14. A FREE ENTERPRISE

IN Kiev we moved into an ‘evacuation point’, a large school building which had been hurriedly converted into a dormitory. We were assigned to a former classroom that contained only twenty people. The building had a dining hall where once a day we were given some murky water which was called soup. Without the German soldiers’ rations which I kept on drawing at the Kiev station, we would have had a hard time of it.

We ate part of the rations and sold the rest in the market. We had little money and the future was very unclear. Having learned that the wages paid around town were extremely small and didn’t cover a quarter of one’s living costs, we began to give serious thought to the problem of earning a living. I had a few skills for which there was no use; Igor was a mechanical engineer, but he could not find a suitable job either.

Finally an old friend of Igor’s advised us to become smugglers. It must be pointed out that before I left home I had obtained a document from the kommandatura listing my destination as Lvov, which had become part of the Ukraine at the time of the Soviet-German agreement of 1939. After the Germans occupied the Ukraine Lvov became part of the ‘governor-generalship’, as Poland was known. Between the Ukraine and the governor-generalship there was a border, guarded by the Germans, but some goods got through to Kiev from the west, and it was said that the people who brought them made a lot of money.

We decided to deal in cheap jewellers’ goods, which a friend of Igor’s sold at the market. Jewellery was generally unavailable under the Soviets and was in great demand. We sold a few of our belongings, gathered all our money together, and Igor departed for Lvov. The main problem for him was now to get back. The pass was good only in one direction.

I was seeing Kiev for the first time, but it was not necessary to have been there before to realize how devastated this one of Russia’s most beautiful cities was. The entire centre had been mined by the retreating Red Army. Explosions and fires had continued for a week after the Germans took over the city. As a result five or six of the central streets lay in ruins their entire length.

This barbarous annihilation was incomprehensible, inasmuch as most of the industrial points, the factories and plants of Kiev, were not damaged.

One quickly came to understand the relationship which existed between the Germans and the local population. Everywhere in the Ukraine the Germans felt that they were masters. The Ukraine was ruled from Rovno by Reichskomissar Koch through innumerable Stadtkomissariats in the cities and Gebietskomissars in the villages. Everywhere the Germans were frankly and systematically despoiling the population. They immediately understood the value of the Soviet collective farm system when it came to collecting taxes from an entire village at once. In the cities there was a rationing system, but the rations were very small. The Germans did not allow a free market and regularly confiscated the food that peasants tried to bring to town.

All the best buildings in Kiev were occupied by Germans. Restaurants, hotels, and theatres were decorated with the sign ‘Nur für Deutsche’. Even special latrines ‘For Germans only’ were built in all the railroad stations of the Ukraine.

We happened to arrive in Kiev during a relatively quiet period, but one could still see remains of signs ordering the shooting of hostages: for one German killed in the street, up to 300 peaceful citizens in the surrounding houses would be shot. All Kievans vividly remembered the destruction of several tens of thousands of Jews in a deep ravine outside the city.

One local resident who had recently made his way back from the countryside told us:

‘Outside of the big cities there’s no life at all. The Bolsheviks left their agents everywhere behind them – the partisans. Although they knew what reprisals would follow every time a German was killed, they began a reign of terror. The partisans shoot one blameless German soldier; the Germans shoot 100 innocent citizens. Then some relatives of the dead shoot another couple of German soldiers, and so it goes.

‘As a result an open hatred exists between the population and the Germans. Yet when the Germans entered the Ukraine, they were usually greeted with flowers and with bread and salt-genuinely greeted.’

A priest from a small town not far from Kiev told us:

‘In our area three villages were burnt to the ground and the population annihilated by the Germans. And why? The partisans again. A group of Communists and military N.K.V.D. people who were left behind for partisan activities in 1941 recently began to be active. They burst into one village and hanged the Gebietskomissar and the elder that he had appointed. In two days there was nothing left of the village but smoking ruins. In another village two soldiers and a policeman were killed during a partisan attack. That village was destroyed by Germans, too. A few people survived and they joined the partisans. Now the partisans movement keeps growing. Trains get derailed, German warehouses are robbed, and the local people also; Germans are hanged. And who are the main sufferers from all this activity? The peaceful citizens. The partisans hang just one German, and a whole village is rubbed off the face of the earth, hundreds of old men, women, and children are killed.’

