This hypothesis remains to be proven. Yet I still cannot help but think that most of the Jews killed were shot on the edge of common ditches, or on planks, and that both ditches and planks were integral parts of Russo-Soviet peasant life. The German occupants recycled rural customs for their criminal ends.
The task of laying the plank, far from being innocent, is crucial to the organization of the killing operations. The layers of planks have to stay on site during the entire execution, close to the shooters. They cannot leave the side of the ditch. And they cannot act alone. There must be at least two of them to carry boards solid enough to support the weight of five people. Who were these men laying planks?
A few years later, in May 2009, in the village of Novossilka, not far from Ternopil, the enigma cleared a bit. Patrice was conducting the interview. Anna, a very serious woman, belonged to a family who worked in the Soviet administration. She spoke with composure, sitting on a long bench against the wall of her house, her face framed by a blue linen scarf. She had her two-year-old grandson with her and never took her eyes off him. Our entire team had the same goal: to discover who transported the planks.
Anna was eleven when the events took place. Not only had she seen the ditches being dug, but she also saw the planks as they were laid. During the interview, she spoke without digression. “The Germans would go into any house. They took the young people to go dig; they had to bring their own shovels and dig. And they went. They dug three ditches, and then they put down planks. I was there and I saw everything.”
For the first time, I was hearing a witness to the transportation of the planks. In this village, the requisitioned diggers were also the ones laying the planks. They traveled not only with their own shovels but also with wooden boards from their farms. If it was so simple, why was there so much silence surrounding them?
Patrice had an intuition that Anna knew more than she was saying and would be ready to disclose it. He went for it. “Were the planks that were laid over the ditches put down on the day the ditches were dug or on the day of the shootings?”
“It was when they were shot. It was the day they were shot that the planks were brought and put across the ditches. There were two planks on each ditch, one on one side and one on the other side. In all, there were three ditches and six planks. I remember it like it was yesterday. The Jews stood on the planks, and the Germans shot them.
“And had the planks come from the village?”
“Yes, from the village, from someone’s house. Yes, in the village …”
The plank was most likely brought from a barn, to the ditch, and then back from the ditch to the barn afterward, after the crime.
Much later, however, on March 4, 2014, Geoffroy Lauby, from the Yahad team, met Alexey in Lokitka, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. He had watched the shootings of the Jews from the safety of a house, through holes in a wall. Alexey recalled not only the planks but also the barked German orders to the Jews to stand on them.
“Yes, they were brought on foot. The Germans had dogs escorting them. There were also soldiers on horseback. The columns of twenty, thirty, or maybe forty people who were surrounded by guards with rifles. Those who couldn’t walk were beaten….
“The ditch was ready and the plank, too. They brought the Jews to the cemetery and started the shooting right away, ordering them to move one by one with a ‘Noch einmal, Schneller, Feuer,’3 faster toward the ditch to be shot.”
“So, they were slaughtered one by one?”
“Yes, yes.”
The men in charge of the planks were standing amid the cries of “Noch einmal,” “Schneller,” “Feuer.” Sixty years after the fact, I am hearing these orders repeated by a seventy-year-old man. They are still deafening. I hadn’t imagined the Germans yelling out orders for each Jew who was shot. The memory of these cries and these orders repeated for each Jew murdered in Lokitka underscores how these plank carriers had to work in the thick of the screaming and violence, at the very heart of the criminal process. The villagers’ silence surrounding these requisitioned men could only be, to my mind, an attempt to cover up their unfathomable proximity to the brutality and noise of the crime.
While our investigation has progressed enormously, with almost four thousand interviews as of this writing, no witness has ever admitted to carrying or moving planks on the day of the shootings.
The Round-up
German soldiers preparing to raid the Kovno ghetto as its Jewish residents look on. Lithuania, 1941–1943. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of George Kadish/Zvi Kadushin)
Ukrainian Jews on their way to register with the German police. Many were subsequently executed by the German and Romanian occupiers. Odessa, October 22, 1941.
The Road to the Execution Site
The Jews of Krivoi Rog leaving their village en route to the site of their execution. Ukraine, 1941.
Jews wearing circular badges are marched through town as they’re deported from the Krzemieniec ghetto. Ukraine, 1942. (Institut Pamieci Narodowej)
Guarded by Germans, Jews walk through the streets of Kamenetz-Podolski toward the site of their execution outside the city. Ukraine, 1941. (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ivan Sved)
Jews assembled before their execution at Fort VII in Kaunas, Lithuania, 1941. (Bundesarchiv, B 162 Bild-04135 / photo: O. Ang.)
Prior to the Execution
In Tluste, a small village near Zaleszczyki, Ukraine, Germans force the Jewish inhabitants to undress before shooting them. 1941. (From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
Jewish women guarded by German soldiers before being shot. The caption in German on the back of the original reads: “They will be massacred.” Skvira, Ukraine, 1941. (Museum of Jewish Heritage, courtesy of the Yaffa Eliach Collection donated by the Center for Holocaust Studies)
Jews forced to dig their own grave in Zborov, Ukraine, 1941. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-A0706-0018-029 / photo: O. Ang.)
