The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (7 page)

But then they heard talk among the men. It turned out to be Ukrainian. Still, they maintained silence. The group passed by. Rachel and Avraham waited, then Avraham signaled her to follow him again. He headed in the direction they had gone, led by their sounds. "I want to be sure they aren't Ukrainian collaborators before we make ourselves known," he said in hushed voice. In almost the same instant they were grabbed from behind-arms about their throats-knives pressed into their ribs, "Resist and you're dead!"

She could feel the sharp point cutting through her clothing-biting into the outer layer of her flesh. The arm choked off her air until she thought she'd taken her last breath. Not until strong hands secured both her arms did the choking grasp free her throat. The fresh air rushed in. Her heart drummed wildly and she thanked God it hadn't stopped. Apparently she and Avraham had been following between the main body of men and a rear guard.

"Search them!" one of the guards shouted.

"We are friendly!" Avraham cried.

"Shut up! We decide who's friendly. Search them!"

Rachel was too terrified to speak. The thought struck her that they had indeed run into Ukrainian collaborators. There were now seven of them, two more coming out of the trees when they heard the commotion the first five made. Two held Rachel, two held Avraham. They didn't struggle and she could feel their grips on her arms ease. She realized they had cut the circulation to her hands.

One of them stood perhaps two meters in front of her, leveling a rifle at her head. Another pointed his weapon at Avraham. He was the one who shouted all the orders at the other men. Again he shouted, "Search them!"

One walked to Avraham and looked directly into his eyes. "Don't struggle. It will go easier for both of us." His hands slid over Avraham's entire body seeking the bulge of a hidden weapon. "He has nothing," the man finally announced.

"Look for identity papers!" the leader replied.

The man pushed his hands into each of Avraham's pockets. They were empty. He opened Avraham's shirt. He loosened Avraham's belt and opened his trousers to make sure nothing was hidden there.

"This one's a Jew!" he laughed. In his search he saw Avraham was circumcised. His tone was terrifying! "But there are no papers."

"Search the woman!"

All eyes but Avraham's turned toward her. His head hung tearfully toward the ground. Rachel swallowed back her own tears as she awaited her fate. Avraham felt her anguish and was defeated by the knowledge of their helplessness.

As the searcher approached her, he looked directly into her eyes, as he had into Avraham's, but a sickening smirk twisted onto his face. She looked around at her captors with pleading eyes, hoping for a sympathetic look-someone who might intervene. They all had those eager grins-waiting. Only their leader was without expression. No help would come from him either.

Fear rushed through every cell of her body ahead of his hands as they slipped over her clothing, slowing at her breasts, then going down...

She thought she might faint and then she heard, "She has no weapon." A reprieve!

"Look for papers!"

The reprieve was short lived.

She felt her blouse open-heard snickers. His foul breath penetrated her nostrils and a wave of nausea ran through her stomach as he stepped closer to reach around inside her clothing. His rough hands felt inside Rachel's tattered brassiere. She broke into uncontrollable tears and she heard Avraham whimpering.

"No! Please, no!" She screamed, as his hands probed inside her other undergarments. "No! We are not your enemy! We have nothing for you."

"Enough!" the commander said. "Bring the man to me." His words seemed heaven sent.

He had been putting questions to Avraham for some time before Rachel could pull herself together to notice what he was asking.

"Are you alone?"

"Are there more of you in the woods?"

"Do you have anything hidden?"

"Are you both Jews?"

"Why were you following us?"

Avraham answered all his questions, convincing him that they were who they claimed to be.

"You say you want to join us to fight the Nazis? I've never known a Jew to fight!" He laughed and his men responded in kind. "Besides, our mission is to kill Nazis-not save Jews."

A shot rang out!

Rachel screamed, "Avraham!" as she saw him slump to the ground.

After the echo of that shot died out she heard him tell his men, "Use her as you like!"

