Jack and Rochelle

by Lawrence Sutin

  Eventually we reached some higher ground that seemed quiet. There we managed to find cleaner water and also scavenged for blueberries and wild mushrooms. I remember we built a fire and I made a thin soup from water and the wild mushrooms. I remember that I used a fallen German helmet as a cooking pot. It was the first hot food we had eaten in a week or more. We had no idea if the mushrooms were poisonous or not. We thought we’d die of hunger if we didn’t eat them, so we took the chance. No one died.

  Our best meal of that time came when we spotted some rabbits and took the further chance of making noise by shooting them. We cooked up those rabbits immediately—a feast. We also found a dead chicken. It was the standard German strategy in hunting down partisan groups to kill off all livestock in the region. They burned some of the farms and even the villages down to the ground. That chicken was one of the victims, but it looked good to us. I cooked it up into a chicken soup. To the soup we added some beets and potatoes that we managed to find in a farmer’s field on the edge of the forest. So that soup was thicker than the mushroom soup. But we had no salt, and the taste reminded me of castor oil … but it was delicious!

  In that way we survived. And in that way most of the other partisans in the Nalibocka Forest survived as well. Ultimately, it was not a successful action for the Germans. They had the superior force, but we had a large wilderness with which we were familiar and in which there were many places to conceal ourselves. Terrible swampy places, yes, but they served their purpose. In a sense, the entire action was like one huge game of hide-and-seek. We would hear them go one way and then we would go the other.

  That is not to say that many partisans, Jewish and Russian alike, did not lose their lives. But the vast majority survived. Even in our atrad, with women and children and the elderly, the majority survived in the end. The German losses outnumbered those of the partisan groups by maybe twenty to one.

  JACK

  The main brunt of the attack lasted for roughly two weeks. When everything was finally over, there were people scattered throughout the wilderness. Then everyone headed back to their own camps to regroup. During that time, we ran into partisans from lots of other groups. From them we found out that the overall attack had gone badly for the Germans.

  There were even three or four German planes shot down. They were single pilot reconnaissance planes that flew low. Even with a regular rifle, if you shot in the right place, you could hit the pilot and bring the plane down.

  We also heard stories of how some of the partisan groups had captured small numbers of German soldiers. They were hanging the soldiers by their feet.

  What was most surprising to us was that, when we finally made it back to Zorin’s camp, we found it intact. Nothing had been touched. Now if the Germans had found it, there is no question that they would have burned and demolished everything. So we were thinking to ourselves that if we had just stayed put, we would have avoided the Germans altogether. But who knew?

  Zorin and his leadership group returned and organized the atrad for the coming of winter. We figured that the Germans would not be likely to launch such a large-scale attack again. It was now late 1943, and they were having major problems on their Russian front.

  ROCHELLE

  Now here is a story I have never before told anyone except for Jack.

  The spring of 1944 was approaching. Liberation was close at hand—we knew that. Then there came what seemed to be very good news. A few of the partisans in Zorin’s atrad had grown up in Stolpce and knew my family. They told me that they had run into my uncle Oscar. He was living on a Polish farm, passing as a Pole. He had taken up with a Polish woman, and living there with them was the woman’s sister—she was what you call an old maid—and her brother and her brother’s wife.

  I knew that Oscar had escaped from the Stoplce ghetto before the final liquidations. Remember, he had been my father’s partner in the family business, which was refined lumber products. Oscar had been the one to go out in the woods and do business with the Polish peasants and farmers. So he knew the woods and the people who lived in the region very well. In fact, he had been kind of a playboy, having affairs with a number of the farmers’ daughters. When the Germans arrived, he would have known where to hide. But whatever kind of plans he made, he hadn’t let the family in on them—he saved himself with not a word to the rest of us.

  Still, it was very exciting to hear that a member of my family was still alive! The farm on which he was now living was several miles away from Zorin’s camp—a long day’s walk. But I made up my mind to pay Uncle Oscar a visit.

  It was a dangerous trip. The Germans were on the run from the Russian front, but they still controlled the area and they still shot Jews on sight. I did not want Jack to come with me. He was definitely getting stronger, but the lingering effect of his boils was such that he would have made the trip more slow and more difficult than if I went on my own. Jack was not keen on my going, but he understood what it would mean to me to see someone from my family again.

  I kept away from the roads, walking through the thickest woods as much as I could. It was a difficult walk, and I became very tired. But I kept thinking, “My uncle is alive! Maybe he’ll be killed or I’ll be killed before the Russian troops arrive. I must see him now, right away, before it is too late!”

  Finally I arrived at his farm. Uncle Oscar was so glad to see me! He was in his late forties by now, but he still looked healthy and full of life. He had survived well on the farm through all of the misery, and I was happy about that.

  He introduced me to the woman he was living with … her name was Antonina. She and her family had saved Oscar’s life by hiding him. They welcomed me and offered me something to eat and drink. Then they left us alone so that my uncle and I could talk.