The Shooting
Members of an Einsatzkommando unit firing on a group of men standing in a trench in front of them. USSR, 1941–1942. (Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichischen Widerstandes)
Members of the German police prepare to execute naked men and young boys lined up at the edge of a common grave. Eastern Europe, 1939–1943. (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz)
The Mass Grave
A mass grave containing the bodies of several thousands Jews, Proskurov (Khmelnitsky), Ukraine, 1941–1942. (US Holocaust Museum, courtesy of Muzeum Wojska Polskeigo)
The Pillage
A man rummages through the piles of clothes belonging to Jews murdered in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, 1941–1942. (From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
German soldiers rummage through the clothing and belongings of Jews murdered at Babi Yar, Kiev, Ukraine, 1941. (US Holocaust Museum, courtesy of Julius Schatz)
Witnesses and Scenes from the Current Day
Nikolai, Novozybkov, Russia (David Merlin-Dufey/Yahad-In Unum)
“There were carts in which they drove the children and old people, who understood they were going to be shot.”
Maria, Mokrovo, Belarus (Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad-In Unum)
“They summoned musicians, who were ordered to play, and the Jews were forced to dance.”
Alexander, Temirgoyevskaya, Russia (Markel Redondo/Yahad-In Unum)
“The carts left and we stayed where we were and played a game of reds and whites.”
Iosif, Bibrka, Ukraine (Erez Lichtfeld/Yahad-In Unum)
“[The German] simply measured four meters for the length and four meters for the width, and he drew them with his shovel.”
Vladimir, Novopodilsk, Ukraine (David Merlin-Dufey/Yahad-In Unum)
“The policeman came into the school. The teacher pointed out each of the half-Jewish children: ‘Juden! Juden! Juden!’”
Ievhenia, Yavoriv, Ukraine (Erez Lichtfeld/Yahad-In Unum)
“That was the day they liquidated the
ghetto.”
Yevgeny, Inhulets, Ukraine (David Merlin-Dufey/Yahad-In Unum)
“They brought the Jews onto the path between the two ditches, and the firing squad, posted on the other side of the ditch, shot them with machine guns.”
Viktor is showing the location of the mass graves at the extermination site in Bronnaya Gora, Belarus, where more than 30,000 Jews from surrounding cities where killed. (Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad-In Unum)
Execution site in Ladozhskaya, Russia, where at least five hundred Jews were killed in December 1942. (Markel Redondo/Yahad-In Unum)
The Yahad–In Unum team interviewing a witness. (Markel Redondo/Yahad-In Unum)
Searching for witnesses in Moldova. (Markel Redondo/Yahad-In Unum)
Portrait of Claudius Desbois, 1943.
PART THREE
THE DAY
Chapter 12
THE DANCE
April 28, 2013, Paris
The phone rings; it’s a Ukrainian number. Patrice is calling me. “In Osipovka, the village where we were working today, near Jitomir, the Jews had to dance before they were shot.”
Forced to dance before the crime, but why?
And then, when I asked him who the witness was who told him about this dancing, he sent me a written message.
“As I told you, Andreï and Natalia found Maria in Iossivka while they were looking for witnesses to another shooting. Maria hadn’t seen the shooting they were talking about, but she had seen another shooting, one we weren’t even aware of.
“Maria’s house, like Maria herself, is a study in contrasts. Bright colors, extreme cleanliness, with a dignity to her manner and yet an obvious fragility as well. Her health is failing. As she speaks of a certain Yankel, she tries to mask her emotions. She wants to talk, but she has neither the heart nor the strength.”
As soon as Patrice is back in France, I ask to hear Maria’s recording.
Music is rare at shootings, to say nothing of dancing! It’s impossible to imagine that an orchestra, or even a musician like the one at the gate of Birkenau, would come set up on the sidelines of a common grave. And yet, a couple of examples come to mind.
There was the Ukrainian village of Novozlatopol, in the Zaporojie region, where in 2006 we interviewed Marfa, who left an indelible impression. She was handicapped and so heavy she had to lean on a stool or chair at all times. She invited us into her home, where she had prepared a large pot of soup.
As a child, from her family’s farm, she had seen carts and drivers arrive to transport Jews to the district police headquarters.
I can still see her, concentrating intently, counting on her gnarled fingers as she spoke the names of the Jewish neighbors to whom she had barely been able to say goodbye.
She testified along with her husband; he had climbed with friends up on the roof of a Jewish house next to the village pharmacy and from there had had a clear view of the shootings.
“The story is that there was a musician in the neighboring village. He played the bouben.1 He was requisitioned several times to play during executions. He couldn’t stand it. It was the only reason he was there. Of course, he didn’t want to do it, but he was forced to. While he played, they banged on metal objects to make more noise.”
So, in Novozlatopol, the German police would go early in the morning before the shootings to requisition a Ukrainian village musician. They dragged him from his farm and forced him to play his bouben, next to the police headquarters, beside the common graves that had just been dug. He was made to play in a futile attempt to mask the noise of the guns firing. He played loudly while the young Ukrainians requisitioned to guard the Jews hit tin cans to drown out the screams.
