Hello, comrades.
We are finally home.
Epilogue
Byelorussian forest. Autumn 1943
On commander Zorin’s orders, the entire brigade gathered for a meeting. I had a feeling it had something to do with Boris’s return from Minsk; however, this time instead of bringing people with him as was his habit, he returned alone, his face grim and forbidding and positively refused to answer any questions before he could talk to comrade brigadier.
The wind caressed bare treetops above our heads. The forest had long become home for many of us. Where I perceived alien and threatening wilderness before, fir trees now promised shelter and freedom. The mist had invaded our parts once again and now its cold, glittering drops that had accumulated on the trees overnight, were falling on our anxious faces – premature tears we didn’t bother to wipe.
Boris and Zorin emerged from Zorin’s dugout, at last, hats with red ribbons – partisans’ insignia – in their hands, gazes riveted to the ground, words failing them for a few interminable moments. We waited patiently; the old, the children, the men, and the women, most coats still bearing faint outlines of the hateful yellow patches; faces were drawn and lined with memories of wasted lives and far too many deaths. Zorin was about to say something but then signed to Boris instead – you brought the news, you announce it. I have not the heart…
The wind was growing stronger, chasing torn clouds along the leaden sky. I turned my collar up. Boris released a tremendous breath and stepped forward.
“Comrades. More than two years ago, in August 1941, we appealed from our underground to the Jews in the Minsk ghetto with the warning, ‘ghetto means death! By every means possible, break down the fence around the ghetto!’ By the end of the first year of occupation, we had opened a way to the partisan forest. Now we must bring you the dreadful news – the ghetto no longer exists.”
A collective groan rolled around the campsite. We had all sensed that it was what he was about to say; we had awaited the dreadful news long enough but were still unprepared to hear the truth.
“There are no more Jews in that city where entire generations of Jews shaped its Jewish look, its Jewish character, and molded its way of life with their blood and their sweat,” Boris continued meanwhile. “They no longer exist, the Jews of Minsk, who contributed so much to our national and cultural advancement. In the streets of Minsk, you can no longer hear the sound of our Yiddish speech. It no longer exists, the city which witnessed the flowering of Yiddish art and literature. And there is no longer any hope of saving it. We are all orphans, we, the last Jews of the ghetto…”
Boris’s voice broke after those last words. He couldn’t speak any longer. All around, the weeping grew louder. And then, in the middle of collective mourning, came a sudden, “if there are no more Jews, then we shall be the Jewish people.”
I looked up at Willy. A soft grin playing on his face, he circled my waist with his arm. As though sensing his touch, our child stirred inside – a future partisan, as Zorin himself announced with a wink one day in summer, when it became impossible to hide my pregnancy from the rest of the brigade any longer. In Willy’s uniform cap, on top of torn German insignia, the same red ribbon of a partisan now gleamed with pride.
“We shall be the Jewish people,” I whispered after him.
“We shall be the Jewish people,” next to me, Liza asserted.
“We shall be the Jewish people,” my sisters repeated in German.
“We shall be the Jewish people,” came the stubborn oath of the partisans.
The desperate, tear-stained faces around us brightened; the eyes now shone with fearless determination; hands linked, chained us one to another – forest brother to forest sister, forest mother to forest child, a German to Byelorussian, a Russian to a Pole and our voices rose in a unanimous kaddish which soon transcended into something fearsome and awe-inspiring – we sang the partisan song.
Note to the reader:
Thank you so much for reading “No Woman’s Land.” Even though it’s a work of fiction, most of it is based on a true story. Ilse Stein and Willy Schultz (the names weren’t changed) indeed met in Minsk in 1942 after Schultz’s brigade was killed by the SS during the Purim massacre the day before that. Their meeting itself and the following development of their relationship are also true to fact. I tried to stick to reality as much as I could while working on this novel and used any information available concerning Ilse or Willy to paint as accurate of a portrait of both as I could. Ilse’s family history, including their move from Nidda to Frankfurt and her further employment at the parachute factory and eventual deportation, are all based on fact, same as Willy’s family history and the history of his employment and war service.
