Babi Yar, page 15
Very slowly the tram managed to get as far as the new school on the Petrovka, which had been taken over two days previously as a hospital. People with their heads in bandages were peering out of the windows. Then suddenly the hooters wailed—an air-raid alarm. Wardens with red arm-bands ran along the tramlines.
’Everybody out! Into the shelters!’
But my mother and I ran off along the empty tramlines. There was some shooting and bombing going on somewhere, but not over our heads, and we got as far as Nizhny Val, where we hoped to get on a No. 13 tram for the station. But we found that trams were no longer going that far.
Again the sirens wailed. People were running about all the way down the street, and distracted air-raid wardens had no idea where to direct people—there were no air-raid shelters, only holes dug in the courtyards of buildings. It was not long since they had been singing ‘If it’s war … ‘, but the idea had been to fight on someone else’s territory.
My mother and I ran from one house to another. She was simply beside herself and shouted at the wardens: ‘This is our house, let us in!’ In this way we ran the whole way to Andrew’s Hill, where there were no wardens and lots of people were hurrying up the narrow twisting street, taking advantage of the fact that it was not blocked.
I could see no point in having all those barriers when there were no air-raid shelters. The city was wide open to the bombers, and the defenceless people were rushing around in it like mice.
As we came near Bogdan Khmelnitsky Square the bombers appeared overhead, and we dived into a gateway jammed with people. The sound of shooting and explosions echoed down the shaft of the stairway, pieces of plaster came tumbling down, children were crying and the inhabitants were bringing water for people to drink. It was terrible to think that a bomb might land on the building and bring it crashing down on our heads.
When things became quieter we started running, still with our cases and quite out of breath, towards the Kreshchatik, from where trolley-buses went to the station. Again the sirens screamed and we were pushed along with a whole stream of people into a dimly lit basement piled high with boards and barrels. The din from the street still reached us down there, and what looked like a very insecure ceiling kept shaking violently. An old man said to Mother: ‘If this lot comes down on us, it’ll be for keeps.’ My mother couldn’t stand it and started making her way through the crowd and up the steps.
But they weren’t letting anyone go out of the gateway and the wardens were saying that the station was being bombed, that there was no transport going in that direction, that thousands of people were there already, that whole trains had been set on fire, and that the October Hospital was already crammed full of injured brought from the station.
There were a lot of other people in the gateway like us, with their cases, and the story then went around that you could still get on to the barges that were being sent off down the Dnieper. So when the all-clear was sounded we started running back again to Podol, but before we reached it there was another alarm. It was like a nightmare.
They chased us into the building of the lower station of the funicular railway. This time it was a raid on Podol itself—a fantastic din, pieces of glass flying everywhere, a fire breaking out somewhere, and on the other side of the Dnieper a plane coining down in flames.
Pale and anxious, the old women sat there on their bundles, and beside them stood a middle-aged Jewish woman who was saying:
‘All right, so they say the Jews have to get away, but what for? Did we ever hear anything bad about the Germans before the war? Now they are putting stories around, but why do we have to believe rumours? Even if we wanted to get away, tell me, how would we do it? Do we have a lot of money? No, we’ve got no money. And without money you can’t get on a train; you can’t even get away on foot. Some folk from our house went off, got as far as Darnitsa, lost all their things, ran out of food and had a terrible time and finally came back to Podol. Now the papers say that the Germans will hang yellow stars round our necks and send us off labouring. All right, so we shall work. What else have we seen but work up till now? Only trouble. The Germans are bound to understand that. We are not aristocrats and we’re not rich, we’re just poor people, we’ve been working hard all our lives and things can’t be any worse. We’ve decided to stay where we are.’
The women nodded their heads sorrowfully. It was true that until the war started only good things were written about Hitler, and nobody had heard he treated the Jews badly. So let the party officials and secret police and factory managers run for it, but what had poor people to run away from? As for the yellow star, it was obvious that they were lying, and so were the stories about the Germans maltreating the Jews—that was all newspaper lies. If not, why had they not written about it before? They had gone on lying to the very limit, that was the trouble. My mother listened to all this talk and then suddenly took fright lest the Germans should drop a bomb on the funicular, so we dashed off across the Post Office Square towards the river landing stage. The approaches to it were black with people all carrying their baggage. Policemen were shouting and whistling and trying to force the crowd back. A man in a white suit and a straw hat was announcing in a very hoarse voice:
‘Listen everybody, enterprises and organizations are being evacuated first. Go back home and don’t crowd together in one place. The public will be kept informed and everybody will be evacuated just as soon as we get the enterprises on their way. So go away! We’re not taking anybody!’
Frustrated by all this, we sat and rested a little in the crowd and then went away. No trams were running. They were saying that the school which had been turned into a hospital on the Petrovka had been bombed out. It was amazing how the Germans had found out—it was only a couple of days since it had become a hospital…
A lorry came down the Nizhny Val with a soldier aboard giving out copies of Pravda. I managed to get hold of one. The bulletin issued by the Soviet Information Office said that there had been no substantial change in the situation at the front. That meant that things were going badly for us.
