Conditions in Włodzimierz were even worse than they had been in Ołyka. Everybody was terrified; the stories of mass killings on the Soviet side of the Ukraine had had a paralyzing effect on people here as well, and the brutalizing process we had seen beginning in Ołyka was far more advanced here. Beatings and killings were no longer isolated incidents, but commonplace. The Germans were tightening the screws with increasing cruelty. There were only about a dozen Gestapo in Włodzimierz, but these were sufficient to control twenty thousand Jews, for they had recruited about a hundred Ukrainian policemen, who enthusiastically did most of the Gestapo’s dirty work for them. These Ukrainians had had nothing before the war; now they had plenty of food, carried weapons, which they used freely, and were encouraged to beat and torture Jews whenever they felt like it.
The Judenrat, executing the orders of the Germans, supervised the distribution of food, registered Jewish workers, and delivered them to the places to which they had been assigned. Most members of the Judenrat had no choice but to do the Germans’ work for them; either they had served in the Jewish town administration before the war, or they were prominent citizens and appointed by the Germans specifically to this post. Refusing such an appointment would have meant certain death.
The Judenrat in turn set up the Jewish police, mostly a bunch of riffraff who were more than willing to enforce German regulations against their Jewish brothers in exchange for more favorable treatment for their own families. And in some cases they were beating and otherwise abusing their fellow Jews entirely on their own initiative.
To make matters worse, I now developed water in my lungs. I was running a high fever, and the doctor couldn’t get me the medicine I needed. I was growing weak, and the family was worried. I often thought while I was ill how much better it would be for me to die then and there, in bed, than to survive only to be murdered later by the Germans. I used to kid the doctor, who was a very nice man: “You know, Doctor, with you around I might get lucky and die right now.” The doctor would smile ruefully, recognizing how true this was.
News of “actions” against Jews were now arriving thick and fast from neighboring towns and cities: Łuck, Równo, Pińsk. As yet there had been no total exterminations in this area, but thousands of people who had been captured by the Gestapo had been taken to the outskirts of town and killed. An “action” was clearly imminent in Włodzimierz.
This meant a new and urgent need for hiding places, which had to be very cunningly disguised. Many families were constructing these skrytkas (hideouts) in their houses, and people who didn’t have one tried desperately to secure a hiding place elsewhere. Our landlord built a double wall with a door that perfectly matched the paneling of the wood, and in front of the door he placed a wooden cabinet. In order to get into the skrytka between the two walls, one had to open the cabinet door, swing out a shelf, crawl inside the cabinet, push through its back wall, and open the hidden door leading to the skrytka. Then you closed the cabinet door, got into the skrytka, swung the cabinet shelf back into position, and closed the door in the wall. We congratulated our landlord on his masterpiece. The Germans would never find us.
In some houses, skrytkas were built in a crawl space between the ceiling and the roof, again with a cleverly disguised entrance. The actions in the Western Ukraine during this period of the occupation were only partial. All the Jews who were captured by the Germans during these searches were killed, but those whom the killers were unable to find returned to their homes once the action was over. It was a game of hide-and-seek in which the prize was one’s life, and a cleverly constructed skrytka meant the difference between life and death.
The Włodzimierz action started on a rainy morning in November. Everyone was on the alert, and the moment we saw the trucks arrive with the Germans and Ukrainians we got into our skrytka. It was about twenty feet long and two and a half feet deep, and there were sixteen or seventeen people in it: the four of us, the landlord’s family, including his daughter and son-in-law, and another tenant and his family. There was barely enough room for us all to squeeze in. It was impossible to sit or crouch; even standing up, our bodies were pressed tight together. It was pitch-dark.
Soon we heard the sounds of a search party in the house. We could hear them walking about, laughing and cursing, knocking on the walls listening for secret openings, alert for the cry of a baby. They went down to the cellar, up to the attic. They were in the house for only three or four minutes, but it seemed an eternity. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure they could hear it. One sneeze from any of us, and it would all be over. Finally we heard the German in charge say, “There’s nobody here. Let’s not waste any more time.”
As soon as they left the house the landlord’s son-in-law let out a whoop of joy. He was instantly hushed. We knew that the Germans often left one of their party behind after the rest had gone, hoping to catch Jews as they came out of hiding. This son-in-law was a dangerous fellow; even before the war he had never been quite right in the head, and the anxieties of the occupation had unhinged him still further. He now started complaining that everybody was pushing him, but in fact no one was; it was just too crowded in there. He was standing near one wall, so he put his hands on it and started pushing the others back, to make more room for himself. He was strong, and the rest of us were being squeezed unmercifully. A few people started complaining and apparently he found this amusing, because he suddenly started to laugh very loudly, terrifying us all. His father-in-law kept apologizing for him and pleading with him to be quiet. The ventilation was very poor, and after two or three hours the air became so heavy that some of us were close to fainting. Finally we took a chance and opened the door a crack.
