Let Our Fame Be Great

by Oliver Bullough

  ‘Just behind me was the son of Mustafa Temirzhanov, who was seven. It was just then that a grenade was thrown into the house. Everyone who was in the house was killed, and it ripped off the top of Mustafa’s son’s head and he just stayed there, hanging from the wall,’ she remembered.

  Sprinting from house to house, the terrified survivors desperately looked for a place to hide, but those who were still alive were too scared to open their doors and take them in.

  As soon as the shooting started, the villagers instinctively gathered together in the stronger houses of the village. The village, as described by the climbers, was packed together in a warren, with connections between the houses and hidden rooms making it very hard for the soldiers to see where their prey could be hiding. A big group decided to hide in a house belonging to Teta Misirov, a neighbour, including Mukhadin Baisiev and his mother. Baisiev was at the time fifteen years old and he was already fortunate that the soldiers had knocked on their door but left without breaking it in.

  When they arrived at Teta Misirov’s house, around sixty people were already hidden there but with so many terrified and hungry children crying and screaming the soldiers found them quickly. When the people refused to come onto the street, the soldiers threw a grenade into the room, deafening Baisiev and killing many of the desperate villagers. The survivors decided to come out, and the soldiers sent Teta Misirov to round up other hiding parties, telling them to come to a meeting. But the meeting was a ruse, and those who had survived the grenade were shot as they emerged into the daylight.

  Among those who emerged was seven-year-old Tani Mamayeva, who said the soldiers lined them all up against the wall in the courtyard outside the house where they had been hiding. Several of the older people tried to move to the side, but could not escape, and started to read Muslim prayers before the shooting started. Mamayeva herself was trapped under the body of her mother, whose long shawl covered her. She had no idea all the others were dead. Her mother, wounded but still alive, begged for water so little Mamayeva, herself wounded five times, crept out to find some. As she emerged, however, she saw that the soldiers were still hunting – although they had now turned their guns on some chickens – and hid among the dead once more. The second time she emerged, the soldiers were snacking on apples, carefully removing the peel before eating them. She hid under her mother’s shawl again.

  The soldiers came back to check the bodies, including that of her mother who had died of her wounds by this stage. Mamayeva stayed unnoticed under the shawl for three days before managing to escape.

  The soldiers set up their base in the village, and waited for survivors like Mamayeva to emerge. Tagii Sarbasheva was one of the group that managed to jump out of the window ahead of the grenade, but was later detained. She was not killed but, as she was escorted through the village, she saw how the women in the next-door house were lined up and shot.

  ‘We saw how they executed Kermakhan, Rakhimat, Galya and her daughter, and Mariyam, the wife of Baraz Misirov. Mariyam had her baby in her arms. A bullet hit the baby, and his little body flew about two metres, and it took off Mariyam’s fingers and wounded her in the face, but she remained alive. She had the sense to pretend to be dead,’ Sarbasheva remembered.

  By a miracle, Mariyam managed to survive and crept to a neighbour’s door. The neighbour, Khanshiyat Temirzhanova, saw her covered in blood, missing three fingers, wounded nine times and begging for water. But she had no water, for her story had been even more terrible.

  On the first night, she had heard the shooting near a house belonging to her family, and her father went to investigate. He had two sons and two sons-in-law at the front with the Soviet Army and had nothing to fear from soldiers. But he was shot on sight, his brains spilling out of his skull as he lay on the ground, so never returned to tell his terrified daughters and wife what was happening. Temirzhanova and her sister Fatimat went to look for him, Fatimat leaving her own six-month-old daughter behind.

  Their other sister, Rakhyimat, was desperately ill, and stayed with her year-old son in the house.

  The two women saw their father dead, and began to run when the soldiers saw them. Temirzhanova stopped when ordered to, but her sister did not and was shot, the bullet shredding her right breast and killing her instantly. Temirzhanova collapsed with fear, just in time to see her mother emerge into the yard.

