“No. You know, I envy you, the Ostjuden. You at least have your ideology. You take your strength out of it. We have nothing. We are nothing. They took everything from us and gave us nothing back.”
“What do you mean, gave you nothing back? You got the gloves out of the deal, didn’t you?”
I stared at her straight face; caught the beginning of another smile, snorted after finally getting the joke through my thick skull and then outright burst out laughing, hysterically, until tears sprung to my eyes.
We stood in front of the Yama – the Pit – as it had already been baptized by the population of the ghetto, promptly reduced by a few thousand. Beside me, Liza was speaking, her voice breaking from time to time. Yet, her eyes were dry, almost as black and impenetrable as the night around us.
“After they readmitted us to the ghetto, you, the Hamburgs, went on your merry way but us, they made us bury the bodies. And after we finished the task, they told us, ‘Well, Jewish filth, since we’re letting you live, show us how grateful you are. Kneel’.” She threw a rock into the pit. There was no gravestone to put it on. “So, we knelt in the snow till midnight.”
“Your knees must be killing you,” I said. Nothing else occurred to me to say in the face of this nameless horror.
“My soul is killing me,” she murmured broodingly. “My knees are fine.”
She threw another rock into the mass grave, still not covered with the fresh snow – a black scar on the face of pristine whiteness – and turned her back to it.
We started in the direction of the Obuvnaya Street where Rivka lived. It didn’t take me long to learn that Liza was familiar not only with Rivka herself but with the entire underground business conducted in the Soviet part of the ghetto. Lily begged me to stop it with them, to mind my own affairs, to keep my head down – the usual big sister Lily mindset. I had long abandoned the idea of arguing with her and trying to open her eyes to the bitter truth; it was all the same to the SS. They shot equally often at the feeble and the strong, at the underground members and the quiet types, at the skilled workers and random sorts. The Pit was the proof of it; the snow in front of the ghetto gates, in which I lay yesterday, still stained with blood this morning, was the proof of it. And so, every evening I would crawl through my “exit” in the barbed wire again.
The truth was, I needed them like one needs air after being submerged under water for a very long time. It had long transcended from pure curiosity and desire to barter some food to something more meaningful, purposeful, organized; something that still instilled hope in people living in this rat trap. I knew I didn’t belong with them. I didn’t even understand their language once they would switch from Yiddish to Russian in the heat of a discussion, forgetting all about me; yet I craved those clandestine evenings and their company like a drunkard craving his schnapps.
In Rivka’s apartment, the cigarette smoke whirled and crawled toward the ceiling, obscuring the familiar faces. Here was Boris with his dark, brooding gaze – an unofficial underground leader; here was Eli, a Polish Jew who’d known Boris from some prewar communist business; Klara and her blonde mop that had tricked more than one German in the Russian side – the underground’s liaison with the Gentiles; here was Efim, who worked the printing press for the German Minsker Zeitung during the day and for the underground Zvezda at night; here was fox-faced Styopka-Kaznachey, who knew the local forests like the back of his hand and took people to the partisans, invariably returning for more, to this hell of a place, instead of joining the freedom fighters himself. Not yet, not just now, he would say, with his sly grin. When we have enough people on the other side; only then. When the entire ghetto is empty.
I extracted a can of sardines out of my pocket and put it on the communal table with more pride than I did with a gun, a few days earlier. It was a custom for everyone to bring whatever they could so that Rivka’s elderly mother could make something out of the goods while we discussed the pressing matters. Among several potatoes, a few slices of bread, some grains, and dried apples my offering gleamed dully like an unexpected lump of gold in a starving miner’s hands.
“Where did you get it from?” Boris was suddenly suspicious.
One couldn’t blame him for his diligence. Rumors traveled fast while one hurls coal from wagons and Liza had plenty to say about several members of the Judenrat being shot during the massacre. In their places, collaborators now sat, according to the same rumors traveling the coal vine – the exact reason why she was so suspicious of Schultz suddenly being so kind to my modest persona. The Gestapo were planning to plant their people everywhere, now very much aware of the illegal underground meetings. The Gestapo were the only people around who ate German sardines, in olive oil no less.
