Memory of the Minsk Ghetto: the Interaction of Genre and Generations After the Holocaust

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto: The Interaction of Genre and Generations after the Holocaust

Tierre Sanford Henderson, Nevada

Master of Arts, University of Virginia, 2016 Bachelor of Arts, Brigham Young University, 2014

A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

University of Virginia May 2020

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 2

To those who wrote and write about Minsk and

To my parents

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 4

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...... 5

THE HISTORY OF PREWAR JEWISH LIFE IN MINSK ...... 7 THE MINSK GHETTO ...... 11 THE WAVES OF PUBLICATION OF ACCOUNTS ON THE MINSK GHETTO ...... 14 CHAPTER ONE: THE FIRST GENERATION ...... 20 CHAPTER TWO: THE SECOND GENERATION ...... 24 CHAPTER THREE: THE THIRD GENERATION ...... 27 EXTENDING THE MEMORY OF THE MINSK GHETTO ...... 29 CHAPTER 1: WITNESSING THE MINSK GHETTO: MEMOIRISTS PIECE TOGETHER THE PAST ...... 31

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF MINSK DURING THE SUMMER OF 1941 ...... 31 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MINSK GHETTO ...... 42 THE FIRST TWO MAJOR POGROMS OF THE MINSK GHETTO ...... 54 THE CRUEL WINTER OF 1941-1942: STARVATION, MALINAS, AND ESCAPE ...... 67 EVERYDAY VIOLENCE, EVEN TOWARD CHILDREN ...... 83 THE BENEFITS AND PERILS OF DOCUMENTATION ...... 102 ESCAPING DEATH ...... 110 THE FOURTH MAJOR POGROM ...... 122 PARTISAN LIFE ...... 130 AFTER THE LIQUIDATION OF THE MINSK GHETTO...... 159 CHAPTER 2: RESTORING MINSK: GEBELEVA'S SACRED QUEST FOR PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SCATTERED COMMUNITY ...... 177

THE LONG PATH TO GEBELEV STREET ...... 177 THE GENRE OF POSTMEMOIR ...... 179 REASSEMBLING THE LIFE OF MIKHAIL GEBELEV ...... 183 KUPREEVNA AS THE CATALYST FOR BUILDING A NETWORK OF WITNESSES ...... 190 EXPANDING HER NETWORK OF REMEMBRANCE ...... 194 SEEKING JUSTICE AND COMMEMORATION ...... 198 MINSK AS A MEMBER OF GEBELEVA’S COMMUNITY OF WITNESSES ...... 202 EXTENDING THE PRACTICE OF WITNESSING INTO LATER GENERATIONS ...... 204 CHAPTER 3: HEARING THE HOLOCAUST: GROSS-TOLSTIKOV’S FICTIONAL ACCOUNT OF HIS GRANDMOTHER’S CHILDHOOD ...... 209

BEFORE THE WAR: AN INTRODUCTION TO MAIA AND MINSK ...... 209 LITERARY TECHNIQUES ...... 212 THE CHARACTERS OF MINSK ...... 219 THEMATIC CONCERNS ...... 222 QUESTIONING THE NATURE OF BYSTANDERS ...... 227 MOVING INTO THE GHETTO...... 232 THE FIRST MAJOR POGROM OF THE MINSK GHETTO AND THE CONCEPT OF SOUNDSCAPE ...... 238 AT THE RADIO STATION ...... 245 DREAMS AND COMING OF AGE ...... 251 A SOUNDSCAPE OF SILENCE ...... 253 FIVE YEARS LATER...... 260 CONCLUSION ...... 263 WORKS CITED ...... 271

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 5

“In more than 950 cities, towns, and shtetlach of Nazi-dominated

Eastern Europe, Jews were confined to ghettos, a form of holding

place and twilight zone where they suffered humiliation,

persecution, and exploitation prior to their destruction. Yet this

central theme in the topography of the Holocaust still remains

comparatively under researched and not fully understood.”

- Martin Dean

Introduction Fifteen years after Martin Dean’s 2005 quote, this hole in public knowledge is only widening. In the American mindset, the term ‘Holocaust’ is rarely associated with the ghettos in which millions were killed. Rather, the Holocaust today means Auschwitz or maybe Dachau. The

American perception of the Holocaust tends to concentrate on central European countries such as

Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, but rarely considers further east. There are many reasons for this. These countries are more visited by American tourists, their languages more accessible, the sites of the Holocaust are better preserved, and many survivors from these countries have since emigrated to the United States. This is just to name a few. When ghettos are referenced amongst the American public, there is a tendency to speak of Warsaw and Łódź but overlook other ghettos. However, many of these lesser-known ghettos and Holocaust sites are places of untold heroism and resistance. The Minsk ghetto is a prime example of this. The Minsk ghetto was the largest ghetto in the German-occupied Soviet Union—housing approximately

100,000 Jews. Operational from August 1941 until October 1943, it was one of the longest lasting ghettos during the Holocaust. Paradoxically, it was located in the country with the highest Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 6 mortality rate of World War II, yet due in part to a highly effective underground organization, has one of the more significant escape records and survival rates of any ghetto.

Unlike most places in the Soviet Union, when the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic was founded on August 1, 1920, it recognized Yiddish as an official state language and granted Jews full civil rights. By the 1930s, Minsk, the capital of Soviet Belarus, had a thriving Jewish community, which included Jewish schools and the publication of Yiddish newspapers and journals. Interestingly, the relative freedom of speech and religion that Jews were granted in Minsk meant that while some Jews adhered to religious practices such as circumcision, keeping kosher, observing religious holidays, only marrying within the Jewish community, etc.—many did not.

There were as many ways of life for Jews as there were Jews themselves. Mikhail Treister, a Jewish boy from Minsk, explains this phenomenon in a subsection of his autobiography entitled, “I am

Suddenly a Yid.” He recalls,

I had known before the war that there was such a word [as ‘Yid,’ a derogatory term

for the Jews.] Those who used it were sentenced to a year-and-a-half in prison. One

must be a really determined anti-Semite to be willing to pay such a price for the

‘humble pleasure’ of calling someone a ‘Yid.’ The elimination of churches,

mosques, and synagogues, and the mixing of marriages also eliminated the problem

of nationalities. I was not a Jew. I was not Russian either. The question of

nationality did not exist for me. (Treister 20)1

Jewishness can be defined in both ethnic and religious terms. In Treister’s statement, he explains how both elements of Judaism were absent in interwar Minsk. Many of the children, such as twelve-year-old Treister, did not even recognize distinctions such as race or religion. This unawareness of nationality and faith allowed for a uniquely cosmopolitan city, especially within Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 7 the Soviet Union. This distinct historical framework came about only after centuries of Jewish life in modern-day Belarus.

The History of Prewar Jewish Life in Minsk For the past seven centuries, Jews have been the largest minority living in historical

Belarus. In the 14th century, the number of Jews living in the territory of modern-day Belarus began to increase exponentially. Many were fleeing religious and economic persecution as well as ever- increasing expulsion from Germany and Poland. At that time, what is now Belarus, as well as parts of Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania all belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

(GDL). Belarus was at the heart of the GDL, which was unique for its open borders, freedom of religion, and allowance of Jewish self-governance. This led to a multi-ethnic and multi- confessional state, in which Jews were even invited to settle, due to their achievements as craftsman, merchants, diplomats, and financiers. Despite a brief eight-year period, 1495-1503, in which Jews were deported from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it was a relatively peaceful and prosperous time and place for Jews to live. In fact, when Jewish citizenship was reinstated many

Jews were even compensated for any financial losses during their period of exile. In 1569, when the GDL was unified with the Kingdom of Poland, life for Jews remained more-or-less stable and secure. However, with the Khmelnitskky Uprising (1648-1657) against the now Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth, Jews were no longer physically safe in Eastern Europe. While most of the violence was confined to modern-day Ukraine, Cossack violence against Jews was fierce and set a precedent for future pogroms against Jews even in Belarus.

A century and a half later, in 1795, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was divided by the three-great-power partition of Poland, and the Belarussian territory became part of the Russian

Empire. This had vast implications for the Jewish population of modern-day Belarus as they were now forced to live within the Pale of Settlement. The Pale spanned from what is now Lithuania to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 8

Crimea, and had been established by Catherine the Great just four years earlier in 1791. Among other things, living in this area came with restrictions for all Jews, forbidding them from leasing land, running taverns, gaining a higher education, etc. Unjust treatment of Jews by the Russian

Empire heavily influenced local opinions as well. Jews faced persecution and even physical threats from their neighbors. For example, after the assassination of Tsar Aleksandr II in 1881, anti- sentiment toward Jews increased and was followed by a devastating pogrom. In the wake of murders, boycotts, and unfair treatment, Jews began leaving the Russian Empire in a wave of mass emigration that lasted from 1881 until the breakout of World War I. While it was generally a difficult life for the majority of Jews who chose to stay during this time of oppression, Jewish life was not without its colorful aspects. Jews were allowed a form of their own self-governance and were later actively involved in religious and political movements. While living in the Pale of

Settlement, eighteenth century Jews took part in intellectual and religious movements such as the

Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah, while many others became active Hasidim or Misnagdim. In his book, The Jewish Revolution in Belarussia: Economy, Race, and Power, Andrew Sloin characterizes this time of Jewish history in Belarus, saying, “Located, in sum, between the Russian capitals of St. Petersburg and Moscow and the Polish metropolis of Warsaw, between the great centers of Jewish learning, between Hasidim and Mitnadgim, between Haskalah and the

“traditional” religious learning, Belorussia was perpetually betwixt” (Sloin 7). This transitory state was only compounded by the fact that Belarus itself had never even existed as a state before this.

The people living there had spent centuries being forced into one empire or another, many of which enforced superfluous restrictions upon Jews.

If anything this status of ‘betwixt’ as Sloin refers to it had only a brief cessation in the first half of the twentieth century. The 1897 and 1926 censuses coupled with statistics of religious Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 9 congregations in Minsk, help to paint a picture of the evolution of Jewish life in Minsk in the early twentieth century. As of 1897, Jews were an integral part of large Belarussian cities. According to the 1897 census, 97% of Jews in the Russian Empire lived within Pale of Settlement, and Belarus was at its center. To speak specifically of Minsk, more than half of its population—52.3%—was

Jewish. However, over the course of the next two decades the Jewish population of Minsk had decreased by more than ten percent to 40.8%. (For precise numbers and figures, see the table from

Sloin below.)

Table 4. Jewish Populations of Major Urban Centers, 1897, 1926

City Jewish Total Jewish Jewish Jewish

Population Population Population as Population Population as

(1897) (1897) Percentage of (1926) Percentage of

Whole (1897) Whole (1926)

Minsk 47,561 90,912 52.3% 53,686 40.8%

Speaking of Jewish religious congregations in Minsk, Smilovitsky details Jewish life in the first half of the twentieth century in Belarus, when he states,

Prior to 1917, in the Minsk area there had been, in addition to Russian Orthodox

institutions, 104 religious congregations, of which nineteen belonged to the Roman

Catholics/the Uniate Church, two to Protestant sects and eighty-three to which were

Jewish. By 1929, the overall number of religious communities had shrunk to sixty-

five, forty-five of them Jewish. Prior to the war, there remained only forty

communities, ten of them Jewish. A handful of synagogues were allowed to

function, in Gomel, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Bobruisk, Minsk, Slutsk, Rechitsa, and some Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 10

other places. Between 1917 and 1940, the number of synagogues in the republic

declined, all in all, from 704 to seventy-one. (Smilovitsky 10)

The decrease in population size and Jewish religious communities is indicative of Jewish life in

Belarus generally and Minsk specifically during the first half of the twentieth century.

While at the beginning of the twentieth century Minsk was a center for dwindling Jewish religious life as well as home to a population full of Jews, at this time Minsk was also the site of multiple wars and divisions. World War I broke out in 1914 and was devastating to the Belarussian economy. German soldiers occupied the land2, which while a sore trial economically, was not too harsh a burden to bear generally. Moreover, this time under German occupation actually strengthened Belarusian nationalism and led to a desire for statehood. After the Russian Revolution in 1917 and at the end of World War I in 1918, Belarus made multiple plays for nationhood, first as the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR) and then as the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic

(BSSR), which was granted in the midst of the Polish-Soviet War in July 1920.

The early years of the BSSR were revolutionary in regards to Jewish civil rights within a country. Specifically in 1924, Jews were granted equal rights under the Belarusian Constitution, antisemitism was outlawed, and Yiddish was instated as one of the four official state languages of the BSSR. These rights were unheard of for Jews in any nation up to that point. Never before or since has Yiddish been adopted as an official state language. These rights, coupled with the NEP

(New Economic Policy), demonstrated a liberalization toward state religious policy and allowed for a flourishing Jewish community in Minsk during the 1920s and into the early 1930s. During this time, younger Jews also began emigrating from shtetls to cities, adding to the youth and vibrancy of the Minsk Jewish community. Jewish education was also flourishing; Minsk was home to two yeshivas, each with 115 students, and by 1939 Belarusian Jews had a literacy rate of 94%, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 11 which was due to the high quantity of Yiddish schools (Beorn 30-31). Despite advances in education and multiculturalism, Belarus was also full of perils. Just as the number of synagogues in interwar Minsk was forcibly reduced by 90%, so too were there the dangers of living under

Stalin’s rule. During the Great Purges of 1937-1941, tens of thousands of Soviet citizens were killed in Kuropaty, a wooded area just outside of Minsk. The mass graves of Stalin’s victims are estimated to hold between 30,000 and well over 100,000 bodies. These educational advances paired with a horrifying mortality rate illustrate the complex nature of interwar Minsk.

In her article, “Jewish-Belorussian Solidarity in World War II Minsk,” Barbara Epstein’s thesis discusses the ties between the Jewish and Belarussian peoples of this time, and how those ties carried over into the Holocaust. She writes,

Interethnic friendships were taken for granted, and interethnic marriages were

common. These ties led to solidarity during the war, including providing help to

friends and supporting resistance. As elsewhere in occupied Eastern Europe, there

were collaborators in Minsk willing or eager to turn Jews in, and there were many

people whose main concern was to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.

Nevertheless, the degree of solidarity between Jews and Belorussians in wartime

Minsk contrasts sharply with relations between Jews and non-Jews to the west, in

Poland and Lithuania” (85).

It is against this backdrop of intermarriage between Jews and Christians, of linguistic flexibility, of educational freedom, and of dark shadows that World War II and the Holocaust are set.

The Minsk Ghetto “Between 1941 and 1945, during the German and Soviet war, half the population of Soviet

Belarus was either killed or deported. Belarus was more lethally touched by war than any other Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 12 place on earth.” (Snyder “Sleepwalking to War”) If Belarus was the scene of the most death and destruction during this time, then its capital, Minsk, was undoubtedly a place of annihilation. In another article, Snyder makes a similar statement; however, this time, explaining the reasons behind the devastation in Belarus. He writes, “By starving Soviet prisoners of war, shooting and gassing Jews, and shooting civilians in anti-partisan actions, German forces made Belarus the deadliest place in the world between 1941 and 1944. Half of the population of Soviet Belarus was either killed or forcibly displaced during World War II: nothing of the kind can be said of any other European country.” (Timothy Snyder in “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality”) World War II and the Holocaust touched every person in Belarus. POWs were starved, Jews murdered, and local civilians shot. Half of the population was killed or lost. It is against this backdrop of death and destruction that the story of the Minsk ghetto occurs.

The month of May 1941 in Minsk was full of excitement: children were sent out of the city to attend summer camps and the construction of the new artificial lake, Komsomolskoe Ozero, was almost complete. The Jews of Minsk were as involved in the celebration as other Soviet citizens, enjoying the rare sun and preparing for summer. The atmosphere in Minsk, for Jews and non-Jews alike, rapidly transformed on June 21—the same day of the opening of Komsomolskoe

Lake—as Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Within four days, the city was undergoing severe and routine bombings by German pilots. As their homes burned, the inhabitants of Minsk were forced to decide to either weather the storm at home, or flee into nearby villages and cities.

Those who decided to stay, often ended up dead, hit by one of the bombs raining down from above.

Those who decided to flee, quickly realized that German soldiers had surrounded the city. After days of walking, they were forced to turn back, often returning to rubble where their former homes were located just days before. In one week, by June 28, German soldiers literally paraded into Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 13

Minsk. They had invaded and taken control of the smoldering city—Soviet party leaders having escaped to Moscow without leaving any city leadership in place. The German soldiers took it upon themselves to appoint new government officials, including a Jewish police force as well as a city council or Judenrat, supposedly choosing its head based solely on his ability to speak a very small amount of German. With natural resources and material goods destroyed, the citizens of Minsk began bartering with German troops for food and other necessities. However, Nazi soldiers could often get belongings in easier ways, through robbery and murder. They even began to post signs around town with orders for money, gold, silver, and other valuables. Another such order required all Jewish men between the ages of 15 and 50 to meet at Drozdy, located on the edge of the city.

Those who didn’t report were shot. Approximately 3,000 Jewish men who admitted to being professionals or technicians were also shot. The rest were forced to sit on the ground, unmoving, for four days without food or water, despite the river running directly along the side of the camp.

It was the first German massacre by bullets in Minsk. Then on July 19, a 13-point poster was posted throughout the city, declaring that Jews must move to live within a small section of the city or be shot. They had five days. The Judenrat, implemented less than a month, managed to collect enough money to bribe the Germans to give the Jews until August 1 to relocate. Families moved into the designated area and lived wherever there was space; one family moved with relatives into the kitchen of a famous Byelorussian writer’s former home, another into a nearby movie theater.

This was the beginning of life in the Minsk ghetto.

Moving into the Minsk ghetto came with a paradox pointed out by Tim Cole in his book

Holocaust Landscapes. Not only did families have to decide “what this new place was,” but they also had to come to terms with the fact that moving into the ghetto “did not mean moving to an entirely unknown place” (Cole 25). The familiar city of Minsk—for many Jews in the Minsk Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 14 ghetto, their hometown—had been transformed from a city of inclusion and acceptance with a half-Jewish populace to a city of occupation, antisemitism, and annihilation. During the two years of the Minsk ghetto’s existence, from August 1941 to October 1943, approximately 100,000 Jews were confined to the small space of the Minsk ghetto, which had an area of only two square kilometers. Over the course of this time in the ghetto, Jews faced an unseasonably cold winter from 1941-1942, which led to death for tens of thousands; they were deliberately killed by the thousands in four major pogroms and then in smaller numbers but much more frequent lesser acts of violence. In addition, the Jews faced starvation and disease. They were made to serve as forced labor, and even had to perform the unconscionable act of burying their murdered loved ones in mass graves. This horrifying existence often concluded in death (for ninety percent of the inhabitants of the Minsk ghetto) or in rare cases, in escaping to join the partisan fighters in the forests. Those few who survived to join the partisans often wrote of their experiences years and decades after they occurred. This dissertation centers around those accounts and the narratives of their children and grandchildren. In the first chapter, it pieces together the full story of the Minsk ghetto, as it is told in the memoirs of its survivors; then in the second and third chapters, it demonstrates how the memory of the Minsk ghetto evolved over the decades with the examination of accounts by the children and grandchildren of the inhabitants of the Minsk ghetto.

The Waves of Publication of Accounts on the Minsk Ghetto The memoirs on the Minsk ghetto are published in a series of waves spanning the seventy- five years since the Holocaust. The first to publish, and also the most well-known memoirist of the

Minsk ghetto, was Hersh Smolar. His memoir stands alone as the only published first-hand account of the Minsk ghetto during the first wave of publication of memoirs on the Minsk ghetto. Smolar published Fun Minsker Geto with the publisher Der Emes in Moscow in 1946. The book is roughly Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 15 translated from Yiddish into Russian and published with the same company as Mstiteli getto in

1947. Speaking about the immediate postwar period during the book, Smolar recounts, “As quickly as I could—in that difficult winter of 1944-1945—I wrote a book about the Minsk ghetto and took it to Emes Publishing House in Moscow” (162). There is urgency in Smolar not just to write but to publish. The distinction is a significant one. There are many memoirs written about the Minsk ghetto and many of the unpublished memoirs include information and ideas that are vibrant and valuable. However, this dissertation examines published accounts, which tend to be motivated by more than a desire to record; rather, they are motivated by a compulsion to proliferate knowledge and ideas. With this first memoir on the Minsk ghetto, Smolar demonstrates that simply writing is not enough. The things written must be preserved and transmitted. He feels an urgency to do this.

Rather than spending a desolate winter at the end of the war searching for shelter, lost loved ones, food, and clothing, he spends this time in a frantic state recording and then publishing. And he does not stop there. He writes in Yiddish and within a year has his account translated into Russian.

The goal is not simply to write, but to create an audience that includes Jews and non-Jews. Whether deliberate or not, he uses a publishing house called “Der Emes” or “The Truth” and thereby marks his memoir as a factual account that must be transmitted to as many people and in as many languages as possible.

After a dearth of publications on the Holocaust generally and on the Minsk ghetto specifically during the 1950s and 1960s, there was a spike of interest on the subject in the 1970s.

In his article “Published Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors,” Robert Rozett provides three events that “contributed to the surge in publications of memoirs” during this time, namely “the Yom

Kippur War of October 1973,” “the airing of the TV mini-series Holocaust in 1978, and “the announcement of President Jimmy Carter [about] a United States Holocaust Memorial, which Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 16 eventually led to the foundation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the

Washington Mall” (Roth and Maxwell 169). As each of these events was occurring, the second wave of memoir publication on the Minsk ghetto was at its height. Primarily this wave included anthologies of collected memoirs as well as Anatoli Rubin’s Hebrew-language memoir Brown

Boots, Red Boots: From the Ghetto of Minsk to the Camps of Siberia. The impetus for this wave of memoir literature was likely Hersh Dobin’s Yiddish novel based on events he survived in the

Minsk ghetto entitled Der Koyakh fun Lebn (The Power of Life). It was published in Moscow in

1969. While this second story of life in the Minsk ghetto was again published in Moscow, the publication location of these documents quickly began to spread around the globe. The first publication about wartime Minsk to be published in Minsk was Karpov’s Russian-language anthology Through Fire and Death, which came out just a year after Dobin’s novel. The collection of memoirs includes 44 accounts of life in and around Minsk during the war. In many ways, the publication of the Yizkor Book Minsk Mother-City in Israel five years later is a deliberate response to Karpov’s collection. Through Fire and Death centered on resistance to the Nazi regime in

Minsk, but did not give special attention to Jewish accounts or acknowledge the extenuating circumstances of the Jewish experience during the war. In response, Minsk Mother-City is a lengthy two volume work that tells of Jewish life in Minsk from the city’s founding in 1067. While it is reacting against Karpov’s Soviet view of Minsk, it includes the account of Sophia Sadovskaia, who’s original testimony was translated from its original Russian in Karpov’s anthology to Hebrew to be included in Minsk Mother-City. In 1977, two more accounts were published, both of which made it clear that the memoirs on the Minsk ghetto were beginning to broaden the reach of language and publication location. They were Anatoli Rubin’s Hebrew account Brown Boots, Red

Boots: From the Ghetto of Minsk to the Camps of Siberia published in Israel and Abrasha Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 17

Slukhovsky’s Yiddish account From the Ghetto to the Forests (Fun geto in di velder) published in

France.

A little more than 10 years after the second wave of publications on the Minsk ghetto— which had spread out of the Soviet Union to include Israel and western Europe—the third wave began. Returning to the roots of the movement, the translation of Smolar’s Fun Minsker Geto into

English by Max Rosenfeld in 1989 sparked the third wave of publications, expanding the movement globally and linguistically: from Europe and Israel into North America; from Russian,

Yiddish, and Hebrew into English. The same year that Smolar’s English translation was published,

Anna Krasnoperko published her memoir Письма моей памяти (Letters from My Memory) in

Russian.3 Following Smolar’s example of reaching a broader audience, her memoir was translated and published in German two years later. David Guy, possibly re-addressing the issue of an anthology that focused on the Jewish experience in Minsk during the Holocaust, published another anthology, but this time in Russian. By 1997, Sima Margolina had followed these examples and published her own memoir, also in Russian. This began a steady stream of Minsk ghetto memoir publication in Russian that averaged a memoir a year from 2000 until 2014. While the trend was to write in Russian, authors were also taking strides to have their accounts made available in

English. Anna Krasnoperko, who had already had her memoir translated into German, had it translated again into English, and other memoirists like Boris Kapilevich and Abram Rubenchik did the same, even making their translations available on Amazon.com. The third wave of Minsk ghetto memoir literature, which Smolar reinvigorated in 1989, became about transmitting memory to the widest group of people possible. Yiddish, which unfortunately was no longer accessible to large audiences and often even not spoken by the memoirists themselves, was no longer the language of choice. Even Hebrew became less popular. Memoirs were penned in the Russian Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 18 language, even while memoirists were living in Israel. Following Smolar’s example, Russian followed by English became the publishing languages of choice.

With the far-reaching aspects of memoir publication in the 1990s and 2000s, it may have seemed as though there were no new avenues to explore. However, with the fourth wave of publications horizons were broadened, not in the form of new languages, but new writers. As

Holocaust survivors were aging, new writers became a necessity in order to continue the narrative.

As Jeffrey Shandler explains, “During the 1970s, the Holocaust became an increasingly prominent fixture of public culture in the Western world. Holocaust survivors were elevated to a new stature, hailed both as witnesses of unrivaled authenticity to a defining event of modern times and as models of tenacity in the wake of unspeakable persecution. This rise in survivors’ prestige correlated with their aging. A growing attention to their mortality heightened the sense of survivors’ importance and prompted concern to preserve survivors’ memories in the face of their imminent passing. Though Holocaust survivors had been relating their personal histories since the war’s end, the increased sense of urgency to document these recollections prompted the search for new means to do so.” (Shandler 2). Shandler goes on to describe the increased availability of camcorders at this time and therefore increase in the number of self-recorded testimonies. There is a similar phenomenon with literature, which continues to this day. Just as typewriters and then computers became more abundantly available, so too did institutions which were collecting

Holocaust testimonies. Even now, self-publishing companies like Amazon make the process of documenting your testimony more and more simple. Memoirs about the Holocaust, whether written by members of the first-, second- or third-generation, are easily accessible in this day and age. Rather than a question of where to find testimony, the question has transformed into which testimony should be read and studied. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 19

Each of these memoirists—from Smolar alone in the first wave of publication to the multitude of writers in the second and third waves of publication—realized their desire to further the memory of the Minsk ghetto. However, as Holocaust survivors are aging, the question becomes how will others perpetuate their ideals? Is continued transmission still possible? Is it possible for anyone other than a survivor to give an authentic presentation of the story of the Minsk ghetto?

And if so, how will these narratives appear?

The answer to these questions lies in the fourth wave of publications of memoirs on the

Minsk ghetto. The fourth wave extends the genre of memoir and into postmemoir and even fiction.

It includes second-generation accounts like Svetlana Gebelava’s 2010 Dolgii put’ k zabetnoj ulitse

(The Long Path to the Cherished Street), a postmemoir which attempts to recreate the life of her father Misha Gebelev, a leader of the Minsk ghetto and the underground who risked and sacrificed his life in opposition to the Nazis. In addition, third-generation accounts like Zhan Gross-

Tolstikov’s В плену родного города (In Captivity in My Hometown) provides a fictionalized account of his grandmother’s childhood in the Minsk ghetto. In this way, the fourth wave of publication explores new genres and new themes. It also provides a means to advance the memory of the Minsk ghetto after the survivors themselves have passed away and to make the story accessible to a worldwide audience. For instance, Gross-Tolstikov’s novella is available for purchase on international platforms such as Amazon.com. However, this phenomenon is not confined to the second- and third-generation alone: first-generation writer Abraham Rubenchik’s account is available by subscription through Kindle Unlimited. Ultimately, the purpose of my larger dissertation project is two-fold. I strive to synthesize the experiences recorded in all four waves of publication in order to further advance the memoirists’ goal of transmitting these Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 20 accounts to readers and to examine how inherited memory of the Minsk ghetto has evolved over time, specifically in relation to genre and theme.

Chapter One: The First Generation The first chapter of this dissertation addresses how four survivor-memoirists—namely

Hersh Smolar, Anna Krasnoperko, Abram Rubenchik, and Mikhail Treister—prove their desire to share their stories through publication. Their intention is not simply to retell or preserve personal memory, but to create a collective memory that can be distributed, retold, and given as a physical object to others. This desire for transmission, however, varies from generation to generation. First- generation memoirists, or survivors, desire to share their own stories for a variety of reasons. Often, they want their grandchildren to understand their family’s past. Many want to set a record straight, attempting to correct misconceptions of the Holocaust. They utilize historical information—most of which was unavailable until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990—to answer questions about the past, analyze motives previously misunderstood, and reframe a personal narrative within a larger picture. First-generation memoirs retell events in a straightforward manner, highlighting the ways that historical events such as the Purim pogrom in the Minsk ghetto, affected an individual personally. Memories are preserved as emotions, reactions, thoughts, and actions are encapsulated on the page, allowing the memory of the Minsk ghetto to live on.

The self-proclaimed motivations behind writing are well-stated by the first-generation survivor-memoirists. The repeated desire to transmit knowledge about the Minsk ghetto was not only apparent in its publication history. By the third wave of publications, memoirists of the Minsk ghetto began to explicitly state their purpose in writing, beginning with Hersh Smolar, the first memoirist of the Minsk ghetto. Smolar was a Polish-born Jew who ended up in the Minsk ghetto after fleeing his native country during the invasion of the Nazis. He made it as far as Minsk, where Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 21 he was forced to live in the Minsk ghetto but immediately resisted the Nazi regime by helping establish an underground movement against the Nazis. The English translation of Smolar’s 1946 memoir provides a clue to his purpose in writing. Titled The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish

Partisans Against the Nazis, the new title of Smolar’s memoir as well as the added first chapter provides clarity about the author’s intent and his purpose in writing. The translation itself also furthers Smolar’s goal to transmit knowledge as far as possible, in this case to an English-speaking audience. The new title—which changed from the Yiddish From the Ghetto and the Russian

Avengers of the Ghetto—alludes to Smolar’s message. It deliberately pits the Jewish partisans against the Nazis. Unlike Karpov’s anthology, there is no sense of Soviets against Germans; rather

Jews are framed as the heroes. Further, the book is not simply about Jews; rather, it is about Jews going up against, or resisting, the Nazis. This theme is prevalent throughout the first chapter and provides a framework, not only for Smolar’s English translation, but also for the rest of the Minsk ghetto memoirs written during the third wave of publication. In the first chapter of the English translation, he reflects on his original aim in recording the events of the Minsk ghetto. He relates

After almost forty years I find myself writing again about the [Minsk] ghetto

. . . The first time I wrote about the struggle, agony and destruction of the

Minsk ghetto was at the end of 1944, only a few months after I returned

from the Partisan forests. What moved me to do so was, first of all, the urge

to transmit to both the surviving Jews and the general Soviet public the

truth. ... My book on the Minsk ghetto ... was intended ... to demonstrate the

particularly tragic fate of the Soviet Jews caught in that ghetto and the role

of the Minsk Jews in creating the first ghetto combat organization in

occupied Europe. (1) Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 22

Smolar’s self-proclaimed objective is simple: he seeks to transmit both the truth about the tragedy of ghetto life and the acts of resistance that occurred during this time. This purpose expressed so clearly in 1989 shapes the third wave of memoir publications on the Minsk ghetto.

Just as Smolar expressed a desire to spread knowledge of the acts of resistance through the written word, the same desire is expressed by Anna Krasnoperko, the only other memoirist of the

Minsk ghetto to publish in the 1980s and the first to record her book of memoirs in Belarusian.

Krasnoperko was a teenage girl during her time in the Minsk ghetto. Like Smolar, she escaped the ghetto to join the partisans. Unlike Smolar, however, her account ends at the moment of her escape, foregoing any details of her experience with the partisan brigades. It is at this point when she is leaving the ghetto for the last time that Krasnoperko begins the Epilogue of her memoir by aptly analyzing sentence-final punctuation. After deRscribing her flight from the ghetto, she remarks, “I put a period. ... Period,” she repeats as though punctuation can stop terrible memories. However, she quickly upends the idea of the cessation of memories as she continues, “But this book has no end for me. Because there is no end to my memory while I breathe, live, and work. I may be writing it through my entire life” (66). In her words, a connection is drawn between writing and living, the most basic form of resistance. Although she may have concluded her memoir with a period, she remarks that she will “be writing it through her entire life.” In other words, the memoir she wrote will never definitively end. It is part of her living, her writing, and her survival. This idea echoes the content of her memoir, in which Krasnoperko frequently alludes to instances in which writing and documenting were forms of resistance: a friend’s fake birth certificate that allows her daughter to settle in a nearby village, Lyalya Bruk’s diary that she references throughout the memoir, and her mother’s altered passport that finally enables them to leave the ghetto. In each of these occurrences, the written word led to survival, a form of resistance diametrically opposed to the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 23 purpose of the Nazi regime. However, to Krasnoperko, survival is not enough. She is driven by her desire to write and to transmit her story. She claims that there will be “no end to [her] memory while [she] breathe[s], live[s], and work[s],” and with the publication of her recollections, there will be no end to her memory. Period.

Like the other memoirists of the Minsk ghetto before him, Abram Rubenchik chose to write to transmit memory in his memoir, The Truth about the Minsk Ghetto (2006). A teenage boy during the German occupation of Minsk, he lost his four younger siblings during his time in the ghetto, and only after managed to escape to join the partisans like his older sister. There, he was eventually reunited with her, his mother, and father. He comments on his motivation to record his experiences in his prologue, saying

I have long dreamed of telling Jews, and especially Israelis, about the tragedies that

took place between the years 1941-1943 in the Minsk ghetto. This has burdened me

with painful memories, which find no relief, forcing me now to tell all. Maybe after

I tell my story I can be released from my burden. ... Of course, this is not an easy

task. More than half a century has passed. I am, however, determined to remember.

It is essential for both the dead and the living to remember since history repeats

itself. Evidence of this is found in newspapers and on television, where masses of

neo-Nazis and Fascists can be seen marching through the streets, openly declaring

their ideas. Those that remain among the living must remember everything that

occurred then. They must keep their memories alive and retell them to the world so

that future generations will know the afflictions we were once forced to endure.

Then, they will fight, weapon in hand, against the enemy to prevent such an atrocity

from every happening again. (1) Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 24

Like other Holocaust survivors, Rubenchik acknowledges the difficulty of dredging up old memories. Despite the burden this act places on him, he—like other memoirists before and after him—writes to resist. Rubenchik specifically mentions that he views continued and persistent resistance as necessary. In his eyes, history is cyclical. He uses hostile and even violent language as a call to action for his readers. He concludes by saying, “The moment has come to tell of our experience. Without mercy, my memory forces me to. So, I turn these restless pages.” With this final thought that writing is difficult but necessary, Rubenchik begins his memoirs.

Mikhail Treister, the final of the four memoirists included in Chapter 1, concludes his memoir with his intention in writing. Born in 1927, Mikhail Treister, like Rubenchik, was a teen during his years in the Minsk ghetto. Nearly, seven decades after escaping the Minsk ghetto to join the partisans, he penned and published his memoir, Gleams of Memory (2011).4 In his

Afterword, Treister provides a simple explanation about his purpose in writing, explaining, “I wanted the reader, who may know the statistics of the Holocaust, to be able to also feel the atmosphere of that time” (49). Bringing together all the purposes in publishing accounts of the

Minsk ghetto, survivors write to express their acts of resistance, to transmit memory, and to assist readers in feeling the ghetto experience. They are attempting to transform their readers from those with only knowledge into those with conviction who will be able to share the survivors’ memories after they are gone.

Chapter Two: The Second Generation The second chapter of the dissertation discusses how second generation memoirists build upon the first generation’s accounts. In her postmemoir, The Long Path to the Cherished Street,

Svetlana Gebeleva layers the tales of the survivor with her own mental and emotional processing of these events. Events from the ghetto come through her narrative in no particular order because Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 25 she personally did not live them, rather she was hearing, processing, and remembering these events simultaneously with the events of her own life. Every moment, therefore, is imbued with double meaning. In Erin Einhorn’s second-generation memoir, The Pages in Between: A Holocaust

Legacy of Two Families, One Home she writes, “And now, for a second time, I saw how my mother’s childhood had also affected the people she left behind. Here, again, was a mother’s hurt, on the tearful face of her now elderly child” (Einhorn 224, emphasis added). This last sentence encapsulates the emotion behind second-generation postmemoirs. These are the narratives of the children of survivors who feel their parents’ pain even decades after it occurred. And while the mother’s hurt in the sentence is understood by the reader, it is felt through the child with the tears dripping down her face.

