Lydia was another story. Forced, constrained, part of a family under threat, for her the shootings had nothing of spectacle about them. She was standing at the scene of a murder where she herself was within the zone of risk.
The local Russians didn’t hide their enmity for the German units; they weren’t passive spectators. On the evenings of the shootings, certain adults even seem to have tried to help save people who might have survived.
“And when the Germans were gone, there was an adult who took us, the children, back home, but the other adults stayed to see if there were any survivors, and they got them out and saved them. Some lived and some did not.”
This was not the first time that a child who had been forced to watch shared memories with me. I had already heard a similar story in Lubavichi in the Russian region of Smolensk. This is the famous town where the Lubavitch1 family originated. Here too, families, especially rebel families with their children, were forced to watch the murders.
Lydia, deeply troubled as a child by what she had seen, said with the child’s words, “You know, it’s something you can’t talk about, a horror you’ve seen but can’t put into words, and it stays inside to this day. We focused on the people falling and not on the shooters. When they were finished, they fired into the air to disperse us and everyone was supposed to go home, but people hid and came back to see if there were survivors. It happened.”
The end of the forced spectacle was signaled by shots in the air. I couldn’t believe it. Like the end of a game or a race.
Very simply, she added, “It was so horrible that my mother hid my eyes so that I wouldn’t see.” She spoke like the child she had been, with the memory of a mother who did what she could to protect her from the sight of the murders. The mothers and children of Rostov were made to witness. The witnessing was hard, the memories of it painful. “I can’t,” she kept repeating.
Today, it is still said in the former Soviet territories that the killings were done in secret.
Chapter 17
A GERMAN SOLDIER AS SPECTATOR
I look one more time at the yellowed photograph, so often featured in books and exhibitions, the image referred to as the execution of the last Jew in Vinnitsa.
A poor, kneeling Jewish man looks uncomprehendingly into the eye of the camera. An immobile shooter poses with his arm outstretched, pistol in hand. Below are still bodies, apparently the Jews who have just been killed.
The German shooter isn’t posing by himself with his victim. There are other soldiers—apparently, all of them from the regular German army, the Wehrmacht—who are posing with him. One even seems to have pushed others aside to be in the front row in the photo. They look serious, some with arms crossed, some more relaxed, with their hands in their pockets.
They are young.
I look at them the way I have often viewed snapshots of young Germans who’ve come for one day, perhaps even for a brief moment, to see the crime of genocide and be seen, or rather to be in the photograph. Immortalized forever.
Whenever I’m walking in Germany, in the streets of Berlin or Munich, I can’t help but stare at every old man who might have celebrated his eighteenth birthday in a green uniform.
I know this is not fair. But each time I ask myself, did he see? How many saw? Because they were passing by on the road near the ditch on a motorcycle or in a car or train. Because their barracks were not far from the common grave. Or simply because, as in Vinnitsa, they went to see. The voices of Germans who looked, out of curiosity, are mostly absent from the archives.
I wanted to ask the burning question of what attracted them to the graves and ditches, the agonizing bodies of the Jewish victims, the pitiless shooters. I wanted to ask, what was it that you came to watch?
In the German archives, we found the deposition of one of these German soldiers. Josef F. was stationed in Kerch, a pretty little town in Crimea. From the port of Kerch, if there isn’t too much fog, you can just see the Russian coast.
His account began with a hunting meal with a Lieutenant Schiller, and with Fi., another member of the SS stationed in Kerch.
“The second unit of the maintenance company, directed by Lieutenant Schiller, was located, in November and December 1941, in Kolongov, three or four kilometers [a mile and a half or two miles] east of Kerch. Since there were a lot of rabbits in the region and I had a hunting permit, Schiller often sent me out to hunt. Among others, SS-Sturmführer1 Fi., also stationed in Kerch at the time, was invited several times to eat rabbit [….] During one of these rabbit meals, at a point when Schiller had been called away, this Hauptsturmführer spoke to me, asking if I had strong nerves. If I did, I could come on December 4 to see the shooting of the Jews. I objected to the Hauptsturmführer that there was an order for the members of the Wehrmacht, that we had to immediately leave the zones where the Sonderkommando of the SS was active. Our sergeant had read this order in front of an assembly of men…. The order stated that we needed to leave any place where the SS was working. But the Hauptsturmführer told me I could come with impunity to the place where the Jews would be shot. If anyone asked me, I only had to say that I had permission from Hauptsturmführer Fi. Already at the time, the name Hauptsturmführer Fi. was known to me. I remember that Fi. had access to the Jewish apartments and that it was from these apartments that all the tablecloths had been taken.”2
At a table covered in a cloth stolen from the home of a Jewish family, Josef F., the soldier, accepts the invitation to go see the extermination of the Jews. Fi. tells him how to get there.
