Babi Yar, page 8
Then Grandma said:
‘Don’t put any faith, my son, in people who wear their caps down over their eyes.’
‘Why not, Gran?’
‘They are bad people.’
‘But why?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what my mother taught me.’
‘Are you talking about the Germans?’
‘About the Germans, about the Russians, about all of them. Just think of all those scoundrels, the militia and the secret police, the way they wear their caps … When I had a good look at those Germans today my heart fell—they are enemies! Enemies, my child. There’s trouble ahead.’
In Grandma’s vocabulary the word ‘enemy’ covered a great many things—illnesses happened because an enemy had got into a person, and it also meant the Antichrist—‘The Enemy is passing over the land.’
‘Gramp says there’s going to be heaven on earth.’
‘Don’t listen to him, he’s an old gas-bag. Heaven is up above, with God. It never has been on earth. And never will be. How many times have people been promised heaven? Anyone who wishes can promise heaven. But the ordinary man, poor devil, still has to labour in the sweat of his brow for a crust of bread as he always did. And they are still promising him paradise … Your grandfather remembers the herrings and the cheap cloth, but the way I used to go out laundering for other people from dawn to dusk for fifteen kopeks a day—does he remember that? And just ask him about the way they executed Petlyura’s men in Pushcha-Voditsa. Oh, what’s the use of talking, I have never seen any good on this earth. Heaven is over there.’
She nodded in the direction of the monastery, and began muttering a prayer.
I began to feel alarmed, not quite myself. I had long been an atheist; after all, I went to a Soviet school, and I knew for sure that Grandma’s heaven didn’t exist either.
Our business in Zverinets was the following.
Grandma’s niece, Aunt Olga, and her husband had built themselves a little house there just before the war. They had been working in the ‘Arsenal’ Factory and now they had been evacuated along with it. When they went away they let a single woman by the name of Marusya have the house to live in and look after. But they left all the documents and a power of attorney with Grandma, so that she could visit it from time to time and make sure everything was in order.
The house had not been burnt down or looted and everything seemed to be in good order. Marusya made us welcome. There was a cheerful, swarthy, unshaven man sitting with her, whom she introduced as her new husband. Grandma immediately kissed her on both cheeks and congratulated her.
The next-door neighbour Grabarev signalled to Grandma across the fence. She gasped:
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, I’m in a real mess,’ Grabarev said. ‘You see, Martha, I helped transport the “Arsenal” Factory to the Urals, where I waited and waited for my family and kept on sending them telegrams. But there was panic here: the railway stations were being bombed, and they just couldn’t get away. So then I just dropped everything and hurried back, only to find they’d just been evacuated. I wanted to rush off back again, but Kiev was already surrounded. So the family got away and I’m stuck here.’
He was a rather gloomy, bent and elderly man. I noticed that his cap was sitting on the back of his head, and I felt sorry for him.
‘Oh lord,’ said Grandma, ‘but you’re a Communist!’
‘Don’t you realize there are lots of Communists caught in Kiev by the encirclement? What sort of a Communist am I, in any case … I joined the party like everybody else, so as to survive. I was on the books and I paid my dues. They expelled me last summer—didn’t you hear about it? Only they didn’t carry it through to the end—the war came. Anyway, now I’m in occupied territory, there’s no argument about whether I was expelled or not.’
Grandma nodded her head in sympathy.
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘Work. Get a job as a carpenter.’
He filled his cap full of apples and handed them to me over the fence.
We passed the night there. I slept well in the new place, but Grandma woke me in the middle of the night:
‘Come on, son, wake up.’ She kept tugging at me. ‘Get yourself down there under the bed.’
The floor and windows were shaking from artillery fire, and there was the horrible whine of dive-bombers. Grandma and I crept underneath the bed, where there was already a blanket on the floor (what a thoughtful grandmother she was!) and we huddled up close together.
It was Soviet planes that were doing the bombing, and in the pitch darkness the bomb explosions seemed to be particularly near and heavy. The bed trembled and the whole house shook as if it was an earthquake. They weren’t trying to bomb us but the railway bridge across the Dnieper near the monastery; but I’m afraid that in the darkness they dropped their bombs at random.
‘Afather chart in heaven … ’ Grandma whispered fervently, prodding me at the same time. ‘Go on, pray, pray! God will protect us.’
I started muttering:
‘Thy Kingdom come. In heaven, as it is on earth. Our daily bread … ’
Next morning Marusya said to Grandma:
‘I have every respect for you, Martha Yefimovna, but I must ask you not to come here any more. This house is going to belong to me and my husband. The Soviets won’t be coming back and you don’t need it. We’ll put it into our name.’
Grandma threw up her hands in dismay.
‘That’s what everybody is doing these days,’ Marusya explained. ‘The houses of people who’ve been evacuated are being taken over by those in need. Especially since this house belonged to a Communist, a parasite. Their day is over! It’s no good you showing me your authority—it’s Soviet and it’s not valid any longer. And don’t forget that you are related to a Communist yourself.’
