by Gerald Green
The great Ukrainian city which was supposed to resist the Germans to the death was now occupied by them. The Red Army vanished, beaten, almost leaderless.
As soon as I saw the first German troops, I forced Helena to leave the refugee center where they had taken us. The guns we had heard on the way in were not Soviet guns—they were the opening barrage of the Germans, crossing into the Ukraine.
All was confusion for a few days. We looked like any other impoverished Russians, pretended to be farm laborers. Helena’s perfect Russian helped us get by. I stole bread several times—once right from the bakery wagon backed up to the big Continental Hotel, which was the German Army headquarters.
Fighting was still going on in a few sectors of Kiev. Some Russian guerrillas had stayed behind, setting off mines and boobytraps. And vast parts of the city were in ruins.
Hearing a machine gun fire, noticing corpses of both Russians and Germans in the street, I dragged Helena into the rear of a ruined shop, where we could eat our bread.
She began to cry softly. “It’s over, Rudi. We are finished.”
“No, dammit. Eat your bread. Make believe it’s a potato pancake.”
There was a water tap in the rear of the shop. I filled my tin cup with water and we drank.
“It’s awful,” she whimpered.
“Some thanks. I get us dinner. Make believe it’s wine. I won’t stand for any complaining. Wait till we’re married.”
She began to giggle, and I silenced her. Outside the smashed glass of the shop I saw movement. There were three German soldiers in full battle kit. They stopped, looked around, waited.
“What is it?” Helena whispered.
“They looked like SS. Probably getting ready to round people up.”
“Oh, my God. Rudi, what will we do?”
“Hide. Get behind the counter. If they come in, tell them the usual lies. We’re farmers. Bombed out.”
Suddenly there was an enormous explosion, as if all of Kiev were coming apart. Plaster and debris fell around us. Outside it was even worse. The street seemed to be lifted in the air by the force of the blast. A second explosion followed, then a third.
I could hear the echoing of falling plaster, bricks, and then an ear-splitting crash, as if an entire block had collapsed.
Our eyes were blinded with dust, but I could see outside the store that the three soldiers were rising from the gutter, hitching belts, pointing toward the Continental Hotel nearby, from whose bakery I had stolen our dinner.
There was a great deal of shouting in the street, much confusion. More troops came running by. A motorcycle driver, covered with dirt, drove up and I could hear him screaming at the others.
“Continental Hotel. The Russians blew it up. There’s dead and wounded all over the place.”
Even as he spoke, there were two more deafening blasts, and they ran for cover against the side of the shop we were in. One man was struck by a falling beam and collapsed into the very store in which we crouched behind the smashed counter.
His comrades started to come to his aid, but the motorcycle driver ordered them out. “Secure the area. Arrest any Russky you can get your hands on. Shoot to kill the bastards. Jesus, there goes another one.”
“What about Helms?” one of the soldiers asked.
“He looks dead. Christ, let’s get out.”
Sirens wailed outside. Trucks rumbled by. The detonations seemed to have stopped, but in their wake was a low, rumbling noise, as if the earth itself were settling.
Helms. I thought it was impossible. It was a common name. But the street free of Germans, I crawled to the front of the store and looked at the soldier pinned down by the wooden beam.
I stared at his fair, familiar face. It was Hans Helms. I knew he had been in the army for years, but I had no idea he was in an SS unit. I saw the death’s head and the jagged lines on his collar tabs.
“I’m hurt,” he moaned. “Lift that thing off me.”
“Son-of-a-bitch,” I said. “I don’t believe it.”
As yet he had not recognized me.
“Helena,” I said. “When I lift the beam, drag him out.”
I put my back to the beam, braced myself and moved it upward. Gently—too gently as far as I was concerned—she pulled him out.
“Take his rifle,” I said.
She did so.
I took off his helmet. His head was gashed and blood covered his eyes. I stared into them and said his name: “Hans Helms.”
He focused his eyes, blinked as if awakening from a dream and said: “Weiss. Rudi Weiss. For Chrissake, what are you … here … how …”
I grabbed him by his collar and began to shake him. “Never mind, you bastard. I never liked you anyway.”
