The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (33 page)

"To assault such an installation, almost in the middle of Kiev and the German army-especially since we know nothing of its layout and defenses-we would have to expect to lose almost twice as many of our people as we could contemplate saving. It would have to be a major assault." He paused a moment, looking at Solomon, his head still bowed.

"And after the raid-the Germans would probably kill everyone left in the camp and pick up a thousand more people in Kiev as reprisal." Diadia didn't like having to turn his friend down and paused to give the matter a last thought. "No, there is no way I can see to justify such a mission. It would be suicide. Only my emotions tell me to do it-and they are clearly wrong this time."

Solomon and Father Peter and I knew he was right. They didn't argue the points Diadia made, but Sol asked, "What would you say to a small party-all volunteers-trying to break in, sneak in, under cover of darkness and try to steal them out?" He knew as he asked it was foolish, but he had to cover all possibilities.

Diadia thought long on the question then asked, "Solomon, if you were the prisoner in the place of Ivan or Sosha-would you want anyone to risk such a mission to get you out?"

"No." His voice could hardly be heard.

"How can you ask anyone else to join you in such a hopeless effort? Who of these people or of your group would you commit to the action?"

It was late. We spent the night in Diadia's camp. We started back the next morning. I was able to barter some needed medical supplies. It was actually mid-morning before we started back to our own encampment. The day was warm, but the forest kept us comfortable. We forced ourselves to make the best possible time the day before as we were going to Diadia's camp. Now that we had resigned ourselves to the fact there was nothing we could do for Ivan and Sosha, we made our way back home in an almost leisurely pace, depressed at the situation. The forest quiet was disturbed only by the chatter of squirrels, the incessant chirping of the birds and the sound of our own footsteps on the leafy floor.

We were still a long way from home, perhaps three hours at this slow pace through the difficult terrain, an estimated eight kilometers yet to walk. We sat down by a small spring to rest, refresh, to take some pleasure from the forest and its sounds and the intermittent silence.

"I feel bad about yesterday," Sol said to Father Peter. "I hope it won't destroy our friendship."

"Nonsense, your points were well taken. I had never really understood before. It was something that needed saying-especially between friends."

"But I feel I let out a lot of pent up anger on the wrong Christian. Actually..."

"Shh!" Father Peter interrupted. "Did you hear that?" He had his ear cocked to the wind.

"What? I don't hear a thing." Solomon said. He automatically drew his pistol which had been untouched in his belt for the past days.

"Yes, I hear it. Explosions - gunfire!" I agreed, "From that direction." And I suddenly realized I was pointing in the direction of our camp.

"Listen! It's that horrible sound that haunted me in Kiev. I haven't heard it in all these months-that terrible sound of gunfire from Babi Yar. The wind must be carrying it all this distance."

Solomon slipped the pistol back into its place. He cocked his ears as the priest had done and concentrated. "Yes, I do hear it. But that wind is from the wrong direction. Babi Yar is southeast of us. That wind is from due south."

We all listened carefully. There was no question; the wind carried the sound of gunfire.

"That's not only gunfire-there are explosions. Grenades! Mortars! It sounds like a battle," Solomon speculated.

Suddenly Solomon voiced it; the same conclusion I had come to seconds earlier, "Dear God, that's the direction of the family camp!"

We came to our feet and started running and stumbling through the thick underbrush. We ran several minutes, the trees and scrub tearing at our clothes, scratching our skin. We tripped, fell, got up and ran further in the direction of the camp. Finally, we were stopped by a small cliff we would have to climb and our exhaustion caught up to us.

Our breathing was labored. I could hear nothing over the pulsing of my blood. We slipped silently to the ground as we tried to get our breath back.

"This is insane," I eventually found the strength to say, between panting. "We'll never-get back this way... We-must use our heads. We're wasting-too much energy. A deliberate, forced march will get us there quicker." Breathing was painful. "We must pull ourselves together."

"I don't hear-the sound any longer. Do you think-oh my-I can't get my breath! Do you think we-just imagined it?" Solomon asked.

