After that it was so bad, there was so much snow, we couldn’t go out. We stayed there because they didn’t find us, but we needed food, we needed food. The Polish people couldn’t come either because of the snow. We were so hungry, and so cold, so desperate, we had no clothes, our feet were wrapped in leaves. I still suffer because my toes were frozen. My mother would put my feet between her breasts to try to warm them up. My father would blow through his cupped hands on my hands and my feet to warm them. We thought there was still a ghetto in the shtetl, and we decided we were going to go; whatever happens to everybody else will happen to us also. That’s enough. We can’t handle it anymore. No clothes, no food, nothing.
So we get up and we start to go. All nine of us were born in Trochenbrod and knew our way around blindfolded. We were moving toward the shtetl and the ghetto through the night. We walked around all night, for hours and hours and hours. My father couldn’t understand why he was getting lost, why he couldn’t find his way back to Trochenbrod. It wasn’t that far; it was only a few miles. First we walked one way, then another way. “I think it’s this way; no, it’s that way.”
We were so exhausted and confused; we were frail from starving and couldn’t walk any more. So we decided we’ll just sit down in a trench and rest for a while, and when the sun comes up we’ll see where we are. While we were sitting there we heard shooting, a lot of shooting. We didn’t know what it was. When daylight came we could see the fields behind Trochenbrod houses. We had been close to Trochenbrod and didn’t realize it. The men went to find people. They crawled to a house and climbed in through the window, and there was nobody there. They went to another house, and there was nobody there either. We found out later that all the people in the ghetto had been killed before, and the shots we heard were the killings of last leather workers who had been held in the synagogue. Another miracle. We got lost; if we had found our way we would be killed with the leather workers.
I don’t know why we didn’t commit suicide. Really, nobody wanted to live anymore. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t have any strength anymore. We waited till nighttime, and we turned around and went to another bunker. We went there, and we had absolutely nothing to eat. It was already three days. We were starving, literally starving. Our tongues were hanging out, we were pale, we were … it’s a miracle we didn’t eat each other. We picked any leaves we could find, and we ate them, and we usually threw up. We ate snow.
I was twelve years old. I got my period. I didn’t know what it was all about. I was lying next to my dad; we were all lying close to each other in the bunker. I woke up, and I was such a bloody mess from my neck to my knees, and my father was also a bloody mess from his neck to his knees. I didn’t know if he was bleeding, I didn’t know if I was bleeding. Where did it come from? Did somebody choke him? Did somebody kill him? I got hysterical, I started screaming and crying. My mother took me out with my cousin, a lady cousin. They took me under a tree. There was a puddle of water. They washed me up, and they told me about the birds and the bees. I didn’t have any social life out there, but they started to warn me about getting pregnant and so on.
There was another bunker not far from us. There was a father, a child, and a few other people, all from Trochenbrod. The little girl wasn’t more than three years old. The little girl got very very sick, and she died. They had to leave their bunker because somebody spotted them. And they spotted us. So we all left our bunkers and we left the little girl under a pile of leaves, and we figured maybe the next night, when it all calms down, we’ll go and bury her. When we came back to bury her, she was breathing! Just barely. My mother put her on her bosom, and my father was breathing in her mouth, and her father was … I mean, it was a scene like not even the movies, it was like animals in a jungle. All the adults gave her drops of water in her mouth, sometimes even spitting in her mouth, and held her close to their bodies to give her warmth, and found pieces of food for her, and … and gave her new life. They all together gave her back her life. She survived the war with her father: two out of seven in her family, and she had a wonderful life after the war.
Warm weather finally came again, and we moved to a different part of the forest, because we were afraid that with spring coming shepherds or other people from the villages would be going into the woods and would spot us. We were hearing too many noises, so we were afraid. We went to a bunker about three or four miles away. When the leaves came out we started living out in the open more, and we built a little fire one time. We had no idea, none at all, what was going on outside, even if the war was over or not.
Once we were near a sort of orchard, and the trees were beginning to produce fruit, just the beginnings of the apples, very far from ripe. My brother went out to get those. We were outside the bunker because as I said, there were leaves on the trees already and they were sheltering us. We were looking and waiting for him to come back, and all of a sudden we see horses. There’s a soldier on one horse, and on another someone in civilian clothes but with a rifle, and on a third horse another soldier with a rifle. One of them is holding my brother. They caught him stealing the apples. They told him to lead them to where he came from. He was a little boy, and he led them to our bunker. When we saw the Germans, Ukrainians, whatever they were coming toward us with my brother on one of the horses with the soldier, we knew it was the end. We decided as soon as they come with my brother, we’re all going to start running. Again we all said good-bye to each other, kissed each other good-bye. We were glad it was over. We didn’t even really care anymore.
But it turned out to be the partisans! Russian partisans! Liberation had come! A third miracle! I have never seen such tears and laughter and screaming, and hysterics. There was such mixed emotions, happiness that the worst of our hardships was over, that we had survived, and deep deep sadness about all those who were lost, who didn’t get this far. I looked up at my father and asked “How did this happen? How did we survive?” Even as a child, at that time, I couldn’t believe it. It made no sense. We had been living like animals on the run, like starving animals on the run. Why were we alive?
