Babi Yar, page 29
‘Take a bag along,’ said Grandpa. ‘If you don’t bribe, you don’t get anywhere.’
I went on working at the factory for some time, then made up my mind. I took my bag along. I bribed. I got somewhere.
THE DYNAMO TEAM: A LEGEND AND THE TRUTH
This almost incredible story took place in the summer of 1942, [when the Germans were at the Volga and it seemed as though their victory was already assured.] It was a story that shocked everyone and became so well known among the population that at one time, when they spoke about the ravine, they would say: ‘That’s Babi Yar, where the footballers were shot.’ The story became a legend, which was so well told and so complete in itself that I want to reproduce it in full. Here it is.
Before the war Dynamo, the Ukrainian football team from Kiev, was one of the best in the country. [The great football battles between Kiev and Moscow were always accompanied by something more than just the excitement of the game itself. It was also a question of the honour of the oppressed Ukrainians.] That was why the Kiev fans adored their players, and especially their famous goalkeeper Trusevich.
When the city was surrounded the team could not be evacuated. At first they remained there quietly, fixing themselves up with jobs where they could and meeting from time to time. Then they began to miss their football and to hold training sessions on an open piece of land. The small boys and local people soon got to know about this, and in due course it reached the ears of the German authorities.
They summoned the footballers and said: ‘Why do you have to use a bit of empty land? There’s a wonderful stadium with nothing happening on it. Why not do your training there? We’re not against sport: on the contrary.’
The members of the Dynamo team accepted the offer and moved into the stadium. Some time later the Germans summoned them again [(note how precise the legend is—the authorities always summon people)] and said: ‘Life is returning to its normal peacetime state in Kiev; the cinemas and the opera have been reopened; it’s time to reopen the stadium. Let everybody see how quickly things are being restored to normal. We suggest organizing a match between you and a team picked from the German armed forces.’
The Dynamo players asked for time to think it over. Some of them were against the idea, on the grounds that it would be shameful and unpatriotic for them to play football with the Nazis. Others argued the reverse: ‘On the contrary: we’ll give ’em a good beating and raise the morale of the people of Kiev.’ They finally agreed on the second view, and the team began to make vigorous preparations. They called the team ‘Start’.
Eventually posters appeared on the streets of Kiev: FOOTBALL. ARMED FORCES OF GERMANY VERSUS KIEV CITY START.
The stadium was packed. Half the stands were occupied by the Germans, including the top brass and the Commandant himself, all very cheerful, looking forward to enjoying the match. The worst seats were occupied by the hungry, ragged Ukrainian population of Kiev.
The game started. The Dynamo team were in bad condition and short of energy. The well-fed German footballers played a very rough game, committing obvious fouls, of which the referee took no notice, and when the first goal was scored against the Kiev team the German spectators shouted with delight. The other half of the stadium maintained a gloomy silence—the Germans, it seemed, could even wipe the floor with us at football.
Then something seemed to come over the Dynamo team. They were seized by a fury. Goodness knows where they found the strength, but they began to outplay the Germans and they made a desperate breakthrough and scored an equalizer. Now it was the turn of the German spectators to remain silent in their disappointment, while the rest cheered and embraced each other.
Then the Dynamo players refound their pre-war class and with some first-class teamwork pulled off a second goal. At this the down-at-heel spectators in the stands shouted: ‘Hurrah!’ and: ‘The Germans are getting beaten!’
This latter remark went beyond the limits of pure sport. The Germans started striding up and down in front of the stands and ordering the people to stop shouting—and some shots were fired into the air. The first half came to an end and the players left the field for the dressing-rooms.
During half-time an officer from the Commandant’s box came into the Dynamo dressing-room and, very politely, told them the following: ‘That’s great—you’ve played some very good football, and we appreciate it. You have done quite enough to uphold your honour as sportsmen. But now, in the second half, don’t play quite so keenly—you must understand—you’ve got to lose. You must. The German Army team hasn’t lost a single game yet, certainly not in occupied territory. So this is an order. If you don’t lose the game you’ll be shot.’
The Dynamo team listened in silence to these words and then went out on to the field. The referee blew his whistle and the second half began. The Ukrainians continued to play well and put a third shot into the German goal. At this a roar swept over one half of the stadium and there were tears of joy in many people’s eyes, while the German half was fuming with indignation. Then Dynamo scored another goal. At that the Germans jumped up in their stands and started taking out their guns. Police surrounded the whole playing-field.
The very lives of our team depended on the result of the match, but the public in our stands did not know this; they simply kept shouting with delight. The German players were utterly crushed and downcast. Then Dynamo scored yet another goal, at which the Commandant along with all his staff quit the stands.
The referee cut the game short and gave the final whistle; without waiting for the players to go to their dressing-room, the police seized the Dynamo team where they were on the field, put them into a closed van and took them off to Babi Yar.
Such a thing had never happened before in the history of world football. In that match the Ukrainian players had no other weapon but their own skill at the game, and they performed an immortal feat. They won the game, knowing full well that they were going to their deaths, and they did it to restore their people’s self-respect.
