Babi Yar, page 40
We used up about fifty cartridges; our shoulders were swollen and we could hardly lift our arms, but we were very happy to be armed. Then we hid the rifle in the foundations and agreed that the first of us to have need of it should take it.
5. A Night of Terror
Even before I reached our house I realized that something was wrong. Weeping women were running round with bundles and children in their arms; soldiers with rifles were standing at our gate; guard dogs were straining at the leash, their tongues hanging out; and my mother was standing in the yard trying to explain something in a tearful voice. On seeing me she rushed up to me saying:
‘There he is! Now we’ll go at once.’
The soldiers took her at her word and went off to drive out the other people. But we popped into the hay-loft and covered ourselves with hay. My mother scolded me quietly in the darkness. I said nothing, either about being caught in the round-up, or about the rifle, and certainly not about the hand-grenades in my pockets. There was no point in worrying her more; she had already changed beyond recognition because of everything that had happened: she looked much older, was terribly thin and stooping, and her nose seemed to be more prominent; when she walked down the street in a plain woollen cardigan and a black head-scarf her former pupils did not recognize her, or if they did would exclaim: ‘Maria Fyodorovna, whatever’s happened to you?’
I broke away a few bits of wood to make a peep-hole through which I could see the collective farm garden. It was already getting dark. Then suddenly shooting broke out very near us—and there was a despairing squeal or a scream which didn’t sound as if it came from a human being. My mother started at the noise.
A German ran through the garden with a rifle, took aim and fired. His second shot also hit the target: there was a yelp and a sort of grunt, and I saw that he had been hunting down a dog.
As night fell, everything became quiet. We only drank water and had nothing to eat. I went off to sleep, and when I woke I noticed a faint glow in the hay. I reached out and took hold of a piece of rotting bark which gave off a mysterious and rather beautiful luminescence. Half the night I amused myself with that piece of rotten wood, but then it began to fade through being handled and eventually went out.
Then I heard a faint rustling: somebody was creeping into the loft. It sent shivers down my spine, but I thought it might be Grandpa, back from the Gardener. Then I heard a faint, plaintive miaow, threw back the hay and rushed to pick up Titus. I held him close to me and felt at once a lot happier.
Cats are really amazing creatures. They live among us, they depend upon us, and yet they preserve a high degree of independence and have their own, special, complex life which comes only very slightly into contact with ours. They have their own sense of time, their own special ways of coming and going and their own meeting-places, which are seldom the same as the ones we use. I always respected Titus’s private life, but that night I was happy beyond words that it had coincided briefly with mine.
We spent whole days like that in the hay-loft, never going outside. Then one day I awoke in the morning and found that neither my mother nor Titus was there. I swept the hay brusquely to one side. Someone was going down the street. In the Babarik’s house opposite, Vovka’s mother was moving about and closing the shutters. I felt easier. Then I heard my mother calling out in business-like tones:
‘Hand the things out; we’re leaving. There’s an empty room the other side of the tramlines. They’re putting barbed wire right round this part.’
I spent a long time looking for Titus and calling him, but he seemed to have vanished into thin air. So we went off without him. On the square a German was dashing from one post to another, aiming at something. First we pressed ourselves flat against the fence, but then realized that he was shooting at a cat. There were dead dogs and cats all over the place. To myself I said good-bye to Titus, who had doubtless also been found unwanted by Hitler’s occupation troops.
All along the tramline prisoners were digging holes, putting up posts and stretching barbed wire between them. There was an announcement on the newspaper kiosk: FORBIDDEN ZONE. PERSONS ENTERING WITHOUT SPECIAL PERMISSION WILL BE SHOT.
Immediately opposite this notice there was a long, low building with tiny little windows, fit only to be pulled down. On the courtyard side there were five doorways into it, each with a little porch. It had probably been occupied previously by Jews, but now all the rooms were taken by refugees. It turned out that around the corner there was yet another rickety door, with a little room inside, a stove and a stool. We made a bed on the floor, promoted the stool to serve as a table, and I went off to find some sticks for the fire.
6. Masses of People on the Move
The last printed communication between the occupying force and the city of Kiev:
TO THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE! MEN AND WOMEN!
After two years of peaceful reconstruction in towns and villages war is once again drawing near. The German Command wishes to conserve its forces and therefore does not fear to abandon certain areas.
The Soviet Command, on the contrary, makes no attempt at all to spare the lives of its officers and men, counting irresponsibly on allegedly inexhaustible reserves of manpower.
For that reason the Germans with their reserves will hold out longer, and that is of decisive importance for the final victory.
You will realize that the German Command is obliged to take certain steps which sometimes seriously upset the personal lives of some individuals.
But this is war!
Therefore you must work hard and willingly whenever German officials appeal to you.
GERMAN COMMANDER*
In practice it worked out like this: using the butts of their rifles and their fists, and firing into the air, they drove out on to the streets everybody who could walk and even those who couldn’t. They gave them one minute to gather their things and then announced: The city of Kiev is being evacuated to Germany; the city itself will exist no more.
