The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (26 page)

And again Solomon found himself asking, "Why? Why me? Why not me?"

The winter of 1943 made an abrupt and ferocious debut. Autumn of 1942 had hardly arrived when snow began to fall on Russia and the Ukraine. By the end of October, the forest floor was carpeted white. The Jewish community's attention narrowed to problems of food and shelter.

Elsewhere in the Soviet Union, nature was about to play a decisive role in world history. A year earlier, she saved a nation under siege; now she would strike a blow that would eventually bring down the aggressor nation.

"Operation Barbarossa" began on June 22, 1941, when Hitler hurled the most powerful army the world had ever seen against Stalin's ill-equipped, poorly trained and ineptly led troops. He attacked the Russians on a front that spread from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. An enormous force of more than two hundred and fifty divisions was set in motion to race for Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Stalingrad and all territories between. Barbarossa's objective was not just to gain these territories, but to destroy, totally, the Red Army. Had nature not sided with the Soviets, Barbarossa would have succeeded.

It was Hitler's idea that Barbarossa would accomplish all its objectives within eight months, putting the Soviet Union at the mercy of the German Reich. His timetable was delayed from the beginning. Barbarossa was to be launched in May of 1941, but because of misfortunes on other fronts-especially Mussolini's problems in Greece and at Belgrade-the starting date was postponed. When the Germans began their move on Moscow and Leningrad, winter entered the battle on the side of the Russians. The first snows of the Russian winter were falling.

The modern and ferocious German war machine bogged down in snowdrifts; men and animals froze. Supplies couldn't keep up with the advancing armies; men and machines became stranded without fuel, ammunitions, warm clothes or sufficient food. For the first time, the Germans found themselves at a disadvantage. German losses became heavier and harder to replace. By the time winter had set in at the end of 1941, Hitler had lost more than three quarters of a million men to the Russian campaign. That was only about a fourth of the original force he had thrown into the campaign. Seven hundred and fifty thousand Germans dead and the fury of the Russian winter brought the momentum of the Nazi advance to a standstill. An age old Russian strategy was to work again. They had traded space for time, strategically retreating over vast wastelands while they equipped and trained men for the eventual counterattack in their heartland.

Now the Russians could start trading lives with the Germans. They were willing to do it because they knew they were fighting for their very survival in their own homeland. Under these circumstances the Germans stood no chance. They had difficulty transporting replacements to the front now, while the Russians had endless replacements, taking them right out of the population as needed. The Russians could trade five lives for every German if need be and still outnumber them.

While the German mechanized divisions stood with their radiators frozen and fuel tanks empty, the Russian cavalry, six hundred thousand strong, galloped out of the forests to surprise and slaughter the Germans, paralyzed by the weather.

By the third week of October, 1941, the German Army was within one hundred kilometers of Moscow. It was probably the worst moment of the war for the Russians. Stalin himself directed the battle for the defense of Moscow from the Kremlin. It was Russia's moment of truth. If Moscow fell, the Kremlin would fall and with it the entire Soviet Union. Barbarossa would be realized. The retreat of the Russians would have to end at Moscow's doorstep.

Every war has many miracles-events decisive in their timeliness. Such was the first heavy snow of the winter which began falling while Germany was preparing to make its final assault on the heart of the Soviet Union.

First the snow came, then a melt and a rain, which left the Germans wallowing in mud. Then there came a freeze and ice and then more snow. Suddenly, the great German Army found itself frozen in its tracks to the west, north and southeast of Moscow.

Through the long and cold month of November, the German army tried to regroup and salvage what it could. The generals wanted to withdraw to a point where they could dig in and resupply, but Hitler would not hear of it.

The Russians spent this time productively, building forces and supplies at the points where they were needed. And they waited for their ally; winter, to unleash its full force against the Germans. Now the Russians would decide when and where the next offensive would take place-the Russian offensive.

On December 6th, 1941, General Georgi Zhukov dispatched his one hundred divisions in a counteroffensive that shattered the German lines.