We stood in the skrytka all day, until dark. At last the landlord opened the door, stepped out, walked cautiously over to the window, and returned to tell us that the street was quiet. The action seemed to be over. We decided to go back to our rooms but remain dressed, while one of us, hidden behind the curtains, kept watch at the window. I slept for a while, then woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. When my turn came to stand guard, I peeked through the window. It looked like a ghost town outside, with no sign of life, no lights anywhere.
In the morning a Jewish policeman appeared in the street, running and shouting: “The action is over. You can come out.” Immediately people appeared in doorways; some even went out into the street to see what had happened to the others. There was a great clamor of anguished cries when they discovered how many were missing.
Later in the day we learned from the Judenrat that about two thousand Jews had been seized by the Germans. They had hidden in cellars, under beds, or in attics, and many were found by the SS and taken away to their deaths.
There were now few optimists left among us. We had had too many eyewitness reports of the mass killings, both from Jews who had not been mortally wounded and had managed to escape from the execution pits after the Germans had left, and from Gentiles who had watched the killings from a distance. We all knew what had happened to the two thousand Jews from Włodzimierz.
But about that time, in November, hope started creeping back into our hearts. The German advance seemed to be slowing down. Leningrad, although surrounded, was holding out. German communiqués spoke of battles near Moscow, but their advance had slowed to a crawl. Their tanks and trucks were foundering in the deep mud. In the Kharkov and Rostov areas fighting was intense; the Soviets had even briefly recaptured Kharkov, a major city, but they had lost it again. Nevertheless, this unexpectedly strong resistance so deep into Russian territory bought time for the Russians, which was what they needed; it prolonged the war enough to bring her most powerful ally into action: “General Winter” came to the rescue of “Mother Russia.”
The situation on the front now changed dramatically. German supply lines were dangerously overextended, and military vehicles found it almost impossible to move in the deep snow. The Luftwaffe was often immobilized by the bad weather. Worst of all, the soldiers were totall
y unaccustomed to the terrible Russian winter and could not fight. Those supposedly infallible German strategists had underestimated the length of the Russian campaign—it was supposed to have been another Blitzkrieg, with total victory before winter set in—and had failed to provide the men with warm clothing. It is hard to handle machines or guns with frozen fingers. On the other hand, the Red Army, which only weeks before had seemed on the verge of disintegration, was resisting ever more staunchly and was gaining in strength and confidence every day. The Russians, at first demoralized by the speed of their defeat, now came into their own. They could withstand the cold, and they suddenly saw their enemy turn from Übermenschen to half-frozen, frightened, hungry men, far from home, unprepared psychologically or physically to fight this kind of war. It gave a tremendous lift to the Russians’ spirits, and changed the whole complexion of the war.
All this was music to our ears; at last there was hope. We began hearing stories of German soldiers literally freezing to death on the Russian front. Troop trains were returning to Germany full of soldiers who had lost arms and legs. Visions of a full-scale Napoleonic retreat danced in our heads. So Hitler could be beaten after all. The Russians had not been defeated; the miracle we had been waiting for was here. Our excitement grew daily: “Hold out—just hold out!” Then doubts flooded back. Perhaps it was only temporary, perhaps the Germans were merely resting and regrouping in order to launch a new attack. It was hard to believe in such a sudden reversal, from a total rout to a quick victory. Was it possible?
Now a new order was announced: Jews and Gentiles alike were to deliver all their furs to certain designated depots. Anyone found keeping back a fur coat would be shot. People were laughing: “Look at the son of a bitch! Now he needs Jewish furs to cover German bodies! The soldiers of the Master Race are to be warmed by furs from the Jewish vermin.” What delicious irony!
Early in December German war communiqués told of German troops reaching the area of Moscow. The Russians were evacuating the capital, transferring the government to Kuybyshev. What a disappointment! Was Moscow going to fall after all? Then days went by, while German newspapers continued to carry stories of fighting in the suburbs, with photos of the Russian capital in the background of the advancing German troops. After that, for a few days, there was little or no news at all from Moscow.
Then suddenly, for the first time ever in World War II, a new word appeared in the German communiqués: “Defensive.” Defensive battles were being fought. My heart leapt with joy. Then another new term: “Shortening the lines”—a euphemism for pulling back.
The English shortwave radio went crazy with the news. The Germans were in retreat! They were suffering heavy casualties. Hundreds of thousands of them were freezing to death in the snow. We heard the names of towns fifty, a hundred miles west of Moscow in the German communiqués; they were being pushed back from the Russian capital. Returning German soldiers told horror stories of the Russian front: the troops stuck in the deep snow in their light summer uniforms, unable to walk, their legs frozen—a disaster. It was sweet music to our ears.
For the first time we heard of Germans actually criticizing Hitler. Right at the start of the war there had been some skeptics who thought the victory in Poland was not indicative, since the Poles were so weak. But after the triumph in the West and the occupation of France, most of these critics were silenced. Hitler had achieved what the Kaiser could never do: He had taken Paris, and he’d had the British on the run at Dunkirk, happy to get away with their lives. Finally, at the peak of the German victories in the East, when he was on the verge of subjugating all Russia, there were virtually no critics left. Hitler was God, he could do whatever he wanted.
