by Ehud Diskin
“Thanks, Max,” the officer replied, his accent thick and foreign to me. “Palestine would be a lot ruddy quieter if there were more people like you. I look forward to your help.”
I felt stunned. How could a Jew offer help to occupiers engaged in acts of oppression against his own people?
On the walk home after our shift, I stopped and turned to Shoshana. “Although I like being around you very much, I can’t work for someone who betrays his people.”
“You mean Max?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
I told her about the conversation between Max and the officer, and her face turned serious. “I’ve only known you for a few days … I thought I’d size you up a little longer before talking about this,” she said, “but I guess I’ll have to take a chance.”
What she said next astonished me.
“Max is part of the Jewish underground. He gathers intel for the resistance. That British officer Max was talking to plays a vital role in the war against the underground, and Max is trying to establish ties to gather information.”
I nodded but remained silent.
“You can join us if you want,” Shoshana said, her gaze searching mine. “I’m a member too. I use my free time to design the same kinds of leaflets that the young man posted before he was arrested. I’ve often wished that I could do more, maybe even be involved physically in some of the operations.”
I frowned. “That could be dangerous.”
“No one has asked me to do more than print and hand out leaflets,” she said with a shrug, “so don’t worry. But if you believe in an independent Jewish state, you should help us.”
She probably expected me to agree on the spot, but that would mean telling her my original plans to fight the British. I wasn’t ready to do that. Instead, I told Shoshana that I needed to think it over and I’d let her know soon. We made plans to walk to work together the next day, and then I headed home.
I thought about Shoshana’s proposal as I lay in bed. I knew the British weren’t the same as the Nazis, but by keeping the Jewish immigrants from returning to their homeland, they had made themselves our enemies. I thought long into the night. I was determined to help my people; I just had to find the right way to do it.
My mind drifted, pushing me toward sleep, but nighttime was a different kind of enemy, and as usual, unwanted memories of my time as a partisan fighter and my struggle against the Germans surfaced.
After I escaped the ghetto, I did my best to follow my father’s instructions. I tried to avoid the farmhouses. Most of the Belarusian peasants hated Jews, and now that they could kill us without being punished by the authorities, I certainly couldn’t knock on their doors and ask, “Excuse me, do you by any chance not hate Jews?”
I tried to move quickly, but after several hours, my depleted body was exhausted. I passed through a field dotted with haystacks and crawled inside one to rest, immediately falling asleep and only waking from the early morning sunlight. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I pressed ahead during the day, I could be spotted by German soldiers or farmers who would alert the Germans. I decided to stay and soon fell back to sleep.
Sometime later, the sound of loud voices startled me awake. Two villagers were standing nearby, talking to one another, but eventually they moved on without noticing me.
I stayed hidden until nightfall and then began to travel again. Wanting to find the partisans as quickly as possible, I hurried all night and kept going during the day, always under cover. By the next evening, I was nearing the spot where I expected to find the Jewish partisans. The sun had yet to set, and I thought it would be a good time to show myself. I approached the supposed rendezvous area with my arms raised.
Soon a bearded man confronted me with a rifle. “Who are you?” he barked at me nervously.
I didn’t know who he was, but he appeared to be a Jew, and I had no choice but to risk identifying myself. “I’m a Jew,” I said in Yiddish. “I escaped from the ghetto. My father told me to look for Shalom Zurin. Can you take me to him?”
He chuckled. “You won’t be the one who decides where to go.”
With his rifle still aimed at me, he told me to remove my knapsack and empty it onto the ground. Left with no choice, I did as he ordered. He looked through my things and told me to return them to the knapsack. “Come with me,” he said.
We soon reached a group of armed men roasting a deer in a clearing. Among them I was pleased to see my former neighbor Zusha, an average-sized man in his forties with gray eyes. He recognized me too. “Lower your rifle,” he ordered the partisan who had escorted me there. “This young man has suffered enough already. Leave him with me.”
I raised my eyebrows and nodded at Zusha to thank him. “My father told me to find Shalom Zurin,” I said.
“I don’t know where Zurin is. It’s best if you join us,” Zusha responded. “But there’s a problem. You don’t have a weapon, so you won’t be much help.”
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the pistol my father had given me. Zusha’s eyes widened with surprise.
“Do you know how to use it?” he asked.
“Only in theory,” I replied.
“Don’t worry, we’ll teach you to shoot. It’s important for you to be prepared as soon as possible, because we’re going to attack a German patrol in two days. We’ll need every able-bodied person and every weapon that can be fired.”
I was exhausted from my long walk, but the notion that I would soon be killing Germans filled me with excitement. After dinner, I was given two blankets. I slept on the cold ground, but it was the first time since the Germans’ occupation of Minsk that I fell asleep with my mind at ease, ready for the start of a new day.
Zusha turned out to be one of the group’s most experienced fighters, and he took me under his wing, teaching me to shoot with both a pistol and a rifle. He also taught me hand-to-hand combat and how to use a knife. When he told me that I was a quick learner, pride welled up in my chest. The next morning, only the third morning after I’d arrived at the partisan’s camp, we would make our attack on the German patrol.
