by Vic Shayne
With dirt covering her face, hands, and clothes, a girl greeted us in almost a whisper. Her name was Galla. She was alone, having lost her family. She was now living with an infamous anti-Semite, the head of the Grozny Russian partisans. Barely twenty years old, Galla’s cheeks were drawn and her eyes old and wise. Her face was streaked with dirt, her hands caked with earth and stripped of their feminine softness. With a small but taut body, Galla made up for any physical shortcomings with an outer confidence and resolve. For the time being she had found safety with Grozny’s group. Grozny, Galla told us, operated a raiding party from the woods. He and his men who had been separated from the Soviet Red Army behind German lines went out at night and attacked German supply lines, stole weapons, blew up equipment, and lived day to day in their zemlyankas.
“If we do nothing else,” Galla said, “at least we keep the Germans away from the war effort. And whatever supplies we take are kept out of the hands of the Wehrmacht.”
Galla shared her food with Shmulek and me and gave us whatever news she had about the status of the war, the murders of Jews, and the activities of the partisans. Not trusting Grozny, we thanked Galla and quickly moved on.
Many years later, having survived the war, Galla would die in peace in New York. Looking at her, as an old grandma, one would never know how many Jewish lives she saved, often just by steering them clear from anti-Semitic partisan leaders, Poles, Germans, and the elements. Galla told us not to trust anyone in any partisan unit. At this time, Russian partisans were killing Jews they found with rifles. People would kill you for a shotgun or a pistol. The only chance of surviving with the Russians was to proclaim yourself a fellow comrade of the Soviet Union. With so many factions in the forests, so great a chance of being murdered, Shmulek and I decided never to linger in one place for long. Endless running; always moving; never resting our minds or bodies. We ran half asleep. There were times when our feet trampled through the woods and my eyelids grew so heavy that I’d close them for a few seconds, drifting in and out of consciousness. When I reopened them, I’d look behind me and Shmulek would be doing the same thing. When we finally collapsed from exhaustion and slept, we found no peace. We would sleep deeply then awaken with a start. When we slept, we were as dead, lying sprawled out on the floor of the forest crawling with insects, sheltered by moaning trees, nearly invisible steam rising from our mouths and pores—rising gently into the breeze and hiding in the leaves. Hunger, fear, exhaustion, and confusion were constant companions. We tried to take turns sleeping, but neither of us could stay alert. Our bodies and brains were so starved of nutrients that, when we did rest, they shut off like a light switch.
We learned to listen for differences in sounds, including the movement of boots on the forest floor or voices on the wind. Our minds fought between the desperate need to be vigilant and the craving for rest. But we never stopped fearing an accidental run-in with the notorious anti-Semites roaming the forests. We were all on the same side unless we were Jews. So we avoided them all whenever we could, many times walking miles out of our way to keep from coming into contact with them.
We plodded along further and further south, staying close to the forest and using the rising and setting sun as our compass. We became obsessed with our own hunger, always looking for bushes bearing berries, mushrooms poking out near the trees, or food that may have fallen from a farmer’s wagon on a dirt path or field.
Not knowing exactly where we were or where we were going, Shmulek and I wound up in the wrong place. Though we made a plan for one of us to remain awake and on lookout while the other slept, we both succumbed to sheer exhaustion and lost consciousness. In the middle of a field, in the early morning, we looked up to find that several local farmers were cautiously approaching and pointing their rifles at us from about fifty feet away. We threw our guns in the high grass and surrendered. They were pleased with themselves, as if they had had a successful hunt. They screamed at us and struck us with the cold steel of their shotguns as we rose to our feet and were made to walk in front of them.
We were given over to a paramilitary group of Polish collaborators and brought to a labor camp in Koldichevo. After all of our running and hiding, we were back where we started, about ten miles outside of Baranowicze. Two thousand captured Soviet and Polish resistance members, along with those Jews who had survived massacres in their shtetls, were all forced to labor for the Reich in this little town in the middle of nowhere. No longer a community, Koldichevo was a sad collection of concrete buildings and overworked farmland, with dilapidated barns, animal stalls, and tool sheds. The town was partitioned with an endless fence of barbed wire to create a makeshift prison. Among the prisoners of Koldichevo was Dr. Yakobovich, the physician who hid with me in the Glatkis’ kitchen, and his wife, Sarah. And there were others I recognized as well, men as well as women.