“When I asked, Fi. described with great precision the place where the Jews were going to be shot. It was an old Russian anti-tank ditch, located between Hirschdorf and Kerch. Part of this ditch was in Bagerovo, to the west, in the direction of Hirschdorf, where our first unit was stationed. Since I often roamed the region, I knew it well. I knew right away which portion of the anti-tank ditch he was referring to. So I went there. As I went from Kerch toward Hirschdorf, the ditch was to the right of the road. It was dug into a slope, and on the side of its straight wall, it was over two meters [six feet] deep. The anti-tank ditch flattened out toward the west, so the deep wall was in the direction of Kerch. There was a mound of earth on top of this wall. Coming from Kerch, there was a narrow path to the right of the road. This path was on top of an embankment almost two meters [six feet] high. From the top of this embankment, you couldn’t see the whole inside of the anti-tank ditch.”
Reading this description, I gasped. Years ago, I had also been to this long anti-tank ditch. I recalled Maria, buttoned into a large coat, walking along with us despite the cold and pointing, “There, that’s where Anna is, with her father, her mother….”
She had seen the murder.
I took up my reading again. Josef F. continued his account of the rabbit dinner.
“To my question about the number of Jews who would be shot, Fi. answered that there would be two thousand.”
With the date set, Josef F. now had only one problem to solve: how to procure a car illegally to get to the site of the shootings. He was going to have to sneak out a military vehicle because the ditch was quite far from his base.
“When December 4, 1941, came around, the only question for me was whether or not I could access the execution site I’ve described. We had a ban on using gasoline due to a fuel shortage, and we had no regular orders to go to that area. But I wanted to see what was happening in the anti-tank ditch. In order to have a pretext for a drive, I pretended to have a gas leak in my vehicle. The only way to verify and correct this kind of problem was with an extended drive. Since the yard at the base was not sufficient, I got permission from the warrant officer to drive for a while. So I drove at breakneck speed to the anti-tank ditch and parked my vehicle strategically on the side of the road, in such a way that it couldn’t be seen from the road.”
Josef F., soldier in the Wehrmacht, wanted so badly to see the murder of the Jews that he was prepared to lie to his superiors.
&nb
sp; “I climbed up onto the embankment I have already mentioned and saw that a heap of clothes, furs, children’s shoes, and hats were lying right there. I also saw piles of watches. Trucks full of men, women, and children were arriving from the direction of Kerch.”
Next the soldier spectator coldly described the criminal “process” that he observed.
“The trucks arrived at the road and, after they had stopped, the people were pulled out by Russian civilians overseen by an SS guard. If they didn’t go fast enough, they were hurried along with sticks until they were all assembled on the embankment. On the other side of the embankment, the Jews had to take off their clothes. If they didn’t do this fast enough, their clothes were ripped off by the Russians and two or three SS guards. If the Jews hadn’t known before, now they discovered what was to become of them. Some moaned aloud, but most of the older Jews clasped their hands and looked toward the sky. It was always the same image; they clasped their hands the way we do at home to ask for something and looked up at the sky. When the children had nice shoes, they were pulled off by the Russians and the SS.”
Suddenly, an SS officer asks him to act, to participate in the crime. He is told to push the Jews toward the ditch. This puts him in the position of having to explain that he is only here to observe. It is hard to imagine a German soldier explaining to an SS officer that he has permission to watch the murder without participating.
“One of the SS officers there called me over so that I would take a stick and help drag the Jews to the shooting spot. I replied that I had nothing to do with this. Since he then tried to send me away, I told him I had permission to watch from Hauptsturmführer Fi. After that, he let me alone.”
I thought: how many young Josef F.s got SS permission to watch the shootings?
“The firing squad was composed of five or six SS. Once they were in front of the shooters, the Jews had to jump into the anti-tank ditch and stand against the straight wall. From there, it all went very fast. As soon as they were all inside, there was firing and the people slid to the ground.”
I was surprised by the strength of his memory. He recalled several Jews beaten forward with sticks toward the ditch.
“I noticed among the women a man who was obviously paralyzed. He was big and fat. He was dragged to the execution spot by two twelve-to-fourteen-year-old boys. The two boys took him by the shoulders but had to keep putting him down because he was so heavy. When they put him down, another Russian would hit and push them. Then I noticed a very handsome couple with two small children. The husband and wife were very well dressed. You could see right away that they were fine people…. This couple was in one of the groups that a Russian civilian was bringing toward the firing squad. The woman had a child of about one in her arms, and the couple was leading another child of three or four by the hand. Once they were facing the firing squad, I saw the man ask for something. He had probably asked for permission to hold his family in his arms one last time, because I saw him embrace his wife and the child she was holding. But at the same moment, the shots were fired and everyone fell to the ground. I watched those people all the way to the firing squad because they were such a handsome couple and they had two children.”
Despite his memory of the handicapped man and the young couple with the children, he continued to call the crime a “process.”
“It made a real impression on me. I can still describe the process with precision today.”
His account of the murder of Jewish children is unbearable, especially where it concerns those children who survived their mothers by a few moments.
“Most of the time, the children knocked over by their falling mothers sat on the ground or on their mothers’ bodies without really understanding what had just happened. I saw how they climbed on their mothers among the dead women. They looked around and definitely did not understand what was going on. I still have the image very clearly before my eyes: they looked up with their big eyes and scared expressions at the shooters. They were too terrified to cry. Twice I saw an SS go down into the ditch with a rifle and kill the children, who were sitting on the dead or on their own mothers, with one shot to the nape of the neck. As I’ve said, they weren’t crying, but looking around in shock. I think he was aiming for the head with his gun. At least, he held the barrel not far from the head, because I noticed almost no space between the head and the barrel. The children I saw struggling to move here and there ranged from babies to children of two or three years.”
