The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  The friend of her aunt barged inside, almost knocking Natasha down. She swiped sweat from her forehead and plunged onto the backless chair. “They have ordered all Jews to register.”

  “But that’s for Jews. What concern is it of ours or yours?” Natasha’s aunt shot back.

  “That’s exactly what I expected, but they sent a man forcing us to come to register. I’ve been there today and tried to explain. What kind of Jew am I if only my great-grandfather was Jewish? We, in my family, have never talked about him. And we attended service in the Orthodox Christian church!” Stains of scarlet appeared on her cheeks, and Natasha recognized fear in her eyes. “But that was before the Revolution,” she added as though suddenly concerned her admission of attending worships banned by a Soviet policy might bring her trouble.

  “So, what’s the problem?” Natasha’s aunt raised her eyebrows.

  “They would not listen. See, they gave me and all my family members these patches.” She pulled out from her pinafore pocket a round, yellow piece of fabric, about ten centimeters in diameter. “Said we have to stitch them into the right sleeve and the back. Said all Jews must have them.”

  “What’s the difference. Just wear them. Keep out of trouble.” Natasha’s aunt gave a shrug.

  “Aunt Polina, how did they find out who is Jewish and who is not?” Natasha interjected.

  “Do I know? They had us on one of their lists. Do you know, they established some Judenrat, said it will take care of us all.”

  “But what should the non-Jewish people do?” her aunt interrupted Polina.

  “Register as well. In the City Council on Tolstoy Street, four.”

  “It’s where the Communal Bank is?” Natasha asked.

  “Was. Take your passports. You’ll get a new one.”

  “We’ll go right now. In any case, we need to go to the market. Right, Aunty?” Natasha replied when Polina was already on her way out.

  It took a while to reach the Council. The streets and many buildings of their beautiful Vitebsk were in ruins, some still smoldering, the burning odor hanging in the hot, summer air.

  Jackbooted, field-green-clad German soldiers swarmed the city streets. Barking voices. Tired but happy faces. On every intact structure hung red flags bearing a white circle with a large black swastika inside.

  Walking on, Natasha and her aunt passed by wrecked trucks and heavy guns, human corpses here and there on the baked earth. To the right of a mangled building, women, children, and the elderly, most likely Jews judging by their clothing, lay prostrate. The same picture at the Psychiatric Clinic on Bolnitchnaya Street, the still air saturated with the cloying stench of rotting bodies, clouds of large iridescent flies buzzing around crazily. “What, no one is concerned about burying them?” Natasha muttered, pressing one hand to her nose.

  Most of the houses on Tolstoy Street remained intact. A rather long line stretched to a building. Natasha and her aunt joined the silent mass of people. Only deep sighs audible, suddenly, a voice cut through the silence as though talking to himself, “Why feel sad? Maybe it’ll be better under Germans. What good did we have with the Communists?” He smacked his lips.

  Some people nodded. Others shrugged. Many lowered their heads so as not to express their reactions. Natasha threw a side glance at her aunt. Her face was tense, her eyes unreadable.

  Encouraged by the tacit acceptance, the orator, a mature man of intelligent appearance, a teacher or a bank employee perhaps, Natasha thought, would not let up. “What, haven’t you heard the Germans are going to allow free trade? Yes, yes. Don’t look at me this way,” he convinced a woman who stood in front of him and now half-turned.

  “How do you know?”

  “People say. Germans distribute seeds and their leaflets promise to return us to free land ownership. I’m telling you.” He smacked his lips again.

  Fricking agitator. Natasha was annoyed but kept her irritation to herself.

  It took hours to get first to the door with a hand-written sign Registry then to the table where they got each a piece of paper with questions about their identity. “Come tomorrow and bring your passports again,” a clerk, a middle-aged little weasel, said after they filled out the form.

  “And what then?” Natasha eased into a smile while fingering a loose tendril of hair on her cheek.