“From the Air Supply unit,” I replied, before someone shot me by accident. “Liza and I work there now.”
“Yes, we know that much.” He still wasn’t convinced. “Did you steal it then?”
“No.” I hesitated before explaining. “Leutnant Schultz gave it to me. He’s our brigade’s supervisor.”
“He appointed Ilse as a brigadier,” Liza supplied, much to my relief. “And me, as her substitute. We are to go into his office every morning to get ration cards for everyone.”
“And your new ration cards include sardines?” Boris arched his brow skeptically.
“If that’s the case, I want to work for the German Air Force too,” Styopka-Kaznachey guffawed behind my back. “Rivka, can you organize something on that account?”
“Da zatknis ty,” Rivka barked at the jokester in Russian; something to the effect of his needing to shut his trap, judging by her intonation and pulled forward at once. “He gave it to you himself?”
“Yes. For my sisters,” I clarified. “But we have enough to eat. I gave them my day’s ration. I figured I’d bring it to you instead.”
“Thank you.” Boris rose to his feet and shook my hand. Food items soon disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. “So, what kind of fellow is he, that new nachalnik of yours?”
I recognized the Russian word they used for a “boss”.
“He’s all right, I suppose.” I was aware of all eyes still zeroing in on me, some still suspicious, some – already scheming something. “An odd sort of fellow, if I’m completely honest.”
I still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of him. Earlier that day I went up to his office to give him the list with his new workers’ names and retrieve their ration cards for lunch and found myself even more confused. After ushering me inside, Schultz took my coat, pulled out a chair for me – I hate eating alone, don’t you? – and treated me to freshly baked bread with butter and jam, eggs, and coffee. After quite a one-sided conversation during which he talked and I mostly sat there trying to eat as much as I could – one must take the good when it comes – he suddenly thrust a can of sardines into my hands. “For Lore and Lily.” The announcement came in tandem with a beaming smile, which spelled, See! I remembered the names of your sisters! Then, he finally released me, almost forgetting about the ration cards for which I had come in the first place.
“I think he fancies her,” Liza suddenly chimed out with a coy grin on her face. I felt the blood leaving my face at once. I wished to slap her for that big mouth of hers.
“He does not,” I assured the assembly, which fixed their eyes on me with even greater interest than before. “He’s just… the Luftwaffe. They’re a little different from the SS. They’re like General-Kommissar Kube – the sentimentalists.”
“Sentimentalists, you say?” Efim narrowed his eyes.
“He gave her his gloves.” Liza, again.
I closed my eyes and slowly opened them again. “As I said, sentimentalists. Same Germans, just an approach that is a bit different. They don’t mind us dead but don’t like seeing us suffering. That’s all there is to it. He fed me, gave me the sardines for my sisters and now he’ll sleep well at night; won’t be ashamed to look at himself in the mirror in the morning. They do these things to separate th
emselves from the SS, to elevate themselves to a different position. But deep inside, they’re all the same. He was only annoyed that his building wasn’t heated that night, not because his workers got shot for nothing. It’s all the same to him, who supplies his office with coal, as long as it’s warm inside.”
Boris exchanged glances with Rivka, considered something for a long time while sucking greedily on his makhorka. Someone next to me sniffed the air. My mouth, too, was salivating at the aroma of the ukha – fish soup made out of my canned sardines and their potatoes. Rivka’s mother was singing something in the kitchen, a joyful song this time. On a small blanket, by the stove freshly fueled with wood and coal – the latter, mine and Liza’s present – Rivka’s son Yasha played with two wooden soldiers. Boris came to a decision.
“You must go up to him every morning, right?” he started. “Could you, perhaps, chat him up a bit while you’re there? He’s quartered with the SS in the same building, isn’t he? Maybe, he has friends among them. They talk to each other, discuss their days, complain to each other about their superiors, moan about operations scheduled in such cold.” He gave me a pointed look. “Smile at him, ask him how his morning is going, what else is new, that sort of thing.”
