“Byelorussian,” Willy corrected him with a grin.
“All the same. Cold as Hades! Makes one want to ask for a transfer to the JG 52 – I bet they aren’t freezing their tails off in the Caucasus!”
“To hell with that!” his comrade countered at once. “I’d rather freeze my tail off here in Minsk with our partisans than get it shot down over Stalingrad by the Soviet flak!”
“JG-52 isn’t anywhere near Stalingrad,” the first one argued.
“It is now; someone has to escort the Stukas that drop the supplies to the Army. At least part of it is transferred there, I heard.”
“Nonsense! They’re near Crimea, the Kerch Peninsula or some such, warming their bones in the sun as we speak!”
“Like hell they are! They’re covering the 4th Panzer Army’s retreat in Stalingrad; I’m telling you this on the most reliable authority.”
“A breakthrough then; not retreat!”
“What kind of a breakthrough is it when one is trying to work his way out of an encirclement, I’m asking you?”
“They’re breaking through the enemy lines, so it’s a breakthrough.”
“Same song, different words. They’re surrounded, aren’t they?”
“See that the SD muttons don’t hear you or you’ll quickly find yourself in one of their disciplinary battalions. Surrounded,” he repeated mockingly.
“They are though!”
They made off, still bickering between themselves. I watched them go, marveling at the very idea that the occupying forces themselves had just as much idea as to what was happening around them as the local population. A lot of good their radios did, too; Willy couldn’t bear listening to it for longer than five minutes before changing the wave to something that played music – the music didn’t lie, according to him. Everything else, including newspapers, Goebbels’s speeches, Hitler’s promises, Göring’s reports, and most of all, local political officers’ announcements, was lies through and through.
“Liza!” An idea suddenly occurred to him, lighting up his eyes. “What if you listen to the radio in my office when you clean there? Ilse and I will leave the room while you clean and you can turn it on and learn more about what’s going on. If the news is true, perhaps, we’ll be able to do something about it.”
“Like what?” She regarded him dubiously.
“If the 6th Army is indeed surrounded and is about to surrender, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of soldiers lost to the Soviet Gulag,” Willy began to explain patiently. “As soon as Paulus surrenders, the OKW will need to take manpower from somewhere to cover that hole in the front. Most certainly they will start taking personnel from all the parts of the Occupied Territories, which is not involved with the active front. Including Minsk.” He gave Liza a pointed look.
She wasn’t grasping it, judging by her look. “But that’s bad news for you, is it not?”
“Not for me personally. I’m a bureaucrat; they won’t transfer me. They need flyers, not bookkeepers. Our Wehrmacht colleagues, however, will most likely have to take a hike, along with a few Staffel of the Luftwaffe and the SS. This will make their patrols and such much laxer since now they’ll be lacking the manpower to man every single checking post.”
A shadow of a smile lit up in Liza’s gaze. “We’ll be able to run to the forest.”
“That’s the idea,” Willy confirmed with a conniving grin, which was soon replaced by a scowl. “You’ll be taking a great risk with that radio though. I can’t lock the room while you’re in there; I can only warn the people against walking in there so that they don’t muddy your freshly mopped floors but…”
“Don’t worry on my account, Herr Leutnant, I’m not afraid. I’ll talk my way out of it.”
We were decorating Luftwaffe quarters for the approaching Christmas. The mess hall for the officers was adorned in fir tree branches and garlands, which Liza and I cut out of paper – layers and layers of artificial snowflakes of all shapes and sizes rested on the sharp-scented pine. The tables had been already moved into a bracket shape by a few orderlies and covered by the freshly starched tablecloths. From the forest, the woodcutters delivered a tree of such an enormous size that its top was reaching the ceiling without any additional decorations. Willy still ordered one of the soldiers to climb the ladder and snip the top a bit. The Yule Tree is not a tree without a star, he declared.
Much to my surprise, one of the officers delivered two large cardboard boxes filled with toys and decorations of many kinds.
“Requisitioned from the townspeople,” he explained, a bit embarrassed. “A toy from each household. We’ll return them all after the holidays, of course! Everything is written down and accounted for.”
I had no doubt it was.
He soon returned with a box full of candles, this time simply depositing it by our feet and walking away briskly. Where that was requisitioned from, was anyone’s guess.
Liza and I finished decorating the tree by four. Kitchen personnel began setting the tables and we went up to Willy’s office to collect our coats and ration cards for the brigade – today we would be getting a double portion.
Willy was on the phone with someone. Abruptly, he finished the conversation with the I’ll have to call you back about that and regarded us at a loss. “Ration cards? You aren’t leaving, are you?”
Liza stole a quick glance in my direction, adding a slight nudge with her elbow. The question is for you, kukla. Hardly he cares if I’m staying over to celebrate.
“We have to go,” I said, staring at my feet.
Willy opened his mouth but ended up saying nothing, only looked at Liza helplessly.
“You don’t have to go.” She understood his silent plea and gave me a bright smile. “I’ll take the cards by myself just fine. What do we need two people to distribute them for?”
“Really, Ilse, stay.”