Shared traits of second-generation narratives include a disjointed, stream of consciousness style as well as a fluid depiction of time. Gebeleva effortlessly weaves her narrative between her childhood in post-war Minsk and her father’s trials in the ghetto. She compares her adult life with that of her father’s and reexamines her own life in order to better understand her father’s experience. For Gebeleva, it is almost impossible to share her own experience and understanding of the Holocaust without sharing her father’s story. The loss of growing up without a father was a constant reminder of the Minsk ghetto. She was forced to wonder what could have been and how her life would have been different if the Germans had never invaded the Soviet Union, if her father had never been killed. She displays an inability to separate her own experience as a member of the second-generation from her parent’s experience in the ghetto. The events her father lived through in the Minsk ghetto—whether directly related to her own experience or felt in absentia— have created a direct effect on her life. The only way for this second-generation author to process her present is to confront her parent’s past. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 26

One difficulty that each writer of a later generation is forced to wrestle with is the portrayal of their main characters, who are by definition victims. Is it better to portray their protagonists as wholly innocent, deeply good people who are entirely without fault for their situation or as fully developed human being with passions and flaws and irrational behavior? If the latter option is chosen, could this realistic depiction somehow be twisted as victim-blaming? These questions are further complicated for second-generation writers due to the fact that the victims are also their parents. For Gebeleva, whose father was tortured to death without giving up information on the

Minsk ghetto underground, his status is elevated from victim to martyr. She never even met him, so describing his more human characteristics is nearly impossible. The people she talks to and the accounts she reads about him are all positive. After all, who is going to tell a fatherless girl about the trivial mistakes her murdered father made in his youth? But more than simply a practical choice based on available information, Gebeleva herself emphasizes the martyr aspect of her father’s nature. The title of her memoir, The Long Path to a Sacred Street (Долгий путь к заветной улице) deliberately utilizes the lexical item ‘sacred’ (‘заветной’) in order to allude to a spiritual or sacred nature of the memory of her father. While Gebeleva does not really discuss the religious aspect of

Judaism in the text, her language does suggest a spiritual element to the story. Gebeleva’s main themes of the text: creating a network centered around her father and the Minsk ghetto and commemorating him amidst Minsk’s streets both have spiritual implications. The creation of a group of followers as well as the physical erection of a monument to Gebelev both elevate him to receiving forms of commemoration that could be considered worship. In this way, the complex nature of the characters of the Holocaust postmemoirs are often flattened. The dynamic aspects of their personality are often ironed out in order to allow the heroic and even saintly facets of their nature to dominate. This is not a value-based judgement of the types of characters in the second- Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 27 generation postmemoir; rather, it stands a depiction and explanation of the nature of these survivors, heroes, and martyrs. It also stands in contrast with the characters of the third-generation memoir.

Chapter Three: The Third Generation The third chapter of the dissertation discusses how the third-generation also strives to present a dynamic protagonist. Zhan Gross-Tolstikov, a member of the third-generation and author of In Captivity in My Hometown (В плену родного города), is a bit further removed from the survivor and therefore able to discuss the Minsk ghetto and his grandmother’s experience in a more cogent, less personal manner than Gebeleva. In addition, Gross-Tolstikov’s self-selected genre, fiction, allows him liberty to create a more fully developed character, whose faults that are not necessarily shared with his grandmother. He has more freedom to write Maia as an imperfect person without implicating his grandmother; yet he elects to forego that freedom as that would undermine his purpose of creating a victim in the truest sense. So despite the fact that Maia’s characteristics could be separated from his grandmother’s, Gross-Tolstikov pens a protagonist without major flaws: a child. So Maia is a young girl—intelligent, passionate, brave, hard-working, and wholly selfless—whose flaws can only be described as a lack of self-preservation and an unfailing belief in the goodness of all people.

Gross-Tolstikov’s account from a third-generation perspective stands in stark contrast to

Gebeleva’s narrative. While the second-generation accounts feature stories that tangle first- and second-generation experience together, Gross-Tolstikov is able to separate himself from his grandmother’s experience. This is indicated explicitly by his choice of genre, fiction over the first- or second-generation ego-document—the name itself revealing the heavy presence of the author.

However, it is not genre alone that helps explain the clear, linear narrative that Gross-Tolstikov is Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 28 able to provide of the survivor’s experience. It is Gross-Tolstikov’s distance in time from the survivor that allows for this unique perspective, which is almost a return to the survivor’s perspective. Gross-Tolstikov has the advantage of speaking with someone much further removed from the events of the Holocaust. While it is common for survivors to avoid discussing their past trauma with their children, they tend to open up about it with their grandchildren. They are able to convey their experiences to this generation, which is further removed in time and location, but not in love. With their grandchildren, survivors have the chance to share their stories with loved ones, after having a longer time to process their trauma and knowing that they can physically remove themselves from their grandchildren’s presence after they tell their stories. They will not be confronted with the questions and reminders that might be present if these accounts were shared with their own children in their own home. This direct recitation of events to the third generation allows them to present the stories in a new light. While their parents were forced to piece together events based on overheard conversations and the whispers of friends and family, the third- generation is able to simply transmit the story as they heard it, spoken openly, by the source.

Therefore, unlike Gebelev’s narrative, Gross-Tolstikov’s is presented in a uniform, linear fashion.

It is also further removed from the story. By hearing it directly, rather than piecing it together throughout his childhood and life, Gross-Tolstikov has the benefit of being able to remove himself from the narrative. It is no longer a postmemoir. Gross-Tolstikov has separated himself as much as possible in order to bring the actual story to life. This is a return to Jewish traditions of oral transmission. He is literally able to make this a Jewish return to “the people of the book.” He is able to revive the textual and oral traditions that are so present in Judaism as he presents his grandmother’s story in a chronological and chronicled manner. He is able to give a recounting of Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 29 the manner in which he heard the story, relating the narrative not as he reexperienced it—like the second-generation writers—but as he heard it.

The auditory experience, then, for Gross-Tolstikov is especially important. His grandmother told him her story of surviving the Minsk ghetto, and his goal is to reiterate that same story in the same manner to his readers. Therefore, the auditory component of his povest’ becomes especially important. Gross-Tolstikov heard the story and he attempts to replicate the sounds that he associates with that original recitation. That is why, reading In Captivity in My Hometown, sonic moments are so heavily marked. Gross-Tolstikov has literally transformed the soundscape of his interview with his grandmother as he transmits a reclaimed soundscape to each of his readers. He knows that Holocaust survivors like his grandmother are dying. Their voices are literally being lost. So while the second-generation was focused on commemoration in a physical manner: monuments, street signs, petitions, etc., the third-generation focuses on replication. They attempt to preserve and retell the story as they heard it. With Gross-Tolstikov as the preeminent example, the third-generation emphasizes the sonic component of the Holocaust to provide credibility to their accounts. They heard the testimonies of firsthand experience and now they call for future witnesses to who can hopefully hear the remnants of these dying voices. They call for readers who will share what they have read, adding a fourth layer of voices to the narratives of three previous generations, one of whom can almost no longer provide their own account.

Extending the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto My purpose in writing this dissertation is not to create a cohesive or even entirely accurate historical narrative. To do so would be to betray or falsify the narratives that were written. As

Lawrence Langer has stated, “The legacy of multiple voices is part of the heritage of survival; any attempt to resolve these voices would seem to betray or falsify that experience” (Langer Holocaust Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 30

Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory 139). The accounts of the Minsk ghetto are not uniform. Rather, they occasionally contradict each other in terms of details such as statistics, dates, ages, etc. These inconsistencies, however, do not minimize the value of the accounts of survivors and subsequent generations; they only enhance them. The broad themes shared between survivors point to shared experience and the unique elements of a single survivor signify individual pain, suffering, and encounters. Together, these accounts can paint a picture of life in the Minsk ghetto on a collective and individual scale. Similarly, accounts of the second- and third- generation do not interpret the events of the ghetto in the same way. Each child or grandchild’s life was affected in a unique manner by their parent or grandparent’s experience. Despite this, there are red threads running through the narratives of all three generations. These strands of common ground provide a framework of understanding the evolution of memory of the Minsk ghetto. In bringing these accounts together, my goal is to highlight both the common and the uncommon elements of each account; this will help scholars and readers alike to recognize the remembered and forgotten moments of the Minsk ghetto. Hopefully, it will also lead to new insights on how this experience during the Holocaust is being remembered and what more can be done to share the story of the

Minsk ghetto with the fourth- and fifth-generations.

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 31

Chapter 1: Witnessing the Minsk Ghetto: Memoirists Piece Together the Past

The German Occupation of Minsk during the Summer of 1941 On June 21, 1941 the manmade Komsomol Lake was to have its official opening. Crowds from Minsk travelled to the lake for the ceremony. Instead of the grand opening of the lake, the people of Minsk were terrified to hear that Germany, an ally just the day before, had invaded the

Soviet Union. Molotov’s speech, broadcast over the radio to Soviet citizens everywhere, declared that war had commenced. As the news was being broadcast, countless children of Minsk were out in the countryside attending summer camps. Parents only had three days to reach their children before the German forces invaded Minsk. Many were not able to make it in time.

When the Nazi soldiers invaded Minsk itself on June 24, 1941, the damage to the city was swift, devastating, and total: bombs were dropped randomly, stores were looted for food and equipment, and gunfire rained down various streets. Men, women, and children were left homeless as the devastation escalated. The elderly and the young were killed in shootings and bombings completely at random. Amidst this chaos, the families of Minsk were forced to decide if they wanted to face death at home or on the road, hoping to find peace and safety elsewhere. Those who decided to flee packed any belongings they had left, scoured the city for food, and began walking down one of the many highways leading away from German forces and out of Minsk.

After walking for days and regardless of the direction one travelled, all were turned back. Soviet tanks had destroyed one highway, hoping to stop the Nazi soldiers from advancing further into the

Soviet Union. At some roads, German soldiers themselves forced the citizens to turn back. In short, the vast majority of those who tried to flee Minsk, ended up back where they started. Only now, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 32 the city was completely destroyed. It is at this moment of devastation that mnay of the memoirists of the Minsk ghetto begin their accounts. Anna Krasnoperko, author of Letters from My Memory, is a young Jewish girl at the time. She details the trials she experienced with her grandmother and little sister.

We went again to see the ashes that were once our home. I cannot bring myself to

throw out the key from our apartment, the key I do not need any more. My father's

words sound again and again in my ears.

“Here, kids, is the key. I am leaving for the front.”

“Have you received a summons from the Military Committee?”

“No, not yet, but I have to go...”

He kissed us and left...

What happened next is horrible to remember: fire, bombardment, the debris-full

gas shelter. Miraculously, Granny, Innochka and I managed to get out. Our

neighbor, from the Byelorussian Radio Committee, helped us to get from the

burning city to the Mogilyov highway.

“Go to the East,” he suggested, “I am leaving with the Red Army.”

Hungry and hopeless, we are in the column of refugees. Grandmother cannot walk

any more, her heart is too weak. Inna and I are trying to hold her. The column of

people stretch along the highway. Sore feet, eyes that cannot cry any more, wailing

children...

And that endless bombardment. Gunfire from the planes. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 33

At last we reached Dukora. Grandmother is not able to walk anymore. Totally

exhausted, we fall down on a stack of hay. We can hardly catch our breath as the

bombing starts again. No break!

And then we hear roaring motorcycles, shouting, a foreign language.

We are pushed out from the barn into the street. We see the crowds of people there,

those who survived the air raids. The Germans push us to some store. They are

bringing out various goods, tossing them in front of us, forcing them into our hands.

We begin to realize what is going on—we are being filmed.

German motorcyclists are in Dukora. Has Minsk been invaded?!

After that they are seizing people. “Kommunisten! Juden!”

... Bleeding earth of Dukora...

... Terrible, exhausting way back, to Minsk. What is awaiting us? We know that our

home has been burnt down. Only the key is left. And we fully realize that being

“Juden” is an affliction. We are thinking about mother. Maybe she has already

returned from Volkovisk? Maybe she is looking for us?

... At last we arrive in Minsk. There is no mother and father. I am responsible for

grandmother and for my little sister..

Looking for some roof over our heads. (Krasnoperko 1-2) 5

Krasnoperko frames her account of fleeing the invaded Minsk with the image of a house key, when she returns exhausted days later, her house and all of her possessions are destroyed, only the key— meaningless without a lock, yet symbolic of all she has lost—remains. What begins in

Krasnoperko’s account as a linear narrative with clear dialogue between father and daughter, quickly devolves to mirror the young girl’s terror, exhaustion, and ultimately despair. Her city and Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 34 home are destroyed, her parents are missing, and a young girl must now take up the burden of caring for her family.

Describing the city of Minsk and the plight of those who stayed in the last days of June

1941, Treister—a child at the time like Krasnoperko—reminisces on the beginning of the violence and destruction in that city in his memoir, Gleams of Memory.

The city is on fire. And people are plundering shops, warehouses, and factories.

Fire engines are making their way through the burning streets to warehouses; burly

firemen are loading sacks with flour onto them and then are leaving to the

accompaniment of their howling sirens. None of them thinks about putting out the

fire. People are selective in their plundering. They check the contents of the sacks

by cutting them open with knives. They are not taking them if they contain

something they do not need. The contents of the cut sacks are pouring out onto the

[streets], and people are sometimes walking up to their knees in the mixture of flour,

cereals, salt, and sugar. (Treister 20)6

It is midday. The sky suddenly darkens from an armada of airplanes. My friend,

Yurka, can count as many as 50. We – my mother, my sister, Yurka, and I – take

up an all-round defensive position, that is, lie down on the floor in the bedroom

with our heads under the beds (which actually saves our lives). Through my head,

which is under the bed, run another enthusiastic song – something like “the armor

is strong and our tanks are swift” – and a bitter regret that the war will end without

my taking part in it. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 35

The bombs are falling closer and closer. The house is quaking. The second to the

last bomb smashes the glass in all the windows, in spite of the criss-cross paper

strips [covering the windows]. And I do not hear the last one. I cannot say how long

I have been lying here. I come to half-suffocated in the dust of the destroyed stove.

My whole body aches and hurts, but my arms, legs and, the most important of all,

my head are undamaged. Somehow, I manage to get out of the debris of the stove.

But oh, my God! There is no ceiling over me, no attic – just the clear, June sky and

dead silence. (I will be able to hear again only in the evening). Three pairs of feet

are hardly seen from under the debris. I start to dig them out. After a while they all

regain consciousness too and finally get themselves out. All are bruised and

scratched, but alive.

It's a weird feeling—being homeless.

That is how the 24th of June became, to me, the first day of real war. (Treister 19-

20)7

The city smelled of charred ruins and burnt human flesh – the smell that one can

neither describe nor forget. My most vivid memory of those days is a hospital

ruined by a bomb and a bed balancing on a beam of the third floor, and on the bed

the dead body of a patient, fastened to the bed by a strap. (Treister 20)8

Unlike Krasnoperko’s family, Triester’s decided to bunker down in Minsk. He describes the drastic transformation that the city underwent in just a few days, and the danger that the people there faced. People were looting; buildings were being destroyed by bombs; and dead bodies were scattered randomly throughout the city. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 36

The passage is rich in visual and auditory detail alike. The citizens of Minsk wade through baking ingredients as if through snow. The June sky opens before a young boy laying on the floor of his now-destroyed home. Finally, a dead body waits to fall from the sky, strapped to a hospital bed, teetering on the edge of a wooden plank. These details, so visceral in their absurdity, serve as lifelong reminders of the horrors of Treister’s experience during the Holocaust. Combined, these two accounts of Krasnoperko and Treister—written almost 25 years apart—represent the dreadful choice that the people of Minsk faced during the Nazi occupation of the city. Running was not only unsafe but fruitless, and staying often resulted in death. Those first few days of German bombs, concluded with a new city order. All of the Minsk citizens who didn’t die in the bombings either returned or remained to see a devastated Minsk with a new governing power.

Within four days of the initial invasion of Minsk, the German soldiers had occupied the capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). Minsk’s government officials had received advanced word of the impending invasion and had successfully fled east toward safety, leaving the city entirely without leadership. In addition to the abandoned government, the damage to buildings and homes was so extensive that many in Minsk were left homeless and without basic necessities or the ability to procure them. While the people were struggling to survive day-to-day,

Nazi officers were busy requisitioning the few undamaged buildings and setting up their command structure. By July 1941, they were covering the city with signs with orders for the citizens to follow. One such sign dictated that all men of military age must report to Drozdy, a field just outside of Minsk proper. There the men were forced to sit unmoving without food and water for four days.

The details of the events at Drozdy are confused to this day. Hersh Smolar, a Polish Jew who fled East in 1939 and was finally captured by the Nazis in the Minsk ghetto in 1941, published Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 37 his memoir on the Minsk ghetto in 1946, just one year after the war ended. His account of the events at Drozdy and all the subsequent events that occurred in Minsk during the war, were some of the earliest written and include many details that others do not. His memoir serves not only as a point of reference for scholars but also for the survivor-memoirists themselves, many of whom quote Smolar directly in their own writing. His book, published in Yiddish, Russian, and now

English, is the foundation for all the memoirs that follow; his account of Drozdy is the one that even other survivors turn to for clarification of those events, despite the fact that Smolar himself had not even arrived in Minsk yet. Instead, he spoke at length with survivors and women who were present during the execution of the Jewish intellectuals at Drozdy. In his memoir, The Minsk

Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans against the Nazis, Hersh Smolar describes the scene in vivid detail:

Out in the open field at Drozdy, under the blazing sun, Hitlerites9 drove about

140,000 men and ordered them to sit on the ground. Anyone attempting to stand up

was shot on the spot. Men died of thirst, but the slightest movement in the direction

of the nearby stream drew the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun or automatic rifle. Soon

a specially selected group of prisoners appeared, mostly “ethnic Germans” from

along the Volga, who dragged away the dead. This happened so frequently that the

prisoners stopped reacting to the horror.

More and more often, women and children came to the camp, bringing food and

clothing (even women’s clothing for their men to use in possible escape attempts),

or civilian clothing for the captured soldiers. The Germans kept chasing them away,

even firing their guns in the air, but the crowds of women around the camp grew

larger every day. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 38

Several days later came the Order to separate the Jews from the rest of the prisoners.

At first, most of the Jewish prisoners did not realize what the intent of the Order

was. Only a few sensed the danger and did not obey the decree. They stayed where

they were, “covered” by Byelorussian or Russian friends. But even at that early

stage there were scoundrels who “fingered” Jews to the Germans and were

rewarded with an extra bowl of soup or a pack of tobacco. There were also mornings

when informers were found on the ground strangled to death.

On the fifth day, all civilians except Jews were allowed to go free. War prisoners

were sent to the camp at Masiukovshtshina, leaving only Jews at Drozdy. Then

came the Order to separate Jews of the “educated professions” from the mass of

other prisoners. People thought the Germans would probably put the Jewish

engineers, technicians, architects, physicians, and artists to work. About 3,000 Jews

reported themselves in this category, including some who claimed falsely that they

were graduates of secondary schools.

The next Order was therefore very surprising: “All physicians and hospital workers

step forward!” no one had anticipated what awaited the Jewish intellectuals. It never

occurred to anyone that the first objective of the Nazis was to get rid of people who

might lead a resistance movement. The Jews did not understand why the small

group of Jewish doctors was sent back into the mass of Jewish prisoners. (Most of

the doctors had been mobilized into the Soviet army in the very first days of the

Hitler invasion.) From their experience in Warsaw and other ghettos in Poland, the

Germans knew that epidemics might break out as a result of the crowded conditions

and the starvation in the Jewish Quarters. They were deathly afraid of the possible Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 39

spread of these epidemics outside the ghetto. For a time, therefore, they spared the

Jewish doctors.

Not until they were on the road of Drozdy did the captured Jewish intellectuals

realize that they were being taken not to Minsk but in the opposite direction. Months

later we heard the terrifying word Trostenets, the death camp where the prisoners

were killed immediately or had been suffocated to death in the dushegubki10

(gassing vans) even before they got to the camp. At Trostenets the bodies were

piled up and burned. The Jewish intellectuals of Minsk were thus among the first

victims of the Nazi mass murder machine. (Smolar 15-16)11

This incident at Drozdy is bone-chilling to read about even 80 years after it occurred; however, many of the details of those days at Drozdy are unclear. Later memoirists of the Minsk ghetto like

Krasnoperko and Treister were younger when the invasion occurred and therefore did not witness these events firsthand. They rely on the accounts they heard at the time or don’t write about the events of those five days at all. Many provide different age requirements, saying that it was men aged 15-50. Rubenchik remembers 18-45. This detail is evidence of both the confusion of the time—the Nazis had just destroyed and occupied Minsk and people were still reeling from the effects of these executions—the senseless loss of brothers, fathers, neighbors, and friends. Even those who were at Drozdy cannot seem to recall who exactly was required to be there. This is one reason that Smolar’s account of the events at Drozdy and of the Minsk ghetto in general is so valuable today.

The first citywide action that the Nazi soldiers took was to post signs stating that all men were to report to Drozdy; however it quickly became apparent that the Jews would be the recipients of distinct mistreatment. According to Waitman Beorn, “Drozdy was, in many ways, an Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 40 introduction to the [Nazi] genocidal policy. … The camp had been divided into sections for commissars and for Jews, containing both Red Army soldiers and civilians from Minsk. The commanding general of the 4th Panzer Army had ordered the internments and the execution of ten thousand inmates (most of them Jewish). … The Jews remaining were permitted water only twice a day. Soldiers for the 354th witnessed the SS and SD conduct frequent selections among these prisoners. In one of these, all Jewish professionals were asked to step forward in order to register for jobs. Instead, they were taken out and shot.” (Beorn 68) In Minsk, like in many other cities,

Jewish intellectuals were the first murder victims after the German occupation. However the methodical division and then execution of the men at Drozdy was only one type of violence that was occurring in Minsk. Just around the time of the Drozdy mass killings, the first murder of a

Jewish family occurred. Unlike the swift and systematic killings at Drozdy, this murder was prolonged and vicious. Avraham Rubenchik describes the murder of the Nachamchik Family at 23

Nemiga Street in his memoir, The Truth about the Minsk Ghetto. Those killed included his aunt, uncle, and cousins. One cousin, Hinda, managed to escape and fled to Rubenchik’s home, where she told story of her family’s murder.

They probably broke in after midnight. All the children were already fast asleep.

Twenty-two people lived in our house at that time. Aside from our family lived

other Jews. The SS officers could not break through our front door. So they broke

the windows and entered our home from the balcony. They were four in total. They

were real SS soldiers because on their sleeves we could see the red ribbons and

swastikas. They had no automatic guns, but small German pistols with long barrels,

Parablos. The oldest soldier, who was probably a sergeant, cried out in German, “Is

there gold? Hand it over.” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 41

Father said we had none. How could a simple working class man with such a big

family have any gold? All of a sudden, the SS officer said something to his

companions in German. They fulfilled his orders and immediately blocked the

exits. The sergeant himself took hold of the oldest sister, Chaya, and began to drag

her to another room. She screamed and resisted, but he raped her. Afterwards he

shot and killed her. The second German went and grabbed our sister Dinka. She

fled from him and defended herself by throwing all the kitchen items she could find

in the drawers at him. The German soldier lost his temper and began to shoot. The

first officer killed mother who tried to protect Sofia and Mina with her body. He

wounded the younger brother Heshel, who lay on the heater, in the stomach. Then

he shot father over and over again. When he collapsed, he covered me with his

body, saving me from sure death. I was entirely drenched in his blood. I pretended

to be dead. How long this slaughter went on, I have no idea. All I remember is that

the officer said something in German and they all left. I still hadn’t understood then

that my entire family had been murdered. I tried helplessly to wake each one, to

restore their consciousness. Only Heshel who was lying on the heater regain

consciousness. He moaned and asked for water. I helped him get down and dragged

him to bed. … (Rubenchik 37-38)12

Hinda was the only person of the twenty-two living in the house at the time to survive the massacre.

She never comments further about her brother Heshel, except to number him among the dead. The pain, even decades later, stops her from speaking. In contrast with that, Rubenchik utilizes this moment in his narrative to deviate from his established narrative voice and address his reader personally. He states, “I intentionally call the readers’ attention to those horrific events as told by Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 42

Hinda. These were the most brutal murders that I witnessed throughout the war. Sometimes it seems to me that sane people could not have committed them. I have never seen anything like it, before or after…” (Rubenchik Chapter 3).13 Rubenchik places marked emphasis on the story with his direct address to his readers. The horrifying nature of the story itself causes it to stand out on its own, but Rubenchik’s marker of importance signifies to the reader that this is a moment that he wants people to remember. Rubenchik remembers the tears his cousin cried, the lengthy pauses in her recitation, and the blood on her clothing; he is calling for his readers to do the same. Those who did not experience it can never comprehend, but they can remember. Rubenchik utters an entreaty for remembrance that will follow his readers throughout the remainder of his memoir.

Rubenchik’s memoir, like the memoirs of the other survivors included here, commences with sharp, memorable images of the beginning of the Holocaust in Minsk. Together these stories give collective voice to the traumatic and very visceral happenings in Minsk during the summer of

1941. They capture the readers’ attention and imagination with vivid and unbelievable events while also hinting at this is only the beginning of the horrors to come.

The Establishment of the Minsk Ghetto These first atrocities—the mass killings at Drozdy and the murder of the Nachamchik family—were perpetrated against the people of Minsk generally, but also specifically targeted the

Jews. They Nazis were deliberately targeting Jews for discrimination and persecution, and this mistreatment became perfectly clear on July 15, 1941 when more signs were posted announcing the formation of the ghetto. The signs read:

ORDER

Concerning the Establishment of a Jewish Quarter in the City of Minsk: Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 43

1. Effective today, the date of this order, a separate section of the city will be

set aside where only Jews shall reside.

2. Within three days of the posting of this Order, all Jewish inhabitants of the

City of Minsk must move into the Jewish Quarter. After that time, any Jew

found in the non-Jewish area of the city will be arrested and severely

punished. Non-Jewish inhabitants who now live inside the borders of the

Jewish Quarter must immediately leave. If there are no dwellings in the non-

Jewish area that have been vacated by Jews, the Housing Office of the

Minsk municipal government will provide other dwellings.

3. It is permissible to move household goods. Anyone caught taking goods

belonging to someone else, or stealing, will be shot.

4. The Jewish Quarter is bordered by the following streets: Kolvirt alley to

Kolvirt Street, along the creek to Niemiga Street, excluding the

Pravoslavna14 Church, to Republikaner Street, and the side-streets of

Shorna, Kolektorna, Mebl-Alley, Perekop, Kizova, the Jewish cemetery,

Obutkova, Second Apanska-Alley, Zaslavski, to Kolvirt.

5. The Jewish Quarter, after the Jews move into it, must be separated from the

rest of the city by a brick wall, to be built by the inhabitants of the Jewish

Quarter. For this purpose, building materials must consist of bricks from

uninhabited or destroyed buildings.

6. Jews from the Jewish labor brigades are forbidden to be in the non-Jewish

areas. These brigades may leave their quarter, with special permission, to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 44

go to designated work places assigned by the Minsk municipal government.

Violators of this order will be shot.

7. Jews are permitted to enter and leave the Jewish Quarter through two streets

only—Apansik and Ostrovski. Climbing over the wall is forbidden. The

German sentries and the police guards are under orders to fire at anyone

who violates this order.

8. Only Jews and members of German military units are permitted to enter the

Jewish Quarter. Also, those who belong to the Minsk municipal

government, but only on official business.

9. The Judenrat is responsible for raising a fund of 30,000 chervontsi for

expenses connected with the relocation from one quarter to the other. This

sum, the interest rate on which will be set a at a later date, must be brought

to the Cashier of the municipal administration, #28 Karl Marx Street, within

12 hours after the issuance of this Order.

10. The Judenrat must immediately give to the Housing Office of the municipal

government a report of all dwellings in the non-Jewish areas that Jews

vacate and that have not yet been occupied by Aryan (non-Jewish) tenants.

11. Order in the Jewish Quarter will be maintained by special Jewish police

units. (A separate Order concerning this will be issued shortly.)

12. Complete responsibility for the final relocation of the Jews into their

Quarter belongs to the Judenrat of the City of Minsk. Any evasion of this

Order will be most severely punished.

(signed) Field Commandant Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 45

(Smolar 11-12)

Because of what it represents, the twelve-point order is often included, in its entirety, in the memoirs of survivors of the Minsk ghetto. With those twelve lines, the Jewish people had gone from free, contributing members of Minsk society to second-class citizens. The rights that were so unique to Minsk Jews were eliminated with the simple posting of a sign.

While the order to form the ghetto included a lot of information, survivor accounts tend to focus in on a few crucial aspects, leaving many details of the order unaddressed in their memoirs.

These crucial aspects seem to indicate what concerned the Jews most at the time. First, the motivation for following the order was strong. The constant refrain “will be shot” echoed through the ears of the Jews, who—after the systematic annihilation of the Jewish intellectuals at Drozdy and the callous brutality demonstrated in the murders of the Nachamchik family—had proof that the order would be upheld. Most felt that there was no way to avoid bending to the demands forced upon them. So even if, as stated in item #8, interracial couples had to be separated from their spouses or children without knowing if they would ever see each other again, this order was generally upheld. Similarly, a report of all Jewish houses unoccupied after the evacuation was likely created. However, these are not the points of the order that people were most concerned about. Three points of the order are repeated throughout the memoirs and testimonies—the creation of the Jewish Quarter and the hunt for a home within that space, the formation of the

Judenrat, and the requisition of funds.

It’s important to note that the Minsk ghetto was not referred to as such in the initial order.

There, it was simply referred to as the Jewish Quarter. However, narratives always refer to it as the ghetto; the epithet “Jewish Quarter” is absent in the lexicon of the memoirs of the Minsk ghetto.

This is because, even before the zone was formed, Jews were already referring to it as the ghetto. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 46

Smolar, a Polish Jew who fled east to escape Nazi persecution but eventually ended up in the

Minsk ghetto, explains the assumed etymology of the term, saying

The word “ghetto” was not used even once in this Order, but when I asked a Jew

dragging a load of bundles on a handcart, “Where are you going,” he pointed to the

Order pasted on a nearby wall and said, “To the ghetto.”

It was the Jews who came from Poland—the “refugees”—who brought this concept

with them. The Jews of Minsk soon adopted it and explained its origin this way:

“Ghetto? Probably comes from the word get (Yiddish, divorce). They are going to

divorce us from everything around us, from our neighbors, from our fellow-

workers.” (Smolar 10-12)

Although etymologically this passage is inaccurate—the term ghetto most likely derives from the

Venetian word ‘ghèto,’ or ‘foundry,’ as a foundry was located near the site of that city's ghetto in

1516—it does demonstrate the way in which Jews of Minsk were able to interpret the transformation of Minsk from an integrated city to a city in which they were being marginalized and ostracized. In using the term ‘ghetto,’ they were foregoing the phrase ‘Jewish Quarter.’ They recognized the term as a Nazi smokescreen that would isolate Jews from their family, friends, and neighbors. Instead, they were naming their own space, in addition to imbuing the name with a distinctly Jewish etymology, if inaccurate. It was a small way for the Jews to process what was happening to them on their own terms and to salvage their place within the city, even if that place was being foisted upon them by outsiders.

More than simply relocating to a small geographic region, however, the Jews of Minsk were now marked as disparate from the rest of the Minsk population. They were stigmatized by the yellow patches they were forced to wear and by the designated area they were compelled to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 47 inhabit. Anika Walke relates how strongly many of the Minsk Jews felt about this new form of identification when she says, “From July 15 [1941] onward, any Jew over the age of ten had to wear a yellow patch ten centimeters in diameter on their chest and back. The patch stigmatized anyone who would try to leave the ghetto and thus enabled immediate punishment. Many Jews were thrown in jail or shot when they were discovered either on their own outside the ghetto or without their patch. In one incident, sixty-four Jewish women were shot for refusing to wear the patch inside the ghetto” (Walke 77). Not only were the Jews branded as such, they were also forced to endure the humiliating move to and the hardships within the ghetto. Finding a place to live was not a simple task. Approximately 100,000 people were being forced to resettle in “a single two- square kilometer area” (Walke 76). These absurd living conditions meant being the first to find and inhabit a given location, and then being willing to share the small space you gained so that others would also have a place to live. They meant that most homes and even most rooms within homes were shared by multiple families. It was not uncommon to have twenty people living in a kitchen. It also meant that any building—post office, grocery store, restaurant, etc.—would have to be converted into shared living quarters. This was Mikhail Treister’s experience as a young boy,

Our first lodging in the ghetto was the hall of the former cinema on Rakovskaya

Street, opposite the bread-baking plant. Besides us, there were about a hundred

other wretched souls in the same pitiable conditions there. The families partitioned

their living spaces with blankets that hung on wire.

We had dug up some of our things from under the ruins of our house and swapped

them for food. I swapped things with the Germans – soap for bread, tobacco,

saccharin. It was honest trade. We would throw our goods into the windows of the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 48

second floor of the bread-baking plant office. And they would throw their goods

out the window, down.

[One day,] someone suddenly grabbed me by the collar, dragged me to the plant

premises, and threw me into a dark cellar. At first I started howling but soon

understood that it was futile and fell into a state of stupefaction. I do not know how

long I sat in that cellar. My mother ransomed me for five bars of soap. As I found

out later, a boy who looked like me had thrown a cobblestone, instead of soap, into

the window. And I was the one who had to pay for that. (Treister 21)15

As is evident in Treister’s experience, simply finding a space to lodge was not enough. The emotional implications of being forced into a state of homelessness were multiplied by the fear of knowing you now needed to find shelter for your family. In addition, many of the places that people lived in were not meant to house anyone. Basic furnishings and necessities were often unavailable in the places people lived, and even if they were, they were being shared by four or five times the number of people that would usually be using them. Therefore, any old belongings that had not been destroyed in the bombing of the city, had to be used and often repurposed in the ghetto. If possessions were not absolutely necessary for survival, they were often used for bartering either with other Jews or with the German soldiers. However, as Treister evinces, this was not always a simple, safe exchange of goods. The Jews of Minsk were forced into a new way of living.

Homes were no longer your own, nor were they safe spaces. Survival meant adaptation.

Another adjustment the Jews were forced to make, as outlined in the Order posted around

Minsk, was the formation of the Judenrat or Jewish Council. While the Order often referred to the municipal government in conjunction with housing and work assignments, Minsk was actually lacking a municipal government entirely. When the political leaders of the city fled just before the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 49 invasion, they left the city without any governing body. The Jews of Minsk, who were used to living under and abiding by Soviet governmental regulations, were actually very uncertain about what steps to take without a system in place. Therefore, the establishment of the Judenrat was viewed, if not favorably, then at least with understanding of its purpose and function. These Soviet

Jews were looking for leadership amidst trying times, even welcoming the head of the Judenrat, who was selected not by the Jews, but by the Nazis and in a most unusual manner. Smolar recounts,

Among the Jews themselves there were various explanations as to how the Military

Commandant came to select Ilya Mushkin as the “Eldest of the Jews.” Some said

the Mushkin was among those who had been maltreated by the Soviet governing in

1937 and that the Germans had more trust in such people. … Another “theory” was

that since Ilya Mushkin had occupied a high post in the Soviet trade apparatus…

the Nazis believed he would be more highly regarded by the Jews and would be

better able to carry out German orders.

The truth was (as members of the Judenrat explained to me later) that the “election”

took place in quite an accidental way. The military Commandant stood on Karl

Marx Street and a large group of Jews, rounded up for forced labor, were paraded

past him. At one point the group was ordered to halt and line up in rows. The

Commandant inspected the rows, staring intently into the frightened faces of the

Jews, who saw only death in his eyes. But they heard no order to shoot. Instead, the

Commandant wanted to know if any of them spoke German. No one responded. A

second time, he demanded in a more menacing tone: “Who can speak German?”

The Jews looked at each other with feat and suspicion, wondering which one of Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 50

them would volunteer. When the Nazi reached for his gun, Ilya Mushkin spoke up.

He knew a little German, he said…

Mushkin returned from the Commandant’s headquarters with a written Order

appointing “the Jude Elias Mushkin” as “Elder of the Jews.” The Order also stated

that he must supply to the Commandant, in the shortest possible time, the names of

individuals who would form the Jewish Council (Judenrat), which would be

responsible for collecting a large sum of money, in Soviet rubles, to be paid as a

“tax.” (Smolar 19-20)

While the formation of the Jewish Council and the Jewish Police only affected a few people like

Mushkin, everyone in the ghetto was expected to contribute to the fund of 30,000 chervontsi that the Germans had demanded. And the timetable to collect was very short. Mushkin had only 12 hours to collect what Smolar says equaled approximately $30,000 in 1941 (Smolar 12). While many were not opposed to Mushkin’s leadership and even respected him, they were reluctant to give away their few remaining possessions of any value, especially to the Nazi soldiers who had destroyed their homes, overtaken their city, and killed their men. Many did not even have any money or valuables to give. As a young girl caring for her little sister and elderly grandmother,

Krasnoperko attempted to grasp the concept of the appropriation of funds at a time of complete devastation. She recalls, “The word “requisition”—to me this is something from history textbooks.

Here it is now—in reality. All Jews have to turn in gold, silver, and valuables in requisition. We have nothing of the sort. Our only property is the key to our [demolished] apartment. I don’t throw it out; it reminds me of our prewar life” (Krasnoperko 5). The shared symbol of key, which features heavily in both Krasnoperko and Treister’s accounts, signifies ownership and independence, something the Jews had recently been stripped of. At this time, Krasnoperko’s only possession did Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 51 not have any monetary value; it’s only worth was sentimental in nature. Like many other Jews at the time, she could not help because there was nothing to give.

On the other end of the spectrum, there were Jews with money, who for obvious reasons, did not want to contribute to the requisition. Krasnoperko remembers witnessing an old woman hiding her gold just as the requisition was occurring:

I saw something. I could not believe my eyes.

I thought that Tema was sleeping and tiptoed into the room. The old woman was

sitting on the couch and was sewing gold inside her coat.

- Girl, you did not see anything. You did not see and do not know anything, - she

said.

But I saw everything. Tema was holding a golden coin in her hands, which she was

sewing under the lining. I was startled. I always thought that gold was the state's

property.

- I know, girl, what you are thinking about. A long time ago, my grandsons were

also surprised when I showed them these coins. Before the revolution I saved

money on food, on clothes and got this. When the worst comes…

I saw her sewing one more coin. Then she put on her coat and touched her wealth:

- These beasts will never get it. Let God hear me: at gunpoint I will not give it away!

