"What have we been selected for?" Ivan asked Dimitri, standing next to him in line.
"I don't know. No one seems to know. It must be very secret."
"That's what worries me," Ivan replied.
"What do you mean?"
"People never come back from secret assignments!"
Just then, von Radomsky drove up with his two constant companions, his best friend Rex and the interpreter. "Good morning, men. I presume you all slept well last night!" von Radomsky grinned at his own humor. "You are surely wondering why you have been picked out of all our guests here? Well, you are a very special group," he explained sarcastically. "You are the strongest and hardest workers-and for this you are to be rewarded." At that he started to laugh hysterically. The interpreter spoke with a stupid smirk on his face, not knowing if he should laugh, too. After von Radomsky regained control of himself, he went on with his little speech. "I want to remind you that any infraction or escape attempt will end in the usual manner. Any hesitation to do your assigned work will be punished with a very special, painful death."
"It is obviously our end," the man on the other side of Ivan whispered through his teeth.
"I think you're right. I just wonder what he has planned for us between now and the end."
In just a moment later, Ivan and his group found themselves marching to the single gate of the concentration camp. Timtov, the leader of Ivan's dugout hut, was in charge of the group, along with seven other Kapos. Two Kapos for every twenty five of us, Ivan noted. We've never had such supervision on a work detail before. What can they have in mind for us?
They were marched out through the double gates and up the road by which they'd been trucked into the camp. When they reached the fork in the road, they turned into the ravine.
"Oh, shit," Ivan heard Dimitri say.
For the prisoners of Babi Yar, this had always been a one way road. "Today I join my Sosha," Ivan heard himself say and felt shock as he said it. He realized it was the first time he let himself admit what he feared was true; she was most probably dead.
It was a long hike into the ravine. The men walked in silence, each with his own thoughts-thoughts that surely he considered among his last. Strange, Ivan thought, how often during one's life one wonders what the end will be like. Now it is here. God, I don't even know the date. I hope they make it quick. Why aren't I upset? Damn these Germans. Why did they have to come into our lives? So this is really the end. How many have gone ahead of me here? I'm afraid Sosha did-that first day we were arrested. A tear rose in his left eye. I hope she didn't suffer. I hope she was brave. I hope she felt at ease about it as I do now. I can't understand why I'm so calm. I guess they've worn me down. I guess I just don't give a damn anymore.
"Halt," Timtov ordered.
The procession halted.
They had marched to a far end of the infamous ravine. The ground was sandy, mixed with clay. Looking around, Ivan noted shovels being counted out by German soldiers at the back of a truck some thirty meters away.
Dirty bastards are going to make us dig our own graves, he thought.
"All right, men," Timtov started, "we have a big job to do. Each of you will be given a shovel. You will dig in groups of ten or fifteen. You will unearth bodies that have been buried here. The Germans have decided that all who have been buried in Babi Yar must be unearthed and burned!"
No one could believe his ears. It was absolute madness. Surely this was some insane joke, a ruse to get them to dig their own graves without suspicion. Everyone knew that there must be more than a quarter million dead in the ravine. Every day they could hear the gunfire from dawn to dark. They had heard it every day in Kiev since the end of September 1941, when they rounded up all the Jews. They heard it every day at the concentration camp. It never stopped while daylight lasted. From another part of the ravine the sound of gunfire could be heard. They were still killing!
How many days had there been since September of 1941? This was August 1943. How many days, how many thousands of bodies? Now these madmen expected them to be dug up and burned?
"Get started. Everyone take a shovel and start to dig!"
It was no joke. It was no ruse. It soon became evident the Germans were expecting them to dig up bodies. All day they dug; first in one place, then in another. By noon, they had dug up enough ground to make mass graves for themselves several times over. The Germans were really looking for the dead. And the humor of it was, if one could call it humor, that in this ravine of death they could find no bodies. Could it be that they had started digging in one of the few undefiled places?
After twelve backbreaking hours, the only dead were those of their own that had died of exhaustion or shots in answer to some infraction. At dusk, seventy three men, those who had not died that day put down their shovels for the night. An extra ration of food was given them. It was a real meal with real bread and a bowl of soup that had potato and a bit of meat in it. It was real potato, not just the peels and real meat-horse meat, to be sure, but real meat. For the first time that day they realized they were not to be shot at sundown. They'd not get their stomachs filled for that.
That night they slept where they had been digging, in the ravine. They were exhausted, but for once with something in their stomachs. They slept like the dead they were searching for. They were awakened at the first light of dawn. Again they got bread, real bread and coffee that resembled the real thing, strengthened by chicory. By the time they were ready to start digging again, a truck had come with replacements for those who had died the day before. Again they dug all day, this time sixteen hours. Again they had only their own dead to show for it at day's end. Thirty nine died that second day.
On the third day, replacements came again. By noon, they still had not unearthed any dead. At about 1:00 p.m. a staff car rolled up, two officers in the back seat. One was a member of the present staff at Babi Yar and the other had been at Babi Yar in the beginning, when the Jews were slaughtered there.