The summer was behind us; leaves had fallen off the trees. All was now bleak and gray. It had been four or five months since my family, friends, and neighbors had been murdered in Maitchet. This tragedy was something I still had no time to grieve for. Maybe Shmulek and I would meet with the same outcome. Maybe this was just an eventuality; we may just have been waiting our turn. Madness. We had gone nowhere for all of our running, starving, and calculating.
Shmulek and I worked through the winter in various barns set up as factories. Slave laborers with uncertain futures sat for endless hours making watches and clothes for the Third Reich. Winter outerwear was fashioned out of coats taken from Jews. We put the finishing touches on shirts, socks, gloves, and other clothing, which were crated and shipped by rail to Germany. As the cold of winter set in, there was a greater demand for warmer clothes for the German soldiers on the eastern front. Much of what we produced was put on railroad cars bound for German-occupied Russia. We, in effect, were struggling to keep alive in order to keep the Germans from dying in the plummeting cold of Leningrad.
The less fortunate among us were sent off to hard labor. Many never returned at the end of the day. We never really knew where they went or how they died, whether from exhaustion, malnutrition, or random killing. By the end of the war, more than twenty thousand people had been murdered in Koldichevo. It was a camp that, for the most part, would escape hardly a mention in the history books.
We knew that the Koldichevo work camp was like all others and that our chances of surviving diminished with each day. We were being used for our labor, and once we came to the end of our vitality, we were discarded. This was an inevitability, because no human being can subsist on scraps of bread and putrid water for long. There was no tomorrow. Murdering Jews had become a pastime of Nazis and their collaborators; survival was not in the stars for any of us. Our numbers were always dwindling.
One day melded into another in Koldichevo. I lost track of time. We worked all through the winter, and Shmulek and I were fortunate enough to work indoors while others died from the cold in the street or on the march home from a work detail. Toward the end of February, our fate was about to change. I do not remember how the decision was made, but at the end of one particular workday, with the lights out in our barn, a group of men gathered in the middle of the structure for a meeting. We spoke in hushed tones while several men kept an eye on the guards patrolling the grounds. We came to a quick conclusion that to stay in Koldichevo was not an option and we would have to dig a tunnel and attempt an escape. Koldichevo was surrounded by a barbed wire fence but was not far from a dense forest. It was agreed that with men working furiously every evening, we could make a passageway in a matter of weeks. The first order of business was to gather tools. Shovels without handles, tin cups, spoons, and blocks of wood were all used for digging.
Scores of us worked in shifts to chip away at the roots, gravel, and soil during the night—every night until dawn. We clawed with our fingers until they bled. The ground outside was hardening from the cold of winter, but several feet beneath the topsoil the earth could be loosened and removed. A team of about a hundred men took tur
ns climbing into the tunnel, filling cans, pots, and bowls with moist, dark brown soil and passing it along the ranks back into the barn where the entrance had been dug. We had to get rid of the soil we removed from the tunnel, so dirt was hidden in the legs of our trousers and carried into the open, released onto the ground, and scattered about with our feet. At every opportunity we tore wooden planks out of barns and sheds, picked up scraps of timber and branches, and lugged them deep into the tunnel to fortify the walls and ceiling to keep it from collapsing in on us. We worked in the dark with very little air to breathe and learned to stifle our coughing from the dust that drizzled down on us each time we dug into the tunnel’s ceiling. The tunnel was barely wide enough to accommodate one man. It was a squeeze to move through, and there wasn’t enough room to turn around. In order to return to the tunnel’s opening, we had to back up on our hands and knees.
At this time, there were no careful inspections by prison guards, so our enterprise went on unnoticed until finally we had managed to create a tunnel fifteen or twenty meters long that extended to the very edge of the Koldichevo forest.