Her cheerful, unshaven husband then appeared and stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips, showing his muscles. Grandma talked about a sense of duty and about God and about lodging a complaint. But he simply stood there with a cheerful grin on his face.
Our journey back was very dismal. Grandma had been utterly humiliated.
At the beginning of the Kreshchatik we were suddenly stopped by a patrol.
‘You a Jew?’ a soldier asked Grandma. ‘Show papers!’
Grandma fumbled nervously in her bosom to get her identity card out. Near by they were checking the papers of an elderly man.
‘Yes, I’m a Jew,’ he said in a squeaky voice.
‘Komm!’ the German ordered him abruptly and the old man was led away.
‘I’m a Ukrainian, a Ukrainian!’ Grandma was saying in a frightened tone.
The soldier inspected her identity card, handed it back and turned away. We hurried off down Vladimir Hill to Podol. A woman told Grandma:
‘This morning we saw a Jewish girl running down the street, shooting from a revolver. She killed two officers and then shot herself. Then they started hunting out Jews. They say they are checking up on them and sending them off to take down the barricades … Oh lord, first they had to be built, now they’ve got to be taken down, and it’s always the local people who have to do it; they’re going round from house to house chasing all the young people off to work on the barricades … ’
There was a crowd of people standing in front of a hoarding, reading an announcement. I immediately pushed my way through to the front. It contained the first orders issued by the German Commandant. I quote from memory what it said.
FIRST. All objects taken from shops, offices or empty houses must be returned not later than tomorrow morning to the place they were taken from. Anyone not carrying out this order and retaining even the smallest trifle will be SHOT. SECOND. The whole population must hand over all surplus food. It is permitted to retain only supplies sufficient for twenty-four hours. Anyone failing to carry out this order will be SHOT.
THIRD. All members of the population must hand in all weapons, ammunition, military equipment and radio receivers now in their possession. Weapons and radio sets are to be delivered to the Commandant’s headquarters on the Kreshchatik, and military equipment to 27 Kreshchatik. Anyone not carrying out this order will be SHOT.
I really felt my hair standing on end; I turned pale and moved away. I was thinking about the brushes and the weights, the lamp and the buttons I had looted …
It was only then that I noticed there were no more looters at all on the streets, only small groups of people reading the orders and quickly dispersing.
Grandma and I arrived home in a very troubled state of mind. My mother rolled up my loot and abruptly ordered me:
‘Take it.’
‘At least he doesn’t have to take the weights!’ complained Grandpa. ‘We’ve got our own scales; let them try and prove they aren’t our weights; there’s nothing written on them to show they came from the shop! And I’ll throw the buttons down the lavatory.’
In the end they made me take back only the lamp and the brushes, since the whole street had seen me bringing them home. I was afraid, and ashamed to go down to the market. There was nobody else taking anything down there yet; I appeared to be the first. And I hung around a long time, until there was nobody passing near by. Then, choosing the moment, I stuffed the lamp through the window, threw the brushes in after, and scampered off.
At home they were debating with much concern what to do with the food. They were counting up the bags of peas, millet and dried bread. There was enough for about ten days, and my grandfather was ready to go to the stake rather than hand it all over.
‘They’re only saying that to frighten us!’ Gramp shouted plaintively. ‘Let people like Shatkovsky, who stole butter by the barrel, take it back! We’ll just wait and see.’
In the evening they sent me down to see what was going on. The shops were still in the same state and quite empty. But my lamp was no longer in the window, and the brushes had gone too.
Nobody returned anything or handed anything over. But Grandpa hid the food in the shed under the straw, just in case. Our bundles and cases were in the trench under the ground. And we had never had any weapons or radio set.
Next day a couple of soldiers appeared and alarmed us once again. But they only went round the house, took an old head-scarf of Grandma’s and went off without saying a word. We watched them, dumbfounded, as they walked away; we just couldn’t get used to them. Grandma said:
‘It’s true, you see, you really don’t need any locks; you might just as well shut the house with a piece of stick … The three days are already up and they’re still looting.’
‘Means they’ve extended it to five days,’ Gramp insisted. ‘Kiev’s a big city, a capital, it’s not so easy to loot, so they’ve given ’em five days. Just mark my words, on the twenty-fourth it’ll all be over.
He was making a great mistake.
On September 24th it was all just beginning.
* Kochubei, a legendary bandit, executed by the nationalist leader Mazepa.
THE KRESHCHATIK
On September 19th, 1941, German troops entered the Kreshchatik from both ends. One column came from the direction of Podol—those were the ones we had run into already in Kurenyovka, brash and cheerful, mostly riding in cars. The other column came in from the opposite direction, across the Bessarabka, and they were on motorcycles, straight from the battlefield, grimy, moving in swarms, spreading out across the pavements and filling the whole of the Kreshchatik with noise and petrol fumes.
It was like some colossal, sprawling military parade, with continual hold-ups, collisions and confusion. The local people stood watching at their front doors; others came running up to stare; some lent a willing hand to move the anti-tank barriers away or started pulling Soviet posters off the walls.