(Krasnoperko 6-7)16

The Jews of Minsk had lost nearly everything: family members, their homes and businesses, worldly possessions, and their freedom. Men and women like Tema drew the line at losing the few possessions they had left. They withheld their gold and valuables Nazi requisition in any they could, knowing that this money could save their lives later. This was not the first instance of Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 52 resistance against the German invaders, but it was a common method. Despite the lack of money and valuables the Jews had or were willing to contribute, the Judenrat was able to collect the whole tax. This success, along with the delay in formation of the ghetto (the Jews were given an extension and would not be forced to resettle until August 1) led to warm feelings being extended toward the

Judenrat. In his article, “The Judenrat in Minsk,” Shalom Chowalsky relates examples from the general populace of the ghetto's opinion on Mushkin thus, “D. Trebnik had this to say about

Mushkin: ‘He used to inform us when an action was imminent; he would collect medications and have them sent to the men in the forest. M. Tokarsky, also about Mushkin, ‘He was very capable and very decent.’ D. Davidson, ‘Mushkin was a very decent man.’ H. Tessman, ‘Mushkin was not willing to capitulate or concede everything to the Germans that they demanded of him. … Other testimonies contain similar appreciations. Naturally, the attitude expressed in these testimonies is towards Mushkin as an individual, and toward his individual behavior, but in the eyes of the Jews of the ghetto, the Judenrat was Mushkin. Dr. M… hints at the tragic dilemma of the Judenrat in the following comment: ‘This Judenrat wanted to help the Jews, but it was also formed to work for the Germans’” (118). In his memoir, Smolar describes a similar sentiment toward the Judenrat, when he explains

… [T]he Judenrat soon began receiving some favorable recognition from the ghetto

population, especially when it became known that Ilya Mushkin had managed to

obtain from the German authorities a two-week extension—until August 1941—in

the deadline for moving into the ghetto. People started believing it would be

possible to nullify other decrees as well, that the Judenrat would be able to defend

the interests of the ghetto Jews. So when the Judenrat appealed for contributions to

the ghetto “tax”—collectors went door to door, describing the dangerous Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 53

consequences of not turning the money over to the Germans by the specified date—

people tried to give as much as possible. Hope arose that somehow life would be

“normalized,” even in the crowded conditions of the ghetto, even with all the

burdensome decrees that were hurled at them every day, even with the brutal and

degrading way people were treated in the labor columns. (Smolar 19-21)

Smolar’s comment that people hoped for normalization reflects the many firsthand accounts of life in the Minsk ghetto. Most of the memoirs begin in one of two ways: either by describing Jewish life in interwar Minsk or by depicting where the writer was on the day he or she first heard about the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The survivors will then describe the events of that summer—deciding whether to stay in or flee from Minsk, the events at Drozdy, and moving into the ghetto. The next part of each memoir is interesting because almost all of them omit the autumn of 1941 entirely. They do not have anything to say about adapting to ghetto life or what they were thinking or feeling during this time. Likely, this is due to the hope that Smolar mentions. Many

Minsk citizens remembered the First World War and were left with good impressions of the

German soldiers. They could be reasoned with. The Jews had followed their orders moving into the ghetto, given them all of their gold, and were even working for them in labor brigades. They had fulfilled every order they had been given, and therefore, as Smolar indicates, many were hoping for a return to “normal” life. This break in all of the narratives, from September through

November 1941 seems to indicate a brief sense of hope for a return to normalcy. If truly horrific things were happening during this time, survivors would have remembered and written about them.

Rather, this seems to be the calm before the storm. Autumn 1941 was a fleeting period of hope for the Jews of Minsk. Unfortunately, those brief hopes were quickly dashed.

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 54

The First Two Major Pogroms of the Minsk Ghetto Smolar explains the events leading up to the pogrom on November 7, 1941. He explains that the members of the underground had knowledge of the impending violence that was about to erupt in the Minsk ghetto and the precautions that they took to prevent as much death as possible.

The fate of thousands of Jews was at stake. Something had to be done quickly.

Zyama had learned from a reliable source that the Germans were getting ready to

“cut off” a whole area of the ghetto which included Niemiga, Ostrovski and other

densely populated streets. Zyama calculated that almost 20,000 Jews lived there.

Where would we find homes for them all? Neither Zyama nor I realized at that

moment what “cutting off” streets from the ghetto actually portended. It never

occurred to us that it meant more than merely reducing the geographical area. Our

thoughts went in only one direction: to give the people in that neighborhood

sufficient warning, so that they could move out in time. …

On the evening of November 6, 1941, when Gorodietski invaded the ghetto—it was

at the hour when the work-groups were coming back—the streets instantly emptied

out. That same evening we learned that Gorodietski had rounded up the Judenrat

members and their families, the leaders of the ghetto police and the labor exchange,

as well as several hundred “specialists” and skilled workers, and taken them all to

the Shiroka concentration camp.

A great fear fell upon the ghetto population. No one slept that night. They had a

premonition that the morning would bring with it a disaster. If the Germans had

rounded up the leaders of the ghetto itself, then there would soon be no ghetto

either. (Smolar 40-41) Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 55

Due to the underground’s warnings, some were able to flee the pogrom. They not only evacuated the predicted areas of destruction and death; they fled the ghetto entirely. Treister explains where he and his mother went to hide during the mass killings:

7th November 1941. I do not know from where my mother had heard about the

pogrom, but at 5 o’clock in the morning we were already outside and could escape

through the gap in the encirclement that had not yet been closed. We ran across the

Jewish cemetery, covered with the first fresh snow, which had fallen the night

before. We were running to the only place where we could find rescue—to my

“second Mum” Yuzya, my nanny and our housekeeper, who had lived with our

family for 14 years. At that time, she lived in the communal flat where nothing

could be kept secret from the neighbors. Despite that, she helped us, risking her

own life. She gave us shelter and food. We could get warm and stay in her room

for three days. Three days later we returned to the ghetto, but “our” cinema and the

whole district had already been cut from the ghetto. We had nowhere to live. We

were homeless again. (Treister 21)17

The warnings of the underground and the friendships forged before the war kept the Treister family safe. A compassionate Belarussian woman risked her life to save her friends’. She would not be the first or last to do so. But the devastation of the pogrom was still felt by all. Being caught fleeing the ghetto, meant immediate death. Most likely, so did staying behind during the pogrom.

The terror that the near-certainty of death must have had on this teenage boy, was only compounded by his shivering as he ran through the early morning snow. Even after survival, there were challenges to be faced. The Treister family was again homeless. And it would not take young

Treister long to apprehend that, in addition, many of his friends and neighbors were murdered. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 56

Some Jews in the ghetto were lucky enough to survive the pogrom due to their work detail.

Like Treister, Rubenchik was safely outside of the ghetto when the pogrom occurred. He is only able to describe what happened on November 7, 1941 due to the reports he heard after the event.

He recounts:

After we left work early in the morning, the Germans and the police encircled parts

of the ghetto. The enclosure consisted of Kostranya Street, Damitrov,

Pozamkovaia, Namiga and Shfaller Alley, Ostrovsky, Opansky, and parts of

Respublikanskaia. Everyone was notified that they must take their possessions with

them. Who knows, perhaps they expected to be sent to work in a different city? The

people began to collect their belongings. However, the Germans were unhappy that

all of this was taking so long. So then came the orders to the Judenrat and

Gerndarmes to drive out the Jews from the designated streets and from their

apartments by force. People had no time to dress. With humiliation, curses, barking

dogs, crying children and weeping women, the SS shouted out, “Schnell, Schnell!

Faster! Faster! Don’t think! Don’t hesitate! Strike them with your rifle stocks!” they

lined the people up, elderly and children included. Soon they understood that the

Germans had lied. What kind of work can there be if the elderly and children were

going too? Everyone seemed to sense that they were being led to their deaths. …

They created a barbaric system where people were divided into groups, ordered to

face the pit, and stand as near as possible to the edge.

“Fire!” the commanding officer ordered. … Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 57

Not every bullet reached its target. Often the bullets would not kill the children who

were short in height. The soldiers would just throw the children into the pits alive

and then shoot the rest of the group who would fall on top of them.

The machine guns fired almost continuously, with only short breaks. People fell

into the deep pit where a bloody mass of human bodies had formed. Then, the

Judenrat police appeared at the edges of the pit. They were brought in to pile up

corpses. It was hellish work. Many of them sobbed. The German officers shot on

the spot those who objected or refused to follow orders. (Rubenchik 58-60)18

Rubenchik’s description of Jews being shot and buried in mass graves is just the first of such depictions associated with the Minsk ghetto. Those who knew what occurred to male Jewish intellectuals at Drozdy and now saw the same violence reiterated in the ghetto, in this moment realized that the murders would continue. In the three months since the ghetto’s creation, there had been no large-scale murders like this one, so people were hopeful that the killings had ended. Very few write about the time between the establishment of the ghetto on August 1 and the first pogrom on November 7. This lack seems to symbolize a sort of hibernation that the Jews of Minsk experienced during this time. However, with the first and second pogroms of November 1941, the

Jews were rudely awakened to the reality of this new type of German soldier as though being hit with a bucket of icy water. With the sudden murder of 12,000 people, the Jews were truly aroused to the horrors of their position. Likely, during these few months of unrecorded activity, many were just trying to fit their lives into some semblance of normalcy. These people remembered the

German soldiers of World War I as enemies with honor. Despite being on different sides of the war, the German soldiers had treated the Soviet soldiers with respect. The Soviet Jews of Minsk held onto the hope that these German soldiers were the same as those of World War I, but with the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 58 first major pogrom on November 7, 1941, those hopes were dashed. A second mass extermination action did not bode well for the future of the Jews in Minsk, and Smolar’s account only further highlights the atrocities committed on that day.

While typically the evening of November 6th meant preparations for the celebration of the

Russian Revolution the next day, that evening the atmosphere in the ghetto was not one of revelry but of dread. As many as could had evacuated their homes in the soon-to-be dangerous sectors of the ghetto, but that did not mean that everyone had escaped or that anyone was without fear. Smolar goes on to describe how the morning of the anniversary of the October Revolution (according to the new calendar) dawned with invasion of the ghetto.

On the morning of the 7th a detachment of SS and police, along with a large number

of local and Lithuanian fascists, marched into the ghetto. They stopped at Jubilee

Square. Then, concentrating on the streets around Niemiga and Ostrovksi, they

began “searching and seizing” men, women and children and herding them into

Jubilee Square under a hail of blows and curses. The old and the feeble were shot

on the spot. The Square and the surrounding streets filled up with people whose

faces expressed only fear and despair.

Then came an order that translated into Russian …

“Line up in rows of eight, as you always do on Oktaibrske!”

People began pushing, dragging their children, trying to keep their families

together. The Lithuaian fascists distributed large red flags bearing Soviet emblems.

Into the hands of the men in the front row they stuck a banner:

“Long live the 24th anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution!” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 59

From the Judenrat building nearby came groups of men in civilian clothing,

carrying huge movie cameras. From all angles they filmed the “demonstration,” as

they ordered the Jews to smile and look happy to put their children on their

shoulders and start marching. The march went along Opanski Street, where a long

line of black trucks was waiting. The police ordered the Jews to climb into the

trucks, which then started moving toward Tutshinka Street.

Only a few people survived. From them we learned what had happened. The

Germans forced everyone into the storehouses of the former Sixth NKVD Division.

People lost consciousness but did not fall, because the bodies were so closely

pressed together. Children suffocated. Thirst tortured all those still alive. For two

or three days the Nazis kept the people standing in there. At the end of that time,

the living were driven toward freshly dug ditches and ordered to undress. The

screams of pain and terror and the curses of the guards drowned out the rattle of the

machine guns. Then—silence. The bloody graves were left uncovered. For a long

time the groans of people still accidentally alive could be heard. Peasants from a

nearby village, who were brought in to cover the graves, reported that even after

they covered Smolarthem, the earth still moved… (Smolar 41-42)

That day, the Jews were constrained to march around with banners, waving flags and singing songs as though celebrating the October Revolution. Adding insult to injury, the German soldiers filmed the production before killing anyone who participated. Smolar gives a summary of the events of that day, saying:

The following day, the Judenrat members and all the others who had been taken

hostage with them were brought back into the ghetto. The Germans explained to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 60

them that they had been removed from the ghetto for their own protection, so that

they would not accidentally become victims of the massacre!

According to the information available to the Judenrat, 12,000 Jews were killed on

that day. There was no consolation in the fact that almost half the inhabitants of the

“severed” neighborhoods had managed to save themselves because we had

forewarned them. (Smolar 42)

This summation contrasts so sharply with his vivid depictions of the victims of the pogrom rolling through a mass of bodies as they struggled to avoid being buried alive. It doesn’t capture the horror of the peasants who were called to cover the mass graves in dirt. Yet Smolar provides both depictions of the event. He wants his reader to feel the shock and horror that can only come with the first portrayal, but he also couples it with the facts and figures of the second. His personal reaction to the unnecessary deaths of 12,000 people. Nothing he did to help some escape could ever provide any consolation for the weight that knowledge placed on his shoulders.

The first and second major pogroms in the Minsk ghetto occurred within a couple weeks of each other. The Jews were still scrambling to cover from the first attack on November 7, 1941, when the second occurred just 15 days later, on November 22, 1941. Gennady Barkun explains the purpose behind this second pogrom when he writes, “On 24 October 1941 the chief of the police in a number of cities in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslavakia received an order from the

Chief of Police Daluge for ‘the evacuation of Jews from the old territory o the Reich and from the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.’ Between 1 November and 4 December 1941, 50,000 Jews were to be exported … to the regions of Riga and Minsk. … Between November 1941 and October

1942, 24 echelons of approximately 22,000 arrived in Minsk from Germany (Hamburg,

Dusseldorf, Frankfurt-am-Main, Berlin, Bremen, Konigsberg, Cologne), Austria (Vienna) and Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 61

Czechoslavakia (Brno, Teresin). Until August 1942 the deportees were first settled in the Minsk ghetto; from August to October 1942 they were delivered directly to the place of annihilation— the area surrounding the village of Trostenets, 20 kilometers from Minsk. … Taking into consideration the number who died in transit, nearly 20,000 Jews from Western Europe were annihilated in the Minsk ghetto and in the vicinity of the city.” (Barkun 158) This second major pogrom in the Minsk ghetto occurred in order to make space in the ghetto for the Western Jews.

While the first pogrom reemphasized the fact that the Nazis had taken control of a Soviet space by distorting a Soviet holiday, this pogrom was more practical in purpose. The Nazis were sending thousands of European Jews to Minsk to reside in the ghetto there, and the ghetto was already beyond capacity. The only way these additional Jews would fit in the current conditions of the ghetto was to kill current residents to make space for them. So after talk of downsizing from two weeks prior, the German occupiers were set to slaughter again. Rubenchik describes the victims of this pogrom, noting, “On the 20th of November the second pogrom took place. … this time it was the women, the elderly, and weak children who had been traumatized by hunger and cold.” He explains the cruel and unnecessary deaths these people experienced as they were lined up and forced to march, “When the lines began to move, the sick and weak began to slip and fall.

The escorting guards shot at them on the street. There were those who took advantage of the chaos and tried to run away, but the dogs were sent to follow them. The hostile guard dogs caught the victims, threw them to the ground and tore their clothes to pieces, clinging to their naked bodies”

(Rubenchik 62).19 These gruesome deaths were even more transparent than those that had occurred two weeks prior. Then the Nazis had thinly veiled their murderous ways. The dushegubki gas vans were loaded with people, but with their opaque walls, no one could witness their deaths. Similarly, people were lined up and marched to open mass graves before they were killed. Now, just two Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 62 weeks later, the murderers were no longer even attempting to conceal their dealings. They openly chose the weakest members of society—the children and the elderly—and they murdered them as they walked through the ghetto. They literally paraded their victims down a main street, shooting them and siccing dogs on them in the open. Krasnoperko describes in detail how these events changed her life forever:

I look steadily across the river. It seems to be quiet outside the [barbed] wire. Yet

there is a roaring sound on the right, from the Nemiga side. It is becoming louder -

the autos are approaching. I am trying to convince myself that they are not

necessarily heading for the ghetto. I come back and do not believe my eyes. The

autos are' all around. Soldiers in German uniform are jumping from them and

surrounding the district.

I can hardly run up to the house and scream: “Pogrom!”

Everybody is dressed momentarily. Mother clutches Inna to her, and grabs a loaf

of bread, then gives it to me. She helps grandmother tie her kerchief, put on her

boots. …

We have been thrown out from the house. There are many people in the yard. They

might have been pulled out from nearby houses. Here is Dvorkin, a handsome man.

His tall figure and gray head are seen from the distance. Near him is his daughter

Zinachka, with her long braids. The engineer Livshitz. He is coming up to us, takes

off his hat, says hello. It is weird, now, at that moment...

I think they will begin to fire at us near that red brick house. My God, they will

shoot us at the house where not long ago my friend Tata—Tanechka Drozdova—

used to live. She and her parents were forced out of it. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 63

And they actually push us to up to the wall. The Germans start to count people and

push them to different sides. We prey not to be separated.

They seem to be sorting us out. I can distinguish clearly two words: "Leben," "Tod."

It means that in one column there will be people whose destiny is to live, in the

other one—those who will be shot. We get into the second one. People understand

what is awaiting them. From the column of death they run to the column of life.

Fire started. Suddenly I step on something soft and fall down. I see white-blue face

of a girl and recognize her. This is our neighbor Sima Kotlyarova, Dina's friend. I

shake her and say:

“Stand up!”

Dina says: “She won't stand up: she has been shot. She wanted to get over the wire.”

Until that moment my thinking was strangely clear. Now it is muddled:

“Has she been shot?!”

...Soldiers surround us.

...Where are they driving us? Up along Dmitrov Street...

Maybe to Yubileynaya Square? To the Judenrat?

The procession is being escorted from both sides, every other row. Our row, with

mother, grandma and myself, is not guarded. But the guards are in front and behind

us. Those who attempt to break from the procession are shot immediately.

I remember that I have bread in my hands and begin to eat. It’s incredible, but I

satisfy my hunger. I hand bread over to mother. She looks at me surprised. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 64

Where are they driving us? Ours is a death column. Are we really going to die? No,

I cannot believe it! Maybe, things will change abruptly? Maybe rescue will come

from somewhere? …

“Mother,” I hear my Mother's whisper, as she speaks to Grandma, “We have to save

the children... We shall try to run away on that turn. Hold on to me.”

“I cannot, my feet would not go,” answers Grandma. “Save children. Run away

with them...”

“How can we go without you?”

“I won’t make it... Save the children... “

Mother tells me to rip off the yellow strip from my chest. She also rips them off

herself and Inna. It is impossible to do the same with the strips on our backs, the

guards behind will see this.

No, we are not going to the Ubileynaya Square. They have already taken us outside

the boundaries of the ghetto. We are being moved along Opanski Street. And

suddenly on the left side of the street we see a horse-driven wagon approaching our

column. In a moment it will catch up with us.

“Jump on the wagon,” mother pushes us from the column. We jump on the wagon,

mother follows us. The villager drives like crazy. There is a commotion, screams,

shooting behind. They fire at us. But we are far from the column. We rip off the

yellow strips on our backs.

“Run away! Rescue yourselves!” the villager is shouting.

xxx Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 65

We hide ourselves in the debris of the bombed-out building. Mother is agonizing

over Grandma's fate.

“Our poor Grandma, poor Grandma she went on with them...” She says, blind-eyed:

“Where are they moving them? My poor mom...”

Shall we ever see her again?

We are sobbing, all sorrow and despair.

We get out of the debris. Where shall we go, where shall we get? We stopped at

Svoboda Square. We see people moving towards the Catholic Church. I remember

us, pioneers, carrying out anti-religious propaganda. We were waiting for the

believers to come out after service and were telling them that religion was opium

for the people.

Mother says we have to enter the church. Let's make an impression that we are just

believers.

“We shall stay there for a while, warm up and go on...” Everybody is kneeling.

Mother tells us to do the same. I cannot. Mother is imploring in a low whisper:

“Don't draw anybody's attention... We may be held up.”

The service over, we leave the church. Where shall we go? To our Byelorussian

friends? It is not safe either for them or for us. There is only one way left for us—

to the ghetto. (Krasnoperko 18-20)20

This scene is one of the most lengthy and vivid depictions of Krasnoperko’s entire narrative. Like other portions of her prose, she shifts from a broad perspective of what is happening within the ghetto, naming specific individuals and how they are reacting to the same event, to a very narrow, personal lens of her own emotions and experience. The scene, which began with a focus on the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 66 people around her and their actions and interactions, morphs into her experience with only her mother, sister, and grandmother. The horror of accidentally stepping on a dead child is narrowed even further as she is not given time to process the inhumanity of that one act. Instead,

Krasnoperko’s language suggests her inability to believe the unbelievable. The readers, too, have little time to assimilate the information that they have been given. This, however, is an intentional piece of reading Holocaust memoirs. Readers “engage testimony precisely because it challenges

[their] ability to assimilate it” (Edmundson 146). Where at the beginning of the scene Krasnoperko and her readership had a clear understanding, even premonition, about what was occurring, now

Krasnoperko’s language is riddled with questions. This reflects her confusion as well as her audience’s. It is as if with her personal interaction with the dead child, her brain has reached such a stopping point. Her actions begin to coincide with her confusion as well: she eats a piece of bread, even offers to share it with her mother, as she is being driven to certain death. While this sense of disorientation and disbelief is emphasized in Krasnoperko’s breakdown of language, the soundscape and emotions of the scene allow the reader to process the events that are occurring through another lens. The soundcape begins developing from the very beginning of the scene, which rapidly shifts from a relatively quiet day to the single, terrified shriek of the word,

“Pogrom!” This word alone disrupts the text, jarring readers and alerting them to upcoming dangers. From there, the pogrom is experienced in sensations and emotions, as readers hear a few familiar words in German before gunshots begin to ring out. This transforms into the feeling of rough hands ripping despised yellow strips from clothing and boosting Kransnoperko into a wagon, while screams ring out. Her ultimate escape and survival comes with the daring jump of someone who has nothing to lose. The soundscape and sensory details begin to intermingle. While she and her mother and sister survive, cheered on by a random Byelorussian, they are now faced Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 67 with the loss of their grandmother. So three Jewish atheists, sit in a Catholic cathedral, mourning the loss of their loved one without uttering a single prayer. Instead of mumbled prayers, there are only sobs.

The events of that day, probably the first real loss in Krasnoperko’s young life, end with a return to the ghetto. Her neighbors and her grandmother are dead; the family returns to their killing site unable to hold even a burial for their grandmother or the young girl that Krasnoperko encountered. The victims that Rubenchik referred to as “old and young” come alive in

Krasnoperko’s testimony with her dynamic descriptions of living people. She doesn’t ever explicitly state that the powerless were targeted in that pogrom, yet her portrayal of the events on that day make that fact abundantly clear. Krasnoperko encountered the death of a child and lost her grandmother on the same day. After all of that, there was nowhere for her to turn; she was simply forced to return to the ghetto.

The Cruel Winter of 1941-1942: Starvation, Malinas, and Escape The deadly aftermath of the first two major pogroms in the Minsk ghetto was followed by a season of starvation, frostbite, and further death. The Western Jews who survived the deportation to the Minsk ghetto during this unseasonably cold winter were confronted with a harsh reality upon arrival. One deportee, Yakov Grinshtein, recalls that “the Minsk ghetto had a horrible appearance.

Toward the end of the autumn of 1941, people were pale and shaking with cold. For firewood, they used demolished houses, fences, tree stumps. The streets were covered with dirty, trampled snow. There were no yards. The old wooden buildings looked hostile and strange, their broken windows covered with dirty rags or wrinkled cardboard. The looks of the Jews matched that of their houses. It seemed that life itself had abandoned these human beings, ragged and hungry, hardly dragging along their inhuman existence.” (Smilovitsky Minsk Ghetto: An Issue of Jewish Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 68

Resistance) This decay of both Jewish homes and Jewish bodies in the Minsk ghetto was further galvanized by the unseasonably cold winter of 1941-1942. In fact, according to an article by Dr.

Harald Lejenas of the University of Stockholm’s Department of Meteorology, “The winter of

1941-42 is known as the coldest European winter of the 20th Century” (Lejenas 1). The Jews in the ghetto had lost coats and blankets in the bombings or had bartered away furs and jackets for warmth. There was no way for them to obtain new ones, and many were dying from the cold. They had quickly come to resemble the decaying structures of the buildings surrounding them. Just as

Grinshtein described the houses without yards and missing windows, so too were the inhabitants of Minsk without winter clothing and missing boots.

However, the cold was not the only barrier to survival that winter; the people were also dying from starvation. The only safe way to obtain food was while on a labor detail. Many saved portions of the meager amount of food they were given at work and took them back to their families. Often, that still wasn’t enough. People were forced to go outside the ghetto for sustenance, so chances of dying of starvation decreased but chances of being caught and killed multiplied. The winter was so terrible that it is impossible to read a survivor of the Minsk ghetto’s memoir without hearing about it. The four memoirists in this chapter each had something to say about the difficulty of that time:

The winter of 1942 was exceptionally cold and there was no fuel to heat the ghetto

building. Early in the evening, after Richter had finished his “tour of duty,” people

would saw down one of the remaining trees and divide it among the neighbors. Not

a splinter was left of the doors and windows in the houses that were destroyed

during the bombing of Minsk. Not a trace was left of the balconies in the nearby

gardens. Everything was used for cooking or to protect oneself from the brutal cold. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 69

There was a saying in the ghetto: “Troubles as plentiful as wood, but nothing to

burn.” People burned up the outhouses in the courtyards. For their bodily functions

they used the bit of open space alongside the buildings. While the weather was cold

it wasn’t so bad, but as soon as the weather turned a little milder the stench spread

all through the ghetto. (Smolar 45-46)

Mother was always complaining about the cold. The only way to solve the problem

was by getting hold of firewood. But where could this be found? In this matter,

Father had a suggestion for us:

“Look, son, how many empty homes surround us, with not a soul inside of them.

Surely they have broken floors, screens, frames, or beams. Everything from wood.”

We began to prepare small bundles of good dry firewood. We started with the

houses damaged by explosions. We carried the wood home and sawed it. Later, we

began to sell, or more correctly, to barter this precious wood. In exchange for a

bundle of good firewood one could receive any product. (Rubenchik 105-106)21

Hunger is a terrible thing. I am hungry all the time, it hurts inside, I stagger from

dizziness.

And you think about bread all the time. Awake and in dream- about bread. We chew

pieces of paper, scrub chalk from ovens... Sometimes it seems, we are passing out.

I do not want mother to notice … But she sees anyway. She gives me her bread.

Inochka also shares her ration with me. Is there hunger in my eyes? (Krasnoperko

58)22 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 70

It was bitterly cold in the winter; there was real frost, even indoors, unless you

managed to find some wood at work or something else that could be burned, and

bring it home. But the columns coming back to the ghetto were often ransacked and

the “firewood” was confiscated. I have no idea what they did with it afterwards.

There was no electricity in the ghetto. We lit up our room with candles. I learned

to make them myself – cast them in a glass tube from paraffin, which I had found

somewhere. Sometimes we also used wood splinters as torches. Then I found a

shell-case and made a carbide lamp out of it. Even now, the smell of carbide takes

me back to the ghetto. Smells as well as melodies are able to take one back more

keenly than just memories. (Treister 23)23

One of the strongest memories of ghetto life seems to be associated with the winter of 1941-1942.

These memoirs bring the sights, smells, and sounds of this season to life. Wood, such a simple everyday object, is endowed with new power and meaning seen through the memoirists’ eyes.

Suddenly mere splinters and full outhouses can be used to kindle a fire. Similarly, bread, the most mundane of food products, becomes a veritable feast in comparison with the alternatives: scraps of paper or chalk ash from the ovens. The scents of this winter are so potent one can almost smell them 80 years later. The smell of feces and urine as the snow begins to melt combines with the acrid odor from the carbide lamps. The two unexpected yet specific details cause the reader to experience the scene in vivid detail. Multiple senses are called upon to experience the winter of

1941-1942 with the survivor. The reader metaphorically faces two massive attacks in conjunction with the writers and is now being forced to confront the Holocaust in a sensory way. The usual protections against the weather and deprivation were unavailable to the survivors, and the Jews Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 71 were bombarded with constant reminders of the cold, hunger, and death surrounding them. It is at this same time that they also realized that they needed a place to hide from future pogroms and night raids that were sure to come.

Mikhail Treister gives a good explanation of these hiding places, dens, or malinas as they were called. Like Smolar’s etymology of the word ‘ghetto,’ Treister provides an unconventional etymology of the term ‘malina,’ 24detailing who hid in them and when. In addition, he explains that many sacrificed their lives or that their lives were sacrificed in order for others’ survival in the hideouts.

In the special jargon used by criminals the word “malina” (raspberry) means “den,”

a secret place, far from the police, where thieves and other criminals can hide and

have a rest after doing their “work.” Nowadays, thieves are quite different and their

dens are on the Canary Islands or in the Swiss Alps; that is, however, a different

topic.

In the ghetto “dens” were secret places where the prisoners hid during the

annihilating raids.

It is difficult to describe all kinds of “dens” – they depended on the room that was

available, the number of people hiding and the imagination of their creators: false

walls and façades with free space behind them, cellars with secret hatchways;

sometimes a cellar was dug outside the house and was connected to it by an

underground passage; a “den” could also be in a side room, with a door hidden

behind a wardrobe.

The inevitable question is – who camouflaged the hatches of the cellars, moved the

wardrobes, masked the doors? This was done by old people who consciously Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 72

sacrificed their lives for the slightest hope of saving their children’s and

grandchildren’s lives. …

Unfortunately, their sacrifices were often in vain, as Nazis had their methods of

search: dogs, tapping on the walls, grenades, smoke grenades thrown into the

cellars, etc. …

The dens were good only for a short stay. Sometimes a child would start crying,

right at the moment when the flat was being searched by Nazis. Then the people

hiding in the den had to suffocate the child. Even if there was anyone among them

who had read Dostoyevsky and knew his words, “The entire future happiness of the

world is not worth an innocent child’s single tear,” they could not afford to think

of it at that moment. They were killing one child in order to save the lives of several

people and other children among them.

My modest den experience comes to one night that I spent among ten other

wretched souls in the narrow chink between two walls. After that I decided that it

is better to die in the fresh air. (Treister 28)25

Each malina was unique. It was designed to blend in to whatever location the user needed. One malina was located inside an outhouse, another in-between two walls of the infectious diseases unit of a hospital, and another inside a hollowed-out wardrobe. Therefore, Treister is unable to provide an all-encompassing description of a malina. However, he is able to describe the sensations associated with hiding in a malina, as those were universal. Treister writes deliberately about the emotional state of those in hiding. The sense of claustrophobia and the smell of body odor is dwarfed by the terror of hiding from murderers. All of these sensations are combined with the dread of certain death for the loved one who chose to remain behind. Finally, masking all of that Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 73 is the sense of absolute revulsion that you might need to strangle a baby in order to save the lives of other loved ones. The terrible emotions associated with such an experience were so strong for

Treister that after hiding in a malina once, he decided it “is better to die” than to hide again.

Treister was not alone in having a terrible experience hiding inside a malina. While they saved many people from certain death, many others died anyway. Innocent children were some of the most common victims. After the details of the winter of 1941-1942, the stories of infants being strangled in order to ensure silence are some of the most common in the narratives of the Minsk ghetto survivors. Rubenchik and Krasnoperko both penned multiple accounts of this in their memoirs. One by Rubenchik is included here:

After they left, exhausted, emaciated and frail people began to leave the malina.

They had sat there for four days without water or food. There was a bad smell of

excretion. There were no toilets in the malina. Leaving the hiding place in a time

of the pogrom was equivalent to suicide.

Grandmother Tzipah looked especially bad. Her head was shaking. Her sagging

cheeks were as pale as plaster while her eyes were wild. She did not reply to

questions and would not speak to anyone. Mother told us that Freida’s daughter

Dana cried all the time. She wanted to drink. No one could quiet her. Rabbi Pesach

prayed all the time, hoping the girl would be quiet. However, this did not help.

Then, his wife said, “For the sake of saving the rest of the people, that child must

be sacrificed.”

Grandmother Tzipa wanted to take the child into her arms, but found that someone

had smothered the child. She had become silent. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 74

I saw that mother too was on the verge of losing it. With her eyes alight and wild

hair, she looked like a mad woman. Father began to calm her.

The scarf used to cover little Taibe was entirely soaked in clotted blood with two

holes from the gunshots. “Where is my Taibe?” my mother cried out.

There was dead silence. Mother and Father looked at each other, eyes with horror.

They neither believed not could truly comprehend what had happened. They had

been left with no more young children, without Elka, without Chaya, without

Yerucham and without little Taibe, who was named after his father’s sister Taibe,

who had been killed in the first barbaric pogrom in the ghetto. That day, my father

mourned Shiva. Grandmother Tzipah finally uttered several words, but what kind

of words! She whispered so quietly that we could barely hear her when she said

that she no longer wanted to live.

From that moment, she stopped talking completely, and never again touched food.

We tried feeding her by force, but it was useless. She shook and moved her head as

if to repel people from her. After a month passed, she died. I am sure that it was not

from lack of food, but from sheer sorrow. (Rubenchik 112-114, 116, 118)26

This tragic account details how infants were almost inevitably killed during the pogroms. Whether left outside a malina or taken into one, the baby was likely to be killed by the Nazi soldiers or those hiding in the malina. It is one of those choiceless choices—“crucial decisions [that] did not reflect options between life and death, but between one form of abnormal response and another, both imposed by a situation that was in no way of the victim's own choosing”—that Lawrence Langer describes in relation to the Holocaust: risk your child’s life by hiding him or her somewhere separate from you or risk everyone’s’ lives by hiding your child with you. The Jews of Minsk were Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 75 forced to confront this decision frequently, and it is clearly one of the most haunting aspects of life in the Minsk ghetto. It was the reality of this experience that killed Rubenchik’s Grandmother

Tzipah as well as his infant sister and the baby named Dana. It is the never-ending pain and trauma of such experiences that keep these occurrences in the forefront of memorable moments still written and read about in narratives on the Minsk ghetto.

Despite the many infant and elderly deaths that occurred in connection with the malinas, some were still able to survive. This small chance of survival was enough to give many the courage they needed to keep creating the hideouts. Smolar tells of his own survival in a malina in the infectious unit of the hospital:

My friends devised a way to hide me even from the bloodhounds of the Gestapo.

In the course of one night the construction worker Moyshe Boykin put up a brick

wall parallel to the chimney in the hospital attic. They put me in the space between

the two walls, leaving a couple of loose bricks through which I could crawl out in

an emergency. Through that same opening they handed me food and brought me

news. At the base of the wall they sprinkled tobacco crumbs that had been sprayed

with benzine, which would throw the dogs off the scent. My contact was nurse

Shpirer, who brought wetwash up with her to the attic whenever she came to see

me.

My new living quarters were hardly “livable.” Sitting was impossible. I could either

stand or lie down on my side. I loosened a shingle on the roof so I could get a breath

of fresh air and see what was going on in the street below. The sudden

disappearance of the people from the street whenever the Gestapo or its agents

arrived [was the most] common sight. (Smolar 94) Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 76

While some like those featured in Rubenchik and Krasnoperko’s stories used their malinas to hide during night raids or pogroms, others like Smolar hid from the Gestapo in their malinas for days and sometimes weeks and even months. These hiding places saved many lives, even allowing people like Smolar to hide until they were able to escape.

As 1942 progressed from January to February and the winter weather remained at all-time lows, escape from the ghetto became an even more appealing option. Often though, escape was only for a brief time: to escape a raid, to gather provisions for your family, or to visit those on the other side of the barbed wire. Barbara Epstein explains how escape from the ghetto into the city was relatively easy compared with many of the other ghettos established by the Nazis. She remarks, “There were practical reasons why so many Jews escaped the Minsk ghetto. It was more porous than most other ghettos, as it was enclosed by a barbed-wire fence rather than a brick wall.

In addition, its fence was guarded by patrols rather than by fixed sentries. Thus it was possible, though very dangerous, to leave the Minsk ghetto” (Epstein 41). The proximity of the ghetto to the forest was also a helpful factor in escaping. If someone could make it to the forest, they were much more likely to avoid detection and to find a place to hide. Others, who were allowed to leave the ghetto for work detail, slipped out of line on the way there or back, or even fled from work itself.

While it was not entirely commonplace to break free from the ghetto for a short time, it still occurred with some frequency. It is also impossible to quantify how many people were successful in their escape attempts. Many of the survivors’ accounts, however, detail stories of them temporarily fleeing the ghetto and their interactions within the city. In fact, all four of the writers included in this chapter left the ghetto multiple times during their incarceration.

Commenting on the freedom of being outside the barbed wire fence, Krasnoperko remarked Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 77 simply, “What a joy it is to walk along the sidewalk, and without those damned yellow strips”

(Krasnoperko 58).27

Treister and Krasnoperko provide full accounts, which detail how some people were able to temporarily escape the ghetto in order to obtain food and the consequences of their actions.

There was another way of procuring food. I used to lie among high burdocks near

the barbed wire for hours. Down there, outside the barbed entanglement, was the

river Svislotch and between the river and the wire – Tatar orchards and there, on

the vegetable beds, grew rutabagas, beetroots, carrots – unbelievable delicacies. I

had been lying there for hours, like a hunter, watching my prey. At last there was

no one around – a dash under the wire and I had about ten kilograms of vegetables

in my sack. It meant that we would have enough food for two or three more days.

(Treister 21)28

On that day the Tyomkins family were happy. Senya brought home a piece of fat

and eggs. And, in general, lately, the boy has been managing to sneak to the city.

