At the end of May, Sam and Felek arrived in Ołyka to spend their summer vacation with us. We were a little cramped all in one room, but very happy to be together again. The weather continued beautiful; we went swimming together and took long walks. But we hadn’t heard from Mother in weeks, which worried us.
Talk of German troop concentrations on the Russian borders intensified. The BBC was predicting that an attack was imminent; one broadcast even pinpointed June 22. We weren’t sure whether these reports represented anything more than wishful thinking by the English, who were naturally weary of resisting Hitler all alone. But in any event, Ołyka was more than a hundred kilometers from the border, and we didn’t feel immediately threatened even if war should break out.
The Soviet radio and press gave no hint of potential trouble. Soviet freight trains loaded with grain and other supplies continued rolling to Germany. Whenever she was mentioned on the Soviet radio, it was in the usual neutralist vein. Soviet criticism was still reserved for the capitalist West. We decided that since the Russians weren’t worried, why should we be, and continued to enjoy the beautiful spring and summer of 1941.
The Germans Attack the Soviet Union
June 22 1941, was a beautiful sunny day. It wasn’t hot yet, and a gentle breeze made it even more pleasant. I got up early that morning and went to a park where school kids played soccer and basketball. I noticed a few people in a cluster, talking excitedly. Early that morning the Germans had attacked Russia.
So this was it. All kinds of thoughts were racing in my mind: the excitement of a gigantic struggle between two large armies, fear of the Germans, hope that all this could somehow lead to the end of the war. I rushed home with the news. Sam, Felek, Father, and I spent the whole day talking, worrying, hoping. Since we were a hundred kilometers from the border, we felt that we were in no immediate danger. The Soviet army was very large and well equipped; even at worst, it would certainly not collapse as quickly as had the Polish army.
The Soviet radio made no announcement until late in the day. When it came, it was, of course, typical Soviet propaganda: “The heroic Soviet army will deal the treacherous fascist invaders a crushing blow,” and so on. Even the master of treachery himself, Stalin, apparently found it difficult to believe that Hitler, his new friend and ally, would launch such a massive attack against him without the slightest provocation or warning. Even though we were caught in the middle, we felt a certain satisfaction at the ignominious end of the cynical pact between those two despots.
Once again, as in September 1939, it was likely that Sam and Felek—and this time perhaps I as well—would be mobilized. And once again, it all became academic because of the rapid advances of the German army. By the third day of the war we watched, with dis-belief and broken hearts, Russian tanks and soldiers fleeing east in a disorderly retreat. Soon the BBC confirmed German claims of having dealt the Soviets a smashing defeat, and those menacing low-flying Stukas appeared in the skies without challenge from Soviet fighter planes.
Once more we discussed our options. We might flee with the Russians; the problem there was that Father was ill with asthma and had a double hernia, and it would have been very dangerous for him to embark on a long journey without knowing whether medical care would be available at any point along the way. We felt—as events were to prove, correctly—that almost certainly we would have been caught by the rapid advance of the German armies, and would have found ourselves somewhere in the Ukraine without the conveniences of our temporary home in Ołyka. The idea of escaping into the forests, as a few young people were thinking of doing, we never seriously considered, mainly because of Father’s health.
Hitler had not yet begun his systematic destruction of the Jews. After the collapse of Poland there was a wave of atrocities, usually forced marches on which tens of thousands of Jews, mainly men, were killed by the Einsatzkommandos. That was followed by a period of increasingly dehumanizing policies: Jews were sealed into ghettos, were forced to surrender most of their money in the form of “contributions,” and were made to suffer many indignities. But there had been no mass killings including women and children, as yet. The speeches of Hitler and his lieutenants included a great deal of rhetoric concerning their plans for rendering Europe free of Jews (Judenrein), “stamping out the Jewish vermin,” and so forth, but only the extreme pessimists could believe that Germany, a nation of poets, philosophers, musicians, and scientists, a nation that had given the world Beethoven, Goethe, and Kant, could actually embark on a program of deliberate mass extermination of the Jewish people as a whole, including innocent children, helpless old people, and women.
