The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (16 page)

Ilya looked up, squinting through his newly broken lens. Without the glasses he was as good as blind. The man who had called to him was motioning for him to join the group.

"What do you want of me?" Ilya asked.

"If we can get that screen off that vent up there, you think you could get through it?"

Ilya looked up at the screened vent. "Where does it go?"

"Who knows? But what do we have to lose? Maybe it leads outside. Maybe you can get out and figure a way to help us. On the other hand, you may get caught in there." He paused and then shrugged. "Will you try?"

Ilya agreed without hesitation. If he got out he might also be able to help his own family. He realized his chances of even fitting through the ventilator were slim, that he was probably crawling to his death. But what choice had he?

"Like you say, what's to lose?"

Two of the larger men lifted his frail body easily. He tugged at the screen covering the vent, which popped loose, bringing dust down on him and those below. He handed the screen down and the two men all but heaved him into the small opening. He fit, easily. After he was in, they lifted another man, small, but too large for the vent, who snapped the screen back into place.

It was cramped and dark in the shaft. As he slid along, dust flew into his nostrils. Struggling to stifle a sneeze, Ilya Chuikov snaked his way on. He came to an elbow turn in the duct. He could get his head far enough into the elbow to see the shaft's outside screen. Daylight showed through and Ilya knew freedom was probably just beyond; but he could not get his shoulders past the elbow turn. With escape not two meters away, Ilya would be forced to return to the basement room.

As he started backing down the duct, he raised more dust. It penetrated his nostrils and he sneezed before he could stop it. He was over a seam in the duct, at a point where the thin sheet metal was poorly supported. The convulsing motion of his body was more than the duct could withstand. The seam gave way and dumped Ilya into a shallow crawl space.

Stunned and sore, Ilya found himself in darkness pierced only by a sliver of light off to his left. He crawled in the loose, cool dirt under the building. The light came through a crack between two boards in what felt like a small, wooden access door.

He put his eye up to the crack. Beyond there was a German standing by a car. Probably its chauffeur waiting for his officer, Ilya thought. He knew right away where he was. The little door was one he had often seen from the outside as he walked to and from the school. He'd never paid much attention to it. Now it was his doorway to escape.

It opened, he knew, onto an alley at the side of the building, next to the faculty entrance to the school. The stairway to that entrance would give Ilya protection from the view of anyone on the street. On the other side, he would be kept from view by trash bins. Now if only that damn German would leave!

For four hours, the German remained at his spot. He kept getting in and out of the car, yawning and talking to himself or anyone else who came by and would pause a moment. He must have smoked a complete pack of cigarettes. Doesn't he have to go to the toilet-or eat-or get a drink of water? Ilya wondered. But he never left his post. Finally, after dark, Ilya heard the officer return to his car. After exchanging a few words with someone in German, which Ilya couldn't understand, the car started and drove away.

Alone with his thumping heart, Ilya waited several minutes before trying the door. It moved easily. He slowly, carefully opened it. The alley was empty. He slipped out and followed the shadows to where the trash bins stood in the alley. He saw no Germans.

Now he paused. How could he help his fellow Jews? No sooner had he started to ponder the problem than he heard a commotion at the rear of the building. The Germans were moving the Jews he had been imprisoned with into trucks. If there had been any chance to help them, it was too late now.

He could not help his family either. He couldn't even find where they'd been taken. Dejected, despondent, overcome with grief, Ilya blindly-dazed, escaped to the countryside. He made his way into the forest, like a ghost, empty and in despair.

By mid-January of 1942, Solomon's partisan band was a community of more than a hundred Jews. Between November and mid-January, the encampment was moved three times. Moving was a precaution Moshe thought would reduce the chances of discovery or betrayal. It happened each time a partisan disappeared, to assure the Nazis couldn't torture the camp's location out of him or her if he or she'd been captured.

As the group became larger, moving became more difficult. Sol came up with an idea that would provide maximum security without constant disruption of their community life.

"What if there were three camps. The first camp, a very mobile one, would be where supplies would be gathered for and from missions," he explained to Moshe. "We wouldn't use it for more than two or three days. New members could be brought in through it, be observed, not being told about the other camps. If there were a betrayal or if someone followed newcomers or a returning raiding party-only a few of our number would be jeopardized.

"Returning from a mission, we'd stay at the first camp for at least twelve hours; maybe more. Long enough to make any followers think it was our headquarters." Sol paused, waiting for Moshe's reaction.

"Go on, what about the second camp?"

"Camp two would be a temporary camp, too. It would house mission eligible partisans and newcomers from camp one. The new people would remain at camp two until their loyalties proved unquestionable. We'd make it look to them that this was the main camp. The second camp would be moved only if there were a capture of one of our people. However, if someone is captured, we would know that he would disclose the first camp-to minimize the torture. We would move the first camp right away, leaving enough evidence to convince the Germans he wasn't lying. It may buy him or her a less painful death.

"Unless a major mission was planned, camp two would never house more than a fourth of our number. This would reduce the chance of a crippling raid on us."

Again Sol paused. "Any question so far?"

"No. It's clear. So far I like the idea. Go on."

"Camp three would be the main camp, permanent community. It will be deep in the forest. Somewhere in an area of wilderness, far from any civilization - at least a day's travel from the nearest road or village. All routes to this camp would be posted with lookouts. A warning system would give us at least three hours to prepare for defense or evacuation. All the children, elderly and non combatants would stay there permanently.

"Those scheduled for a mission would leave camp three and set up a new camp one. Camp three would be far too remote to be a staging area for any mission."

"Where do you envision the camp three being?" Moshe asked.

