15. IN TRANSNSTRIA

IN Russia Zhmerinka had always been a synonym for a very small and very dirty city. We were convinced of the fairness of this reputation the next morning.

After the night’s rain we had to walk around the streets with great care; not one was paved. The town was built on hills and on the down slopes we had to hang on to each other or to fences. It was not clear where the street ended and where the pavement began. Everything was covered with a thick layer of sticky clay. Probably it had looked the same thirty, and a hundred, years before.

But there was something in Zhmerinka which distinguished it from all the other towns of Russia and the Ukraine under German occupation: an abundance of food in the market. Naturally no sanitary or hygienic standards could be applied to this market; the dirt was just as thick as everywhere else. But the food was out of all proportion to the population of Zhmerinka. There was fat, so rare in the Ukraine. There was butter, bacon, vegetable oil, meat – which we had almost forgotten existed: pork, chicken, goose – and many other things that made our eyes pop.

Moreover, it was all inexpensive. We bought a lot more than we needed, enough for a week; our greediness got the better of us.

According to the plan we had worked out the evening before, I was to start for Odessa immediately. The Governor of Transnistria, Professor Alexianu, resided there, and I was to get official permission for our group to enter our particular ‘promised land’.

By-passing the station, for lack of this document as yet, I went right to the tracks and had no difficulty getting on a train whose cars were marked ‘Zhmerinka to Odessa’. After a while the train started. The conductor went through checking the tickets. Having none, I offered him double the price, saying that I had almost missed the train and had no time to buy a ticket. He was completely satisfied, either by my explanation or by the money. Naturally he did not give me a receipt for it.

A little while later the conductor came through a second time, shouting, ‘Get your papers ready; military police check!’

Two bewhiskered Rumanians entered the car and began to look over everyone’s travel permits. When they got to me I somewhat hesitatingly handed them my permission to go to Poland. It was in German and decorated with a large swastika stamp.

The pass was good for Poland, and I was on my way to Rumania, but the police were satisfied for the simple reason that they did not know German and apparently had respect for the swastika. Having turned the pass around a few times, one of the policemen handed it back to me and saluted. I nodded at him patronizingly and turned away.

A few hours later I got out at the Odessa station, entered one of the waiting droshkies, and gave the man my aunt’s address.

I had never seen my aunt, although I had corresponded with her from time to time. She was not at her apartment, so I went to a small shop which was pointed out to me, and there, standing behind the counter, I immediately recognized Aunt Shura by her resemblance to my father.

‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.

‘These two cakes please,’ I said.

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes. I’m looking for an aunt who doesn’t know her own nephew. Can you help me?’

She looked at me thoughtfully, started to speak, and then suddenly ran around the counter and hugged me.

After a few minutes of happy and disconnected conversation, she darted out into the street, called a little girl, and said to me, ‘Well, let’s go home. There won’t be many more customers today, it’s too late. The neighbour’s daughter takes care of things for me when I have to leave the shop.’

As we left she filled a basket full of goods from the shelves – fruit, pastry, meat, and so forth.

Later we were seated at a table covered with a clean cloth and loaded with good things, telling each other our stories by turn.

‘Well, as you see,’ said Aunt Shura, ‘I have become a shopkeeper in my old age. Before the Rumanians came I was a schoolteacher. Then half the schools were shut down and I was without a job. I thought a great deal, and then, getting together as much money as I could, I opened a store.’

‘Does it pay?’

‘Well, in a way. I can’t save any money, but I have enough to eat and I help my daughter Tamara out.’

‘Tamara is married?’

Aunt Shura sighed.

‘Don’t talk about it! He’s not a bad fellow, but a German, a Volksdeutsche. Don’t get the idea that this marriage is a concession to the spirit of the times; they were married three years before the war. But he’s always sick and he’s a person who’s completely unadapted to life. So I have to support them.’

‘You’re wonderful, Aunt Shura.’

