believe me, if we are not there to remind the world, the world will forget as quickly as possible. We must survive to be the conscience of the world. Our lives have gained meaning through their deaths. We cannot shirk our responsibility now."

Sol heard but did not answer.

There was sadness in Rachel's eyes. She put her head on Sol's shoulder, her arms about him.

"Poor Solomon, my poor Solomon. It's all hitting you at once. You've put it out of your mind all these months and now it's pouring over you-drowning you."

The storm came and passed.

Sol's depression persisted.

A path was finally cleared to the second camp, but they had to wait to send out a mission. It would have been too easy to follow them back in the snow.

Sol volunteered for the first mission and for as many missions after that as he could. By April of 1942, he was a seasoned guerrilla, having gone on almost every operation since the train incident. At times he wouldn't reach the family camp for two weeks, coming in from one mission and volunteering for the next one, waiting to go out.

At first, Rachel and Moshe and the others were concerned. They feared that he didn't care whether he survived, but then they saw that he always acted with caution. On the fifth mission after the storm, he had to kill. It had been a routine operation. He and two other men had been out on reconnaissance when they were surprised by a German coming around a curve on a motorcycle. He was alone, the sidecar empty. He almost ran into them, swerving out of reflex and running his cycle into a ditch. His reflex action proved to be his last. Sol leaped into the ditch and onto the German before either realized what had happened. On top of the cyclist, pistol in hand, Sol pulled the trigger.

Afterwards, Sol trembled. He'd killed before, but always felt some remorse. This time he felt nothing. He did it without hesitation. He didn't like it-nor dislike it.

Do others kill so coldly, he wondered?

What happened to the boy, Solomon Shalensky?

By the end of April, much of the snow started to melt in the forests. The weather was much warmer. It was easier to move about now. Missions were easier to carry out. The Jewish guerrillas attacked supply convoys, sabotaged troop trains, plundered and burned warehouses; they attacked small German patrols whenever and wherever they ran across them. They also took heavier losses themselves. Losing ten to twenty percent of their force became common. But they took comfort in the motto, "At least we die fighting the Nazis." They didn't think about the future. The Germans were winning in Europe and Russia; and if the Germans were victors, there would be no future for them. It was only a matter of time before the Jews were wiped out completely.

At least these Jews had the opportunity to strike back on behalf of themselves and the millions who had no chance to resist.

As the missions became more frequent and more hazardous, Sol and many others began avoiding close relationships. The injury or death of a comrade was painful enough-the injury or loss of a close friend was devastating.

Rachel recognized Solomon's withdrawal and fought against it. When he tried to go off by himself she forced her company on him. "I'll not let you walk off and brood alone. Sol, you have no special claim on tragedy, so stop feeling sorry for yourself." At first her behavior angered Sol, but she knew that even hostility was better than self pity.

Rachel's actions were not all benevolent. She needed this close relationship. Though it seemed an eternity, it was only a few months since she and the others had lost their loved ones. In many ways, Sol reminded her of Avraham, her fiance'. Perhaps that was what attracted her to him in the beginning. Both were sensitive, considerate and respectful. Now he tried to suppress these characteristics to protect him from further hurt. She was determined to keep them alive in him.

Sol didn't have the formal education Avraham had, but he was well read on his own. He had a practical "street education" so necessary for surviving the poverty of Kiev's Podol. Physically, Sol was taller, slimmer. His facial features were more distinctive. Sol was more thoughtful, less impulsive, but both had a determination to see things to completion. Both were highly principled, intolerant of injustice.