She heard her clothing rip, felt the hot, smelly breath of the first man as he grabbed her. Now God was merciful-for she would remember nothing else. She fainted into unconsciousness and hours later her ravaged body was left for dead in the forest next to Avraham's corpse.

Dovka, at twenty four, had earned a law degree, unheard of for a woman or a Jew in the Ukraine. Her father was a judge, also very unusual for a Ukrainian Jew. Her family had been one of the first to be wiped out by the Nazis.

She had not been home at the time of the roundup, but her father, mother and two younger brothers were hanged in the public square as reprisals for an act of resistance. Dovka saw the terrible execution from a window overlooking the square. The town was in the northwest, one of the first overrun by the Germans.

Her neighbors warned her before she returned home, when her parents and siblings had been rounded up by the Germans; and they hid her in an attic overlooking the square.

As she watched the executions in horror, she decided she would extract revenge on the Germans and any Ukrainians who were in sympathy with the atrocities against the Jews. Right then she decided she would have to go to the forests. All her life she had thought that disputes were best settled with reason in the courts. But that was for civilized societies. These Germans and the Ukrainians who cheered as the executions were carried out were not civilized.

She told her rescuers that she was leaving after dark. Several asked to go with her. She agreed. A natural leader, they followed her. When she let herself out into the cover of darkness that night, seven Jews accompanied her into the forest, five men and two women. Dovka fell into the undisputed role of leader in the effort to escape certain death. As they picked up others who had independently fled to the forests, she remained their leader.

Exhaustion overtook Yorgi Tzarof.

Sleep claimed him right there on the dusty ground where his German captors threw him. He was unconscious of the search of his clothes by other prisoners. He had nothing of value on him except his shoes, which were quickly removed while he slept. Now he was completely ignored by other prisoners who wandered aimlessly or just sat around in the vast compound.

Yorgi awoke after four and a half hours of motionless sleep. He had to think a moment before he could recall where he was-Darnitsa! He opened his eyes very slowly, but still didn't move. Finally he raised his head cautiously and looked around. There were thousands of prisoners in the compound and to Yorgi's relief none seemed the least concerned with him.

He had been in prisoner of war camps before. He knew the other prisoners could be as dangerous as the guards-more dangerous. He sat up. Damn it, they got my shoes, he realized. He made no outward sign of emotion or recognition of the fact. Oh well, I'll get others. At least it's warm weather. But I'll need a pair before I escape. All in its time...

Darnitsa was across the Dnieper River from Kiev, a suburb made up mostly of working class people. During World War I, the area had hosted an enormous prisoner of war camp. At that time, it had been the Germans who died inside the barbed wire by the thousands. Now, the Germans had turned the tables on their former keepers. These Russian prisoners could not complain that they were being treated any worse than they had treated the Germans nearly a quarter century earlier. In those days, hundreds of Germans died daily in Darnitsa, from hunger, exhaustion, exposure and disease. If more Russians died now, it was only because there were more of them detained in the same area.

As Yorgi looked about him, he saw a mass of wretched humanity. Most had dull, unseeing, emotionless expressions. They'd soon be reduced to spiritless animals. Draining them of all hope and ambition made control of them easier. Yorgi wondered whether most cared if they took another breath.

He'd been in other prisoner camps, but none like this. Sixty or seventy thousand men were enclosed by barbed wire in this place. The ground was hard, dry and dusty. There had been an abundance of plant life here before it had been reclaimed as a prisoner compound, but all of that had been picked and eaten by starving men-picked clean, down to the last blade of grass.

There was a stench common to all such camps of urine, vomit, feces and the odor of bodies not cleaned in days or weeks. At least here it appeared, they removed the dead quickly, so the horrible smell of death did not add to the other disgusting odors.

Officers, political prisoners and Jews were put into a separate enclosure where their life expectancy was even shorter than in the main camp. Yorgi had made every effort to keep two facts to himself since the Germans had occupied the Ukraine: that he was an officer and a Jew.