“No, I can’t.” I tried to smile at him. “Surely, you understand.”
“No, I don’t understand. You said it yourself, your family always celebrated Christmas… Liza, you too. Didn’t you tell me that you all celebrated Christmas here in Minsk before the war?”
“New Year. Soviet people don’t celebrate Christmas. But yes, the tree was always up.”
He shifted his uncomprehending gaze from Liza to me and back. It was Liza who finally sighed, collecting herself and began explaining, with infinite patience, the things that I couldn’t quite put into words.
“Herr Leutnant, forgive me my directness please, but Ilse would never tell you this herself because she wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings unintentionally. I know you’re offering this with the best intentions but your Christmas, our New Year – both are family holidays. And you want to make her sit with people who are complicit in killing half of that family of hers. I know you’re not the same as the SS but you all fight for the same Führer and you all wear his uniform. It would be positively heartless to make her sit among you.”
Willy was looking at his hands. Liza gave my fingers a reassuring pressure and carefully picked up the ration cards from his desk. “Merry Christmas, Herr Leutnant.”
“Merry Christmas,” he replied automatically.
I was already closing the door after myself when he called my name quietly.
“Yes?” I paused on the threshold.
He was searching for the right words but none fit the situation, the entire predicament we found ourselves in. For an instant, it appeared that it was not only the door that stood between us but hundreds of thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of living, with their eternal hatred, with their souls corrupted by the madman’s words, with the lust for blood with which they desired to wash an entire race off the face of the earth. The entire world stood between us.
Willy rose to his feet and closed the distance between us in a few hesitant steps. Just as he was about to say something, Liza cleared her throat loudly in the corridor – someone was walking by.
“It’s all right.” I smiled at
him. “You don’t have to say anything. I know exactly what you feel.” I quickly brushed his left breast pocket, behind which a heart was beating in rhythm with mine. “Merry Christmas, Willy Schultz.”
“Merry Christmas, Ilse Stein.”
I turned around and walked away before he could see that I was crying.
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht!
Alles schläft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute, hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh…
Tears rolled down our faces as we sang. It was only a few of us, the ones who celebrated, gathered around a small table with the fir tree branches, decorated with paper and placed in a vase with a cracked neck, which Liza brought from somewhere. My sisters and seven more women from the brigade who belonged to the confused flock which wasn’t quite sure what to make of itself. Not Jewish in the religious sense and proclaimed stateless nationality-wise. Whatever the hell we were, we didn’t know any longer.
The beautiful melody which used to instill hope and serenity each time we sang it, now sounded more like mourning. The celebration of life turned into funeral by some evil, malicious twist of fate in our forgotten piece of the earth, shrouded in snow and silence. The latter, we couldn’t bear any longer and so, we sang; we sang Stille Nacht and O Tannenbaum, Weiße Weihnacht and Alle Jahre Wieder just to hear something besides that deafening silence around us. Eventually, we ran out of songs.
Behind the window, the snow whirled and floated, landing softly on top of the tombstones. I couldn’t see the gates of the cemetery from here but I knew that they, too, were covered in snow, just like the sign above them – He who is born must die; he who dies enters life eternal. The words were still there, invisible under the layers of snow and time, yet still true. I wondered who engraved them there and why. They offered both hope and an inevitable end, depending on the way one looked at them. Perhaps, that’s what our entire existence was, a matter of personal perspective.
The women, who celebrated with us, remained in our house for the night in order not to risk wandering around past curfew time. In blueish light, provided by the snow outside, I kissed my sleeping sisters’ temples, took my coat and stepped out, unnoticed by anyone. For a while, I stood facing the street, so velvet, so diamond-dusted and deliciously frosty. The snow melted on my cheeks; it crunched under my feet as I made the first few steps toward the Cemetery. In the distance, the soldiers were shooting rockets into the sky against all regulations. I smiled at their defiance, much like my own and ventured even further away from our thatched-roof dwellings. For one night, they allowed themselves to believe that the Soviets wouldn’t annihilate them overnight with their bombers; for one night, I allowed myself to believe that they would not annihilate us.
Making my way around the headstones, I eventually found the “exit” which used to be frequented by the underground members before the massacre. I was certain that it was still in use, only the underground members were so few now, no footsteps could be seen near it. Perhaps, it was just due to the fresh snow. Yes, it was much better to think this way. Gently probing the barbed-wire, I discovered the place where it had been cut and carefully reattached, worked my way to the other side and put the wire back in order. On the other side, even the air was different. It smelled of freedom here, freedom and fresh snow. I wondered how far I could make it before anyone would notice me.
Round the cemetery, round the ghetto itself, the skeletal remains of it. The streets were deserted; only fresh burn marks from the German signal rockets marred the pristine whiteness around me. A new layer of snow was slowly covering, concealing both them and the ground itself, matted and pockmarked by hobnailed boots. The soldiers, who’d left them, were already sleeping in their beds. I was the only one left in the whole world.