‘Well, I have to do a little hustling. I get up at 4 a.m. and go to the market to buy food for the store, while I can still get it first hand and cheap. I open the store at 7, and stay there almost without a break until evening. Now what about your plans?’

‘I’m in Transnistria illegally. The first thing I have to do is get permission to. live here. I’m not alone; there’s a group of friends with me, five people. Can you suggest anything?’

‘Of course. I have friends in the city government and in the governor’s office. We can go there tomorrow morning.’

‘And your store?’

‘I’ll take care of that. Someone will take my place for a while.’

It took three days to get the permission we needed. During this time I got to know Odessa. It was an amazing place.

The Rumanians captured Odessa in the very beginning of the war, after a short siege during which the city was seriously damaged by bombing and artillery. During the evacuation by sea several ships full of refugees were sunk. From the Nikolaevsky Boulevard you could still see their masts and funnels in the harbour.

Odessa and the territory between the Dniester and the Bug rivers was given to the Rumanians ‘to administer’, according to a preliminary agreement between Hitler and Antonescu, and after the war Transnistria was to be joined to Rumania in compensation for her participation in the war and for the loss of Transylvania to Hungary.

Having seized this territory the Rumanians began to organize it in earnest and with a view to a long tenure. The railroads were repaired quickly. Reconstruction was started on the buildings in Odessa which could be restored to use. The demolished power station reopened, the streetcars started running, and hundreds of stores opened, as well as workshops where essential articles were manufactured.

Unlike the Germans, who regarded the Russian territory they occupied as an area to loot and strip and the Russians as a people designed by fate to be slaves of the German race, the Rumanians immediately introduced an entirely different order in Transnistria.

The first, and perhaps the most important thing they did was to grant everyone complete freedom of private initiative in trade and commerce. The taxes which were to be collected from the peasants were set at reasonable rates. The population was able to use the railroads for all types of shipments.

This does not mean that the Rumanians did not despoil the country. They removed a great many things to Rumania: equipment from large plants, food, luxurious furniture from the houses of the Soviet aristocracy; but at the same time they gave great freedom to the Russian population, which not only helped to heal the scars of war but also produced a well-being unknown under the prewar Soviet regime.

Some schools were open in Odessa (under the Germans schools were very rarely opened), and the university was functioning, which would have been unthinkable under German occupation.

Four newspapers were published in the city in Russian, and various other periodicals made their appearance. There were performances every day in the magnificent Opera House, and in addition some theatres and a few moving picture houses were open.

The several city markets were overflowing with food at attractive prices, especially compared with the rest of occupied Russia. Nonedible goods were expensive. These were mostly second-hand articles or contraband smuggled from Rumania. But absolutely everything was available.

On the principal streets there were fine restaurants and pastry shops. Hotels functioned, not only for Rumanians but for Russians as well, whereas beyond the borders of Transnistria I had never seen a hotel which Wasn’t occupied exclusively by Germans.

The very behaviour of the Rumanians was different. They did not look like conquerors. Most of the civilian Rumanians were residents of Bessarabia who knew Russian and loved Russia, though not Soviet Russia. When in 1940, after an agreement with Hitler, the Soviet forces ‘united’ Bessarabia with Russia, the population experienced the same woes as the people of eastern Poland. Everyone was robbed; thousands were sent to Siberian concentration camps, and the ones who survived developed a wholehearted hatred of the Soviet regime.

However, the Bessarabians did not lose contact with real Russian culture, valued it, and treated Russian intellectuals with great respect.

It was not hard to deal with the Rumanians. Any favourable decision and privilege could be obtained. It was merely necessary to give the proper officials bribes of sufficient size. Money settled everything.

It sounded like a joke when Aunt Shura told me about the time the Rumanian military warehouses in Odessa had been robbed. The culprits were caught red-handed at the market, selling strips of parachute silk. They were tried by a military court and two of them were sentenced to death. Their friends collected something like 5,000 marks and gave it to the military prosecutor. The next day the condemned men were freed.