He grew up so fast, and became so daring and reckless! He has gray sparkling eyes

and there is such firmness in them.

... They were happy that day. But at night...

Senya's house is near the wire. Sleeping is wary in the ghetto; every sound is

heeded. Senya was the first to notice the Germans who surrounded the house.

- Hide yourselves! Run away! - he cried.

Senya broke the window and jumped into the Shornaya, outside the wire.

When he returned home he found only his mother. She hid herself under the bed, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 78

and being undiscovered survived. Everyone else in the house was killed. Senya's

sister Rivochka was found on the Obuvnaya street. She attempted to flee, and they

stabbed her with bayonets. (Krasnoperko 47-48)29

Two young boys escaped the ghetto to feed their families. This was often the case. However, even escape did not guarantee survival. Like Krasnoperko’s neighbor Senya Tyomkin, many who were able to escape the ghetto for a short time still suffered from untimely deaths by the Nazi perpetrators. This meant that anytime someone escaped the ghetto, they did it for what they considered to be particularly important reasons: to feed their family or, in the case of Dr.

Kontsevaya, to save someone’s life:

Kontsevaya might be 45-50 years old. Not tall, portly, with gray hair and steady

look of the light eyes.

Klara Efimovna is a gynecologist. She does not have job in the ghetto.

… Kontsevaya is beaten more often than others because she is old and weak.

She is well-known in the city. Sometimes when there are no patrols around, women

come up to the wire and ask for the doctor or hand something over to her. They are

her prewar patients. Risking their lives, they come here to reward this woman for

her kindness. Sometimes they come to the place where we work on Sverdlov Street.

Germans gave this street their own name Sigesstrase.

We were surprised to see a man there. We saw that he was in panic as he was saying

something to Kontsevaya. He was, probably, asking her for something... Klara

Efimovna whispered something to him and he left...

Kontsevaya approaches us:

“Girls I have to go and help his wife,” she feels bad. “They are my friends...” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 79

“And what if somebody asks where you are going?”

“I have to go...”

We watch silently her disappearing in the ruins behind our privy. Thank God,

nobody has noticed this...

xxx

In the morning, Eva Khazina who supervises our column says the number: forty.

She might have not counted us by the roster.

...We go down to the basement. Klara Efimovna is waiting for us there. She gives

us a needle and a thread. Asya hides herself in the corner and sews on her yellow

strips.

“A girl was born,” Kontsevaya whispers happily.

We go out and pull the cart. Shortly we see near the boulevard the man who was

coming to her yesterday. He came to make sure that everything was OK with the

doctor. He makes a barely visible goodbye nod and leaves...

Soon we learn everything.

The man who was coming to Kontsevaya was the father of the

woman in premature labor. Her husband is in the Red Army. Being a former highly

visible party official, she could be arrested if taken to the hospital. He wanted to

take his daughter to the relatives in Nesvizh but it was late.

That is why he decided to ask for help his old friend, the doctor. Risk is far too

obvious for both sides, but there was no other choice. We are looking at Klara

Efimovna. Her face got young and beautiful.

“I have done what I had to do,” she says. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 80

xxx

...The grandfather of a newborn child appeared again. He was looking for Klara

Efimovna but could not find her. Looking around he came up to us:

- Tell the doctor... Everything is OK with us. We gave the girl her name...

...But there was nobody to say this to. Klara Efimovna was shot in a roundup. To

run away—she could not make it. (Krasnoperko 27-28)30

Krasnoperko begins her account by acknowledging the value and humanity of Dr. Kontsevaya.

The Nazis had reduced her to fit into only two categories, Jewish and old—and that was when she was only in her late 40s! In contrast, 70 years later, Krasnoperko remembers this woman. And she is a dynamic person with amazing abilities and strength. She is a person who is willing to risk her own life to try and save another. She fits the definition of a hero, and Krasnoperko honors her with her description of her bravery and sacrifice.

Just as Dr. Konsevaya was willing to risk her life to help the people on the outside of the ghetto, those outside the ghetto were willing to do the same in turn. Speaking of the Minsk ghetto,

Evgeny Finkel explains that in order to be rescued “one did not have to be rich or highly educated to have ties with non-Jews or to be fluent in Russian, Polish, or Belorussian. The rescuers, even guided by altruism, tended to help Jews they knew personally. It is unclear if they would have gone to the same lengths to help complete strangers.” (Finkel 129) No matter their motives, many of these rescuers received the honorary title “Righteous Among Nations,” signifying that they have been honored by Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum in Israel) for their dedication to saving

Jewish lives. Whether they officially received these honors or not, the testimonies of the survivors of the Minsk ghetto often include their stories. They remember those who risked their lives in order to protect their Jewish friends. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 81

We see a German throwing bread to the dog. The dog did not eat it. We were not

quick enough to snatch it. Some other girl did. We see a lot of people in the distance

moving along the Sovetskaya street. More prisoners of war... As the column is

approaching we see a girl rushing to the German guard.

“Lieber Herr,” she is pointing out to one of the prisoners. “Das ist mein Bruder.”

She is trying to give him some paper, probably, a document.

Amazingly, the German shoves the prisoner from the column. The girl pulls him

into the debris of the former movie house "Chirvonaya Zorka".

“She is wonderful, this girl!” says an old man. It is not the first time that she has

saved people. (Krasnoperko 4)31

The ghetto conditions became so severe that only by illegally leaving the city could

we save ourselves from the roundups and the extermination. That is what we did

one evening when we heard the sounds of gunshots nearby.

At that time, we lived in a house on Vtoroi Opansky Alley. The barbed wire of the

ghetto was adjacent to our house. Without hesitation, we decided to escape. The

three of us, Mother, Yocha, and I, crept under the wire and went to the brick factory.

This was my Yocha’s work place. She led us there. It was rather a long walk to the

factory, more than 6 kilometers. …

That night, we suffered from the most dreadful diarrhea. The building had no

toilets. We went to the trash can at the end of the corridor. We didn’t give a thought

about what would happen in the morning. At dawn, we heard a door opening. There

was no light. The cleaning woman entered and lit the oil lamp. The stench of the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 82

corridor was unbearable. The cleaning women began to curse and insult those who

had done this. However, once the light revealed the face of the woman, Yocha ran

towards her. They began to kiss and cry. The cleaning woman was her friend. …

The good woman’s face changed. She understood that we needed to be rescued

before daylight. She led us to her home and gave us something to eat. …

We spent a day and a half in these conditions right next to a German brick factory.

Once we knew that the danger had passed and the gunshots had ended, the owners

of the house led us back. We returned to the ghetto without incident.

The name of the woman who saved us is Natasha Shuneyko. In saving us, she risked

her and her husband’s life. Natasha did not only help us then. Over time, she

persuaded Yocha, that we, the whole family, must join the partisan brigades.

Natasha said in Belarusian, “If you want to live, it is important that you leave the

ghetto and go to the forests.” (Rubenchik 121-123)32

One commonality between these two accounts is the repeated help received by the Byelorussians.

They were not only willing to risk their occupations and their lives for their Jewish neighbors once, but many times. This is indicative to how many acted throughout Minsk. While there were some people who cared more for self-preservation than protecting others and some who turned their backs on their friends in the ghetto, often the people of Minsk were willing to help. They sheltered people during pogroms, brought food into the ghetto, and even claimed Jewish children as their own. It is in large part due to their assistance that approximately 10,000 Jews were able to escape from the ghetto. Many of those people utilized contacts outside the ghetto to escape. The death rate would have certainly been higher without the good deeds of the Righteous among Nations in

Minsk. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 83

Everyday Violence, Even Toward Children Despite the overall good treatment by the people of Minsk, the Jews of the ghetto were still forced to face persecution and violence on a daily basis. Krasnoperko, in particular, was dedicated to describing as many small acts of violence as she possibly could. In her memoirs, she describes the fate of three children in the Minsk ghetto, Asya Vorobeychik, Sema Marshak, and Dodik

Gertsik. He relates

It was a cold and wet morning.

Asya Vorobeychik and I were captured in a roundup. As usual it was sudden. They

threw us into the cars and were driving somewhere. Where? Maybe to the

afterworld? We are holding strongly each other by the hands. We have agreed that

in case they take us to the execution we either fall down or run away. We arrived

quickly. They got us off the cars and counted. We look around and saw: we are in

the courtyard of the Government House. It was said that the architect who built it

was not satisfied with the design. To his opinion, the building was not beautiful

enough. We had never shared this view before. But now we cannot look at it long

enough, so much we admire it. Maybe this building has remained for us the symbol

of peace and kindness. But this image is dispelled. Now they are in it, beasts,

nonhumans. Such as this big one, with red eyes, brandishing the whip in front of

us. Then he pulls Asya and me and orders us to do something. We don't understand.

He is yelling and his whip is kicking the ground near our feet. Fear grips us. He is

laughing. Then he points out at the roofing roll on the ground. We begin to

understand that he wants us to lift it. We make an attempt but it does not work. The Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 84

German is beating our hands with the whip. Bloody welts swell on our hands - the

pain is intolerable. What shall we do? How can two girls lift such a huge roll?

I take it from the front and attempt to put this damned roll on my shoulders. Asya

is trying to help me from the rear but the roll does not move.

I hear my friend's shriek and look behind: Asya is lying on the ground, blood on

her face.

But I run up to her.

- He ... hit me ...with the whip... on the head...

I help Asya from under the roll. Her body is shaking with seizures. She is opening

her blue eyes at me. We are clinging to each other.

Near again the whistle of the whip ...

xxx

Since that time Asya had suffered from epilepsy. (Krasnoperko 7-8)33

What a bitter fate for Mara Entina's classmates. All those boys had been in one

class...

...Sema Marshak.

The SS stopped him on the street.

“Why are you without your strips?”

In no way would Sema agree to wear them, whoever tried to talk him into it. That

was how he was defending his dignity. The SS men ordered him to dig a pit.

“Why?” Sema protested.

They were holding a gun on him. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 85

He was dug into the earth alive...

...Dodik Gertsik. Mara said that this name should command respect and admiration.

A wonderful, daring boy!

“He trusted me very much,” Mara told me. “We have known each other from

school! He told me about the war news, about Soviet Information Bureau's reports.”

Lately Dodik has not been returning to the ghetto. He was staying for the night in

the city to listen to Moscow radio.

He was also killed: captured, tortured and hung... (Krasnoperko 55)34

Possibly due to her mother’s profession as a doctor or simply due to valuing human life,

Krasnoperko wants her readers to realize how much senseless violence occurred in the Minsk ghetto. She distinguishes everyday acts of violence from the violence that occurred during pogroms, remarking how this violence was often perpetuated simply due to their captors’ evil nature. Her first account is of two young girls being forced to perform a task they are incapable of while being whipped, beaten, and screamed at. The experience is personal. It occurred when

Krasnoperko had been in the ghetto for just a few months, and yet its impact on her and her friend lasted through the rest of their lives. Asya suffered from epilepsy the rest of her life, and

Krasnoperko was still able to recount the events of the day in great detail, even 50 years after the event. This early instance of physical and emotional child abuse was imprinted on their memories forever. Similarly, Krasnoperko’s account of Mara Entina’s classmates demonstrates how other children were abused, assaulted, and killed in the Minsk ghetto. Those who were young and daring enough to resist the Nazi regime, whether by refusing to wear their yellow strips or by sneaking out of the ghetto to listen to the news, were killed for their actions. No one was safe from the cruelty of the Nazi soldiers. They tormented children for fun and killed others in the cruelest Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 86 manner possible. Yet these are not the details that stand out to the memoirist. These are simply historical events. For Krasnoperko, the heart of the story lies in the remembrance of the names of these three young victims.

More than 50 years after these events occurred and Krasnoperko still remembers the full names of three childhood acquaintances: Asya Vorobeychik, Sema Marshak, and Dodik Gertsik.

The two boys are not even described as her personal friends, but rather as the classmates of a friend. Yet Krasnoperko still remembers their full names 50 years later. She presents the names of the wounded and the dead to her readers to pass on the memory. These names hint at her purpose.

She does not write simply for revenge. She could record Nazi atrocities without providing names.

Rather, she gifts the memory of these events and these individuals to her readers, asking them to help the memory live on. In this sense, she is endowing her readers with the calling of remembrance.

Rubenchik recounts a similar experience in which a young man was killed simply because he was afraid and easy prey:

I will never forget the incident that occurred not far from me and exemplified the

depth of cruelty that had been instilled in Hitler’s fighters. At this time, the German

commander of the ghetto was a thin man with a typical Aryan last name of

Guttenbach. For some reason, I remember his green-grey army jacket with its wide

belt, his revolver pouch on the side and his long, thin neck. Those who saw him

even from afar would life their hats and bow for long periods, shaking violently.

One day, I saw a youth wearing a cotton wool jacket, walking a few meters in front

of me. The moment he noticed the commander, he dashed towards the barbed wire

out of fright. This took place on Sochaia Street. Unfortunately, the youth was Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 87

caught under the wire. He could move neither forward nor backward. When the

commander noticed this, he approached him and stepped on the youth’s neck. The

youth began to scream from pain and to move his legs and hands in protest.

Guttenbach calmly took out his revolver from his pouch and shot two bullets into

the boy’s head. Then, the Commander moved his foot, raised his chin, and

continued on his way as if nothing happened. (Rubenchik 120-121)35

Again, Rubenchik commences his account with the idea that he “will never forget.” The cruelty that he refers to was part of the Minsk Jews’ everyday life. It comes alive in the image Rubenchik paints with his pen. The juxtaposition of the Nazi officer’s smart army jacket and the child’s ordinary jacket, likely dirty and threadbare coat. These different coats encircle very different necks. The long, thin neck of the officer is also contradicted by the child’s small and malleable neck, which is being crushed by the officer’s boot. This second comparison, even read from the words of a sterile page is traumatizing to the reader. So too is imagining the blood draining from the boy’s head down to his coat. One is left to wonder if the gray-green army jacket was touched by any blood. Based on the cold ending that Rubenchik provides, the reader is left with the knowledge that there is blood on the officer’s hands, even if his jacket remains untouched.

Despite one’s best efforts to avoid the Nazi soldiers in the Minsk ghetto, encounters with them were ever-imminent. One never knew when he or she would cross paths with someone with more power or more weapons, who would senselessly use them to maim or kill. Often children and the elderly bore the brunt of the Nazis’ random attacks because others were outside the ghetto on work detail. However, the young and old were not the only victims. No one was safe from Nazi cruelty. Krasnoperko remembers when she internalized this principle: Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 88

The chairman of the Judenrat, Ilya Mushkin, is dead. Everybody says he was a

remarkable man: smart, clever, and kind. He tried to reduce a number of fascists'

victims. Everybody feels his death is an immense loss.

They say that he saved even people who were sentenced to death, from the bunker.

I saw Mushkin several times near the Judenrat. Tall, handsome, composed, with

dignity in his bearing. He commanded everybody's trust.

He was hung.

... He was replaced by somebody from Poland by the name Ioffe.

What kind of a man is this one? (Krasnoperko 29)36

In this account, no reason is provided for Mushkin’s death. As a child, Krasnoperko most likely was not informed that Mushkin was arrested on charges of collaborating with the underground and consequently hanged in February 1942. Mushkin was obviously well respected and well loved by the Jews in the ghetto, yet even as an adult, Krasnoperko does not feel the need to explain the motive for his murder. In Krasnoperko’s mind, there likely was none. Mushkin was a good man, as were all the students in Mara Entina's class and the young man that Rubenchik described.

Krasnoperko and Asya certainly had not done anything to warrant the beating they received. That was the common factor in all of these acts of everyday violence: they were completely senseless.

No motivation or meaning could be attributed to them. Their unpredictability allowed a sense of fear to permeate the ghetto. No one was safe from these attacks—not children, not even the head of the Judenrat, and no one could predict who the next victims would be or when the next stroke of violence would occur. The Jews of the Minsk ghetto were in a constant state of alert, knowing that at any time they, too, could be killed. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 89

Murder and beatings were not the only form of violence that was occurring throughout the ghetto. What amplified the fear even more was the fact that sexual assault was another common form of violence. Young women were vulnerable to rape, and fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, and grandparents were all in a constant state of fear that this would happen to their daughters, nieces, cousins, or granddaughters. Krasnoperko and Smolar each recount the story of Lina Noi and her death in the Minsk ghetto:

Ribe…organized the “beauty contest” of young Jewish women, selected twelve of

the youngest and prettiest, and ordered them to parade through the ghetto until they

reached the Jewish cemetery. Here he forced them to undress and then shot them

one by one. The last woman to be killed was Lina Noi. He took her brassiere from

her and said smugly, “This will be my souvenir of the pretty Jewess.” What did it

matter to him that the Jew who had been brought along to cover the grave could

hear him say it. (Smolar 46)

Noemi Rudnyanskaya, Sofa Sagalchik and Lina Noi might have been the most

beautiful girls in the ghetto.

One cannot forget Noemi's bitter fate and tragic end.

Sofa Sagalchik was killed during a pogrom.

Lina Noi...

In whatever words I describe her beauty, I fail. I see clearly her dark pale face, big

light eyes, mass of ash-colored hair. She was tall, poised, graceful and dynamic.

Lina had fallen the victim of one of the most heinous Germans' crimes. Once during

a roundup, the most beautiful ghetto girls were captured. There had been driven to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 90

the Rabi square and locked in the barn. They were crying, screaming, pounding on

the door. They knew what was awaiting them.

They spent the night there, and in the morning, they were taken to execution.

Senya Temkin saw how it happened. He also saw what everybody else was telling

each other in the ghetto. When the girls were approaching the gates of the cemetery,

a song was heard. One of the girls started to sing “International.”37 She was shoved

and knocked down. This girl was Lina.

Together with other girls, she was dragged to the graves and ordered to undress

herself. Lina did not obey. They forcibly ripped off her clothes.

The girls were shot just for being young and beautiful. (Krasnoperko 60)38

In Minsk, Lina Noi was a young woman renowned for her beauty; in the Minsk ghetto, she was victimized for it. Such was the difference in life before and during the Holocaust. Women and girls were afraid not only of death but of assault and rape before death. They often attempted to make themselves look less beautiful than they actually were: deliberately maintaining poor hygiene, weaning frumpy and discolored clothing, cutting their hair short, and attempting to stink. Yet, not all were able to hide beauty or were targeted despite their plain looks. Lina Noi is an example of one of these young women. While Smolar and Krasnoperko’s accounts of the event are not identical, side-by-side they tell the reader a lot about how memory of these types of atrocities has been preserved. First, like the children-victims from before, it’s important to note that the victim’s name has been remembered. Even fifty years after her death, the survivors honor the victims of the Holocaust by identifying them. They attempt as much as possible to endow them with names and personalities. Lina was not only beautiful; she was dynamic. Tall. Poised. Graceful. Lina was a living, breathing human being who sang a Soviet anthem as she was marched to her death by her Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 91

Nazi tormentors. Lina was bold. In contrast, the soldiers killing the girls are also given characteristics. They are not only murderers but merciless and twisted. They take pleasure in shooting naked, young girls in the back of the head, even keeping a trophy for their own ugly form of remembrance. In describing these men, the memoirists take away their humanity. Their response to the Nazis dehumanization of these young girls is to dehumanize the perpetrators in turn. By plainly describing their actions, they are revealed as ruthless, murderous beasts, incapable of human emotion or behavior.

Rubenchik also describes another instance, detailing the barbarous cruelty of the Nazis and the result of being a beautiful, young Jew in the Minsk ghetto. In his account, however, the focus shifts from the young girls and their perpetrators to the family’s response to the tragedy. He writes:

Our enemies—with their daily routine of cruelty, lack of remorse, beatings, and

shootings—wanted to prove that human life had no value in times of war. To prove

this point, I will describe a second cruel murder that took place in the ghetto prior

to the mass pogrom of the 7 November 1941. The tragedy took place in the

Kavarski’s home, which was not far from us. The family was known for its

beautiful daughters. These daughters were raped by the German police just days

before the pogroms began. The policemen broke into their home on Ratomka Street,

late in the evening. They began an evening of fun and games, forcing the girls to

drink Schnapps and dance naked on the table.

As soon as I heard of it and went there in the morning, I immediately saw a

terrifying image. On the floor lay a dead girl. The beasts had raped and murdered

her. Spread across the bed in a sheet of blood was her sister with a gorged out eye Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 92

and ear. … their mother sat between the corpses and held each ones’ hand. The

blood was still flowing. (Rubenchik 51)39

Rubenchik is a firsthand witness of the cruelties of the Nazi soldiers in this moment. Like Smolar and Krasnoperko, Rubenchik remembers the last name of the young victims, and he does so almost

70 years after the end of the war. He does his best to honor these young girls in this way, but devotes specific attention to their mother. When he goes to the house the morning after the attack to see the evidence of the violence, he witnesses a particularly gruesome scene—a mother holding the lifeless hands of her two dead daughters, blood flowing from their corpses. This image is imprinted in Rubenchik’s brain decades afterword, and by painting it in such vivid detail, the reader is left with the same everlasting image.

Much of the purpose of memoir is to help readers remember. Not just dry historic facts, but names, details, faces, and the mothers of the dead. In this way, memory takes on a life of its own, growing and transforming as its transferred from person to person. Remembrance, too, transforms the audience into people with memory, who carry the memory of the dead, thereby endowing them with new life. Just as Rubenchik was affected by the cruel treatment and senseless deaths of his neighbors, so too will his audience be forced to confront the reality of the dangers of the Minsk ghetto. This reality includes perpetual violence such as was presented on a massive scale during the third major pogrom on March 2, 1942.

The final days of winter 1942 were marked by the third of four major pogroms to occur in the Minsk ghetto. It was almost as though the Nazis were stating that if you survived the winter that did not mean you would survive them: their sporadic killings, their dushegubki (black gas vans), and their mass graves. The cruelty of the everyday violence, of the raping and killing, was about to be overshadowed by the deaths of countless children at the ghetto orphanage. To add Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 93 insult to injury, this was to occur on March 2, which also happened to be the Jewish holiday, Purim.

Instead of commemorating the defeat of Haman’s attempt to massacre the Jews, the Nazis were going to create a massacre of their own. In great detail, Smolar describes the events leading up to the pogrom and the mass murders of the Jewish children as well as the skilled laborers.

The SD (Security Service) demanded from the Judenrat that on the 2nd of March

(1942), at ten o’clock in the morning, five thousand Jews must report “for work”

and that this number must not include any skilled workers employed outside the

ghetto. In order to make sure what was going to happen with these workers,

Dolski—a well-known actor who could speak German fluently—asked whether old

people and children could be included in the five thousand. The answer was cruel

and unambiguous: “Ganz egal” (“It’s all the same…) Clearly they simply wanted

five thousand Jews to murder on March 2nd.

Our people in the Judenrat told us that after receiving the order from the SD they

had consulted with each other. One idea had been to draw up a list of people who

were critically ill, or invalids, or old, and in this way to save the younger people.

[The underground’s] directive was that on no condition must they provide the

Germans with any kind of list. We must not help the murderers sentence even one

Jew to death.

We proposed to Serebrianksi that he immediately assign his most trusted people …

to spread the word: Find a way to save yourself. We urged that whoever could do

so should go to work that morning anywhere outside the ghetto. People who had

friends on the Russian side should try to get there on the evening of March 1st.

Those who had prepared a good hiding-place should go there immediately and stay Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 94

there. In the Judenrat workshops they had prepared a malina for several hundred

people. At the ghetto fence, our people dug an underground passage to the outside.

We put it under the control of the people who lived in that neighborhood.

A night of terror fell upon the ghetto. The only people who had an encouraging

word to say were the older Jews who knew that the next day, March 2nd, was Purim.

They comforted each other— “perhaps another miracle would happen and our

enemies would suffer the same fate as Haman…”

We did not know then that the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) had deliberately

chosen Purim for their massacre in order to show the Jews that they had nothing

left to hope for, there would be no miracle…

At precisely 10a.m. the Einsatzkommandos, assisted by groups of Lithuanian

fascists and Byelorussian “Black police,” began their pogrom. They invaded the

ghetto near the Judenrat building and pounced brutally upon people who were

trying to take refuge there. “Where are the five thousand Jews we ordered?” The

Commander dispersed the Jewish police, accompanied by squads of his own men,

to go out and bring in the victims.

Soon afterward came the crackling of rifles and the explosion of hand grenades.

The first victims were people who could not move fast enough—the old, the sick,

the infants. Then the Nazis began searching for hiding-places. They would stop

outside a place they suspected and the Jewish police would call out that “there was

nothing to be afraid of.” But no one came out. Then the grenades did their

murderous work. The streets of Minsk were red with Jewish blood that day. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 95

Their next “military objective” was the Jewish Children’s Home. They forced the

frightened youngsters to line up and march. At the head of the line was the Director

of the home, a devoted mother to the orphans. Her name was Fleisher. In one arm

she carried a sick child. Her other hand clutched the hand of her own young son,

walking beside her. …

The march of the children was halted at a freshly dug ditch at the lower end of

Ratomski Street, not far from the Judenrat building. The air was suspiciously still,

but the executioners had already taken up their “positions” around the ditch. In

command was the Nazi governor of Byelorussia, Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube. At his

side stood a tall SS officer in a long, leather coat. From the German Jews we later

learned that this was Himmler’s right-hand man—Adolf Eichmann. At his signal

the murderers began throwing the children into the ditch and covering them with

sand.

The screams and cries could be heard far into the ghetto. Children stretched out

their hands, pleading for their lives. Kommissar Kube walked alongside the ditch,

tossing pieces of candy into it. … [F]rom the Jewish police we learned that

Eichmann swore angrily when blood splattered his coat. Upon the mound of dying

Jewish children the Nazis threw the dead bodies of their guardians—Director

Fleisher and Doctor Tshernin.

At exactly twelve o’clock noon the executioners sat down to a lunch that had been

prepared for them on Jubilee Square. Whiskey was plentiful. After lunch, drunk

and inflamed they rampaged through the ghetto hunting for the rest of the five

thousand Jews. When their leaders saw that they were not “reaching their quota,” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 96

they countermanded the original order excluding skilled workers from their

dragnet.

At dusk, groups of Jewish workers returned to the ghetto at Shorno Street, expecting

to be readmitted as usual. After waiting for quite a while, they began to sense that

something was terribly wrong and became more and more anxious to get back

inside to their families. Instead, they heard a harsh command to lie down in the

snow. As soon as they did so, the SS-men and their helpers began firing at anyone

who moved. The snow on Shorno and Obutkova Streets turned red.

Directors of several German workshops tried in vain to intercede for the Jewish

workers. The warden of the Minsk prison came running—he had obtained

permission to protect the brigade leader Ber Sarin, the Yiddish poet who was one

of our underground members. The gentle poet declared, however, that he would go

back only when the other workers did. He died with his group… (Smolar 72-74)

Smolar’s narrative is unique in its detailed description of the chronological sequence of events of the day. Rather than focusing on his own personal experience, he paints with broad strokes to capture a fuller picture of the events of the day. His inclusion of the underground’s foreknowledge of the pogrom is unique among survivors’ testimony. He was one of the few included in that decision not to fulfill the Nazi requisition for 5,000 people, and therefore provides invaluable context for the pogrom. However, his narrative is also representative of other survivors’ accounts in its inclusion of the murder at the orphanage and the mass shooting on Shornaya Street. Smolar’s more distant testimony provides background details, which help readers better understand the personal accounts of other survivors like Avraham Rubenchik. His account of the Purim Pogrom provides a continuance of Smolar’s narrative as he further attests to the slaughter that occurred, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 97 adding personal descriptions about how he and his family survived in their malina and the process of moving the bodies after the pogrom:

It occurred in the first days of March 1942. The ground was still frozen after the

frost. Layers of melting snow and ice lay in the roads. Although many Jews had

been massacred in the ghetto, life continued. This was unbearable for the occupying

regime. The events that were to follow confirmed this.

Mother and her small children were staying at that moment at our uncle Moshe’s

house on Zaslavsky alley. Mother had chosen to live a nomadic life because she

feared the pogroms and roundups. In addition, our uncle had a safe shelter. When

gunshots were heard from the streets, everyone would immediately hide in the

malina. When the noise stopped, we returned to the house. These were the nerve-

wracking conditions in which we lived.

It is important to elaborate on the subject of Uncle Moshe’s malina. On the outside,

it looked just like a regular toilet found in any courtyard. Up to the war, every

courtyard had such a structure. A flushable toilet with running water was beyond

people’s dreams. Therefore, this “toilet” was a regular wooden hut with a dug up

pit that stood at the peak of a mound. Within this elevated plain was a most

mysterious and spacious hiding place, a work of art in its own way, which could

easily hold more than twenty people.

When the alarm sounded, every person that wanted to enter the hiding place had to

enter through the toilet. A lid would be lifted from the floor with a special descent

allowed the people to be lowered. The cover of the lid would be locked with a

strong latch from the inside. Even the disguised toilet had been designed with so Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 98

much thought so that when the Germans smelled the human waste they would block

their noses, walk away and close the toilet door shut. … (Rubenchik 88-89)40

Following the pogroms, Minsk was filled with corpses, in the homes, courtyards

and streets. The gravediggers pulled the bodies into the pit on the corner of

Zaslavskaia and Ratomskaia Street. This task was made easy by the downhill path

from the mountain to the pit. The gravediggers would grasp on to the remainder of

the frozen corpse with a rod, or rope or wire, which they used to drag the bodies on

the frozen ground. By the time the gravedigger had dragged the body to its place of

burial, only the skeleton remained, since the flesh had been stripped away by the

frozen bumps.

There were also bodies with hooks attached, at the bottom of the pits. The bodies

were pulled into rows and stacked like firewood. … I witnessed these events

myself. My friend Monya and I helped to lower the bodies into the pit.

… The relatives of the Russian victims crowded at the mass graves beyond the

barbed wire at Kolchozny Alley. The Gendarmes did not allow them to take the

bodies of their relatives. Thus, the piles of bodies consisted of both Russian and

Jewish victims.

By evening when all the dead had been dragged from the adjacent streets, a car

arrived from the engineering corps. Acting according to the instructions of the

senior officer, the police dug a large hole in the frozen wall. We were sent away.

An explosive detonator was laid inside the hollow. We only saw the officer give Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 99

his soldiers the signal to detonate, causing a great explosion. The collapse covered

the mass grave with dirt.

In the spring when the snow melted and water penetrated the pit, many bodies

floated to the top. In the nearby roads, it was impossible to breath because of the

stench of decomposing bodies. The Germans had no choice but to bring the police

to cover up the grave again with dirt. (Rubenchik 90-92)41

In Rubenchik’s case, he and his family were saved from the atrocities of the pogrom by hiding in their malina. Therefore, Rubenchik, like many other survivors of the third major pogrom, did not actually witness much of the death and destruction of March 2, 1942. Rather, he was forced to witness the aftermath. He and a friend were forced to bury bodies in a mass grave and then watched as the grave was slowly uncovered in the spring. The olfactory conditions of his tale are terrible.

He hid inside a functioning toilet for at least a day. Then, he helped move and bury dead bodies.

Just a few months later, the flesh and bones of those bodies rose through the top layers of soil. In this sense, Rubenchik’s testimony of the Purim Pogrom is not based on sight alone, but it is augmented by a sense of smell that his readers are able to imagine. His personal account is not filled with the many details of the full events of that day like Smolar’s testimony; however, his personal witness allows the readers a multisensory glimpse into the details of that pogrom and the repercussions in the subsequent months.

Another witness of the pogrom on March 2, 1942, Krasnoperko, was one of the lucky laborers whose line left for work before the Nazi soldiers arrived and stopped the other lines from leaving. She describes how one of the German officers saved his column of workers, and is reunited with her mother at the ghetto gate. The next day, she hears how her family and friends survived: Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 100

At the end of the working day Otto sets the column and we are headed for the

ghetto.

...There are puddles of blood on the snow all around—the traces of the recent

pogrom.

People are running to us. Inna and some woman are hurrying to me. Oh, God! I can

hardly recognize mother. Alive! But she is really unrecognizable! Yellowish-blue

skin, dusty-colored hair, a very loose coat. Now I see how haggard she is - that is

why the coat became so big and is hanging loosely.

“Alive, alive! My dear!” I am crying happily. I notice Otto.

“Mom, Otto saved our lives...”

We follow him with our eyes. He, Edith and Linda are heading for the sonderghetto.

I ask mother, if there was a pogrom there.

“No,” she says. “Nobody has touched them yet.”

Yulya also hugs her mother. Where is Asya? Is her mother alive? “I was looking

for her, but I couldn’t find her. Everybody who is alive is here,” mother says.

We run to the Obuvnaya street, to Asya. Her door is open, she is sitting on the bed,

ashen and stiff.

Now Asya is all alone...

xxx

[It is the next day.] Everybody who was hiding in the cellar is alive. Mother

recounts:

“Panic erupted in the morning. The labor columns were held up. We understood

that your column had gotten outside the ghetto earlier. Then shooting began. The Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 101

ghetto was encircled. We managed to tumble into the cellar. Innochka huddled to

me, trembling all the time. My feet, arms, back were numb. I was thinking about

you, father, grandma... And then,” mother broke off...

“They were shooting into our cellar,” our neighbor, doctor Gita Efimovna

continues, squeezing her temples. “And they were firing and firing.”

“Did they find an entrance to the cellar?”

“Yes, they did, but they did not come down, they were firing from the stairs. We

all huddled in the far corner. Then we heard: ‘No, there is nobody in there. See,

nobody is screaming... They would have been frightened... Where could they have

hidden themselves? Maybe on the hill? I wish we could blast these dregs!’”

“I thought they would throw a shell,” Gila Efimovna added, “I was eager to run out

and do something to these beasts. But I thought I might endanger the whole

assembly...”

How beautiful Gila Efimovna is! Tall, slender, with radiant blue eyes and chestnut

hair.

“Do you know,” mother says suddenly, “Yesterday was my birthday.”

(Krasnoperko 35-36)42

While Rubenchik’s report of the third major pogrom in the Minsk ghetto is laced with disgusting scents, Krasnoperko’s account is filled with disturbingly vivid colors. The puddles of red blood staining the white snow overlap with the blue-yellow bruises that mar her mother’s skin, making her unrecognizable. The soundscape too comes alive as echoes of bullets ricocheting down the stairs. This contrasts sharply with the terrible silence that Asya is surrounded by as she sits alone on her bed, mourning the loss of her whole family. After the brutality and uncertainty of the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 102 pogrom are laid out, Krasnoperko returns to the theme of color as she described Gila Efimovna.

The girl’s “radiant blue eyes and chestnut hair” is enhanced by her willingness to fightback against the Nazi perpetrators who bruised her mother’s skin another shade of blue. Abruptly, the memoir takes on the literary device of absurdity as the account concludes with the anecdote that the third pogrom occurred on Krasnoperko’s mother’s birthday.

Krasnoperko’s account of the third major pogrom in the Minsk ghetto concludes with the juxtaposition of former concerns and everyday life in the ghetto. On a day that she would normally celebrate another year of life, the Nazi soldiers murder her neighbors and friends. The streets run red with blood. Asya is left without a mother. This small detail emphasizes how life has changed so dramatically for the Jews of Minsk. Not only had this woman’s birthday gone uncelebrated, but many Jews were living with false documents that had changed their birthdates and nationalities.

They attempted to be older, so that they could receive the rations that came with a work detail.

And they attempted to disguise themselves as Poles, Bulgarians, Byelorussians, etc. so that they could flee the ghetto. While being caught with forged papers was certainly a death sentence, obtaining them also meant prolonging your life.

The Benefits and Perils of Documentation Smolar and Rubenchik explain the danger placed on a family when one of its members escaped the ghetto. Smolar worked to produce death certificates of the people who disappeared in order to protect their remaining family members. Rubenchik, on the other hand, experienced the danger firsthand when his sister escaped to the forests to join the partisans. They record their experiences thus:

It was forbidden to tell anyone of [my sister, Yocha’s] sudden disappearance.

Staying home was also dangerous. Surely any moment the Gestapo was bound to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 103

break into our house. The escape of a family member to the partisans meant death

to everybody else. All kinds of bad thoughts entered my mind. Mother and I began

to beg our closest acquaintances to allow us to sleep in their houses at night. We

were afraid to stay in our own house. (Rubenchik 125)43

The Gestapo began sending agents into the workshops that employed Jews from

the ghetto. They checked the names of people who failed to report for work. If

someone was unaccounted for they went to his address during the night and

murdered his whole family. We tried to save such families by using forged medical

certificates showing that the son or husband had died from flu or pneumonia. On

the basis of such documents the names of those whom we sent out to the forest were

removed from the Judenrat records. This method of outwitting the Gestapo worked

for some time. (Smolar 87)

Official documents such as passports, home registries, work credentials, and medical records were utilized by both Nazis and Jews. The Nazis used such information to track people, but the Jews falsified papers in order to save lives. While for Rubenchik’s family returning home meant almost certain death, people who had false documents were able to escape the ghetto or to claim that relatives died of natural causes and therefore escape suspicion, as in the case that Smolar relates.

Another example of the beneficial aspects of documentation is reflected in Krasnoperko’s memoir.

She quotes her friend’s published diary, Berta Moiseevna Bruk's Notes, in order to provide an example of how work papers could save someone’s life. Smolar, too, relates how other forms of identification could be used to trick the Nazis and save people in that way. They relate: Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 104

Later father found a tiny room and we moved there. We sent Tolyushka (his father

was Russian) to the city to Lena Sokolova, and she sheltered him...

“...This is incomprehensible... How could this happen?”

To designate for annihilation the whole region... To assemble all people living

there, without any exception, the old and children, and drive them to the before-

prepared ravines. They throw people there alive... Then they pour gasoline on

them...