The myth of German invincibility was destroyed.

To the north of Leningrad, the Germans were also stopped before they could enter that city. But there the story was quite different. The Germans were indeed stopped, but the city was surrounded on three sides with its back against the Baltic Sea. And across the sea was Finland, a small but determined enemy of Russia and an ally of the Germans against the Soviets.

When Leningrad was first cut off, surrounded, there was only a few days' food supply in the city. It led to a ghastly and deadly siege. By the height of that winter 1941-42, up to five thousand people were dying daily of starvation. That blockade lasted until 1943. Never did the Germans or Finnish armies penetrate the boundaries of Leningrad, but they shelled and bombed the city to rubble. A few supplies were smuggled in or dropped by parachute, but they were a mere pittance compared to what was needed. Still, those people of Leningrad held on. By the time the blockade was broken in 1943, more than six hundred thousand men, women and children had died there.

As the summer of 1942 approached, it became increasingly clear that the German takeover of Russia had ended. It was obvious to everyone but Hitler and a few of his closest confidants who shared his madness and unshaken belief in their own propaganda.

Hitler issued his directive that Stalingrad and the Caucasus were to be the objectives of the 1942 German offensive. On September 13, 1942, a German division broke through the defenses and entered Stalingrad. What they found was a bombed out city, but not a relinquished city. Every foot of that metropolis cost the Germans dearly in lives. Every deserted building was mined, almost room by room. Snipers, marksmen, were everywhere. Each overhead window was an opening through which death could be hurled in the form of a Molotov cocktail. The German advance was no longer measured in kilometers, blocks or even meters. It was measured in corpses.

Miraculously, General Vasili Chuikov and his troops, reinforced by civilians of Stalingrad, held the besieged city. For more than two months, they dealt death to the Germans who shared their city with them, while they themselves suffered terrible casualties.

Then, on November 19th, 1942, Zhukov, the General who saved Moscow, launched a counterattack at Stalingrad. In four days, he had the Germans trapped. Hitler would not allow his generals to surrender when they realized the struggle was hopeless. They continued their futile effort until January 13, 1943. By that time, General Freidrich Paulus had no choice. He was forced to surrender his German 6th Army to the Russians. He and ninety thousand emaciated, ragged, half frozen men were all that was left of the once proud three hundred thousand soldiers who had planned to take Stalingrad.

The series of defeats that started at Moscow continued to plague the Germans along the entire Russian front. What the winter of 1941-42 started, the winter of 1943 finished.

As hard as the winter of 1941-42 was on the Jewish community in the forest northwest of Kiev, the winter of 1943 was far more difficult-even though they were better prepared for their second winter in their family camp.

This winter of 1943, the snowfall was heavier and the sub zero winds made going out impossible for days at a time. The very first storm dropped on the family camp more than a meter of snow, which fierce winds drifted, here and there, to three meters in depth. An elderly woman who'd led a young child to the latrine lost her way in the blizzard, disoriented by the blinding snow. They froze to death not twenty meters from their dugout. When it was over, the dugouts looked like white burial mounds among the trees. No sooner did the Jews clear out their entrances and chimneys than the snows began to fall and swirl again. The second storm brought another half-meter of snow to the guerrillas' problems.

Fortunately, Ivan and Sosha had been at their farm when the first storm broke and the only fighters caught out in it were five at the second camp. When the blizzard ended, the five made their difficult way to the cave Sol had found the year before. It was still used as a warehouse and emergency hideaway.

There was sufficient food both at the family camp and at the cave, but feeding the horses became a real problem. The five men from the second camp led their horses to the gully where the cave was, but once there they found no hay. The animals could not graze the snow covered ground. There wasn't enough grain stored to last the horses even two days.