  Taking no notice at her attempt to flirt, he grounded the words out between his teeth. “Then you’ll get your new Ausweis—Passport and an assignment for work.”

  “What about some ration cards?” her aunt interjected.

  He looked at her as though she was a moron and proclaimed the well-known Soviet catchphrase: “You don’t work, you don’t eat.”

  27

  Ulya

  End of July-August 1941

  Days came and went. An unsettling feeling gnawed at Ulya’s gut. To wait? To take initiative into her hands? As a military person, she could not act without an order though. What about special circumstances? No, that would mean disobeying the Charter. Besides, Rita had told her she would be contacted.

  The first Germans in flesh and blood appeared on Nikolskaya Street riding two black motorcycles with a mounted gun in the sidecar. From her observation post, she watched them move along the street on both sides, stopping at every house to paste what looked like a flyer to a door or a fence. At the end of the street, they turned around and after looking toward Ulya’s house, sent one of theirs to it on foot.

  Ulya climbed down from the attic and waited for the courier on the porch. He approached with obvious caution, one hand on a submachine gun, the other he stretched to her with a sheet of paper. “Commissars? Communists? Jews?” He pointed at the house with his head.

  “Keine Kommissaren. Keine Kommunisten. Keine Juden,” she responded.

  A broad smile appeared on his young, rosy-cheeked face. “Bist Du Deutsch?—Are you German?”

  “Wolgadeutsche—Volga German.”

  “Ich bin aus Österreich—I am from Austria.” He shifted from foot to foot. “In case you know where they hole up or if somebody hides them, report to the Commandantur.” A motorcycle horn made him turn his head to his comrades then back to her. “This is for Russian soldiers if you happen to meet them.” He glanced at the flyer in her hand. “Goodbye.” And off he went.

  The double-sided piece of paper with the text in Russian and in German read,

  This permit is valid for an unlimited number of

  commanding officers and soldiers of the Red

  Army who are joining the German troops.

  The bearer does not want the senseless bloodshed on behalf of Yids and commissars and leaves the defeated Red Army to join the German Armed Forces. German officers and soldiers will welcome this person, feed him and provide work.

  She returned to the attic and watched the motorcycles stop at the first house on Nikolskaya Street. Indeed, they stopped to take—flowers? from Oksana’s hands while her parents bowed in a servile fashion to the gray-green clad soldiers.

  A soft moon light flooded the room.

  Ulya crossed the borderlines from sleep to vague wakefulness and back again when she thought she detected a slight noise from outside and then her eye caught a fleeting shadow behind the lacy curtains. Jumping from the bench and inching along the wall, she hid behind the oven with a good view of the entrance door.

  A light creak and the next instant, a man halted in the doorway. Young. Of her height. Slightly built.

  She threw herself on him and, putting an armlock on his throat, pushed him down.

  “Too many wolves in the local woods,” he wheezed out.

  “We can get them all quickly eliminated,” she said then released him.

  “What a greeting. I wouldn’t want to come across you in a dark alley,” he breathed out and smartened his shirt while getting to his feet.

  In the light from the moon, she noticed he wore belted light-colored cotton pants and a typical Byelorussian shirt with some embroidery at the collar.

  H
e rubbed his face and stretched his hand for a shake. “Nathan.” A smile found its way through the grimace of pain she knew she’d inflicted on him. Two little dimples on his cheeks appeared, making him seriously handsome. He was soft faced, however, close up she detected a few hard lines in his countenance. His eyes seemed dark in the dimness of the room.

  From inside his boot top, he plucked a slip of paper. “For you.”

  In tiny handwriting, Your assignment is to infiltrate one of the offices (SS, SD, Gestapo, Police, or the civil administration subordinated to the occupying authorities) with the goal of obtaining information about the opponents. You are forbidden to carry out any killing operations or be involved in any other activity that could jeopardize your mission. The person who hands you this message is your liaison.