This potency of money was something new to me. In the Soviet Union before the war money did not have this power. Bribery was punished by imprisonment, and both givers and takers were sentenced. Every offer of money was looked upon as a provocation and it was rare that anyone dared to take it.

Under German administration it was rare to find a German who was willing to break a general rule against bribes. There were such cases but they were unusual. In general I came to the conclusion that the famous German honesty was not a fairy tale.

In Transnistria, under wartime conditions, the possibility for Russians to avoid unpleasantnesses by paying bribes was definitely an advantage. After all, the appetite of the Rumanians was a fairly modest one. When the Office of Public Safety held up permission for me and my friends to move to Odessa, I merely asked the captain in charge, ‘How much?’ He looked at the ceiling and answered with a shrug, ‘One hundred marks.’ I was surprised. You could buy a pair of geese or six pounds of good salami at the market for 1oo marks.

Upon receiving the permission I lost no time getting back to Zhmerinka, and a few days later we returned to Odessa in full force.

Without much trouble we found a six-roomed apartment. From the warehouses of the city government we received some old furniture, almost free of charge. We were in no great hurry to find new work. The money we had saved in Kiev allowed us not to worry about this immediately upon arrival. Still, a month later Igor went to work as an engineer at the power station for 1,000 marks a month. This might have been enough for a small family without pretensions, but there were six of us. My friend Sasha found a job as a watchman in a store. He was paid 400 marks there; this was about enough for one person.

I found a few friends in Odessa, refugees from the northern Caucasus; among them were some of my fellow workers in the city government at home. All of them had arrived before me, usually illegally, having paid large bribes at the border. They either had jobs or were opening shops. Sorokin, our first burgomaster, was there, working in a candy factory. His successor had started a profitable second-hand store. A group of our entrepreneurs had opened a large restaurant with gambling . . .

Once, walking along the street, I passed a sign which said ‘Recruiting Post for Russian Volunteers.’ My curiosity led me in, and I immediately ran into a friend, head of one of the police stations in my home town. We went to the nearest restaurant together and began to talk.

‘You’ve probably heard about the Russian volunteers for the German Army,’ he said. ‘Until recently there were not many of them, and most of them were on the north-eastern part of the front. They are grouped in battalions which are part of German regiments: a battalion of Russians, and two or three of Germans.’

‘Who is in command of them?’ I asked.

‘Within the battalion they have their own Russian officers. Above that, naturally, all Germans. But there is also a general political command, under General Vlasov.’

‘Vlasov? The name sounds familiar.’

‘It probably is. He was one of the principal directors of the defence of Moscow in 1941, and an organizer of the Soviet counterad vance. At the beginning of the war he commanded the best motorized corps in the Red Army. In 1942 he was captured by the Germans near Leningrad and later began to organize Russian anti-Bolshevik forces on this side.’

‘What forces is he organizing?’

‘Mostly prisoners of war. In the first year of the war the Germans captured about 5,000,000 Russian soldiers and officers. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they surrendered. Vlasov is forming his Russian Army of Liberation from these prisoners. Of course, it’s not an army yet – merely separate units in the German Army – but they’ve promised him to collect it into one force and put it into action on the eastern front.’

‘Are a lot of people volunteering?’

‘Yes, a good many. Not all of them of course for idealistic reasons. The conditions of prisoner-of-war camps are frightful. Maybe half of them have already starved to death. The Germans treat our soldiers like animals. Stalin has proclaimed all prisoners of war outside the law and doesn’t help them at all, and the U.S.S.R. is not a member of the International Red Cross. So some of them are volunteering. At least they get fed and have a good chance of surviving.’

‘Where are they using these units?’

‘Mostly in the rear areas, as railroad guards, and against the Communist partisans. Very rarely at the front.’

‘Are you recruiting for them?’