The Gestapo men kept firing into this moving grave till it was becoming tedious for

them...

After the pogrom the doctor Livshitz, the wife of the radiologist, ran into the

hospital. She managed to get out of the ravine. She had burns and injuries. She told

us about the people being thrown into the pits and set ablaze alive.

...I keep recalling how we have survived this pogrom, how I showed the Germans

the certificate that I was a doctor, the department head of the hospital for infectious

diseases. Later even the ghetto Commandant Gottenbakh told that the personnel

from the hospital of infectious diseases will be the last to be killed.

I remember being beaten with the butt of a rifle when I showed this paper.

Fortunately, later, thanks to this paper, when my daughter, three-year-old grandson

and I were shoved into the truck, one German let us go.

I also remember how we, “the exempted,” were commanded to kneel on the wet

pavement and stare at one point. My three-year-old grandson kept asking whether

he was doing this in the right way. And he was trembling with cold like an aspen

leaf... Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 105

. . . When we returned home in the evening, we saw the empty apartments. It

became dark, and the neighbors came home from work: two brothers whose

families were killed. One of them slit his wrists, and I watched over the other one.

My daughter did her utmost to comfort him. In the morning my husband Zhenya

came who had been dispatched to work in the city the day before. Zhenya looked

at us and could not believe we were alive. Just there the two dead were lying: a

mother and a child. They were killed for disobedience. (Krasnoperko 16)44

During the night of March 31, 1942, like everyone else in the neighborhood of

Abutkova, Koletorna and Shorna Streets, I heard the noise of speeding autos and

then the firing of automatics and machine-guns. In the morning I left my hiding-

place—and walked right into the path of Police Superintendent Richter. Along with

several other Jews he led me to Kolektorna Street No. 18, a very familiar address,

in one of those flats lived Nina Liss. On the street in front of the building, in the

hallway, on the stairs, in the rooms, lay the dead bodies of men, women, and

children. I recognized Nina’s mother. Nina herself was still holding her child in her

arms Richter ordered us to carry the bodies to the Jewish cemetery.

As I stood there, trying to get control of myself, I felt a tug at my sleeve. It was

Hersh Ruditzer, a member of our group in the Judenrat.

“Come away from here, quick!” Pulling me into a side street he quickly gave me

the appalling news. The Gestapo had raided the house during the night. They were

looking for me. Zyama Serebrianksi and Misha Tulski of the Jewish police had Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 106

been arrested. The Gestapo had given them until twelve noon to turn me in, dead

or alive, or else all the Judenrat members would be shot.

I asked Tuditzer to take a message to Dr. Kulik at once: I was seriously ill. It was

imperative that he send a stretcher for me and get me into the hospital.

Dr. Kulik was able to do it. He put me in the ward for contagious diseases, whigh

the Germans never entered. Soon afterward Emma Radova came to “visit” me.

Later she brought Misha Gebelev and Zyama Okun. By this time they knew more

details about the massacre on Koletktorna Street. Our courier, Clara, had been

wounded, but managed to escape. At around eleven the previous night someone

had knocked on the door of the house, calling out, in Yiddish, “Ninka, open up!”

Clara had recognized Tulski’s voice. The Gestapo had broken down the door and

demanded of Nina: “Where is Stolyarevitsch?” Tulski had added: “Where is

Yefim?” Nina knew where I was, but didn’t utter a word. She died with the child

in her arms…

What was to be done now? Zyama told us about the uneasiness in the ghetto. Some

people were complaining: “Why must we all die for the sake of one man?” “Maybe

they were right,” Zyama murmured. I said nothing, but Misha burst out with a

categorial “No! We must not submit to the enemy’s demand,” he argued. “The

enemy has sentenced us all to death, anyway, let’s not make it easier for him.”

Misha tried to convince us with a historical analogy. But it was Joffe, the wise,

cultured chairman of the Judenrat, who saved the situation.

He simply followed the biblical story of the “binding of Joseph.” He wrote out a

ghetto-pass with the name of Yefim Stolyarevitsh, took it out to the Jewish Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 107

cemetery, where some of the previous night’s victims still lay unburied, and

smeared the document with their blood. He then showed the Gestapo the pass that

he had “found” on one of the men they had shot. Yefim Stolyarevitsh was no longer

among the living…

The Gestapo left the ghetto even before their noon deadline. (Smolar 85-86)

Just as the medical certificate saved not only Bruk’s life but her daughter as well, an identification document smeared with blood saved Smolar’s. These documents were often used to the Nazis benefit. Documents such as house and employment registries as well as passports, which stated nationality, could often be used to identify and track people. However, many in the Minsk ghetto found a way to turn these forms of documentation into means of survival. Identification documents could be so useful, in fact, that one of the underground’s main feats in the ghetto was creating their own printing press, which forged these types of documents in addition to many others.

While the underground utilized a printing press and its members did the best they could to create forged documents to help people, these types of papers were not always successful.

Krasnoperko relates the story of a young mother and her son, who were unable to trick their Nazi captors with a fake birth certificate. She recounts

Ruta might have made this decision a long time ago. Her neighbor Sheva Ozer says

that the day before Ruta was carefully ironing a children's sailor suit. Sheva

wondered why.

The house in which Ruta had lived before the war had not been burnt, and she took

with her to the ghetto some documents and clothes. And this sailor suit too. In the

evening she had the boy try this suit several times and made some alterations, since

it was loose. The she made him repeat many times: Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 108

You have to say: I am Kostya Damyanov. My father is a Bulgarian...

In the morning Ruta put the suit on the boy and came with him up to the wire.

Sheva was standing not far from there, and heard and saw everything.

When the patrol had passed by, Ruta made a hole in the wire, and let the boy out.

“Stand here, son, do not walk far.”

Then she waited for the policeman to turn back and approach them. Ruta even

called him: “Come here!”

The policeman was surprised: “How come? Why is he here?”

“Listen to me, please. His father is a Bulgarian. Look, his name is Konstantin

Damyanov. Here is his birth certificate,” Ruta put the document through the wire.

The policeman turned the document, grinned and asked the boy: “So who are you?”

“I am Kostya Damyanov... Father is a Bulgarian,” the frightened boy mumbled.

“See how he studied! How old is he?”

“Six, he is six. It is written there.” Ruta looked imploringly at the policeman.

“And what is your name?”

“Ruta Stolyarskaya. Ruta.”

The policeman jerked.

“The name you have!.. And where is his father, the Bulgarian?”

“In Igarka.”

“Exiled?” the policeman sneered.

“No. The day before the war he had gone on a business trip.”

“What do you want? Say quicker. I've been here with you long enough.”

“Take the boy to the city. To the foster home. Save the child.” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 109

“I have something for you.” Ruta took off a ring. “Golden, wedding.”

The policeman snatched the ring, looked around. “What else do you have?”

“Nothing...”

It occurred to the boy what was going on. “Mom, I won't go with him!”

“Go, Kostya, go, my son.”

The policeman shoved him from the wire with the butt: “Let us go.”

Ruta suddenly became scared.

“You won't kill him? Won't kill?”

She crawled out from the hole in the wire and followed them. From the corner

another German and a policeman emerged. One of them raised a gun...

Ruta staggered and fell down, her arms stretched forward. (Krasnoperko 39-41)45

Each presentation of a false paper was full of risk. Providing fake documentation was gambling with your own life, and in the case of Ruta Stolyarskaya, the life of your child. There was always the chance of being caught, and the common consequence—death by bullet—echoed through the back of people’s minds. However, despite the risks associated, escape was an appealing option because if one could do it safely then they would not have to face the daily likelihood of death that was present in the ghetto. This sense of desperation jumps out of these pages as the reader learns of little Kostya’s desperate scramble through the barbed wire fence. Desperation morphs into dread as Ruta Stolyarskaya mirrors her son’s struggle through the hole, striving to reach him before he is killed. The great likelihood of death in escape attempts and otherwise extended into daily life.

One was never certain who he or she would run into, when their use as a laborer might run out, or whether a night raid or pogrom would occur. Despite this, there were a lucky few who managed to avoid death, and many—more than once. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 110

Escaping Death Many of the Minsk Jews planned and prepared escape attempts; however, they could be faced with imminent death without any warning whatsoever. In these instances, a few quick-witted and lucky individuals were able to cheat death. Rubenchik describes two experiences, one personal, and the other of a good friend. He details how they both escaped life-and-death situations and remarks upon how visceral an experience it was, the first time he cheated death. He recalls

I remember one funny incident that happened to me.

Early in the morning the work transport car was being prepared. Being the quick

child that I was, I climbed into the car first. The car began to move towards the

ghetto gates, but the officers at the gates would not permit it to exit and ordered the

driver to stop. Everyone understood that an inspection was to take place. I had to

do something quickly, so without much thought I slid under a women’s skirt

pressing my legs together and keeping dead still.

I heard the officers’ orders and stopped breathing out of fear. In the meantime the

officers examined and counted the people. They did not notice a thing. The officer

ordered the driver to continue. As the car moved on I sighed in relief and came out

of my hiding place. It all happened so fast that the woman did not even have a

chance to react to what had happened. (Rubenchik 78)46

The soldiers caught more than ten children. They were brutally beaten in the

barracks or pressed against the frames of trucks and then lead by the German police

to the Jewish cemetery on Sochaia Street where they were shot to death next to the

gates. Only one boy survived, Yankele Cooper, a brave urchin who always wore a Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 111

red jacket. He had been the one to warn us before of the roundup. The following

day, we asked him:

“Yankele, how did you escape the Germans?”

“They were afraid of touching me once they saw how much lice I had.” (Rubenchik

110)47

Rubenchik’s first time on the border of life and death remains firmly imprinted in his memory.

Rubenchik’s quick-thinking likely spared his life. With his friend, however, it was not quick thinking but lice. The ways to avoid death seemed as random as the ways to encounter it.

Unfortunately, they were not as numerous. In these two accounts, Rubenchik sends his readers on a rollercoaster of emotions, experiencing firsthand the juxtaposition of the heart-pumping fear of facing down death and the bone-melting relief of survival. One can almost experience their own heart pounding in their chest as a someone running for life itself and then the slow pounding in the heart of relief when death is evaded. However, mixed with the relief is always the grief—its constant—of knowing so many others did not escape.

Treister had another experience escaping death. His occurred while on work detail. He managed to obtain a spot as one of 36 men who were considered “specialists” in their field.

Treister, like many others, took a risk, hoping it would save his life, rather than end it. While it was a close call, Treister did live and was even considered an especially valuable laborer in the ghetto because of his escape attempt. He recounts his life-changing and life-saving experience:

One day the most influential person in the whole ghetto, Naum Epstein, head of the

job-center, came into the camp. He was accompanied by four Jewish policemen. A

few minutes later, the news spread among all the prisoners that thirty-six,

particularly valuable specialists had been demanded back by their German Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 112

employers. The list had been approved by the General Commissioner and those

thirty-six people were to be returned to their working places because the Germans

could not spare them, even temporarily, despite the strict schedule for the “final

solution”. It was easy to guess that I had no chance to be included in that group.

That’s what it looked like. Epstein, with the list in his hand, and his assistants stood

in the middle of the square at a small table. The crowd of prisoners was pressing

around him, trying to hear what he was saying. The guards were keeping them back

with the help of butts and dogs. The commandant was walking with a scornful

wince between the crowd and the table, his pistol in one hand and a bamboo stick

in the other.

At last it became quiet. The silence was absolutely unnatural for such a number of

people collected in one place. Even the dogs stopped barking, as if they also felt

the importance of the moment.

It was an instant of a deafening silence between life and death.

The names were announced one by one and each of them was followed by an almost

immediate shout: “Here!” and the crowd expelled, as if unwillingly, another lucky

one who ran to the table.

The next name was declared:

“Naum Rosin!”

An endless silence lasted the whole half-a-second, that is, an instant longer than it

would have taken Rosin to respond, if he were still alive. But he kept silent, and

before that half-second eternity was over, somebody’s hoarse voice pronounced:

“Here!” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 113

At that moment I realized that the voice was my own and started to elbow my way

through the crowd towards the table, as if in sleep. Epstein, who knew me

personally and must have known Rosin too, gave me an astonished look but said

nothing. As for me, I was standing in the group of those “lucky ones”, feeling

absolutely out of place among those elders. But I decided to stick to it...

The group was gathered and was formed into a column, two by two. The

commandant inspected it one last time, saw a gaunt, sixteen-year-old, “particularly

valuable specialist”, hit him without a word with his bamboo stick on his sheared

head, and pointed with the stick at the crowd. Epstein was looking at it without

trying to interfere. What else could he do?

My skull skin was cut and was bleeding badly. My eyes were flooded with blood.

I groped my way to the water-tap, washed off the blood, took my torn cap out of

my pocket, and pulled it onto my head. At that moment I noticed that the

commandant had gone to the farther corner of the square to suppress the agitation

in the crowd and I made the last attempt—I stole behind the piles of bricks to the

group that was ready to leave the camp. Epstein gave me an anxious look. I realized

that if the commandant came up to the column again and saw me there, it would be

the end of me. But it was already too late to hesitate. I put everything at stake and

took my place at the end of the column. The commandant, as far as I could judge

from the sounds of the shots, was busy with the prisoners in the right part of the

square, too busy to pay attention to us, and I, casting the last glance at the familiar

faces in the crowd, left the underworld, together with the group of 35 other men. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 114

Thus Naum Rozin, whom I had never known and who had not lived until that day,

and Naum Epstein had bestowed on me a piece of life that lasted for all those lucky

ones for about two months—until October of 1943, and for me, as fate has willed,

for 65 years. When I meet them in the hereafter I will bow low to both of them. …

What happened next was even crazier. When our column had almost reached the

ghetto it was overtaken by a car with German officers of a very high rank. They

scolded Epstein and then even beat him. It turned out that Epstein’s list, according

to which the 36 people had been released, differed from the one that they had on

them. The new list had also been approved by the general commissioner. It also

contained 36 names. Some of the men were on both lists; the others were not on the

final one. The total number of 36 was not to be exceeded.

So Epstein got a new order: to put all of the released men into the cell at the job-

center (there was such a cell, where people caught in manhunt raids were kept), to

sort out and release those who were listed on both lists the next day; the rest of the

group was to be taken back to Shirokaya Street, and new men, according to the new

list, were to be released instead. (I hope you can follow me.)

Naum Rosin’s name, let him rest in peace, was on both lists (he must have been a

really valuable specialist), so the next day, under his name and with Epstein’s

blessing, I was let out of the cell to the ghetto. I still cannot understand why Epstein

was so kind to me.

I came back home, trying not to be seen by anyone, as I (of course, as Michael

Treister) was already believed to be dead. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 115

My mother did not recognize me at once – that’s how the days spent in that hell had

changed me. One of my neighbors, the head of the ghetto police, Rosenblatt, as I

have already mentioned, had already been killed; the other, Schulman, pretended

neither to know nor to see me. (Treister 35-36)48

Treister came home from work a day later a changed man. He had obtained value as a specialized laborer and was less likely to be killed because of this. However, what likely transformed him even more was the mental and emotional stress that he underwent as he pretended to be someone else and sat in jail waiting to hear his fate. One can easily imagine the physical torture paired with the mental strain of constant wariness of waiting to hear your sentence. However, Treister did not even describe the night in jail waiting to hear if he would live or die. He leaves it to readers to imagine how that situation would affect them personally. Triester’s personal trauma is just one of thousands that occurred at the hands of the Nazis in Minsk as the spring of 1942 slowly transitioned into summer.

After March 2, the spring of 1942 progressed for several months without another pogrom; however, the Nazis continued to torment the Minsk Jews. Although there were no planned pogroms, other forms of physical and psychological suffering were implemented. There were frequent yet sporadic night raids. To counterbalance the random night raids, weekly “concerts” with mandatory attendance were being held on Sundays. Finally, the Nazis were capturing and torturing people for information. These acts of violence bled into the everyday experience in the

Minsk ghetto, shrouding it in anticipation and fear. Smolar describes the atmosphere of the ghetto during this time, explaining:

During the day, Jews in the ghetto had one common wish: that darkness come

quicker. The security police and the Shiroka concentration camp squads usually Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 116

raided the ghetto in the morning hours. The days stretched endlessly; evening

seemed to bring some relief. Workers who had replaced the murdered Jews in the

German factories returned to the ghetto with news. Sometimes the news was good.

…

In the early evenings people when to the “Small Market” on Krim Street to buy or

sell something. A few hours later, just as people were beginning to fall asleep, they

would be jolted by the crackling of rifles and machine guns. From the sound of the

firing we would try to judge on what streets the massacres were taking place. If it

were somewhere close by people would run to their hiding places where they would

not hear the screams of the victims. At such times they prayed for daylight to come

quicker…

In the ghetto, both the days and the nights were too long. For the constantly

diminishing ghetto population it was the remaining weeks and months that were

growing shorter and shorter. (Smolar 89)

Smolar highlights how the emotions in the ghetto mirrored the cycle of the sun. As the sun rose, people woke or simply got up from a fitful night already terrified of morning raids. Then the long day stretched emotions from outright terror to constant nervousness. The return of the workers at the setting of the sun brought some relief, but by nighttime, terror again began to set in. This cycle alone was a form of psychological torture. The Jews were conditioned to expect violence morning, day, and night. While the evenings seemed to bring a short reprieve, the feeling of mild anxiety brought a stress of its own. The attacks were both predictable and sporadic; therefore, no one could ever be completely without fear. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 117

The night raids in particular were a juxtaposition: both anticipated and shocking. Everyone in the ghetto knew to fear the night, but they never knew where or when an attack would occur. In this way, night raids were a form of both psychological and physical torment. Smolar explains the psychological aspects of these raids, depicting the nightly screaming and the fear it aroused.

Treister’s account complements his, detailing both the physical tortures people were forced to endure at the Nazis’ hands, as well as the personal effects these night raids had on him, even years after the ghetto was destroyed. They relate:

Most terrible of all were the night raids. Officially the Germans were not allowed

into the ghetto at night without special permission. Several watchtowers were

erected, from which local police guards would fire shots into the air to frighten

away possible unwanted “visitors.” This had no effect at all, however, on the groups

of German soldiers—marauders—who more and more frequently began visiting

the ghetto at night. They would break into houses, conduct “inspections,” steal

whatever came to hand. In some instances, they forced young Jewish women to

dance naked before them. Such visits often ended in killings. The screams of the

victims could be heard all over the ghetto. Jews began putting up barricades at the

courtyard gates to keep out these night raiders. Fear and helplessness gripped the

entire ghetto populations. (Smolar 22)

[W]hen the roar of the engines filled that street that night, it could mean only one

thing. About 20 to 30 minutes later we could hear screams, shouts, curses, bursts

of machine-guns, dogs barking somewhere in the neighborhood. Another half an Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 118

hour and everything was quiet again and then we could hear the sound of the cars

and lorries driving away. The vultures’ night shift was over.

The next morning, when I was going up Obuvnaya Street to the place where the

columns formed, I went past the house that had been raided during the previous

night. Everywhere – on the ground, the sidewalk, the walls – were blood and brain

remnants (they had shot with explosive bullets). On the ground around the house –

cartridge-cases, empty vodka bottles. Sometimes I passed carts with high sides. The

load was covered with a tarpaulin stained brown; from under the tarpaulin there

sometimes hung a hand or a leg. Each cart left a broad red track on the ground. The

load heaved. The corpses had not become stiff yet. The carts went towards Sukhaya

Street and then turned left to the cemetery. And my way lay to the right, towards

Yubileinaya Square, into my column.

The dead bodies were gathered and carried away by the ghetto (Jewish) police.

They all wore white armbands.

Some benches in the workshop became vacant. Nobody asked for the reason. Not

even the foremen.

There were times when hardly a night passed without a raid and every time people

heard the sound of engines in the night, everybody wondered if it was their turn....

They did not even hide in the “dens” – there was no time for that.

For about five years after the war, I used to wake up, bathed in cold sweat, upon

hearing the sound of a car engine in the night. (Treister 24)49

While different from the pogroms, the night raids also terrorized the Minsk ghetto’s inhabitants.

Rather than serving a purpose such as diminishing the ghetto population, night raids were often Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 119 executed simply because Nazi soldiers were bored and wanted some sport. They often involved excessive drinking, pointless destruction of property, looting, sexual assault, and murder. They were completely unpredictable and outside of the Jews’ control. They weren’t committed out of revenge or even pettiness, so the Jews lived in fear every night that their home and their family would be next. For Treister, the psychological effects lasted throughout his childhood and even into adulthood. He was one of the lucky ones. For victims, they often did not survive the night.

This kind of fear was paralyzing, and it grew in proportion to the ghetto’s rapid decrease in population.

The terror of these raids is illustrated by the absence of human bodies in the account. At first, bodies appear as remnants covering the ground outside an unfortunate house. Other times, corpses fill the bed of a truck, covered with only a stray limb or two limply dangling down the side. Finally, there are no bodies at all. Only empty spaces along the benches at work where those bodies once sat. This ever-increasing absence of human life is indicative of the ever-growing terror the Minsk Jews were feeling and the ever-increasing questions they were asking. What happened to my friend? Did he or she end up as brain matter sprinkled across the sidewalk? When will this happen to me? To my children?

Just as it was not uncommon to ask these types of questions or even to experience a night raid, it was also relatively likely that you or someone you knew could be tortured. Jews suspected of working with the underground were likely to be tortured for information. Mikhail Gebelev, who is the subject of Chapter Two, is a well-known example of this type of persecution. Others, however, were tortured in retaliation. Rubenchik shares one example of such torture when he shares the story of Roza, a translator for the Nazis who helped rescue Jews from the ghetto. He relates: Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 120

When the Germans arrived in Minsk, [Roza] worked for them as a translator. She

took advantage of her position in order to help Jews in the Minsk ghetto. However,

a terrible fate awaited her. She was a brave woman who many times went to the

partisans. Although her heroic actions have not yet been recorded, nevertheless she

saved many Jews from death. According to the Minsk ghetto underground, Roza

lead many Jews to the forests and did it many times. . . .

Disaster caught up with her in the end. Someone exposed her, or she was followed.

She was caught and placed in the jail on Vlodarsky Street. We knew then that she

would never be freed from the stronghold of the Gestapo. She was tortured

endlessly. Her friend, Goffel Doltz told me that one of her executioners forced a

sewer pipe into her throat. They tied it to her so that the waste flowed inside of her.

She was poisoned and died in great agony. (Rubenchik 15)50

Physical torture such as Roza experienced was not an uncommon punishment for those who worked as members of the underground, even for those who were merely suspected. However, there were many methods and types of torture. Other forms included purely psychological torture.

One common instance in the Minsk ghetto, took the form of a “concert” series, in which the Nazis paraded dead bodies through the ghetto and then shared their own rhetoric of how these Jewish victims were killed by Soviet citizens. The Jews were informed that the partisans were killing them and that the rest of Minsk outside of the ghetto was also unsafe. The overarching message: nowhere was safe. The Nazis wanted the Jews to stay within the ghetto, so they told lies and spread fear to keep them there. Smolar relates:

The Gestapo also waged psychological warfare against the influence of the

underground. They drove large open trucks, containing the bodies of people they Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 121

had shot, through the ghetto streets, their loudspeakers blaring in Russian and

Yiddish that this was how the partisans treated Jews. The message was: “Don’t

believe what the agents of the partisans tell you!” (The same death-laden trucks

were also driven through the Russian zone, warning that the “Jewish partisan

commissars” were killing Russians and Byelorussians.)

Suddenly a different kind of order came:

Every Sunday morning all the Jews must gather in Jubilee Square. The Jewish

police urged people to leave their homes, assuring them that this was only a

“sabrainie”—a meeting. People didn’t believe them, but what choice did they

have? At these meetings Superintendent Richter would explain the newest “rules

and regulations,” particularly those concerning individuals who participated in

“illegal” visits to the “Aryan side.” These speeches were also aimed at discouraging

the exodus to the forests. People were dying there of cold and starvation, he warned.

The German army would wipe out those bandits to the last man. Here inside the

ghetto, however, things were now safe—there would be no more “actions.” So long

as everyone did their work diligently, “everything would be fine.”

After the speeches came a “concert.” The orchestra of the “Hamburg” ghetto—

among whom were many first-rate musicians—played classical music. Gorelick, a

noted Jewish singer who had been featured on the Minsk radio before the war, sung

sad folk songs that were in complete accord with the mood of the Jews.

These “appeals” were repeated again and again. (Smolar 87-88)

The Jews of Minsk experienced a profound dissonance within the events of the weekly concert series. Bodies of their friends and neighbors were paraded through the ghetto in a line of trucks. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 122

Meanwhile, people were repeatedly told that they were safe. There would be no more killing in the ghetto. Then, they watched as a local Jewish hero was forced to sing against his will. For every action that the Nazis took to ‘comfort’ the Jews in the ghetto, another action terrified them. They were kept in a constant state of vacillating emotions.

Unlike the night raids, the “concert” series was a scheduled event in the Minsk ghetto. It occurred every Sunday, and attendance was mandatory. This type of consistent psychological torment was paired with the unpredictability of physical torture and of night raids. Part of the torture was recognizing the helplessness of both situations. Inhabitants of the ghetto could not miss the weekly “concerts” nor stop the night raids; they were powerless. They simply had to hope that their loved ones would not be among those attacked and to trust that the Nazis would keep their promise not to commit anymore mass shootings. The ghetto inhabitants could not put that kind of faith into the Nazis who had already killed so many, and as expected, the Nazis did not keep their word.

The Fourth Major Pogrom From July 28 – July 31, 1942, despite the lie that there would be no more actions or pogroms in the ghetto, the Nazis committed the fourth and final of the major pogroms of the Minsk ghetto. This was the longest and most devastating of the pogroms to date. Smolar provides a good description of the sequence of events during those darkest of dark days, and Rubenchik,

Krasnoperko, and an excerpt from Berta Moiseevna Bruk's Notes supplement his broad overview with their own personal narratives. They recount the events of those four days as follows:

On that morning of July 28, 1942, things seemed “normal” in the ghetto. People

crowded around the Labor Exchange, waiting for the German brigade leaders to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 123

march them to work. Some of our underground members, however, noticed unusual

activity on the part of the “Operative Group.” They were scrutinizing the workers

very closely, as if trying to spot those who didn’t belong there. The Epstein-

Rosenblatt gang must have known very well what that day was going to bring.

Immediately after the work brigades left, a line of black trucks carrying SS men

and Security Police roared into the ghetto. Units of local police and Lithuanian

fascists marched in after the trucks. They had been assigned to specific streets and

neighborhoods in the ghetto. The “advance” units were the Jewish police. Then,

with bloodcurdling yells, the drunken pogromchiks began racing wildly through the

entire ghetto. The attack was so sudden that many of the Jews, especially women

and children and older people, did not have time to get to their malinas, which by

that time had been constructed in practically every apartment. The Nazis herded

their victims into the trucks, which then sped toward the ditches that had been dug

in advance.

From my “observation post” [i.e. malina] I watched as the “Black Police” whipped

columns of women and children along Tankova Street. The screams of the terror-

stricken women and children rose to the heavens and chilled the blood.

In my despair I turned to the whiskey bottle that friends had given me, but it did

not deaden the pain and the hopelessness. All that day my contact, Jadsha, did not

appear. Suddenly I heard shooting inside the hospital itself. Not until later that

evening did I learn that the killers—for the first time—had invaded the hospital.

Still avoiding the Contagious Diseases Ward, they went straight to the surgical

floor, shot the patients and all the medical personnel. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 124

Was that the end of the carnage? It did not seem so. None of the work brigades had

returned to the ghetto, a sign that the killing would continue. The night was full of

terror. Everywhere you could hear the sound of firing from the watchtowers. Tracer

bullets flew through the darkness with a kind of wail that only intensified the fear.

It was a prologue to the second day of slaughter. (Smolar 99)

...The villains broke into our hospital and killed all the patients from Ward 31,

among them my husband. That is how Zhenya's life ended. He had been expecting

any day the papers to flee the city and join the underground.

... I had not known that I had lost forever my life companion, that Lyalinka had lost

her father. A giver and a caretaker. That was kept a secret from me. But I heard

Lyalinka crying, she was lying beside me in bed.

I felt a little bit stronger and started to get up. Lyalinka had told me the truth. But

at that time I was not even able to cry, to have a feel of what was going on—I was

just lying in bed, swollen from hunger....

On the second day, the murderers set out to “check” all the ghetto dwellings. The

crackling of automatic rifles meant that they had found people in their homes.

Wherever the killers suspected a hiding-place they attacked with grenades. The

cries of the dying could he heard in every corner of the ghetto.

Another night came. People began crawling out of their bunkers to fetch water and

food from secret places. They gathered up the dead. The rockets and gunfire from

the watchtowers were not as frightening as they had been before. The guards Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 125

seemed to be shooting mostly to cover up their own fear of this desolation…

(Smolar 100)

Why should this child be born? To die such a horrible death? What tragic end for

Malya Kriger and her infant Lilechka. During pogrom on July 28th, Malya did not

go down into the hiding place. She was sitting on the bed with her Lilechka. The

girl was born in the ghetto. People used to say that was a good sign. The birth of a

girl—the birth of peace.

Malya's sister Dvosya was already in hiding. Malya's eight-year-old son Kim who

did not want to go without mother was forced in there. The entry would soon be

closed, but Malya was still sitting on the bed clutching the baby. She would not go

down, being afraid to endanger the assembly if the baby started to cry.

The old Sendar said: “This is not good. Take the baby. We’ll hide her.”

Suddenly the shooting began.

Dvosya who was supposed to close the entry rushed out and pulled the sister with

her. Malya did not manage to seize the baby. ...When shooting was over, Malya ran

out, to the bed. Her little daughter was choked with a pillow.

Malya took the baby and went out. She was walking with the choked girl in her

hands, and people looked into her stony face and blind eyes. (Krasnoperko 53)

On the third day the end came to the only place in the ghetto where Jews had

gathered with any hope of safety—the Judenrat building. Housed here were

members of the Judenrat and their families and friends. The Jewish police had also Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 126

moved their families into the crowded rooms of the Judenrat and the Labor

Exchange. There were also a few Jews who had paid the police for the privilege—

a buying and selling of “living-space” in full knowledge of the death that was

staring everyone in the face.

All of these people were not driven out by the SS killers and pushed into the black

trucks with blows and curses. … (Smolar 101)

[Also] on the third day of the massacre in Minsk, a fleet of trucks came into Jubilee

Square, but they were not really trucks. They looked more like buses, all polished

up, with little white curtains on the windows.

As usual, the Germans had assured the Hamburg Jews that they were being taken

out to work, that they would be safe at the workplaces. Only 40 men radio

technicians were separated from the others. The Hamburg Jews were all dressed up

in whatever clothing they had left. The men politely helped the women into the

buses. When everyone was aboard, the doors were here hermetically sealed. The

buses rolled away smoothly, quietly, without even admitting any smoke. The

deadly fumes were inside…

When the vehicles arrived at the ditches, the passengers were already dead.

Only one man survived, a physician. He wet a hankerchief with his own urine and

held it over his nose and mouth. He survived to bear witness to this mass murder of

the German Jews. (Smolar 103)

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 127

On the fourth day the brown-shirted and black-shirted gunmen rushed into the

ghetto with trained dogs on leashes. The animals tore through the streets barking

ferociously. After them ran the Jewish Police, shouting in Yiddish:

“Jews, it’s safe to come out now! The danger is over!”

Nobody believed them. Our people in the Ordnungsdienst told us, however, that it

really did appear as if the “action” were coming to an end, because on the afternoon

of the fourth day they were no longer being ordered to “clear out” the hiding-places.

Their orders now were to “clean up” the ghetto streets—to collect the corpses and

bring them to the Jewish cemetery.

In the early evening, the Jewish workers who had been detained for four days

outside the ghetto were brought back. For the time being, the craftsmen had been

spared. When people heard the familiar voices of their own husbands and brothers

they finally came out of their “malinas.” The weeping that they had been stifling

burst into a loud keening that could be heard in every street. Many of the workers

found none of their family alive. Homes stood empty. Men wept and sobbed openly.

Others cursed in impotent rage. The destruction, the bloodstains on the pavements,

the desolation and misery—it all cast a pall of despair over everyone. No one had

a word of comfort to offer anywhere. (Smolar 100-101)

[Rubenchik, a worker returning to the ghetto four days later said,] our eyes beheld

a picture that is impossible to describe fully. These were the bodies that had

accumulated during the three-day long pogroms. Two-wheeled carts filled with

corpses and various body parts soaked in blood. Most of the carts stood next to the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 128

cemetery. No one gathered the dead bodies. Sochaia Street was high on the hill and

the continuous rain diluted the blood of the dead people, so that there were red

puddles all over the streets of the ghetto.

We stood for a few minutes dumbfounded, this appalling vision being imprinted on

our hearts. Later, I realized that this picture would never be forgotten. This turned

out to be true. More than half a century has passed. I still see in my dreams the two-

wheeled carts filled with bodies of the Jews of Minsk. Based on this terrible

memory, I drew a sketch of what I saw. I invite the readers to look at it. (Rubenchik

114-115)51

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 129

The sensations associated with this four-day pogrom are impossible to encapsulate. Rubenchik’s black and white sketch—almost impossible to decipher with the two colors flowing into each other, and the various images and corpses tangling together—mirrors the emotions of the pogrom itself.

They run the gamut: harried, fearful, powerless, hungry, terrorized, miserable, momentarily hopeful, doubtful, horrified, sorrowful, enraged, and numb. However, the feeling of guilt is the one striking emotion that runs through the tales of all the memoirists. They help the reader transform into reader-attestant as they bring to life the guilt of knowing everyone on the floor of the hospital you are hiding in was murdered; of knowing your husband is dead but not being able to feel anything other than hunger; or of carrying your murdered infant in your arms as you stroll aimlessly down deadly streets, perhaps hoping or just not caring that you might end up dead too.

In this the final and lengthiest of the pogroms in the Minsk ghetto, people from every area of the ghetto were killed. The destruction was systematic, and it included everyone. The hospital personnel and the sick were killed in the midst of administering care and being treated, respectively. The German Jews, who had so often been left out of the instances of mass violence, were loaded into the dushegubki and killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Even infants and the elderly fell victim to the carnage. Within the ghetto, only those in the Judenrat and the infectious diseases wing of the hospital were spared. Those outside the ghetto on work detail were not allowed to return home until four days later, when the pogrom had finally elapsed. They, too, were victims. Returning to the blood and carnage, life in the ghetto was never the same. The relatively few who were still alive the next morning, August 1, 1942, had survived one year in the Minsk ghetto. But the Nazi soldiers had made sure that they had not done so without devastating loss.

From the one-year anniversary of the official formation of the Minsk ghetto on August 1,

1942 until its liquidation on October 21, 1943, remarkably little is recorded about ghetto life. There Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 130 are many reasons for this. By this time, the ghetto population had been severely whittled down from its peak at approximately 100,000 people. According to Smolar, after the fourth pogrom in total “there were about 12,000 Jews remaining in the ghetto.” (Smolar 108). Those who survived the ghetto had either already escaped or mainly used this time planning and executing such an escape. Very little is written about day-to-day life in the ghetto itself because those who still survived were mainly those who were strong enough to serve on a work detail during the day, and plan their escapes at night. Most of the young and old were among the first to be killed. Therefore, the last 14 months of the ghetto’s existence includes very few descriptions of daily life in the ghetto; rather, the events there focus on work, escape, and life among the partisans, which is where most Jews were attempting to go.

Partisan Life Of the approximate 100,000 Jews who had been imprisoned in the Minsk ghetto, by August

1, 1942 almost 90% had escaped or were dead. The vast majority of those were killed, gunned down in a night raid, gassed in a dushegubki, shot for simply running into the wrong Nazi at the wrong time, or killed in the explosion of a malina. Others died from starvation and hypothermia.

However, compared to other ghettos, Minsk Jews had a relatively high survival rate and the Minsk ghetto itself a relatively long existence. According to Yehuda Bauer, speaking about the Holocaust generally, “Large-scale partisan activities occurred only from the winter of 1942-43 on. By that time, of course, Jewish ghettos no longer existed (except for the one at Minsk, which was finally liquidated in October 1943)” (Bauer “Jewish Resistance and Passivity” 245) By October 1943, approximately 10,000 Jews had escaped from the Minsk ghetto, and 5,000 of those survived the entire war. Most of those who escaped and survived, both men and women, did so by joining a partisan unit in the forests outside of Minsk. Others were hidden among the general Byelorussian Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 131 population or stayed hidden for years. The majority—including each of the memoirists included in this chapter—managed to survive by escaping the ghetto and joining the partisans. While some escapes occurred earlier in the history of the Minsk ghetto, many began during the summer of

1942, especially in the devastation and aftermath of the fourth pogrom at the end of July, and continued into October of 1943, even occurring on the same day that the ghetto was ultimately liquidated. Those who escaped to join the partisans included men, women, and even some children.

Girls with weapons were welcomed into the units, regardless of gender, while women without weapons were often required to demonstrate other useful skills in order to gain admittance. One such skill was knowledge of the countryside and the ability to blend in among the Belarusian population. These qualities were often attributed to children and young teens who risked their lives to save people from the ghetto and to perpetuate the partisan movement against the Nazis. Almost all successful escapes occurred under the direction of such guides. Smolar shares their stories:

Most of our forest guides were children who, in the ghetto, had stopped being

children. Better than many of the adults in the ghetto they had learned how to avoid

encounters with the enemy. They understood very well what was in store for the

Jews in the ghetto. They quickly mastered the basic rules of underground work.

They very rarely smiled. Some of them already looked like little old men and

women. And they learned to handle guns as expertly as the battle-scarred partisans.

