The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

The plant buzzed like a beehive. In a panic, the director and the management rushed through the workshops, stimulating the people with words, often empowered with well-rounded Russian curses. Only Sergey Vladimirovich, silent and composed, now dressed in blue working overalls that made him more approachable, appeared here and there to help with the lifting of heavy equipment or a kind encouragement.

  “Natasha.” She heard him address her from behind her back and swung around. “Let me do it.” He took the hammer from her hands and swung it to hit the huge fastening bolt at the base of the lathe. One after the other, he loosened all sixteen. “Now, you step back and let the men complete the task.” A faint light twinkled in the depths of his intelligent brown eyes. Was it warmth in them? ran through her mind. When the spell of his gaze lifted, he was already heading to the workers who had just finished moving another lathe bed.

  Natasha started packing the small parts of her machine. With care, she wrapped them in oilpaper then put them into the huge wooden box, which she marked after she nailed it shut.

  Finding him with her eyes, she approached the group of workers who had just finished with another machine. “Sergey Vladimirovich, what do we do with this box?” Either he didn’t hear her or already had something more important on his mind, but he didn’t show any reaction, and the next instant, she saw him on his way to the hall exit.

  “Don’t touch it!” Anton’s voice stopped her as she bent to lift the box on the lift fork. “I’ll do it.” He shoved her aside.

  Natasha guessed she recognized love and care in his gaze but feeling fatigue gathering behind her eyes was too tired to attach any thoughts to her observation. With nothing more than a quick nod to him, she spun and went to help Elvira collect the small pieces of her friend’s lathe.

  23

  Ulya

  July 8-9, 1941

  The day before, the city was on fire, started as a result of the bombing, and the next day, the sun was blazing. Big puffs from artillery shell impacts covered the cloudless sky. Fights kept unfolding north-west of the city. The West Dvina’s shore was burning.

  From her observation post, Ulya watched rows upon rows of Soviet military units, mostly infantry, supported by a few artillery squads heading to the west. The next day, like an ebbing wave, they appeared in small, distinct groups or singly, bloody, barely able to move. Military tracks collected them to draw away eastbound. Retreating? Defeated?

  Ulya felt a presence behind her back. On instinct, she readied herself for a potential fight and spun around.

  In the doorway, Rita stood dressed in camouflage, a backpack of the same pattern in her hand, her eyes red, perhaps due to lack of sleep.

  “Rita!” Ulya quickened her steps to embrace her friend. “Where have you—” Rita’s steady gaze stopped her in her tracks.

  “Too many wolves in the local woods.”

  “We can get them all quickly eliminated.” Ulya reacted on impulse then shook her head. “Ah, Rita, Rita.”

  A quick smile moved across Rita’s face, which otherwise looked concerned, even oppressed. “Forget about Rita. Agent Cloud.” She officially-mockingly stretched her hand for a shake. So little and delicate, a girl’s hand, Ulya thought, holding it in hers.

  “Bagdan too?”

  Her head bobbed once, so slight a movement it was almost unnoticeable. “Yes, my dear Agent Hunter, we are on the same side of the barricade.” She gave Ulya a long look as if considering whether or not to speak what was on her and Ulya’s mind, then ventured, “Yes, it was I who recommended you.”

  She plucked from her breast pocket and handed to Ulya a slip of paper. “Read.”

  General Headquarters made a decision to change your assignment. Your deployment to Germany is canceled.

  “It looks like Germany came to me,” Ulya said.

  “Yes, looks like it.” A silence fell between them. Rita consulted her watch.

  “And what about—?” Ulya caught her eyes.

  “They beat us.”

  “So I thought.” Ulya restrained herself from asking Rita what was up for her. As though reading her mind again, Rita said, “I have my own assignment. Yours is to lie low. In all cases, your contact person will keep the same password.” She pointed at the order in Ulya’s hand. “Destroy it.”

  Ulya took a lighter from her, clicked, and watched flames catch. She held the scrap of paper until she could feel her fingers singeing.