‘Not now. We’ve received orders to recruit for the Russian Corps in Serbia. It consists of old emigrants, White Guards. It’s commanded by General Steiffon and is operating against Tito’s bands in the Balkans.’

‘Is the recruiting successful here?’

‘Well, not too much so – ten or fifteen men a week. Life is good in Odessa, so there aren’t many people who want to go and fight. The ones who volunteer are usually those who for some reason have to get out of Odessa quickly. For instance, criminal elements, thieves, sometimes bandits, or simply homeless refugees.’

‘Do you think they’ll thank you for that type of volunteers?’ I asked him. He waved his hand.

‘I don’t give a damn. I’m not looking for any medals for this work. My job is to take everyone who is willing and send them to Belgrade. Usually about half of them desert on the way, but that’s outside of my responsibility. Recently we recruited some Cossacks here for Chernov – do you remember our police chief? He’s a colonel now and very much respected by the Germans. Well, out of the two hundred we sent him only eight got there. The rest ran off in Poland somewhere.’

‘Where did you find Cossacks in Odessa?’

‘Hell, that’s just a name. Actually it doesn’t make any difference. The units which Chernov is forming are called Cossack units. They say that Chernov is having his complications with the Germans now, but I don’t believe it.’

‘You’ve got a soft job here.’

‘‘I have to make my money on the side. They don’t pay me anything here. But our men who accompany the volunteers bring contraband from Poland, Rumania, and even Serbia. We have passes to cross borders.’

A thought flashed through my head. ‘Listen, I don’t want to volunteer for any army, but if there’s a chance of my making a trip to Poland I would be very grateful.’

‘Certainly; nothing could be easier. It’s a little hard to get there now. The front passed the Dnieper a long time ago and the only remaining railroad, through Proskurov, is under fire sometimes. But if you want to risk it, I can arrange it for you.’

Losing no time, we went to his office, and he wrote out passes for Igor and me to go to Poland.

We left on New Year’s Eve. We were supposed to ‘accompany’ three volunteers, but they announced to us at the start that they were perfectly capable of finding the way themselves, and it was obvious that they did not intend to go into any army.

We celebrated the New Year in the Zhmerinka station, which was full of Germans. By all appearances the front was very close. For a moment we were undecided whether to go on to Poland or turn back.

Just at midnight there was so much firing that it almost seemed like a Soviet attack. But it was only the Germans welcoming the New Year, 1944, and perhaps saying goodbye to Russia – they were all being shipped to the west.

We reached Krakow without adventure. We were in a hurry to get back and every hour was valuable. For this reason, we decided not to look for profitable goods but simply to buy gold, which cost much more in Odessa than in Poland. I found my old Polish acquaintances, with whom I had done business before. They were full of optimism. The Germans were obviously being defeated and they were hoping for a speedy liberation of Poland.

When I told them not to be in too much of a hurry to celebrate, because the arrival of the Soviet ‘liberators’ did not mean a great change for the better, my warnings were received sceptically. I reminded them of the experience of Lvov and other cities which had been under Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941, but they answered that times had changed, that the Americans and English would not allow the Poles to suffer.

I did not argue, but changed the subject to business. I needed gold, in coins.

‘We have Swiss francs, 20-franc pieces.’

‘How much?’

‘Fourteen hundred marks.’

That was on the expensive side, but there was still a point in taking them. We could make a 30 per cent profit in Odessa.

The return journey was a long one. We tried to go by way of southern Galicia and Chernovitsy but were detained and sent back; no civilian traffic was allowed there. In Lvov we changed to a troop train with reinforcements on its way to the front, and finally reached Odessa after three days of very difficult travelling.

The situation at the front had had its effect on the money exchange. Our trip was very worth while. We received twice what we had paid for the gold. But prices everywhere had risen greatly, and the question of making money promptly arose again.