Josef F.’s coldness, the precise details about the babies lost among the bodies, froze my blood. How could a young soldier, not a member of the SS, seeing a mass shooting for the first time, have actively wanted to watch children, babies, a young couple, a crippled old man, massacred before his eyes? How could he recount it so cold-bloodedly years later?
The end of his account provides some clues, or rather, it goes to the heart of my question: what did he see? A young Jewish schoolgirl speaks to him, implores him, in German:
“While I was watching the massacre, a young girl came up to me suddenly, grabbed my hand, and said: ‘Please, please, they have to let me live a little longer, I’m so young. My parents have already fallen. We didn’t have any radio at the house, and we didn’t have newspapers either. The rich Jews left a long time ago with cars and planes. Why are they shooting the poor Jews? We have never insulted the Germans. Tell them that they have to leave me alive a bit longer. I’m so young!’ The girl had her hands in front of her face, as though praying, and she was looking me straight in the eyes. From what I remember, she was still a schoolgirl or a student. She spoke German fluently, without an accent. She had brown hair and did not look at all like a Jewish child. One of the shooters with an automatic pistol saw us and called out to me: ‘Bring her!’ I answered that I would not do it. The girl, who had heard, begged me, terrified: ‘Please, please, don’t do it!’ Since I was making no move to bring the girl to the firing squad, I saw the SS coming toward me. He had his automatic pistol ready at the hip. At this moment, all I could think was: ‘Let’s hope that the girl doesn’t turn around, that she keeps looking me in the eye and that she doesn’t see her killer approaching and have to face death.’ I kept comforting her over and over, even though I could see the shooter approaching her back. The girl was still begging me and surely didn’t hear the shooter coming. Once he was right behind the girl, he pulled the trigger. He shot her behind the ears and she fell to the ground in front of me, without a sound. I think she even fell on my feet. I will never in my life forget this image of the girl lying at my feet. Her right eye had been torn out. It was still held by the optic nerve and lay on the ground ten or fifteen centimeters [four to six inches] from her head. The eye was still whole. The shot had just ripped it from her head. I can still see that white globe today. Her head wound barely bled. I stood there as though paralyzed. When I saw the SS approaching, I assumed he was going to send the girl to the ditch to be shot. I didn’t think he would shoot her right in front of me. When she was lying on the ground, the SS told me I could drag her to the other dead. This man made me so nauseated that once he turned around I spit behind him. Disgusted by the animal behavior of these people, I turned around and went back to my vehicle.”
He had to be begged for salvation by a young girl in his native German; she had to look him in the eye in order not to see her killer coming, and collapse on his shoes in order for him to realize that what he was watching was murder.
What is the dark force that attracted Josef F. and allowed him to stay so long at the anti-tank ditch, to watch and remember certain victims, and also to recall the process? What made him watch and at the same time blocked him from understanding he was witnessing murder? His deposition dates from twenty years after the end of the war.
In Josef’s deposition, from February 1965,3 the fact of a soldier authorized to watch the killings is terrible, terrible for the former young soldier. Was Josef unable to admit to himself that he derived pleasure from watching Jewish children and t
heir parents killed? The disgust he experienced so late is most likely linked to the fact that a young Jewish girl believed in him and spoke to him as her savior.
Chapter 18
THE TRANSPORTER OF CLOTHING
Inhulets, June 2, 2010
Inhulets is a pretty name that evokes little villages in Provence. But it is actually not far from the major industrial city of Dniepropetrovsk in northern Ukraine. Today, this village is very small, lost in the steppes. Before the war, it was what was called a “Jewish colony.”
There were many of these to be found in eastern Ukraine; the Jews first came to farm at the invitation of the tsar. Later, under the Soviets, these Jewish villages became kolkhozes. Jewish kolkhozes! A little-known story. When I discovered a map of these Jewish kolkhozes in Ukraine, I decided to find out more. And especially, to learn about the shootings of their inhabitants. And so, one morning in June, we found ourselves in the deserted streets of Inhulets.
As our van turned this way and that through the little streets, I scanned desperately for the silhouette of someone old enough to have known the war and the Nazi occupation, maybe even Jewish inhabitants from before the war.
As we were starting down one of those banal streets of gray facades, I saw on our left, sitting on a long bench, a pale, immobile man who was very tall, dressed entirely in gray.
He had the air of one of those elderly people you meet in a French retirement home, sitting sadly. They wait, today just like yesterday, often without knowing what they are waiting for.
I asked the driver to stop and I approached the man along with a translator; he seemed so very still. To my surprise, as soon as we started talking to him about the past, his entire body, his mind, and his expression all seemed to awaken.
Yes, Yevgeny did live in Inhulets during the war. He saw everything. He was here for the execution of the Jews, he saw the ditches. He said he had even been requisitioned to transport their clothes.
In Broad Daylight Page 17