The Petrovka had been cordoned off. The bomb had not fallen on the hospital but on a single-storey house next to it. Only a small section of one wall was left; all the people living in it had been killed and their bodies were just being dug out. But the school had been damaged, windows and window-frames had been blown out, and people were evacuating the wounded, carrying them out and putting them in ambulances.
8. Bolik Comes Back
All this time I was bemoaning the fact that I wasn’t older, so that I could join the volunteers or, like Bolik, at least go to work on the defences, and then I could have stayed there to help man them.
Then one day the news went round our gang that Bolik had come back.
I rushed down to see him. I found his mother fussing over him while he was stuffing himself with potato, half choking as he told his story:
‘We were digging an anti-tank trench, a damned long one, right across the fields. There were thousands of people there, all sorts of professors and girls and that. I saw a Messerschmitt dive on us and machine-gun us and then I saw my professor lying there with no lenses in his glasses … I hid in a pile of hay.’
Then German tanks appeared and the people ran off in all directions. Bolik had gone off through the woods and across the fields and finally took refuge from the ‘Messers’ in the marshes. He trembled when he talked about them; he hated the Germans so much that he started stuttering:
‘He’ll dive right at you, aiming at you, as if he’s after you personally, trying to get you, and there’s nothing you can do, doesn’t matter whether you shout or cry or fall down … Anyway, listen chaps, I’ll let you into a secret. We’ll get hold of a machine-gun and set it up in the attic, and when they come, boy, we’ll let ’em have it—whee-ee-ee-ee-ee!’
Aunt Nina, his mother, was crying from joy that he was alive. She washed him clean, fitted him out in a clean suit and gave him money for the cinema. So Bolik and I went off together to the cinema on the Kreshchatik to see a funny film called St Jorgen’s Day. We laughed till tears ran down our faces at the antics of Igor Ilinsky, despite the fact that we could hear the sirens going and bombs exploding outside: the programmes were not interrupted during a raid.
We left the cinema, bought ourselves ice-creams and strolled down the Kreshchatik. We felt fine and knew nothing of what was really going on—that the decision had already been taken to abandon Kiev without fighting; that we were seeing the Kreshchatik for the last time, and had been watching a comedy film in a building which had already been mined; that the next day Bolik would be evacuated along with the rest of his school, and that he would vanish again without even having said good-bye.
The loudspeakers on the Kreshchatik were proclaiming in triumphant tones: ‘This is Kiev speaking; this is Soviet Kiev speaking! Kiev calling Russia—do you hear us? Kiev is and will remain Soviet!’ Moscow’s reply to Kiev was: ‘You have revived the immortal traditions of the heroic era of the Great October Revolution and the Civil War. You do not stand alone. The Red Army is with you. The whole Soviet people is with you.’
Words, words …
We went home in the opposite direction to a stream of troops who had obviously been on the retreat for a long time. The Red Army men were utterly exhausted, dust and sweat caked on their faces. On an old farm-cart drawn by bullocks a tough-looking lad in a fur hat, a dead-pan expression on his face, was sitting playing a gay tune on the accordion.
Meanwhile the women came streaming out on to the pavements to watch, arms folded, sighing, sniffing and sobbing. A frail old man with a stick was standing near a post, weeping, and he called out to the young man playing the folk dance:
‘Come back, lads, come back … ’
Many of the people were crying as they watched their menfolk retreating.
The little garden in front of our house was crammed full of tired Red Army men sitting and lying around. One of them was working on a ‘Maxim’ machine-gun, so we sat down by him and watched carefully what he was doing. He said:
‘Listen kids, I’ll give you a rouble: go and bring me a drink of milk.’
We dashed off down to my grandmother’s. She was full of sympathy, wouldn’t take the rouble, but gave us a jug of milk. The Red Army men held out their cans and we poured the milk into them, but it was only a drop in the ocean.
My grandfather was carting bread down the street.
There was no longer any bread to be bought in the shops, it was being distributed according to lists that had been drawn up. Every household had to make themselves a bag and write their name on it in ink. Then in the shop they divided the bread up among the bags, and Grandpa was given the job of taking them around on a little cart. Eager to be doing something, we quickly took over the job of pushing the cart, knocking on the doors and emptying out the bags. It was a tricky business weaving our way through the marching soldiers.
‘So it’s all over, lads, is it?’ said my grandfather. ‘Kiev is being abandoned.’
‘Kiev is to be a second Tsaritsyn,’ we said indignantly. ‘You just wait, Gramp, you don’t know the sort of fighting there’s going to be!’
‘Don’t talk about fighting,’ Gramp said with an impatient gesture. ‘Just look at ’em—how do you think they’re going to fight?’