"Not unless 'we' were sharing the same nightmare." Father Peter said. We lay silently a minute, strength returning now. Father Peter continued his opinion, "Perhaps when we get to the top of this ridge. It'll protect us from the wind. It might carry the sound over our heads."

We climbed the steep but short incline and at the top carefully listened...

"Silence," I whispered with some relief.

"I don't hear it either," Father Peter agreed. "All right, with a steady and forced pace we ought to make it back in about two hours, maybe one and a half. Running through this terrain will only slow us down-and we risk injury. Let's be rational. And when we get near the camp, let's use caution. If there's trouble back there, we'll be unable to help anyone if we just blunder into the same situation."

It took only one hour and forty minutes to get back to the family camp. When we reached familiar territory we slowed our pace, using extreme caution. The sounds of battle had no longer been heard since the time we first heard them almost two hours ago. We felt some cautious relief.

At half a kilometer from the camp we stopped. We remained hidden from anyone who might happen by and listened.

Silence.

The wind, though mild-more a light breeze-still came from the direction of the camp.

"We should be able to hear some sounds from the camp at this distance," Sol whispered.

"I agree. I smell smoke on the breeze-and gunpowder!" I said.

"Yes, I smell it too. I'm afraid to think about what it means. God, I wish we could hear something!" Solomon said with concern in his voice.

"We should hear something!" Father Peter repeated. "Either our people or the enemy. Do you suppose they've all been captured and taken off?"

"Let's go in and see," I said. "Careful, they may have posted guards or snipers."

"Let's separate, just in case; no point in all of us getting caught." Solomon added.

"You're right, Solomon. You go left-I'll go around to the right. Dov go straight ahead-carefully!"

As I crouched and creeped the last half-kilometer toward the camp, I listened for any sound that would betray some form of life in the area. Even the forest animals were still. I constantly looked about and up into the trees, wary of ambush. When I'd worked my way to about thirty meters from where the first dugouts of the family camp were, I stopped and raised my head above the low shrubs.

"Oh, dear God, no!" I stood up, grief expelling caution. Where I had expected to see the first of the dugout huts I saw it collapsed into a crater, smoke rising from its smoldering timbers. I walked forward, not caring for my safety anymore. Not a single hut was left standing. Smoke filtered up through the trees, carried on the mild breeze into the direction from which we'd come. It lay on the ground in places like a early morning haze, giving an eerie, mystical, unreal look to the destruction. "Am I dreaming? Please, God, let it be a bad dream!"

Suddenly I saw someone walking toward me through the smoke. I was about to drop back into cover of the shrubs when I recognized Father Peter. He recognized me and called out loudly, "Come in, Solomon! Come in, there's no one here; just Dov and me."

Sol came in and to Father Peter's side. There was not a building standing, not a body in sight, not a single person to be seen. Small trees were uprooted, broken off at their trunks by what must have been explosions. The larger trees were badly scarred by shrapnel and bullets. "Whatever happened here was devastating. But there are no dead. Not ours, not theirs. What do you make of it?" I asked.

Sol was white with trepidation. "Only one thing-they found the camp. They must have surrounded the area and surprised us before we could make a move. They must have rounded everyone up-taken them prisoners-then just destroyed the camp so it could never be used again."

"That makes sense. Or maybe we had warning. Maybe there was time to get away into the woods and they destroyed an empty camp - maybe?" Father Peter hopefully speculated.

Sol replied, "I'd like to believe that. But we have to assume the other. We must try to stop them. They'll have to move slowly with so many prisoners. If they get them out of the forest, they'll execute them all, either at Babi Yar or, more likely at a public execution in Kiev. God, what can we do?"

"I don't know. Do we have time to contact Diadia? We need help!" I interjected.

"We have to think, fast," Sol said. The problem was overwhelming. "Maybe we can find a radio intact in the rubble of the main hut. It would be too lucky, but let's look."

Together we started to walk through the area, kicking over large planks and rubble that might be hiding something we could use. When we reached the spot where the radio shack had been, we came to a sudden stop.

