In addition to nearly starving to death, Motele’s family almost froze. Since the villagers refused to lend Burtzik a horse, he was unable to get wood for the fire. It was up to Motele and Batyale to walk two miles to the forest. Digging through the deep snow with their bare hands, they would search for twigs that they could load onto their little sled. Crying because they were starving, freezing, and exhausted, they would endure taunts and insults from Ukrainian children on their way home.
The Massacres Resume
In the spring of 1942, the ethnic cleansing of Volhynia resumed with brutal intensity. The Nazis began systematically liquidating the ghettos, starting with women, children, and the elderly who were unfit to work. Close to twenty thousand Volhynian Jews were killed in the first stage of these renewed massacres, which commenced in May and lasted until mid-June. The second phase resulted in the complete destruction of the ghettos in Rovno and Olyka and the murder of ten thousand Jews. It was the third stage that did the most damage. It began in August and lasted more than two months. The killing teams, often operating in several districts at the same time, murdered 150,000 Jews, effectively obliterating what was left of Volhynia’s once-vibrant Jewish community. A final stage, in November and December 1942, completed the ethnic cleansing by eliminating the 3,500 skilled laborers who had remained in the ghettos. This left alive only a few thousand Jews who had managed to hide or escape to the forests, many of whom would later die of starvation or during partisan battles.
The massacre that took place in the Volhynian city of Korets on May 21, 1942—the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot—resulted in the slaughter of 90 percent of the town’s Jewish population. One of the few survivors was a forty-four-year-old civil engineer by the name of Moshe Gildenman, who later related the horror of the Korets massacre in gruesome detail. “Near a pit twenty-by-twenty meters long and three meters deep stood a table with bottles of cognac and food,” he recalled. “At the table sat a German with an automatic pistol in his hand. Frightened and despairing Jews were pushed into the pit naked, six at a time. The German ordered them to lie on the ground, face down. Between one sip of cognac and the next he shot them. Among the 2,200 Jews the Germans shot that day were my wife and my thirteen-year-old daughter.”
The killings lasted for twelve hours. That evening, Gildenman and the other survivors met in the synagogue to rend their garments and say Kaddish for the dead. While others were mourning, Gildenman’s thoughts turned to rage and retribution. He heard a voice cry out from inside himself: “Not with prayers will you assuage our grief for the rivers of innocent blood that was spilled—but with revenge!”
As soon as the Kaddish was over, Gildenman banged the table. “Listen to me, unfortunate, death-condemned Jews!” he called out. “Know that sooner or later we are all doomed. But I shall not go like a sheep to the slaughter!” Gildenman vowed that someday he would exact his revenge.83
On September 23, 1942, with the Germans and Ukrainians surrounding the Korets ghetto for its final liquidation, Gildenman, his son, and several other men escaped to the forest. Combining Gildenman’s engineering background with their thirst for revenge, the partisans staged a series of sophisticated attacks, killing Nazis and acquiring their weapons. The group’s many successes included a number of cleverly engineered attacks on trains, railways, and bridges that prevented the Germans from transporting much-needed reinforcements to the Eastern Front. Taking its name from Gildenman’s partisan moniker, the outfit became known as “Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group.” It would be this partisan brigade that Motele would join in January 1943.
One day, Motele was approaching his family’s home when he saw the Nazi-appointed mayor of the village enter the courtyard with four German soldiers. Fearful of coming face-to-face with the Nazis, Motele darted into the windmill. He climbed up to the top floor and looked out a round window at what was happening below.
While the mayor leaned against the well, nonchalantly brushing the dirt off his boots with a twig, the four soldiers entered the house. Suddenly, Motele heard his father cry out. Several gunshots were followed by the heartrending screams of Chana and Batyale.
Then there was silence. A shudder went down Motele’s entire body. His hair stood up on end. He knew instantly that his parents and sister were dead. He would be next if he was not careful. He decided to run away as soon as he could get out of the windmill safely.