  “You’ll find everything necessary to subsist in the house while going to pick mushrooms.” A sad smile flashed on Rita’s face. “With your special education, you don’t need me to show you how to unearth them. And I should hurry up.” She took her backpack, gave Ulya a quick hug, and stepped to the doorway. “Stay alive.” The night swallowed her, letting Ulya stand still on the threshold, pondering.

  All the pieces of the puzzle came together. Rita’s well-planned wedding was to bring Ulya closer to the place from where they could smuggle her to Germany. The fancy clothing was indeed intended for her.

  Ulya picked up a flashlight and under the safety of the night, headed to the dugout. Inside, it smelled different from when Rita took her there two weeks earlier. In some boxes she found a stack of food supply: canned stewed meat, vegetable preserves, tins of condensed milk. There were German biscuits and bread sealed in a transparent plastic with the year of baking as far back as 1938, large bars made of Ersatz honey and butter, bars of chocolate, cigarettes and matches. It took her a long moment to figure out that a cigarette lighter hid a tiny secret camera.

  A flush of adrenalin tingled in her body while in other boxes, she discovered a Nagant wrapped in oilpaper, a Tokarev TT-33, fully loaded—eight bullets, 7.62; Parabellum and the latest Walther with silencer, small as a toy, about fifteen centimeters long, easy to conceal. She weighed it in her hand, clicked the safety catch on and off. Her finger tightened around the trigger. There were rounds and rounds of ammunition in separate boxes, all marked. Seven M-34 hand grenades were wrapped in a sackcloth and stored on their own.

  I’m supplied for months in case our army doesn’t stop them—she called them they because though German herself, she rejected even the idea of identifying herself with the invaders.

  A sapper shovel and pickaxe leaning against the earth wall drew her attention. On a whim, a decision came. That was what she needed now. She climbed out, taking them up with her.

  The earth radiated the days’ moderate heat. Ragged clouds moved from the west, promising rain. They occasionally separated, revealing the moon that provided enough glow to avoid using the flashlight. Some trees, or at least their trunks, had a human form so a person standing in front of it would not be visible. Ulya halted to listen but heard only the sound of insects and the hiss of the breeze in the treetops.

  She headed to the conifer tree. From there, she took twenty steps to the peculiarly entwined birches and, after looking around and finding a perfect spot with her eyes, took ten steps to an alder, the only one among the surrounding aspen trees. She put her shovel to work and the sand and clay soil succumbed to its pressure with only the cluster of roots slowing her tempo. By the time the morning flickered in the east, she’d finished constructing a much smaller dugout. Its close proximity to the old one, in case it was discovered, would most probably divert the interlopers from searching the immediate surroundings. Ulya moved one metal box from the old dugout and stacked it with the most important items. Her emergency reserves. As she straightened, fat droplets fell on her face and the next minute, it was pouring, hiding her intrusion into the serenity of the soil.

  After a short, exhausted sleep, she observed the surroundings from her look-out post to see some neighbors busy digging in their vegetable gardens, burying trunks in the pits.

  24

  Natasha

  July 8, 1941

  The German bombardment continued, the humming of explosions coming nearer and nearer. The Soviet troops fought back on the outskirts of the city.

  I can’t. I just can’t. Natasha op
ened her eyes. Even that made her moan. The last five days had been a sequence of unbearable exhaustion. For fourteen hours a day, the workers labored to load the trucks with equipment, which then were driven to the railroad station.

  Perhaps only an opportunity to see Sergey Vladimirovich gave her strength to make herself get up every morning and, after a quick wash and a piece of bread and butter, which she ingested with a glass of milk, hurry to the plant. These days, she hardly saw her aunt. Like thousands of other Vitebsk residents, she had been called up for digging anti-tank trenches around the city.

  The first days of shock had turned into days of hysterical fear and panic. The city rumbled day and night, vehicles and the train of horse-driven carts with people and all possible house staff moved without stopping. To the east. To the east. Like an Exodus.