In the Ukraine there was no trace of the comparatively free intercourse between the population and the Germans that I had seen in the northern Caucasus. It was clear that here the Germans were merely occupiers and could claim no missionary-liberator role.

When we began to try to find an apartment, I made frequent visits to the local city government and became very well acquainted with the head of the housing section, a man of real culture and refinement. Under the Soviets he had been a professor in the local university; he had co-operated with the Germans by conviction.

‘What is the general policy of the Germans here?’ I asked.

‘It’s very primitive. They simply milk the Ukraine as much as they can. All enterprises are in German hands, mostly run by private individuals who know how to make money. I don’t know on what basis Ukrainian factories are given to these rotten German businessmen; probably for services rendered to their Führer. The Germans control everything. They’ve kept all the state and collective farms intact, and it’s no exaggeration to say that today the whole of Germany is being fed by the Ukraine. At any rate all our grain, butter, and meat are being shipped west.’

‘How does the population exist?’

‘What do they care about the population? They live somehow; they’re hungry but they stay alive. This region is very rich. Nowhere in the world is there such soil as we have in the Ukraine. The hatred of the people for the Germans is an absolute fact. It’s too late now to patch up relations, even if the Germans should suddenly decide to make things better. The gulf between us is too great.’

‘Do you know whether it’s possible to go to Europe?’

‘Right now it’s very easy. So many people have been taken into the army in Germany that they have a great man-power shortage. Until recently the Germans asked people from fifteen to forty-five years old to go there voluntarily, but now they’re shipping people out by force. Sometimes they simply grab young people off the streets and put them on a train. There haven’t been any such incidents in Kiev yet but I’m sure there will be.’

‘May I ask you a personal question?’ He nodded. ‘All the time we have been talking you haven’t said a good word about the Germans; you criticize their activities and find no mitigating factors in their behaviour. How is it then that you keep on working in the city government? I know you’ll be blamed by the Communists and those with them, but I’m not referring to them now. I want to know what your own thoughts are about it?’

‘That question is a very easy one to answer. The life of this place of 600,000 depends to some degree on the city government. While I remain in my position I can be sure that mistreatment of people will be held to a minimum; I consider myself an honest man. Don’t think that the Stadtkomissar is unaware of my attitude toward the Germans. They’ve been able to organize a good spy service. But I execute all his orders and don’t send him any requests that the Germans cannot, or will not, which is the same thing, comply with. If I’m removed some Volksdeutsche will be appointed in my place. He’ll try to be more Catholic than the Pope. He won’t have any interest in the fate of Kiev and its citizens, and he’ll spend his time licking the boots of the German administration. So I stay here, although, believe me, it would be much more pleasant and restful to quit.’

He advised me to find some job in a hurry in order to avoid being caught by the police and shipped to Germany because I was unemployed.

I decided to apply for work to the office of the stadtkomissariat which had to do with small city enterprises.

I was received by a fat, jovial German in a yellow uniform whose name was Schwarz. I told him about my past and spread out all my papers including the German ones for him to see. He called his secretary over.

‘We must find some sort of work for this gentleman.’

Meanwhile Igor had returned from Lvov. We had been worried about his long absence, and there had been reason to worry: he had almost been detained by the police with all the goods which he had bought. Only after a great deal of trouble had he managed to get permission to return to the Ukraine.

He brought two suitcases full of cheap jewellery with him: glass beads, brass earrings and necklaces, brooches, etc. His friend the tradesman looked at the goods and offered to buy the whole lot at once, without even bothering to inspect each item separately. He offered us 100,000 karbovanetses.* However, this was not an excessive sum of money. A pound of butter at the market cost 600 karbovanetses at that time, and a three-pound loaf of bread 200. But for us it was a good deal and the profit was almost 100 per cent.