"I have no idea. The site will have to be carefully chosen and very remote. These forests around Kiev are vast. People have been lost in them for weeks. We must find a place deep-hours deep into the wilderness-where we can build a permanent community-a secret community-under tree cover so as not to be seen from the air. And it must be defensible. Such a place might be hard to find, but it will also be hard for the Germans to find."

As soon as the site had been selected, the number one priority was to build shelters. Every person, man, woman, child, was pressed into working at whatever tasks capable. Snow was already in the air. Nights were cold but not yet freezing. Days were chilly. They thanked God that this winter of 1941 was beginning later than usual, but they also realized that late-starting winters were sometimes the bitterest when they finally did strike.

In four days, they had enough shelters built to house everyone in an emergency, should a storm strike. Over the next few days, they completed the rest of the necessary buildings.

Shelters at both the first and second camps would be makeshift, temporary, usually lean-to type structures made of cut tree limbs, fallen leaves and evergreen boughs. Sometimes trenches were dug and lived in, covered over by the same materials, but as the days and nights became colder digging trenches in the more shallow frozen ground became impossible. Any natural shelter, such as a cave, was utilized when possible. Once in a while, they used deserted farm buildings and villages for the first and second camps.

The main camp was another matter. Everything had some sign of permanency. Houses were built among the trees to give added protection from the weather, but more important, protection from observation of men in overflying aircraft. Built simply, the houses were like those used by Ukrainian peasants for centuries. The average building was about five meters by three meters and more underground than above. It could be put up in a day or two by several men, before the ground was too frozen.

First, a hole was dug about four feet deep by the dimensions of the building to be constructed. The hole looked like that dug for the foundation of a house, but empty of the foundation itself. Then logs were built up on the ground at the edge of the excavation, to a height of about a meter or a little less. From outside the structure looked like a short log cabin. A thatched roof was added. The earth, which had been excavated, was piled outside the logs for added insulation and protection. When finished, the houses looked like low mounds of dirt with thatch in the middle. There was a vent for smoke from a fireplace at one end of the room. Inside it was dark. The distance from the dirt floor to the roof was about two meters, with the roof having just enough slope to carry off rainwater or melting snow.

The primitive structures gave excellent protection from the cold of winter blizzards. In the hot summer months, if the Jews were still there, the huts would be cool. Unmarried men and women would live dormitory style, eight to ten per building. The goal was to eventually have a shelter for each family. Until that was possible, young children stayed in dorms with their mothers and older boys lived in men's dorms with their fathers. They built huts at a feverish pace to house all the families before the ground froze for the winter.

There was one hut built and designated as headquarters, another synagogue and school. Supplies for the camp were kept in three other buildings. There was a common kitchen, though it was used mostly by the single partisans. Families usually preferred to cook for themselves. There was also a hospital building-as yet seldom used. By Chanukah of 1941, December 24th, all was finished.

A short time after the three camp system was established Solomon started to keep a diary. Events demanded documentation. Certainly the Germans wouldn't keep honest chronicles of their atrocities. If there were no survivors, how would the world ever know? It was a common fear among the Jews that the world would never learn the truth about their extermination. Many besides Solomon started diaries, hoping they would be found later, should the worst happen.

The new life in the forest, the daily chore of survival, the inhumanity of the situation, all produced changes in the partisans. The times made changes in Sol, too. He now wore a beard. The warm sparkle in his eyes didn't disappear, but he developed a bitterness common to those who had lost so much. His humor often turned sarcastic. It was never directed at individuals, but at the world outside the encampment. The hard work of survival made his body strong and sinuous.

By the beginning of 1942, he matured remarkably. People respected his opinions in spite of his youth, but then much of the activity and leadership was carried out by the young.

For most of the Jews, camp three was the first place they had ever been free of the constant abuses of the Christian world. And in those first few months of forming the Jewish community in the forest, Rachel became an increasingly important part of Solomon's life.

Now that there was a mutual trust between Father Peter and Ivan, the priest started to send him many escaping Jews. It was a dangerous situation for the priest, one he could do nothing about. When refugees came to him, because they had nowhere else to turn, he took every precaution but could never be really sure he wasn't being entrapped. Fortunately, the Germans had so many other problems that they only watched one facet of the priest's activities, his sermons. Each Sunday, the same German came to the worship service, sat attentively through the sermon and then reported back to his superiors that the priest was being cooperative with the occupation.

Father Peter watched the man during prayers and was impressed that he took the services seriously, participating sincerely in the service. But the priest never thought for a second that the "good" Christian would not turn him in for the least infraction.

The reports temporarily satisfied the Nazis. However, Father Peter and the partisans had no way of knowing whether the Germans considered the Churchman a threat or not. To them, every shadow hid an enemy observer.

Security and suspicion were problems shared by all resistance groups. But there was one matter unique to the partisan Jews, the policy of accepting all Jews into the community. There was no exception. Age, sex, health, disabilities or handicaps were not even considered. If a refugee was Jewish, that refugee was welcomed. Other groups could select only those capable of fighting, but the Jews could not, would not refuse refuge to any Jew. To do so would mean a death sentence. Outside the partisan camp was enemy territory, inhabited by Nazis and anti-Semitic Ukrainians.

This policy actually became an asset rather than a liability to the Jews. Others had a single objective in their activities, the disruption and destruction of the German war machine. The Jews had not only that goal, but the goal of survival-both for the individual Jew and for Judaism at large. This difference was reflected in the Nazi attitude toward their enemies. Gentiles were executed because of political philosophy or military action against the Reich. Jews were executed because they were Jews. Hitler had singled out only one other group for the final solution, for genocide-the Gypsies.