Vilik Rubeshin was twelve years old. In the panic of the first days of the war he

lost track of his parents. Somehow he managed to suvive until Sara Goland, a

member of the underground, took him in. … Vilik quickly caught on to the

significance of the whispered conversations in Sara Goland’s home, where couriers

from the forest were frequent visitors. Vilik wanted to become one of them. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 132

He successfully led a large number of Jews into the forest, until he felt the ground

burning under his feet. At that point, despite his youth he became a full-fledged

partisan in a unit of the Frunze brigade, where he was known as one of the best

scouts and diversionists in the forest. By the time of his 13th birthday Vilik had

already blown up seven Nazi troop trains.

… Twelve-year-old Bunke Manner had “memorized” the paths leading to the forest

so accurately that every bush along the way seemed to have been placed there for

his special benefit. This lad succeeded in leading more than a hundred Jews in the

forest without once falling into a Nazi trap.

Dovidke Klonski led twelve groups of 25-30 people from the ghetto to the forest.

Fania Gimpel had a “special assignment”—to guide our doctors, who were so

urgently needed by the partisans.

Simele Fiterson was twelve years old when I met her and the beginning of the effort

to recruit people for Lapidus’s detachment. I wanted to convince myself that we

could place the fate of these organized combat groups into such young hands.

Before me stood a small child with the wrinkled face of an older woman. Her clear

but sorrow-filled eyes studied me closely as I spoke. Her response consisted of the

same Russian slang word that Zhenka had used: poryadek—everything will be

taken care of. Her hand came out of her pocket holding a small pistol, and for a

moment, a proud smile lit up her solemn little face.

But soon, walled up in my “malina,” I heard the harrowing news. Returning to the

ghetto after one of her missions, Simele had been followed by one of the

“Operatives.” That same night the Gestapo broke down her door. Simele managed Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 133

to get to her hiding-place, but her mother and younger brothers were taken away.

She became even more taciturn and single-minded as she continued her work—

leading Jews out of the ghetto into the forest. (Smolar 95-96)

Children and teens like those that Smolar describes were at the heart of the partisan and underground resistance movements. Due to their age, they were often less cautious and less suspicious-looking than their elders. They also were quick to adapt to the roles of courier, spy, escape artist, and even soldier. Each of the five children listed by. Smolar accomplished remarkable feats—saving hndreds of lives at the possible expense of their own. Yet their story concludes not with their bravery and successes, but rather with the tragic loss of Simele Fiterson’s family. Sometimes it was not bravery or sacrifice that motivated this group. Rather, it was often grief and vengeance. For every child completing these life-saving missions like Simele, there is a backstory of tragic loss and death. Smolar leaves his readers with the vision of who these children were risking their lives for—their remaining friends, family, and neighbors. These young heroes risked their lives to save the ten percent of the population of Minsk Jews that had not yet been murdered without reason or cause.

Of the four memoirs used in this chapter alone, two were young boys who served in partisan units fulfilling many of the same roles that Smolar describes. However, in order to become partisans, they first had to escape the ghetto. One such escape attempt was led by Mikhail Treister in September of 1943. He had been in a partisan detachment himself for some time, when he was finally able to convince his commander to allow him to attempt the rescue of his mother and sister.

However, the road was a very dangerous one. Most Jews who had managed to survive the first two years of the Minsk ghetto, knew how dramatically their numbers had dwindled. With a sense of foreboding, they could feel that something was coming and wanted to escape as soon as possible. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 134

These large groups made detection an even greater possibility. Treister’s rescue mission shows how perilous escaping could be:

As my mother and sister were still in the ghetto, I could use this excuse to persist

in asking our partisan commanders to send me there as a guide.

And I succeeded.

My task was to bring from the ghetto to the unit a pharmacist, a soap-maker and a

gunsmith. They could bring relatives and I was allowed to take my people too. But

the strictest order was that the total number of the people in the group was not to

exceed ten. Bigger groups, as a rule, were doomed to fail. Besides, I also had to

procure and bring to the unit some equipment: namely, weapons. I had to bring the

group to Staroe Selo, where we were to be met by another guide. He would take a

few other groups together and would lead them to a bigger, partisan unit.

Everything seemed simple, clear and precise, as it usually is, in theory.

Somehow, now, I do not remember my way from the forest to the ghetto, maybe

because it went smoothly. It was September 1943.

The ghetto, already pretty shrunk, was experiencing its last weeks, or maybe even

days. There was no time to lose. I started looking for the necessary specialists.

Despite my secret mission, different people from here and there came to see me.

They did not come with empty hands. I remember two visitors. One had an

automatic pistol in a brand-new holster and three full cartridge clips. He said that

he had five people with him. The other man handed me a small cylindrical bundle,

wrapped in a newspaper, which was too heavy for its length. That proved to be gold

coins. He had six people with him. But the order is the order; I had to keep my Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 135

mission secret, so I told them that I’d never gone anywhere and was not going

anywhere. I told this even to my close friends and neighbors, Lucy and Rosa

Zuckerman. Thank God they survived, and I had an opportunity to apologize to

them after the war.

Finally, the people were selected and the group was formed. We had to meet in the

boiler room of the ghetto’s hospital for infectious diseases on Sukhaya Street. The

departure was set for 2 a.m.

And here, what I could not possibly have predicted happened. It turned out that

there were many different people living in the boiler room: people who

miraculously had survived annihilation raids, people whose homes had been burned

or destroyed. Besides them, some prisoners of the ghetto had heard the rumors

about the group being gathered and had come to join it. Here I saw Sholom Kaplan,

my colleague-shoemaker's son and our friend, the young woman Clara with her

daughter... I let them join us too. All in all, the number of people in the group came

up to 25-30 people.

On one hand, I understood clearly that the chance of leaving the city unnoticed with

such a big group was equal to zero. But, on the other hand, there was nothing that

I could change at this point, not even the departure time.

The only thing that I could do was to order everybody to wrap their shoes in any

rags they could find, so as not to be heard while walking in the city streets at night.

So, at 2 a.m. precisely, we cut the barbed wire of the ghetto on Opansky Street and

walked toward our fate. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 136

… It’s hard to believe, but we managed to get out of the city, which was not so big

at that time, and ended up somewhere behind the Catholic cemetery. This alone I

consider a miracle, even today. …

We had a short rest in the bushes, and then started discussing what to do next. …

Three young scouts went to examine the way, and we divided the group into three

smaller ones. These three groups, each lead by a scout, had to leave the thicket and

move in the right direction, separated by an interval of 20 minutes. Mine was the

last one.

The first group left; then the second one followed it. It was then my time to move

out. I went first, with the others following me at a distance of about 50 meters. The

terrain was complicated: an ascent, then a kind of pass, then a deep ravine, then

again an ascent to a forested hill and, somewhere behind it, there was a highway

that led in the direction of the town of Rakov. When we had almost reached the

pass, I heard the dry, remote rattle, dissolved in a wide autumn space. That did not

even scare me at that time; I was just puzzled. I waved to my group to stop and lie

down, and I, myself, crawled up to the pass and glanced down. The picture I saw

stands before my eyes, even now.

In a low ground, on the left side of the road, there was the framework of a house;

near it a group of German soldiers were shooting, point-blank, at our second group.

Local policemen were shooting their rifles at the people of the first group, who were

running up to the forested hill; some of them had already reached it and were hiding

among the trees. I saw people falling down there too. Later, when the rest of us met, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 137

we tallied up – the second group had been annihilated completely; in the first group,

half of the people had been killed.

… Near Staroe Selo our group merged with several others, and this united group of

newcomers, including us, left for the main partisan camp in Naliboksky Forest, the

place where partisan detachment 106 was stationed. We were led by another guide,

a young girl by the name of Katya. On the way to the forest, we walked about 80

kilometers in one day and the following night. Our feet were sore and bleeding. At

the end of the journey, many of us had to cut our boots, as we could not pull them

off. But still, we managed to reach the unit without additional loss. (Treister 37-

40)52

Treister’s story of escaping the ghetto provides a vivid depiction of what such escape attempts were like. The 25-30 people in the boiler room all knew that their chances of survival were slim, especially in such a large group. However, they were all willing to take the risk. The Jews of the

Minsk ghetto, especially those still alive just weeks before the liquidation, had seen and survived horrific acts of violence. They were desperate to escape. Their desperation was amplified by a feeling of foreboding sweeping through the ghetto at this time. Everyone seemed to sense that death was a likely and imminent outcome of their stay in the ghetto, and therefore decided they’d rather risk their lives in flight. Similarly, Treister was desperate to save as many as he could despite the risk to his own life and even his family’s safety. He took three times the allotted amount of people with him, sensing their desperation and powerlessness without his aid. Overall, it is predicted that about 10,000 out of the 100,000 ghetto inhabitants escaped the ghetto. However, only half of those 10,000—or five percent of the ghetto’s inhabitants—lived to survive the war.

Many, like two-thirds of Treister’s group, were killed shortly after their escape while trying to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 138 reach the forests. Others made it to the forests and died fighting as partisans. However, partisan life was the best chance that one had of survival.

The general path to escaping the ghetto to join the partisans included a variety of steps.

First, anyone hoping to escape would ideally find a guide to take them. Not only were guides helpful in navigating out of the ghetto itself, but in helping the escapees to traverse dozens of kilometers and arrive at hidden partisan bases while avoiding Nazi soldiers and other dangerous people along their route. Once a group arrived at the partisan base, they would still need to receive approval in order to gain admittance. The guide could provide an introduction, which would hopefully help, but having a skill or a weapon or gold would be the best ways of gaining admittance to a partisan detachment. It was difficult for women and children, who were often unable to help fight, and without necessary skills to assist the camp, they were simply extra mouths to feed. It is hardest to find records of elderly men and women, who ever made it to a partisan camp. It seems as though they almost invariably died in the ghetto. Often, children were sent as guides to the ghetto and told to return with people with specific skills and with certain supplies. Speaking of a rescue mission undertaken by his older sister Yocha, Rubenchik writes, “With [one] mission,

Yocha had rescued three children and twelve adults, two of whom were surgeons. In addition, the

Minsk underground brought with them medicine, surgical equipment, a typewriter, and batteries.

The Minsk Underground brigade passed all this on to the partisans” (Rubenchik 141).53 These were the type of people and supplies that the partisan brigades needed. Anyone who could get their hands on these types of supplies was much more likely to be admitted into a partisan unit, and therefore, much more likely to survive. In greater detail, Rubenchik shared how Yocha saved him and a few others from the ghetto. He recounts Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 139

Yocha told everyone to take only their most valuable possessions, earrings, clips,

gold, anything that could be swapped for weapons. She also explained to each one

separately that they would only walk during the night. Therefore, it was important

to follow each other so as not to get lost in the dark.

Hinda and I ran to the market. In exchange for the German marks I had hid, I bought

cheap tobacco, matchsticks, saccharine, salt, bandages, and other items.

Yocha decided that the meeting point would be at the end of the second brick

factory. From that point, we began to walk the path to Medbagabo. My sister

anxiously gave each person detailed instructions. Firstly, we were not to leave

footprints. Secondly, we must walk in silence, in single file, and keep a distance. It

was already dark as we crawled under the barbed wire in different places. We

escaped through the Russian zone near the brick factory. I was dressed like a groom,

in a short jacket with a winter’s cap, so that my Jewish nose wouldn’t stick out too

much. …

We had been walking for a long time, approximately 12 kilometers. Suddenly, we

were told that Yocha was unable to walk any more. It seems she was falling off her

feet from fatigue. She wanted to sleep. We all understood why. She had not slept

for more than 48 hours. The women took turns helping her walk. They not only

helped her stand up, but pushed her forward to get as far away as possible from the

city. …

Now we were free people. The journey had brought us to freedom and restored our

self-dignity. We would indeed find weapons, go to the Naliboki forest and become

true partisans. (Rubenchik 133-134, 137)54 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 140

This was a typical escape: 1) gather belongings that could be traded for weapons, 2) meet up and escape at night, 3) follow a precise path moving toward the Naliboki forests, and 4) travel only at night. This customary procedure for escape portrayed in Rubenchik’s account is also paired with the characteristic sense of relief that accompanied flight from the ghetto. It was not just a relief from constant terror, trauma, and abuse, but a relief on a human level. Those who escaped became free from more than just the terror but also from the notion of being less than human. With escape, a sense of dignity, of humanity, and individuality was returned to each escapee.

While this was the standard method of escaping to the partisans, some people with underground contacts were able to pull off more elaborate methods of escape. Smolar relates one such escape coordinated by the underground:

The “exodus” of our first group of fighters took place in a way that violated all the

elementary rules of secrecy. In typical partisan fashion they confiscated two

wagons in the ghetto itself. Then they built false bottoms in both wagons,

“liberated” several horses and at four o’clock in the morning rode out of the ghetto.

Their passes showed them to workmen on the way to the forest to chop down trees

for fuel. At Kalvaria, where Kudriakov was waiting, they dug up 13 rifles and 4000

bullets. Into the same hole they threw all their yellow patches and then rode through

the heart of the city toward the Bobrowitsh forest about thirty kilometers from

Minsk.

Inside the ghetto the message of our cells traveled from house to house like a slogan.

“Provide yourself with the ‘new passport’—a pistol, a grenade, a rifle-part, an

automatic—any kind of weapon or part of a weapon. This will give you entry into

the partisan forests.” Captain Bistrov’s condition that he would accept only people Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 141

who came armed created a “season” in which the ghetto population was busy trying

to obtain weapons by one means or another. Primarily it was our underground

groups that stimulated this activity. (Smolar 63, 65)

Not only does this account emphasize the radical nature of some of the escape attempts, it also indicates that no matter how one escaped, certain elements were almost always involved. People were most likely to be rescued and/or admitted into the partisan units if they had weapons or valuable skills that they could contribute. Documents, too, were helpful when traveling through the Belarussian countryside. Often, a person’s possessions and knowledge were indicative of his or her survival rate, as admittance into a partisan brigade highly increased with the possession of weapons, documents, or medical training. In fact, it is one of these reasons that each of the four memoirists in this chapter was able to join the partisans. Rubenchik and Treister had weapons;

Smolar a knowledge of the inner workings of the underground; and Krasnoperko’s mother was a doctor. These were crucial aspects to surviving the Minsk ghetto.

Each of the memoirists depicted in this chapter, managed to survive the war because they joined partisan brigades. While Krasnoperko decided to conclude her memoir with her escape from the ghetto, the other three memoirs include stories about their time in the partisan detachments.

Rubenchik and Treister provide especially rich detail on what that experience was like for them.

The first element of these depictions was the transition period between ghetto life and partisan life.

Unless someone was recruited as a soldier or specialist like medical personnel, chances were you had to find a weapon and then get admitted into a partisan unit. This was the case for Abram

Rubenchik and Mikhail Treister’s mother. Rubenchik relates how he found and made a weapon before joining the partisans. He and five others who escaped at the same time went to Staroe Silo, a village outside of Minsk where people usually went before joining the partisans. It was generally Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 142 known that different partisan brigades had contact in the village, and if one were ready to fight with weapon in hand, this was the best place to get connected to the partisans. Rubenchik relates his experience staying in the town:

The six of us who were left in Staryo Silo continued to search for weapons. Each

day, we left to go to the forests like going to a place of work. However, it was the

difficult and unpleasant life of nomads. Every night, we begged for food and

shelter. We even exchanged our possessions for a warm bed and a little food.

The spring season brought us new strength. From day to day, the warmth increased.

We got accustomed to sleeping in haylofts. Partisans would occasionally appear in

the village. We would ask them to take us with them to the brigade. Many

sympathized with us and helped us by giving us food, but they had no authority to

accept us on behalf of the partisan brigade. Sometimes they would lead us away

from Staryo Silo to another village where they would organize a place to us to sleep

and add some bread and milk. …

We continued to search for weapons persistently. One day, I was lucky. I noticed

an unusual mound of dirt. I began to examine it when I felt a metal barrel. I cleared

off the dirt and dust. It was an intact carbine smothered in oil. It seemed as if some

farmer had found it and hidden it here. Indeed, this was a wonderful discovery! My

happiness was endless. Immediately I felt like a grown-up adult. Attaching the belt

from my pants to the gun shaft, I made a strap for the rifle.

(Rubenchik 143-144)55

Rubenchik picks up the account explaining how he was able to use his relationship with his sister, who was already a member of a partisan brigade, to also gain admittance. He continues Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 143

I began to request from Ivan Kazak, a commissar, to take me with him to the

brigade. He looked at me attentively and asked, “What will you do for us?”

“I will patrol,” I replied.

He smiled and nodded. “Still too young.”

“My sister, Yocha, goes on your missions,” I said back. “Yocha is your sister?” he

asked, and I told him, “Yes, she is.”

“Whose gun do you carry?” he wanted to know, and I said, “Mine! I found it

myself.” I admitted this proudly to Kazak.

When he found out that I had a weapon, the commissioner said to one of his

subordinates, “Take this youth with you. He is a soldier. He found a gun for

himself.” (I was to use this same gun for the rest of the war, up until the day of

liberation.) (Rubenchik 145)56

For many, the reality of escaping the ghetto blossomed into reluctant hope. They each knew that death was still a likely eventuality for a Minsk Jew, especially those who witnessed deaths during the escape attempts. However, hope of survival, of joining family members, of retaliation, and f finding a place of belonging lead countless people to spend days, weeks, and even months searching for weapons and other methods of admittance into a partisan brigade. Hope of survival, hope alone which seemed so precious and tenuous within the ghetto, spurred them on to join the partisans.

Familial associations were also an important indication of who was admitted into the partisan brigades, and therefore, of who survived the war. While it was ultimately his possession of a rifle that allowed Rubenchik admittance to the partisan detachment, it was his connection to his sister that allowed for his initial access. Partisan units were leery of detection by the Nazis Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 144 through informants or spies. Therefore, having someone vouch for you helped pave the path to admittance. Krasnoperko, too, was admitted to a brigade only because of her mother’s skills as a doctor. Were she someone else’s child, she likely would not have survived the war. This was just one realistic aspect of partisan life. Those with weapons, skills, and connections were much more likely to gain entrance into the partisan brigades.

After becoming a member of a partisan group, daily life consisted of many of the same activities it had in the ghetto. There was the need for food and shelter. Much of the day would be spent simply maintaining the camp, finding firewood, and obtaining food through hunting, collecting edible plants, or bartering in nearby towns and villages. Day and night, partisans stood on guard to make sure that their camps were not found by the enemy. Whenever possible, the partisans were also undertaking missions to disrupt Nazi plans or kill Nazi soldiers. If given the opportunity, one might take a couple hours to visit the family, friends, and neighbors left in Staroe

Selo, who were without homes and food and who awaited their own chance to join the partisans.

This was a part of Rubenchik’s first mission with his partisan unit:

I remember my first partisan mission. I stood by the watch post at the edge of the

Lisovchechina village. … if I saw a small group of people, I must wait until they

come closer in order to determine whether they were Polizei. If they were indeed

Politzei, I was to shoot one shot in the air. If I saw a car, then shoot two shots in the

air. An experienced partisan showed me how to do it.

No one came. I stood like this for five hours. It seemed to me that I stood there for

an eternity. Finally two partisans arrived. One man took my place and the other told

me to come with him. That is how my first assignment ended. Nobody had passed Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 145

the whole time. I still returned proud that I had passed the test, even though I was

hungry. …

The partisan led me to a house where there were many armed people. The air was

hazy from cigarette smoke. I was poured a thick bowl of potato soup and given a

large portion of meat. I could not stop eating. I could not fill up, and I could not

stop eating. There was more meat in a big bowl on the table. Just before taking

another serving, a thought crossed my mind. I cut the pocket of my jacket from the

inside, as I had done in the German dining room, and began to throw the meat into

it. The meat went through the lining, and fell into the bottom of my coat. Afterwards

I approached the commander and asked, “Can I leave for two hours?” He asked,

“Where to?”

“I want to go to the other side of the village and visit my mother and also my cousin

and others from the ghetto,” I told him. …

He permitted me to go. He even gave me a present to give to them, a loaf of brown

bread.

Mother had not yet joined the partisans. The storeroom she and the others stayed in

was crowded. It consisted of five adults and Hinda, who was thirteen, as well as a

few newcomers. They moved from place to place, not always finding food.

I ran to them and gave mother the loaf of bread and meat. The partisan food had

come at a needed time. When I got up to leave I saw my mother in tears again. We

parted sadly. I didn’t see mother for nearly a year after that, but I knew she was

alive. (Rubenchik Chapter 21)57 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 146

On his first assignment, Rubenchik stood sentry for five hours before being fed. He saved some of his provisions, which he took to his family and then traveled back to the partisan base for the evening. This was a fairly typical day in partisan life. Hunger and boredom were common states.

After a long day of either manual labor or guard duty, the evenings were typically considered a high point in partisan life. One bright memory for Treister was eating dinner and singing songs around the campfire at night. While the physical requirements between ghetto and partisan life were similar, the feeling between the two differed drastically. The starvation, cold, and privation of ghetto life were similar to living in a forest with only rough shelter, food, and clothing; however, the feeling of freedom distinguished the two. Feeling secure in the knowledge of a loved one’s safety or simply singing for pleasure were occurrences outside of the ghetto experience. Yet

Rubenchik’s account above and Treister’s below, testify to the relative safety, freedom, and even peace of partisan life. Treister relates

The main impression, I would even say a really, dazzling experience, connected

with the coming of the Red Army – besides the regained hope for life and freedom

– were the songs. They crashed on us like an avalanche.

The people in our unit used to sing in the evenings also: For some unknown reason,

Siberian and Cossack songs had been especially popular. We also had sung

“Katyusha” and some other songs that had been popular before the war, but we had

had no idea of the new war songs. And on the first evening that we spent sitting

around a huge fire with soldiers from the neighboring artillery unit, we heard (tens

of new songs, written during the last four years. Nowadays everybody knows them,

but on that evening we were discovering them for the first time, under the

accompaniment of the guitar and the accordion. It was wonderful to sit there and to Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 147

listen to them. The soldiers sang beautifully and looked so young, but at the same

time, strong, brave and experienced, smelling of gunpowder and covered with the

dust of war roads. Their very appearance made one absolutely sure that nothing

would be able to stop them before they would reach Berlin. The Red Army was like

a huge spring that had been pressed from the border to as far as Moscow and

Stalingrad, and was now straightening itself, hitting the enemy back. That was what

I felt, sitting there near the fire and listening to the unknown songs, the cracking of

the fire and the rustling of the night wind. (Treister 44-45)58

Despite the nostalgic beauty of some of those nights sitting around the campfire singing, more often life in a partisan unit was dull and difficult, full of hunger and cold, interspersed with moments of great fear. Just as life was in the ghetto, there was still a shortage of food. Rubenchik recounts

[L]ife was difficult for the partisans and full of dangers. Days were spent walking

through swamps without food. We had to eat the natural food under our feet—

grains and nettle.

Horsemeat became an important source of nourishment. When we found a dead

horse that had drowned in the mud, we cut it up and roasted it on a fire. Of course,

this was dangerous because the Germans could easily find us by following the

smoke. So we posted watchmen far from the fire in every direction. (Rubenchik

187)59

Not only was food scarce, but the duties of partisan life were also difficult. Rubenchik had one particularly memorable experience travelling through swamps, trying to avoid German soldiers Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 148 and looking for his base camp and food. He recalls how dangerous partisan life could be, especially when three young men were left without a commander:

Three youths from the ghetto, myself, Yankele Kofer and Chaimka Goldin were

placed at the watch post. Vanya Chochlov was assigned to be in charge of us since

he was the most experienced. After one day had passed, he said, “You stay here.

I’ll go to the brigade and bring everyone food.”

He left, never to be seen again. We were on watch for more than 48 hours without

food. Shots were heard from all directions. Apparently, Chochlov had run into

German soldiers. We went towards the direction of the brigade in the hope that we

would find something to eat. It was fortunate that we had used extreme caution.

Next to the mud huts, we saw the German soldiers. It seems that they had passed

us on the sides.

We moved towards the swamps since we knew that Hitler’s soldiers would be too

afraid to go in there. We were usually forbidden to enter them because of the deep,

muddy water. The whole time swarms of mosquitoes continued to bite us.

The three of us moved through the swamps, sinking frequently in mud up to our

chests. After a while, we returned to dry land. As they say, “hunger breaks stone

walls.” We had to reach our base camp—and we did. However, nobody was there.

Everything had been destroyed, but we still found some food.

We got our strength back and continued to move. We spent maybe five days like

this. Several times we reached areas that could not be passed because of the depth

of the swamps. Once we heard the movement of people. The sound became louder. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 149

We sat in the swampy water up to our belts. We had no place to run because running

to an open ground meant a sure death.

After a while we saw people dressed in a variety of clothes, meaning that they were

not Germans. Yet, they were still walking in our direction. I raised my gun and

shouted, “Stop! Who goes?”

“We are on the same side,” replied one from the group.

I then commanded, “One of you approach so I can identify you!”

We approached one another. When the partisans realized that we were only three

people, they began to laugh. Together with the delegated envoy, we went to the

commander. When he was told how old we were, he began to laugh. Three youths

had frightened an entire brigade. (Rubenchik Chapter 23)60

The nature of this account is unique in comparison with the other stories in the memoirs of the

Minsk ghetto. It differs in emotion. While there are still elements of fear and danger, the lighthearted end to the tale is unusual. There are few tales of humor associated with the ghetto, and like this one, they are never set in the ghetto themselves. Occasionally a light-hearted occurrence might transpire at work or on the streets outside the ghetto. These humorous occurrences become most common after escape and joining partisans in the forest, once survivors are finally away from the ghetto’s shadow.

Unfortunately, even in the partisan brigades, it was impossible to escape the shadow of the ghetto in its entirety. Many conditions in the partisan brigades were similar to conditions in the ghetto—lack of food, sleep, and safety—however, there were some ways in which the partisan units brought new dangers. In the ghetto, the Jews faced hatred and death in the forms of night raids and pogroms and outright killing. When they escaped to the partisans, the Jews believed they Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 150 had escaped slaughter simply for the reason of being born Jewish; however, they quickly found that like hunger and terror, even antisemitism had followed them to the forest. Smolar and

Rubenchik both recall instances of antisemitic violence and death amongst the partisans.

Rubenchik recounts how his relative escaped the ghetto only to be killed at the hands of the partisans. He relates, “The Parchomanko platoon was established by the Jews of the Minsk ghetto…, the commander of the brigade ordered the fighters to purge the brigade of all Jewish partisans together with their wives. This commander killed with his own hands one of the first

Jewish partisans to join the brigade, Henach Rubenchik…” (Rubenchik 17).61 These moments of antisemitism were unfortunately somewhat commonplace within the partisan units. Rubenchik and

Smolar alone relate three more examples of such experiences:

I want to tell you of another event in our partisan lives. The Jewish partisan by the

name of Podbriyozkin, who we liked to call Peter the First [Peter the Great] because

of his tallness and impressive physical strength. He was born in the town of

Horodok. The brigade valued his knowledge of the surrounding area, his ability to

track in the forest, most importantly, his expertise as a professional saboteur. He

participated in the continuous battle of the railway tracks, derailing trains. The

command began to give Podbriyozkin the most complicated and difficult

assignments.

Once, together with a small group of ten men, he conducted a most successful

operation. They destroyed a train with explosives. The German transportation lines

to the front were stopped for a number of hours. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 151

The group of saboteurs reached the forest with no harm. On the way, after obtaining

some moonshine, fat, and other provisions, the partisans got happily drunk. In this

state, they continued their journey to the base.

They journeyed deep inside the forest. In the wagon there was no way of moving

fast. Podbriyozkin sat at the front and steered the horse. Besides him, there were

another three. Suddenly one of the partisans by the name of Kozlov quietly told his

friends, “Let’s get rid of this Jew.” The second drunk replied, “Do as you wish. Get

rid of him. Let the devil take him.”

Kozlov lifted his gun to Podbriyozkin’s neck and with one shot, blew off half his

skull. Following the shooting, everyone got off the wagon and ran to

Podbriyozkin’s body soaked in blood. Upon seeing this, they immediately sobered

up.

The partisan commander asked, “Who shot him? For what reason?”

No one could believe that one of our partisans could have done this. Kozlov the

drunk replied, “Let the devil take him. There will be one less Jew.” …

For the murder of a comrade the partisan Kozlov is sentenced to the highest form

of punishment, death by hanging. The partisan trial was quick. The verdict was

implemented in front of everyone. The partisan Rovel hung Kozlov on an oak tree

that grew inside the cave, as the commander had ordered. (Rubenchik 195-197)62

“Tevl, where are you taking me?” I demanded. “What has happened, Tevl? Tell

me!” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 152

“To the Niemen—I want you to see—not the river—but our blood that they

spilled—“

What I saw on the river bank robbed me of speech.

The bodies of several Jewish women lay on the ground. It was not necessary for me

to ask Tevl who had shot them. After swimming all the way across this wide river,

when they finally reached the shore… It was not Germans who had done this. They

didn’t even dare step onto our shore unless it was as part of a mass attack. These

Jewish women had been murdered by our own friends, by other partisans.

The tears running down his cheeks, Tevl stared at me, waiting for me to tell him

what to do.

To this day I cannot explain it, but this atheist of so many years could only murmur:

“Kaddish, Tevl, say Kaddish…” (Smolar 128)

[Once] a drunken partisan from the adjacent house entered our house. He began to

envy my carbine and proposed that I exchange it for a rifle.

“Come on, Mamzer, let’s make a deal, I will give you a grenade and three bullet

cartridges on top of it.”

I did not agree. So he pressed me up on the wall, took out a handgun, pointed it at

me, and said, “If you don’t hand it over, I’ll kill you!”

He probably thought I was a coward and would be scared.

“No! I will not swap the carbine for anything.” I said, thinking the drunk would

then lay off. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 153

“Hey, you are a Jew! I am counting until ten. One, two, three, and all of a sudden

Yocha appeared with her gun. Someone had whispered to her, “There your brother

is about to be killed.” She grabbed the rifle by the barrel and with all her force gave

a blow to the hand holding the handgun. He didn’t even have enough time to let out

a groan and fell straight to the ground with a broken hand.

Because he did not get immediate medical attention, he remained disabled for his

entire life. They decided not to punish Yocha because of her distinguished service

as a partisan, and the fact the drunk was even guiltier. (Rubenchik Chapter 24)63

Unlike twenty years earlier, when Yiddish was an official language of the USBR and intermarriage among Jews and Soviets was so common, antisemitism had spread among the people of Minsk.

The events in the Minsk ghetto demonstrate that many Belarusians were still great friends to their

Jewish neighbors, even willing to risk and sacrifice their own lives for the Jews. However, life in the partisan units show the other side of the coin. Jews were killed simply for being Jews;

Rubenchik was almost robbed and killed, and the justification: he is Jewish. Smolar even relates how a group of cold, tired, and unarmed Jewish women were slaughtered after escaping the Minsk ghetto and reaching the forests. Unfortunately, the harsh reality of partisan life included antisemitism. While some were punished for the murders they committed, these tales complicate the experience of Jewish life in the partisan brigades. Just because the Jews had escaped the Minsk ghetto, they were not necessarily safe from murder, theft, or violence. Antisemitism had become a part of life in Minsk; no Jew was safe from it. In the ghetto, all attacks had been antisemitic.

They stemmed from Nazi invaders. Now, outside of the ghetto, these attaches came from

Belarusian neighbors. So while lighthearted moments are not recorded inside the ghetto, feelings of treachery are only recorded outside the ghetto. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 154

Despite the difficulties of everyday partisan life and the cruelties of the antisemitic partisans, most memoirists look back on their time in the partisan brigades with nostalgia and some fondness. Rubenchik recalls feeling valued even as a young member of the partisan unit, “I was not the only one who wanted to take part in combat activities. The youths with weapons were given greater authority and were viewed with much respect even by the adults. We were fearless. The older comrades valued this. Thus they always tried to take us on patrols.” (Rubenchik Chapter

23)64 Those who survived the ghetto and reached the partisans often speak about the traits they engendered and the lessons they learned in the partisan units. They were proud to be able to fight against their oppressors. In a section of his memoir entitled “My Partisan University,” Treister provides a list of a few life lessons he learned amongst the partisans:

- I established a record for time spent in the unit prison, and I have to admit that

each time the punishment was well deserved.

- For the first time in my life, I saw a praying Jew and a Jew who kept kashrut,

even in the unthinkable conditions of the unit, and that made me think over a

lot of things.

- I gained real friends, many of whom passed the test of time and remained my

friends for life.

- And I understood that human life is precious, but I also understood that there is

something even more important. (Treister 43)65

While there were both good and bad sides to life in the partisan brigade, Treister focuses on the good. He involves the reader in reflecting upon life in the partisan brigades, as he introduces concepts of choice and consequences; religious practices; friendship and loyalty; and the sanctity of human life. While he introduces these topics, he does not leave the reader with any set Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 155 conclusions. Rather, he asks his reader to engage and wrestle with the material he is providing.

For instance, instead of explicitly stating what is more important than human life, he causes readers to reflect on the life story recorded in his memoir and on their own life experiences. Treister is asking the readers to truly consider various aspects of the Holocaust, not just to read what he has written, but to take a step beyond reading into remembering, into sharing.

Despite the regulations and antisemitism found in partisan life, the majority of the five percent of Jews who survived their internment in the Minsk ghetto, did so by escaping and joining the partisan fight against the Nazis. They were motivated to help other Soviets, regardless of nationality or religion, overcome the occupation of the Germans. As a group, the Jews of Minsk— more than anyone in that city—had a particular desire for vengeance. They were determined to do all they could to drive the murderous Nazi soldiers from their home. Approximately ten percent of the Jews of Minsk were able to escape the Minsk ghetto; however, only half of that number survived till the end of the war. A good portion of those final five percent who died, did so in order to take revenge against their captors and killers. The Jews of Minsk, who had already lost around

90,000 people to the war, sacrificed 5,000 more lives to contribute to the ultimate defeat of the

Nazi regime.

While all of the fighting was going on in the Naliboki Forests just outside of Minsk, there were still Jews living in the ghetto. By October 1943, the Minsk ghetto had been whittled down from roughly 100,000 to 2,000 inhabitants. Rubenchik, who had already escaped the ghetto and joined the partisans in the forests, relates his impressions of the liquidation of the ghetto based on information he gleaned from firsthand witnesses. He recounts,

By orders of the Nazi Regime, the remainder of the Jewish population was to be

sent outside the city to a place of execution where they were to be exterminated. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 156

Thus, on the evening of October 20, 1943, the ghetto borders were closed off by

the secret service, army, and police. On the following morning, the Jews were

loaded into cars and brought to Trostenets. Those who objected or were unable to

move due to malnutrition, swollen legs or illness were shot on the spot. If the

soldiers had any suspicion that people were hiding in a cellar or any other “safe”

place, they would throw in hand grenades. (Rubenchik 233)66

The Jews of Minsk seemed to sense that the end was coming. Especially those in the Jewish partisan units like Zorin’s Brigade were still attempting to rescue Jews from the ghetto even in late

October 1943. They knew that the time was imminent for the liquidation, or destruction of the ghetto and its entire population, and they wanted to save as many people as they could. With even fewer inhabitants, it was even more difficult to disguise someone and smuggle them into the ghetto.

Similarly, it was even more difficult for groups to escape. Conversely, the necessity to escape was escalating daily. The Jews knew that their destruction was imminent. It was with this end in mind that Smolar and other members of the Zorin brigade were executing as many rescues as possible, most led by Bronya Feldman. Smolar explains how she shared her experience on the day of the liquidation of the ghetto. There were almost no other survivors to provide an account. Smolar relates:

We had agreed that whenever Bronya Feldman went into the ghetto to bring out our

people, we would meet in Zorin’s headquarters to get the latest information and

decide, on the spot, what to do next. That was the situation at the end of October

1943.

When I got to Zorin’s headquarters, everyone was there. One look at the faces of

commander Sholem Zorin, commissar Haim Feygelman and chief of staff Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 157

Wertheim and I felt as though my heart had stopped beating. To my almost

hysterical question: “Bronya didn’t make it?”—Zorin quietly asked his adjutant to

call her in.

She was barely recognizable. Her usually smiling face was shrouded in deep

sorrow. She looked at me helplessly, barely able to speak.

No — she had not been able to get into the ghetto this time — there was no ghetto

left in Minsk— only smoke, heavy smoke, black soot everywhere — she could hear

the sound of machine guns, rifles, grenades —

On the way back she met several people who had managed to escape. She had

brought them into the forest.

These Jews told us:

“At dawn on October 21, it began. What was left of the ghetto was surrounded on

all sides. To the accompaniment of their usual bellowing row Sprouse — the Nazis

drove people from their homes half-undressed. The advance unit consisted of

Epstein, Rosenblatt and the rest of that gang, shouting, ‘Jews, there’s no use hiding,

we’ll find you anyway!’ People they found hiding were often shot on the spot. The

dead lay in the streets. The barking of dogs smothered the groans of the wounded.

The ghetto of the hundred thousand Jews of Minsk no longer existed.

When we recovered from this shattering news, Zorin’s staff decided to send out

immediately several men — on horseback and on foot — to intercept any Jews who

might be lost on the roads around Minsk. That same day 90 people were brought to

the partisan village and later to Zoirn’s base. A few others, hidden in the ghetto Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 158

“malinas” stayed there till nightfall and then set out toward the east, where the

number of partisan detachments was greater at that time.