We held a meeting and decided that I should prepare to leave immediately for Lvov before the money had been spent. The prospect did not appeal to me at all. Since childhood I had felt an aversion to commerce and this had been strengthened by my Soviet upbringing. But we had to live, and I set out with the same document that Igor had used. Zina went with me. We could both speak German. We spent the night at the Lvov station and took a train for southern Galicia where, according to information we had, the goods we needed could be obtained at a lower price.

Looking out of the window of the car, we marvelled at the cleanliness of the little stations we passed and the neatness of the carefully cultivated fields. The town we went to, Stryj, was very clean and light, a place such as we had never seen in Russia.

We completed part of our business the first evening and decided to spend the night again at the station in order not to make the acquaintance of the police. To stay in the city one had to register at the police station. Leaving Zina guarding the baggage, I made another trip to an address we had been given to arrange for the purchase of a couple of hundred cheap ornaments.

It was dark on the way back to the station. Only an occasional street light broke the gloom. The streets were almost deserted. I walked on, depending on my memory to find the way. Across my path, which I thought was the correct one, there was a small gate. It was open and two men stood by it smoking and talking in low tones. For some reason I did not ask them how to get to the station, although in the light of one of the cigarettes, which had suddenly flared up, they looked like policemen.

They did not stop me. A block or two later I noticed that the doors of most of the houses were open and I could see people inside engaged in ordinary household activities. There were a number of people in the street, too, they were not going anywhere, merely standing around in groups talking, or walking back and forth singly.

Farther on, the street was blocked off with a wooden fence. I turned back, walked a block, ran into another fence, and turned back again. In confusion I said in German to the first man I passed, ‘Can you please tell me how to get to the railroad station?’

He looked at me in surprise. ‘The station? You can’t go to the station even if you have a pass. It’s too late.’

‘Pass? Why should I need a pass to go to the station?’

‘Don’t you live here?’

‘No, I just arrived in town today.’

‘Do you know where you are?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘You’re in the ghetto,’ said the man, and something in his voice broke. I felt goosepimples on my back. It was not exactly a feeling of fear. I had nothing to be afraid of; they wouldn’t keep me in the ghetto. But knowing the position of Jews under the Germans I was overwhelmed by the tragedy of these people. I had the sensation of being in the society of living dead men. That is what in fact they were.

The man understood what was going on in my mind. In a quiet, somewhat sorrowful voice he said, ‘I don’t think you have anything to fear. Come with me; I’ll take you to the gate. Perhaps they’ll let you through in spite of the late hour.’

He led me to the same gate through which I had entered. Two men in uniform stood there as before. They were internal ghetto policemen. My companion explained to them that I had accidentally entered while the gate was still open – before 10 p.m. – and that I had to get to the station to catch a train. He added the last on his own.

The policeman answered that he had no right to open the gate at night, that strict discipline had to be maintained at all times, because the least violation would have consequences for all the inmates, who were linked in mutual responsibility. I might be noticed leaving after the curfew, so he could not risk letting me out.

I was somewhat at a loss. In the first place Zina waiting for me at the station might think that something terrible had happened to me if I did not appear. Secondly, the tense feeling which had come over me when I first found out where I was was still with me, and in addition the prospect of spending the night on the street did not appeal to me.

‘Is there any way of letting my companion know where I am?’ I asked the policeman. ‘She is waiting for me at the station.’

‘We can try,’ he said. ‘We have a telephone here arid some friends at the station who can try to find her. What’s her name?’

I wrote Zina’s name on a sheet of paper from my notebook. The policeman handed it to his silent companion who disappeared into the nearest doorway with it.

‘About a place for you to spend the night,’ said the policeman, ‘I don’t know what advice to give you. We have no hotels here.’