  We decided to go out for a walk together. We were both pent-up with excitement at meeting again. Oscar was full of questions. He had escaped from the ghetto relatively early on and so he had never learned the details of what had happened to the rest of the family. I was his first source of information on those terrible matters.

  We were walking around in the woods on the edge of the farm. It was very emotional and very nice to be with family again. He was crying and hugging me, calling me his kind—his child. It felt natural. After all, before the war, when we had last spent real time together, I had been only a little girl.

  Then came the big surprise. We had gotten some distance from the house—and he started making sexual advances toward me! I don’t mean fatherly love. He started kissing and hugging me. At first, I thought this was just more of his happiness in seeing me. But then I saw that he meant to go further.

  I said to him, “What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy?”

  His reaction was to be angry at my lack of interest. I had already told him about Jack. So now he said to me, “What’s the matter? You can sleep with that young man of yours. Am I worse than he is?” In other words, give Oscar a chance. Maybe he’s even better. Can you believe that?

  This was my uncle. And after all my emotional outpouring to him, after telling him all that I had gone through, he dried his eyes and wanted to have sex with me!

  I had a hard time keeping him off me. He wasn’t a Russian partisan—he wasn’t going to beat me or rape me. But he kept pushing himself on me. I became very angry. I told him to get away from me and I made it clear that I would stand none of it.

  It was a very awkward situation because it was already evening and I couldn’t make it back to our camp. I had to spend the night in that farmhouse with Oscar and his Polish family. All through his advances in the woods, we both kept our voices down because neither one of us wanted to go through the embarrassment of being heard or spotted by them. And now, having fended him off, I had to walk back into the house with my uncle and act as if nothing had happened.

  Somehow we pulled it off. My uncle was smooth as could be. He went to sleep with his Antonina and I shared a bed with her sister. At the crack of dawn I was up and saying
good-bye. I was desperate to be on my way. Uncle Oscar kept insisting that I take along this or that, but I refused everything. I had lost all respect for him. It was a nightmare.

  When I came back, I had to tell Jack what had happened. I thought about keeping it a secret, so as not to upset him. But when I came back, I must have looked shaken. Jack saw that something was wrong and I had to explain.

  JACK

  I brooded about that for a couple of weeks. Then I told Rochelle that I wanted to pay a visit to her uncle. I made most of the trip with a couple of other guys from the atrad who were off on another mission in the same vicinity. They would go off and complete that mission and then meet me back at that farm—so that we could all return together, for greater safety.

  On the way I was thinking to myself that I would kill him. Could I have done that? I can no longer say at this point. Maybe. I was so angry about what he had put her through. I was angry enough to think about murder, that much I can say.

  I did not tell the other two men specifically about the plan, but I asked them to back me up if, when they returned to get me, there was any kind of trouble. I had no idea how Uncle Oscar would receive me. Maybe he would turn violent. Angry as I was, I was also, I must say, very curious as to what kind of a character he would turn out to be.

  I had not given Oscar any notice that I was coming. But when I arrived, he was immediately very outgoing and friendly toward me. He acted as though nothing had happened. He showed no shame, no consciousness about it at all. He must have been faking—or maybe he just didn’t care. But it was difficult for me to confront and kill a man who behaved in that way. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t believe he thought that I knew what he had done to Rochelle. He probably figured that Rochelle would have been ashamed to tell me. We talked about Rochelle and the rest of her family—how they had died.

  The two men from the atrad came back for me, and I left with them. I never confronted Oscar. I decided to leave things as they were. On the way back to camp, I was very frustrated—my anger was still pent-up. But I said to myself that it wouldn’t have helped Rochelle for me to murder the last of her family in all of Europe. There had been enough death, enough killing.

  Meanwhile, even with continued good news from the Russian front, the war was not yet over for us. We still kept up our food raids and our demolitions of German supply lines. I was still going out regularly on guard-duty shifts on the perimeters of the atrad. If we had seen German troops during my shifts, our orders were to shoot at them, kill as many as we could. They were on the defensive, and we were to disrupt their retreat any way that we could.

  But for the first time since the Germans had arrived in eastern Poland, we started to feel a real hope that they might be driven out and that we would be alive to see it happen.

  ROCHELLE

  I followed all of the stories and rumors with incredible interest. We got our news mainly from other partisan groups. And our atrad had a radio that I had a chance to listen to occasionally. Some of the local farmers would tell any news they had heard to our food bands.

  I knew that the Russian front was coming closer and closer to Poland. Our own partisan bands were skirmishing regularly with retreating German troops who were crossing through our region in disorder. Zorin sent out regular teams of men to watch the highways and crossroads and to ambush and kill as many of the German soldiers on the run as we could. That was good news in terms of the overall direction of the war, but at the same time it made our activities in the region all the more dangerous.

  Jack and I had been through so much. And he was just starting to heal from those terrible skin boils that had covered him for months. So I thought to myself, “I’ve finally fixed him up and now he’s going to go out and get killed in a raid!” Just when we could finally see the end in sight. Not that the Russians taking over again would be paradise, but it would be much better than the Germans. We would at least have a chance to lead a normal life together and not be shot on sight.