Chaim Votchin, who now lives in Haifa, Israel, was born in a village in the vicinity of Rovno. His father died when he was very young, and his mother remarried and moved to Lozisht in 1920, when Chaim was six years old. He was an athletic and strong-willed youngster, one who tended not to follow traditional paths. He was also very good with mathematics and languages, and from a relatively young age used these talents as a professional teacher. He had the right set of inclinations and abilities to be a partisan leader.
One day in 1942, a German soldier ordered Chaim to catch one of his chickens for the soldier’s dinner, and then “… stood there with his chest pushed out and his thumbs in his belt exploding in laughter” as Chaim chased after the chicken in his yard. This humiliation cemented Chaim’s determination to prepare for partisan activity. He knew nothing about fighting or guns or living in the forest, but he began making plans.
Then others came to me, like Gad Rosenblatt, who was a Beitar commander, and we began to discuss how we could be partisans, where we could get weapons, how we could live in the forest, how we could learn to be fighters, with what could we carry out our fight, how could we get started without the Germans or Ukrainians finding out, and so on. This was much before August 1942. But we didn’t go into the forest yet.
We formed a committee and handed out jobs: acquire weapons; convince Trochenbrod young men to join us; make a plan to move Trochenbrod people to the forest; make contact with Russian soldiers who were separated from their units during the big retreat of the Russian army; figure out the best way to get food in the forest; try to contact the Ukrainian Communists. It’s very important to find the Ukrainian Communists because they were probably in contact with the Red Army and maybe they get supplies from them; and also we heard their leader is operating in the Radziwill forest and maybe he could tell us how to get weapons.
The name of the Ukrainian Communist partisan l
eader was Alexander Felyuk. We knew he was from the village of Klubochin a few kilometers through the forest from Trochenbrod. We talked to his mother there, and then met him in the Radziwill Forest. Radziwill had armed forest rangers to protect his property. So Felyuk said, “If you’re brave, let’s go take the guns from those forest rangers.” Alexander Felyuk worked with us for several months and made us into partisans. He was a wonderful man. He died recently, but we stayed in touch with him all these years; we sent him money and packages.
One day one of our boys found a pistol in the Ignatovka cemetery. It was a new pistol, with bullets—it had been left behind when the Soviet soldiers ran away. With this pistol we began to learn how to use guns, and with this pistol we went to a forest ranger, waited until he had to come down from his tower, and then took his rifle.
With one rifle we went into the forest and began to arm ourselves; we got another one and then another one and then another one. We got more rifles and ammunition and even grenades. We became a big enough group of armed partisans. I was the commander and Gad Rosenblatt was my second-in-command. Eventually, including the six Soviet saboteurs we met, we had thirty people.
And so we began to operate. For example, a Jew came to us; he said that a certain Ukrainian found a Jew and turned him over to the Germans. This Ukrainian was called Gapon. Immediately four of us went to Gapon’s village and we took him to the forest and shot him.
Another operation: we heard that the Germans arranged to send the animals that were left from Trochenbrod to Germany. We found the herd, ready for transfer to the train station, and we went in and set them free and scattered them all.
Another operation: A very terrible Schutsman who had done horrible things to Jews lived in a small village called Yaromel near Trochenbrod, a Ukrainian village, with mostly straw-covered houses. We pounded on his window: “We are Schutsmen. We have an important message for you. Glory to Ukraine. Open up.” The man came and we drank with him. He bragged about all the Jews he killed—this included women and children—and others he gave to the Nazis. Then we showed who we were. His wife screamed and we took him away in a horse wagon that we hired from a Polish man who drove it. We took him to the forest and shot him. The Polish man was happy to be a part of the operation; he was a good man and he had a good time. Revenge felt sweet, revenge for the blood of all the children, women, and men that the Schutsman had murdered.
That’s how we started. We didn’t know anything about how to fight battles yet, so we started with operations like that.
The Nazis were able to fool so many people. Of course, the nationalist Ukrainians were the biggest fools. They thought they should help the Nazis get rid of the Jewish people and then the Polish people. So they did the work of the Germans with happiness, and when the Soviets drove out the Germans they treated these Ukrainian nationalists as enemies. What is funny, the Nazis saw the Ukrainians as sub-human, good for nothing more than slaves. If the Germans won the war they would take the Ukrainians off the land and shoot them or kill them in slave labor camps.
The Jews also were fooled a lot. Many of them believed the Germans would not kill them even though they saw death in front of them. Once we were planning to attack Trochenbrod and kill the Germans and Schutsmen. We planned to throw grenades into the houses where the Germans and Schutsmen lived, then open fire and kill anybody left. Another group would set fires in different places, burning anything the Germans wanted to have. We sent word to the ghetto to all the Jews saying to sneak away to the forest. Soon one of the Jews from the ghetto showed up and said he was sent to beg that we do nothing. The Jews would not leave. They believed the German promises that there would be no more killings, so they did not want to leave Trochenbrod. We begged them, but they would not listen. Those Jews, they saved the lives of the Germans and Schutsmen. Soon they were murdered by them.