  There were black holes and craters from bombs everywhere, and the military trucks and refugees shared the roads and the pedestrian walkways.

  Everyone kept glancing into the sky, watching out for German bombers. At the shrill whine of bombs, people climbed over the sides of trucks or carts. “Take cover!” “Disperse!” Those on foot had the advantage: without losing a moment’s breath, they ran to hide in the wrecks.

  By this time, the city was severely demolished. Not as much by the German onslaught, but for the most part by executing Stalin’s decree of leaving behind a desert for the enemy.

  The Sovinformburo communiques recounted hard battles with the enemy on all fronts. The panic-stricken rumors doubled the horror of the situation. Stories of German parachutists disguised as intelligently dressed people and infiltrating the population spread out through Vitebsk as fire on gasoline. Back on June 25, the authorities had established a special exterminatory battalion to fight diversionists. Patrols stopped and checked documents of all who awoke any suspicion.

  To stop the panic, on June 28, the Byelorussian government released a decision ordering the “arrest of individuals who spread all sorts of provocative rumors on the spot and subject them to court martial.” Despite the order, the rumors went on, only circulating in whispers.

  Today, it took Natasha twice as long to barge her way through the crowd to get to the plant. It felt like swimming against the tide—the solid mass of people continued to push in.

  “Natasha.” Sergey Vladimirovich stopped her at the gate. “Go to management and take your evacuation papers.” He consulted his watch. “In four hours, you should be at the train station. Our plant is being shipped to Sa—” He drew his eyebrows together. “With other workers, you’ll go to the place where the equipment is being transported.”

  She bobbed her head. His embarrassment of the unwanted slip did not divert her from raising the question. Were they going to Samara? Saransk maybe? Or Saratov?

  He stretched his hand. “Good luck, Natasha.”

  For the moment he held her hand, she forgot how to breathe. “And you?”

  He made an uncertain move with one shoulder and hurried away.

  On her way home, she wrestled with the dilemma of what to take with her to the evacuation. Were they going to a warm-weather place or to the north?

  Home, she found her aunt in bed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Threw my back out,” she moaned.

  “While digging, I’m sure.” Natasha recalled how generous Sergey Vladimirovich was in offering his help these last days and said, “Can I help you with something?”

  Her aunt got all googly eyed. “Since when have you become so caring?”

  “I evacuate,” Natasha said, ignoring her aunt’s remark.

  “Where do you go?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere with the plant. But how can I leave you behind?”

  All of a sudden, as if the fear of saying a wrong word was forgotten, her aunt shouted out, “Won’t my Red Army defend me? Where is our air force? Where are our tanks?” Her face smeared with red blotches, she dropped eye contact with Natasha. With an anguished “Ooh,” she half rose, supporting herself on her elbow and, watching Natasha rushing about, instructed her, “Take some winter clothes.” “Don’t forget this . . .” “Don’t forget that . . .” irritating and pushing Natasha’s nerves to the limit.

  After Natasha stuffed her things in a cardboard suitcase, she bent to her aunt and placed a peck on her cheek. “But maybe I’ll be back soon.”

  “Take care of yourself, Niece.” Her aunt smothered a sob.

  The sky dimmed in the east. Natasha approached the railway station, but to get close to the platform was a challenge. It looked like the entire city was storming it. Mostly women with teenagers. Bending under the bags of belongings, they swore and pushed one another in an attempt to get to the train cars. A chain of armed soldiers held the line, letting only the citizens with special papers embark. “Are we not human?” some screamed; others spoke in whispers, “The Communist bureaucrats and administration already left with all their belongings.” “With their cars and furniture.” “My neighbor took even his dog and two cats.”

  With much effort, Natasha squeezed through the crowd and pushed into an officer’s hand her evacuation pass. After studying it, he sent her away with a movement of his head. “The last car.”

  “Natasha, Natasha!” she heard Elvira yelling. “Here.” Her friend, half-hanging out of the window, waved with one hand at her.