The mayor walked into the house and reemerged a few minutes later carrying a bloody sheet into which he had packed several stolen items. He walked back to the village, followed by the Nazi murderers.
As Motele continued to watch from his hiding place in the windmill, the neighbor Pavlo Fustamit appeared. Pavlo ran into Motele’s house and stuck his head out the window.
“Maria!” he shouted. “Quick, bring a sack!”
Maria walked over with an empty bag and entered the house. After a little while, Pavlo came into the yard with a large featherbed that Motele’s mother had painstakingly made. He ripped the quilt apart, dumped out all of the feathers, and took the empty cover back into the house. When he reemerged a few moments later, the quilt cover was filled with stolen items. Maria followed behind him, nearly doubled over under the weight of her heavy sack.
Convulsing with quiet sobs, Motele watched through tearful eyes as the mayor returned.
“Until the regional commander takes over the windmill, it has to be sealed,” the mayor explained to Pavlo.
As the mayor walked toward the windmill, Motele scampered down from the top floor and hid behind an old crate. His heart pounded and his head spun. He felt dizzy.
“Is there anyone here?” the mayor called out, opening the windmill’s only door. “Come out, because I’m nailing the door shut.”
Motele heard the door close, followed by the hammering of nails. He breathed deeply, but did not leave his hiding place. He lay there for a long time, crying softly.
When night fell, Motele decided to make his escape. He found a rope and tied one end to a post. He pushed the other end through a small hatch on the top floor. He climbed through the hatch and slid down the rope fifty feet to the ground.
Motele’s heart pounded as he approached his house. As soon as he walked through the door, he froze. In the moonlight he could see Burtzik lying in the middle of the room, covered in blood. His eyes were still open. Chana was on the bed, one bare foot draped off the side of the bed into a pool of blood. Young Batyale lay nearby, underneath a chair. Her face was flat against the floor. Her little hands were stretched out, frozen in her last moments of desperation.
“Blood . . . blood,” Motele said to himself, in shock over what he was seeing. “I no longer have anyone. They’ve all been murdered. I have to run away from here, as quickly as possible. They’ll murder me, as well.”
Before he left, he noticed his father’s little prayer book on the floor near his feet. He picked it up, pressed it to his lips, and put it in his pocket. He quickly ran out of the house.
He had no sooner reached an old pear tree that stood near the border of the yard than he saw Pavlo coming down the road. Motele quickly scampered up the tree and watched as Pavlo walked to his own house. As Motele climbed down, he suddenly remembered the Gershteins’ violin, which he had secreted in the hollow of the very tree in which he was hiding so the Germans would not confiscate it.
Motele grabbed the violin from its hiding place and pressed it to his heart. It was his last reminder of better times. He ran into the dense forest with only one thought in his mind: “Run away, the farther the better. Escape from these evil people.”
Motele in the Forest
As Motele would later tell Lionka and the other partisans who would discover him in the woods, he spent the summer after his flight in the forest. Walking eastward, toward Belarus, he lived off wild berries and mushrooms. Whenever he came across a town or village, he would hide in the bushes until it got dark and steal potatoes from a garden on his way out of town. When he needed to sleep, he would buil
d himself a bed out of moss or grass and use his violin case as a pillow. He was initially scared of living in the forest, but he quickly became more confident as he developed his survival skills.
When the autumn brought cold winds and rain, scavenging food became much more difficult. Berries were no longer in season, mushrooms were increasingly hard to find under inches of fallen leaves, and potatoes had already been harvested from their gardens. With only a thin linen shirt, one pair of pants, and no shoes, Motele was also freezing. The weather was even affecting his violin case, which was starting to swell from the moisture. Motele had not played the violin in months, because he was afraid that someone would hear him. He would, however, occasionally open the case and run his hand gently over the strings. Just this small amount of physical contact with his instrument was enough to bring him comfort.
