by Mark Kurzem
As we entered downtown Minsk, we were rescued from Natasha’s commentary by the driver, who turned on the sound system. In an instant, the van was transformed into a mobile disco as Russian pop blared out through loudspeakers, as if to announce our arrival to the population of Minsk. Judging from the reactions of people we passed by the side of the street, Minsk knew we were there—pedestrians turned to see where such a racket was coming from, and when they spotted the bus, they pointed at us and burst out laughing.
We eventually stopped in front of a vast, run-down Soviet hotel. A flashing neon sign spelled out HOTEL PLANETA AND CASINO in bright red letters.
“It looks more like a brothel,” said my mother.
We checked in, and with Erick’s help found our rooms. Our floor was guarded by a large elderly woman, the perfect babushka. Ensconced on a sofa opposite the elevator doors on our floor, she was the first of many such porters we would meet. She gave us an appraising look, nodded dourly, and returned to her knitting.
The next morning I rose early for our journey to Koidanov, which lay about twenty miles to the southwest of Minsk.
I made my way down to the foyer and spotted my father standing at the hotel’s panoramic window, gazing at the view of downtown Minsk in the near distance, a scape of low-lying buildings, mostly modern but punctuated by the odd Soviet monument and the occasional prewar construction that had survived the devastation of the German invaders.
Nearby I saw Erick standing with my mother and an attractive, vivacious woman. “I’m Galina,” she said. “Your new interpreter.” I was surprised. She explained that she was to replace Natasha, our Mata Hari from the previous evening. Natasha had been “fired” and, mysteriously, no explanation was forthcoming. (Later I cornered Galina to find out the reason, and she had merely said the word “vodka” and mimed swilling from a bottle.)
Galina turned out to be an excellent replacement. Quite the opposite of Natasha, she didn’t chew gum or wear dark glasses. There was nothing of the vamp about her. She was forthright and spoke flawless and idiomatic English.
As we walked toward the bus, I saw the driver lean into the front cabin and turn on the flashing roof lights. He then looked at us gleefully, giving us a thumbs-up sign and hoping for our approval. We embarked, the engine rattled loudly, and with a few jerks we took off into the traffic.
After ten minutes or so on a narrow highway, we came to a turnoff with a battered sign: DZERZHINSK 14. As we drove through the industrial sprawl on its outskirts, it seemed merely to epitomize a drab, industrial Soviet town. And with its expanse of gray concrete public housing it was clear that Dzerzhinsk had expanded since the war.
“Not far now,” Erick declared as we wound our way through streets. Then, without warning, we came upon an enclave of old, colorfully painted wooden houses with carved shuttered windows on half-paved streets. “This neighborhood was the village before the war,” Galina translated for Erick.
I glanced at my father: he was staring out of the window pensively, his hand held to his cheek. This gesture was to become habitual during our journey. At other times, however, he would withdraw into himself, holding his hand to his cheek, only to reemerge moments later either claiming or rejecting what he had just seen as part of his own past.
“Dad?” I whispered, lightly touching his arm. I didn’t want to startle him.
He didn’t respond.
My mother gently grasped his elbow so that he snapped out of his dreamlike state. His eyes were intensely blue and alive with curiosity.
“Do you recognize anything?” my mother asked.
My father shook his head. “Not anything specific, but it all seems very familiar.”
Erick leaned across to the driver, shouting instructions for him to pull over. He jumped out of the rear of the minibus and beckoned us all to join him on the deserted street. It was midmorning and the houses were closed up, but when I turned around unexpectedly I saw several curtains twitch. Our arrival had not gone unnoticed.
Erick looked at my father.
“This is the street you grew up on,” he said. “October Street.”
My father turned slowly in a circle, again lightly touching his cheek. “I just don’t know,” he said.
Erick grasped my father’s hand and led him two houses farther down the street. We followed. “You grew up in this house,” Erick stated emphatically, pointing at the house in front of us. There was little to distinguish this house from any of the others in the row.
“Here?” My father was surprised.
Erick nodded his head several times.
My father was silent as he examined the exterior of the house. He approached the front fence and stared even more intently at the building before him.
Erick joined my father. “Your home!” I heard Erick insist.
My father turned to my mother and me. He gave a shrug, looking bewildered, and came over to us.
“I don’t remember this place,” he said in a dispirited tone.
“Perhaps it’s been altered,” my mother suggested.
“That’s right,” I added, trying to sound encouraging.
But my father remained doubtful. “I don’t remember,” he repeated.
Erick must have sensed the gist of our exchange because he became slightly agitated and began to repeat “your house” over and over. His insistence only confused my father even more so that he retreated into himself, uttering in a low voice, “My home was different. It had a drive down one side where my father had a cart and next to that there was a shed where he worked and the apple tree that I used to climb. I remember that clearly.”
His recollection made him more resolute. “No,” he said. “This is not the house I grew up in. It’s the wrong house.”
“Are you absolutely sure, Dad?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said slowly.