‘I’ll try to fix you up,’ said the man who had brought me to the gate. ‘If you wish, you can stay in my house. We’re crowded, it’s true, but we have a spare bed. My brother, who is not with us any more, used to sleep in it . . .’

I thanked him and accepted the invitation after a moment of hesitation. I couldn’t explain the reason for my hesitation or say that it distressed me to be in the company of these rejected and doomed people. While the other policeman was still telephoning I told them the reason for my coming to Stryj, who I was, and where I came from. My guide and host-to-be told me that his name was Rosenberg (like the famous Minister’s, he added with a wry smile), that he was a tailor by profession, and that if I wanted he would try to help me purchase the goods for which I had come.

The second policeman returned and said that Zina had been located at the station and told not to worry, that I would return in the morning. Rosenberg and I said good night to the policeman and went back into the ghetto.

‘Here is my apartment,’ he said, letting me into a small, dimly lit room. ‘These are my wife and children.’

As I entered a young woman with completely grey hair got up from behind a table, and two children, a boy and a girl about four or five years old, crawled off their chairs and froze, staring at me. The woman looked at Rosenberg, and speaking in dialect he explained in a few words how I had come there.

Pleasantly, but without smiling, she asked me to take off my coat and sit down at the table.

‘We’ve had supper already,’ she said, ‘but I’ll prepare something for you, although we haven’t much to offer.’

I was not hungry but I was afraid to offend her by refusing, so I asked her for a cup of tea; or better, just hot water, I added hurriedly, noticing that she looked at her husband in confusion when I mentioned the word ‘tea’.

‘That’s fine,’ said Rosenberg. ‘Now you sit here and I’ll go and find out about the purchases you want to make. Tell me again exactly what you want.’

I felt very awkward making use of his services, but he obviously wanted to do something badly and I told him that I needed cheap earrings and brooches. He put on his hat and went out.

Mrs. Rosenberg heated up a teakettle on a small stove, kindling the fire with shavings. She explained that they had a very good electric teakettle but that in the ghetto it was forbidden to use electric heaters of any kind. With the cup of water appeared a small jar of jam which I did not touch, seeing with what longing the little girl was looking at it.

The mother apologized that she could not converse with me since she did not speak German. I answered that we could speak Ukrainian which I understood sufficiently. She began to talk about things in general, about the front which was moving west, and remarked that the worse the Germans fared in the war the worse it was for the Jews.

‘But why?’ I asked.

‘Because when they have to retreat anywhere, they never leave a single Jew alive behind them,’ she said bitterly.

I kept quiet. What could I say? After a while I asked her if they had any chance to leave the ghetto. She shook her head.

‘Sometimes rich and single people manage to get away from it, although generally the ones who remain are made to pay for it. But people like us, with children—’ she pointed to the boy and girl who had climbed up into their chairs again and were showing me their books. ‘It’s hopeless.’

Rosenberg returned with two elderly Jews. He was in a fairly gay mood, although it seemed to me then and later that his gaiety was artificial, that he forced it in order to cheer the people around him. One of the men with him wore on his coat the large yellow six-pointed star with the word ‘Jude’ in black.

‘Well, all your business is in order now,’ said Rosenberg. ‘My friends Schreibmann and Valkevich will help you.’

Schreibmann had a little suitcase with him, from which he took out his goods and spread them on the table. He had brought several dozen brass earrings studded with coloured glass, and some brooches.

Rosenberg’s wife began to put the children to bed, and we talked in low tones. I looked over the ornaments; they were all suitable. I asked the price. Schreibmann quoted a price which was so low that I was amazed.

‘Isn’t that too cheap?’ I asked. ‘Usually I pay a great deal more for things like this and I don’t want to cheat you.’

Schreibmann gave a wry laugh.

‘Don’t be surprised. Jews are disliked because they always sell cheaper than others. And besides, I don’t feel like making a lot of money any more. I don’t need much now.’

‘But it’s still too cheap. I’ll make a much bigger profit than usual on your goods, and there’s no reason to charge such a low price.’

