Babi Yar, page 10
Ivan came across a column of a couple of hundred men who had surrendered in that way. There were just two Germans in charge of them and even they had their obviously unnecessary rifles slung over their shoulders. Ivan fell in with them, and the other men welcomed him with much shouting and whistling—they were glad that their fighting days were over and that they were going to relax as prisoners. But Ivan was unlike the others; he did not want to relax; he kept thinking about his family.
‘So I went along with them for a bit—bala-bala — jumped into a hole and then skipped away!’
My grandmother gave the starving Ivan something to eat and sighed her sympathy. My grandfather went out on to the street for some reason, but almost at once his footsteps could be heard again on the porch and he came rushing into the room:
‘I’ve great news for you! … From tomorrow there won’t be a single Yid left in Kiev. It seems it’s true what they said about them setting fire to the Kreshchatik. Thank the Lord for that! That’ll put paid to them getting rich at our expense, the bastards. Now they can go off to their blessed Palestine, or at any rate the Germans’ll deal with ’em. They’re being deported! There’s an order posted up.’
We all dashed outside. A notice printed on cheap grey wrapping-paper, with no heading and no signature, had been stuck on the fence:
All Yids living in the city of Kiev and its vicinity are to report by 8 o’clock on the morning of Monday, September 29th, 1941, at the corner of Melnikovsky and Dokhturov Streets (near the cemetery). They are to take with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear, etc.
Any Yid not carrying out this instruction and who is found elsewhere will be shot.
Any civilian entering flats evacuated by Yids and stealing property will be shot.*
After that followed the same text in Ukrainian and then, lower down, in very small type, the same again in German. It was a sort of three-level poster.
I read it over twice, and for some reason it made me shudder. It was written so very harshly, with a sort of cold hatred. What’s more, it was a cold day with a lot of wind and the street was deserted. I didn’t go back indoors but, rather disturbed, I wandered off in the direction of the market, not quite knowing why.
Three plots away from us was the large holding belonging to the collective vegetable farm. It was full of little mud huts, wooden sheds and cow-stalls one on top of the other, and it was there that a great many Jews lived, terribly poor, uneducated and in pitiful conditions. I glanced into the yard: it was in a state of silent panic; people were rushing from one hut to the other, carting things in and out.
The same notice had been put up in other parts of the city. I stopped and read it through again, still not quite grasping its meaning.
In the first place, if they had really decided to deport the Jews as a reprisal for the Kreshchatik affair, why should it affect all of them? Say a dozen people might have been involved in the explosions, but why should the others have to suffer? True, the explanation might be that the Germans could not discover who were the actual incendiaries, so they had simply decided to deport everybody. Cruel, but true, perhaps?
In the second place, there were no such streets in Kiev as Melnikovsky and Dokhturov, whereas Melnikov and Degtyarev Streets did exist. The order had obviously been written by the Germans themselves with the help of bad translators. These streets really were close to the Russian and Jewish cemetries in Lukyanovka, and next to it was the Lukyanovka railway goods-yard. So they were going to put them on a train? But where to? Were they really going to Palestine, as Gramp suggested?
But again this was very cruel: to expel thousands of people by force from the places where they had been born and transport them to places where they hadn’t a thing to their names—how many of them would get ill and die on the way? And all because a few of them turned out to be incendiaries?
Did that mean that Shurka Matso would also have to go? But his mother was a Russian and was divorced from his father, and Shurka hadn’t seen his father for ages, like me. Did it mean that Shurka would be taken off on his own? That his mother would stay and he would go? I began to feel sorry for him, sorry to have to part from him for ever.
Then suddenly—to my surprise, sort of spontaneously—I began to talk to myself in my grandfather’s words, with that same intonation and malice: So what? Let ’em go off to their Palestine. They’ve grown fat enough here! This is the Ukraine; look how they’ve multiplied and spread out all over the place like fleas. And Shurka Matso—he’s a lousy Jew too, crafty and dangerous. How many of my books has he pinched! Let ’em go away; we’ll be better off without ’em—my Gramp is a clever chap, he’s right.
With these thoughts in my mind I went as far as the Kurenyovka police station, where my Dad once worked. It had been taken over by the German police and had a portrait of Hitler posted up in the window. He had a stern, almost sinister look and was wearing a peaked cap with lots of braid on it. And the cap was pulled right down over his eyes.
I could not, of course, miss such a rare spectacle as the deportation of the Jews from Kiev. As soon as it was light I was out on the street.
They started arriving while it was still dark, to be in good time to get seats in the train. With their howling children, their old and sick, some of them weeping, others swearing at each other, the Jews who lived and worked on the vegetable farm emerged on to the street. There were bundles roughly tied together with string, worn-out cases made from ply-wood, woven baskets, boxes of carpenters’ tools … Some elderly women were wearing strings of onions hung around their necks like gigantic necklaces —food supplies for the journey …
In normal times, of course, all the invalids, sick people and older folk stay indoors and are not seen. But now all of them had to turn out—and there they were.
I was struck by how many sick and unfortunate people there are in the world.
