There was no hope of waging a real battle with them. We decided to run for our lives. Once I started to run it seemed that my feet barely touched the ground. Bushes and branches would loom ahead of me and I would jump and fly over them like a bird. There were bullets hitting the trees on either side of me. There were bodies falling. I kept running for maybe an hour, never stopping, not tiring until the very end. Whoever was left from our group had completely dispersed. I was on my own.
I remember that I crossed a road and then went into a deep stretch of woods. I found a secluded place to lie down. I needed to rest and plan how to get back to our camp. While I was lying there, I heard footsteps coming toward me through the woods. I thought it would be a German who had somehow followed me. But instead it was one of my fellow Mir runaways who had joined the politruk’s group at the same time I had. He too had survived the ambush. It was a happy occasion for both of us to meet in the woods. We were both relieved at no longer being alone or surrounded by the enemy.
It took us three days to get back to the camp. We were very careful, because the politruk would have told the Germans the location of the camp, and it was possible that they would launch a follow-up attack. As it turned out, there had been a few other survivors from the ambush who had reached camp ahead of us and broken the news to the others. As a result, everyone had scattered off into small groups. Thank God, my father was still waiting for me. The Germans must have decided that the ambush was successful enough that a full-scale counterattack on our camp would have been a waste of time and supplies.
My father and I became part of a small group, five or so of us at first. We knew that winter was coming on, that we would have to dig a larger bunker in which to live, and that we could not take the risk of remaining close to the road. We also decided that our chances for survival would increase if we could link up with other Jews in hiding and form a larger group. So we merged with another small band of Jews whom we had seen coming and going in the woods. The wilderness region in which we were living was called Miranke—basically a swampland with trees on the higher patches of land.
Now there were fourteen of us, including three women, one of whom was a doctor who had run away with her husband. There were eight young men who could go out and obtain food and, if need be, engage in skirmishes with the German or Polish police. My father stayed behind and helped with the cooking and other camp chores, as did the women.
Together we started to dig a new bunker for winter deep in the woods. It was a difficult task, given as many people as we had in the group. It wasn’t possible to do anything too extensive, because the larger it was, the harder it would be to conceal.
We found a small hill, more a mound than a hill. Then we dug down into the ground and created an underground hole roughly five feet deep and fifteen feet by twelve feet in length and width. In the four corners of the bunker, we set the trunks of four small trees as support poles. We also lined the dirt walls with saplings, to prevent the earth from crumbling down on us. Over the top we constructed a cover of intertwined branches covered first by earth and then by small standing evergreen shrubs. After the first lasting snowfall, the bunker looked just like a little mound with evergreens.
The entrance to the bunker, which took up one of its sides, was a sloping passageway that you went down like a children’s slide. Only one person at a time could slide in or climb out. On two of the sides within there were sleeping bunks made out of saplings and branches. They weren’t comfortable, but they kept our bodies from touching the cold earth directly. On one of the sleeping sides there was also a food-storage area. We ate what we could scavenge and what would keep in those underground conditions—mainly flour, potatoes, and roots.
The fourth and final side was reserved as a cooking area. We made a tiny hole in the cover of our shelter, to which we rigged up a piece of metal pipe we had scavenged. It served as a chimney for the little fire we kept going through the nights in a small brick fire pit we had set up in the center of the bunker. We used the fire both for cooking and for warmth, though we were always cold, given what little clothing we had. We had managed to take some blankets from the farms, but they weren’t enough to keep the winter from sinking into our bones. And the fire was for nighttime only—because during the day, especially in the winter sky, any smoke could be clearly seen for a mile or more. At night, under cover of the dark, we could only hope that the farmers would be sleeping.
Our schedule was to start cooking at two A.M., eat in the middle of the night, and sleep during the day. We set a pail on top of the bricks of our firepit, and in this pail we would cook our staple main dish. Here was the recipe:
We started with water. Next to our firepit we dug a deeper hole that served as a kind of well into which the underground swamp water would seep. It did not take much digging to strike water—brackish water, brown like strong beer. And it stank of the swamp. We would drink it through pieces of rag. And on the other side of the rag, as we drank, things would be crawling. It was unbelievable at first, to live this way. If on a particular night we could use melted snow instead of the strained swamp water, it was a gourmet dish! When the water came to a boil we poured some flour in it, so that it came to look like thick clay. That was it—our basic soup, a clay to eat with spoons we had stolen from the farms. We didn’t even have salt for seasoning. We called the soup zacierke. For a different dish with the same ingredients, we would replace the pail with a flat piece of scrap metal and then pour the flour-water clay into little patties that we baked on both sides. That was our bread. Now and then we boiled a big pailful of potatoes.
We couldn’t relieve ourselves outside, because any farmers passing through the woods would have noticed the human waste. So we dug a second hole alongside of our bunker, and dug a small window opening between the two. Then we would relieve ourselves in small pots and empty the pots into that second hole through the window, which we stopped up with rags when it was not in use. That was our toilet-flushing system.