I was disappointed for my father and for all of us, but I admired his faith in his own memories and his refusal to yield to the incredible pressure we all felt to confirm Erick as his half brother.
Everybody remained still, waiting for him to make the next move. My father shook his head and looked away from the source of his disappointment. I watched as he crossed to the other side of the street. With a subtle nod he beckoned me over.
“I must be a Panok after all,” he said with finality. “Not a Galperin. I hoped for all our sakes that this would work out. We’ll have to start all over again.”
I felt grim but my father didn’t seem to notice. He was immersed in his own train of thought.
“What can I say to Erick?” he said with compassion in his voice. “He was so happy to find he had a brother. Did you see his face? This will break his heart.”
And I had seen my father’s face. Despite his reservations, I knew that he, too, had hoped that some of his early childhood might be returned to him.
Something had to be done to salvage the immediate situation. We couldn’t simply turn around, get back in the van, and with a brief apology make a quick exit from Belarus.
I returned to Erick, who was still waiting in front of the house. “You grew up here after the war?” I asked through Galina.
“Yes,” Erick replied, shifting on the spot and not looking at me. I wondered what the matter was and then immediately reprimanded myself—he must have been as disheartened as my father.
“Your father didn’t change houses when he came back from the war?” I persisted.
“No,” he retorted, now slightly belligerent and pointing at the house. “He returned to this house where I was born.”
“When did your father sell it?”
“In the early seventies, when he got sick. He came to live with us in Minsk until he died.”
“Who lives there now?”
“I don’t know,” Erick replied. The glimmer of a scowl crossed his face. I decided to let the matter drop, partly because my father was now moving slowly along the street, looking in all directions. His expression changed, becoming more alert.
He stopped. He had seen something that the rest of us could not.
“Over there seems familiar,” he said, pointing farther up the street.
My father headed off toward an intersection, where he again came to a stop. He turned to look at us. “I know this,” he said about the intersecting street. “It goes down to the village hall, I am certain of it.”
My father smiled broadly. “I remember the hall,” he said. “That’s where I went to see a film one time, when a traveling show came to town. I went with another boy, my friend. We walked down the hill together, hand in hand. I can’t see his face or remember his name. But I do remember that my father tossed me a few coins for an ice cream from the man who stood in front of the hall. That was the first time I ever tasted ice cream.”
My father forged ahead. A few yards farther into that street we came to another intersection. My father stopped dead in his tracks. We waited in silence.
“This is the way the soldiers…” he said, staring down the path before him. There was no need to complete the sentence. He was visibly shaken, but after several moments he seemed to gather himself. With a wave of his hand, he motioned for us to follow him and set off quickly along the path. We hastened after him.
About two hundred yards farther along, the path opened up into a grassy space about the size of a football field.
“That’s where it happened,” he said in a low voice.
My father led the way forward, but he had lost his vigor. He walked with trepidation, almost tiptoeing, as if he were creeping up on the scene from over fifty years ago and he did not want the soldiers to notice him.
He turned at one point and summoned us to keep up as if we were reluctant tourists who had suddenly lost their taste for the journey ahead and begun to dawdle.
But there was no going back.
He came to a stop. His eyes were empty, and he had forgotten that we were standing right beside him. He appeared to recognize a topography from the past and began to make comments aloud, as if confirming what he saw to another person.
“Yes,” he said. “This is it…”
He looked back up the path he had just taken. “It’s strange,” he said, suddenly becoming aware of us. “I remember being led down that path toward the soldiers. But it was steeper before, so I could see what was happening ahead of us. I was holding my mother’s hand and my little brother’s as well. But I’m confused. I was with them, but I didn’t go to my death with them. Something must have happened to have stopped the executions that day, but for the life of me I have no memory of what it was.”
My father turned in all directions.
“Over there,” he said, pointing at a track off to the right. “That’s the direction I came from when I ran away from home.” Then the sequence of events seemed to get more confusing. “It happened during the night after we’d been led down the hill, after my mother had told me that we were all going to die in the morning.”
He headed over to the path and began to retrace his steps from the night of his escape. He walked tentatively across the open space as if trying to find his way in the dark.
“Up there,” he said, this time pointing off slightly to the left. “That’s where I headed—up the hill and into the trees.”
We all turned our heads in that direction. There was a hillock with a few trees at its peak.
My father appeared to forget about us once again and strode across to the hill. Though I felt slightly ashamed to do so, I hurried ahead of the others so that I could continue to eavesdrop on his words.
“Not as steep as I remember,” he said. “It seemed like a mountain at the time. I climbed as fast as my legs could take me.”
My father stopped and stared back down the slope with a frown on his face. But he was unaware of the scene unfolding in front of him: my mother had run out of breath and was now struggling to climb the slope. Fortunately, at that moment I saw Galina and Erick come to my mother’s aid, and together they made their way slowly in our direction.
By this point my father had reached the top of the hillock and, hand to cheek, stood very still looking down over the vista below us. He nodded grimly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
At that moment the others reached us.