The men had but two choices-to shoot the horses or let them go free in hopes they would be claimed by someone who could care for them. But merely to let them loose would not work. The animals would starve among the deep drifts. They decided to try to get the horses to the vicinity of Irpen and let them go there, though they'd probably fall into the hands of the Germans. Still, the Germans treated animals well-it wasn't like turning Jews over to the Nazis. And if Ukrainians did get hold of the horses, they would probably be eaten.

The day after they reached the cave, the second snow storm hit. The horses were tied together and under cover of the snowfall one man led the animals out of the gully to the road that led to Irpen. Two kilometers from the village, he released the animals and returned to the cave, letting the new snowfall cover the fresh tracks.

In the family camp, they remained snowbound. The days turned to weeks, the weeks to months. The many kilometers of waist to shoulder deep snow they'd have to struggle through made guerrilla actions impossible. And if they could make it out, the deep tracks they would leave could never be entirely erased by snow. The Germans would surely find them and slaughter would follow. So the Jews became prisoners in their own community from November 1942 into March of 1943.

The radios were the only link to the outside world. Without them, their morale would have dwindled. They couldn't get far enough from camp to transmit safely, but news coming in was tremendously uplifting. Each day brought news of more and greater disasters befalling the Nazis. The Russians beamed news of their victories over the now starving German army, into the occupied territories so that in the midst of their white prison the many resistance groups could gather hope for the future.

When Father Peter was not busy with the radios or helping Rachel and me with the sick or in philosophic conversations with his other new comrades, he sat brooding on his own future. What does it hold for me? Will the Church accept me when this is all over? I've rebelled on behalf of my own conscience, but did the Church really condone the acts of the Nazis? Each time Father Peter asked that question the answer wounded him. "If the Church didn't condemn the Nazi atrocities-it condoned them. Anyone who didn't cry out against the crimes is guilty of the sin of omission."

Father Peter wondered, in fact, whether he could ever, in clear conscience, return to the pulpit-should the Church accept him back. In his mind, the Vatican had lost its purity, its mystique, its holiness.

But why did it take the Nazis to make me see? I'm an historian. Did I simply close my eyes to the facts? Yes-this has been my sin of omission... He knew his Church's history of torture, anti-Semitic teachings, war, inquisitions, crusades-but had never questioned it-never questioned the hypocrisy of it. "I can no longer deny the one shattering fact-that the Nazi success is the outcome of nearly two thousand years of Christian ideology and hatred of the Jews."

He continued the mental chastisement of himself. When Paul of Tarsus could not convert the Jews of his time, he introduced anti-Semitism into his teachings for those who would listen. In the Gospels of Matthew and John, a major anti-Semitic mythical theme appears-that the Jews killed Christ and should therefore be identified with the powers of evil.

Father Peter recalled that the early Christians had renounced the Jewish rebellion against Rome, had minimized the role of Pilate in the crucifixion to pacify the Roman authorities. He recalled the two centuries of Crusades in the Middle Ages during which hundreds of thousands of Jews were raped and murdered with the Church's blessing. "Why have these facts never disturbed me before?" he asked himself bitterly.

In more recent years, there have been the pogroms. How many churchmen have preached hatred of Jews-encouraging their flocks to lash out, maim, plunder, burn Jewish villages? He sat downcast as he thought. So much anti-Semitism has been so deeply ingrained in parochial education, it is no wonder the Germans found it so easy to slaughter Jews without Christian resistance.

That winter was one of anguish for Father Peter. He felt the weight of his own and his Church's sins building up all around-like the snow.

That winter, Solomon and Rachel, for the first time since the occupation, allowed themselves to think of the future. Since the news of the Russian victories and the changing tide of the war, many of those in the resistance started to think that there might be a future for them after all. The group of young Zionists, who had joined earlier in 1942, spoke constantly of their plans to continue on to Palestine after the war. Their plans influenced many others, including Solomon and Rachel.

"There is no place left in Russia or Europe for Jews," was the contention of the young Zionists. "The survival of our people depends on a homeland for the Jews. Now is the time to re-establish our State of Israel in the Promised Land!"