“Take it easy. They forced me into this outfit. I was a plain infantry guy. Fouled up, and they made me a Black Crow.”
“You shit. You liar.”
Helena was utterly confused. “You know him?” “A relative,” I said.
“Not my fault, Rudi,” he gasped. “I never had anything against you. Jesus, get me some water.”
Helena took his helmet and went to the tap at the rear. She filled it, returned. Helms drank. He seemed unhurt, except for bruises. His legs moved and his arms handled the helmet. So I kept the rifle in my own hands.
“Listen, Helms, I’ve been wandering for three years because of bastards like you,” I said. “Tell me about my family. You ever see your sister?”
“Six months ago. In Berlin.”
“Did she say anything about my parents? Karl? My sister?”
He hesitated. I jabbed the rifle at his throat. “Talk, asshole.”
“Your mother and father are okay, Inga said. They’re in Poland. Warsaw, I guess. It isn’t bad. The Jews got a whole part of the city. Inga hears from them.”
How much he was lying I had no idea. But even lies were better than no information. “Karl?”
“He’s in Buchenwald. He’s okay too. Inga helped get him a soft job.”
I gave the gun to Helena and began to shake him again. “You son-of-a-bitch, I think I’ll blow your head off right here. Tell me the truth. One more dead Nazi won’t bother me. You can die for the Führer.”
He began to plead. “Christ, Weiss, what did I ever do to you? I got nothing against you. We played soccer a hundred times …”
I thought of the helpless, frightened, unarmed Jews his kind had killed and I wanted to kill him; but I could not. “What about Anna?”
Helms inched away from me. “She’s dead. She got sick. Pneumonia, I don’t know.”
I went for his throat. His hands clutched at my sleeves. “Jesus, I had nothing to do with it. No one hurt her. She just … got sick … she died. I don’t know anything else.”
He denied that his parents had informed on her. He claimed he himself was in Russia at the time. My rage prevented me from crying. For the moment I just wanted to hurt him, make him pay for the crimes against my family and all the other outrages I’d seen.
Then I could no longer contain my tears. I wept, loudly, unashamedly. “She was sixteen, Helena,” I sobbed. “Those bastards, I know they had something to do with it.”
“Oh, Rudi, I am sorry. You loved her so.”
I looked at Helms’ bloodied head. His eyes were frightened. These sons-of-bitches could also be afraid. They could learn what it was like to die, unable to defend oneself. “Give me his rifle,” I said.
“No, Rudi.”
“I’m going to blow his head off.”
“Rudi, give me a break.” Hans pleaded. “We took you and your mother and sister in. We took a chance.”
“Because Inga made you.”
“So what? We did it. Look—your father and mother are okay. Karl’s okay—”
“You killed Anna.”
“Didn’t lay a hand on her.”
“That uniform makes you as guilty as anyone who did. I know you’re lying, Helms. Something happened. Tell me.”
“I swear
I don’t know.”
He knew about her being raped and abused, of course; but it is likely he knew nothing about her murder at Hadamar.
Finally, with Helena pleading with me, and explosions rattling the sky and the earth again, I decided to let him go. I had not yet reached the stage where I could shoot a defenseless man. Not yet.
“Help me out of here. I’m hurt. To an aid station.”
“Maybe I’ll bury you alive. The way your people do it to old Jews. Shovel dirt on them while they’re still breathing.”
“I never did anything like that. Listen. I can get you work passes. It won’t be safe for Jews in Kiev, believe me. I’ll see to it they leave you alone.”
Helena looked at his fair, open face, covered with clotting blood. “Rudi, I think we can believe him.”
She was of a trusting, gentle nature; but I listened to her. It took me a few seconds to decide to follow her counsel. Helms was perhaps different. I’d known him a long time. And he was Inga’s brother.
We helped Helms to his feet, set his helmet on his head, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and we walked out of the shop into the rubble-strewn street.
To our left was a squad of Germans, and beyond them some trucks and horse-drawn wagons.
We each held one of Helms’ arms over our shoulders, and we walked toward the squad. A sergeant came forward. I could hear him talking to his men, turning his head. “Christ, they’ve blown up half of Kiev.”
