The Mascot

by Mark Kurzem

  “You are both survivors,” my father said.

  “We were fortunate,” Volodya said. “Anya was in Leningrad with her sister when Belarus was invaded. She stayed there and later joined the partisans.”

  “And what about you?” my father asked Volodya.

  “I joined the partisans, too. Outside Mogilev in the northeast of Belarus.”

  “And my father?”

  “Your father was a survivor, too.”

  “My mother told me that my father was dead. Why would she have done that?”

  “So that you wouldn’t have given the game away,” Volodya replied.

  My father gave him a puzzled look, forgetting that the man was blind.

  Solomon and his friend Volodya, with whom he escaped from Koidanov in 1941.

  “We—your father and I—didn’t want anybody, including you, to know where we were hiding,” Volodya said.

  “I don’t understand,” my father said.

  “Let me start at the beginning,” Volodya said. “The Fascists invaded our country in 1941. There’d been scraps of news and rumors that the Nazis were rounding up the men and boys from the villages and taking them away. We knew what that meant—it was going to be like the old days of the pogroms. None of the Jews in the village knew what to make of it. But we were sure that the elderly, the women, and the children would be safe. We knew that if the Nazis came into Koidanov we’d be done for. Some of the other men in the village were also making plans to get away before the Fascists arrived. There was a lot of talk about joining the partisans that were forming in the forests everywhere throughout Belarus. A few men talked about heading farther east away from the invaders.

  “In late summer of 1941,” Volodya recalled, “I visited your parents to discuss the situation. I put it to Solomon that we, too, should think about escaping. He was reluctant.

  “‘And my family?’ your father said. ‘My children? What about them?’

  “I had to convince him of the danger to both of us. ‘The Germans aren’t coming for the women and children,’ I told your father. ‘They’ll be safe if they keep to themselves.’ Your father knew the history of the pogroms, after all. But he couldn’t be convinced that this was the best course of action.

  “I had another idea. Anya was already in Leningrad with her sister. I told Solomon and Hana that I’d hide in the roof of my house but spread the word that I’d joined the partisans.

  “‘Ridiculous!’ Solomon said. ‘How will you survive up there?’

  “‘I’ll store food and water with me and anything else, then I’ll wait until the middle of the night,’ I told Solomon.

  “Suddenly we heard a noise and jumped up. Somebody had been listening to our plans. Do you know who it was?”

  My father shook his head.

  “You.” Volodya laughed. “You’d been eavesdropping from behind the curtain.

  “Your mother ordered you back to bed, but you didn’t want to go. You were stubborn, that’s for sure.”

  “I remember a scene like that. The talk had woken me up. Wait!” My father stopped abruptly. “Did you have a beard?”

  “That’s right!” Volodya burst out laughing. “Like this,” he added, indicating its large bushy shape. “What a memory you have!

  “Eventually Solomon came around to the idea on the condition that we hid in the roof of twelve October Street instead. That way he could keep an eye on his family. Hana was keen on that—she could fetch anything we needed and let us know when it was safe to come down.

  “‘If events do not go to plan,’ Solomon said, ‘I’ll escape—take the family—in the middle of the night.’

  “We had to be certain that nobody—not you, not even the neighbors—knew where we were. Hana would tell the neighbors that her husband had fled during the night to join the partisans and she had no idea if and when he’d return.

  “‘We’ll have to keep it from Ilya,’ Solomon said. ‘He doesn’t know how to keep a secret. We must tell him that I am gone.’ It hurt your father deeply to have to say that.”

  “My mother told me that my father was dead,” my father said. He looked perplexed. “I’m sure of it.”

  “You were only a child. Gone must have seemed like dead in those days,” said Anya.

  “We decided we would put the plan into action at the right moment,” Volodya continued. “It was another two months, October 1941, before we did so. The news had reached us that the Fascists were in the region of Koidanov. The remaining able-bodied men began to flee, and the streets became more deserted day after day. By the middle of the month, Solomon and I were living in the roof.

  “Less than a week later, late one night, Hana told us she’d heard the Fascists would arrive within the next few hours.

  “Solomon and I had had a lot of time to think up in the roof. We weren’t as well protected as we should’ve been, so we’d decided to escape and hide out deep in the forest for a few days, until the Fascists had passed. Your mother and Sonya agreed with us.

  “One night, when the children were fast asleep, Solomon and I let ourselves down. Your father wanted to see you before we left. He went quietly to your bed and kissed you. You stirred for a moment, calling out, ‘Papa.’

  “I remember,” my father said. “He said good-bye, didn’t he?”

  “Exactly as you say,” Volodya answered. “Then we made ready to leave. Hana had organized a bag for each of us—filled with food that she’d prepared. I bid my farewell to your dear mother and your aunt Sonya.

  “‘Come back to us,’ Hana whispered.

  “We promised we would, but in truth we weren’t confident. We opened the door just enough to slip through. The last thing we saw were Hana’s and Sonya’s faces, peering at us with worried expressions. Solomon raised his cap to them and whispered ‘farewell’ one final time. The door closed.”