We didn’t dare go outside unless there was a big snowstorm. Our tracks would disappear right away if the snowfall was heavy enough. We could take walks, make expeditions for food. But if the snowfalls didn’t come, we could be trapped inside the bunker for days on end. Naturally, that meant the numbers of visits we could pay to neighboring farms was dramatically reduced, and our diet suffered as a result. Still, there were times, even when the snow was not falling, that we had to go out and get ourselves food from the farms. We had to worry about tracks, about being followed. Our hiding place never felt fully secure. We just hoped that we would not be trapped inside by a surprise ambush, without the chance to wage a fight.
So during this winter of 1942–43, we basically lived like squirrels, hiding in a hole. As you can imagine, the air in the bunker stank like hell. On nights when it was snowing or otherwise very dark, we would lift open the cover of the bunker a bit. Otherwise, we would sit in our hole.
We were doing our best to survive, even to resist, but no one in our group expected to come out alive from that hell. The main thing was not to be taken alive by the Germans, not to submit to their questions, their torture, and a passive death at their hands. We were always armed and had an understanding that if we were ambushed, we would fight until we were killed. If need be, we would shoot one another rather than be captured. It was inevitable that we would die—but death would come on our terms.
Once I became used to that idea, I became extremely brave. I don’t say this to boast, but only to describe the state of mind I was in. I wasn’t afraid of death any longer. I established myself as the leader of the group and always went out on food raids from the farmers in the region. I took huge risks. I would pick farms that were owned by Nazi sympathizers and were situated only two miles from German police headquarters. We would break into the houses and steal lots of food and clothing. Then we would smash the windows and the furniture. We killed their dogs when they bit us.
It came to the point that the Germans already knew me
by name. I found out from some of the farmers that the German police had placed a price on my head! This was an honor at a time when Jewish life came very cheap.
I should tell you that something happened to me during that time—in August or September 1942. It was a dream, a very powerful dream—one that I believed in completely, without logic or reason.
A voice—I think it was my mother’s voice—told me that I would meet Rochelle in the woods and that we would come together and remain together. I don’t remember seeing the face that was speaking to me in the dream. It was just a voice coming toward me. But I did see Rochelle’s face very clearly.
When I woke up I started to think. Yes, Rochelle and I had known each other in Stolpce before the war, but we hadn’t dated or even had a close relationship. Why would she come into my dream? I didn’t even know if she was still alive. The chances were that she had died in the liquidation of the Stolpce ghetto. And even if she had survived that ordeal, the chances of her running to the same place in the woods where I was hiding were not even one in a million.
But I believed in the dream, as I have said. I took it so seriously that, while we were digging out our winter bunker—roughly a month after the dream—I insisted that we construct one extra space next to my own to be saved especially for Rochelle.
When I told the members of the group that Rochelle would be coming, they all thought I was going crazy. I’m sure they were laughing and joking about it behind my back. But I was a very effective leader on the food raids and they needed me. So they tried to reason with me, because space was at a premium in the bunker. “How can you know she is going to come?” they would ask. “Maybe she’s dead, maybe she’s a hundred miles away!”
I didn’t want to tell them about the dream. In fact, I didn’t give them any explanation at all. I said only, “Don’t any of you worry about it. I just want a space ready for her when she comes.”
So matters stood in November 1942, roughly three months since the dream had come to me. I was sitting in the bunker. Outside we had two young men standing guard at two different observation posts, to make sure we weren’t taken by surprise. One of the lookouts came back to me to report that there were three Jewish women coming toward our shelter. The guard had stopped them, and they told him they wanted to speak to me. I had no idea who the women were—the guard hadn’t gotten their names. So I went out to meet them.
Rochelle was standing out there. It was unbelievable! She was alongside a friend of hers, Tanya, and they were being led by a girl from my hometown of Mir, named Fania, who was in a little partisan group of her own in a nearby part of the woods. Even in Fania’s group, they had heard the story about how this crazy Izik Sutin wanted to save a place in the bunker for a girl he hadn’t seen for years and knew nothing about. In fact, that’s how Fania knew to take Rochelle to our bunker. She had heard the story, and when she ran into Rochelle she decided to bring her to me.
Well, there she was.
What I felt when I first saw Rochelle standing there was that my dream had not lied to me. Someone, something, was watching over us. Rochelle and I had been fated to meet.
How else could she have arrived at the same small hole in the woods in which I was hiding? How else could I have known to prepare for her arrival?
All this is something of what I felt at that moment. The rest—and there is more—I cannot find the words to tell.
V
Rochelle Escapes from the Stolpce Ghetto
ROCHELLE
A former schoolmate whispered in my ear, and suddenly I was an orphan.
My mother’s last message to me was to take nekome, revenge. On a certain abstract level, I could understand. I wanted it myself. But, at the same time, it was incomprehensible to me. I was alone, a girl without weapons or power, surrounded by a world that had shown me nothing but hate.
People use the word “trauma” to describe how they feel when something very bad happens to them, something they know will have a lasting effect. To me, the word is not strong enough to convey what the first days—after learning of the death of my mother and sisters—were like.