There were ten soldiers in the patrol. Our plan was to ambush them at dawn, with some of the resistance fighters positioning themselves ahead as a blocking force and others hiding among the trees lining the road, opening fire on the Germans from the flank. Because I was armed only with a short-range weapon and lacked experience, I was instructed to hang back and keep watch from a lookout point in a tree where I could spot any Germans trying to flee.
The initial attack from the forward group of partisan fighters left five Germans dead. The others tried to run into the forest, where three more were shot and killed. One soldier was shot in the leg. He could barely walk as he struggled to get away and was quickly chased down and shot dead. Only a single soldier managed to slip through our net. From my vantage point, I could see him retreating at first and then advancing cautiously, clearly intent on attacking the partisans who had just killed his comrades in arms.
I quietly lowered myself from the tree and drew my pistol as I maneuvered through the underbrush. I ducked behind a tree, then jumped out from behind him as he crept past.
When he whirled around, I put two bullets into his surprised face.
It was my first kill, and my hands trembled as I approached the body. Without thinking, I fired a third shot into his head. I told myself it was to make sure he was dead, but I later admitted the truth to myself: I took pleasure in putting another round into that Nazi. Those bastards had taken everything from me—my loving parents, my siblings, the rabbi who had tutored me, the friends I’d had before the Germans forced us into the ghetto. I was eager to take revenge on those who were persecuting us and seeking our annihilation, and I quickly adopted the partisan mindset that the more Germans we killed, the better.
I knelt down and took his rifle—a Mauser K98—and his ammunition as the other partisans ran up behind me. “You did well,” one said. “We could have paid a heavy pric
e if he’d gotten away.”
“Now that you have a rifle too,” Zusha said, clapping me on the back, “I expect you to kill more than one German per mission.”
The operation to take out the German patrol earned me not only the Mauser K98 rifle but also the admiration of my new partisan brothers. Moreover, I won Zusha’s close confidence, and he became both a friend and a father figure to me. Zusha continued to train and guide me until one day he simply said, “I’ve taught you all I know. You’re a skilled fighter and know your weapons. Now you must put it into practice.”
We would spend hours in the evening talking, usually about our families. He told me that the Germans had murdered his wife and daughter but that his son, a year older than me, had escaped. He didn’t know what happened to him.
“I want you to promise me,” he said, “that if I am killed and you survive, you’ll try to find my son, Izak, and tell him that I died fighting the accursed Nazis.”
“You have my word,” I said, “and I want you to promise me the same. I don’t know what happened to my family. I hope they survived somehow.”
Our group numbered fifteen members when I arrived, and we gradually grew to twenty-eight fighters. We were constantly looking for ways to strike at the Germans, and for that we needed information. One of our best informants was a man named Pavel, a portly Belarusian farmer with a round face, thick black mustache, and bushy eyebrows above a pair of nervous blue eyes.
He wasn’t much of a farmer, because he spent most of his time drinking homemade vodka. When our assaults on the Germans left us with valuable spoils like watches or cash, we’d trade them to Pavel for useful information. He had told our group about the German patrol that we’d attacked and successfully eliminated, so when he told us about a new patrol, we immediately got to work on a plan.
We decided to follow a similar tactic as before: a blocking force on the path ahead of the patrol, with a second force attacking from the flank. The ambush would take place where the path was bordered on one side by a river and by a forest on the other. Based on Pavel’s information, we would outnumber the Germans three to one—and have the element of surprise in our favor. We felt confident, maybe too confident.
When the day came, the vanguard and assault forces took their positions just before dawn. Having learned our lesson from the previous operation, we also stationed ten men a short distance behind the ambush site in case any of the German soldiers managed to escape the initial assault. Just as before, I was part of the rearguard, only this time I had nine partisans by my side.
From our hiding spots in the forest, we watched the Germans approach, holding our fire as we waited for them to enter the trap. But when the patrol got about a hundred and fifty yards from us, a terrible surprise began to unfold.
The Germans halted and took up positions across the wide path and along the side bordered by the forest, opening fire with machine guns and rifles. A moment later, artillery shells began erupting in the forest. As we clung to the earth and wondered what to do, we heard the shouts of German soldiers running through the woods to attack us from behind.
The men in my rearguard force were the only ones who survived, and we were lucky to slip away with our lives. When we returned to our hideout in the woods, we were frightened and confused, but as we replayed the events, the answer was obvious: Pavel had betrayed us.
I felt stunned when I learned my good friend Zusha had been killed, and my heart ached with the loss. How could Pavel have done such a thing to us? Sitting silently together, those of us who had survived knew, without even discussing it, what must be done.
We waited until nightfall, and then two partisan brothers and I made a beeline for Pavel’s farm. We cautiously approached the farmhouse and peered through the window to see Pavel sitting at the table, feasting on a sumptuous dinner served by his wife. The table was laden with juicy sausages, roasted meat, and two bottles of Sekt, an expensive German sparkling wine, presumably his reward for selling us out.