I believe it was the beginning of March when we finally finished the construction of our crude, subterranean hallway to freedom. There was just enough room for one man at a time to crawl on his belly, knees, and elbows in the direction of the woods. Kerosene lamps lit the way at a couple of points, but it was still nearly impossible to see inside. At the determined hour we headed, in the middle of the night, through darkness into more darkness. I was one of the first to climb into the tunnel. I don’t remember being frightened. It was more frightening to stay in the labor camp than anything else. Now we had a chance for freedom. I crawled like a lizard as fast as I could and reached the end of the tunnel in a few minutes. Then, I lifted myself into a squatting position with my hands over my head to poke through the opening by the forest. Immediately, I felt the cool night air brushing my sweaty fingers. I peaked my head through the hole. I couldn’t see especially well; my eyes had to adjust to the darkness of the night. I pulled myself out, feeling the next person after me pushing against my legs. A blast of fresh air hit my face and burned the inside of my nose. There was dew on the grass and the trees were watching me through the thick night. The first thing I noticed was that we were short of the forest. I’d have to run across a field to reach the trees. But it was now or never. We could hear the guards talking to one another, parading around the perimeter of the ghetto. We could see puffs of cigarette smoke billowing in the distance as the guards casually shuffled further and further away from us. I whispered to warn the man beneath me to be careful so he could pass the message down the line. The forest was just a wall of blackness; I would be running into a void, into the unknown. There were almost a hundred men yet to go. Running as fast as I could, I tried to stay low and quiet. I could hear my own breathing and my heavy feet over rocks and weeds.
Right behind me was Dr. Yakobovich, a strong young man in his mid-thirties who walked with a noticeable limp. I wondered how he would manage to run. The doctor, like Shmulek Bachrach, fled western Poland during the Nazi invasion only to lose his entire family to the murderous Poles in Maitchet. Sarah Yakobovich stayed right beside her husband as they ran into the darkness. Behind those two were the other escapees, all emerging from darkness into darkness. Like ants in the middle of the night, we poured out of our nest, eager to flee, with hearts pounding out of our chests and eyes open wider than wide. One by one we were running away. But the sounds of our feet grew collectively louder, like a stampede, breaking the silence of the night.
I tried to be invisible but didn’t get very far before one of the guards turned around, spotted us, and started shooting randomly. It was a wild scene with gunshots cracking and splitting the night. Bullets whistled through the air and bounced off the ground. I could hear them pass over and around me. They hit the trees and splintered branches and exploded the bark. We were running toward the forest but not in a direct path. Some fell to the ground to avoid the bullets while digging their fingers into roots and crawling to the forest. Others ran wildly this way or that. We were all in some way panting and scratching our way toward the trees. People were tripping, falling over one another, crying, whimpering, wetting themselves, diving for cover, and rolling along the ground. I could hear the commotion but barely saw a thing as I made my way through the thicket. There was no time to think. Our only instinct was to reach the trees and meld with the night. I heard a bullet whoosh and whistle past my right ear, cracking a branch only a meter in front of me. And that’s when I felt something tear at my right arm. Maybe a sharp branch. I was stung but desensitized by confusion and adrenaline. The cold air was cold on my arm then warm again, then cold.
My arm burned. Warm blood was not just trickling but pouring down my arm and down along my fingers. I didn’t realize I had been shot. I didn’t feel the full effect of the bullet right away. I wasn’t consumed by pain, but quickly the pain began to burn like a flame. As I ran, my arm dangled lifelessly by my side, swinging wildly. My fingers were wet and slippery but growing numb. I ran and ran along with the others whom I could barely see. My arm was all at once useless. Try as I might, I could not control it as it whipped leaves and branches. I used my left hand to feel through the darkness, to grab my right wrist, now drenched with blood, and hold it as my feet stumbled over the forest floor. My immediate world was swallowed up by silhouettes, ghosts, crunching leaves, crackling twigs, panting, coughing, wincing, sloshing, and pounding feet. My jaw clenched from the pain in my arm as I continued to hobble through the forest. I didn’t know who was in front of me or behind me. Voiceless, we ran like a herd of animals, instinctively, bumping along then turning this way and that, sweating profusely in the cold air; following whomever was in the lead. The breathing was in bursts—wheezing, gasping, choking, coughing, spitting up phlegm. Animal sounds, grunting, with sweat stinging our eyes and ears, and noses burning from the cold. Our only goal was “away”—as fast as we could run, on empty bellies and starved minds. We ran and ran, deeper into the forest and away from the guards, until Koldichevo was far behind us and the gunshots faded into silence.