  “I saw you leave,” my father said somberly. “I’d woken again. I called to my mother and told her, but she said that I’d been dreaming. That Papa had died.”

  Everybody at the table was silent.

  “The night was cloudy, which gave us some cover as we left Koidanov,” Volodya continued. “But your father was still torn: no sooner were we on the outskirts of the forest than he wanted to return to Koidanov. In the end I talked him out of it.

  “Over the two days that followed we trudged on. Each night we took a few hours’ sleep while the other kept watch. On the third day disaster struck. We’d been going in circles and had ended up within minutes of Koidanov again. We huddled together for some time and then, when it was safe, we headed back into the forest.

  “We’d only been on the move a short while when we heard the sound of repeated gunshots in the distance. Solomon stood upright, frozen to the spot.

  “‘Get down!’ I shouted at him. ‘In God’s name, what are you doing?’

  “‘I’m going back!’ he cried. ‘There’s something wrong.’

  “I grabbed your father by the arm but he shook me off.

  “‘My family is there!’ he said.

  “Solomon understood that I loved your family, too. But I knew that we could not stop whatever was happening back in Koidanov. ‘What good would it do if we were caught?’ I argued with him. ‘We must move forward, wherever that is.’

  “Solomon went mad. He gripped his head and wailed for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t know how to help him. Suddenly everything went quiet, and a terrible rain began. We were drenched and had to huddle together. It didn’t stop all day. By the evening we had to head off—it was too risky.

  “‘All right,’ your father said. ‘What are we waiting for?’ He looked defeated. We headed back into the forest.”

  The room was deadly quiet. My father stared at his hands resting on the table.

  “You know I was there that day?” he said.

  “Where?”

  “In the village. I saw what happened.”

  Both Volodya and Anya seemed too overcome to speak.

 
“I saw it all. My own family. The others. The killings went on for two days.”

  “I cannot imagine,” Anya said softly. “Our grandson is nine years old. Even a child of that age could not cope. Not even an adult…do you want to tell more of this?”

  “I, too, ended up in the forest outside Koidanov on the day of the exterminations,” my father said. “What if you and my father had passed within reach of me with no idea I was there?”

  Anya touched my father’s hand. “We need brandy,” she said.

  The fortifying liquor seemed to revive my father. “Tell me more about what happened to my father and you,” he said to Volodya.

  “We were tired and hungry but kept pushing ourselves in the direction of Mogilev in the northeast,” Volodya said. “Sometimes a farmer shared his food or gave us shelter, but we never stayed more than a single night. We couldn’t put anybody else in danger. Germans and Latvian and Lithuanian police battalions were on patrol everywhere.

  “We made it to the outskirts of Mogilev. Solomon knew there was a risk, but he wanted to get into the town to find out if there was any word of life back in Koidanov. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen.

  “That morning he set off for town. I agreed to wait for him until the next morning. If he didn’t return by then, I wasn’t to wait any longer. The following day came and there was no sign of him. I decided to wait a further night, but as another day dawned, I assumed that he’d been captured, that his fate was sealed. I never thought I would see your father again. Eventually I met up with a group of partisans. I fought with them in the forests, attacking trains, until the war ended.

  “You’re kidding!” my father said. “I used to guard the supply trains. The soldiers would hoist me up onto the carriage roofs, where they’d make me shoot into the air with a rifle to frighten off the partisans.”

  Volodya shook his head in disbelief. “Imagine if I’d been shooting at you,” he said.

  “Thankfully you missed.” My father laughed darkly. “Later I was sent to Riga and, after a few happy days there, it was decided that I should again join the soldiers. This time they took me to the Russian front. It was terrible. The humidity was unbearable. And the mosquitoes at night were the worst. We slept in dugouts that were always full of water.”

  “When was this?” Anya asked, sitting up in her chair.

  “The summer of 1943.”

  “Where exactly were you?” Anya asked.

  “The Volhov swamps,” my father said, “south of Leningrad.”

  “This is beyond belief!” Anya interrupted. “I was in the Volhov swamps with the partisans at the same time as you.” She rose and crossed to a shelf. “See this,” she said, indicating a framed certificate there.

  My father and I joined Anya and examined her award.

  “For bravery in the war. From Stalin, no less. Before he decided Jewish partisans needed punishment and not reward.”

  My father’s eyes then moved to a photograph perched on the shelf.

  “That’s me,” Anya said. “Taken during the war.”

  He picked it up. Suddenly he gave a very slight start that nobody else seemed to notice. His face went pale. “You were beautiful,” he said.

  Anya laughed, pleased. We returned to our seats and my father continued with his story.

  The late afternoon wore on. My father and Volodya jumped from one topic to another as my father devoured what Volodya knew. But there was still more that my father wanted to hear about his father’s survival.