‘I told you the price,’ said Schreibmann, ‘and you can pay that. But if you like, give something to Rosenberg who introduced us.’

‘Please, please!’ Rosenberg protested, ‘I really don’t need anything.’

‘Yes, you do, Rosenberg,’ said Schreibmann firmly. ‘You know that as well as I do. You have children.’

‘Well, we can discuss that later. But here is Valkevich. His goods are not here; they’re in town at a friend’s house, and if you wish he’ll write you a note and you can choose what you need there tomorrow.’

Valkevich, the one with the star on his coat, merely nodded.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘please do that. I’ll take everything that’s here, naturally.’ We counted up the ornaments and I paid Schreibmann. Meanwhile Valkevich wrote out a note and handed it to me saying, ‘Here it is. The price of everything you pick out there should be more or less the same as for these things.’ He pointed at the table. ‘But they’ll charge you more. You know nowadays even one’s best friends don’t do anything gratis.’

‘And what about the money. Shall I give part of it to you now?’

‘Young man, you don’t know how to do business. How can you give me any money when you haven’t even seen the goods you are to buy, and when it might turn out that there are no goods at all there? You can pay in full there, and they’ll give me what’s coming to me.’

The agreement was concluded. Schreibmann and Valkevich left.

The children were already in bed, and another bed had been prepared for me off to the side.

‘You’d better go to bed now, it’s twelve o’clock,’ said Rosenberg. ‘My wife and I will turn in later; we always stay up late. She’s going over to visit a neighbour now.’

Mrs. Rosenberg wished me good night and went out. At once all vivacity drained out of Rosenberg’s face. Silently he went over to the children’s bed, looked at them for a moment, and then turned to me.

‘I can understand a great deal,’ he began. ‘I can understand Germans hating Jews and considering them subhuman, and destroying them. Perhaps there were Jews in Germany who used to make trouble for Germans; I can understand that, too, although I can’t believe that all German Jews were bad. Let them do what they want with me, although I have never in my whole life done harm to anyone. My father and my grandfather were tailors, and I myself have been working since I was a child. Let them destroy me because there may have been other Jews who made trouble for non-Jews. But my children! How are they to blame?’

He was quiet for a minute and then continued:

‘You are from Russia. I know that life has been hard there, but at least it doesn’t matter there whether you are a Jew or not; it’s hard for everybody. But here – horrible times! My wife and I have resigned ourselves to everything long ago. I lost my brother; my wife her whole family. In what way are we better than they? But I can’t bear to think about the children. If I had any hope that they could live, even with people who don’t love them, I would hang myself tomorrow so as not to trouble the Germans. As I died I would think that my children would grow up and find a little piece of happiness for themselves in the world. That’s all that I would need.’

‘Isn’t there any way of settling the children with some family outside the ghetto?’ I asked. Rosenberg looked at me, his eyes narrow.

‘There’s a possibility, why not? But I don’t have the million zlotys I would need to pay people to take them. I don’t have 100,000; I don’t even have 10,000. My former friends don’t want to recognize me when I walk down the street with a yellow star on my chest. Who wants my children besides myself?’ He pronounced the words with such deep feeling that I felt shivers up and down my spine.

There was silence. Rosenberg sat down at the table and covered his face with his hands. When he took them away there was a guilty and embarrassed half smile on his face.

‘Please forgive me for what I’ve said. I shouldn’t have said all that. What have Jewish woes to do with you? You must have troubles enough of your own. Please go to bed; it’s getting late. I’ll go and get my wife. She’s waiting for me to call her.’

He left the room and I undressed and got into the bed that had been prepared for me. I could not sleep, and as I lay with my eyes closed I heard the Rosenbergs come in, put out the light, and go to bed.

Perhaps for the first time the tragedy of the fate of the Jews rose before me in its full horror. What were the ghettos of medieval times, the ‘pale of settlement’, and other restrictions on the Jews in tsarist Russia, or even the pogroms, in comparison with their present fate?