  ‘They turned their guns on her and shot, and I saw everything, her neck just came in half, just like when they open a fish’s belly. Without a sound, mother fell onto me and died instantly. There was a big stone nearby, and it’s still there to this day, and blood from mother’s wound hit this stone like a fountain, painting it red,’ she said.

  The blood possibly saved her from the soldiers, who may have assumed she was already dead, although one stuck his bayonet into her tunic without harming her.

  When she entered the house, stepping over Fatimat, who lay in the doorway, she saw that the soldiers had killed her other sister in her bed, but that her niece and nephew had survived unscathed. They were both crying, and she could not manage to calm her niece, who was hungry and missing her mother.

  Desperate, she stripped the still warm corpse of her sister and gave the little girl one last suck at the corpse’s left breast – the righthand one having been shredded by bullets – before it lost its milk. This quietened the infant for a while, but they both would need more to drink, and the only water in the house was that being used to soak a sheep-skin. She gave that to the children, but it was salty and only made them more thirsty, so after that she fed them on each other’s urine.

  They managed to hide, the aunt and the two orphans, until the third day, when the soldiers found them. Temirzhanova was calm, she said later, knowing that she would be killed. She opened the door when asked and walked outside, carrying her niece and nephew. The soldiers asked where her brothers were, and by a lucky chance she had a letter from the front in her pocket, and the soldiers left with it.

  Five minutes later, two men talking Balkar – presumably allies of the Red Army – came and told them to hide, but she was past caring and just went home. That was the evening when Mariyam’s weak voice begged her to open the door. Scared that the soldiers would follow the blood trail and track down her little group, she took Mariyam to a barn and left her there, before returning home to hide once more.

  By this time, Nakin had communicated with headquarters. He had, he boasted, killed 1,200 people that first twenty-four hours, having lost just two people dead and five injured. ‘The whole population has rebelled,’ he reported.

  The vast number of people killed – which was, in fact, exaggerated – appears to have stunned Colonel Shikin, who demanded to know who they were and what weapons he had captured. Shikin warned his subordinate not to harm women and children, but instructed him to keep killing all the bandits’ accomplices.

  Nakin pushed on towards the main village of Mukhol, where he sought to drive out the deserters controlling it since the Red Army had pulled out. On his way, he sacked the villages of Glashevo, where sixty-seven people were killed, and Upper Cheget. This latter was partly spared since one of the soldiers in Nakin’s detachment was born there, but it was still savagely attacked.

  Kabul Kadyrova, mother of four soldiers at the front, was one of the villagers murdered. She had imagined no soldier would kill a woman with four boys in the army. By this time, the deserters in Mukhol had guessed something terrible was happening, but did not know what. Khutai and a friend went to wake up Khazhdaut Osmanov, a teacher and hence a respected man locally, to tell him the rumours about what was happening in Sauty. He visited Upper Cheget, learning for himself of the massacre that was making its way towards them.

  The men in Mukhol asked Osmanov to write Nakin a letter, asking him what they needed to do to be left in peace. The answer came back that they should surrender, but they were not prepared to do so and left for the hills, leaving a look-out to see what was happening.

  They joined up with r
esidents of most of the other villages in the hills, for only those people in Sauty were unable to escape, being trapped by the soldiers who were still patrolling for them. Khalimat Misirova, thirteen years old at the time of the massacre, had already been stopped by a soldier in the village, but he turned out to be kind.

  ‘You’re Muslims, and I am a Muslim. Don’t be scared of me, I’m going for water. Don’t be scared of me, but we are ordered to kill everyone in this gorge,’ the soldier, who was a Kyrgyz or a Kazakh, told them. He advised them to hide the best they could. Her family then went back home and her father hid the children in a potato clamp, having removed the potatoes to make room. The four children hid in the tight space, while the soldiers rampaged outside. The eight children of their neighbours also tried to get into the house to hide, but all eight – Soltan, Osman, Murat, Mukhadin, Muzafar, Aminat, Salikhat, Saniyat – along with their mother Erkekhan were shot in the courtyard.