  “Early one morning,” Volodya began, “there was a loud knocking at the door. When I opened it, before me was Solomon, disheveled, dressed in an SS overcoat, haggard but smiling. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “He had the hunger of a bear. I let him gulp down the food without interruption until he could eat no more. Your father told me that after we’d separated, he had in fact made it into Mogilev. But almost as soon as he entered the town he was stopped by a policeman wanting to see his papers. He had none, of course, and was arrested. At first he worked in a number of labor camps, until finally he was delivered to Auschwitz. He survived there for over two years. You know what saved him? His skill with leather. He looked after the guards’ boots, and for that they kept him alive.

  “Much later he was transported to Dachau. He told me he wouldn’t have survived there for long. The conditions were even worse than in Auschwitz—but liberation turned out to be only months away. That must’ve been around the end of April in 1945.

  “The Allies even gave him the chance to emigrate to America. But he wanted to return to Koidanov to see if his family was still here. Your father then made a journey back from hell. He walked all the way across Europe from Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

  “When he’d entered Koidanov, only minutes earlier, he’d found his house deserted. He decided then to find me. I had to confirm the awful truth about his family: that all had perished, even you.

  “Solomon was exhausted beyond belief, but still he insisted on seeing the mass grave. He went by himself. It was many hours before he returned. For some days after that he never said a word. And then his silence broke, and Solomon returned to us, changed—we all were—but stronger.

  “He began a new life, but he never forgot his first family.”

  Anya reached across and gently took my father’s hand. “Try not to despair,” she said. “He never forgot you, his little Ilya. What a happy, friendly, and good boy you were. You have the same feeling as Solomon.”

  “My only inheritance,” my father said sadly.

  “No!” Anya sprang to life. “You have more than that! Your family were good people. You carry that goodness in you. The Nazis took you, but they never touched your goodness. I can see that. Don’t ever forget it—you must always keep it close to you.”

  My father shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the vehemence of Anya’s emotion. He signaled to me with his eyes that he wanted to leave. He sighed loudly and looked at his watch.

  “We’ve been here over three hours,” he said, feigning surprise. “We should make a move. Mum’ll be wild.”

  We made our farewells. Volodya and Anya remained on the veranda, vulnerable and frail, waving as we passed through the gap in the broken fence. I wondered whether we would ever see either of them again. As it turned out, we did not. They both died within months of each other before we had the chance to visit again.

  The following evening, our last in Minsk, we found ourselves in Erick’s modest apartment in one of the city’s inner suburbs. The room was dominated by a very large table laden with food and drink prepared by Erick’s delightful wife, Sonya.

  At one end of the table, Erick showed my father the few photographs he had of Solomon during the postwar years until his death.

  “If only I’d spoken sooner,” my father said. “We might have found each other.”

  “You weren’t to know,” Erick replied.

  “I thought everyone was dead,” my father continued grimly. “I had nobody to look for. And nobody was looking for me. I was dead to this world.”

  “Even if you had spoken, it would have been impossible to find anybody here,” Erick added. “Can you imagine what Belarus was like under the Soviet system?”

  Later, as the evening drew to a close, my father tapped on the side of his glass and rose. All filled their glasses and then quietened down.

  My father held his glass high. “I am not a very good toast-giver,” he joked. “I just want to say that it’s been a long way home, but it has been worth it. We have found each other now.”

  My father united with Erick Galperin and his family in 1998.

  We raised our glasses in response.

  “To the brothers!”

  The following morning we waited in the departure lounge for our flight to Riga. My father leaned forward, his hands clasped together. “How could Erick have been confused about the house he grew up in?” my father asked me.

  I shrugged impatiently.

>   I had a number of explanations in my mind but decided to keep them to myself. Talking about them would not move us further on our journey. Initially I had been simply grateful that other evidence—the mass grave, the memories of Volodya and Anya—had been enough to persuade my father that he’d found the right village. The subsequent last-minute discovery of his original home, of which he’d retained memories, had been beyond all our expectations.

  The boarding of the flight to Riga was announced, and the three of us made our way wearily to the departure gate.

  I quietly observed the profiles of my mother and father as they rested in their seats across the aisle from me. My father must have sensed my gaze because suddenly he opened one eye and, without looking at me, asked, “When do we get in, Marky?”

  “Not long now!” I replied. “Some water, Dad?”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said, following me to the rear of the plane. We stood together at the water fountain.

  “Will you change your name, Dad?” I ventured.

  My father raised his eyes to heaven. “God forbid,” he chuckled. “To Ilya Solomonovich Galperin? What a mouthful!”

  I had something else on my mind. “Dad,” I ventured, “what was it that bothered you when you looked at Anya’s photograph on the shelf?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw your reaction,” I persisted.

  My father didn’t respond immediately. He sipped on his water, reflecting on my question. Then he spoke.

  “Do you remember when I was in Volhov, hiding in the tree, when the partisans passed below me?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “And I caught a glimpse of one of the women and thought I recognized her…Judging from the photograph I saw of her in Koidanov, I now believe that woman was Anya.”

  With that my father returned to his seat.