Sleep did not come. The bed upon which one who had so recently been killed had slept burned me. Only toward morning did I doze off for half an hour. When I opened my eyes and saw that it was light outside, I began to dress quickly. Trying not to make any noise, I took a piece of paper which was lying on the table and wrote a few words of thanks to Rosenberg, putting a couple of hundred marks under the paper.

As I was leaving the house I bumped into Rosenberg, who was just coming in. He had risen earlier than I.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I hope you managed to get a little sleep.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I answered. ‘And now it is time I went to the station.’

‘You haven’t forgotten Valkevich’s note? Don’t fail to see those people. Come, I’ll walk with you to the gate.’

We walked through the narrow streets, past still-sleeping houses, on the walls of which were signs in Hebrew and six-pointed stars of David. The gate was already open and the same policeman who had been on duty the evening before greeted us.

I said goodbye to Rosenberg and went to the station. Zina was waiting for me. We had something to eat and then set out to finish up our affairs. We were through at noon, and having no trouble getting a permit from the local German kommandatura to return to Kiev, we started back the same day.

The trip back was uneventful; the profits were bigger than any of us had imagined; but I wasn’t myself for a long time afterward.

Life went on, and we had to begin to think about the next trip to Poland. Prices were going up in Kiev. The future became more indefinite every day, and money began to acquire more and more importance. We did not dare to make another trip with the old pass. Every time the police on the border had studied it with growing suspicion. And so I went to the stadtkomissariat to see Schwarz. The fat, jovial German in yellow uniform to whom I had reported when I first came to Kiev. He knew all my past and had studied all my papers.

I told him about our predicament frankly and asked him to send me to Poland, ostensibly on official business, and to issue me the necessary papers. Equally frankly I informed him that he, too, would profit from our enterprise.

He found the last idea very pleasant and without much pondering ordered his secretary to prepare the papers.

I noticed right away that something unusual was happening in the stadtkomissariat that day. Germans were moving from office to office and whispering together excitedly.

As he gave me the papers Schwarz cursed softly under his breath, but not at me. I ventured to ask him what had occurred.

‘I’ll tell you what’s happened! Those damned Italians have betrayed Germany!’ he thundered.

‘How?’

‘Badoglio and that old bastard the King arranged a coup d’etat, arrested the Duce, and made a truce with the Americans and English.’

‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked.

‘How should I know?’ Schwarz shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let the Führer’s head ache over it. What did he have to tie himself to those cowards for? A long time ago some French general said, “If Italy is against us, we’ll need four divisions in reserve; if she is neutral, we’ll need eight; and if she is with us, we’ll need at least twelve.” And he was right, that Frenchman.’

‘Can the change in Italy have an effect on the eastern front?’

‘It’s had an effect already.’ He began to swear again. ‘A whole Italian army corps has gone over to the enemy. The rest are being disarmed in a hurry and sent to camps in Germany.’

I said goodbye to Schwarz and left. There was a lot to think about.

Only I could go to Poland with the papers I had received from Schwarz. As soon as we had collected the necessary funds I set out for Krakow. The place charmed me completely. A small ancient city on the Vistula, with churches, palaces, and a castle on the hill where Frank, the Governor-General, resided, Krakow was the best of the cities I had seen thus far. The clean narrow streets of the centre and the wide avenues of the outer ring lined with tall, thick trees; the somewhat old-fashioned citizens, the open carriages with courteous if expensive drivers, the lack of wartime damage – all this was most unusual and extremely attractive.

With this background the atmosphere of the German occupation contrasted vividly. There was frank, undisguised hatred between the Germans and the Poles. The city was full of signs reading ‘Out of bounds to Poles’. They were everywhere, in hotels, restaurants, and stores. There was only one other sign in evidence – ‘For Germans only’ – and this was a match for the first.

The trolleys in Krakow were divided in the middle by a rope. Only Germans were allowed to enter by the front platform; the Poles used the rear one. Usually there were but two or three Germans in the front half; often it was completely empty. In the rear people were packed like herrings in a barrel. Only Poles had to pay for their rides.