Sovietskaya street. No patrols here either. It’s dead and abandoned, like a position which cannot be held any longer. I thought about soldiers in Stalingrad. I wondered if they had anything to eat for Christmas this year. I wondered if they remembered that it was Christmas. I wondered when we would all forget all the Christmas eves spent in ghettos, trenches, and forests. I wondered when we would become humans again.
A figure in an overcoat appeared in front of me, far away still yet dangerously close – depending on how fast he could run and how quickly I could hide. I stopped dead in my tracks, hesitated, wondering if he could see me. The figure stopped and hesitated also. We both had no business here, this soldier or myself. He watched me apprehensively – I could have been a partisan for all he knew. I watched him anxiously as well – I saw no rifle slung over his shoulder at least.
Him, half-a-step forward, half-a-step to the left; a pause. I mirrored his route. A silent agreement passed between us; you go on your way and I go on mine and we’ll both thoroughly pretend that we can’t see each other. Blurry and mysterious, we watched each other closely as the distance between us shortened with each guarded step. He took his hands out of pockets, just to demonstrate that they were empty, no weapons. Out of politeness only shared between the enemy troops, I produced mine, with difficulty though, as Willy’s fur gloves tangled themselves in my coat’s narrow pockets. He stopped again, abruptly. I turned both hands palms up, just in case.
“Ilse?”
I blinked a few times, my hands still up in the air, holding some invisible offering.
“Willy?” I finally whispered, so quietly, most certainly he couldn’t hear me say his name.
In a few short steps, he crossed the road and stopped in front of me, bewildered. “Just what are you doing here at night?”
“I can ask you the same.” I grinned in spite of myself.
He moved closer and took my hands in his. “I recognized you by the gloves.”
“They’re my talisman.”
“I wanted to see you.”
His face was sharp and white against the snow. His eyes were shining.
“How exactly were you going to see me?” I asked.
“I know exactly where you live.”
“You weren’t going to sneak into the ghetto in the middle of the night, were you now?”
“That’s precisely what I was planning on doing.”
“You are quite mad, Willy Schultz.”
“But you were going to do the exact same thing, Ilse Stein.”
His teeth glistened as he began to laugh softly, along with me.
“How do you know that I was going to see you?” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Perhaps, I was just taking a stroll. Such a beautiful Christmas night outside. Perhaps, I simply felt like walking.”
“One doesn’t risk their life for a simple stroll in the middle of the war, you little liar.”
“No. One only risks their life for something worth it. A stroll on the new snow on Christmas night when the whole world is asleep is very much worth it.”
“Yes. So is sneaking inside the ghetto to steal a kiss from you.”
“Good thing we met halfway then.”
“I suppose.”
I leaned into him and opened my mouth to his. He tasted of coffee and cognac and cigarettes and everything I grew to love so much.
“How far do you think we can make it tonight, before they catch us?” I asked him when he broke the kiss to replace it with soft and tender ones, with which he was covering my eyes and cold cheeks.
“Not as far as we need to.”
“We won’t make it to the forest?”
“No. But I’ll try it with you all the same if you really want to go.”
I held his face in my gloved hands. “No. Not tonight. Tonight is for dreaming only.”
It all looked like a dream around us, the sparkling, pristine whiteness, the indigo velvet overhead, the windless, soundless night where only two of us existed.
“Did you make a wish at twelve?” he suddenly asked me.
“No. Did you?”
“I did. Do you
want me to tell you what I wished for?”
“No, or it won’t come true.”
“That’s right. Never mind then. You’ll know exactly when it comes true. I’ll tell you then.” He pressed his lips to my forehead again and I closed my eyes for I couldn’t bear how much I loved him at that moment.
Chapter Twenty-Two
February 1943
A month had passed uneventfully. Then, suddenly, Liza crying on the freshly-mopped floor, by the radio through the speakers of which a Russian voice was still speaking excitedly as we entered. Willy rushed to switch it off.
“They surrendered! Stalingrad is ours!” Liza cried out and grabbed my legs until we both were on the floor, laughing and kissing each other. Willy observed us, positively beaming, then began working the radio again, only searching for a German state wave this time – he wanted to hear the news in his own language. Somber notes of Adagio from Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony poured into the room instead of regularly scheduled announcements. He tried another German wave, the local one, for the troops. Again, mournful, classical German music and stubborn silence apart from it.
“They can’t bring themselves to acknowledge it,” he muttered, at last, his eyes alight with some inner victorious glow. “The very first major defeat. They refuse to face it.”
They. His own superiors became “they” to him. The alien side, the hostile side. Somehow, in the middle of this war, he switched fronts without realizing it fully.
Liza, still smiling through happy tears, reached out for his hand and pressed it tightly.
“Dear Comrade…” Her voice broke. In her eyes, newfound faith shone.
For the first time, she dared to touch him, for that day he had forever ceased to be the enemy; he was one of “us” now, the future victors, whose cause was the right one, according to their narcom Molotov.
We all linked hands, alight with hope once more. It was all coming together just as we planned. We’d be able to get out of here now – we allowed ourselves to indulge in this selfish belief that brightly-lit February day.
No Woman's Land: a Holocaust novel based on a true story (Women and the Holocaust Book 2) Page 21