Obviously according to a previously arranged plan, troops began to occupy the empty buildings on the Kreshchatik. There were in fact more shops and offices on the street than living accommodation, and practically all the occupants of the flats had been evacuated. It was on this main street of Kiev that all the party officials, officers of the secret police and famous actors had been living—and they, of course, had all departed. The Kreshchatik was deserted.
The German command had taken a fancy to the building on the corner of the Kreshchatik and Proreznaya Street, which had the popular Children’s World shop on the ground floor. The German staff occupied the enormous Continental Hotel. The Doctors’ Club was converted into a club for German officers.
Everything had been carefully thought out and was put efficiently into practice in the shortest possible time: trailers with electric generators were set up right on the pavements to provide current, and water was brought in tankers from the Dnieper.
It looked like a lively and businesslike take-over by guests who had arrived with a lot of noise, and who were not there to amuse themselves but to get on with their business, and the people of the city watched them expectantly.
It was because of the troops passing through that the looting of the Kreshchatik did not start at once, but later—in fact, at night, when it became clear that the troops were busy with their own affairs. But once the first cautious looters had taken sacks full of things from under the very noses of the Germans, people rushed down to the Kreshchatik from all over the city.
By morning all the shop-windows had been knocked out and figures could be seen moving about the Kreshchatik carrying rolls of carpet and piles of crockery, bundles of children’s satchels and even curtains out of the theatres. And there were Germans busy among them as well. They chased the looters away, uttering threats and clouting people over the head, and then started looting themselves. It was like an overturned ant-heap —everybody was carrying something somewhere.
After lunch-time the Bessarabka market suddenly came to life: the first stallholders produced hot pies with peas and boiled potatoes, assuming, quite rightly, that the looters would get hungry. They had no idea what prices to ask: they just demanded a packet of home-grown tobacco and let their customers eat their fill.
Two barber’s shops opened up. The enterprising Jewish barbers guessed correctly —the German officers crowded in.
There was such a happy mood about the place, a sort of holiday spirit, and the sun was shining, which also helped to put people in a good mood.
The keys of the locked flats belonging to the party officials and bureaucrats who had fled were in the keeping of the house-managers. The Germans went around the flats with them or a workman, opening them up and taking them over or grabbing anything they took a fancy to.
It was a chance for all the house-managers and people employed in the buildings, the watchmen and lift-attendants, to get their hands on things. They took over the five- or six-roomed flats belonging to officials of the city’s party organization, which were full of things most ordinary people could never dream of having (especially if you bear in mind that only recently ordinary people would have had to fight for a couple of days in a queue to get a few yards of cloth!). They were dragging stuff from all parts of the building into their new flats, turning them into store-rooms. There was a tale about one workman who moved from the basement to the first floor and collected twelve grand pianos, stacking them one on top of the other.
Nobody ever returned any of the loot when the Commandant’s orders appeared. It seemed rather pointless to do so. For the sake of his twelve pianos the stupid workman might well have been shot, but it was out of the question for him to go and hand them back himself. He just couldn’t do it!
But the hated weapons and the dangerous radio receivers were taken back. Maybe one person took his back first and then others took fright and took theirs back too. Especially gas-masks—they took a lot of those back. Once you had returned a gas-mask you felt you had at least partially carried out the order. People threw them down in a pile in the premises of the café and cake shop opposite the Commandant’s headquarters, at 27 Kreshchatik, and the mountain of gas-masks soon filled the café right up to the ceiling.
The first people to be called together (from lists of names and addresses found in the personnel department) were the employees of Radio Kiev. The offices of the radio and the studios were on the corner of the Kreshchatik and Institute Street. The German who had just been appointed head of the radio stepped out on to the platform, surveyed the people gathered in the hall and started in a very unusual way:
‘All Jews stand up!’
A deathly silence descended on the hall. Nobody stood up; people simply moved their heads a little.
‘Jews stand up!!’ the German repeated more loudly, turning red in the face.
Again nobody stood up.
‘All Yids get up!!!’ he screamed, reaching for his revolver.
It was only then that in various parts of the hall people began to stand up—musicians, violinists and cellists, a few technicians, some editors. With heads hanging they made their way to the exit.
The new boss waited until the door had closed behind the last of them. Then, in broken Russian, he announced to those remaining that the world must hear ‘the voice of free Kiev’. In the next few days, he said, the radio station must be quickly brought back into operation, and from the following day everybody must return to work. Anyone who refused to work would be regarded as a saboteur. The time for peaceful, creative work had come.
People got up from their places, subdued and perplexed, and began to leave. At that moment the first explosion was heard.
It was on September 24th, at four o’clock in the afternoon.
The building housing the German headquarters with the Children’s World on the ground floor was blown up. The explosion was of such a force that it blew out the windows not only on the Kreshchatik but also on the streets running parallel with it, Pushkin and Mering Streets. Glass came crashing down from the different floors on to the heads of the Germans and passers-by, many of whom were injured.
On the corner of Proreznaya a column of flames and smoke rose into the air. People started running, some to get away from the explosion and others, on the contrary, to get closer to it and see what had happened.