There was no fraternizing whatsoever between the Germans and the population, except for unavoidable contacts between occupiers and occupied. I never saw a Polish girl walking with a German soldier, or any German in the company of Poles.

A Polish tradesman with whom I had dealings said, ‘There can be no talk of any normal relations with the Germans. That is impossible. Poland was a free, independent, democratic state. No one was hungry; no one was in need. There was a certain amount of friction with Byelorussians and Ukrainians, but nothing serious. In the provinces where there were non-Polish populations there were no special restrictions for them. It is natural that Polish was the official language, since the Poles were the ruling nationality. But before the law everyone was equal.

‘And so the Germans, in alliance with the Soviet Union, grabbed Poland. Many cities were ruined; the paw of the occupier descended on all Polish property. They took away the freedom we had had in Poland; they took away everything. Why? Poland didn’t threaten anybody and didn’t constitute a danger to any nation. She was just a sweet fruit ready to be picked. Now we are insulted everywhere we go. They treat us like beings of a lower order. A lot of people have been killed, and not only Jews or Poles married to Jews.

‘How can we possibly make our peace with the Germans? Poland is the victim of the Great Powers, and the people of Poland will never agree to the inevitability or the right of any coercive foreign regime.’

‘But what can you hope for,’ I asked him, ‘squeezed in as you are between Germany and the U.S.S.R.? Under present conditions Poland will inevitably be the prey of one or the other.’

‘At the moment, yes. But I’m certain that England and America will crush Germany and the U.S.S.R., too, whom they are now so friendly with. That’s the only way we will get our former freedom back. Otherwise Poland is lost, no matter how the war comes out.’

There was nothing to be said against this. He was right. The Poles, who had really lost everything as a result of the war and the occupation, had every reason to hate the invaders. But what about the Russians? What had the Russian people lost in the parts of their country which had been occupied? Freedom? They did not have it to lose. Economic well-being? They did not have that either. Moreover, during the war nobody had any doubt that, no matter how hard life was under the Germans, it was easier than ‘on the other side’, where people worked almost twenty hours a day, hungry and exhausted; where millions were mobilized into an army whose generals looked upon their soldiers as cannon fodder.

Undoubtedly it was easier to perish ‘over there’. Under the Germans at least there was a chance to survive.

My trips to Poland went on for some time. I went to Krakow a few more times, visited ruined Warsaw and several other places. Every time I noticed the relations between the population and the Germans becoming tenser. In some places troop trains were derailed. Fortified guard points were erected along the railroads, and day and night you could see Germans standing guard behind their earthworks and barbed wire.

The Kiev newspaper reported that in the near-by town of Vinnitsa, an enormous cemetery of mass graves had been found. Each grave contained piles of bodies. They were people who had been shot by the N.K.V.D. during the purges of 1937-38. There were some who said that these were bodies of Jews shot by the Germans, but soon live witnesses appeared who had seen the pits dug.

One day I met on the street a doctor friend who had just come from Vinnitsa. He completely agreed with the official story.

‘They are wrong around here when they blame the Germans for this thing,’ he said. ‘That is secret Soviet propaganda at work. Most of the bodies are of residents of Vinnitsa and thereabouts, and there never were many Jews there. They were shot long before the war, during the purge which Yezhov directed in 1937. A lot of people who are still alive have recognized relatives among the bodies. The graves were found in the city park which was opened to the public before the war started. Before that it was surrounded by a high fence and the N.K.V.D. would let no one in.’

‘Wouldn’t bodies have changed in five years so that they couldn’t be recognized?’

‘Sometimes they could be told by their teeth or by their hair. Often papers were found on them.’

‘Were a lot of them dug up?’

‘They’ve uncovered about 5,000 bodies so far, but undoubtedly there are more; they are still excavating.’

‘But why aren’t the Germans using the case for propaganda as they did the Katyn Forest massacre?’