Tired, scraggy old nags were drawing military carts, weapons and rickety farm-carts. The Red Army men were ragged, bearded and wounded. Some who had walked till their feet were bleeding were going barefoot with their boots slung over their shoulders. Others had no boots or shoes at all. They moved along without any sort of order, like a herd of cattle, bent under the weight of their kit-bags, greatcoats and weapons, their tea-cans rattling in a very unwarlike way.
‘Oh, those poor soldiers of ours,’ my grandfather mumbled, taking off his hat.
* The Communist League of Youth. [Tr.]
* Foreign Literature. [Tr.]
† Russian History in Pictures [Tr.]
* Sergei Kirov (1886–1934), a Bolshevik leader, head of Leningrad party organization from 1926, who was said to have opposed Stalin’s dictatorial methods. His assassination in December 1934 was used by Stalin as the excuse for unleashing a fierce wave of repression and ‘purges’. [Tr.]
† Sergo Ordzhonikidze (1886–1937), a member of Stalin’s Politburo until his death in mysterious circumstances in 1937. [Tr.]
† Andrei Vyshinsky (1883–1955), prosecutor in the three principal show trials of the great purge in the ‘thirties. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union 1940–49, Minister 1949–53. [Tr.]
* Vasili Chapayev (1887–1919), a Red Army hero of the Civil War, about whom a well-known film was made in 1934. [Tr.]
* Tsaritsyn, a city on the Volga, the scene of a battle in the Civil War in which Stalin was said to have played an important part. It was renamed Stalingrad in 1925, destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–3, and renamed Volgograd after Stalin’s death in 1953. [Tr.]
A CHAPTER OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
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ORDER
It is forbidden for anybody living in the city to be out of doors between 1800 hours and 0500 hours, German time. People failing to observe this order may be shot.
Commandant of the city of Kiev*
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Extract from an announcement:
All males between the ages of 15 and 60 are to present themselves at the housing office in their district … †
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Title of a feature article in a newspaper:
THE YID—THE PEOPLE’S WORST ENEMY ‡
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Entry into the city by persons not resident in Kiev is strictly forbidden. Any person who arrived in Kiev after September 20th must leave the city immediately. Anyone who has a good reason for remaining in the city must obtain permission to do so from the city Commandant. Such permits are issued at the permit department, at 8 Komintern Street.
Anyone remaining in the city without permission after October 15th, 1941, will be liable to severe punishment.
City Commandant §
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From an article entitled ‘Tasks for the Ukrainian Intellectuals’:
Our task is to restore the national culture of the Ukraine, destroyed by the Jewish Bolsheviks.¶
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Announcement by the Commandant:
As a reprisal for an act of sabotage, 100 inhabitants of the city of Kiev were executed today.
This is a warning.
Every inhabitant of Kiev will be held responsible for every act of sabotage committed.
Kiev, October 22nd, 1941
City Commandant*
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ORDER
All pigeons in the city and suburbs must be destroyed immediately.
Anyone found still keeping pigeons after October 26th will be EXECUTED as a saboteur.
EBERHARDT
City Commandant†
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Day after day the newspaper gives special prominence to the following appeal:
The Führer of the German people has said:
‘Millions of German peasants and workers are carrying out their obligations in exemplary fashion.’
Ukrainians! You too must carry out your obligations and work hard!‡
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Our Führer Adolf Hitler said on October 3rd, 1941
‘We shall make the whole continent play a part in our battle with Bolshevism.’
The place of every Ukrainian is at Germany’s side in the battle for a better Europe!§
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Announcement by the Commandant:
Cases of arson and sabotage are becoming more frequent in the city of Kiev and oblige me to take firm action. For this reason 300 inhabitants of Kiev were executed today. For every additional case of arson or sabotage a considerably larger number of inhabitants of the city will be executed.
Every inhabitant must immediately inform the German police of anything arousing his suspicions. I shall maintain order and calm in Kiev at any cost and by all the means at my disposal.
Kiev, November 2nd, 1941
EBERHARDT
Major-General City Commandant*
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All felt boots now in the possession of the civilian population, including children’s sizes, are to be requisitioned immediately. The use of felt boots is forbidden and will be punished in the same way as the use of weapons without permission.†
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Announcement by the City Commissar:
In accordance with an understanding reached with the city Commandant, the population of the city of Kiev is informed that civilians have the right to be on the streets only from 0500 hours to 1730 hours.
City Commissar‡
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Announcement by the Commandant:
Means of communication in the city of Kiev (telephone, telegraph and underground cables) have been maliciously damaged. Since it is no longer possible to tolerate such hostile activity, 400 MALES HAVE BEEN EXECUTED IN THE CITY. This should serve as a warning to the population. Once again I demand that the German police or German military should be informed of all suspicious incidents, so that the criminals may be punished as they deserve.
Kiev 29.xi.1941
EBERHARDT
Major-General City Commandant*