So we decided to wait for the arrival of the Germans and their occupation, hoping that we would survive somehow, that the Russians, with the help of “General Winter,” would eventually defeat Hitler as they had Napoleon in 1812, and that America would sooner or later enter the war and rescue Europe once again as she had in World War I.
We thought too that in the meantime we might find a chance to rejoin the rest of our family in Hrubieszów. It was now a year and nine months since we had left home, and we missed them more than ever.
Meanwhile, the Russian retreat was becoming a rout. Demoralized Soviet soldiers came through Ołyka, sometimes without their weapons. On June 27 we heard for the first time the threatening rumble of artillery in action. The Stukas were flying low over the town, attacking anything that moved. Clearly it was a matter of hours before the Germans arrived, and so we, together with many others, sought refuge in caves in the hillsides of the main road on the outskirts of Ołyka.
Never will I forget the entry of the German army into Ołyka. First we heard the distant roar of hundreds of approaching vehicles, which became louder and louder. Then we heard commands shouted in German, and a large column of the German army came into sight—first motorcycles, then tanks, trucks filled with soldiers, artillery, and hundreds of foot soldiers. The column was moving along in a very orderly fashion; the soldiers’ uniforms were clean and fresh, as though they had never seen battle. Officers in open command cars were barking orders and talking to each other loudly. It looked more like a parade of a victorious army than a combat force. There was fear in our hearts; the Germans sounded harsh and arrogant, and we were awed by the power and efficiency of the German war machine.
Even though we had expected it, we were still surprised by the warmth and enthusiasm with which the Ukrainian population met the Germans. Women threw flowers at the soldiers, people ran up to them waving greetings and offering them bread and salt as a symbolic gesture of friendship. There was no sign of any hostility. Apparently the Ukrainians were not aware of Hitler’s opinion of them—indeed, of all Slavs. They didn’t know that they were classed as Untermenschen (subhumans), and that plans were already under way to exterminate most of them to make room (Lebensraum) for the Germanic peoples.*
Under the Germans:
Ołyka
The first couple of weeks under the German occupation were not so bad for the Jews as we had feared. The German army passed quickly through the Ołyka area in pursuit of the Russians, meeting only sporadic resistance. If any Germans remained behind in Ołyka, we didn’t see them. A few Ukrainians had been appointed by the Germans to take over local government, and there was no shortage of food or other basic commodities.
The rapid advance of the German army and the Red Army’s inability to hold any defensive lines took everyone by surprise. Every day German newspapers and radio gave the names of the cities newly fallen to the onrushing Germans: Zhitomir, Minsk, Smolensk. The German war communiqués spoke of gigantic encirclements, with entire Soviet armies surrounded and annihilated. Five hundred thousand Russians were trapped in a huge pocket in Byelorussia, six hundred thousand in the Ukraine. Most were killed or taken prisoner. The Germans seemed unstoppable.
Enlargement of the area in Poland where the Orenstein family was moving from town to town during the 1939–t1943.
One day in the middle of July, Felek, S
am, Father, and I were sitting in our room, discussing the situation. Father wasn’t feeling well and was lying on the sofa. Our landlady looked through the open window and told us, “The Germans are going from house to house rounding up Jews for work.” We quickly decided to go upstairs to the attic. Father wouldn’t join us. “I’m not going,” he said. “I’m sick—they can’t use sick people to work for them.”
A minute later, from the little attic window, we saw an SS man and two Ukrainian policemen enter the house. First we heard the Ukrainians shout in broken German, “Juden—Arbeit” (Jews—work). Then we heard the German screaming, and there was a great deal of commotion. We saw them leave our house and enter the one next door, from which they soon emerged, taking our neighbor and his son with them. They continued down the street, looking for more Jews.