“You okay, Mum?” I asked. She nodded, still quite breathless.
“Trees, Erick,” my father called out. “Were there more trees here?”
My father hadn’t even noticed that my mother had joined him. And for a moment I was annoyed by his lack of regard for her condition.
“Yes,” Erick replied. “I used to play up here as a child sometimes. They removed many of the trees years ago.”
My father was silent, and we waited for him to speak.
“In the morning I saw the people being led from over there. Near that cottage. I was peering between the trees. They were lined up on that hill as the soldiers pushed and prodded them down in groups,” my father said, indicating the path we had taken earlier. “Then I saw my mother and the children and”—my father gasped as if the air had violently been knocked out of him—“the rest of my family were among them, and they were almost there…the pit.”
My father took a deep breath. “My mother was holding my brother and sister. She looked away from what was going to happen to her and that’s when I am sure she saw me up among the trees. For a split second I saw her eyes. She recognized me.
“I am sure that she must have been beside herself with worry when she’d woken in the morning and found me gone. At least she knew I was alive, for what that was worth…”
I stared at my father, who seemed to be in a state of shock. “I bit my hand not to cry out,” he said in a strangled whisper. I saw him raise his hand and bite it as he had on that day, as if reliving the horrific scene. A trickle of blood dripped down his wrist and onto the cuff of his shirt.
My mother had noticed, too, at the same instant. “Alex!” she cried out, but he didn’t hear her.
Panicked, she dashed forward and began to shake him. “Alex!” She was alarmed. “Stop it! Please, stop it, Alex!”
My father returned to us. His face was ashen and he seemed fragile and disoriented. He stared down at his bleeding hand. My mother pulled out her handkerchief and gently bandaged it, while my father stood like a helpless child.
“C’mon, luv, let’s get out of here,” my mother said, putting her arm in his and moving him away from the edge of the hill. My father didn’t resist.
As we made our way down the hill, Erick pointed us in the direction of a simple monument on the right. It was the memorial to “the martyrs of the Koidanov massacre,” as he described them. It had obviously been neglected for many years and was partly obscured by the bushes and tall grass.
“This way!” Erick ordered, and, dashing ahead of us, he began to tear away at the foliage. By the time we reached him, he had managed to clear the debris from around the dedication plaque.
Reading aloud, Galina translated it for us: “Here lie sixteen hundred men, women, and children who suffered at the hands of the Fascist invaders.”
My father stepped forward with his head bowed. My mother, who stood close behind, passed him three roses that she’d had the foresight to bring with her from the hotel.
We stood quietly as my father placed the roses at the base of the memorial, his mother’s gravestone.
As we made our way slowly back from the site of the mass grave, my father stopped and took me to one side. “This is my village,” he whispered. “I’m sure of it. But I’m still not certain that I’m a Galperin.” Then, leaving me with that thought, he took off in pursuit of the others, who had reached the base of the hill.
We had been so absorbed in our search, we hadn’t noticed the sun come out. Although it threw off only the palest spring light, its mere presence alleviated some interior chill. We’d also been oblivious to the attention our visit had attracted.
A few yards away, a number of children had gathered by a bench, staring at us with both shyness and frank
curiosity. One of the boys waved to us, indicating that we were welcome to make use of the bench. He wore a cheeky grin, and, as we approached to sit down, he called out to us, “Hello, Mister America.”
“Not America,” Galina explained. “Australia.”
This provoked a wide-eyed response. We must have seemed very exotic. The children began to gather around chanting “kangaroo” at us. My mother burst out laughing with pleasure—she loved being around children—and took a seat on the bench, as did my father and Erick. I remained standing and only half listening to my mother and father as they tried to tell them more about Australia.
I was restless. I looked around and only then noticed that a handful of people had come out onto the front porches of their houses and were observing us silently. From where I was standing they all appeared to be quite elderly, and my immediate thought was whether any of them had witnessed the massacre. I wondered whether they had been the ones my father had remembered standing on their balconies, laughing and chatting as women and children were led to their deaths.
I suggested to Galina that she and I walk past these houses. I was not surprised when a man, no more than seventy years old, called out to us from where he was seated on his front porch. We stopped.
His face was alert with curiosity. He spoke and Galina translated. “What are you doing here?”
“I am trying to find out more about what went on in this square during the war,” I said.
“The massacre by the Fascists?” He fixed me with a shrewd, assessing gaze. “Why?” he asked.
“My father’s family perished in it,” I answered.
“Jews, were they?”
I nodded.
The man gave a low grunt and shifted the blanket that covered his knees.
“I saw it,” he said, after a silence of several moments. “I grew up in this house and from here I could see everything. I remember it better than what I ate for lunch today.” He chuckled to himself.
“What happened that day?” I asked.
“It began in the middle of the night. We were woken by the sound of men in the square. Father and I went out onto the porch, as did some of our neighbors. Soldiers and a group of men—about twenty or thirty of them—were there. We couldn’t understand what was going on. The soldiers were guarding the men who were digging.