Babi Yar, page 28
We used to take them cigarette ends and we too would sit round in a circle learning to smoke. I liked it, and I started to smoke like a real working man, because, after all, what working man does not smoke?
I told my grandfather about the Gardener, at which he exclaimed: ‘But I know him, he’s a friend of mine. Tell him he mustn’t wallop you.’ Next day, when he had us in formation, the Gardener said: ‘Which of you is Anatoli Kuznetsov?’ I stepped forward. ‘You and two others are being transferred to lighter work.’
He sent us off to pick lime-blossom. We could have wished for nothing better, and went off to climb all over the trees. The limes in the grounds of the sanatorium were tremendous, two hundred years old. They may even have seen the Empress Catherine II; according to the legend, when she drove into the park with Potemkin, who was for some reason rather depressed, she said to him: ‘See how lovely it is. Cheer up!’
The best blossom on lime trees is at the very top, at the ends of the branches, and they are not easy to pick. Each of us had a fixed quantity to gather, and if we failed to achieve it we lost our soup ration. So we all tried very hard, and I used to clamber up to such high places that I dared not look down. On one occasion the tree-top broke off with me on it and I dropped from the height of a six-storey house. I escaped only by sheer luck! On the way down I fell among some intertwined branches which held me like a hammock, though I might still have gone right through if I had not managed to grab hold of them with my hands and hang on, swinging like a monkey. Then I scrambled down to experience the pleasure of hard work.
In this way, at the age of twelve and a half, my official working life began, to prevent me growing up in this world to be too educated or to cause too much trouble to the people who would do all my thinking for me and determine my place in the world to the end of time.
I can only thank my benefactors who made it quite clear to me why I have come into this world—to labour where I am told and to carry out my allotted task in the cause of progress and of a better future for some vaguely defined, good-for-nothing descendants. Lucky descendants.
* From an order dated January 12th, 1942, issued by the Reichskommissar for the Ukraine to all General- and Gebietskommissars concerning the conditions on which primary schools were to be reopened. From The German-Fascist Occupation of the Ukraine (Kiev, 1963), p. 71.
* Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, May 14th, 1942.
POTATOES IN FLOWER
The No. 12 tram used to take about an hour to get to the end of the line in Pushcha-Voditsa, and most of the way was through the forest. It went fast, rushing like an express train through the unending green tunnel formed by the pine forest, the branches of the nut trees brushing against the windows.
To do the same journey by foot along the tram track took my grandfather and me practically the whole day. The rails were rusted over, the grass was pushing up between the sleepers, with daisies and cornflowers waving in the wind.
From time to time we met people coming from the other direction, very distressed, who told us:
‘Don’t go this way: they’re taking everything away from people at the children’s sanatorium.’
And in fact we found three policemen sitting beneath a fir tree at the children’s tuberculosis sanatorium, with a great pile of bundles and vessels next to them. This was where they had set up their post to do their daylight robbery. All the roads to Kiev were closed and the robbery was perfectly legitimate.
Many years previously my grandfather had worked in the mill at Pushcha-Voditsa. In fact, he had spent his youth there; it was there that he and my grandmother had lived after they were married, and he knew the surrounding country very well.
‘So that’s what the damned scoundrels are up to,’ he said in a worried voice. ‘But I know the little footpaths and on the way back we’ll miss them by going through the forest.’
Our feet were really sore when, towards evening, we got as far as the fourteenth street, where there is a pond and a weir. By the weir we could see protruding the blackened piles on which the mill had once stood. My grandfather stopped for a moment and studied them thoughtfully.
In the sacks which we carried over our shoulders we had all sorts of things belonging to my grandmother which we hoped to exchange for food: skirts, jackets and some high laced boots.
We spent the night in an empty barn on the other side of the pond, with the old forester who still remembered my grandfather. Then we set off again at dawn with the dew still on the ground and tramped for another whole day along overgrown paths through the forest and were simply dropping from exhaustion and hunger when we came to the River Irpen and the village of the same name.
We proceeded to go from house to house, knocking on the doors and making the dogs bark.
‘Can we sell you anything? We’ve got skirts, and scarves …’
The women would come out, feel our goods and hold them up to the light.
‘This here is old stuff.’
‘It’s good quality, it’s quite new,’ Grandpa would say crossly. ‘My wife only wore it once.’
‘I’ll give you a glass of beans …’
‘A glass of beans for a scarf!’ Grandpa would exclaim. ‘To hell with that, it’s worth three, you greedy devils!’
We should have looked for a more remote village, because this, the nearest one, had more than its share of ‘barterers’ who kept coming and begging, and even stealing. But we didn’t have the strength to drag ourselves any farther, so we just went on knocking at the doors. At one of them a man came out, heavy with sleep and unshaven, scratching himself, and asked:
’You don’t have a gramophone, do you? What’s the use of your flea-ridden rags to us?’
We somehow managed to collect two bags of maize, beans and flour. I shall never forget our journey back to my dying day.
