Part II. Under German Occupation

10. THE FIRST DAYS

THE number of Germans who entered the city was amazingly small. Only on the central streets (perhaps because they alone were well paved) could automobiles, occasional tanks, and motor cycles be seen dashing back and forth. But still the townspeople were surprised at the mechanization of the German Army and compared it involuntarily with ours, which moved almost entirely on foot.

The Germans kept to themselves and paid little attention to the people who filled the streets. However, there were a few cases of soldiers taking watches away from passing civilians.

In general the population was well disposed toward the occupants and there was something of a holiday atmosphere. On the main street I met an acquaintance, a book-keeper from the restaurant trust. He had tears in his eyes.

‘It’s about time, Vladimir Nikolaevich,’ he said, ‘for the damned Soviet regime to end. How many years I’ve waited for this day!’

‘Don’t you think you’re being a little hasty? We don’t know what the German rule will be like yet,’ I said.

‘It makes no difference what it will be like. Can’t you see, even the air has changed somehow! I can curse Stalin all I want and nobody makes me yell Heil Hitler either. You’re young and you don’t appreciate this. Wait a while and taste a bit of freedom!’

‘But maybe it will be harder on us in other ways.’

‘What other ways? Nonsense! Maybe there won’t be much to eat, but we’re used to that. We won’t be thrown out of our houses either. The comrades left enough room in all the committee buildings. Of course a lot has been blown up and there are a few fires that haven’t been put out yet, but that will take care of itself. Look at their soldiers-how well dressed they are! And they must stuff them with food!’ He continued in raptures.

Looting persisted in the city. People were taking everything they did not have a chance to take earlier. They scurried around with packages, with full pails, with bags. The Germans did not interfere. I noticed one of them standing by a wrecked warehouse and photographing the crowd which had gathered in the street. A boy threw a roll of cloth out through a broken window. There was a scuffle, but no one was angry. Everyone seemed to be in an unusually good humour.

There was a distant explosion. A few minutes later someone ran by shouting, ‘The city soviet has been blown up.’

I went to the centre of the city, but the German sentries were not letting anyone through to the scene of the explosion.

For two or three more days buildings which had been mined by the retreating Soviets kept blowing up. There were both delayed-action mines and booby traps which would explode if someone opened a door inside the building. Sometimes the Germans would blow up a building when their sappers found a mine they could not take out safely. There were a few victims, mostly from the local population.

The second day after the arrival of the Germans I almost became one of these victims. A friend and I were walking along one of the main streets and discussing everything that had happened, particularly the destruction of the mined buildings. We had almost reached the big, white military hospital, in front of which a few Germans were standing about. We knew that about two hundred wounded Red Army soldiers were in it – there had been just time enough to evacuate the officers. Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion and I was thrown to the ground. Flying stones filled the air. Everything grew dark with dust and smoke.

Feeling dizzy and rubbing the back of my head which ached considerably, I looked for my friend. He was unconscious and his face was bleeding. His cheek had been laid open. I lifted him up and looked around. The hospital was in ruins. Among the stones in front of it lay the crushed bodies of several Germans.

Cars drove up and the street was roped off. Some Germans came up to us and said something which I did not understand. One of them threw me a small package in which I found a bandage and some cotton. I tied up my friend’s cheek as well as I could. Meanwhile the Germans had dug out their own dead and began to carry the bodies of the Red Army men from the hospital, laying them out on the pavement. It looked as if not a single Soviet soldier had survived the blast.

I took my friend home and went back to the centre of the town. In those days not only I but everyone in’ the city was in a sort of feverish condition. There had been a radical change of everything we had grown accustomed to throughout our lives, and it produced a nervous reaction. Everyone kept hurrying somewhere in a state of excitement, exchanging news and impressions.

I remember how astonished we were at one small incident on the first day of the occupation. Late in the evening, when no one would risk walking in the unlit streets, the people who lived around our yard had locked the gate and were sitting talking on the benches in the small garden.

Suddenly, a loud knock at the gate. We looked at each other.

‘Who could it be? Germans? Looters?’

Several of us went to the gate.

‘Who’s there?’

There was an answer in German and the knocking resumed. We opened the gate. There was a young German soldier. He looked at us, entered the yard, and began to speak. I managed to make out that he was searching for one of our neighbours. The man whose name he pronounced came up to him.

The German took out a piece of paper and gave it to him. A candle was was produced and it turned out that this was a letter from Rostov, from the man’s daughter, with whom the German was acquainted. She wrote everything was quiet in Rostov although much of the city was in ruins.

The soldier stood there uncertainly. But for us the tenseness was gone now. We took him to the end of the yard where supper, wine, and vodka were quickly laid out for him. At that time everyone had plenty to eat from the looted warehouses. The soldier made himself at home. He took off his cap and belt with its knife, unbuttoned his tunic, and even tried to say a few words in Russian.