"Oh, tell me I don't see it," I said, all hope leaving me.

Solomon was silent. He couldn't move. His heart beat furiously in his chest. His throat went dry. Nausea and a cold sweat swept his body. His mouth opened as if to cry out, but no sound came forth. He put his hand over his eyes.

"We have to check. We have to look." Then Father Peter, too, was overcome. "Oh, dear God in Heaven, don't let it be..."

Gathering our courage, we walked to a large area of fresh-turned soil. It was about ten meters by about fifteen meters. There was fresh dirt scattered all around its edges and the black earth mounded gently toward the center. "How could they have dug such a large pit?" Father Peter asked. "They couldn't have had much time."

"They had our people dig it themselves. It can't be very deep."

"Solomon, we have to be sure. You know what we have to do. Solomon, we have to check!" I said.

"I know. Oh please, Rachel, don't be there."

Slowly-filled with dread-we approached the turned earth. At its edge we dropped to our knees and with our bare hands began to dig in the cool, soft, loose dirt. We'd not dug more than a few inches when Solomon felt a hand. Withdrawing his own, he beat at his chest and cried out. "They're all in there, God, aren't they? All but me!

"Why?

"Why me?

"Why not me?"

The disaster was too huge to fathom.

There was nothing to do but return to the camp of Diadia Misha.

As we made our stunned way back through the forest, Solomon's pain was almost more than he could bear.

By the time we arrived at the camp, the group already knew of the disaster. The Germans wasted no time in broadcasting their triumph over the radio. They described the action in full detail and boasted that every man, woman and child at the "Partisan Camp" had been killed. The only fact omitted from the broadcast was that the great majority of the group was Jewish.

Solomon kept his grief to himself.

Outwardly, he displayed hate and confusion. He again insisted on going out on almost every mission. His new comrades could not decide whether he was determined to kill every German in the Ukraine or was seeking death himself. In any case, he became a fighter with an insatiable fury. No action was too dangerous. The greater the odds against him, the more eager he was to go on the mission. Any Nazi or anyone collaborating with the Nazis was marked for death in Solomon's mind. Some of his friends hesitated to volunteer for missions with him, feeling his eagerness for revenge might jeopardize the safety of others in the operation.

But Solomon always returned; never as much as received an injury. In time, the others realized he had no intention of throwing his own or anyone else's life away. In conversation one evening, he replied to a comment with, "I cannot kill the enemy if I'm dead. I have every intention of going on living until there are no more of those bastards left to kill!"

By the end of the summer, it became quite clear that the days of the German occupation of the Ukraine were numbered. The resistance started to make plans of how to reach the advancing Russians and join forces with them against the Germans on the front lines.

Ivan learned quickly.

He became an expert in survival.

Anyone less than an expert was dead in a week. Two things were necessary to cheat death at Babi Yar-expertise and luck. On the average, twenty percent of the prisoners at Babi Yar camp died daily. Some died from exhaustion, some from disease and some from being shot for minor infractions. Others were just murdered at the whim of von Radomsky or other camp personnel. Even the Kapos-prisoners used by the Germans to keep order in the camp-held the power of life and death over their fellow prisoners. In fact, many of the Kapos were more brutal than some of the German guards. They were certainly hated more by the other prisoners than the German guards were.

Camp commander Paul von Radomsky had a favorite game, which contributed significantly to the mortality of the prisoners-and to the morale of his soldiers. He would walk among the inmates after the daily evening roll call-up and down the rows. He had his daily lucky number, as he liked to call it. Some days the number was chosen at random; other days it was determined purposely low so more prisoners would be selected to compensate for overcrowding in the camp. It was just another efficient way to reduce the number of prisoners - and entertain the guards. If the attrition rate of the inmates did not keep up with the number coming into the camp, the lucky number would be a low figure. After each day's roll call in the late afternoon, von Radomsky would drive up in his car, his interpreter in the back and his trusted dog in front. He would get the evening count from the officer in charge. He'd make a quick mental calculation, then announce for all to hear, "Today's lucky number is eight!"