  He took the paper back from her. “First, you need to register in the city council and apply for work. They need translators, so most likely they’ll place you in one of the German institutions. Don’t conceal the fact you are the daughter of an anti-Soviet activist.”

  Ulya cringed at the remark.

  “No one here except for me knows of your mission. Well, some people over there.” He made an indefinite gesture with his hand. “In case I can’t contact you, another comrade will. The safe word remains the same.”

  She nodded, studying his well-defined, generous mouth. His voice was cultured and, again, she caught herself on the sensation it was pleasing to her ears.

  “Exercise extreme caution. Avoid any confrontation with the locals. All the communication goes through a hiding place. Let’s step out, I’ll show it to you.” He limped, slightly favoring his left leg.

  “Is it I who—?”

  He followed her gaze. “No, not at all. As a teenager, I broke my knee.”

  She exited with him into a cool night. A rainy wind blew fat white clouds rapidly across the sky, now and then revealing a large white moon.

  He headed to the outhouse. “Luckily, this part is screened from all sides.”

  She couldn’t agree more. However tiny, the shabby construction at which Nathan stopped protected a view of a fence section from the grove. He pulled a plank, stooped down, and parted a wormwood shrubbery aside. Taking her hand in his, he guided it to the ground and let her feel a depression in the earth. “Pull it out.”

  She picked up a half-liter jar with a removable lid.

  “You’ll get my assignments from here. Leave yours here too. Report the progress of your actions. Till the next contact.” He turned around but she grabbed him by the elbow. “Stop. How is it there?”

  “Challenging. The Germans blocked Leningrad. Our troops hold the attack against Moscow. Kiev is lost to us,” he said with light bitterness and only after Ulya released her grip on his arm, disappeared in the darkness behind the spruces.

  His visit took hardly ten minutes.

  No doubt, the people who stood behind him were prepared for war. Words from a popular pre-war song came to her mind: “We strengthen the defense for a reason. And on the enemy’s land, we will defeat him with mighty blows.” The words that some time ago sounded assuring and even cheerful, now left her with a sense of irritation.

  Though the morning was at its beginning, sun flooded Nikolskaya Street on one side while on the other shade prevailed. A perfect day to start a new life.

  After her everyday morning exercises, a thorough washing, and light breakfast, Ulya got dressed smartly in a knee-length dark gray skirt and a white collared long-sleeved blouse she’d ironed so not a wrinkle was in sight. She covered her head with a white headscarf and before leaving, checked herself in the mirror. Something was wrong. She took the headscarf off and fixed her braided hair helix-style over her ears, careful not to leave a strand out of place. The previous night, she’d found a little jar of black boot cream and shined her battered heelless shoes, deciding not to touch the fancy footwear intended for her deployment to Germany. Germany. An uncomfortable sensation like a fleeting cloud swept over her. No regrets, she steeled herself. Before heading outside, she looked in the mirror one last time and found her appearance out of place. So be it, she thought and, swinging her black purse over her left arm, she stepped out of the front door.

  Despite the early hour, the day promised an afternoon of heat. She was about to turn toward the city center when she caught the noise of a cart behind her back. “Hey, girl,” a male voice hailed her. “To the market?”

  “To the City Council.”

  “Right on my way. Hop up.” The peasant, who she would put in his sixties, motioned to the back of the cart.

  Ulya settled on the sacks and inhaled the air infused with fresh hay, still smelling of the field.

  Her carriage-driver seemed impatient to strike up a conversation. “So, you decided to work for Germans?” And without waiting for her answer, continued, “That’s shrewd. With them, we’ll have a better life, not like under the Bolsheviks.” He added a juicy swearword. “Have you heard our liberators are re-opening churches? But maybe you don’t believe in God, I surmise. Like all the youth. The damned Communists forbade my grandchildren going to church.” Again, he seemed unable to help adding a well-rounded Russian curse then concluded with, “Godless brats.”

  Ulya chose to please him. “Why, I believe in God, and I am glad they are opening churches.”