It was horribly like the procession of Jews in 1941. Masses of people were on the move, with howling children, old people and invalids. Bundles hastily tied up with string, broken ply-wood suitcases, shopping bags and boxes of tools … One old woman was carrying a string of onions hung round her neck. Babies were taken along, several of them together in one carriage; the sick were carried on people’s shoulders. The only form of transport was barrows or children’s prams. The Kirillovskaya was already one mass of milling humanity. The people with their bundles and barrows would all stand still for a while, move forward a little, then stop again. The crowd made a great din; it was like some fantastic parade of beggars. Nobody was seeing anybody off: everybody was leaving.
My mother and I watched this procession from the window. The appearance of the trams was something out of this world: never in my life had I seen a line of tramcars looking so dreary.
The Germans let them through to speed up the evacuation. The trams circled the Peter-Paul Square and the refugees crammed into them. There was much howling and crying as they clambered in through the doors, handed their belongings in through the windows and found places for their children. It all took place just outside our window. The police were saying sneeringly:
‘You wanted to welcome the Bolsheviks, did you? Well, come on then, get in.’
Without waiting for them to chase us out with dogs we took our bundles and went outside. And only just in time, because the last groups were already being driven out. Next to us near the school a grey-green line of soldiers were standing shoulder to shoulder across the road and behind them it was completely deserted—not a living soul to be seen. We went up to an already overcrowded tramcar.
‘Let’s try the next one,’ my mother said.
We went to the next one.
‘Let’s try the next,’ mother said.
The line of trams started up, moved forward a little and stopped again—there was a hold-up somewhere. We ran from one car to the other and couldn’t make up our minds to get in. The Germans were no longer shouting or shooting at people, but just waiting patiently.
My mother seized me by the hand, dragged me back to the shack where we had been, and we slipped into the courtyard. All the doors were hanging wide open and there was not a soul in sight. We dived into our little room and shut ourselves in. My mother sat on the floor, staring at me with terror in her dark, deep-set eyes. We sat there, not daring to move until the last tram had departed.
Darkness fell outside and from time to time we heard the tramp of heavy boots. Peter-Paul Square was absolutely empty, with bits of paper and old rags lying about. About five yards away from our window along the pavement a German soldier stood on guard with an automatic. I could see him only if I squeezed right up against the wall, and I kept stock-still, like a little animal, and even held my breath whenever he turned round.
Next day they chased out some more small groups of people whom they had caught, and they went through the houses again, but the man continued to mount guard at our window, and that saved us, just as ducklings sometimes remain unmolested immediately beneath a hawk’s nest.
We hadn’t the slightest idea what was going to happen next or what had become of Grandpa: we didn’t know even whether he was still alive. But I thought up the following plan. If they found us they would probably not shoot us in the room but take us out into the yard. There we would have to jump in different directions and make a dash for it, not out on to the street but farther into the yard and then through the gardens to the embankment, which was long and overgrown with bushes. Without dogs it would be difficult to find us there, but since they were sure to have some dogs we would have to run farther, across the meadow, weaving about until we could dive in among the reeds in the marshes and stay there. If necessary we would have to put our heads under the water and breathe through a reed as I had read they did in ancient Russia when they were escaping from the Tatars. Then we should have complete, marvellous security.
It was only later that it came to be known that the Germans had indeed loaded the whole population of Kiev into goods trains and transported them to the west. The majority of them succeeded in escaping and dispersing in Poland; many died on the way; some turned up in Germany and some even got as far as France.
A few figures: Before the war Kiev had a population of about 900,000. Towards the end of the German occupation about 180,000 remained, or a great many less than lay dead in Babi Yar alone. One in three of the inhabitants of Kiev was killed during the occupation, and if you add to this figure the number of those who died from hunger, who failed to return from Germany and so forth, then it appears that every second person must have perished.
* Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, September 26th, 1943.
† Ibid. Order issued by Maj-General Virov, Military Commandant.
* Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, September 30th, 1943, after which the paper ceased to exist.
‘WAR OF THE WORLDS’
When our water came to an end and we had nothing more to eat, the guard was withdrawn and the city was left completely empty and dead. We crawled out, moved aside the barbed wire just beneath the notice that threatened trespassers with death, and made our way home across the square. We came to the conclusion that there would be less chance of being ferreted out in the forbidden zone.
Previously the square had had flower beds and a children’s playground with swings. Who would have thought that one day we would have to creep across it at the risk of our lives! We ran across keeping bent down, our eyes skinned, ready at any moment to fall flat on the ground. But the square was deserted and there was not a sound to be heard. The corpses of dead cats and dogs lay rotting everywhere.
My mother threw up her hands in dismay when she saw our house. The gate was wide open, the doors were broken and ripped off their hinges, a window had been knocked out, and books, broken crockery and some of my photographic materials were lying all over the place. Germans had been billeted in the house, and the rooms were full of straw, magazines and empty tins, the doors had been broken off the cupboard and a tin bowl had bullet holes through it.