In reality the story was not so neatly rounded as that, although it ended in exactly the same way. But, like everything else in life, it was more complicated, if only because it was not just a case of one game but of several, with the Germans’ fury increasing from match to match.
Dynamo did not find themselves in occupied territory because they were unable to depart but because they were mobilized into the Red Army and taken prisoner. Most of them went to work as porters at the No. 1 bakery, and they formed a team there.
There was a German stadium in Kiev to which Ukrainians were not admitted. But on June 12th, 1942, posters were put up around the city.
OPENING OF UKRAINIAN STADIUM
The Ukrainian stadium is to be opened at 1600 hours today.
(No. 51 Vasilkovskaya; entrance from Prozorovskaya.) Opening programme: gymnastics, boxing, light athletics and—as the main item—a football match. (At 1730 hours.)*
In that match, it is true, a team from some German military unit was beaten, which did not please the Germans very much. But there was no serious trouble.
In their annoyance the Germans simply got together a stronger military team—the P.G.S.—for the next match on July 17th. It was utterly routed by the Start team with a score of 6–0.
The newspaper report of that match was priceless:
… But the fact that our team lost must not be regarded as an achievement on the part of the members of the Start team. The German team was made up of footballers who are individually very good players, but they could not be called a team in the proper sense of the word. There is nothing surprising in this, since it consisted of players who happened to join the unit for which they play. It was also apparent that there had not been sufficient training, without which no team, not even the strongest, can be successful. The Start team, as everybody knows very well, consists mainly of players from the former champion Dynamo team, and we ought therefore to expect much more from them than the form they showed in this match.*
The badly concealed annoyance and the desire to apologize to the Germans apparent in every line of that report were only the beginning of the tragedy.
On July 19th, a Sunday, a match took place between the Start team and a Hungarian team—M.S.G. Wal. The score was 5–1 in favour of Start. A quotation from the report of that match: ‘… Despite the final result of the match it can be said that the two teams were more or less equally matched.’†
The Hungarians suggested a return match, which took place on July 26th. The score was 3–2 for Start. It looked as though they were on the verge of beating the Ukrainians, and the Germans would at last be happy.
So a match was arranged for August 6th between Start and the German Flakelf team, reputed to be the ‘strongest’ and ‘ever-victorious’. The newspaper fell over itself with its descriptions of the team and comparisons between the enormous number of goals it had scored and the insignificant number scored against it, and so forth. It was in this match that the Germans suffered the defeat which became a legend. But the newspaper published no report of it at all, as though the match had never taken place.
Even so, the footballers were still not arrested. And they were given much longer than the interval between the two halves to think things over: they had three whole days. A few lines in the Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo for August 9th contained the last announcement about football: ‘At five o’clock today in the Zenith stadium there will be a friendly match between the two best football teams in the city—Flakelf and Start (Bakery No. 1).’
They were giving the Ukrainian team one last chance. The Ukrainians gave the Germans another good beating in this match, but as for the actual score there are only various fantastic rumours. It was after this match that the footballers were dispatched to Babi Yar.
At that time, as I said before, the Germans had reached the approaches to Stalingrad.
*Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, June 12th, 1942.
* Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, July 18th, 1942.
† Op. cit., July 24th, 1942.
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR
A REMINDER. Well, so you are reading these stories. In some cases, perhaps you have just skimmed through unmoved. In others, perhaps (and that would be my fault) you have been bored and have flicked on to the later chapters. After all, you think, it’s only fiction. But I must keep on reminding you that nothing in this book is fictitious.
IT ALL HAPPENED. Nothing has been invented and nothing exaggerated. It all happened with real, live people, and there is not the slightest element of literary fantasy in this book.
There is, of course, a certain tendentiousness. I am certainly biased in my writing because, despite all my efforts to be objective, I remain a living person and not a computer.
[My bias lies in my determination to expose every resort to the use of force, every case of murder, of failure to respect individuals and every attempt to humiliate them.
There was a case in one village where the partisans killed two Germans. They were very young, each of them about eighteen, and they lay there partly covered by the snow. The police forced all the inhabitants of the village to assemble in the square, and the peasants thought they were going to be shot. But they weren’t. Suddenly an illiterate old woman, whose son had been killed in the Finnish war, started to wail: ‘Oh, my little sons! You also have mothers somewhere who don’t even know that you’ve been killed!’ And she fell prostrate upon them, lamenting all the time. Her own people from the village dragged her away, whispering: ‘Quiet! When our own folk get back here they’ll kill you for weeping over some Germans.’ But she just went on moaning: ‘My poor little sons!’
I have the same bias as had that simple woman.] But, irrespective of my views, I take full responsibility, as a living witness, for the absolute TRUTH of everything I relate.