Now, with this unexpectedly stiff resistance from the Russians, and with the Germans in retreat, doubts reemerged. We were working at a railway depot at the time, under the supervision of German army officers, and we clearly sensed the change in the atmosphere. One officer told our foreman that he personally had never believed that the “painter” knew what he was doing. “And look at how he treated the poor Jews. The crazy bastard!”
These were exhilarating days. Even if Hitler killed us, we would die knowing he was going to hang for it. And just think of the Russians! What fantastic fighters! To us, who were helpless, the thought of the Russians turning on their tormentors and giving them a taste of what it was to suffer was like a breath of life, an infusion of energy and hope. Hitler’s savagery toward the Russians now came back to haunt him with a vengeance. They fought back like tigers. They could resist the brutal cold, the hunger, the discomfort far better than the Germans. They were used to it, the terrible winter was their element. And they had heard about the hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners who were being starved to death. There was a large prisoner-of-war camp not far from Włodzimierz, with close to sixty thousand Russian prisoners. For weeks the Germans had given them no food. There were horrible scenes, even cannibalism. The peasants sometimes threw loaves of bread over the barbed wire, and packs of soldiers would fall on each loaf, tearing it and themselves to pieces. After a few days, an order came: No more bread. German guards shot at anyone approaching the fence. A few courageous women tried anyway; one was shot to death. In ten weeks, sixty thousand men—virtually the entire population of the camp—starved to death.
Countries and territories incorporated into, occupied, or controlled by the Third Reich from March 1938 through September 1943.
The Russian people knew they had nothing to lose. Most of them hated Stalin—but now he was leading the fight against their tormentors. And he knew how to appeal to them. Not for the cause of Communism; no, it was to something much deeper, to their love of country. He spoke to them in the name of “Mother Russia,” words long forgotten in the Communist dictionary. Women worked sixteen-hour shifts in the new factories in Siberia, going full blast even before the roofs were on. At the front, the soldiers fought like men possessed. Behind the German lines, partisans derailed German trains, exploded ammunition dumps. The Russian nation rose as one to fight the invader.
Life in Włodzimierz was becoming extremely difficult. There were shortages of food, and the Ukrainians were going wild, beating people in the streets at the slightest whim. We decided to leave Włodzimierz and move to Uściług, a small town on the Bug, eight miles west of Włodzimierz. It was right on the border, and on the road to Hrubieszów on the other side of the border. Felek and Sam had worked in Uściług during the Soviet occupation, and had friends there. Sam was able, through his connections in Uściług, to register us there with the Judenrat. We made arrangements with a Ukrainian peasant who took us to Uściług at night.
Uściług
As soon as we got to Uściług, we rented a room with a Jewish family. It wasn’t bad; we had two wide beds, and we could sleep more comfortably than in Włodzimierz. Here life was more orderly, and the local Germans and Ukrainians seemed less vicious. Food was more readily available from local farmers, and it was cheaper too, which was important, because we didn’t have much money left. We had about five thousand rubles, and we knew that would not last us long.
Money was not our main concern, however; at the moment the burning question was: What were Hitler’s intentions for the Jews? Would his Gestapo continue their limited “actions,” in which some Jews were killed and the rest allowed to go on living, or would they start total extermination actions in our area, like the ones they had conducted in Kiev and other cities and villages across the former Polish-Soviet border?
What kept our spirits up was the situation at the front. We were hoping that the German soldiers, shocked by the sudden turn in the fortunes of war, cold, exhausted, and stuck in the snow, would break, abandon their arms, and flee home, as Napoleon’s armies had done one hundred and thirty years earlier.*
As the winter progressed, the situation at the front became stalemated. Seriously weakened by the loss of millions of soldiers in their initial defeats, the Russians could not maintain a counterattack. Most of t
heir industrial production capacity was lost. They had succeeded in evacuating a number of large plants and equipment, but these were in the process of being set up in the Urals, and only a few were yet in operation. Men, women, and children worked night and day in the bitter Siberian cold to get these plants going. They realized now that this was no ordinary war, but a fight to the finish. Either they defeated the Germans, or they would perish. So they labored for their lives, without sleep, frostbitten, half starved. Their heroic efforts, together with the sacrifices of their fathers, brothers, and sons at the front, saved Russia, and perhaps Western civilization as well. As the grim winter of 1941–1942 wore on, both sides were close to exhaustion.
On the whole, this was good news. Although our hopes for a total German collapse and a speedy end to the war had not materialized, there was reason to take heart. Hitler’s advance had been halted; he had even been pushed back a little. England was still alive, and building up her armed forces. We had something to hope for.
At the same time, however, I sensed an increased danger. Hitler had to be enraged at his setbacks, and I felt sure that the Jews would bear the brunt of his fury. If there had ever been any hope for the survival of those Jews already in Hitler’s clutches, our chances were surely now much diminished. It was ironic: Good news was bad news for us. But even though we lived in fear, we nevertheless felt relief. The thought of Hitler and his demented henchmen ruling the world was hard to bear.*
In the meantime, hope rose from another quarter when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. America was now in the war, and the world’s greatest industrial power would save Western civilization.*
I Shall Live Page 9