It was a quirk in the systematic German mind that made them insist on digging up the dead in the same order that they had put them into the earth. They were determined to dig up the first Jews they had slaughtered, but they couldn't find them. "You damn fools!" the visiting officer called out. No one knew for sure if he was addressing the diggers or their supervisors, but no one really cared. "You are digging in the wrong place! This is where we had them undress." Then he added, pointing to an adjacent area, "That is the place." He got out of the car, walked about sixty meters with determined strides and then with his heel made a mark in the ground. "Dig here!"
The prisoners were brought over and the next few shovels full of earth revealed the ghastly remains.
81
Exhuming the Dead...
There was little dirt over the dead and the pits gave them up by the thousands. The first bodies were in such advanced state of decay that they came away in parts. The stench was unbearable. The prisoners were sick from the sight and smell. They vomited. The Kapos vomited. When even the German guards began to vomit, they started guarding the diggers from a greater distance.
As Ivan worked he came to the horrible realization that this first pit was the one Solomon's family was in. He wondered if he were lifting the very bodies of his parents, brothers, sister, his grandfather. Then an even more horrifying thought crossed his mind. If I survive long enough might I come across? He couldn't make himself think her name in that regard.
Ten meter square areas were marked off on the ground. The bodies and parts were laid out in the spaces. On each layer of the dead was placed a layer of wood and on that, another layer of the dead. Those diggers who died that day were also placed on the pyre. Thus they were placed until the pyre was about two meters high. Then petrol was poured over the entire pile and ignited.
Flames licked at the sky beneath a thick black cloud of smoke. A new disgusting smell was added to the already existing stench. But after a short time, the flames died. The petrol and the top two or three layers
had burned, but the mass below was packed too tight. There was insufficient draft to let the pyres burn.
By dusk that day, there were six partially burned, smoldering piles. When their food came, no one could force himself to eat. They escaped the horror in sleep.
Again the German's ingenuity came to the rescue. The next day the replacements were accompanied by two hundred additional prisoners. The newcomers' shock was evident on their faces. While two hundred prisoners dug and carried the dead out of the pits, the remaining hundred or so were put on trucks. Ivan was among the latter. It was still in the early morning and already the sun was hot. Dimitri said to Ivan, "The heat will take its toll. Many of us will die today."
"It will make little difference which day we die," Ivan replied. "Do you have any guess at where they are taking us?"
"None."
They drove only a few minutes when the truck stopped just outside the old Jewish cemetery at the entrance to the ravine. "Good Lord, you don't suppose they want us to dig up these dead, too?" Dimitri asked, half-joking.
"Well, at least we'll know where to dig, if so," another answered.
"Get out! Hurry! Everyone out into the cemetery," Timtov commanded.
"I can't believe it," Ivan said. "I think they really are going to have us exhume those corpses. They won't even leave the Jews at peace in those age old graves."
Once inside the graveyard, Timtov gave them instructions. "At once, start taking down the grave markers. Take down each headstone and carry it over to the main gate where I want them neatly stacked. Now, you four," he said, pointing to the largest and strongest men he could see, "you will take them from that pile and stack them on the trucks. Two carry to the trucks while two of you work on the truck stacking.
"Four more of you are to take down the iron fence that is on top of the brick wall. Four volunteers, quickly!"
Ivan and three others stepped forward. Ivan wanted no part of desecrating these graves. He thought it strange after all that he had been through the previous day, but the thought of taking down headstones left him with an uncomfortable feeling.
The work was hard, but a pleasure compared with the work in the pits the day before. By noon, the sun burned down without mercy. The temperature was well over a hundred; there was no refuge from it. Even the Germans realized that to get the work done they'd have to indulge the workers in an unprecedented act of kindness-they brought in a water truck.
As the men took their unusual break, they noticed a strange, muffled explosion. A few minutes later another, then another, puff, puff, puff after puffing. As the temperature rose, the explosions became more frequent.
"What in the hell is that?" Ivan asked Dimitri, not really expecting him to know the answer.
"I've never heard anything like it. It's too muffled to be a very big explosion. I can't imagine what it could be. But with the Germans, there are a lot of things I can't imagine!"
"I can't guess what they want these headstones and iron fences for," Ivan added.
All day they worked. Truck after truck was filled with materials, which were driven back into the ravine. By dusk, the cemetery had been denuded. It looked eerie, a field of unmarked graves, unkempt and overgrown with weeds. No one will ever be able to find a loved one's grave in here again, Ivan thought, then he realized there was no one left to return to those graves.
The trucks returned once more to take the prisoners back to their temporary living area in the ravine. As the sun set and the air-cooled, the muffled explosions had ceased. When they arrived back at the area, they saw what their labor had been for. Makeshift open furnaces were being built of the headstones and the iron fences were being used as grates, letting the pyres draw air from underneath.
The pyres from the day before had been restacked on the grates. They were packed more loosely and three were ready for ignition. One of the Kapos was given a torch, which he put to the stacks of dead bodies. It went up in roaring flames. The same horrible stench filled the air.
Humans can get used to anything, Ivan thought; that night when the food came, almost everyone ate.