Apart from that there was another factor. The men who were fit had already been mobilized into the army and only the invalids had been left behind. Everybody who had been able to get himself evacuated, who had enough money, who had managed to go along with his office or plant or who had influence somewhere—all those had already left. [A shopkeeper from Kurenyovka by the name of Klotsman had managed to get away along with his family even after Kiev had been cut off. I don’t know whether it’s true, but he was said to have paid a fabulous sum to some airmen who put him and all his belongings into a plane. (When the war was over he turned up again safe and sound in Kurenyovka.)]
So those who were left in the city were the really poor people, the sort of people described by Sholom Aleichem, and it was they who now came swarming out on to the street.
How can such a thing happen? I wondered, immediately dropping completely my anti-Semitism of the previous day. No, this is cruel, it’s not fair, and I’m so sorry for Shurka Matso; why should he suddenly be driven out like a dog? What if he did pinch my books; that was because he forgets things. And how many times did I hit him without good reason?
Deeply affected by what I saw, I went from one group of people to the other, listening to what they were saying; and the closer I got to Podol the more people I found out on the streets. They were standing in the gateways and porches, some of them watching and sighing, others jeering and hurling insults at the Jews. At one point a wicked-looking old woman in a dirty head-scarf ran out on to the roadway, snatched a case from an elderly Jewess and rushed back inside the courtyard. The Jewess screamed after her, but some tough characters stood in the gateway and stopped her getting in. She sobbed and cursed and complained, but nobody would take her part, and the crowd went on their way, their eyes averted. I peeped through a crack and saw a whole pile of stolen things lying in the yard.
I also overheard someone say that in one place a cabby who had been specially hired to transport the luggage belonging to several families simply whipped up his horse and dashed off down a side-street, and they never saw him again.
The Glubochitsa was thick with people making their way up to Lukyanovka; it was just a sea of heads—the Jews of Podol were on the move. What a place that Podol was! [It was the most poverty-stricken part of Kiev, and you could recognize it simply by the smell—a mixture of things rotting, cheap fat and washing hung out to dry. Here from time immemorial had lived the poor of the Jewish community, the poorest of the poor—the shoemakers, tailors, the coal-merchants, the tinsmiths, porters, harness-makers, confidence tricksters and thieves … The courtyards were devoid of grass or greenery, with evil-smelling rubbish tips, tumble-down sheds swarming with great fat rats, lavatories which were just holes in the ground, clouds of flies, miserable streets which were either dusty or muddy, houses in a state of collapse and damp cellars—that was Podol, noisy, overcrowded and utterly dreary.]
My head was simply bursting from the noise and shouting. From all sides came the questions: Where are they taking them? What are they doing with them?
In one crowd only two words could be heard: ‘A ghetto, a ghetto!’ A middle-aged woman came up, greatly alarmed, and interrupted: ‘Dear people, this is the end of us!’ The old women were weeping, though it sounded almost as if they were singing. A rumour went around that some Karaimes had passed through (it was the first time I had heard this name, which is apparently given to a small Semitic people)—very old men wearing robes reaching right down to the ground, who spent the whole night in their synagogue, then emerged and declared: ‘Children, we are going to our deaths; prepare yourselves. Let us meet it courageously, as Christ did.’
This caused some indignation: fancy sowing panic in people like that! But it was already known for a fact that one woman had poisoned her children and then herself, so as not to have to go. And near the Opera a young girl had thrown herself out of a window and was still lying on the street covered with a sheet and nobody bothered to remove the body.
Suddenly there was a new cause for concern; people started saying that ahead, on Melnikov Street, a barrier had been put up, and that they were letting people in but not back out again.
At this point I myself took fright. I was tired, my head was buzzing from everything that was going on, and I was scared lest I should be unable to get back and they would cart me off. So I began to force my way back in the opposite direction to the crowd, worked my way out of it and then wandered for a long time through the deserted streets, along which a few latecomers were practically running, to the accompaniment of whistles and shouts from the doorways.
When I got home I found my grandfather standing in the middle of the courtyard, straining to hear some shooting that was going on somewhere. He raised his finger.
‘Do you know what?’ he said with horror in his voice. ‘They’re not deporting ’em. They’re shooting ’em.’
Then, for the first time, I realized what was happening.
From Babi Yar came quite distinctly the sound of regular bursts of machine-gun fire: ta-ta-ta, ta-ta …
It was the sort of rather quiet, unexcited, measured firing you heard when they were training. Our Babi Yar lies between Kurenyovka and Lukyanovka: you have to cross it to get to the cemetery. They had driven from there, from Lukyanovka, it seemed, into our ravine.
Grandpa looked puzzled and frightened.
‘Maybe it’s fighting?’ I suggested.
‘That’s not fighting!’ Gramp shouted plaintively. ‘The whole of Kurenyovka is already talking about it. Some folk have climbed trees and seen what’s going on. Victor Makedon ran all the way back; he went down with his wife, she’s a Jewess, and he only just escaped being taken himself. Oh, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, what is this, why do they do that to them?’