An interpreter was found: an old German woman who had lived near us for thirty years. Everyone crowded around the unexpected guest, asking what would happen to us. One thing amazed us; how he could have dared to come to us alone, at night, unarmed, and even drink vodka, in a newly occupied city where theoretically every house could contain an ambush. After supper the German was unable to say a word. He was thoroughly drunk. Someone put him up for the night, giving up his own bed.

At the end of the second day the looting was over. German military policemen walked around with lists of some sort, checking them with maps of the city, which they had had printed liberally before its capture. On all warehouses, shops, and surviving factories they posted short but eloquent notices, ‘These premises are under German control. Looters will be shot.’

However, they posted no guards. There was no need for them. Our people had been used to discipline since childhood, and everyone understood that in time of war if you were caught you would be shot on the spot with no one to appeal to.

At the same time, notices from the German kommandatura appeared announcing that the city was under martial law and civilians were forbidden on the streets from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. All citizens were instructed to return to their jobs. The exchange rate was set at ten rubles to one Reichsmark. Lastly, it was stated that the Germans had come to liberate the Russian people from Bolshevism, and the population was urged to seize partisans and commissars and bring them to the kommandatura.

The notices were printed in Russian and German, headed by an unfamiliar sign: a black eagle with a swastika.

People crowded around the placards, read them, and went home discussing them.

One evening I went to see a friend, the elderly engineer Arsov. There were about twenty people at his house, all members of the city intelligentsia: doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors.

The lawyer Sorokin was talking.

‘This morning Alexandrov and I were at the kommandatura. The Commandant received us. We offered him our services to organize life in the city. We gave him a list of the demolitions the Soviets made before leaving, but he had a completer one of his own. After a little talk the Commandant said he wanted to appoint me burgomaster. I told him I’d like to consult with my friends before deciding whether or not to accept. So I’d like you all to give me your opinions.’

Krichenko, the senior engineer of the destroyed power plant, said, ‘Of course there are various ways of looking at the possibilities of cooperation with the Germans. In principle I am against it.’

‘Maybe it’s because you were a Communist?’ said someone.

‘No, it isn’t,’ said the engineer sharply. ‘It’s obvious in recent history that Communists can co-operate with Hitlerites very successfully. But I consider myself a Russian, and the Germans are invaders. It’s true that they say they have come as liberators, but we have still to be convinced.’

‘Let’s be practical,’ Sorokin interrupted. ‘Do you want to work in the future city government?’

‘I am being practical. You’re not the burgomaster yet and I’m not your subordinate. So please don’t interrupt me.

‘Comrades, I . . .’

‘Comrades are all over with,’ someone else broke in. ‘We’ve become misters.’

Krichenko continued without looking around.

“. . . consider that we must work. In the city there are more than 100,000 people who have been left to their fate by the Bolsheviks. The power plant, the water system, and the railroad have been destroyed. There isn’t one vehicle left that will run. In a couple of weeks the food that the population has managed to stock up will be gone and the situation will be catastrophic. I myself am going to the power plant tomorrow to do all I can to get it working as soon as possible.’

‘I thank you,’ said Sorokin majestically, writing something down in his notebook. ‘Who else would like to express an opinion?’

Professor Vanin, the director of the city hospital, got up.

‘At the moment there are about 500 people in the hospital without any food supply. Our drugs are almost gone. I shall continue to work.’

‘The city will be divided into three districts. We need three district burgomasters,’ said Sorokin. ‘Who wants to have the jobs?’

Three volunteers were found.

‘What is the situation in regard to the Jewish question?’ someone asked.

‘I asked the Commandant about that. He said the matter does not interest him, that along with the army there are S.S. units that are specialists on the Jewish question, but no S.S. units have arrived yet.’

‘Didn’t you ask what would happen to the Jews?’

‘No, I didn’t. But I don’t think anything very pleasant will happen to them.’

Sorokin’s friend, the lawyer Alexandrov, said, ‘I guess we can consider that the basic framework of the future city government has been formed. Sorokin and I will report to the Commandant about it tomorrow. I ask you all to think about this and talk it over with people who feel they can be useful in this work, as well as to start thinking about how to solve the problems that are before us.’

People began to leave. Our host, Arsov, who had accepted the administration of the First District, turned to me.

‘What do you think? Do you want to work with us?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘I don’t know what all this will involve and how it will turn out. Frankly, I would like to wait a bit and see.’

He started to try to convince me that we had no right to wait, that somebody had to take the responsibility of restoring the city to normal life, that the population, after all, was not to blame for the situation.

‘You must understand, Vladimir Nikolaevich, that all of us who are able to do anything have a citizen’s responsibility before our people. We can think about the moral side of co-operating with the Germans but we have no right to forget that no one is going to worry about the little people. The Germans have their own worries; they are fighting a war, and probably looting. The population has nothing. You know that as well as I do.

‘The Bolsheviks blew up everything they could when they left. Did you know that tremendous charges were discovered in all the transformers in the city today? If they hadn’t been found all the houses around would have been blown to hell as soon as the power plant started up again.