  Inside the car crammed with her fellow workers, Natasha searched for Sergey Vladimirovich. Elvira, perhaps offended she didn’t thank her for the spare seat, grumbled, “Stop gawking. He is not here.”

  “Who is not here?” Natasha said, then became aware of how her heart choked at her friend’s words.

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  Saying nothing to Elvira’s mocking, Natasha grabbed her suitcase and pushed through the overcrowded car, all the way hearing Elvira yelling behind her back, “Idiot, where do you go? Are you off your head?”

  Getting out of the train station proved even more difficult. Only when the locomotive blew its whistle and started moving, carrying the smell of burning coal with it, did she stop to catch her breath. Now, what would she do?

  She ran to the plant, maneuvering between the bombed buildings and heaps of rubble. The plant workshops stood abandoned. The gate open. And the only noise she heard she guessed was a distant cannonade. Natasha felt ice spreading through her stomach. Would she see Sergey Vladimirovich again?

  25

  Ulya

  July 10-11, 1941

  The German bombardment continued, the humming of explosions coming nearer and nearer. The Soviet troops fought back on the outskirts of the city.

  Ulya climbed up the ladder and pushed the trapdoor to the attic open. From under the turned upside down wicker basket, she took the binoculars and observed what she could see through the small windows. Based on the banging of the cannonade and plumes of smoke that rose to the sky, Germans attacked from the side of Chepino, from Gorodokskoye and Polotskoye highways, and already were on this side of West Dvina, in Ulanovichi, the airbase and railway bridge area. By now, she didn’t even need a map.

  The German airplanes brought not only bombs. Right over her house, like giant snowflakes, pieces of white paper fell. Ulya hurried outside and picked one up, which read,

  The German Army brings you a new order. Don’t fret, we set free all of you except for Yids and Communists.

  She folded the leaflet and, returning to the attic, shoved it behind a plank.

  The next day, before dawn, she heard a strange noise. Or did she feel it first? It seemed to travel through the walls, making them quiver. After some long minutes, her ears picked out the distinctive sound of engines revving, some clanking. The rumble intensified, becoming a roar. The air itself seemed to vibrate. She took a step to the window: panzers moved in a crawl, crushing the wooden fences where they were too close to the roadway. Through the window vent, the warm air brought the smell of fuel, and she tasted the dust on her tongue. After the clouds of exhaust and dust settled down a bit, she watched the heavy
guns towed by trucks and by teams of horses. They trundled over the street, followed by a column of olive-green armored vehicles. She craned her neck: it went on for as far as she could see. It looked surreal, like monsters without human presence. So, they are here.

  26

  Natasha

  July 11-25, 1941

  On July 11, the fight continued inside the city. And then, compared to the madness of the previous days, silence ensued, disturbed only by the murmur of motorcycles and solitary shots.

  For the next week, Vitebsk was like a dead city.

  On July 17, Natasha found a leaflet affixed to their gate printed in Russian and Byelorussian, All citizens of Jewish origin must register. Have your passport with you. And the address where to go.

  They were not Jewish, so Natasha and her aunt dismissed it with an easy mind. And yet, at the uncertainty of what to expect for them, Natasha felt pressure pushing against her chest and convinced her aunt to wait.

  With every passing day, her aunt became more irritated. “Will we sit here like mice in a hole? I remember when Germans stayed here during the Great War nothing bad happened.”

  “What do you suggest we do? We must keep quiet. Why ask for trouble?”

  A week later, her aunt couldn’t take the uncertainty any longer. “Go to the city and find out what’s going on. How long can we stay without bread? Luckily, I stashed enough salt, sugar, and matches.”

  “I’ll go, Aunty. Tomorrow.”

  The next morning, a knock made them wince. “Who’s there?” they cried out in unison.

  “It’s me, Polina. Open the door.” With its characteristic “r”-intoned accent, the voice of their neighbor came then the tugging at the door.