One of my comrades guarded the window while the other man and I kicked in the front door. Pavel began babbling, his mouth full of food. I slapped him across the face and demanded to know why he had sold us out to the Germans.
“If you don’t start talking, I’ll shoot you in the kneecap,” I hissed.
He choked, and bits of sausage sprayed from his greasy lips. “What do you mean?” he sputtered. “You’re my friends. I would never betray you.”
I fired a shot into his foot, and he screamed in pain.
“Pavel,” I said, “If you don’t tell me the truth, the next bullet will be in your knee, and I won’t stop until I get the truth from you.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he realized his fate. “I had no choice. After the ambush on the last patrol, the Germans realized someone was passing information to the partisans. They guessed it was me and said that if I didn’t cooperate, they’d send me and my wife to a concentration camp.”
I fired a bullet into his forehead, and he slumped to the floor. His wife started screaming that we were dirty Jews and that she’d make sure the Germans killed us. I didn’t like the thought of killing a woman, but we couldn’t take a chance on her reporting us before we got far away from here. Making up my mind, I grabbed the woman and stuffed a napkin from the table into her mouth, stopping her screams. I tore the sashes from the apron she wore and used them to bind her wrists and feet.
“Keep quiet,” I warned as I pushed her down beside her dead husband. “Or I’ll rethink the merits of being merciful.” Her eyes were wide with fear, and she obeyed.
Although the smell of the food made our empty stomachs growl, we had lost our appetites. Instead, we packed the food and took it to share with our partisan comrades. As we made our way out of the traitor’s house, all I could think about were the deaths of Zusha and my other partisan brothers. I promised myself I would avenge them further, fighting the Germans with everything I had inside of me.
After Pavel, I learned never to place my fate in anyone’s hands but my own. Once I arrived in Israel, I resolved to take on the British alone, in complete secrecy, using the instincts and experience I had accumulated fighting the Germans.
The memories began to fade as I lay in my apartment, so far away from my childhood home in Belarus. My eyelids grew heavy, and at last, I found a blessed oblivion.
I MET SHOSHANA OUTSIDE COHENS‘ the following day, and we started to walk to work.
“I’ve been thinking about our conversation,” I said to her. “Ideologically, I support what you and Max are doing, but my spirit needs a break. It’s only been a few months since the Germans were defeated, and my time as a partisan has left me exhausted from fighting. But I do have experience with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, so maybe I can help you plan operations against the British.”
Shoshana thought for a moment. “I understand. I’ll tell Max what you said.”
When we arrived at the restaurant, Shoshana called Max into the kitchen for a private talk. Max didn’t say a word to me when they emerged, but an hour or so later, he walked by as I was clearing a table and uttered a single word.
“Wimp.”
Two weeks on the job had been enough to make me feel like an accomplished waiter. The customers, for the most part, were happy, and criticism from Max was rare. The bartender had even taught me how to prepare drinks. But I was growing weary of working six days a week. Now that I had made the decision to fight against the British oppression of the Jewish people, I needed time to learn more about the country, the various underground organizations, and the British Mandate authorities. I told Max I wanted to switch to a five-day workweek. He looked at me with disdain and called me a wimp again. I took that as a yes.
I soon got into the habit of reading the Yedioth Ahronoth evening newspaper, both to improve my Hebrew and to get a clearer picture of what was happening in the country. At the same time, I began visiting the editorial office of the English daily, the Palestine Post. The office was on HaSolel Street
, near Ben Yehuda Street, not far from Max’s restaurant. Every time I had a break at work, I’d go in to read the previous day’s paper, improving my English and keeping pace with events in Israel and around the world.
I also began to strike up conversations with some of my neighbors about the immigration struggle, the underground organizations, and the British authorities. Some of them were reluctant to say much, fearing perhaps that I would report them to the British. But others spoke willingly. What I heard from them made me decide to visit the library at Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, to dig up information on the various underground groups.
My reading taught me that the Haganah, the largest of the underground organizations, had been established in 1920 to protect the Jewish community from Arab hostilities—most notably through their elite strike force, the Palmach, led by Yitzchak Sadeh. In 1939, the British published the White Paper, which rejected the idea of a Jewish state and the partitioning of Palestine. The White Paper limited Jewish immigration to seventy-five thousand for five years and ruled that the Arab majority would determine any further immigration. Restrictions were also imposed on the rights of Jews to purchase land.
During World War II, the Jewish community fiercely opposed the restrictions the British forced on them. David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Haganah under the authority of the Jewish Agency, didn’t initially support the illegal immigration organized by groups outside of the Jewish Agency, but he changed his mind in the wake of the pogroms against the Jews of Germany and Austria. It was clear that the Jews under the reign of Nazi Germany faced an existential threat, yet the Mandate authorities refused to lift the severe limits on Jewish immigration to Israel.
Most Jewish residents of Israel identified with the Haganah and supported Ben-Gurion’s policies, though they seemed too restrained to me. I continued to read about the other organizations that had adopted a far more aggressive approach than Ben-Gurion’s.