When the cold rain became too much to bear, Motele hid his violin under a fallen tree and walked into a village. He knocked on the first door he came to and was welcomed by an elderly farm woman who found him a job working as a shepherd for the richest farmer in the village. Motele went back into the forest and reclaimed his violin, which he hid under a pile of straw in the woodshed. In return for caring for two oxen, four cows, and ten sheep, Motele was given a jacket, a pair of pants, and a pair of boots.
The rich farmer Karpo was a quiet and kind man who treated Motele well. His wife Christia, on the other hand, was a hateful woman who lorded over Motele and her servant girl Dasha with verbal and physical abuse. Even worse was her son Pyetro, an anti-Semitic policeman from nearby Dombrovitze.
“This is our new shepherd?” Pyetro asked upon seeing Motele. “For some reason, he has very curly hair like a zhid. Come closer to me, boy.”
Although his heart was pounding, Motele approached Pyetro with every ounce of courage he could muster. “Glory to Ukraine!” he cheerfully greeted the policeman, using the salutation he had learned from the Nazi schoolteachers in Krasnovka.
Pyetro stared into Motele’s shiny black eyes. “The ‘Our Father,’” he said, referring to the Christian prayer. “Do you know it?”
Motele had grown up with Christian Ukrainian children. He had learned their customs and their prayers. He recited the prayer in one breath.
“Even though you’re a Christian,” Pyetro conceded, “you do have the hair of a non-Christian.”
That settled the matter until New Year’s Eve, when Christia discovered among Motele’s belongings the little prayer book that had once belonged to his father.
“You’re a zhid!” she said, confronting Motele when he entered the house that night.
“Everybody says that I look like a zhid,” Motele responded matter-of-factly. “Even your son Pyetro said that I have the hair of a non-Christian.”
“Then what’s this?” Christia demanded, triumphantly holding up the prayer book.
“Where did you find Seryozha’s little book?” Motele exclaimed, quickly inventing a Jewish friend. “He gave it to me to play with for a day and I lost it. We almost got into a fight over it.” He calmly grabbed the book and slid it into his pocket.
“I told you that you are picking on this poor child for no reason,” Karpo scolded his wife. “He’s a true Christian soul, and you want to turn him into a Jew.”
“Tomorrow our Pyetro will come,” Christia responded, not willing to concede defeat. “He’ll interrogate the boy as necessary and will establish whether he is a zhid or a Christian.”
On New Year’s Day, when the family departed for church, they left Motele behind to guard the house. The interrogation would come after the church service. Motele had planned to simply disappear while they were gone, but was overcome with a thirst for revenge. He thought of the Nazi teacher who had humiliated him in Krasnovka and of the beatings he received from Christia. He thought of his old neighbors Pavlo and Maria Fustamit, who had shunned his father and then looted his house. He thought of his murdered family. It was not fair that the self-proclaimed Christians would celebrate their New Year while he would be forced back into the forest. Someone had to pay.
Motele grabbed his violin, climbed into the attic, and set the straw roof on fire. Hiding behind buildings, he quickly made his way through the village and into the forest. As soon as he reached the tree line, he heard screams. The church bells began to sound an alarm. Motele turned around. As he disappeared into the forest, he watched the flames from Karpo’s house shoot into the sky.
The servant girl Dasha had told Motele stories of the partisans who had occupied the forests surrounding the village. These brave combatants were killing policemen, ambushing military depots, and sharing their loot with the poorest farmers. Inspired by the tales of their bravery, Motele had made up his mind to find them. After three days of his wandering around in the forest, they found him. And so the boy who called himself Mitka joined Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group, which by then was receiving tactical support from the Red Army. Motele proved to be a clever and daring young operative with a knack for intelligence and espionage.
Motele the Young Partisan
Shortly after Motele joined the Jewish Group, Uncle Misha himself sent the boy on a mission. Motele was to spy on a group of Hungarian soldiers who had arrived in Lubin, a village located three miles from their partisan camp.
“When they stop you and ask who you are, what will you say?” Uncle Misha asked Motele before dispatching him.