Our landlady came to the foot of the attic stairs and called, “They’re gone. Hurry, your father needs help.” We ran downstairs. Father was sitting on the sofa, the top of his head covered with blood. “Don’t worry, it’s not bad,” he reassured us. We cleaned and bandaged the cut, which was superficial, while our landlady told us what had happened.
The SS officer had been angry at not finding any men in the house except for Father, and ordered him to get up from the sofa. “I’m sick. I can’t go to work,” Father replied. The German put his revolver right to Father’s temple and said, “Verfluchte Jude [Damned Jew], you come or I’ll shoot you.” “Go ahead and shoot,” Father answered. “I can’t go. I’m sick.” The German then struck Father on the head with the butt of his gun, spat, repeated “Verfluchte Jude,” and walked out, followed by the two Ukrainians.
As she recounted this, the landlady shook her head. “Your father is a meshugene (crazy). He tells a German, ‘Go ahead and shoot.’ I thought he was a dead man for sure.” Once again Father had demonstrated his extraordinary coolness and toughness; how many men would refuse to obey an order with a gun to their heads?—especially when at the time it seemed to be merely a matter of a day’s work.
We learned within an hour or so that the Germans and their Ukrainian helpers had gone searching through the main Jewish section of Ołyka, taken all the men they could find, about four or five hundred, loaded them into trucks, and driven off. The men’s families were not particularly concerned; most thought they would be back by the end of the day. By evening, when the men had not yet returned, their families were beginning to worry, but not for their lives; it was more a question of their being hungry and perhaps mistreated.
The following morning a man came back with a bone-chilling tale. A Ukrainian school friend of one of the Jewish boys who had been taken away told his parents that from a distance, just outside the town, he had seen the Germans and the Ukrainians shoot all the Jews they had taken to “work” and bury them in ditches left over from World War I.
The general reaction was of disbelief. One of the men started shouting, “He is a liar, an anti-Semite! He’s trying to torture us with worry. The Germans wouldn’t do that.” Sam, always the pessimist, thought the boy might be telling the truth. Felek and I didn’t believe it. Father didn’t say much; perhaps he agreed with Sam but didn’t want to worry us. So many men had been taken away that in about half of all the Jewish families in Ołyka someone was gone—a father, a son, a son-in-law, an uncle, a cousin.
They waited nervously all that day, but there was still no news from the men. By next morning the nightmare was becoming a reality. One of the Ukrainian police confided in his girlfriend that it was true, the Jews had been killed. She in turn repeated the story to a Jewish friend of hers. Even then, faced with this confirmation, many people refused to believe it. They still thought the stories were being spread by anti-Semites who wanted to scare the Jews.
But as days passed and none of the men were heard from, the terrible truth had to be accepted—especially since we were now hearing similar stories from other nearby towns. Worse yet, actual eyewitness accounts of the mass killings of thousands and thousands of Jews, including women and children, were coming from the Russian side. A wounded German officer on the way home from the Russian front told one of the men working at the Ołyka train station of an unbelievable slaughter in Kiev: a hundred thousand Jews—men, women, and children—murdered in a ravine.*
This was the first time we had heard of mass extermination, and at first I rejected the monstrous thought. Women, old people, babies, being murdered on such a scale—it was simply not conceivable. But while my mind pushed the thought away, my heart was gripped with terror. Most people refused to believe the story, unable to accept such a possibility, that not only they themselves, but their entire families, the whole Jewish people, might be wiped out. They seized upon any rationalization, however improbable; perhaps the Germans considered all Jews inside “Old Russia” to be Communists. We, the “Europeans,” they would surely leave alone. These were frantic days and frantic discussions. It was difficult for us to absorb the thought of mass slaughter of little children and old people. How could we begin to grasp the fact that we were going to be killed just for having been born Jews—and that there was nothing on this earth we could do to prevent it?
In the meantime, the Germans continued to advance on all fronts. They surrounded Leningrad, occupied Kiev, then Kharkov, and were approaching Moscow. It seemed only a matter of days before Leningrad and Moscow would fall. How long could the Russian army continue to resist? Then I saw a bold red headline in a German army newspaper dated October 3, 1941: HITLER: THE WAR IS WON. ONLY MOPPING-UP OPERATIONS REMAIN.