One thing I know I did not feel at that time—a sense of fear over what might happen to me. In truth, the worst I could imagine had already happened. The Nazi murderers had conquered without much effort and now they were doing their work without hindrance. I was a slave in their hands, one who worked in the local sawmill to produce the lumber demanded by the German war machine. What was left to fear?
In fact, as my head started to clear, I even began to feel a crazy sense of freedom. I had been helping my mother care for my younger sisters—watching over them, scavenging bits of wood from the sawmill to serve as fuel for the stove. But now they were gone. And so now there was nothing to prevent me from doing whatever I had to do. My life was my own to give up, so to speak.
The night after I had resumed my labor, I returned to the cold, bare ghetto room in which my mother and sisters and I had been living for the past few months. I found a couple of photos on the floor—my mother, my sisters, their faces before me again. I picked up the photos and put them in my brassiere. I still have them.
I knew then.… I had made up my mind.
There was nothing left for me but escape. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to survive. At that point, I did not even know that there was such a thing as a Jewish resistance effort. There was no media, no communications network to let those of us trapped in the ghetto know that there were Jewish partisans in the woods. Under the Nazis, those Jews who lived at all lived in total isolation. But I would not let them strip me naked in front of the German police and the Polish people I had gone to school with. They were not going to take me on a truck to the grave. I was not going to wait for that. I decided that I would die running!
At the sawmill, I worked alongside another Jewish girl named Tanya. We had both grown up in Stolpce, though we were never close friends. Our job was to catch and pile the bark as it was sawed off the raw boards, and then to stack the boards. The boards kept coming all day—we had to move constantly.
Physically, Tanya and I resembled each other: we both had brown wavy hair and we were both buxom. Tanya was a very sweet and friendly girl. So I confided in her. I said, “Listen, they’re going to kill us in a couple of weeks anyway. Right now they’re just organizing us into groups to see how many they have to liquidate. I’m going to make a break for it. Let them shoot me in the back as I try to escape.”
Tanya decided to go along with me. Her parents and her siblings had all been killed. For Tanya, life had become a sorrow. She was willing to try to escape, I did not have to work to persuade her. There was a Jewish man and his wife who worked alongside us as well. The man’s name, I remember, was Mottel. He was a tall, gangly man in his twenties. He and his wife had been sweethearts since high school, and they had a five-year-old son together. We decided that we were going to try to escape together—all at once. For Mottel and his wife, it was an awful decision, because they knew that if they took their son with them he would never survive. It would be a death they would have to watch. So, on the morning we had planned for our escape, they left him in the ghetto. They said good-bye to him and left him with the older Jewish women with whom they were packed together in a room. They were saying good-bye knowing their son would die. There were no good choices, there were only ways of dying.
The sawmill was located on the Niemen River. Right across the Niemen was a forest. We would try to swim across the river and then head for the woods. Why as a group? Only because it gave us an extra bit of courage to die together. There was no plan beyond that. We never even talked about what we would do if we reached the woods. We didn’t expect to live that long. We just decided that we didn’t want to be killed the way the Nazis planned—slowly, as it suited their purposes, and after we had worked ourselves to near death. We could die with some dignity. We would try to get away, they would shoot us with their machine guns, and that would be it.
There was a cha
nce element that played a role—the local terrain. Because there was a forest across the Niemen River, we had a very slim chance of success that somehow helped us to take the risk, even though none of us really believed that we would survive. Without the forest, it would have been a joint suicide pact, pure and simple.
We decided to wait for an especially foggy morning. Such a morning came toward the end of September, 1942. Our plan called for making a break just after we had been marched by the Nazis, in the early dawn, from the ghetto to the sawmill for our daylong labor. There were two outhouses that stood at the very end of the sawmill, not far from the river. The German routine called for allowing the Jewish workers, upon arrival, five or so free minutes for stretching and physical needs before we had to go to our machines.
And so we began our escape by moving casually toward the outhouses. I was wearing clothing that the Nazis had decided was not worth confiscating. It was my high-school uniform—a pleated skirt and a top, shoes, and a jacket.
The four of us first crawled under some loose barbed wire that had been set up by the Germans, and then we ran roughly fifty yards to the river just before the bell rang that called the Jews to our machines. Once we reached the river, we dove in, still clothed, and started swimming as hard and as fast as we could.
Within a minute we could hear the German police raising a cry. But they didn’t have cars or motorcycles—those were too valuable for the large-scale liquidation and military operations to be wasted on a ragged Jewish work crew. And so the German police who chased us had only bicycles. But they were fully armed. The machine guns were loud … rat tat tat tat. We heard the bullets hit the water all around us and we thought that was what we wanted: to die at any minute.
But somehow, I don’t know how, we managed to swim all the way across the river to the other side. Then we ran for the woods. The machine guns were still going. You could hear the bullets striking the trees and ripping the leaves that were still left on the branches. Mottel and his wife must have run in another direction, because I didn’t see them again for a long time. But Tanya and I ran together. Meanwhile, between swimming and running, I had lost my shoes, so I was barefooted. And I had thrown away my jacket just before diving into the river because it would have been too hard to swim in it. So I was just in my pleated school skirt and blouse.
Jack and Rochelle Page 8