  At least sixty other people were hiding in the house, but the soldiers found them on the third day and killed them together. ‘I could recount the names, but probably couldn’t remember them all. There was the old man Batyrbii Misirov, his wife Nanuk, his daughter Khalimat, his sons Khizir, Mukhai, the children of Mukhai, his wife Naibkhan, his daughter Zhansurat, his second daughter Abidat, his third daughter Kyokkyoz. I’ve forgotten the names of the sons; there were nine or ten children in that family,’ she later told investigators.

  ‘Those four old folk who were killed in the basement, they weren’t burned. The oldest was Batyrbii, the other women and children, they were all shot in the courtyard, I can’t say the total, but more than sixty people. They shot them, then burned them.’

  Two of the children together with her in the potato clamp argued after this, saying it would have been better to be killed since now they would be burned alive. The two got out and fell asleep where they were, and luckily were not found.

  At night, she heard a voice calling them but did not react for a long time, thinking it was the soldiers hunting them again. But eventually she realized it was a fifteen-year-old boy called Yusuf who they’d assumed was dead. Yusuf was hiding on the roof and calling down the chimney. He told them the soldiers were burning the houses in the village and that they needed to get out quickly. The four children managed to climb out of the chimney, only to see the night lit up brightly by the blazing village. Misirova only had one shoe on, and the children were terribly cold as they left the village in the snow but they were eventually rescued by some fellow refugees.

  Nakin had by now destroyed the hamlet of Kunyum as well, and in a report to his superiors increased his estimated death toll to 1,500. He said he had totally burned the hamlets of Sauty and Kunyum, while Upper Cheget and Glashevo were ‘destroyed’.

  ‘According to hostages ninety of the destroyed people were bandits, 400 could have carried weapons, and the rest were women and children. The artillery piece has been taken,’ he wrote to Colonel Shikin on 29 November. He received a reply from Shikin that must have pleased him.

  ‘I find your actions good, and your soldiers’ actions just wonderful. If you cleanse Central Balkaria from these bastards, who instead of defending their homeland from the German occupiers betrayed it, and became bandits themselves, then you will have conducted an act of great importance. Secure the rear of our forces,’ Shikin wrote.

  The deserters and other men from Mukhol decided, however, to obtain weapons to defend themselves against the soldiers. In the circumstances they could not steal weapons from the Soviet troops, who were too well-armed and happy to shoot on sight. They decided, therefore, to send a deputation to the neighbouring valley and to the town of Zhentala, which was already in the hands of the Germans. They hoped their country’s enemies might help defend them against their own army.

  On their way, they met Yakub Zhangurazov, a local man who had worked for the Communist Party until the war, but who had apparently changed sides to join the Germans. It seems he was now acting as a German agent and appears to have confirmed that they could obtain weapons from the Germans.

  The trip, which took most of 1, 2 and 3 December, ended resistance in Mukhol and allowed Nakin to capture it – a fact that he trumpeted to Shikin on 3 December – although he did not keep it for long. In fact, General Kozlov, commander of the 37th Army, had received the report of 1,500 dead and was very concerned about it. He ordered that an investigation be conducted into the affair, but by this time the male villagers had returned to the gorge with German guns.

  Nakin and the Red Army troops were considerably less brave in the face of men with guns than when slaughtering sleeping women and children, and the soldiers were rapidly driven out of the village of Shaurdat and then engaged outside Mukhol. The battle for Mukhol continued for all of 4 December, before Nakin’s force retreated towards Sauty at evening-time.

  The Mukhol men went on the offensive and Nakin had to consistently pretend to his superiors that secret German forces had already taken the valley to explain the fact that he had lost control of it. The Mukhol men also killed five Soviet partisans they had taken prisoner around this time, just before Nakin left the valley on 6 December.

  The army had been conducting its own investigation, although it had not, it would seem, actually sent men to visit the destroyed hamlets. Three days later Seskov, a political officer in the 37th Army, sent a report on the affair to his superior. ‘I consider that Nakin’s unit killed many innocent people, who were totally unconnected to the bandits,’ he concluded. He said the death toll of 1,500 was unrealistic and had been an attempt to show off before the high command. However, if this figure was correct then at least 1,010 women and children had been killed.