Ivan sat near one of the men who remained behind on the pit detail. "What was that noise we heard all day? Sounded like muffled explosions, all-coming from inside the ravine. Do you have any idea?" Ivan asked.
"They were just that, explosions. We could see them. Never saw such a thing and hope never to again. We were working in the terrible heat, when suddenly we started hearing those sounds. They came more frequently and we could see puffs of dust rise from the ground with each report. They were over there by that cliff." He pointed over his shoulder without looking himself.
"Well, what was it?" Ivan asked impatiently.
The man shrugged. "It appears the Germans used that area for their slaughter last week. The earth over the dead is very shallow. The sun reflecting off the cliff raises the temperature over there much higher than it does here. The heat beating down on the dead causes gasses that form in the corpses to burst. Those bodies were actually exploding under the ground. Each time one exploded it made a loud puff and raised a little dust."
The thought of it ended Ivan's meal. He gave his bowl to the man who had related the story. He was glad to take what was left of Ivan's food.
Ivan rolled over on his side right where he had been sitting and went to sleep.
82
Burning
The Evidence...
The bringing up and burning of bodies went on for almost six weeks-seven days a week, sixteen hours a day. The number of workers was increased to five hundred. And all the time that Ivan and the other prisoners were made to dig up and burn old corpses, new corpses were being added by the Nazis. Each and every day the shootings continued as the Germans brought in new victims.
Each pyre had a hundred bodies in each layer and sometime there were twenty layers to a stack. The Germans decided two thousand bodies made the most efficient blaze. It took about two nights and a day to burn out one pyre completely. The prisoners worked all day to stack as many pyres as possible and that night would ignite them and the next day, while they still burned, new pyres would be stacked for burning that evening.
After a burning, when the ashes heaped under the grates, a crew of prisoners sifted through them for any gold or precious stones that might have escaped detection at the time of execution. What bones were found were brittle and another group of prisoners was put to work crushing them. Then the bone ash was bagged to be used as fertilizer.
Ivan estimated that each day, they burned about ten thousand corpses; bodies, people, humans. There were usually at least five pyres stacked each day, sometimes as many as eight. This pace continued for forty one days-from August 19, when the efficient burning plan was accomplished, to September 28, when the digging was finally stopped. And there were untold bodies still in the ground.
The nights were getting cooler in September and after the first week of that month the Germans started taking the workers back to the dugout huts in the concentration camp for the nights.
As they rode back to the camp one evening toward the end of September, a relative newcomer to the work crew said to Ivan, "Do you know what I just calculated?"
"How many days to Christmas?"
"No! But do you know how many bodies have been raised and burned since you started this work?"
"Yes, about four hundred thousand bodies to date. The question I have is how many are still left in the ground?"
Ivan wondered if Sosha's body...
"How could they have murdered so many?" the young man asked.
"How? For them it was easy. They just sat day in and day out and pulled the triggers and released gas in their vans. In the first week of their slaughter, they murdered a hundred thousand Jews."
"Are you serious? In the first week?"
"That's the estimate I heard and I believe it. The first pit we emptied was filled with their remains. When we had them all out, the bare pit was ten meters deep, twenty meters wide and over eighty
meters long. The weight of the corpses on the top had so compressed the ones on the bottom that we had to hack them apart with shovels and axes to get them out. In a few cases, the Germans went down and set small charges of dynamite to blow the bodies apart."
"Oh God!"
"Oh God, hell! Better ask, 'Where was God then? After that first week, they imported more Jews-then Gypsies and Russian prisoners-then Communists and partisans-then just innocent men, women and children who happened to be on the wrong street at the wrong time." He paused, remembering his own arrest with Sosha. "Anyway, by now they've killed so many we'll never get them all out. I'd bet we haven't taken out half. And the killing hasn't stopped yet." His bitterness was overflowing now. "And the last pyre will be ours, because we are witness to it all and we can't be left behind to give testimony to this-this..."
"How much longer do you think it will last?"
"Not long. When the wind blows from the east, it carries the sound of battle. The Russians are advancing. But rest assured, the Germans will get rid of us before the front passes back through Kiev."
83
Anniversary...
It was a coincidence that the last bodies to be exhumed were taken from the ground on September 28, 1943, exactly two years to the day since the first Jewish roundup in Kiev. As the last pyre was ignited, Ivan and the other survivors of the forty-one day ordeal knew that tomorrow would most likely be their execution date. That knowledge encouraged the only known mass escape attempt at Babi Yar.
There was nothing to lose.
They would try an escape during the night. It would have to be spontaneous. It was too late to make definite plans. When they were locked in for the night, the men in Ivan's dugout considered their best course. Like prisoners everywhere, the men had over a period of time collected things that might come in handy. This night each brought out his secret treasures. There were some pliers stolen by the men who had been assigned to pull teeth from the dead. One had found a small hammer that some poor soul had taken to his grave with him in the ravine. There were pieces of wire, nails and needles, bits of string, a broken knife blade-but no weapons and little that would be of much help in an escape.
The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (Boomer Book Series) Page 27