Some Trochenbrod Jews escaped to the forest and stayed there. They did their best in that hard situation. But they suffered. They dug their shelters deep into the ground in hidden parts of the forest. They camouflaged their shelters with loose dirt, tree limbs and leaves. Some shelters they actually built right in the swamps. We helped the families as much as we could. After every raid we brought them food, clothing, and boots. Also we often visited and instructed them how to live better in the forest. That’s how far we had come in a month or two—now we were teaching other people how to live in the forest!
In October 1942 one of our partisans, Yosef, came back from a forest nearby after he visited Jews hiding there. On the way to our camp he stumbled on a band of Soviet paratroopers that the Red Army parachuted in to blow up Nazi trains. He really stumbled on them. They were hiding in the bushes and he almost tripped on them. Imagine the tension there was until they figured out how much they could talk together. Yosef told them he would bring the leaders of his partisan unit. They were waiting only a kilometer or two away. We went to meet them.
Their two leaders came toward us. One was a short older man, about forty years old. The other one had light hair and was about twenty-five. They had red stars on their hats and brand-new shiny automatic rifles. When just a few steps separated between us we stopped and for a while we just stared at each other, and then we started to talk. They explained that they were Soviet saboteurs sent to blow up German trains. I told them, “We are a small group, but we are well-organized and we’ll be honored to help you destroy the fascists the best we can.” The older man took out a cigarette pack from his pocket and offered us a smoke. We told them about our activities, about our hopes, about our men. They asked us to help them with their sabotage, and we agreed. They began to teach a few of us how to blow up trains, and then some of us went with them on missions to blow up trains. And they agreed to fight together with us when we attacked Trochenbrod.
Fall had started. The storks had migrated, and lots of other birds were flying above us to their winter places. The paratroopers and our men who went to sabotage the railroad were successful. They derailed trains almost every night. How things changed! Just a short time ago the Germans were like gods, and now every night they were terrified, at least on the trains. Then the Germans made local villagers help guard the tracks. Each guard had a piece of track that he walked up and down, and a whistle to blow in case they saw something suspicious. A German detachment stood in the train station, ready to move if there was an alert. This made our jobs more difficult but not impossible. We crawled toward the rails, waited for the guard to walk in the other direction, then crawled the last one or two hundred meters, put the explosives where they should go, and crawled away. When a train passed over we exploded the charge.
Alex went away two weeks ago to try to make contact with a group of partisans that we heard rumors about in the forests much further north. Before he came back to us he stopped at his village, Klubochin, where his mother and family were. He learned that the Germans entered the village and rounded up a large group of men, women, and children. They took them to a pit in the forest and murdered them all, including Alex’s mother, brother, and little daughter. This was Nazi payment for twenty people from Klubochin, including Alex, who were partisans. They were Communists. The other nineteen partisans were in Klubochin when the Germans came, so they were murdered.
In November we had a big battle with German soldiers. We fought them off. That’s how far we had come in two or three months—now we were fighting German detachments and winning! The Germans were surprised that there was an organized group with weapons, and we knew they decided they had to wipe us out. They would come again soon, and this time maybe they would bring Ukrainian militia. What could we do? Should we stay and try to outsmart them? It had begun to snow, and that meant when we went from one of our shelters or storage caves to another one we would leave a trail and “ask” for attack. We also had a problem that we didn’t have enough ammunition. Rifles we had, but not enough ammunition. We saw that we couldn’t keep going like this. So we decided to leave the Trochenbrod area.
Alex said we
should go to the Pripyat swamps in the north, in Byelorussia. Because of what he learned on his travels he was sure there we would find large partisan camps which we could join, and they were receiving Soviet support and Soviet weapons. Our Russian paratroopers did not want to go, they wanted to stay and continue their sabotage work. Although it was Alex’s idea to go north, he decided to stay in the Klubochin area, so he went with Medvedev’s partisan detachment. This Soviet detachment was based at Lopaten, not far from Klubochin and Trochenbrod. Their main activity was to sabotage high-level German officers and operations in Rovno, which the Germans used as their central administration center.
As we moved north we came across another group of Jewish partisans from Kolki who were also looking for a larger Soviet partisan detachment. We continued north together, and found village after village and town after town where the Jews there were murdered and their possessions were stolen or destroyed. Although I taught Jewish studies, in my heart I was not really a very religious man. But when I saw what happened to the people in Trochenbrod and when I saw what happened in all those other villages and towns and when I heard about what happened in the cities I knew that never in my life again could I even think about a God who saw and heard all this but just sat there watching.
In Byelorussia we found scouts from a Soviet partisan group, and they took us to the base camp of Kovpak’s partisan detachment. This detachment was commanded by General Mayov Kovpak, a sixty-year-old fighter from World War I where he fought against the Germans and the White Army. We talked with Kovpak and agreed to become part of his group; we would be a unit of Kovpak’s Third Battalion. That night in December 1942, our Jewish partisan group, Trochenbrod’s partisan unit, was no more.
The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod Page 11