Beneath the wall of the barn lay an icon which I was quite sure Grandpa had hidden in the cellar. We rushed into the barn. They had not found the onions; they had simply raked the earth away and with a crowbar had forced a hole through into the cellar. Some odd scraps of material were hanging there and a shabby old fox fur was lying with its tail torn off. Mother wrung her hands and gave voice to her feelings.
I crept through the hole, fumbled around and came across an empty trunk and the crowbar they had broken in with. Icons lay all over the barn. The principal one, of the stern-looking Virgin with the adult-looking child, was broken and now at last all its gilt leaves, flowers and other ornaments were in my hands. They turned out to be very primitively constructed of tin; they were cold and rough, and not in the least interesting.
I tried to see what was beneath the oklad, bent it back, and found the whole icon painted on wood. It was a complete icon for which someone had later made an oklad and covered up everything but the faces and hands of the Virgin and the child. There was nothing else of any interest in the case. In those days we knew nothing at all about Rublyov and early Russian icon-painting; I had been taught that icons were just nonsense and deception. Consequently I swung my arm back and threw the Virgin away, so that she turned over and over several times and landed in the vegetable garden.
At that moment there came from behind the rubbish tip the plaintive wail of a cat. When we returned Titus had apparently kept out of the way and had only just recognized us. He crept out, laboriously forcing his way through, his eyes wide and staring, intoning a mournful, droning lament; he was trying to tell us what a bad time he had had there, all alone, what frights he’d had and how he had laid low. He jumped on to my chest, dug his claws in, pressed his head against mine and kept nudging me—doing everything he could, in short, to show how pleased he was.
I was very pleased myself to find that he had been clever enough not to fall into the Germans’ hands throughout the time they were posted near us. Titus’s return cheered us up and we set about putting the house in order.
There was a butt full of water standing under a rainwater pipe, so that we were not likely to die of thirst. We poked around in the vegetable garden and dug out a few potatoes that had been overlooked. Some rabbits, already quite wild again, were skipping around the gardens, but they were as fast as hares and there was no way of catching them. My mother decided not to light the stove, because the smoke would be seen coming from the chimney. Instead she set two bricks side by side on the ground and made a fire between them. The trouble was that we had only a few matches left, so we decided to keep a little fire going the whole time.
The neighbouring houses had been turned inside out: windows broken, doors hanging open, the contents lying outside—a stool here, a book there, a bucket, or just rubbish. I decided to investigate the district around us and went first to the Engstrems’ house.
As I went in I tripped over tins and saucepans lying around on the floor, examined the shelves on the dresser and in the pantry, even looked under the beds; and I was not disappointed—I found a piece of dry bread that had been dropped.
This inspired me to further effort, and I hopped over the fence and went into the next house, where I found the same kind of mess; somebody had even relieved himself in the middle of the floor. I went down to inspect the cellar. Since there were no matches, I felt around with my hands in the darkness, caught my foot on some slippery boards and found what I was looking for: a pile of old, rotten potatoes, and a few withered carrots. That was real abundance!
As I crossed the road I glanced at the house in which the Kobets family had lived and nearly dropped my loot from sheer fright. Staring at me out of the broken window were the little bloodshot eyes of a shaggy wild boar.
It was the Kobetses’ stuffed boar which some German had apparently propped up in the window as a practical joke. When I had taken the potatoes home I went back to the stuffed boar, examined it carefully, poked it in the snout, and it fell into the room. I climbed through the window after it.
Broken glass crunched beneath my feet and the floor was scattered with pieces of paper, old letters and albums which had been tipped out of the desk drawers. I picked some of the things up, examined a little broken porcelain statue, a monogrammed spoon, a book—they were lying in piles in the corners—and threw everything back. None of it meant anything to me.
I picked up the stuffed boar and fixed it up in the window again. Then I found the deer, the wolf and the fox and spent a long time fixing them up in the other windows, supporting them with books, to keep the boar company. I was having a lot of fun, and I decided to go outside and see what the house looked like with the heads of the animals staring out of the windows. It wasn’t bad—really quite amusing …
Going through the drawers of the chest one after the other I found the collection of photographs which the old lady had once shown us. They were stacked up, as if in a card-index, strictly according to size, and I recognized in them the elegant ladies, the men with their flowing moustaches, the children in their sailor suits, Nikolya next to his motor-car with the cart wheels and Sevochka standing by his aeroplane. It was a precious collection of all the people close to her, and I came to the conclusion that she and Mima must have had to flee in a great hurry if she had left all that behind.
One photograph was very much like another, and they were of no interest to me anyway. But now they meant nothing to anybody; everything had collapsed, and I wondered whether I couldn’t find a use for them. So I took the whole collection out into the garden in its box and started flicking the photographs in all directions. They sailed away beautifully, spinning and sailing through the air like plates, some landing in the bushes and others disappearing over the fence into the street.