How many Jews escaped that last massacre we did not know. Later, isolated Jews

would sometimes come into the forest. A very small number — perhaps ten —

survived in their hiding places until the day of liberation. (Smolar 143-144)

It is impossible to describe how Smolar must have felt knowing the last of the Minsk Jews in the ghetto had been murdered. Even Smolar struggles to describe his own feelings. He employs adjectives like sorrow, hysteria, and helplessness, but even these words pale in comparison to the reality of this monumental tragedy. Therefore, Smolar describes the emotional state of this moment by painting a picture of Bronya Feldman’s physical condition, which is better able to capture his feelings. Her physical appearance is completely disheveled. Her face is so devastated as to be unrecognizable, and her clothing, normally somewhat dirty and unkempt, is today covered in soot.

Similarly, the ghetto’s physical space is transformed into pure smoke and blackness. The emotional state related to the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto is so severe that it has transformed the physical reality of the Minsk Jews and Minsk itself. The soundscape of the scene too is full of sensory detail which gradually grows. First, Smolar’s heart begins to pound; Bronya’s voice is low and choppy; machine guns and hand grenades are introduced; finally, the barking of dogs covers the dying groans of the wounded. Although Smolar is unable to describe the magnitude of his feelings, the physical details he relates and the soundscape he provides paints a picture of the devastation he feels at the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto.

Even over 75 years after the event, it is extremely difficult to locate Jewish memoirs that include a firsthand account of the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto. On October 21, 1943 when the ghetto was liquidated very few survived. Most of the survivors of the Minsk ghetto had already Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 159 fled to the forest or were living in hiding outside the ghetto. Approximately 100 people made it out of the ghetto on that day and joined Zorin’s partisan brigade. Likely others escaped as well, but those accounts are difficult to find. What little remains is Smolar’s recitation of the events as they were shared with him. This tragedy, although not well recorded in history, was never forgotten. Like Smolar, those who heard of the events of the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto, continue to share that story, in hopes that the memory of those who died on that day will not be forgotten.

After the Liquidation of the Minsk Ghetto The story of a single group who survived in hiding, is rather famous among memoirists of the Minsk ghetto. There were thirteen people who survived the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto inside a malina in the Jewish cemetery. They lived there from the day of the liquidation until the liberation of Minsk by the Red Army on July 4, 1944. This is the only tale of the Minsk ghetto to take place after its destruction on October 21, 1943. Rubenchik tells the story of a few of his family members who were able to survive in this malina within the Minsk ghetto boundaries until the day of liberation. He relates:

Only a small number of Jews still lived in the ghetto at the end of 1943. They were

literally existing, but not living. They were a handful of hungry, shadow-like people

who were crazy from hiding out in basements, or in the few malinas that were still

around. The Germans and Police hunted them, diligently fulfilling the orders from

Berlin to wipe the Minsk ghetto from the face of the earth. However, the Jews, just

like any other living beings, were determined not to die before their time. This

feeling was strengthened by the knowledge that someone was intentionally trying

to wipe you out. They did whatever they had to in order to stay alive. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 160

At the time, at the end of Sochaia Street, after the tramway turnabout where the

Jewish cemetery began, a small group of prisoners made a daring move: they

bricked themselves up in a dug-out cave. There was only one aim to survive at any

cost in order to witness the arrival of the liberation fighters. It was a real miracle

that these families survived the nine months underground in total darkness, almost

without food, with a scant supply of water and inhuman conditions. …

The following excerpt is form Edward Freedman, a young prisoner of the Minsk

ghetto, who is presently living in Israel. We met just before my book was about to

be published.

“We hid in this cave in October 1943. We were at that time twenty-eight people.

The head and supervisor of our group was the baker, Pini Dobin. He went to the

cave together with his family, his elderly mother, his wife, and two sons, Boris and

Shimon. Also joining us was the coachman Eliah and his wife; my family were

four: my mother Mariasha, myself (I was eight years old), my cousin Rasha and her

son Marik Hochman. The bookkeeper Beril, an old watchmaker, a middle-aged

woman, Rachel and her young son Mosya and the tailor’s daughter Leah. Another

two girls hid with us, but I don’t remember their names. I have accounted for 19

people there, but there were a total of 28. No one could anticipate what would

happen to us…

I particularly remember my mother’s mood. She was a pharmacist by profession.

She adopted desperate measures to ensure our survival. As early as 1942, they tried

to get her to join the partisan brigades and leave me at some village. However, she

did not agree to abandon her son… Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 161

In the ghetto lived in many different places. Every time we moved, the first policy

was to prepare the malina. This frequently saved us from death…

I will describe, in short, life in the cave. It was dug out in the Jewish cemetery under

the concrete cover of a destroyed house. Two sections of shelves were arranged.

Each family tried to stock up enough supplies of dried bread and other provisions.

Prior to this, they prepared themselves for months for the willing imprisonment,

taking with them only the bare necessities. For preserving the water, they carried

several barrels containing 300 liters. In order to conceal and cover of the entrance,

the baker, Pini Dobin, prepared a manhole, bricks and other building material in

order to close off the hideout from the inside.

At first feeling themselves in relative safety, everybody was civil, did not despair

and believed they would soon witness the coming of the liberating Red Army. The

children invented many different games for themselves. My mother Maryasha sang

sad Jewish songs. Rachel told more jokes than usual. In order not to reveal our

whereabouts by our conversation and the noise we created, we lead an irregular life.

We slept during the day and were awake at night. With time we got used to this

routine because most of the time we were surrounded by darkness. There was an

oil lamp, a candle and toothpicks. Nevertheless, we tried not to use them.

Not everyone could bear this kind of life. The first to die was the oldest woman,

Chaya-Sara who was buried inside the cave. She was followed by the elderly

bookkeeper, Beril. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 162

After a few months, we understood that we were bound to die of thirst. The water

in the barrels had been used up and all that was left was to wet our dry lips. The

children suffered most of all.

Then, a miracle occurred. The baker Pini discovered that not far from the

bookkeeper’s grave the sand was wet. He began to dig around this place. To our

surprise, water from melting snow was seeping in. it seemed that the water had

permeated for many days. We filled our barrels to the full and drank water without

end. Then came the fear that this water would drown us. All of us moved to the

higher shelves but the water level continued to rise. Happiness was replaed by

despair. Nevertheless, there is a God. At the end of the week, Pini discovered that

the water level was in actual fact decreasing.

We spent five months there. The youths began to complain, and they requested that

they be released from this living grave. The young boys and girls were ready to join

the partisans, but our leader Pini Dobin did not agree to this. In his opinion, this

meant that he would be sending these people to a sure death. Even his own son

Boris’s arguments had little influence on him. In the end, two of the girls convinced

him. Outside the cave, it was already the month of March, spring. They promised

to establish a connection with the partisans and return to take us back with them to

the forests. However, no one ever saw them again after they left.

Rachel, Pini’s sister-in-law, requested to be released. He believed that she would

not reveal their secret hiding place. He instructed Rachel, “It’s better if you go with

someone. Take Mosya with you and collect money from those who are left. It is

bound to be useful. We need to buy something against scurvy.” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 163

The escape from the underground was successful. At Jubilee Square, Mosya met a

Belarusian acquaintance, Gana. Before the war, they had both worked at the shoe

factory. Gana lead them to her house and fed them some broth and bread. They ate

and wept. Afterwards they could not bear it any longer, and they told her that they

had spent the last five months living in a cave under the ground. The location they

did not tell her. Gana also wept out of sympathy… She told them that the ghetto

had no more Jews. The Germans had killed them all. Gana gave them bread, onions,

garlic and salt to take to help with their trip.

Later the baker Pini established contact with a woman who lived next to the

cemetery. It turned out that she knew Gana. This calmed Pini’s suspicions. The next

time he left the cave, he returned with good news, a partisan pamphlet. From this

we all knew that the Soviet army was soon to attack. It would only be a few days

until they reached Minsk. Anticipating the arrival of the Red Army, the people in

the cave did not notice that there was nothing left to eat.

We learned about the liberation of Minsk only two days after it happened. Most of

the thirteen people who were still alive left crawling on all fours. The fighters who

had liberated the city helped us. Afterwards the military command arrived. People

said the aforementioned Ilya Ehrenberg himself was among them. They ordered

military doctors to help us out since we were all blinded from the constant darkness

and no longer knew how to walk. However, I was carried out on a stretcher,

dehydrated and twisted with knees that didn’t straighten to be sent to the hospital.

It turned out that I was sick with dystrophy. The hunger and darkness had turned

me, a nine-year-old boy, into a man.” (Rubenchik 230-233)67 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 164

Of the 28 people who survived the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto within the ghetto itself, only 13 survived the war. Their story is one of hardship, fear, resistance, and courage. Their circumstances are distinct amongst survivors of the Minsk ghetto, yet their character traits are representative of the Minsk Jews as a whole. This group exemplifies the strength of will that the Jews of Minsk possessed, their determination to survive whether it be in the ghetto or in the partisan forests. The experience of young Edward Freeman also demonstrates the lost childhood that he was not able to regain even after surviving the Minsk ghetto. By liberation, this nine-year-old boy describes himself as being so bent and twisted one would think him an old man. He—like Krasnoperko,

Rubenchik, and Treister—had been forced into adulthood at an early age, and life after the ghetto—be it in malina or partisan brigade—did not allow for a return to innocence. These children would continue to fight even after so many had died.

During the nine months after the liquidation, the majority of Jewish survivors were still without homes fighting with the partisan units in the Naliboki forests surrounding Minsk. They continued to kill German soldiers, steal supplies and break equipment, and sabotage the Nazis in any way that they could. Many partisans—Jews and non-Jews alike—died trying to get the German invaders out of their city. When the Nazi army finally retreated on July 4, 1944, the partisan units began capturing, interrogating, and killing Nazi soldiers. Sometimes they wanted information, other times revenge. Rubenchik shares his experience as a witness to both:

I have many memories of events from my life in the partisan brigade. I will limit myself to

two incidents that occurred when the German were besieged at the entrance to Minsk.

I was returning to the base camp early in the morning in order to take breakfast back to all

those standing watch with me at the lookout post. I was halfway there when I saw a sleeping Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 165

German soldier by the side of the path. I quickly looked around me. There was no one

around except for him. I loaded my gun and shouted loudly in German, “Hands in the air!”

When he heard the shout, he jumped up as if bitten by a snake. I aimed my weapon at him

and commanded in German, “Throw your weapon down and step forward.”

He obeyed. I took up his gun, thinking that it would be a nice trophy. I told him to walk in

front without looking back. After a while, I began to smell the food from the kitchen

because we are getting closer to the brigade. I told him to take off his uniform, his boots,

and his watch, and tie everything into a bundle with a knot.

It was early that morning. I could see the German shivering from cold with the bundle of

clothes in front of him. I led him to brigade headquarters in the trenches. All the partisans

came out and began to praise me for this loot. Usually the partisans take for themselves the

valuables that are obtained in the confrontations with the German executioners. Since I did

not desire any of their valuables, I willingly shared them with my friends.

We met with German-speaking headquarters chief Rozinsky. He began to interrogate the

shivering Nazi soldier, who continued to shiver and requested that his clothes be returned

to him. In stammering Russian he said that he did not kill partisans, and then he burst into

tears. I took pity on him, and with Rozinsky’s permission, I returned to the hostage his

pants, boots, and cloak. I remember that he promised to tell everything to the senior partisan

commander. This occurred at the time that the German military was besieged at the

entrance of Minsk. Following the interrogation, the German prisoner was sent to division

headquarters. His fate is unknown to me. (Rubenchik Chapter 26)68

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 166

[Another time] we saw a terrible demonstration of national revenge: There were some

large, indistinct bodies, in torn clothes, hanging high in the trees. Around them were

screeching crows. We paused and came closer to examine them. I had never seen anything

like it. In the birch trees swung two halves of a human body tied by the feet. It looked as if

it had been chopped into two pieces from top to bottom except for the head. Down on the

ground lay a rolled-up officer’s hat with the SS emblem on it. The way it appeared, the

partisans had caught an SS officer, bent the trees, attached each leg to a tree, and released

the trees.

We continued to walk. A shallow brook was in front of us, with a small bridge above it.

We saw a naked German soldier, his body entangled in ropes, hanging with his head

downwards. His swollen body was covered in flies, and he was tied to the bridge. The head

and the neck were in the water. I could imagine the painful death of this fascist as he

suffocated.

These tortures came from the great bitterness the partisans felt over Nazi atrocities. They

were called the nation’s avengers. They were brought to a state where they could commit

cold-blooded murder with indifference. These were acts of revenge for the death and

destruction of their families, friends, homes, farms and villages—for all the destruction

that this war had caused. (Rubenchik 222-223)69

These two events occurred within weeks of each other and within a chapter of Rubenchik’s narrative. They demonstrate how differently the partisans responded to the German defeat in 1944.

Some captured soldiers were given what appears to be leniency—although Rubenchik relates that he cannot say what end that German soldier met. Others were tortured in killed in ways as brutal as those used to kill the Jews and non-Jews of Minsk. These were the kind of sights that the few Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 167 surviving Jews were faced with as they returned to a now free Minsk. The memoirists rarely relate how they felt about these gruesome deaths, only recording them as they recorded other deaths, but often foregoing their personal feelings about what they witnessed. Those personal feelings, however, become much stronger as the victims return to Minsk and see the final devastation of their hometown.

The return to Minsk after the war and after surviving the Minsk ghetto was strenuous on

Smolar, Rubenchik, and Treister. They all recall returning to their beloved city, which had been a place of such strong emotions—happy memories from before the war and the pain and loss associated with their time in the ghetto. The trials were rather similar to those that they had experienced in the summer of 1941 when they first entered the ghetto: scavenging for food, finding shelter, and trying to survive. It seemed as though so much had changed over the course of the war, and yet most Jews felt as though they were experiencing a cyclical return to the same situation that they had been in when Minsk was first invaded. Rubenchik, Smolar, and Treister respectively recall the devastation of the time and how they coped with their individual situations:

We reached Minsk. We entered from Respublikanskaia Street and through Jubilee

Square where the Judenrat building had once stood. The frightening German sign

Judenrat was no longer there. Everything around us was in ruins. There were many

burnt houses. The only remains were the foundations of the houses and the brick

chimneys. My heart was bitter at the sight. I wanted to cry.

Our house on Zilyoni Alley had remained whole, although strangers were living

there. When we entered the house, they audaciously repeated their claim that they

had bought this house from the owners at a fixed price. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 168

I burst into laughter from surprise, and said, “This is very nice! And if so who are

we?”

When Father declared that he was the rightful owner of the house, they did not

believe him.

“It is impossible! All the Jews here were killed, including the owners of the house.

I helped him a lot with bread and potatoes,” they said.

He stopped when he saw our moods. Of course, without identification we could not

prove a thing. In spite of this, they gave us a room where we could spend the night.

In the morning, the neighbors informed us that many possessions had been buried

in the owner’s garden.

The following day Yocha came. She had participated in the partisan ceremony and

wore a machine gun around her shoulder and a partisan cap with a red ribbon.

Yocha declared in a decisive tone, “Look for another apartment wherever you wish,

but get out of our apartment.”

Seeing that her words had no effect on the “new owner,” Yocha took off her

machine gun from her shoulder and shot upwards.

From the room a scared woman jumped up began to lament it Belarusian: “What is

going on here, people are being killed! Help! Help!”

Yocha at first spoke softly, and then in screams. “After tomorrow, you will not set

foot in here. Is this understood? We fought while you were getting rich! Get out of

our house! And if you don’t go willingly, you will be where my brothers and sister

are!” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 169

These were people who had made a fortune out of the suffering and sorrow of Jews.

Following the murders and atrocities, these people would come to the empty houses

and take for themselves the most valuable items. Our house was seized in this way

after we had fled. (Rubenchik Chapter 27)70

Returning to our liberated native city, we walked like mourners following a coffin.

No longer did we have any hope of perhaps meeting someone there that we knew.

(Smolar 148)

Minsk in those days was one tremendous partisan camp. At every step one met

armed men in the most bizarre dress, even in German uniforms taken from

prisoners, but with the unmistakable Partisan symbol — the red ribbon on the

shoulder. In the heart of the city, among the ruins, grazing on the weeds and

crabgrass, where the partisan horses. High in the clear summer sky floated the

smoke of partisan campfires. On sticks and iron rods hung large scorched kettles

— as if they were still in the forest — cooking something “to tide them over.” And

in accordance with partisan custom we sat down among a group of men completely

unknown to us and stuck our inseparable companions — our spoons — into the

common kettle of stew. (Smolar 150)

I took a walk in the neighborhood is beyond the center of the city, where thousands

of temporary homes had been set up. Here many of the Jews lived him I had known

in the ghetto and the forest. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 170

Often, when we embraced, we would not order a word, so deep was the joy of

having survived, of having outlived the enemy, of having returned to our native city

that now lay in ruins.

With Nochem Feldman, who was attending as commissar of a large partisan

detachment, I found it impossible to talk at all. “Let’s wait until later, after the

parade,” he suggested. When it was proposed, however that we all visit the graves

of our families in the area of the ghetto, we walked silently to the destroyed streets

of the ghetto, mute witnesses to the murder of the last Jews left behind the barbed

wire fence. Still standing was the Judenrat building, its doors and windows gaping

open. Also, the Labor Exchange and Jubilee Square with its trees laying on the

ground as if felled by a storm.

Still there was the Jewish cemetery, with open or barely covered graves containing

the remains of Jews who had been shot by the Nazis. Still there—but without any

sign as to what it was—was the place where 5000 Jews had been murdered on

Purim 1942. The ghetto hospital—with my hiding place in the boiler room—was

still there, too. (Smolar 151)

The euphoria of the first days of freedom was soon over. The return to Minsk was

sad, and for the majority of us – even tragic. Most Jews did not have any homes to

which they could return, or any families. It was like coming back to the cemetery.

The three of us – my mother, sister, and I – were a rare exception. The three of us

had experienced the beginning of the war together; we had been together in the

ghetto, had escaped from it and had come back to Minsk together. It was enormous Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 171

luck. However, we were homeless again. We could not return to our old flat, as the

house had been destroyed by a bomb on the 24th of June 1941. We did not have any

clothes or shoes, we were hungry, and to crown it all, we were homeless... Before

long we got letters from my eldest brother from Samarqand and from the second

one, who was in the Army at war. We were overjoyed – the whole of our family

was alive!

As for lodgings, the parents of my sister’s classmate offered us a room in their flat.

The room was small and used to serve as a through-passage, but it was the only

shelter we had. I believe that one of the reasons for the kindness of our landlords

was to placate the authorities. One of their sons was in the Red Army, but the other

one had been a local policeman during the war. He was even said to have been a

driver of a mobile, gas chamber. In such a situation, the help given to a partisan

family could be regarded as extenuating circumstances.

The room was about 6 square meters large, with four doors leading to it. Two of

them were boarded up, the third one, leading from the street to the kitchen, we

curtained off with a blanket. Then the blanket was replaced with a plywood

partition. We lived in that room for about ten years.

During the first weeks, we hardly had a single peaceful night. Minsk was often

bombarded. The retreating Germans tried to destroy the little that had not been

destroyed at the beginning of the war. I remember seeing, under West Bridge, a

man with his legs torn off by a bomb.

During one night a bomb got into a train, full of ammunition, and the burning train

fired and shelled the neighboring part of the city for the rest of the night. It was a Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 172

night of ceaseless cannonade. The shells whined above the roofs of the houses and

exploded somewhere in the neighborhood until morning.

I remember the only night that I spent in the bomb shelter under Saint Paul and

Peter’s church on Nemiga. Women were screaming, children crying, and men

swearing. It was terribly stuffy, and there was no toilet, so people used the shelter

also as a toilet.

After that night our landlord, Lyavontiy, and I dug out a small shelter in the yard

of our house and hid there during air-raid alarms. Again, like on the 24th of June

1941, I was lying with my cheek pressed to the damp ground, which was shaking

violently, and it felt as if every bomb was aimed right at the back of my head. And

the carbide lamps that were thrown from the planes with parachutes lit with their

blinding white light, not the neighborhood, nor even Lyavontiy, lying next to me,

but me personally. (Treister 45)71

On my way from the ghetto to the partisans, I had already had to ask for food or, to

call a spade a spade, to go a-begging. During our first weeks in Minsk, after

returning back home from the partisans, we did not have any food or money, and I

had to take up begging again. As far as I remember, I went begging in the houses

that were situated not far from the former ghetto.

I still had my submachine gun. We had to give up the weapons only after the

partisan parade on the 26th of July 1944. Until that day I could not leave my gun

anywhere and used to carry it on me all the time. You can imagine what it looked

like when a 17-year-old boy, armed with a submachine gun, came into the house Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 173

and asked for something to eat. People did not usually refuse. They invited me to

share their meals with them and sometimes even gave me something for later on.

It did not last long, though. We were soon put down for allowance and started

getting ration cards. Besides, an additional opportunity to earn some money

appeared, and I had to take up shoemaking again.

That is what our life was like in the first weeks and months after Minsk was

liberated. But the war was still going on in the West. (Treister 46)72

While memoirists’ personal feelings about the cruel treatment of Nazi soldiers at the end of the occupation are not often stated explicitly, their feelings about the Minsk they returned to are presented with acute emotion. The sentiments contained in the written accounts of the destruction of enemy soldiers pale in comparison to the strong reactions the Jews had to the destruction of their former hometown. Whether it was the sight of a former home or the former ghetto, survivors of the Minsk ghetto recall the strong feelings associated with the return to Minsk. They feel rage and betrayal by the neighbors who occupied their homes; sorrow and despair by the deaths, hunger, and homelessness they are facing; euphoria and joy in unexpected reunions and survival. In addition, survivors often equate the devastation of the time with the summer three years earlier, when Minsk was first invaded. In this way, the story of the Minsk ghetto comes full circle at this point. After twenty-six months living in the ghetto and then an additional nine months hiding or fighting, the Jews of Minsk returned to a home in ruins. The time for mourning that had been begun thirty-five months earlier, would simply continue. Indeed, it was a time of compounded mourning, as the deaths of loved ones combined with the loss of home.

Hersh Smolar, the Jewish atheist who organized the Jewish resistance within the Minsk ghetto, gave a eulogy, a form of Kaddish, when the Minsk ghetto was liquidated at the end of Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 174

October 1943. His mass eulogy was given on behalf of the Jews who died in the Minsk ghetto, and on behalf of all the Minsk Jews. He mourned their loss, explaining that the Minsk of the past was shaped by its Jewish presence and that with the destruction of the Jews, the Minsk of the present had lost something irreplaceable. His speech, as he records it in his memoir, reads:

“More than two years ago, in August 1941, we appealed from our underground to

the Jews in the Minsk ghetto with the warning, ‘Ghetto means death! By every

means possible, break down the fence around the ghetto!’ By the end of the first

year of occupation we had open the way to the partisan forest. Now we must bring

you the dreadful news:

“The ghetto no longer exists.

“There are no more Jews in that city where entire generations of Jews shaped its

Jewish look, it’s Jewish character, and molded its way of life with their blood and

their sweat.

“They no longer exist, the Jews of Minsk, who inscribed their names in the history

of our people with their pioneering role in establishing and developing all the social

movements that produced fighters for our national and social liberation.

“They no longer exist, the Jews of Minsk, who contributed so much to our national

and cultural advancement. In the streets and byways of Minsk you can no longer

hear the sound of our Yiddish speech.

“They no longer exist, the Jews of Minsk, whose sons and daughters, at the end of

the last century, helped to consolidate the militant freedom forces of all of Russia.

The Nazi barbarians destroyed the wooden building in Minsk where Jewish workers

helped to organize the first conference of the Russian labor movement. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 175

“They no longer exist, the Jews of Minsk, the city which saw the rise of the

movement that we know so familiarly as ‘the Minchukes.’

“No more Jewish men, whose sons and daughters fought on the barricades in 1905

to bring down the walls of that enormous ghetto known as the Pale of Settlement.

“No more Jewish Minsk, where thousands upon thousands of our people joined the

armed struggle against the pogromchiks at the end of the Civil War, when they

organized special Jewish militia units.

“It no longer exists, the city which witnessed the flowering of Yiddish art and

culture.

“And there is no longer any hope of saving it. We are all orphans, we, the last Jews

of the ghetto.” (145-146)

Smolar mourned the loss of Jewish Minsk and of every individual Jew who had made Minsk what it was up to that point. He mourned the people, culture, and lives that were needlessly lost in the

Holocaust. He ended his speech explaining that there is no hope for that vibrant Jewish city or for its Jewish people. Smolar, like the other Jews of Minsk, survived the war only to be left as orphans.

They had no homes in a physical sense and no homeland in a spiritual sense. They were cut off from their past, which has disappeared, and were alone in their present without a future in sight.

Smolar’s eulogy cites all the losses of the Jews of Minsk and ends without hope. This bleak speech reminds the reader of everything that has been forgotten in the tale of the Holocaust—Yiddish art and culture, Jewish political and social advancements, etc.—and of everything that has been lost.

There is no other end for Smolar’s eulogy, just as there is no other end for the memoirs written or this chapter. These stories are left with only lists of the dead, tales of continued antisemitism after the war, and reminders of a lost people. I leave Smolar’s words here as a fitting conclusion to what Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 176 was lost and how it should be remembered. The memory of Jewish Minsk lives on in the stories recorded about it; I conclude this account with the end of the ghetto, but not the end of the Minsk

Jews.

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 177

Chapter 2: Restoring Minsk: Gebeleva's Sacred Quest for Personal Identity and Scattered Community

The Long Path to Gebelev Street As Anna Pavlovna chapter lay in the hospital on her deathbed, she turned to her friend

Svetlana Gebeleva—journalist, Jew, and daughter of Mikhail Gebelev, leader of the Minsk ghetto underground. A fellow scholar of the Minsk ghetto, Kupreevna had spent her career researching the Minsk ghetto underground. Gebeleva records the words Kupreevna told her from her hospital bed just before she died: “Remember, Sveta, your father was a hero. Carry the truth about your father, about the heroes of the Minsk ghetto, to others. Promise me, that you will continue my work. I believe in you” (42)73. For Gebeleva, fulfilling this promise became her life’s mission. She embodied the idea that “the passing of the survivor [or victim] does not mean the passing of witness. Many have become witnesses by adoption and investigate what happened with religious fervor” (Hartman, “Shoah and Intellectual Witness” 2). For Gebeleva, this investigation took the form of commemoration, of having a street in Minsk named after her father. After all, every other leader of the Minsk underground had a street named after him. During the war Minsk was divided into five regions, and the leaders of the underground in each of those regions except Gebelev’s had streets named after them. Only the Tel’manovskii region—the region of the Minsk ghetto—was left unrepresented in Minsk’s cartography. Gebeleva was determined to right the injustice, to have her father recognized as the leader of the underground in the Minsk ghetto and to fulfill her promise to a friend to continue her work, to carry the truth about her father to others.

For years, Gebeleva’s attempt to memorialize her father’s leadership and sacrifice went unanswered. She recalls a phone call she made in 1993, hoping to have a street in Minsk named after her father, as well as the answer she received. It would be “нецелесообразно” or “pointless” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 178 to record her father’s name on a map of Minsk (Gebeleva 44). Feeling discouraged and jaded,

Gebeleva and her family emigrated to the United States the next year. For five years, she travelled around the country visiting people who knew her father, learning about him, and writing about him. She recalls that during this period “her soul ached to accomplish her life goal”74 of gaining her father the recognition he deserved by having a street named after him in Minsk (45).

It was not until 2005 that Gebeleva finally received news from her brother in Belarus that due a multitude of factors—her own efforts, relations between the United States and Belarusian embassies, and work by archivists—that finally a street of Minsk was to be named after her father.

This story is the central narrative of Svetlana Gebeleva’s second-generation Holocaust postmemoir, The Long Path to the Sacred Street.75 The significance of this day is noted in textual symbols sprinkled over the next few pages of the chapter. Whereas earlier in the text, Gebeleva used typical personal pronouns to allude to her father, in this chapter pronouns referring to him are written in all capital letters. It is as though her ability to accomplish something on her father’s behalf, to finally realize her own dream, and to fulfill her promise to Anna Kupreevna makes her father an even more central figure in her life. One cannot read the pages of this chapter without his or her eyes being drawn to any mention of HIM. The capitalization of the personal pronoun deliberately distracts the reader from the story about Gebeleva and her decade-long search to commemorate her father. It draws away attention from Gebeleva and places her father’s story as the central element to the text. Despite the fact that she cannot write all aspects of her father’s story and is therefore forced to recount her own, Gebeleva forces the reader to remember the true purpose of the renaming of the street and, even more importantly, the true purpose of her whole postmemoir.

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 179

The Genre of Postmemoir While for the survivors of the Minsk ghetto, memoir was the logical genre to employ to tell their stories, Gebeleva justifies her choice of a similar genre—postmemoir—to tell her own story alongside her father’s. She relies on the dual nature of postmemoir to explain her choice of genre. Memoir is a genre between literature and history; postmemoir is a way to transmit history in a literary form, even without the benefit of the survivor or the true memoirist. As Geoffrey

Hartman relates, “As the eyewitnesses pass from the scene and even the most faithful memories fade, the question of what sustains Jewish identity is raised with a new urgency. In this transitional phase, the children of the victims play a particular role as transmitters of a difficult defining legacy” (41). In Svetlana Gebeleva’s 2010 account, The Long Path to the Sacred Street, she takes upon herself the mantle of witness, of postmemoirist. In turn, memoir itself takes on a new form— postmemoir.

Marianne Hirsch, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and author of the concept ‘postmemory,’ elucidates

‘Postmemory’ describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the

personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before—to experiences

they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which

they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and

affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory’s

connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by recall but by imaginative

investment, projection, and creation. To grow up with overwhelming inherited

memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s

consciousness, is to risk having one’s own life stories displaced, even evacuated,

by our ancestors. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic fragments of Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 180

events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These

events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present.

(www.postmemory.net)

Gebeleva’s life and memory, as reflected in her postmemoir, have been shaped by her father’s experience in the Minsk ghetto. The effects of his past ripple on into her present, enough “to seem to constitute memories in their own right.” Although Gebeleva never met her father, possibly because she never met her father, her life story can only be told when it is intertwined with her father’s. Her postmemoir is her attempt to recreate the life story of someone whose absence was so strong it appeared as a presence in her own life. Alan Berger, too, expounds upon the choice of autobiographical writing for the children of Holocaust survivors and victims when he says, “The second generation has a double burden of mourning a past that they never knew but which shapes their lives while, at the same time, seeking to shape this elusive memory for their own children and future generations. The indelible stain on the soul of history is felt in an intensely personal way by the second-generation” (Berger Lessons and Legacies 343). While Gebeleva can give an accurate account of her own life, in her postmemoir she also endeavors to transmits as clear a picture as possible of her father, Mikhail Gebelev, a leader of the Minsk underground movement against the Nazis.

The Long Path to the Sacred Street is two-sided, mirroring the binary nature of postmemoir. Gebeleva’s second-hand transmission of another’s experience openly acknowledges the duality of postmemoir as a genre. In the opening note of the book, titled simply as “From the

Author.” In this note Gebeleva explains

“I tried to tell, as vividly and intelligibly as possible, the story about my father,

about my father not only as a fighter, a hero, but also as a man surrounded by family, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 181

friends, and brothers-in-arms. I strove to show historians his nobility, love of

people, courage, and heroism. Everything that is written in this book is corroborated

by documents. In my home museum of my father, many materials are gathered

about the Minsk ghetto and its underground.” (5)76

From here, Gebeleva provides an extensive list of scholars’ works, anthologies, secondary sources, etc. that she has in her private collection. She concludes by referring to the many “recollections about her father, newspapers, journals, and books with publications of him, which she gathered in different cities” (5)77. Not only does Gebeleva strive for a clear description of her father and his life, attempting to bring out his character and interpersonal relations, she also endeavors to make him a dynamic literary figure. She explains that she provides him with a literary persona that is based on primary and secondary sources. Essentially, she writes about her father both from a subjective and also a research-based standpoint. She incorporates the elements of both literature and history to recreate a man she never knew from a place grounded in both fact and fiction.

Interestingly, Gebeleva directly comments on a portion of her audience, namely historians. She says that she wrote about her father’s character—“his nobility, love of people,” etc.—for historians specifically. In this moment, she plays with the blurred lines of the postmemoir genre. The literary elements of her postmemoir, characterization and verbose descriptions, are directed to the historians. While the elements of academic research and travel are clearly present, Gebeleva wants historians to note her creativity in describing her father, not from a historical standpoint but from a literary one. She chose the postmemoir genre so that her father would not simply be a historic figure who has facts and actions impersonally attached to his name, rather Mikhail Gebelev as his daughter transmits him to the reader is not only a man who concretely lived and led the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 182 underground movement in the Minsk ghetto, but also a person who breathed and bled, loved and fought.

Gebeleva utilizes the duality present in the postmemoir genre to give credibility to her father’s actions while allowing her imagination room to invent, understand, and depict a man she never met. Lawrence Langer once posed the following question: “To whom shall we entrust the custody of the public memory of the Holocaust? To the historian? The critic? The poet, novelist, or dramatist? To the surviving victim? … [W]ith the exception of surviving victims, all are witnesses to memory rather than rememberers themselves” (Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of

Memory 39). With her accurate yet lively depiction of her unknown father, Gebeleva seems to provide the answer to Langer’s query. She seems to say, “We, the second generation, will continue to witness, even if we are witnesses to memory rather than the Holocaust itself.” This, too, emphasizes the lack of chronology inherent in postmemoir. Evolved from Hirsch’s concept of

“postmemory,” the genre of postmemoir imbues a typical memoir with the temporal layering that the prefix post- implies. In her article, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Marianne Hirsch explains that “‘postmemory’ signals more than a temporal delay and more than a location in an aftermath.

Postmodern, for example, inscribes both a critical distance and a profound interrelation with the modern; post-colonial does not mean the end of the colonial but its troubling continuity. …

Postmemory shares the layering of these other ‘posts’” (106). Gebeleva, then, adopts the concept of postmemory, weaving her life’s story with that of her deceased father’s.

The departure from memoir to postmemoir by the second-generation brings the reader of literature of the Minsk ghetto full circle. It indicates that the children of survivors consider their parents’ experience in the ghetto to be a formative part of their own identities. The effects of the hellish life inside the ghetto ripple out to subsequent generations, causing them to define their own Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 183 lives in terms of an event they themselves did not experience but can still bear witness to. Svetlana

Gebeleva, a journalist from Minsk, utilizes the genre of postmemoir as a medium to understand her present through the lens of the past. She bases parts of her own life—the present—on her father’s example—the past. Her father’s reconstructed life serves as a model for her own in terms of personality traits, relationships, and home. Gebeleva reconstructs her father’s identity in order to understand her own; she seeks out the last remnants of her father’s friends in order to create a similar community for herself; finally, she imprints her father’s name forever onto the city of

Minsk itself in order to reclaim the city as her home.

Reassembling the Life of Mikhail Gebelev Chapter One of Gebeleva’s narrative begins thus: “On my table there is a portrait of a young, handsome man with an open face and expressive eyes” (10)78. The initial sentence of her postmemoir introduces the tangled web Gebeleva experiences when talking about herself or her father. The two are difficult to separate. It is his portrait, but it is placed on her desk. Add to this connection the fact that every time she looks at the portrait of her father, she probably sees something of herself in his face. Do they share the same expressive eyes? Maybe it is their cheekbones or jawline that are similar. Maybe she can’t see the similarities, but she knows they are possible, so she continues to search for them. Compound their possible familial resemblance with the portrait’s location: on her desk. Gebeleva is telling her reader that every time she sits down to write, her father is as physically present as he has ever been in her life. His presence will influence every page of her work, just as his absence influenced every day of her life.

In order to substantiate the idea that this book is not about Gebeleva alone, the initial chapters are loaded with information about Gebelev. His story takes center stage in the preliminary pages of his daughter’s postmemoir. Even though she has never met her father, Gebeleva does Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 184 everything she can to piece together an account of his life. As Jacobs states, “The narratives that inform descendant identity are ... often incomplete, a limitation that, while acknowledged, does not render these stories less meaningful for the children and grandchildren of survivors who look to these narratives for a greater understanding of self” (Holocaust Across Generations 2). Chapter

Three of Gebeleva’s narrative serves as a fragmented introduction to her father and his life, which in turn informs the reader about Gebeleva herself. It is by far the longest chapter in her book, and despite its placement early on in the text, is the central message of Gebeleva’s story. The chapter introduces her father from others’ points of view. Working her way through his life, Gebeleva utilizes descriptions from other books and from personal interviews to create an image of who her father was.

Gebeleva’s depiction of her father, however, differs vastly from other unbiased, impersonal accounts. It is clearly the illustration of a loved one. Evgeny Finkel’s description of Gebelev in

Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust presents a sharp contrast with

Gebeleva’s portrayal. Even isolated, the title of Finkel’s monograph divorces his depiction from

Gebeleva’s. He views Gebelev as an ordinary Jew and describes him as such when explaining his role in the underground resistance movement of the Minsk ghetto. Finkel writes,

[N]ew members joined and assumed key roles. The most important of these was

Mikhail Gebelev. Like other underground leaders, Gebelev was a devoted

communist. In 1924 he had already risen to the rank of Komsomol leader in his

small hometown of Uzliany. From 1937 to 1939 Gebelev studied at the Communist

Party’s school for propagandists and worked as a low-level party cadre. His wife

and children had escaped the city before the German takeover, and this made

Gebelev more available for resistance work. (Finkel 166) Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 185

This description provides a solid introduction to Gebelev’s role and his importance within the resistance movement of the Minsk ghetto. It touches on many of the key aspects that Gebeleva focuses on in her own postmemoir, and yet differs vastly in the manner it is presented. Both authors have never met Gebelev, and both were forced to research his life through secondary sources,

German documentation, in-person interviews, etc. However, their approaches to writing about

Gebelev are markedly different. Finkel is able to provide a sterile, chronological summation of

Gebelev’s life, while Gebeleva’s account in Chapter Three of her postmemoir provides an overly sanguine, disorderly, chapter-long narrative of her father’s life. The chapter breaks down

Gebelev’s life into three main parts: his childhood; his participation in the youth komsomol group and his time in the army; and his time as a leader of the underground movement in the Minsk ghetto. Despite these categories, the chapter itself is less organized; rather, it mirrors real life. The quotes are not organized into categories or even placed chronologically. Instead they work together to provide a living, breathing description of a complex man who cannot simply be labeled as brother, woodworker, soldier, or captive. Gebelev was all of those things and more. The somewhat sporadic, piecemeal collection of accounts in contrast with Finkel’s sterilized summary of his life reflect this reality.