  So I made up my mind that I would do everything I could to keep Jack alive. I told Jack that, even though he was getting better, he should pretend that he was still sick from the boils. He still looked terrible, with red marks and bumps and black tar all over him.

  For my part, I would go to our friend Wertheim, who continued to have great influence in Zorin’s leadership circle. I would beg him to realize that Jack was still sick, that they shouldn’t push him into dangerous raids in which he couldn’t keep up and would have no chance to survive. Once Jack was definitely on the list for a raid. I pleaded with Wertheim until he promised me that he would keep Jack back, which he did.

  Once I even went to Zorin himself and started to cry. My tears were sincere. I was afraid that Jack would be killed. And I wanted so much for him to live.

  JACK

  Again, the truth is that there were times when Rochelle kept me back from some raid or other action. But most of the time, once my boils had healed up, I was out there risking my life with the rest of the atrad fighters. That was the way I wanted it. I don’t say that I was not sometimes conflicted—of course I wanted to live! But I still had the hunger to fight. It was not pleasant to watch my fellow fighters go off without me.

  Then it was March 1944. One day we heard on our camp radio that the advancing front of the Red Army was only sixty miles away. A few days later there was even more exciting news—the Red Army had liberated our hometowns of Mir and Stolpce, as well as nearby Nieswierz. The Russian front was only thirty miles away.

  It is impossible to imagine the happiness we experienced on hearing that, after nearly three years in the woods.

  That evening, Rochelle and Julius and I sat around a campfire with some of our friends. We were still happy with the news, but the euphoria had worn away and we all somehow needed to take stock. We shared memories of our friends in the partisan groups who had been killed during shoot-outs with the enemy, who had risked and sometimes lost their lives during dynamiting raids to blow up the main German roads and rail lines. And we talked about the families we had lost.

  For the older men and women in the camp, as well as some of the young children without parents, the news of our possible liberation was a tremendous joy—on first hearing. There were smiles on all their faces and they were embracing one another, shouting about going home at last. But by the next day, when I walked past their shelters and spoke with some of them, I could see that they had been doing some thinking. They had realized that they had no families to whom to return, that their homes would not be waiting for them, that their Polish neighbors would not be delighted to see them. They were remembering the dead, the parents and children they had loved.

  Where were they to go? What were they to do?

  A few days after the news of the liberation of Mir and Stolpce, we could hear the echoes of intensive shooting that was coming closer and closer. Our leader Zorin called a meeting of all the fighting partisans in the camp and said: “The German army is in retreat. Large numbers of German troops are trying to avoid the main roads, where they are being mowed down by strafing and bombing by the Soviet air force. So there will be many German soldiers coming our way through the woods.”

  Zorin laid out a plan for us whereby we would set up a series of ambushes on all sides of the retreating Germans, while still maintaining protection for our camp. We created six groups of fighters who took up various positions within a mile of the main campsite. By this point, we were well armed, with machine guns, automatic rifles, hand grenades.

  Within a few hours, we could see several small groups of German soldiers walking slowly in our direction. They knew that there were partisans in the Nalibocka Forest, but they didn’t know our locations.

  When they came close, Zorin gave the order to open fire from all of our directions at once. Many German soldiers fell. Others managed to run away. We determined that there were twenty-one German casualties. Amongst those were several SS officers. We gathered up the fallen German arms and ammunition, reg
rouped and changed our locations. Then we waited.

  It did not take long. The Germans opened fire in our direction. They had regrouped as well. What alternative did they have? They had to continue in our direction—the Red Army was on their rears.

  Zorin ordered us not to return their gunfire. In that way he hoped to make them think that we had retreated. It also kept our positions secret until the last possible moment. After ten minutes or so, we saw that the Germans were slowly moving closer. There were more of them than before—more of their retreating comrades had joined them.

  Finally we opened fire. It was a pitched fight. Several of our men were wounded, and Pressman, Zorin’s second-in-command, lost his life. The casualties made us fight all the harder. A few of our fighters—very brave men—crawled forward with hand grenades and managed to eliminate some German machine gun nests that were causing us great problems. That enabled us to keep shifting our positions, to make the Germans think that we were greater in number.

  At last, when the tide was clearly in our favor, Zorin called out to the German troops—it was in broken German, but he made himself understood—urging them to surrender. He told them that this time they were not dealing with defenseless Jews, but with armed Jewish partisans. Apparently that provoked the Germans to fight harder—because that was what they did. They must have understood that they could expect no mercy from Jewish partisans.

  So the Germans kept up steady and intense firing. They had enough ammunition to continue for a while. We suffered more casualties. Zorin himself was badly wounded in the leg, but he continued on at his post, issuing orders.

  Finally, about a dozen of our fighters managed to sneak up on the Germans from a different angle. The fighters opened up with their machine guns. That caused a panic amongst the German troops—they were convinced that they were surrounded. So they began to run for their lives in all directions, leaving all their heavy armaments behind. Some of them—a small number—did manage to get away. We didn’t chase after them.