‘The devil only knows why. Probably because they don’t care now. They’ll have to let the Ukraine go soon and there’s no use spreading any more propaganda.’

Meanwhile events did not wait. The situation in Kiev, too, was tense; Soviet troops were approaching the Dnieper above and below it. The day came when we had to leave the city.

Without much trouble I got passes from the Stadtkomissariat for our entire group to go to Poland. The group now included Sasha, a friend of my school days, and formerly a talented engineer, whom we had met in Kiev, and who was living with us. Our belongings were all packed; some of them were to be left behind. We abandoned our apartment and moved to the station where, after a wait of three days, we got places on a flat car in a train going to Lvov.

Our departure was not a problem because no large part of the population was fleeing to the west. In general the picture was totally different from the one I had observed in the northern Caucasus. The people who were fleeing from Kiev had been connected with the Germans in some way – working in the city government, the police, or in some office – or else their children had been shipped to Germany involuntarily for forced labour. There were quite a lot of the latter; the Germans had taken over five million young men and girls from the Ukraine. Sometimes their parents decided to follow them, sure that otherwise they would lose their children forever.

In addition to these categories, the Volksdeutsche were naturally going, as well as the refugees who had arrived in Kiev earlier from cities farther east.

However, the masses of the population re. named to wait for the Soviets, and the reason for this undoubtedly was their firm hatred of the Germans.

I saw no hangings in the streets of Kiev, although there were rumours that the Germans were catching and shooting Communists whom they hadn’t touched before. It is a strange but undeniable fact that the Germans everywhere willingly hired Communists. They considered them more experienced in administrative work and more capable than the others. So far as I know, these Communists who found themselves the ‘favourites’ of the Germans never betrayed the confidence which was placed in them.

And so in all only a few tens of thousands of people were leaving Kiev; but the Germans were employing all means of transportation to take grain, cattle, manganese, and other goods they needed out of the Ukraine. All roads were thronged and traffic moved in only one direction. Seated on our flat car we could see two trains ahead of us and two behind. A hundred metres apart, we all crawled south-west.

In Kazatin we were supposed to turn toward Shepetovka, but there was such a jam there that our train continued to Zhmerinka, in order to proceed toward Proskurov and Lvov from there. This turned our thoughts toward a new route.

The territory between the Dniester and the Bug, which was called Transnistria during the war, was occupied not by the Germans but by the Rumanians. It was known everywhere that life in Transnistria was incomparably better than anywhere else in occupied territory in Europe. A large part of the products which appeared on the Kiev black market came from beyond the Bug.

Earlier we had made attempts to move to Odessa; partly because my father’s sister and her daughter lived there, but the Rumanians absolutely refused to let any refugees from the Caucasus or the Ukraine into their territory. Even Germans were not allowed to go there except on especially important missions. The border guard was very real and effective.

Chance had helped us. Zhmerinka was on Transnistrian territory. Of course the station was guarded and no one was allowed in the city, but we could try . . .

An argument began on our flat car. Igor and Zina were for continuing on to Lvov, since they considered that our choice had already been made and there was no point in making side trips. Sasha and I were for going to Transnistria. We were united by an unexpressed desire to remain on our native soil as long as possible and put off real emigration till sometime in the future.

The argument would not settle itself, and we decided to draw lots. The lot fell on Transnistria.

When our train stopped that night in the midst of several others at the freight station in Zhmerinka, we carefully lifted our things off the car and made our way to the outskirts of the town, ducking under several railroad cars. It was so dark that no guard spotted us, while the other passengers decided that we were moving to another car of the same train; we had kept our plan strictly secret.

When our baggage was piled next to the wall of a dilapidated little tavern, Sasha stayed with Nina and her grandmother, while Igor, Zina, and I wandered through the dark and dirty streets knocking at doors and asking to be allowed to spend the night. Before very long we found exactly what we needed – a whole hayloft, full of fresh and fragrant hay – and moved everything in. It was good to sleep there.

* Ukrainian equivalent of rubles.