The history of the organization of the ghetto, its structure, etc., I also tried to keep as close to reality as possible. I preserved all the names of the streets, including “exits” used by different resistance members (unlike many other ghettos, the Minsk one wasn’t surrounded by a brick wall but only by a fence of barbed-wire which wasn’t electrified and therefore, due to this fact and lax patrolling of the perimeter, the members of the ghetto underground and also children who begged for food on the “Russian side” almost daily, could more or less freely crawl through it when the occasion presented itself). The Labor Exchange, the Orphanage, the Hospital, the Jewish Cemetery, the Market set up on Krymskaya Street, Jubilee Square – everything was transferred into the narration as described by the ghetto survivors.
Most of the characters, including secondary ones, are also based on real people, such as Oberscharführer Scheidel, who “welcomed” Ilse and her family upon their arrival to Minsk; his boasting about “freeing the space” for the German Jews by killing thirty-five thousand Soviet ones is also based on truth; his words I tried to change as little as possible while preserving the message. General-Kommissar Kube was also a real senior official in Nazi-Occupied Byelorussia, who was later assassinated by the Byelorussian partisans in 1943. Known to be a vicious anti-Semite, he nevertheless treated German Jews (called “Hamburgs” by the locals since the first transport from Germany arrived from Hamburg) differently from their Soviet counterparts; the occasion where he protested against the treatment of former decorated war veterans is real (at the end of the note I’ll provide an actual letter he wrote to the Reich Commissioner of Ostland, H. Lohse), just like his idea to provide them with “skilled worker’s” cards to protect them from selections by installing a wagon workshop in their Sonderghetto.
Police Superintendent Richter, his brutal treatment of the ghetto inhabitants, including setting his dog on them and his infamous “Sunday concerts” are also based on the facts provided by the survivors of the ghetto (you can read in more detail about him in H. Smolar’s memoir “The Minsk Ghetto” or a collection of memoirs of the ghetto survivors, “We Remember Lest the World Forget”).
Ghetto Elders Dr. Frank (the Sonderghetto) and Ilya Mushkin (the Ostjuden ghetto) are also based on real people. Mushkin was indeed captured by the Gestapo and executed for aiding a German officer who wished to defect; what happened to the officer himself is not known but most likely he was court-martialed as well.
The members of the ghetto underground and their activities are also based on real people and true events. The character of Boris Makarsky is a fictionalized version of Hersh Smolar, who was considered a leader of the ghetto underground. The underground printing press was indeed in use in the ghetto and many of the printers were captured and publically hanged in May of 1942, just as described in the novel. However, this didn’t stop the production of the underground leaflets after new people took over the positions of the executed members of the resistance. Many other instances of the underground sabotage activities are also based on historical fact, such as Jewish workers smuggling gun parts and bullets out of German factories in their boots and mess tins, the attack directed on the SS barracks (mentioned by Ilse in her conversation with the pilots quartered with Willy), smuggling c
hildren out of the ghetto and setting them up with Gentile families or orphanages for the Gentile population (as was supposed to have happened with Ilse’s sister, Lore); the case with the Jewish sculptor and his spying on the Wehrmacht officers while drawing their portraits; Reuven’s dealings with Hening’s daughter and his “buying” permit blanks from her (Reuven, Lore’s boyfriend, is based on a real young Polish boy Reuven Liond, who indeed worked as a doorman in the Kommissariat headquarters and helped many people by getting permits for them. You can read more about him in B. Epstein’s book “The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943. Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism.”).
Liza Gutkovich (the name was unchanged) was indeed Ilse Stein’s best friend. It was her who approached Ilse on the day when Ilse first met Willy Schultz and asked how Ilse knew him and why he was so friendly with her. Liza was indeed appointed by Schultz as Ilse’s substitute and later treated as Willy’s own confidante. The instances, where he asked Liza what could be done to help Ilse are described by Liza herself both in B. Epstein’s book and the documentary, “The Jewess and the Capitan,” which tells a detailed story of Willy’s and Ilse’s relationship. Liza’s risky enterprise with listening to the Soviet radio in Schultz’s office is also based on Liza’s recollections. The events surrounding the surrender of the 6th Army in Stalingrad and the German command’s reaction to it are all based on historical facts. There weren’t any announcements acknowledging the surrender until Goebbels’s infamous “Total War” speech in Berlin’s Sportpalast (its parts were used in the novel, unchanged).
Willy indeed had a friend who was willing to take the risk and fly the couple – Willy and Ilse – across enemy lines and who was later transferred to the front. Since his name was lost to history, I took the liberty of naming him, Otto Weizmann. His further destiny is, unfortunately, also unknown.