My laughter came out a bit too scornful for my liking but it was too late to take it back. “Do you actually believe he’ll buy it?”
“Why, it’s innocent enough. And you happen to be a girl who’s easy on the eyes. He’s all alone there, with his comrades. And here you come, a piece of civilian life. They all long for it, a little chat with a good-looking girl.”
I was already shaking my head adamantly. “No. You’re not German. You don’t understand. We’re not ‘good-looking girls’ to them. We’re vermin. They’re raised with that hatred in their hearts. They drink it from their mother’s breast, together with milk. They will never see us as equals. Dirt under their feet is of more value for them than us. As much as I would love to help you, your plan just won’t work; I’m telling you this right now.”
“Yet, he gave you his own gloves,” Rivka noted without looking up.
I thought I saw a hint of a smile on her face. Perhaps, it was just a shadow. Whatever the case, I had nothing to say to it.
“Why don’t you try and see how it goes?” Boris suggested. “You have nothing to lose, really. If he tells you to leave off and not to stick your Jew-nose into his business, you’ll do just that. But if not…”
It could be a mine of so much-needed information, it read in his eyes. I remembered that he’d lost many of his Judenrat comrades to the Pit and promised to try.
As she walked me to my “exit,” Liza touched my sleeve. “Are you mad at me for telling them?”
“No.”
“You are. I can tell.”
“I’m not mad. I’m upset because you’re putting false hope in their hearts. That whole gesture with the gloves… it was not what you thought it was.”
“Because I’m not German?” She sounded almost amused.
I pursed my lips and didn’t answer.
“I think it’s you who’s mistaken this time,” she spoke again after a pause. “I think he does genuinely like you. No, don’t start another argument with me now, will you? I need to believe in something good still existing in this world. Don’t give me such dirty looks. I didn’t tell you my story before, but maybe if I do, you’ll understand. When they first took us all here, to the ghetto, they began sorting us at once into ‘useful’ people and the rest. I was an engineer before the war but I lied to the SS man with the list and told him that I was a tailor. I was put in the ‘useful’ category. My husband, who worked in a conservatory and was far too honest to know what’s good for him, told the SS he was a musician. He got shot.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” She took a deep breath and raised her head towards the sky, dusted with stars. “You asked me if I was religious before. I am. My religion is a world, in which people coexist in peace and where musicians are very useful people and where German pilots can like Jewish girls from the ghetto. Sounds absurd, I know. But so do all other religions and therefore, I’ll stick to mine if you don’t mind.”
I didn’t.
Chapter Nine
Overnight, the temperatures plummeted. The morning dawned even colder, with icy gusts of wind tearing at our exposed faces. Tears froze on my eyes; the scarf covering the lower part of my face, which was also embroidered with frozen vapor, grew stiff with cold. Even the planks of wood seemed frozen solid, stuck to the sides and the bottom of the freight train cars, weighing a ton, unyielding and mocking in our small, women’s arms. We’d been unloading the supply train for a little over an hour only, yet it felt like an eternity. I don’t know who had it worse, our part of the brigade or the one which handled the wood as we sent it down the steep, icy slope, braving the snow while they trudged toward the boiler house with their burden. It had never occurred to me that the walls of hell were made out of ice.
Along the train tracks, Liza was marching toward me purposefully with a young woman in tow. I shoved another piece of heavy lumber down the slope with my foot and watched them approach.
“Comrade Brigadier,” Liza began, still a bit out of breath. “Tell this Fräulein that she can’t be using the facilities every thirty minutes. She doesn’t seem to understand that she’s not the only one to be considered and that we have quotas to fill. It is the third time she’s asked me to be excused since the beginning of the shift!”
The young woman’s black eyes gleamed with wrathful disdain as she pointedly looked away from Liza as though refusing to acknowledge her very existence.