Looking back on that time, I am surprised to what a degree most of us who had broken forever with the Soviet regime and chosen the road of exile avoided thinking beyond the immediate future. Like the proverbial ostrich we tried not to notice the catastrophic position of the Germans at the front. Many comforted themselves with the idea that everything would still change, that international diplomacy would lead to an agreement for a united front against Stalin, or that the Germans would gather new strength and begin to advance again – although there was absolutely no basis for such beliefs.

However, around the time of our return from Krakow a few farsighted tradesmen were beginning to liquidate their affairs and provide themselves with passes to go to Rumania. But these were individual cases. The city as a whole went on living, having a good time, going to the theatre and the movies, and no special feeling of alarm was noticeable. Perhaps, to a certain extent, there was a half-hidden nervousness and a desire to ‘live like a man’ before the coming of difficult times in the future.

Whatever the causes were, I fell under the influence of the general mood, and in January, two months before the Red Army took Odessa, a tiny jewellery and trinket shop had its opening on the main street. Igor, Zina, and I took turns working behind the counter. Every evening we put our entire stock into two big suitcases and carried it home, as a precaution against robbery. After supper we added up the profits of the day.

The profits were not great but they covered our everyday expenses, so that we did not have to touch our ‘capital’. Prices everywhere continued to mount, but for us with our shop this was not frightening; our profits rose proportionately.

One of the commercial curiosities of that troubled time was the value of gold. From the sale of the coins we brought from Krakow we made a profit of 10,000 marks. If we had held the coins until it was time to leave Odessa two months later, we would have made 100,000 marks, because in the last days the people who were remaining in the city were buying up gold and unloading their marks, which were losing all value in the area.

It was not until the middle of March that we emerged from our commercial hypnosis and realized that the Red Army was approaching Tiraspol, that land communications with Rumania had actually been cut off, and that it was high time for us to flee. However, this turned out to be a very complicated operation. As soon as we began trying to arrange it we learned that the Rumanians were not letting anyone into Rumania, with the exception, naturally, of those who could pay astronomical bribes. There was only one answer to all the requests and pleas of those to whom the Soviet return meant the gallows: ‘Rumania is a little country; we can’t take anybody.’

At the doors of the Rumanian kommandaturas, military police stations, and other installations there were dramatic scenes, as desperate people seeking a means of escape were unceremoniously kicked out of the offices. Suicides occurred; people opened their veins in the streets in the middle of crowds.

After a few tries which were fated from the beginning to fail, I went to see the friend who worked in the recruiting office for Russian volunteers.

‘We are helpless while the Rumanian authorities are still in the city,’ he said. ‘The Rumanians are a despicable nation. They hate the Germans and those of us who are fleeing with them. As soon as they stop being afraid of the Germans they’ll betray and sell out everybody. We must wait until the Germans take over Odessa; they are not far from here now. Everything will be simpler then.’

The city was changing before our eyes. Stores were closing one after another. Their owners were either going to Rumania, having paid fat bribes for passes, or hiding their stocks in preparation for the arrival of the Red Army. Occupation money kept falling in value and we managed to sell the entire stock of our shop, even the worst items, very profitably. Finally our shop closed too.

When Tiraspol was taken the Rumanians gave up Odessa and handed it over to the Germans. This had no effect on the life of the city, which was visibly dying. The university closed down. Only one paper had been published for quite a while. It was becoming harder and harder to buy food at the market.

Sasha came in as we were packing.

‘You’re leaving?’ he asked.

‘Naturally we’re leaving, but we don’t know exactly how yet. What do you plan to do?’

‘I’m staying. And please don’t start all over again telling me the complications I may run into if I stay. I’ve thought it all over and decided.’

‘You lucky fellow,’ I said. ‘What have you decided, if it isn’t a secret?’

‘I won’t be an emigrant. And I won’t be a slave of the Germans in Germany. I’m ready for anything. I don’t care if they shoot me or send me to the front in a punishment battalion. My whole life has been spent in Russia and it’s going to end here.’