And as for you young folk born in the ‘forties and later, I must admit to you, at the risk of appearing sentimental, that I look at the world at times in amazement and think:
‘Just imagine what good fortune it is nowadays to be able to walk down the street whenever you feel like it, at one o’clock at night or even at four in the morning.’ You can listen to the radio as much as you like, and you can keep as many pigeons as you wish. If you are awakened by the sound of a car in the middle of the night you may mutter crossly and sleepily: ‘The next-door neighbour has come back in a taxi from some party,’ and you turn over. I don’t like to hear the drone of planes at night; when it starts it seems to turn me upside down inside, but I immediately remind myself: ‘Take it easy, those are only training flights; that’s not the real thing yet.’ And in the morning the papers arrive with their stories of little wars here and there … They say we never pay attention to our health so long as we have it and only start to complain when we lose it.
I stare in amazement at this flickering, wobbling world.
BABI YAR: THE SYSTEM
Vladimir Davydov’s arrest was a very simple, undramatic affair.
He was walking down the street when he met his friend Zhora Puzenko. They had been to the same school, belonged to the same sports club and gone out with girls together. They got into conversation, and Zhora said with a smile:
‘What on earth are you doing, walking about the streets, Volodya? You’re a Yid, aren’t you? Come on, let’s go.’
‘Where to?’
‘Come on, come on …’
‘Who do you think you are?’
Zhora simply smiled.
‘Are you coming or not? I can show you my papers.’
He produced documents to show that he worked for the police, and he moved a revolver from one pocket to another, letting it be seen ‘accidentally’.
It was a fine, sunny day and the street was full of people. They went off together. Davydov asked him quietly:
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’
‘No,’ said Puzenko with a shrug. ‘I get paid for it.’
And in this quiet, unemotional manner they arrived at the Gestapo headquarters at 33 Vladimirskaya.
This building is not far from Bogdan Khmelnitsky Square, practically opposite the side gates to the Cathedral of St Sophia. It is a very striking building—huge, and dark-grey in colour, but looking almost black against the buildings near it. With its columns and portico, it rises like a gigantic tallboy above the Vladimirskaya, thick with the dust of ages. There are no cars standing in front of it and no signs on the door. Built before the revolution, it was intended to be the offices of the district administration, but it was never finished and under the Soviet regime it was turned into a Palace of Labour. But not for long—the State security police took a fancy to it.
Right up until the retreat of 1941 the building housed the secret police of the Ukrainian Republic and no expense was spared in adapting it for its new function. Behind the majestic façade were concealed beautifully equipped interrogation rooms, torture chambers, stone cells in the basement, and in the courtyard, hidden away from the eyes of the curious, was a prison, several storeys high, linked to the main building by covered passageways. Sometimes people on the street outside could hear screams coming from the basement. It was generally believed that, as far as ordinary mortals were concerned, they could only enter that building: it was very rarely that anybody came out again.
[The Soviet secret police blew up the Kreshchatik with its shops and theatres and also blew up the greater part of the history of ancient Russia in the Monastery of the Caves. But they left their own building unharmed, as though they intended the Gestapo to have at once all the facilities necessary for its work. The Gestapo accepted and appreciated this thoughtfulness, settled in at once behind the majestic façade, and the screams started up again.
(Looking ahead a little, I may add that when the Germans retreated in their turn they set fire to the neighbouring buildings on Bogdan Khmelnitsky Square and the University, but they left number 33 untouched. It now houses the secret police of the Ukrainian Republic, and in it are preserved many Soviet and German records, which this book so lacks, and new ones are continually being compiled, no doubt so that future researchers should not be short of work. But what a marvellous thing it will be if later generations use the building as a museum: ‘The destruction of man in the Ukraine and his transformation back into an ape’ …]
Davydov had been serving as a private in the Thirty-Seventh Army. He had been taken prisoner near the village of Borshchi, spent some time in prison camps at Darnitsa and elsewhere, and had finally escaped near Zhitomir. He knew a woman in Kiev by the name of Neonila Omelchenko, a doctor, who had contacts with the partisans in the Ivankov district, and Davydov had been about to set off for Ivankov with some medical supplies when he was arrested in this absurd manner.
It remained a matter for conjecture how much Puzenko knew, but Davydov was put in the most frightful cell, the so-called ‘Jewish’ one, which was crammed full of people waiting to be sent to Babi Yar. Davydov realized that there was no hope for him.
He was summoned for interrogation, and they demanded that he confess he was a Jew and also tell what he knew about the partisans.
Davydov proceeded to shout that he was not a Jew and not a partisan, and that Puzenko was only working off an old score on him. He was taken in front of a commission, where he was examined by German doctors for signs of his Jewish origin. They used magnifying glasses to seek traces of his being circumcised, but came to a negative conclusion.
Nevertheless they put him back in the same cell, because it was still not the custom to let anybody out of number 33. It was like a conveyor belt: once you got on to it you simply got carried along and there was no way of getting back.
People were taken out of the cell and never returned, but Davydov remained there. Finally, when there were only ten men left, they were led out into the courtyard, where a van was waiting which they recognized at once.