‘And then after all, Vladimir Nikolaevich, we must begin to believe in something. We’ve been living for the last twenty-five years with no faith of any kind, without any hope for something better. You’re young and you don’t realize the horror of such a life. You have nothing to compare it to. I’m twice as old as you and I’ve seen a lot – a lot besides Soviet concentration camps. I’d like to believe that out of the blood and fire of war there’s a new life starting for us, a better one than what went before, a freer one. Why should we be sorry if Hitler beats Stalin? What can we lose? The Germans won’t conquer Russia, that’s obvious to any child. Russia can swallow the whole of Germany and there will still be room left.

‘You’ll tell me, “Russian blood is being spilled, and the Germans are doing it.” Believe me the Germans will never be able to kill as many people as Stalin has. And I am ready to close my eyes to the destruction of the Jews, terrible as that is. That is the point where the Germans go insane. But at least they leave the nonJews alone.’

‘What about the prisoners of war? You know how they are treated in the camp.’

‘Yes, I know, the conditions are awful there – an appalling death rate after only a week and a half. But the U.S.S.R. stayed out of the international conference about prisoners of war and doesn’t look out for them through the International Red Cross. If we work with the Germans, we’ll be able to help them somehow. But if we just stand aside and condemn everything, no one will be better off. Think about it.’

I finally agreed to organize the clearing of the streets of all the debris which had littered them during the explosions, as well as to list the residential buildings which had been damaged. It was obvious that there would be no way of making any further repairs.

‘Incidentally,’ I asked, ‘how is the city going to support the people on these jobs?’

‘The Germans say they have captured some of the money in the State Bank. There is going to be a directive about paying all the cash which is still left in the various cash drawers about town into the city treasury. And then there will be taxes.’

‘Who is going to be taxed and how?’

‘Private trade and privately owned workshops are going to be permitted. The owners will have to buy licenses, and they’ll pay the taxes. The food and goods left over from the looting will be sold. Also the Germans are supposed to put up some money.’

‘What about police?’

‘The German military police are to organize the police directly. The only thing I know is that some former officers of the Tsarist army are going to be in it, as well as some of the city’s former Soviet policemen.’

‘Well, we’ll see how it goes,’ I said getting up. ‘Where is your office going to be?’

‘We don’t know yet. We’re to look for a suitable place tomorrow. Come over in the morning.’

On the way home I pondered everything that had occurred, and the future. Something was troubling me. I had just consented to work for the city government, or, stated in official Soviet language, ‘to collaborate with the enemy’. Had I done the right thing? I could not decide. I had some foggy, for the most part emotional, objections to it. I began to examine myself:

Whom are the Germans fighting against?

Against Russia.

Who are you?

I am a Russian. The Germans are my enemies.

Do you want to help your enemies?

No.

Whom do you want to help?

My own people, the people of my home town, deserted by the Soviets, invaded by the Germans.

Is it possible to help them without helping the Germans at the same time?

This was a difficult question. In order to help the people in the city it was necessary to take things from the Germans, even though these things had been seized by the Germans elsewhere. To take things from them was not necessarily helping them. But this answer did not seem convincing. I tried to approach the matter from another point of view:

Who is defending Russia today?

The people, and not very willingly.

Who is organizing this defence?

Stalin and the Bolsheviks.

Should you help Stalin in this?

For what purpose?

To chase out the invaders.

And in doing this, strengthen the Soviet regime?

Perhaps, but—

No! No, a thousand times!

Memories of the Kolyma swept over me; I rid myself of them with difficulty.

Stalin isn’t defending Russia, he is defending himself and his power at the cost of enormous sacrifices on the part of the people. Moreover, the Germans are today the only power fighting against Bolshevism, the No. 1 enemy of my people. Therefore they are the single hope for our liberation from it.

Do you know what the occupation will bring with it?

No. But I don’t believe it could be worse than before. Besides, I don’t believe the Germans can conquer Russia.

But this was not entirely convincing either. At any rate Nikolai, who had swum across the river to join ‘his own’ a few days back, believed it complete nonsense: that after the war everything would become better.

There remained one more approach, a most logical one:

Do you have any means of existence?

No.

How are you going to live if you don’t work?

I’ve got to work.

Do you know that any form of work in an area occupied by the enemy is considered aid to the enemy under Soviet law?

I know it.

Would you rather starve or break a Soviet law?

I laughed inwardly at the childishness of the question. Break a Soviet law? How can you avoid breaking it, even in a ‘peaceful’ nonwar period? Where do all the millions of Soviet forced labourers come from? They must have broken some Soviet law.

But wasn’t it enough that I, a man of military age, who had been convicted for counter-revolution, was not in the army and had not been evacuated? Wasn’t this enough in itself for the ‘comrades’ to shoot me whenever they got the chance? Now I was really outside the law.

I was calm. There was no mistake. I would go to work.