  He craned his neck to glance at her. “The way you speak. Are you not local?”

  “I am not.”

  A bunch of bricks and smashed building parts blocked the street. “See? The Reds. What they did to the city!” Again, he swore. “Detonated the production plants and most of the bridges, the devil curse them!”

  “But how do you know it was them?”

  As though he didn’t hear her retort, he continued grumbling under his nose, “I saw Germans in 1918. They are a cultured nation not like those Bolsheviks and Yids.”

  On one hand, the German sympathizer was right. Some parts of the city lay in ruins, which might be due to Stalin’s order of scorched earth. The man maneuvered his horse as they passed the half-destroyed railroad.

  They drove by groups of young men with the round, yellow patches on their shirts who worked clearing, shifting rubble under the supervision of German soldiers with German shepherds, the dogs howling, snarling, tearing at their chains.

  From afar, Ulya saw a line to an imposing old two-story building. Red-white-and-black swastika banners dangled on both sides of the high entrance door. The man stopped the horse and, most likely disappointed she didn’t badmouth the Soviet power in agreement with him, waved his hand. “There, the Council.”

  At the entrance, a man with the red and white band on his left sleeve checked documents. When her turn came, he demanded her passport. “Not a local? Go to room six. Along the corridor, on the right side.”

  She found it and had to wait, six people ahead of her. At last, as the woman who had been in front of her in the line, exited, a voice came through the open door, “Next!”

  In the small room, behind the only table, a man bent over the desk with piles of folders, writing something in an accounting ledger. “Name?” he said without lifting his head.

  “Kriegshammer.”

  His head jerked up. “What?” A face, gray with exhaustion. “Is it a Jewish name?”

  “German. Here is my pass. I need an Ausweis.” She took the initiative.

  The man cleared his throat and snatched the passport from her hand. Towering over him, she watched him dipping his pen into the inkpot and with a steady hand recording her name into the ledger below somebody’s last name, Grishko, then her date of birth, place of registration. “Engels. Where is it?” He blew on the ink.

  “On the Volga River.”

  “What is your business here?” The clerk watched her with suspicion.

  “My friend invited me to her wedding. I was her maid of honor.”

  “I see.” He pushed a piece of paper to her and a pencil. “Here, write your explanation and also what is your education, your prof
ession, what you can do.”

  Ulya turned around looking for a table.

  “On the windowsill. In the corridor.” He snapped the ledger shut.

  By the time she finished her account, the line had exhausted. The man took her report, read it through. “You speak German?”

  “I do.”

  “Good?”

  “Yes.”

  A look of indefinable emotion ran over his otherwise inexpressive face. He rose from the table and waved her to step out of the room with him. “Wait here.” He hastened along the corridor almost at a trot, clasping her report to his chest, and soon disappeared around the corner.

  Meanwhile, Ulya studied the surroundings: the doors along the wall, in front of every one a longer or a shorter line, people solemn and gloomy. She was the only person in front of number six. Most likely, the strangers were few.

  Men with the red and white bands hastened by. A young woman in a starched white apron and headband passed, a plate with a teacup and some cookies on it. For a fleeting moment, the air became saturated with the aroma of coffee. Ulya inhaled deeply and smiled at the memory: SHON. Herr Wagner. The western manners and the coffee etiquette.

  The clerk returned in about thirty minutes, his eyes shifting. “Would you mind coming tomorrow at eight? You’ll get your new document and you’ll . . . talk with a responsible person.”

  28

  Natasha

  July 31, 1941

  A gun shot roused Natasha from her drowsiness. Her stomach turned. She slipped from the bed and tiptoed to the window. First, she heard cries and swearing in Russian and Byelorussian coming from the neighbor’s hut then noticed several Polizei. Observed by a German officer with his hand resting on the pistol holstered to his belt, Byelorussians waved their rifles, herding Polina’s old parents and her two daughters with small children to an open truck.