At the time of our escape from Koldichevo, I had no idea of the scope of this event. But now, after sixty years have passed, I have come to learn that, on that night, close to a hundred of us reached the partisans hiding in the forests of Naliboki. None of our group died in the escape, yet Shlomo Kushnir, the leader, was captured almost instantly. He committed suicide while in the hands of the Nazis. But Shmulek Bachrach and I, my friend who had aged with me since the days we were torn from our families in Maitchet, had made it again to freedom. Most of the others joined up with the Bielski brothers’ partisan group that was, at this point, the largest and most organized of any group of refugees.
When eventually, as if in mutual agreement, the herd came to a halt, exhausted, gasping for air, spent and falling to the ground, I at last fully realized how badly I had been shot. Our eyes had become adjusted to the darkness and moonlight filtered through the trees. My sleeve was red with blood, draining out of me from my upper arm, halfway between my right shoulder and elbow. I was lightheaded, pale, and tumbled onto the forest floor until someone took notice and called for Dr. Yakobovich.
The light of dawn was just beginning to trickle through the trees to the east. We had been running, walking, moving, dragging ourselves along all through the night. This was the first time I was able to assess my condition. The bullet in my upper arm had shattered the bone. I saw nothing but blood matted on my dirty shirtsleeve. My right hand was numb and the wound was throbbing. I could do nothing but sit in pain while staring at the muddy ground. When I looked up, Dr. Yakobovich was hovering over me and my useless arm. I studied his kind face with its furrowed brow, deep-set black eyes, and pointed nose as he squatted beside me to study my wound. He spoke with a soft, caring voice, “Let’s take a look.” He peeled back the material of my shirt clinging to the wound and squinted to get a better view.
In the middle of the forest, Dr. Yakobovich set up his “hospital” without anesthesia, a sterile environment, medical tools, gauze, or adequate lighting. Dr. Yakobovich found two men to hold me still as he dug deep into my tissues with his fingers and a knife, and pulled out the bullet. The pain was unbearable as he probed around in the open wound but, gritting my teeth and taking deep breaths through my nose, I would not allow myself to scream. I would not betray the silence; I wouldn’t convey my own weakness as the doctor did the best he could to remove loose bone fragments and stop the bleeding. My arm was badly damaged. I had no choice but to suffer with it. With whatever rags he could find, Dr. Yakobovich dressed the wound. All I could do was to hope for recovery, and hope to keep up with the others and fend for myself.
Over several months of hiding in the forest, living with the partisans, then heading out on my own, using urine as the only disinfectant, and rags as bandages, my arm had healed. But I could no longer straighten it and it lost most of its usefulness. But I managed to get along on sheer will and reliance on my left hand to feed me; there was no other choice. At least I was far from Koldichevo, alive in the company of a new group of partisans.
More Aimless Wandering
The days and weeks after the escape from Koldichevo melded into one long struggle. Shmulek and I parted ways from the other escapees, banking on our own independence. One day, wandering the countryside in search of food and shelter, we came upon a small farm in the woods with a barn in the corner of the property. It was sometime toward the end of the day, beneath a drizzling sky, that we snuck up on the barn and let ourselves in. As the rain came down harder, we scratched around for a few minutes and found a couple of ears of corn lying near some hay. We drank out of a rain barrel outside, ate the corn, and rested against the wall of the barn. Soon we fell asleep to the monotonous beat of raindrops on the roof and a steady drip of water from a wooden beam overhead into a growing puddle.