I was crushed, my heart broken. This was the end of hope. I wept silently, in despair. Now that Hitler was the master of Europe, all her resources at his disposal, how long would it be before the free world could defeat Germany? Ten or twenty years—maybe never. It seemed unbelievable, illogical, insane, that this maniac, this mass murderer could control the destiny of hundreds of millions of lives, but he did. It seemed that nothing and nobody could stop him now. True, there was still America, with her fantastic productivity, but what good was she, an ocean away? And America hadn’t even declared war on Germany. Only helpless little England was still free, fighting on alone, her sole defense the waters of the English Channel.
The world was dark, dark, dark! Even to an optimist like me, everything looked hopeless. For the first time ever I began questioning whether life was worth living. Hitler seemed invincible. In 1939 he had conquered Poland in days, in May and June of 1940 he had dealt a crushing blow to the combined Anglo-French armies, and now the world was witnessing the quick destruction of the Soviet army.
It never occurred to us to doubt the truth of that headline; until then all Hitler’s announcements of victory had proven completely accurate. We had no way of knowing then that for the first time Hitler had announced a victory that wasn’t really his. I was so depressed that for days I wouldn’t look at a newspaper or listen to a radio.
In the meantime the Germans and their Ukrainian henchmen stepped up their persecutions. They formed a Judenrat, a Jewish council like the one in Hrubieszów, composed of elders whose terrible job it was to see that German orders with respect to the Jewish community were carried out. All Jews were ordered to wear the yellow star. Arbitrary and exorbitant fines were imposed, which the intimidated Jews paid, often out of the savings of a lifetime. Jews were brutally beaten and kicked while at work and in the streets. The brutalizing process was in full swing, and we felt totally helpless in this small town, where we were strangers even to the local Jews.
We still had a little money left, but it wouldn’t last long. We started thinking of moving west, closer to home, hoping to get to Hrubieszów, even though we had heard that the Germans were still guarding the border. But perhaps they were treating the Jews better in Poland; after all, we told ourselves, Ołyka was part of eastern Poland, which had been “contaminated” by the Communists for two years. These were foolish rationalizations, but we grasped at any notion, however ridiculous, that offered even the feeblest ray of hope
.
We met a local Ukrainian truck driver who transported oil drums for the German army, and made arrangements with him to take us as far as Włodzimierz.
It was a cold day in October. We met the truck driver after dark on a narrow street not far from where we were lodging. He told us to climb inside some empty oil drums in the back of the truck, and laid more drums over us. The road was full of potholes; crouched inside the drums, we were nearly deafened by the clanging as the truck jolted and lurched along. Approaching Łuck, a large town between Ołyka and Włodzimierz, we suddenly heard a German command: “Stop!” We could see nothing, only heard the soldiers questioning our driver, and his replies in broken German. At last we heard “Los, los” (Out, out). The truck started up and we breathed again as it picked up speed.
Włodzimierz
The trip to Włodzimierz seemed endless. My knees hurt and I developed a tremendous headache from the banging and clanging of the steel oil drums. At last we stopped. The driver came back and moved the empty drums so that we could get out. “All right, we made it,” he said, “but I wouldn’t take a chance like that again for any money in the world.”
We got out of the drums and climbed down from the truck to find ourselves on a dark, deserted street in Włodzimierz. Our legs were so stiff from crouching for so many hours that we needed a few minutes before we could even start to walk.
We went to the Burstyns’, where Father and I had roomed during the Soviet occupation. Mr. Burstyn greeted us warmly, but had no room for us in his house. The town was already overcrowded with Jews from neighboring villages who had been forced by the Germans to move there; twenty thousand Jews were now in Włodzimierz, compared to a prewar population of twelve thousand. Mr. Burstyn was very helpful, though, and in the morning found a small room for us in the same neighborhood.
I Shall Live Page 8