“It’s my time of the month,” she supplied instead. I recognized a Berliner’s accent at once and an attitude to match.
“Stiff luck,” Liza countered in the same abrupt tone. “Time of the month or not, it doesn’t give you the excuse to disappear for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, while the others have to pull double duty for you!”
“Quite an un-communistic spirit you’re demonstrating, comrade,” the young woman drawled maliciously. “Wasn’t it your dream to build a farmer and worker’s paradise? Well, go ahead, work.”
Liza began saying something in her logical manner, something universally reasonable and self-evident, that other women had to suffer through the same, that no one around had it better than her, that it would only be fair if the duties were shared equally among all – the Berliner only barely deigned to acknowledge Liza’s arguments with a scornful smirk and an ice-laced cruel jab of, Speak German to me if you want me to understand you. I can’t comprehend your Bolshevik gibberish.
Liza paled, stiffening next to her. My face had grown dark as well; suddenly, I was consumed by an inexplicable desire to strike her porcelain-white face under her expensively-made, department-store shawl.
“You sound like the SS that have put us here,” I growled, through gritted teeth. “Apologize at once!”
The Berliner was not impressed. “The SS meant to separate us from those Bolshevik barbarians. I am not obeying her orders and I am sure as hell not apologizing to her.” Another arrogant nod in Liza’s direction.
I felt a vein bulging on my temple. I wished to slaughter the conceited cow properly at this point.
“You are still obeying my orders though.” Her smile melted at once. I turned to Liza. “What is her current assignment?”
“Boiler house.”
I arched my brows. “And she’s shirking even that assignment? Comrade Gutkovich,” I addressed Liza Bolshevik-style, even though ordinarily we addressed each other by first names only, “assign her to my part of the brigade permanently if you would be so kind.”
The Berliner’s face grew long. She blinked at me in apparent confusion. Aren’t you supposed to be on my side? You’re from a Sonderghetto, just like me. We are different than them; we’re better!
You ignorant fathead, I wished to take her by the shoulders and give her a thorough shake. That’s preci
sely the mindset that has landed you and me here in the first place and yet, your skull is too thick to take it in and process it. No human being is better than any other.
The Berliner regarded the mountains of unloaded lumber in horror, began to tremble; then, tears came, bitter and hysterical like those of a child who had just been unjustly punished.
“Are you a communist too, then? Is that why you’re siding with her?”
“I’m not a communist and neither am I siding with anyone. I’m only doing what’s right.”
Liza gave me a warm look. She didn’t appear triumphant, merely grateful.
“Get to work,” I barked at the Berliner, pulled Liza’s list with the names of the brigade’s personnel and marked the one I had just reassigned, using a stub of a pencil. “Baumann. And if I catch you shirking again, I’ll report you to Leutnant Schultz. See how fast he sends you back into the ghetto and takes away your worker’s ration card.”
I expected her to curse me out properly and stalk off; instead, she fell in a heap at my feet, sobbing uncontrollably. “I can’t take it any longer! I’m not supposed to be here! It’s all a horrible mistake! I’m from a good family! My father is a well-known physician who treated the elite of Berlin! I studied in Vienna myself! I was supposed to graduate and have my own practice! I had a fiancé, a Doctor of Law… We often joked that we were to be two doctors…”
The rest of the words dissolved in tears, in incomprehensible sobbing and pain that was surprisingly easy to understand. Suddenly, Liza was kneeling in the snow next to her.
“Stop it, stop it at once! You can’t cry here; the SS will see and punish you! My husband got shot too. Was yours? I know… It’s all right. It’ll get better. It will but only if you think of the present and never about the past. If you keep going to the outhouse to cry all day long, you’ll lose your head soon. Start working instead. Work yourself until you fall off your feet in the evening. Work yourself until you’re so tired, you forget everything else; understand?”
The Girl Who Survived: Based on a true story, an utterly unputdownable and heart-wrenching World War 2 page-turner Page 7