“I’m hurt,” Helms said to him.
“Who are you?”
“Corporal Helms, Twenty-second SS Division.”
The sergeant nodded at us. “Who are they?”
Helena was about to speak, then stopped.
“Jews,” Helms said. “They tried to kill me.”
“No,” I said. “We’re Ukrainian farm laborers. Tell him, Helena.”
“Jews, kikes,” Helms persisted.
“You lousy, lying bastard,” I said to Helms. “We saved your life, we risked our necks for you, and now …”
Two soldiers came forward and sat Hans down on a pile of rocks. A medic began to clean the wound on his head and bandage it, from a first-aid kit.
The sergeant looked at us as indifferently as if we were sacks of potatoes. “You two, on that truck over there.” He jerked his thumb to the truck and the wagons, which were being loaded with Russian civilians.
“Why?” I asked.
He cracked me across my face with his pistol. “Shut your mouth, kike. You’re being moved out for your own good. Move!”
Helena shuddered. I wiped the blood away. The two of us walked down the street to the trucks. “What’s going to happen to us, Rudi?” she muttered.
“I don’t know. I just want to live long enough to get even with that bastard Helms.”
As we were shoved aboard the last truck, there was another earth-shaking explosion. A mine, almost beneath the spot where Helms and the others were standing, had detonated. I looked back and saw that my craving for revenge would never be fulfilled. Hans Helms had been blown to bits, along with the medical aide.
Erik Dorf’s Diary
Kiev
September 1941
The Continental Hotel, army headquarters, is a mass of rubble. More than two hundred of our top army officers and men are dead.
Luckily, Blobel’s command post is in a different part of the city. The army doesn’t care to have us too close to them. The Waffen SS, the fighting branch, is generally accepted. But the army officers, while never impeding us (indeed, often aiding us), prefer to keep some distance between Einsatzgruppen personnel and themselves. In this instance it worked to our advantage.
The carnage and destruction in central Kiev is appalling. Russian engineers apparently mined huge areas of the central city, notably the hotel, and when they had cleared out, they set off timed charges. Who would have thought these primitive Slavs that clever?
Blobel was beside himself, bellowing orders into phones, trying to get information. He will catch the very devil for this from Heydrich. After all, the shooting of Jews is just one of our functions. We are also expected to eliminate saboteurs, criminals, commissars and any elements who might prove troublesome. Surely the Red Army had left spies behind to wreak such destruction.
Blobel and I detest each other, especially since the scene a few days ago when he shamed me into shooting the woman. (The fact is, I’ve since found out, he himself never pulls a trigger, but merely gives orders.) In any case, the disaster that has struck us in Kiev gave me a chance to get back at him.
“Your intelligence left a lot to be desired,” I said, as he raced from phone to phone, taking in reports of more deaths, more devastation in the Ukrainian capital.
“Sure,” he snarled. “We’re so busy shooting Jews, we have no one around to watch the Red Army.”
“You are supposed to do both.”
He slammed a phone down. “Yes, and I can see you snitching on me to Heydrich. To Himmler. That drunken bastard Blobel, with his sloppy operation. Well, why didn’t you know the Red Army had mined the city? What the hell do they think we’re doing all day? Drinking vodka and screwing ballerinas?”
The explosions had ended, but a miasma, a thick mist of pulverized dust, plaster, earth, hung over the ruined city. I looked out of the window. SS squads were rounding up people—anyone loose in the street. The Russian army had melted away. Those not taken prisoner have run to the east. I console myself that they have put up a poor fight for Kiev, have been outgunned and outmaneuvered at every turn. It is said that “Great Stalin” is in a terrified sulk, can barely get himself to read the bulletins from the front, and is ready to surrender.
A thought occurred to me. “Blobel, you think of me as an enemy, but I’m not,” I said. “Maybe we can salvage something out of this mess.”
“What? Collect the insurance on the Continental Hotel?”