“I’ll tell them that I’m from the village of Kristinovka and that I’m looking for a white cow with red patches and a broken horn,” Motele smartly replied, without even thinking about it. “The cow separated from the herd and went in the direction of Lubin.”
Barefoot in his short linen pants, with a bag over one shoulder and a whip in his hand, Motele looked every bit the part of a shepherd. He walked right through the village, innocently strolling past the Hungarian soldiers who were going from home to home gathering eggs and cheese. When he reached the center of the village, he came upon six large wagons. Next to the wagons Motele discovered a fat Hungarian cook, whom he befriended by chopping wood for him and by stirring his soup. While Motele was working on the soup, the cook dozed off. Motele noticed that the cook had left his pistol on a bench and thought to himself, “Once I have a pistol like that, I’ll be a real partisan.” He quickly removed the cook’s pistol from its holster and slid it into his bag.
As Motele was heading out of the village, he happened upon a Hungarian soldier who was mounting a horse. The soldier dropped his whip and signaled to the boy to pick it up for him. To avoid looking suspicious, Motele ignored his pounding heart and calmly handed the whip to its owner. As soon as the soldier rode off, Motele ran quickly back to the forest.
After recounting his experience for Uncle Misha, Motele reached into his bag and dramatically produced a Belgian Colt. “Come to the other side of the marshes,” he said gleefully to Lionka, grabbing his new friend by the hand. “You can teach me how to shoot!”
“Wait a second before learning how to shoot!” Uncle Misha interrupted. “You haven’t reported to me the findings of your reconnaissance mission. I sent you to Lubin to find out how many Hungarians are there and how they’re armed, not to steal pistols from sleeping cooks.”
Motele’s face turned bright red. “I told you that there were six wagons,” he retorted angrily. “If we assume that there are five men to each wagon, then there are thirty Hungarians. The cook makes thirty-one, and the commander makes thirty-two. There cannot be any more than that because Hungarians are not partisans who are willing to ride ten to a wagon.
“They only have one heavy machine gun, like our Maxim,” he continued, referring to the bulky machine gun that took several people to operate. “I saw it on a wagon, hiding under a heavy green tarp. It looks like they came to Lubin to get some wheat because I saw new bags painted with swastikas on one of the wagons.”
Within less than an hour, Uncle Misha acted on Motele’s report by attacking the Hungarians in Lubin. Just as Motele had calculated
, there were thirty of them. Uncle Misha’s men killed them all and took their supplies.
One Sunday in the spring of 1943, Motele was sent on a new mission—one considerably more daring than simply spying on a brigade of Hungarians. Whipping a horse that was half dead from starvation and disease, Motele drove a wagon loaded with bran bags toward the village of Bielko. When he was just outside the village, Motele stopped and climbed down from the wagon. Looking around to make sure that he was not being watched, he unscrewed the bolt that secured the right front wheel and threw it into the bushes. He rode into town, announcing his arrival with the loud screeching of the ungreased wheels. He stopped right in front of a large wooden house that was the headquarters of the most powerful police force in the region, including forty Ukrainian policemen and six German soldiers. Six policemen came out of the building to investigate the noise while a German soldier watched from a window, laughing at the young Ukrainian peasant’s primitive transportation.
Motele climbed down from the wagon and made a spectacle out of checking the front right side. “I lost the bolt from the front wheel.” He started to cry, hitting himself in the head with his fists. “What will I do now? My father is going to kill me!
“The bolt must be in a forest not far from here,” he continued. “How will I go on?
“Would you please hold on to my horse while I run and look for the bolt?” he asked the policemen who were standing there poking fun at the weeping boy. Before they could respond, he handed one of them the reins and started back toward the forest. He walked with his head bent down, studying the ground. Every few steps, he would kneel down as if he were searching for something. When he reached the dense forest, he slipped into the woods and disappeared. He ran as fast as he could for five hundred yards and stopped. Putting two fingers in his mouth, he whistled loudly. Immediately, he heard a similar whistle from not too far away. Lionka and two other partisans appeared out of nowhere.
Violins of Hope Page 19