We went slowly and painfully, sitting down to rest every mile or so, and no sooner would I doze off from sheer exhaustion than my grandfather would say with a sigh: ‘Come on, let’s do a bit more.’ He went on stubbornly carrying his load, groaning, gasping and sometimes falling: after all, he was already seventy-two, apart from all the hunger and sickness he had been through. To cross the river you had to walk along a couple of shaky poles high above the water. I ran across without any qualms, but Grandpa stopped and just couldn’t make himself do it. I had to take his bag across for him, then he crawled across on his hands and knees, nervously holding on to me and the poles. If anyone had seen us they would have died of laughter.
We spent that night in a haystack. In the morning we could hardly move for the aches and pains in our backs, arms and legs. And off we went again, taking even more frequent rests; we just didn’t have the strength to stand up. You thought you were getting up, but your body stayed where it was, and your sack seemed full of paving stones.
There was nothing but forest on every side, with an occasional clearing near a farm, with potato tops in full flower, which I saw only through a haze. On one occasion we crept into a field and stole a few potatoes, digging them up with our hands and sticking the tops back in so as to leave no trace. Then we went off and cooked them over a fire and made a meal of it. But they were very small, the size of nuts, and didn’t cook very well.
Remembering the thieving policemen posted at the children’s sanatorium, my grandfather decided to go round Pushcha-Voditsa to the west of it and that brought us out on a hard forest road. Suddenly we heard the sound of a motor behind us and a lorry with two Germans in the cab passed us, covering us with dust. It braked violently and the driver looked out of his cab and watched us catch up with him. My heart sank.
‘Bitte,’ the driver said, pointing to the back of the lorry. ‘Jump in!’
It didn’t look as though he was out to rob us. Anyway, we climbed in and the lorry went careering down the road. I turned my face to the wind and enjoyed the sensation and the rest. In this way we travelled as far as we could have gone on foot by nightfall. When the city came in sight we realized that we had gone around it from the west and had missed Kurenyovka.
Grandpa banged on the cabin, and the lorry stopped in the open country. We climbed down and Grandpa held out a little bag of flour to pay for the ride.
The driver looked at us and shook his head.
‘No. You old and small. No.’
We stood there, not believing our ears. The driver laughed and moved off.
‘Danke! Thanks!’ I shouted.
He waved his hand. Grandpa bowed from the waist at the departing lorry. We slung our bags across our shoulders and set off across the fields in the direction of the roofs of Kurenyovka which were already visible.
‘Ah, what a fool he is, that Hitler!’ said my grandfather. ‘The Germans are not really so wicked. But he’s made ’em into scoundrels. How we looked forward to them coming! And if only they had behaved decently Stalin would have been finished long ago. The people would be ready to live under the Tsar or under the rich, so long as it was not under Stalin. Then this monster turned out to be even worse than Stalin. Oh, damn them all …’ And he spat on the ground.
We went down various side streets, along Beletskaya Street and came out at our bridge, from where it was three minutes’ walk to our house. We no longer had any feeling in our feet or shoulders, and we staggered along like long-distance runners at the finishing line.
And at that point we were stopped by two policemen.
‘Been carrying it far?’ asked one of them ironically.
We stood there in silence, because it was just unbelievable: it just couldn’t happen like that.
‘Put it down,’ said the other one and proceeded briskly to help Grandpa remove his sack.
‘Listen, friends,’ said Grandpa, quite dumbfounded, in a whisper. ‘Listen …’
‘On your way, now, on your way,’ said the first policeman.
‘But, friends, listen …’ My grandfather was ready to fall on his knees.
The police paid no attention to him, but simply took our sacks and put them down by the post where there were several others lying already. They appeared to have set up a new checkpoint here, on the approach to the market. I dragged Grandpa along by the sleeve, because he was quite beside himself and couldn’t believe it had happened. I had difficulty in getting him home, where I simply curled up to rest and get some sleep, because next morning I had to be off to work again. Out of friendship for my grandfather the Gardener had given me time off on the quiet to go and do some bartering. Well, I’d had my time off.
It is a very simple process and it has been done through the ages. You fill up a bag with all sorts of things—potatoes, carrots, with perhaps half a loaf of bread and a piece of fat bacon on top, and you cover it with a piece of newspaper. Then your mother takes you by the hand and you go down to the local authority.
It’s a little scaring to go into the place, because it’s where all important decisions are taken—about a person’s life, his food and work and his death. It is from here that you may be sent to Germany or you may be marked down for the Yar.
There are no Germans there. The people at the desks are Volksdeutsche or ‘real’ Ukrainians with long moustaches and embroidered shirts. You can’t get round them as easily as you can the Germans; they know their own people too well.
[Such people are always to be found. They had helped the Bolsheviks to organize the collective farms, to confiscate the property of the richer farmers and to inform on the rest of the population. These people, ‘flesh and blood’ of their own people, are the main support of the authorities, because they know who had what for dinner and who has got some potatoes hidden in a hole in the ground. After all, who used to serve on the village Soviets, and who ran the local councils and the town councils, and the trade unions and the courts? And now, look, there they were again, the very same people!]