‘Well, Sasha, if you’ve decided you’ve decided; we won’t discuss it any more. I’m going west, to Europe, because I still have confidence and believe that I can make a real life for myself by emigrating. And furthermore, I’m sure there will come a day when I, too, will return home.’

The days went by. The Red Army was already breaking through to the Carpathians, but no possibility of departure had as yet turned up for us. The Germans had made some sort of agreement with the Rumanians and refused to help Russians leave the country. We were beginning to regret very seriously that we had fallen into this mouse trap and not gone straight on to Germany six months before.

One night there was a loud knock at our door. It was Aunt Shura.

‘Get ready quickly,’ she said. ‘Tonight all the Volksdeutsche are being taken out. Tamara and her husband are going and they are taking me, too. They are loading barges at the docks. We are all ready, and you’d better hurry. They’re not checking papers and anyone who wants to can go. There’s plenty of room.’ And she sped out.

We began to pack as fast as we could. The power station was not working and it was dark, but luckily we had candles. In about an hour all our bundles and suitcases were ready and carried downstairs, where we loaded them into a handcart that we bought from the janitor.

We hurried to the harbour through the dark streets. Little Nina, who could not understand why she had been awakened, was crying.

The streets were deserted. The only people we met were German patrols or people bound for the harbour. There were flashes in the north-eastern sky, but we could not hear the guns.

The port was badly lit and a large crowd was there. We had trouble elbowing our way to the gangways. It was a strange sight. It looked as if people who had come to the port were beginning to have doubts whether to leave. Many who had already climbed into the barges would suddenly start to carry their things ashore again.

It was quiet. There were almost no Germans around. Occasionally people standing on the shore would shout something to the ones in the barges. Here and there relatives and friends were parting.

We quickly loaded our belongings into a barge and stowed them in one of the holds. The confusion was gradually diminishing. I went up on deck and stood on the side of the barge nearest the shore, away from the others.

My mind was almost blank. The worries and alarms of the last few days made it hard to concentrate on anything. But strange sensations seized me at this last moment.

In a narrow line along the shore I could make out Odessa. Beyond it lay the limitless country which had once been called Russia, where the people talked my native language, where there were many places that I knew, and where many dear and close to me still remained.

There, not so far from me, was the roar of guns, and people were dying. Russian people. They were fighting against the enemy who had invaded their country and were defeating him and driving him out of Russia. They were saving their country and, at the same time, the fearful regime which had tortured and oppressed Russia for almost thirty years. At this turn of history, by an extreme concentration of his false propaganda, Stalin had managed to fool the people again and convince them that the concepts ‘Soviet regime’ and ‘fatherland’ were synonyms.

There was another way, which I had chosen, but which was unacceptable to many. There was no third way. The stamp of inevitability and compulsion lay on those who were fighting over there and on those who were about to leave their country on this barge. Over there they were fighting to strengthen and re-establish the regime, hating it and wishing its fall but seeing no way to bring this about. Many heads were full of foggy hopes for improvement in the future.

We were fleeing Russia because we saw that Stalin’s regime was strengthening itself in the process of beating the Germans. For us the thought of a return to life as it was before the war was impossible – the endless official hypocrisy of government propaganda, sucking out the last of life’s juices with Stalin five-year plans. For the many who knew the vengefulness of the Soviet regime staying behind was equivalent to suicide. At best they could expect a slow death in a concentration camp; at worst a noose around their necks on one of Odessa’s squares.

We were choosing a road into the unknown, the foreign, and, obviously, the unfriendly. A tiny bit of freedom was left to us; the freedom to choose our way. We had decided to go and we were going. And each one of us, consciously or instinctively, grasped at this bit of freedom as he parted with his country.

The gangplanks were taken away and the engine of the tug began to work. Odessa with its blinking, covered light bulbs began to sink into the gloom – the last piece of our own land. There would be no return. I bade an unspoken goodbye to my country where everything that had been part of my life, both good and bad, remained.