All of the pogroms (or Aktionen – SS-conducted massacres) mentioned in the novel were also described based on recollections of the ghetto survivors. Adolf Eichmann indeed supervised the Purim massacre during which over five thousand people were killed and eventually buried in what was later known as the Pit (or Yama). It was said that General-Kommissar Kube, who was present during the pogrom and had a fondness for children, was indeed throwing candy into the pit where children from the Jewish orphanage were being thrown alive to be later shot or buried alive.
The July pogrom, which lasted four days and during which Willy Schultz hid his brigade in the cellar of the Government building, is also based on the survivors’ recollections. According to their memoirs and the historians’ accounts, not only Schultz but several other officers in charge of the brigades hid “their Jews” during the pogrom to save their lives, even though such actions were usually severely punished by the SS. However, it was said that Schultz was well-connected and most likely that was the reason why he could get away with such risky arrangements.
The daring escape itself is based on true historical fact. After getting notice of his imminent transfer, after the SS got wind of his relationship with Ilse Stein, he secured the permit for the wood-cutting brigade and also a truck with carefully concealed weapons. After gathering the brigade, they managed to get through all of the checkpoints without any trouble and eventually got to their destination in the partisan zone, Willy holding the driver at gunpoint. The bridge was indeed blown up and one of the brigade members did take the risk of jumping into the freezing cold water to get to the other side. The partisans arrived soon after and, after interrogating Schultz for the entire day and realizing that he wished to defect to stay with his beloved, accepted him into the brigade. The driver was offered to stay as well. Ilse and Willy later had a son together.
If you’d like to know what happened to Ilse and Willy after the war, feel free to contact the author. I’d like to finish their story on this happy note, which proves once again that even in the darkest of times love will always be stronger than hate. Let their story be an inspiration for us all.
Letter of General-Kommissar Kube to the Reich Commissioner of Ostland H. Lohse about the deportation of the Jewish people of Germany to Belarus:
Minsk 16 December 1941 Top Secret
My dear Heinrich! I ask you personally to give an official instruction about the position of the civil authorities regarding the Jewish people deported from Germany to Belarus. Among those Jewish people there are some who fought at the front [in the war] (during the First World War) and who were conferred with the decoration of the Iron Cross of the First and Second Degree, disabled war veterans who are half or even three-quarter Aryans. So far, only 6000-7000 Jewish people out of the expected 25000 we were informed about arrived. I do not know what has happened to the rest of them. During a few official visits to the ghetto I noticed that among them there were Jewish people differing from Russian Jewish people also [particularly] by their neatness. There are some qualified workers capable of doing five times more [things] a day than the Russian Jewish people.
Those Jewish people (the German Jews) will probably die of cold and hunger in the next few weeks. To us, they constitute a dire menace as they catch diseases easily, since they, like us, the Germans, are susceptible to 22 epidemic diseases spread in Belarus.
On my own responsibility, I will not give the SD any instructions concerning the way those people are to be treated, although some Wehrmacht subdivisions and police have already appropriated the property of Jewish people deported from the Reich. Thus, the SD has taken 400 mattresses from them, and also confiscated other things. I am certainly firm in my opinion and willing to contribute to the resolution of the European question but those people, who belong to our culture, differ from the stupid herd of locals. Maybe we can execute Lithuanians and Latvians in massive numbers who are alien to the local population as well. I cannot do that. I ask you to give exact instructions so as I can perform the required action in the most humane manner possible.
With kind regards, Heil Hitler!
Your Wilhelm Kube
(Annihilation of Jewish people of the USSR in the years of the German occupation (1941-1944). Collection of documents and materials. Jerusalem 1991. P. 178-179; Judenfrei! Free from Jewish people: A History of a Jewish Ghetto in Documents. Mn., 1999. P. 211)
About the Author
Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, "The Girl from Berlin." Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents.
In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.
Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2016) - "The Girl from Berlin: Standartenführer's Wife" (first place)
Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2016) - "The Austrian" (honorable mention)
New Apple - 2016 Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing - "The Austrian" (official selection)
Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2017) - "Emilia"
Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2018) - "A Motherland's Daughter, A Fatherland's Son"
hank you for reading books on Archive.
No Woman's Land: a Holocaust novel based on a true story (Women and the Holocaust Book 2) Page 25