There had been a relatively large number of Jews conscripted into the Russian army. It was a method by which the Russians had tried to assimilate the Jews out of existence. For a Jew in the Russian army, it was almost a matter of assimilate or die. They weren't too eager to assimilate them into their society, but into the military, that was acceptable.

Few of these Jews had become officers, but Yorgi was an exceptional Jew. He had an appetite and an aptitude for survival. Even now, as he looked around Darnitsa compound for the first time, he thought escape.

He got up. The warm, dusty ground felt good to his bare feet. From past experience, he knew it wouldn't be too hard to get another pair of shoes. The death rate in such camps was so high that many pairs of shoes would become available every day. Right now, he enjoyed the feel of the earth against his feet. It reminded him of the dirt roads of the village of his youth. A million years ago, he thought. He was a little concerned about the night when it would cool, but that was several hours off, according to the sun.

Yorgi started a walk around the Darnista camp. In a few days, I'll be like all the other prisoners-unable to help myself-and not caring. I have to escape before they drain my strength.

Walking, he memorized everything. The entire enclosure is barbed wire. Guard towers at intervals of two hundred meters. It's amazing that most of them are unarmed. Those have Ukrainian guards. Germans don't quite trust them with weapons. Just lookouts to yell an alarm if someone breaks. Armed Germans and unarmed Ukrainian guards walked outside the wire. They joked with each other more than they attended to their business. But if someone made a try for it, they'd have him full of bullets before he got through the wire. But they obviously expected no escapes from these broken spirited creatures.

The guards were bored.

It was an ideal situation for escape-when the time is right. Yorgi wondered if he could find anyone here to help in an attempt? "It's got to be soon... Maybe it's better if I keep my plans to myself; don't know who I could trust," he mumbled to himself.

He walked on and observed, while doing his best to be unobserved.

There were two single fences around the camp. No electric barrier, no mine fields that he could sense, not even large clearings to cross. Along one area a road passed right by the outside barbed wire. Lines of women stood there on the chance they might catch sight of a husband, brother, father or son taken prisoner. They knew if a loved one were there, he'd be dead in a week or two. Many carried a basket or small bag from which they threw potatoes, turnips or onions over or through the fences. Like feeding animals in a zoo. When the camp first opened the Germans had shot at women for throwing food, killed them, but in time they stopped. They'd come to find it entertaining to watch the starving men fight each other to get at the food. Often one would kill another for a small morsel. It was one of the few times anyone in the camp showed signs of life.

It was along this section of fence that Yorgi thought he might find a few comrades still interested in and capable of escape. He also knew he would probably have to join that scramble for food to maintain his strength.

There were no buildings in the compound. Men slept, relieved themselves, lived and died wherever they happened to be at the time. There were a few trees, but their bark had been picked off as high as men could climb-picked off to be eaten. Starvation was everywhere. Here and there Yorgi saw men chewing leather belts and shoes. Men picked lice from their own bodies and popped them into their mouths. If a mouse or rat or squirrel or rabbit happened into Darnitsa, it would be captured instantly and eaten raw-bones, entrails, skin, all-but not before it had caused a near riot. It was so entertaining that often the Germans would catch them and throw them in. Even stray cats and small dogs had been thrown in, but now there were few of them left because the starvation in the city had made them a delicacy there, also. It was commonplace for those who died during the night to be discovered in the mornings with areas eaten out of them by starving humans.

Disease was rampant, especially dysentery. The smell of urine and excrement was everywhere. A rubbish heap was near the German military kitchen where they threw their garbage into the compound. Here, also, there were always a large number of prisoners rummaging through the refuse, picking out anything edible. Onion and potato peels, apple cores orange rind-delicacies all-could be found. "Slop to the pigs!" the Germans laughed.

Yorgi continued his walk. At the back of the compound, an area was fenced off and under guard. Inside the wires were building materials. The Germans planned to build barracks in which to keep some of the healthier prisoners. They would be worked while they still had some strength left. But the work programs would come too late for Yorgi. If he stayed in Darnitsa he would be dead long before the program began.