In Novozlatopol, the traditional Ukrainian instrument that is beaten like a tambourine was repurposed to camouflage gunshots and cries.
In Rawa Ruska, the people of Borove, where I discovered the first mass grave, also recalled music-loving Germans from the time of my grandfather’s imprisonment. They listened to the music of their homeland to alleviate boredom while the Jews were digging. They had a gramophone set up at one end of the village. It was on a folding table, near the ditches. As at a campsite, one German would play the harmonica while another sang.
All the while, a few Jewish men were digging what would become the tomb of the last 1,500 Jews remaining in Rawa Ruska. Each time I went back to Borove, I thought about this German music ringing through the forest just before the crime.
Graveside music might at first seem almost utilitarian for the murderers, a way to block noise. But according to our witnesses, it was not very common and was not a widespread policy; it was a local decision.
“Forced dancing,” to the best of my knowledge, is even rarer. Here is the story that Maria—born in 1933 in the village of Mokrovo in the Brest region of Belarus, now frail in mind and body—was able to tell us.
“They assembled all the Jews from the surrounding villages in one place. It was on a bridge. They summoned musicians, who were ordered to play, and the Jews were forced to dance. Everyone, without exception, big and small, young and old. I remember one old man with a long beard. He was crying, and the Germans kept clubbing him to make him dance. They had also brought together all the inhabitants of the village and forced us to watch the Jews dance. Everyone was crying; the villagers knew the Jews well. They were friends. It was very hard to watch them suffer. Everybody had to dance, the young children, the adults, the old people. They all held hands. If anyone stopped, they were instantly beaten. This happened before our eyes.”
A forced dance show. The Germans who had come to Mokrovo made the Jews dance on a bridge. And they forced the villagers to come see. The bridge still exists. It isn’t long and connects two villages. But why dance? Why such violence against those who weren’t dancing? And why did the whole village need to be there? Did the general public need to witness German dominance to the point of seeing Mokrovo Jews turned into mechanical dolls?
I don’t know. The story is exceptional. To try to understand, I listened again to Maria’s interview. As I watched our video of her, I was struck right away; her face was virtually immobile, but her anxious eyes moved right to left across the camera. Her voice was soft, measured, and precise. She spoke calmly and without guile. Behind her were two piles of large, pretty pillows, covered in some sort of netting. I recalled that my grandmother Victorine piled her cushions in the same fashion on the beds at Villegaudin, veiling them in gauze against ever-present, annoying flies.
Maria was ten at the time of her story. She hasn’t forgotten the names of her friends.
“I remember a Jew named Yankel very well. He had three children: two girls, Bassia and Lioussia, and a son, Dodia…. They lived on my street. There were only four streets here: Baranivska, Doubrivska, Tchotyriïska, and Zemlianska Streets.”
Several times, she brought up Yankel.
“He sold tickets at the train station in Doubrivska. His wife was Ukrainian, her name was Tania…. It was very common! Ukrainians married Jews, and Jews married Ukrainians.” She spoke with a certain nostalgia. These were the memories of a ten-year-old girl.
“Yankel was a nice man. When we kids would go see him, he would take a big handful of matzoh2 and distribute it among the children.” It is quite frequent in the stories of young Soviets who lived in the Jewish kolkhozes to hear about Pesach, or matzoh. Some of these non-Jews even still speak Yiddish. Patrice was quick to ask Maria if she still remembered the matzoh recipe.
“Do you know how to make matzoh?”
“It’s a light dough. I know that it takes a lot of kneading and that you add very little water so that it will be firm. The girls said you had to knead for so long that your arms would hurt from doing it.”
Like a child, Maria took up her story again and described the setting up of the local government by the German occupation.
“Two weeks after the Germans arrived, they announced a general meeting in the village. Everyone was there, including the Jews. This was where the
staroste and the sotnik3 were chosen. Both were selected from among people who were not originally from the village but had settled here in 1937 after the Poles had been deported to Kazakhstan. A man named Dratch was named staroste, and Litvinov was named sotnik. I remember the police, especially an officer named Zeremensy, singing ‘Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet.’”4
Since this was the first time we had heard a witness use the term “sotnik,” Patrice asked for clarification, “What is a sotnik? Is it different from a desiatnik?” Maria explained, “It’s the same thing…. There was only one sotnik and one staroste.”
This was not a question of simple intellectual curiosity. Patrice wanted to know who had assembled the Jews on the day of their execution. Maria clarified, “It was the staroste who announced that we had to assemble. All the villagers came, the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Jews…. Nobody thought that something terrible would happen.”
It was to be a gathering of the entire village, a general meeting—what could be more ordinary?—in the local “club.” This club, the sole substantial building ensconced in the village center, was the Soviet-era locale for culture, festivities, and political meetings.
“A German … flanked by a Volksdeustche, arrived from Baranivka with his adjunct. We sang our song. Then they announced that Germany needed our help, that we had to dig ditches, etc. They also said that all the Jewish men had to gather the next day. So they gathered, believing they were actually about to be put to work. Yankel was more suspicious than the others; he realized that they weren’t being taken away to work, and he fled.”
In Broad Daylight Page 13