Blobel’s sarcasm annoyed me. It is now my conviction that my mentality is so superior to his that I can bend him, make him listen to me, accept my decisions, even though he outranks me. “Neither of us will look too good when this report is filed,” I said. “Instead of dwelling on why we weren’t aware of the Red Army’s minefields, why don’t we blame the whole thing on the Jews?”
Blobel belched, opened his collar. “Christ, Dorf. Those old guys in beards? Those kids with earlocks? Those filthy women? Such people could mine a city, goddam near destroy it?”
Patiently, I explained to him that lies in the service of a greater truth, extreme statements and extreme actions in the pursuit of a great goal, are perfectly acceptable. Jews are both a means and an end, I told him again. Berlin will find our story acceptable on all levels. We need no further excuses for killing them, but emotionally, strategically, placing the blame for the destruction of Kiev on Jews will sit well with everyone. It will gain us the unwavering support of large sections of the Ukrainian population, and it will deflect any possible criticism from the outside—if word ever leaks out about the Einsatzgruppen.
I reminded Blobel of his mocking comment to me—if you kill ten Jews, it is easier to kill a hundred, still easier to kill a thousand.
At once he got on the phone and ordered a new roundup.
Rudi Weiss’ Story
A few kilometers outside Kiev—the day was September 29, 1941—we were ordered off the trucks and wagons and made to walk.
It was very hot. We choked on clouds of yellow dust. People who stumbled and fell were shot. The guards blew their heads off with pistols and shotguns. Helena began to tremble. I held her close to me, tried to keep her from becoming hysterical.
Helena began to talk to a man in front of us, in the line of march. He looked well educated, well dressed, and said he was a schoolteacher. I don’t remember his name—Liberman, Liebowitz.
“They’re taking us to a work camp, I heard the guards say,” he said—almost cheerfully. “That can’t be too bad. They’ll feed us, anyway.”
“Yes,” a woman added. “The
y say we’ll be protected, for our own good, from the Ukrainians.”
“Where is this camp?” asked Helena. “How far?”
“Oh,” the teacher said. “Not too far. Just beyond the Jewish cemetery. Place called Babi Yar.”
Helena turned to me. “A funny name. Babi Yar. It means Grandma’s Ravine.”
I whispered to her, “This is no work camp we’re going to. They want revenge for what happened in Kiev. I don’t believe anything they say any longer. We’re going to run away as soon as there’s a chance.”
“Rudi … no …”
“I’ll drag you by your hair.”
I looked at the poor Jews of Kiev—the old, the weak, the Orthodox, young couples, women with babies in their arms. They believed; something in them impelled them to believe. But had we in Germany, so proud of being German, so modern, so sophisticated, been any smarter?
A convoy of German army vehicles roared by—staff cars, trucks, motorcycles. They were going in our direction. In the back of each truck I could see machine guns, muzzles pointed out, stacks of ammunition boxes.
The convoy raised a cloud of dust, a poisonous, choking cloud. It was dry on the road, the earth beneath our feet a cindery yellow powder. As the billowing dust rose and obscured us, and made the SS guards in their goggles and scarves cough and spit, I grabbed Helena’s arm and pulled her off the road. We rolled down the embankment into an irrigation ditch. I waited a moment. A second convoy roared by. Again the walking column was enveloped in a cloud of powdery earth. Taking advantage of this, I yanked at Helena’s sleeve and we ran, crouching low, to a grove of maples and oaks. The wild grass in the field was high and thick, and helped hide us. Soon we were out of the sight of the column, which had grown in size until it seemed to stretch all the way back to Kiev.
Beneath a rocky ledge we rested. She huddled in my arms and cried softly. I kissed her tears, kissed her nose, her mouth. I told her we would not die, that I would not let them kill us.
It was the foolish bragging of youth, but I had no other course but to lie to her, or at least to project a hopeful future.
Soon she stopped crying. She was so small, so courageous, so much a part of me. I have often wondered how so young and frail a girl could be so strong in character, so loving, so full of desire. Her background was humble. The daughter of a shopkeeper, pathetic Zionists, ordinary Prague Jews. But bred in her—how I do not know—was a love and a depth of feeling that reminds me in many ways of Anna, my lost sister.