  While the Soviet troops were analysing the disaster, the Balkars were left to clean up the damage. They emerged blinking from forests and caves, only to find the world would never be the same again.

  Kakus Gazayeva was thirty-two when the massacre took place, and had fled her village of Shkanty for the forest when she heard shooting. She only returned to her home when she heard the Red Army had left the valley, and found her hamlet burned. She went along with her two brothers and her sister to Sauty on that first day.

  Another sister had lived in Sauty and had been eight months pregnant with her fourth child, and they hurried to look for her.

  ‘Their house was fully burned. Not far from the pile of ash, we with difficulty found among many burnt bodies the blackened bodies of Mara and her children: Ibragim, eight; Ramazan, six; Daut, three. We wrapped their remains in cloth and buried them in a common grave,’ she said. ‘That same day we found what had been Aslanuki Sarbashev’s family, they were relatives of my husband. They were Kabakhan Sarbasheva, Aslanuki’s mother; Nafi Sarbasheva, his wife; Ismail Sarbashev, six, his son; two daughters, Shamshiyat, twelve, and Nazhabat, fifteen. Every one of them had been shot point-blank in the head. As we later discovered, they were called into the yard, apparently to hold a meeting, then stood in a row and shot.’

  The sad business of attempting to identify the dead continued. Bagaly Temirzhanova said they tried to find people from their clothing or personal belongings. Some bodies were burned into a powder, and the survivors swept up the powder and buried that.

  ‘Then there were rumours that the Germans were coming. We left the village again. But the Germans did not disturb anyone, and we returned. They helped us to bury the remaining dead. They brought on sledges the sacrifices we had prepared. They did not kill a single person,’ she remembered.

  The ‘Germans’ – they were actually troops from Germany’s ally Romania – were decent occupiers, and just looked on while the villagers cleared away the collapsed roofs of their houses, searching for the remains of their relatives within. In Sauty and Glashevo, the dead were buried in long trenches, since there were now too few people to dig proper graves.

  It did not take the Soviet army long to realize that, with a new occupier in the valley, even one as mild-mannered as these Romanians (only one German office
r ever entered the Cherek valley), they had a perfect scapegoat for the crime that had been committed. The barbarity of the Red Army could now be blamed on the foreigners, and could be hidden for ever.

  On 16 December, before the Cherek valley was even recaptured, the cover-up began. The political department of the 37th Army said the deserters had German agents operating alongside them, thus paving the way for them to be blamed for crimes moved forwards in time by just a few days.

  The Romanians pulled out of the valley at the end of December, provoking the villagers to once more flee into the hills in fear of retaliation by the Red Army, and the armed men to set up checkpoints at all entry points. They still, for now, controlled the valley. But storm clouds were gathering over them once more. Negotiations over their surrender continued with the Red Army, while at a gathering of the regional Communist Party one delegate urged the army to go in and crush the independent-minded villagers.

  Finally, the NKVD took action. In three columns, it moved into the valley in mid-January 1943, meeting slight resistance at one checkpoint – at which one soldier was killed, and one injured – but taking over the Cherek valley with little trouble. The villagers welcomed the soldiers with red flags, but must have known their troubles were not over yet.

  In the days up to 6 February, nearly all the men in the valley who had not been either conscripted or murdered were arrested. Over several days a total of 324 villagers were seized, leaving the livestock without minders, so the animals started to die as well. Another seventy-six people were arrested by the end of the year for their alleged connections to the bandits, bringing the total to 400 – which would suggest the police were operating according to a plan. They had to arrest 400 people and picked up men, women, teenagers, pensioners to meet the demands of their superiors.

  On the lists of arrested people, just thirty-five were deserters; the rest were local government workers or political activists. All 400 of the arrested villagers were listed as ‘bandits’ in reports to Moscow, although the vast majority of them had no connection to the violence at all, and the real fighters – Khutai and his men – remained at large in the mountains, still able to move freely from place to place, secure in their knowledge of the terrain.