We moved indoors. But it was impossible just to sit there. The firing went on and on.
Gramp went across to Makedon to hear what had happened and found a lot of people assembled. The young man (he had been married just before the war broke out) was relating how, down there, they were simply glancing at people’s identity cards and then throwing them straight on to a bonfire. But he had shouted: ‘I’m a Russian!’ so they had dragged his wife from him and taken her off to the ravine, and the police had driven him away …
It was cold outside; there was a biting wind blowing, like the previous day. All the same I went outside and strained my ears. Grandma brought out my coat and hat and also stood listening and wringing her hands and muttering: ‘Oh God, there are women and small children there … ’ I had the impression she was crying. I turned round, and she crossed herself and, with her face to Babi Yar, she said:
‘Afather, whichart in heaven … ’
At night the firing stopped, but it started up again in the morning. The word went around Kurenyovka that thirty thousand people had been shot on the first day, and that the others were sitting there waiting their turn.
My grandmother came from the neighbours with some news. A fourteen-year-old boy, the son of the collective-farm stableman, had come running into the farmyard and was telling the most frightful stories: that they were being made to take all their clothes off; that several of them would be lined up, one behind the other, so as to kill more than one at a time; that the bodies were then piled up and earth thrown over them, and then more bodies were laid on top; that there were many who were not really dead, so that you could see the earth moving, that some had managed to crawl out, only to be knocked over the head and thrown back into the pile. They hadn’t noticed him; he had managed to sneak away and had run all the way home.
‘We must hide him!’ my mother said. ‘In the trench.’
‘Come on, son,’ exclaimed Grandma. ‘Quickly. We’ll hide him away, feed him and take care of him.’
I hurried across to the farmyard.
But it was already too late. At the gate there was standing a cart drawn by a spindly horse, and a German soldier with a whip was sitting in it. Another soldier, his rifle under his arm, was leading a white-faced boy from the yard. In fact he was not even leading him; they seemed to be walking side by side.
They went to the cart and climbed on to it, one on each side, and the soldier moved the hay aside to make the boy more comfortable. He put his rifle down on the straw, and the boy lay on his side resting on his elbow. He eyed me with his big brown eyes quite calmly and indifferently.
The soldier cracked his whip, urged the horse on, and the cart moved off—all as simply and with as little excitement as though they were going off to the fields to make hay.
The women in the yard were arguing loudly with each other and I went up to listen. Some were protesting, others argued:
‘She did right. Finish with the lot of ’em. That’s for the Kreshchatik.’
It was a Russian woman who lived on her own on the collective farm, working with the cows.
She had seen the boy run into his own home. She had gasped with alarm, listened to his story, put a jug of milk on the table and ordered him to sit quietly and not to go outside so that no one should see him, and then she had gone off to the police to give him away. What’s more, when she got back she watched over him until the Germans came with the cart.
There was one woman, Dina Mironovna Pronicheva, the mother of two children and an actress at the Kiev puppet theatre, who managed to escape from Babi Yar itself at that time. She is the only eye-witness to come out of it, and I am now going to tell her story, as I wrote it down from her own words, without adding anything of my own.
BABI YAR
She went down to see the order for herself, read it through quickly and went away; nobody stayed very long at noticeboards or got into conversations.
Throughout that day and into the evening they discussed the situation and what to do about it. She had a mother and father, both very old and frail. Just before the Germans arrived her mother had come out of hospital after an operation, and everybody wondered whether she would be able to travel. The old folk were quite sure that at Lukyanovka they would be put aboard a train and taken off to Soviet territory.
Dina’s husband was Russian, so she had a Russian name and moreover didn’t look at all Jewish. In fact Dina looked far more like a Ukrainian woman and she spoke Ukrainian. They argued, speculated, pondered and finally decided that the old folk should go, but that Dina should take them and see them on to the train and then stay behind with the children. Then they would see what happened.
Her father was a glazier, and he and her mother lived at 27 Turgenyev Street. Dina lived with her children at 41 Vorovsky Street.
She arrived home late, tried to go to sleep, but instead lay awake the whole night. People were running about making a lot of noise all night: they were trying to catch a young girl from the same block. She had taken refuge in the attic and then tried to get down by the fire escape, and men’s voices could be heard shouting: ‘There she is!’
Actually, before the Germans came in this girl had been heard to say:
‘They’ll never get into Kiev, but if they do I’ll soak the house in paraffin and set fire to it.’
What happened was that the yard-cleaner’s wife had recalled those words and, fearing the girl might really set the place on fire, informed the Germans, who were trying to catch her that night.
It was a dreadful, hellish night of tension. Dina was trembling all over. She never got to know whether they caught the girl or not.
When it began to get light she washed herself and did her hair, took all the documents and went down to her parents’ house close by on Turgenyev Street. There was an unusually large number of people out on the street, all of them hurrying in one direction or another with their possessions.
She reached her parents’ home just after seven o’clock in the morning. The whole house was awake. Those who were leaving were saying good-bye to their neighbours, promising to write, entrusting them with their homes, their possessions and their keys.