They sit there, writing summonses, drawing up lists and building up files. A thickset, energetic woman with a very masculine manner, wearing a severe grey jacket and skirt, strides around the place and says without emotion and with an air of utter finality:
‘If you don’t want to work we can hand you over to the Gestapo … If you don’t carry out instructions the Gestapo will deal with you …’
Your mother leads you across to the desk of a rather dishevelled-looking woman who holds your fate in her hands. She puts the bag down by the side of the desk and moves the newspaper back enough to leave the bread and the bit of bacon showing. It’s only a tiny bit of bacon, about the size of a matchbox, but you can’t see how big it is beneath the paper, only that it is actually bacon.
With her head humbly bowed, your mother explains that you have signs of tuberculosis and that it’s bad for you to work in the fields and talks a lot of that sort of nonsense, while you in the meantime also play your part, standing with your back bent and doing your best to put on the appearance of wretchedness.
The woman takes you in with one glance, gives a disapproving sniff, looks silently through the lists, finds your name and crosses it out and then enters it in another list, saying:
‘Seven o’clock tomorrow at the entrance to the canning works.’
You give an impression of great relief, your mother mutters her thanks, bows and takes you off as quickly as she can, leaving her bag on the floor beside the desk.
The canning factory was pervaded by a sour, sharp smell which seemed to bite into you and get right into your nose. But only a complete fool could go hungry there.
Lorries loaded with pumpkins used to arrive in its vast courtyard and the group of boys I worked with used to have to unload them. We would come across pumpkins that had been split open, and if we didn’t then we used to break some open ourselves, scrape out the slippery white seeds and stuff our mouths full of them. From then on I ate nothing at home, but kept myself going on those seeds the whole day long. Once I had an accident: I wasn’t watching what was going on, the side of the lorry was let down and an avalanche of pumpkins descended on me. They raised bumps all over my head, a piece of one of my teeth was broken off, but I just lay for a moment by the wall and walked away. It was a bit of bad luck.
In the lunch break in the middle of the day we were taken to the canteen in pairs. Here I found a way of squeezing in among the first, getting my plate filled and rushing off into a corner to drink my soup down, without using a spoon and burning my tongue, and keeping one eye on the queue to make sure it didn’t come to an end. The people at the end of the queue would be receiving their first helping, but I would be there for the second time. I would turn my face to the wall, quietly lick my plate clean, wipe it with my sleeve and then with a look of innocence hold it out to be filled.
The cook would take my plate and pour half a ladle into it, letting me know in that way that she knew what I was up to, but that she was taking pity on me and wouldn’t make a fuss. I used to devour the second helping more calmly, savouring it, letting it pass through my teeth, and licking my lips, and I wouldn’t even bother to lick my plate clean, like some of the others who were on their last legs, but went and washed it off under the tap. That was a bit of good luck.
What I hated most was when we were given the job of loading up the jam. It was packed in eighteen-pound sealed tins. We had it there in our hands, but we couldn’t get at it. It was for the chosen people.
The production part of the factory was strongly guarded, but on one occasion, after loading up our lorry, we noticed that the watchman had gone away and another boy and I slipped quickly into the factory. It was dark and warm inside and there was something bubbling and boiling away in the vats. We rushed up to the first woman we saw—she was working there in dirty overalls—and said:
‘Please, lady, give us some jam!’
‘Oh, you poor things, come over here, quick!’ She pushed us behind a lot of metal stands and brought us a battered box half full of hot pumpkin jam. We stuck our dirty hands into it, dipping our fingers first into the hot jam and then into our mouths, gulping it down and trying to get as much of it as possible into our tummies. That was a real bit of luck!
Then we became even cheekier and slipped into the workshop where they started boiling the pumpkins. By means of sticks we each managed to get a piece of pumpkin out of the vat, still uncooked but very tasty. Unfortunately a white-faced, sickly-looking worker saw us and said:
‘Who let you in here?’
We said nothing, simply ignored him, as though to say: What business is it of yours? He went off, as it turned out, to summon the foreman. When he appeared, a very strong man, he first clouted my friend over the head and then me. My friend started to whine and plead with him, but I, like a fool, kept silent, so I got more. He beat me so viciously, with such a professional touch, holding me firmly by the shoulder, punching me in my ribs and my back, that my little head nearly came off. Then he let me go and shoved me away. We went off behind the store and I sicked up jam with pieces of pumpkin in it. That was bad luck. You can’t have it all your own way.
Our working day lasted twelve hours. When we finished we were formed up and marched across to the works entrance, where we were carefully searched and let out one at a time. It was very well organized, and I reckoned that on the whole I had more good luck than bad. I used to boast when I got home, and tell my grandfather about all the good things there were in the canning factory and how much I had to eat there. He, poor man, was terribly hungry, and took a different view of things. He was angry because I didn’t bring anything home.
‘There’s one clever chap I know,’ he said once. ‘He’s making sausage on the quiet without a licence and he’s looking for a reliable helper, someone who won’t talk. Why don’t you let me fix you up with him; he promises to provide food and to pay in bones.’
‘Bones—we could do with some of those,’ I said. ‘But how can I get out of working at the factory? I’m on the list.’