The random accounts of Gebelev’s life also serve to slowly build a picture of Gebelev’s character. The first account was imparted directly to Gebeleva by Tatiana Arkadeevna Boiko, who said, “For us, the youth [in the ghetto], he was like a god: handsome, smart, honest, bold” (17).79

This larger-than-life description of Gebelev was probably similar to Gebeleva’s own perception of her father growing up. If she was told about him, she likely would have grown up hearing about the man who saved thousands of lives and even sacrificed his own life, rather than betraying his friends. So to begin with a description of her father as a god, reinforces the original impression Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 186 that she would have had. In this way, Gebeleva invites her reader to discover more about her father’s life. She believed him to be nonpareil, so that’s the first impression the reader receives.

The reader then traces Gebeleva’s fragmented understanding of Gebelev’s past, learning about her father’s childhood, youth activities, army service, and time in the ghetto; although not in the order they occurred and never receiving a full picture, just enough pieces to begin to reconstruct the puzzle that was her father’s life. One interesting example of this is made up by the descriptions of her father’s childhood. He was one of ten children, whose mother died when they were young.

Despite this, and according to all the accounts in the Gebeleva’s narrative, their childhood home was remarkable. The children never fought; they loved to read and sing; and all of the boys were talented and hard-working craftsmen like their father. While the account may not provide completely accurate details of Gebelev’s home life: it does provide an accurate picture of the type of accounts Gebeleva was receiving about her father. After hearing such positive assessments, it is not surprising that her first impression of her father is one of a man verging on godhood.

Gebelev’s young life centers on his participation as one of the founding four members of the Uzliany youth komsomol group. He was the secretary of the organization and all of the quotes about him from this time describe him, first and foremost, as a leader. According to a childhood friend, his other qualities included, “a wonderful talent as an organizer. … [He was] very simple, quick to sympathize, attentive to others. Misha would come to help at any moment. He was polite and tactful to refinement” (29).80 Like his home life, Gebelev himself is described through a lens of rose-colored glasses. In fact, everything concerning Gebelev is framed that way, while

Gebeleva’s life is simply ordinary. The distinction allows the reader more of a glimpse into how

Gebeleva perceives her father than into her father’s actual nature. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 187

At fifteen, Gebelev was called to serve in the army and was forced to grow up rapidly as he transitioned from the army to the ghetto. This part of his life is not as well detailed in Gebeleva’s accounts. Presumably she was unable to find people from his army days who could give her descriptions of him at that time. Therefore, the bulk of the chapter on her father details Gebelev’s exploits in the ghetto itself. Gebeleva pieces these parts of her father’s life together using many of the memoirs written by the survivors of the Minsk ghetto. One memoir that she devotes significant attention to was written by David Kisel’. Like Smolar and many others, Kisel’ wrote a memoir, which Gebeleva includes in part in her account. His story bears some remarkable resemblances to

Gebelev’s own and includes direct references to Gebelev himself. Like many other memoirs of the

Minsk ghetto, Kisel’s story of life in the ghetto centers around the pogroms that occurred there.

He uses them to mark time. Beyond that he also uses people he knew in the ghetto to describe his experience there. Outside his family, the first person he introduces to his readership is Mikhail

Gebelev. An associate of Gebelev before the war, Kisel’ describes him thus

He was an energetic, handsome man. He said that we needed to get involved in the

underground wrestle with the enemy. I was included in the group with Khanan

Gusinov. We fulfilled all tasks that Gebelev gave us. He was a genuine hero of the

underground. The underground center in the ghetto was then led by Smolar. He was

called ‘Skromnyi.’ But if ‘Skromnyi’ was always modest, then Misha Gebelev was

always the epicenter of the war. Factually, he was the soul of the underground

(75).81

This very flattering description of Gebelev matches with Gebeleva’s own ideas about his character.

And later in the story, when Kisel’ is tortured and then sent to the GULAG, he directly relates his experience to Gebelev’s. He explains that he understands the torture that Gebelev experienced at Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 188 the hands of the Gestapo. These shared characteristics from ghetto life to torture and from a shared hometown and profession to working in the underground, give Gebeleva someone who relates to her father. Although she cannot read his own words about his experience, she values the words of those who struggled and suffered with her father. Kisel’s account of his trials and memories brings

Gebeleva closer to her father, even if only indirectly.

After reading accounts of her father, Gebeleva briefly turns to firsthand accounts by survivors who knew her father personally. Relying on those who knew her father, she begins to piece together the relationships that were central to Gebelev’s life, and later uses those relationships as a pattern to form her own. One of the earliest memories she has of an account of her father, comes from one of her father’s friends. It is a story that makes her feel closer to him.

Simon Shneider recounts that his life serves as a living representation of Gebelev’s selfless service and sacrifice for the underground. Based on the emphasis she places on this story, Gebeleva remembers the following meeting possibly more brightly than any other of her childhood. She describes a man from Gebelev’s hometown coming to visit her mother. He recounts his interaction with Gebelev to Geveleva’s mother thus

I was there, in the square, from which Misha Gebelev sent a group from the ghetto

to the partisan detachment. He should have left with this group to join the partisans.

There was only one spot left in the truck—it was for him. However, seeing me

among those staying behind, he said,

“You go, Simon. I’ll take the last trip…”

I declined. He persisted. He was able to convince me. He saved me. But he . . .

(79) 82 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 189

Shneider continued the conversation, crying and asking Gebeleva’s mother for forgiveness that he lived and Gebelev died. Gebeleva remembers this grown man crying, not only on behalf of her father, but also on behalf of all of the Jews from their home village, Uzliany, who were massacred.

Although she was not there to witness her father sacrificing himself for Shneider, she got to hear a testimony of her father’s selflessness. This story is representative of how Gebeleva is reexperiencing her father’s life during the Holocaust. She lives it all through second-hand accounts rather than experiencing first-hand events. Yet for Gebeleva and her reader, these witnesses are remarkably compelling and powerful. She remembers a conversation held in the kitchen on her childhood home well enough to approximate it word-for-word. Her memories, like those of

Holocaust survivors themselves, are strong and enduring. She shares them because the transmission of these events, even through second-hand sources, influenced her whole life, setting her on a path to restore her father’s name. She’s hoping that these same stories, recalled and transmitted years later, will have a similar effect on her readers.

In recreating the story of her father’s life, Gebeleva turns to the written and oral testimonies of her father’s contemporaries. David Kisel’ and Simon Shneider are just a few examples of how

Gebeleva utilizes testimony to recreate her father’s past, helping her comprehend her own present.

However, a knowledge of her father’s childhood, day-to-day life in the ghetto, and heroic death is not enough. Gebeleva “attests to the continuing impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations, [to the fact that] the second generation’s legacy is both constantly present and continually elusive” (Berger Children of Job 3). For Gebeleva, this elusive idea of individual remembrance is not enough; she still thirsts for communal recognition. She longs for commemoration—of her father’s sacrifice specifically and of the tens of thousands of other residents of the Minsk ghetto generally. In order to remember and commemorate the experience Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 190 of the Minsk ghetto more generally, Gebeleva begins to create a network of likeminded individuals who can assist her in her quest. In this endeavor, the first person she turns to is Anna Kupreevna.

Kupreevna as the Catalyst for Building a Network of Witnesses Gebeleva and her husband moved from Minsk to Buffalo, New York in 1994. In her own words, she describes the experience saying, “Setting out for Buffalo in 1994, I did not leave behind my dreams: to restore the name of my father, a hero. My husband and I searched for people who were close to us in spirit” (111).83 The two ideas seem fundamentally unconnected—her dreams and her acquaintances. Even reading her prose about the move to Buffalo feels as though there is something missing between the two sentences. However, for Gebeleva, the two desires—to restore her father’s name and to do so with people of like mind around her—were inseparably connected.

In order to restore her father’s name, she first became acquainted with the people who knew him personally and now, she turns to others who know and value the history of the Minsk ghetto; they too will serve as witnesses that the name Mikhail Gebelev is truly worth restoring.

Gebeleva devotes a central chapter of her narrative to “The Victory of Anna Kupreeva.”

She introduces Kupreeva stating that “many years ago Anna Pavlovna imparted hope” in her quest to remember and commemorate my father’s life (64).84 Kupreeva was the senior scientific fellow at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus when she first contacted Gebeleva. Her work there was exceptional because, unlike her colleagues, this Belarussian woman did not shy away from identifying the people she studied as Jewish. She was a Belarusian researcher who worked on the history of the Minsk ghetto when such research was frowned upon, if not outright forbidden in the Soviet Union. One day she phoned Gebeleva and asked her to help in the collection of materials on Gebelev and his leadership in the underground movement. Although she contacted Gebeleva for help in researching Gebleva’s Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 191 father, she ended up providing Gebeleva with information, contacts, and knowledge. Kupreeva became Gebeleva’s mentor. Their relationship deeply affected Gebeleva’s life and her search for her father. She relied on Kupreeva’s expertise and came to follow her model of dedication to her research. Due to their similar backgrounds of growing up without fathers, the two became were very close.

One marked correlation between Gebeleva and Kupreevna is the unjust treatment of their fathers and the subsequent mistreatment that they both had to face. Gebeleva shares Kupreeva’s personal history, noting that Kupreeva’s road to research was not an easy one. In 1938,

Kupreevna’s father was called to Moscow and offered a job there; when he declined he was quickly arrested and shot—although not fatally—in the span of one night. Nineteen years later, the KGB informed the family that her father was rehabilitated. Meanwhile, the family was cast out of their home, and as a child, Kupreeva and her two siblings were labelled “children of an enemy of the state” (66).85 Despite the obstacles in her path, she studied hard in school and was eventually able to get a job and take night classes. When she was admitted to graduate school, her father’s status was again brought into play and she was not given a dissertation topic for quite some time. In

1957, she was awarded her doctoral degree and became a researcher at the Institute of History

Academy of Sciences in the BSSR, where she began her research into the Minsk ghetto, setting the trajectory for her studies for the rest of her life. This devotion to the history of the Minsk ghetto, despite personal obstacles, inspired Gebeleva and created a connection between the two individuals.

Another similarity that the two shared was their love of writing and their interest in the history of the Minsk ghetto. When they were first introduced, Gebeleva was so impressed with

Kupreeva’s research that she adopted her motivation for writing about the Minsk ghetto. She even Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 192 describes Kupreeva’s motivation behind her research in the following manner: “Her only dream was to let people in the Republic and abroad know about how Jews were tortured, tortured, killed by fascists just because they were Jews. About how fearlessly the patriots fought for freedom behind barbed wire, how they went to the execution with their heads held high” (68).86

Interestingly, the motivation that Gebeleva ascribes to Kupreeva fully coincides with her own motivation to research and write about her father. While Kupreeva wants other Belarusians to recognize the patriotism and sacrifice that occurred in the ghetto generally, Gebeleva wants the same groups of people to acknowledge the same characteristics about her father specifically. This is what has driven her to devote so much of her time to reconstructing her father’s life, and she recognizes a kindred desire in Kupreeva’s own research and writing.

Kupreevna and Gebeleva’s relationship grew over many years, causing Gebeleva to embrace Kupreevna as a parental figure in her life. Kupreevna shared a passion for history on the

Minsk ghetto with Gebeleva but was a similar age to Gebelev. This similarity in age plus devotion to the commemoration of the Minsk ghetto allowed Gebeleva to conflate Kupreevna not only with a parental role, but also with the role of a Holocaust survivor. Despite the fact the Kupreeva is not a survivor of the ghetto, or even Jewish, to Gebeleva her knowledge of life in the ghetto and her identical subject matter to many survivor-memoirists of the ghetto allow her to stand in as a representative of a survivor. Gebeleva depicts Kupreevna’s thoughts and ideas about ghetto life in her old age as mirrors of the thoughts of survivors as they are aging and dying. She takes some liberty. Embellishing a quotation by Kupreeva, to represent memory of the traumatic events of the ghetto in old age, Gebeleva recalls a note she received from Kupreeva, which reads, “Forgive my typos. My hands don’t work. But in my head, the material remains. It was hard won by me, it has come out of me. It has come out of my legs, my hands, my soul, and my heart. I have lived and Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 193

now live it. These were wonderful people!” (69).87 In this utterance, Kupreeva metaphorically speaks for both the survivors of and the writers on the Minsk ghetto. She, like other survivors, has hands that are withered with age, yet a mind that is resilient with memory. She draws a distinct connection between the writer and the survivor as she demonstrates a parallel connection between memory and writing. Although the survivor may not have the physical strength or skill to record his or her experience, the writer does not have the memory. It is only as the two complement each other that they are able to create something such as Kupreeva’s monograph or even Gebeleva’s book.

To Gebeleva, her life and Kupreevna’s become intertwined: they share the experience of growing up without a father who was incarcerated without reason; they are both writers, sharing the subject matter of the Minsk ghetto; and, ultimately, they both desire commemoration of the members of the underground in the Minsk ghetto. Kupreevna’s dual connection to other survivor- memoirists of the Minsk ghetto, namely a shared subject matter and the loss of father-figures, also prompt Gebeleva to gain recognition for Kupreevna as she gained it for her father. Just as she took up the cause to have a street in Minsk named after her father, she also makes a case to her readership, pleading Kupreeva’s cause to be officially designated Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. As with her father’s situation, Gebeleva deliberately attempts to honor Kupreeva and her sacrifices as much as possible.

In another instance, Gebeleva spoke at a conference in the Belarusian Museum of History of the Great Patriotic War on the day that Kupreeva died. Before she spoke, Gebeleva asked attendees to stand for a moment of silence to honor Kupreeva. Afterwards, Chernoglazova— another scholar on the Minsk ghetto and an employee of the museum—asked Gebeleva who gave her permission to disrupt the conference in such a manner. Succinctly, Gebeleva replied, “My Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 194

conscience” (69).88 Her devotion to this woman and the similar drive they shared to carry the truth of the Minsk ghetto and Mikhail Gebelev to their readers caused Gebeleva to champion Kupreevna in many of the same ways she had her own father: speaking out against detractors and calling for fair and physical representations of their accomplishments. Gebeleva seeks to honor Kupreeva as she did her father. Their shared personal losses of their own fathers and their interest in spreading knowledge of the Minsk ghetto cause Gebeleva to create a community of survivors and like- minded individuals. Kupreevna is adopted into this community as the first member and a member of the same generation as Holocaust survivors themselves. However, the community quickly expands from Kupreevna alone to include many second-generation witnesses like Gebeleva herself. They seek not only to remember those who suffered and died in the Minsk ghetto, but also to reframe the narrative of the ghetto and to reclaim Minsk as their home.

Expanding her Network of Remembrance As Gebeleva undergoes a process of remembrance, seeking to discover what her father’s life was like, she encounters others along her way who share her desire to remember the Minsk ghetto. After recovering her father’s lost memories, Gebeleva forms a network of like-minded individuals who also want to record and to witness similar people and events. At the outset of her commemorative efforts, Gebeleva’s objective was to understand who her father was and his role in the Minsk ghetto and then to memorialize his sacrifice by having a street named after him.

However, once she completes these tasks in 2005, Gebeleva is still drawn to the story of the Minsk ghetto, and more specifically to other people who are trying to remember and commemorate the events of the ghetto in their own way. So Gebeleva begins to create a network of like-minded individuals who desire to preserve the history of the Minsk Jews. Her community expands from a two-member network consisting of herself and Kupreevna to dozens of first- and second- Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 195 generation writers who strive to remember the events of the Minsk ghetto in a way that mirrors

Kupreevna’s and Gebeleva’s own remembrance practices. In 2009, when Gebeleva was invited to

Minneapolis to speak about her father, she was excited to meet the members of another writing community who lived there. These writers, like Gebeleva, worked as journalists, contributing to the same Russian-language journal, Zerkalo. While many were not Jewish or from Minsk, their shared background in the field of journalism and in living in the former Soviet Union during World

War II allowed Gebeleva to make quick connections with everyone she met there for the first time.

These connections with writers of Zerkalo included Vladimir Sergeevich Posse, Evgenii Mazo, and Mikhail Zakharovich Sheinkman. Each has a personal story and familial connection to World

War II; each endeavored to encapsulate this experience in writing.

Posse’s connection to the war, like Gebeleva’s, was strengthened by his father’s story. His father was sentenced to rehabilitation at the height of Stalin’s reign of terror in 1937. Only twenty years later did his family receive word that he was alive. Meanwhile, Posse himself fought in the war at the First Baltic and Leningrad Fronts (105). He then became a historian and was one of the first to research the Minsk ghetto and the members of the underground. Gebeleva referred to his efforts as a “tireless search” that was stopped during the Khrushev years, but eventually came to fruition when he moved to Minnesota and wrote a trilogy about his own life, Historian in History,

Don’t Forget the Road to the Past, and Spiraling (106). Similarly, Evgeny Mazo also experienced the war from the battlefield; at 17 years of age he was sent to the front. Like Gebeleva, he worked as a journalist and felt the need to document the war, specifically life for the soldiers, partisans, and members of the underground. His writing is probably the closest to Gebeleva’s in quantity— he has written eleven books on the war, including a memoir of his own life, just as Gebeleva has written The Long Path to the Promised Street. Both of these men fall into Gebeleva’s community Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 196 of shared loss of loved ones and shared loss of home. While Minsk may not have been home for both of them, their choice to emigrate from the former Soviet Union equates to a similar loss and a similar choice to find and establish a new home. These men create a home in Minneapolis where they are able to confront their losses and the other effects of World War II through their writing.

Just as Posse related to Gebeleva’s need to discover her father’s identity, and Mazo to her need to record the events of the war, Gebeleva identifies with Sheinkman’s efforts to publish a second anthology of Minsk veterans’ experiences during the war, entitled War Didn’t Break Them.

Mazo worked for years to publish the accounts that were unable to fit into his first volume. It took approximately ten years for his second volume to get published, when it finally did Mazo wrote

Gebeleva, “The second volume of the book War Didn’t Break Them was published. This is our great victory. A victory in honor of the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Great Victory!” (110).89 Like

Posse and Mazo, Sheinkman could relate to the feeling of accomplishment that came with expending so much effort to remember and truly honor the sacrifices that were made during the war, the lives that were lived and the lives that were lost. In the final sentence of the chapter

Gebeleva writes, “The war didn’t break them, and that strength of spirit will not leave us even now” (110).90 These three men exemplify the spirit of strength that Gebeleva argues lives on in the children of survivors today. After reading one of their stories, Gebeleva penned, “many facts of [his life] were seemingly taken from my own” (106).91 Of another she said, “it was like parting with his father all over again” (105).92 Their lives and their experiences feel familiar to Gebeleva.

Because each of these men exemplifies some aspect of Gebeleva’s own life experience in relation to the Holocaust, she easily befriends and adds these men to her community of survivors and the children of survivors the first time they meet, thereby creating an official network of people who strive to record and remember the events of the Minsk ghetto. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 197

Gebeleva’s community slowly expands from people who have information about her father to people who understand the importance of remembering the Minsk ghetto through writing and now to people who share Gebeleva’s suffering, experiences, and postmemories in a unique and personal way. She introduces her readers to Savelii Kaplinskii, who is the transitional figure of witnessing to her father’s heroism but also of shared suffering based on the similar experience of losing a parent and a home to the Minsk ghetto. Four years after her arrival in Buffalo, Gebeleva became acquainted with Savelii Kaplinskii, a child survivor of the Minsk ghetto, who at the age of 13 became a member of the underground in the ghetto and then escaped to join the partisans.

His story—like Gebelev’s own—is included in Hersh Smolar’s 1948 memoir as well as many memoirs and secondary literature on the Minsk ghetto. He has also written his own memoir of his experience entitled “Lines Written by Fate.” Gebeleva then is able to utilize these accounts to increase her knowledge of her father. Unlike Smolar, however, Kapelinskii is still alive. Gebeleva can speak with him in person and ask him direct questions about her father. And based on his willingness to record his impressions of the ghetto in a memoir, he will also be willing to answer questions she might have. This shared interest in preserving his memories of the Minsk ghetto as well as his acquaintance with Gebeleva’s father, really draw Gebeleva to this man. The purpose of her association with him is bifold: he is able to tell her of her father and he is simultaneously able to record the losses that he incurred as a child of the Minsk ghetto.

As Gebeleva switches her focus from familial remembrance to city-wide remembrance, she begins to create a community of people who share the same purpose as she does—a desire to record the events of the Minsk ghetto so that others will begin to remember them. The journalists writing for Zerkalo and Savelii Kaplinskii help her to see that she is not alone in her quest, and they start to contribute to her acts of remembrance. In this way, her community begins to mirror Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 198 the pattern that Gebeleva set on her path to find her father: it was not enough simply to recover and record his story, she had to find a way to reclaim his memory and then commemorate it.

Similarly, Gebeleva’s network of members of the second-generation strive to not only remember the events of the Minsk ghetto, but also to reclaim the city for themselves. Kaplinskii himself demonstrates how this can be done.

Seeking Justice and Commemoration For Gebeleva and her network of survivors’ children remembrance is not enough. They, unlike many of their parents who died in the ghetto or abroad, have the opportunity to reclaim

Minsk as their home. Two examples of this desire come through in Gebeleva’s associations with

Savelii Kaplinskii and Matvei Basov, both of whom seek beyond remembrance also for justice, impossible though that will be to achieve. It is not only Kaplinskii’s shared love of writing and his firsthand knowledge of her father that appeals to Gebeleva, it is also his belief that memory should be preserved that bind them together. Speaking to Gebeleva at a meeting where the President of

Belarus, President Lukashenko, was also in attendance, Kaplinskii said, “Sveta, let’s lay [the roses] down by the monument together. I know that on March 2 your relatives died at this pit, here my mom and sister, my uncle, were also killed. My father died in ghetto even earlier” (112).93 It is not only their shared belief in commemoration, their need to record the past, or their knowledge of the same people that brings them together. It is also shared loss. Both lost fathers in the Minsk ghetto; both understand that pain, and yet both still love the place that their fathers died. Through this ceremony held at The Pit Memorial, they are able to reclaim this place as their ancestral home.

They are living realities of the idea that “The transmission of memory at Nazi sites of terror influences the construction of Holocaust descendant identity” (Jacobs 27). As public figures like

Lukashenko attend and therefore acknowledge the reality of their pain and their loss at such Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 199 memorials, members of the second-generation are able to reclaim their home in Minsk. Like their lost loved ones, many Holocaust descendants also lost their hometowns. Almost all the members of Gebeleva’s community have emigrated from Minsk; yet with events such as the establishment of Gebelev Street and with the attendance of President Lukashenko at a ceremony held in tribute of the victims of the Minsk ghetto, these second-generation Minsk Jews are allowed to re- appropriate Minsk as their home. These types of events at sites of terror permit Gebeleva to be proud to be from Minsk, and allow Kaplinskii, even in his old age, to return to Minsk every year on the anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto. Gebeleva’s relationship with Kaplinskii exemplifies all of the ways in which creating a network of survivors’ children can heal the wounds of loss of identity and of home. They are sharing multiple forms of pain: the loss of loved ones and the loss of their home. Through Kaplinskii, Gebeleva is able to learn more about her father and therefore, herself. With his support, she is also able to reconcile with her love of Minsk, despite the atrocities that occurred there.

Just as Gebeleva first compiled and recorded the events of her father's life and then commemorated them with the creation of Gebelev Street, so too do members of her network of children of survivors seek ways to memorialize the losses they experienced due to the Minsk ghetto. Another member of this community of children of survivors of the Minsk ghetto is

Belarusian artist, Matvei Basov. Born in Minsk and married to a Jew, he uses the Bible and the

Torah as inspiration for his work. While he is neither Jewish nor a direct descendent of a ghetto survivor, he married into the community of children of Minsk ghetto survivors. Basov like

Kupreeva still feels a desire to share what he knows of the Holocaust in Minsk; Kupreeva through her monograph and Basov through his art. Gebeleva feels a connection to him due to their shared interest in the arts and a desire to use their talents to transmit knowledge of the Holocaust in Minsk Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 200 to locals as well as people abroad. Not only does he paint and create exhibits on the Holocaust in

Belarus, he also attended the opening of Gebelev Street in Minsk. Talking to Gebeleva about his presence, he said, “I couldn’t not come. It was a great event in the life of the city and not only for the Jewish people. I think that everyone worries about the fact that justice exists on earth. This street occupies a big place in my life. … It inspired me to create new pictures about the Holocaust that were also exhibited at my exhibition in the History Workshop [in Minsk]” (84).94 His presence at the opening and his kind words about what the day meant to him personally create a bond that

Gebeleva shares with him and that allows him to enter into her imagined community. Their shared participation in commemoration of the Minsk ghetto allows for an expansion of the community of children of survivors to include those who share similar goals of transmission.

Gebeleva and Basov have a reciprocal relationship: she inspired him with her work to name a street after her father, and in turn, he commemorated that event with his art. In addition, they both seek ways to transmit these art forms to the public. When Gebeleva recalls Basov’s paintings of the Minsk ghetto, she switches to present tense to describe them, her literary marker for a particularly vivid memory. Gebeleva even provides the titles and descriptions of several of his paintings, ruminating on the title of the collection “Knock at the Door.” When Basov explains the title, he honors Gebeleva’s father, stating that it was due to him and other members of the underground that ten thousand Jews were saved from liquidation of the Minsk ghetto. Basov and

Gebeleva share not only a desire to transmit knowledge via art, but also through museums. Like

Gebeleva, Basov wishes to establish a Holocaust Museum in Minsk. Also like Gebeleva, he wishes to honor his own father, Israil’ Basov, a Belarusian artist whose Socialist Realist paintings were criticized and often censored due to their content. Basov desires to create a museum in Minsk dedicated to his fathers’ work, just as Gebeleva was able to dedicate a street to her father and his Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 201 work in the underground. These shared interests of material representations of the Minsk ghetto in journalism and in art and of restoring their fathers’ names and of creating a Holocaust Museum in

Belarus allow Basov to easily fold into Gebeleva’s community of the children of survivors. It is not only for direct descendants, but now expands to include individuals with shared goals of remembrance and transmission.

Another member of this network also assists Gebeleva in finding a resolution to the losses of identity and home that come with being a child of Holocaust victims. In her stream-of- consciousness style prose, Gebeleva tacks on a final, yet essential member to her community at the very end of her book. This member is the creator of the Museum of the History and Culture of the Jews of Belarus, Inna Gerasimova (126). As a museum curator who actively seeks to transmit memory to present-day viewers, Gerasimova embodies Geoffrey Hartman’s idea of keeping testimony ever-present even decades after the events of the Holocaust. He explains, “In the years immediately after the war, testimony had the status of an archival document whose primary aim was an increase of knowledge; today it is rather a means of transmission that keeps the events before our eyes.” (Longest Shadow 40) Gebeleva relates how Gerasimova’s museum has fulfilled this mission and touched so many in the process. Gebeleva even includes museum visitor testimonials in her postmemoir. This museum comes to symbolize a new form of transmitting memory—namely museum exhibitions—that Gebeleva is now considering. It also takes the transmission process and unlike art, literature, and film makes the transmission process interactive.

So while it might appear that Gebeleva is simply adding this last person onto her community at the end of her book—Gebeleva herself mentions that she thought she’d be done writing by now— rather, Gebeleva is exploring a new form of transmission of memory of the Minsk ghetto. She finds herself relating to other museum visitors who said, “Visiting your museum gave us the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 202 opportunity to more brightly imagine their lives and those horrible events, the result of which their descendants ended up far outside of Belarus” (127).95 This is the kind of thought that inspired

Gebeleva to write her book and to pass a question on transmission and commemoration on to other members of the second generation and to her readership. In his book The Longest Shadow: In the

Aftermath of the Holocaust, Hartman continues, “The very events that have jeopardized the community must now reinforce it. As the eyewitnesses pass from the scene and even the most faithful memories fade, the question of what sustains Jewish identity is raised with a new urgency.

In this transitional phase the children of the victims play a particular role as transmitters of a difficult defining legacy.” (Geoffrey Hartman Longest Shadow 41). This network of second- generation witnesses—including people like Kaplinskii, Basov, Gerasimova, and Gebeleva—has come together to remember and commemorate the victims of the Minsk ghetto and to reclaim the city of Minsk. They have moved on from simply remembering the Minsk of the past to reclaiming

Minsk as their home in the present.

Minsk as a Member of Gebeleva’s Community of Witnesses On October 15, 2005, Gebelev Street was officially dedicated in Minsk. Gebeleva’s life’s work to restore and honor her father’s memory had been completed. Similarly, Savelii Kaplinskii was able to commemorate his father’s underground activities by having a plaque placed on the hospital his father worked in to save the lives of the sick and to provide a secret location for underground members to hide and to meet. They shared this day of commemoration in Minsk with friends from their community of witnesses. Interestingly, it is in this final scene about the return to Minsk, that the city itself joins the community of children of Holocaust survivors. Minsk has been a living, breathing organism to Gebeleva all along. It, like all the people living in it, suffered during the initial bombings by the Germans in June of 1941. Minsk, too, felt the effects of the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 203 ghetto, of having its land divided and of outsiders coming in and taking over the street. And just as Gebeleva is reunited with her community in this final mentioned return to Minsk, so is she reunited with Minsk itself. Describing her feelings as she first arrives in the city, she writes, “And behold it is again before me—my native city in festive decoration. Again joyful meetings with aunts, cousins, nieces. Memories of the past, news of the day” (130).96 She speaks as though Minsk is another member of her family. In fact, while the family itself gets only a list of members, Minsk is awarded an entire sentence with a description of its current state. A description so in contrast with the way that Minsk was during and after the war that it becomes apparent Gebeleva has come to see Minsk in a new light.

Just as Gebeleva is able to accept Minsk, to take joy in her return and in the way it commemorates her father and others’ fathers, she is able to take the ultimate joy in coming together with her community in this special city. She ends her story, where it began, but with a new community and a new recognition of what they and Minsk mean to her. She would not have this carefully crafted community without this city. Despite the tragedy that occurred there, she doesn’t hold Minsk responsible. Rather, she comes to recognize Minsk as a central part of the community she has built and the narrative she has written. She embraces Minsk both as a member of her community which witnessed and suffered under the German occupation and also as her home, a city to which she “will endlessly return” (135).97

Gebeleva’s network utilizes museums, memorials, plaques, meetings, street signs, and the city itself to commemorate the murders of the Minsk ghetto. The community’s final task becomes transmitting the story to subsequent generations, their children and their grandchildren, hoping that a shared understanding of the past will help them keep these memories alive in the future. At the end of the chapter on Gerasimova’s museum, Gebeleva reflects on commemoration, stating, “We Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 204 talk about memory. But memory—it’s not simply that. I think about what to do, how to create the conditions so that this memory is preserved. Therefore, I leave these questions in my book, hoping that answers will be found” (129).98 At the conclusion of her book, Gebeleva is essentially stating that she has done all she can to transmit memory of her own family, namely of her father, to future generations. She has even broadened the lens of her research to include creating a network of second-generation witnesses who commemorate as many victims and survivors of the Minsk ghetto as possible. However, she knows her efforts are not enough. Just as she, a generation removed from the events of the Holocaust, strives to create a space to remember the tragic events that occurred during that time, she also pleads with her readers, with the subsequent third-, fourth-, and even fifth-generations to continue her work. There is more to remember, she is saying, and she will need her readers’ help to accomplish this last task.

Extending the Practice of Witnessing into Later Generations When Gebeleva’s husband, Yuris, died in 2007—two years after the founding of Gebelev

Street—Gebeleva’s reliance upon her community of Holocaust survivors’ children grew. During this time, her attentions also turned from restoring her father’s name to transmitting the knowledge of the Holocaust, specifically of the events of the Minsk ghetto, to an even younger generation. In that same year, she received a letter from Oleg Ivanovich Kavchenko, a Belarusian diplomat and the child of partisan fighters in the Belarusian forests, which spoke about the importance of her endeavors to restore a street in her father’s name and of the impact that could have on the growing generation. In her response to this letter, Gebeleva said that she especially appreciated his letter because he himself was still rather young. Her community expands at this time to include those younger than themselves who weren’t even alive during the immediate postwar period, yet still have parents and grandparents who were witnesses of that time. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 205

More than anything, Gebeleva hopes that the next generations’ childhoods will not mirror her own experience and the experience of others in her community of second-generation witnesses.

In Chapter Six “Children of the Underground” Gebeleva moves away from the topic of her father and describes the community of children of survivors of the Minsk ghetto that she has become a part of. She provides examples of specific members of the group and uses anecdotes from their lives to demonstrate how the ghetto experience was a foundational part of these children’s lives, despite the fact that many of them were not even alive to experience it. The community she creates is full of the children of survivors, who like Gebeleva, attempt to understand life in the Minsk ghetto. While they all go about it in different ways, they seem to agree that this was a foundational aspect of their formative years. Three of the members of this community—Gilel, Semen, and

Yan—recall “playing war” as children. They would pretend to be either partisans or Germans; although no one ever wanted to take on the role of the Germans. Not only does the childhood game demonstrate an awareness of their parents’ experience, one specific example also demonstrates the deep emotions associated with their knowledge of their parents’ experience. Gebeleva tells that one day when the children played, they actually attempted to hang the child who was playing the role of the Germans. They recall that had a parent not arrived and put a stop to the rapidly devolving game, the child might have died. The depth of violence in children so young paints a vivid picture of the ways in which the children were marked by the events of their parents’ past similar to the way in which their parents were marked. Even before turning ten years old, the children truly knew of the violence associated with wartime Minsk and the Minsk ghetto. The trauma that their parents experienced in the Minsk ghetto had a deep psychological impact on their children, and this trauma was present in their children’s lives, even at an early age. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 206

Recalling her own childhood, Gebeleva reminisces about one of her closest childhood friends, Galina Grigorovich. Likely due to Grigorovich’s attitude toward the war as a child,

Gebeleva had not seen or spoken to Grigorovich in decades. Despite their childhood friendship,

Grigorovich did not always understand the Gebeleva family’s sorrow in relation to the war. She loved Gebeleva’s mother’s cooking, visited their home often, and was a lifelong friend, but only as years passed did she understand why they were especially sad on Victory Day. As a Belarusian,

Gebeleva felt that Grigorovich didn’t understand Jewish suffering in the Minsk ghetto. They were separated by experience, so when Gebeleva moved to the United States, she formed her own connections with people who understood the impacts of the Minsk ghetto in the same way she did.

However, years later Grigorovich did come to comprehend her friend better. She wrote Gebeleva a letter in which she apologized for her inability to understand her plight. In the letter she spoke of

Mikhail Gebelev, saying, “The main thing was that he was a Person” [capitalization is present in the original Russian text] (116).99 Regardless of race, this fact had become apparent to her over the many years since their parting, and Gebeleva received this letter of apology with gladness.

With this indication of sympathy if not empathy, their relationship grew even stronger than it was throughout their childhood. Grigorovich invited Gebeleva to visit Minsk after her daughter was born, and she brought her whole family to the opening of Gebelev Street.

Naturally, as Gebeleva reflected on her own childhood experiences and learned about those of other second-generation witnesses, she contrasted them with those of her own son. She deliberately recalls returning to Minsk after her husband’s death and bringing her adopted son.

Together, they would rush to Gebelev Street. Gebeleva would converse with her deceased father at the street, bringing him greetings from old friends and from family members still living.

Interestingly enough, it is not until she is able to restore her father’s name that she begins regularly Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 207 returning to Minsk. Once she has honored her father’s memory, she is able to extricate herself from the strict confines of her community of witnesses and open up the list of important people in her life to include old friends and family. Before, the community she surrounded herself with needed to understand her desire to reestablish her father’s good name and recreate his image. Now that she has accomplished her goal, she becomes less rigid about whom she associates with.

Finally, she has accomplished her personal goal of commemorating her father’s life and sacrifice, and now she is able to remember not only her father’s past, but her personal past as well. She is finally able to grieve her father, content that he is being remembered and honored, rejoicing that his legacy will not be forgotten with her death. In the final paragraph of the chapter, she and her adopted son visit the plaque that was established at the beginning of Gebelev Street. Together, they reflect on his life and the events of the Minsk ghetto. In this moment, family, friends, and community coalesce into one. Generational divides are bridged. Gebeleva stands talking to her son about her father—first-, second-, and third-generation witnesses to the atrocities of the Holocaust stand together—in remembrance and commemoration, confident that their story will live on for generations to come.

Gebeleva’s aim to express the murders that occurred and to memorialize the sacrifices of people like her father also advances as Gebeleva volunteers at schools in Buffalo, New York, sharing the story of the Minsk ghetto (95-96). Speaking of this experience, she writes that schoolchildren in the United States know “about the victory of her father, the Minsk underground members, and Mikhail Gebelev Street. I tell them about the Holocaust on the territory of Belarus.

American schoolchildren know what the Holocaust is. The topic is included in the history program.

School children study it; they write essays and take tests. They prepare crafts that [go along with]

The Diary of Anne Frank” (95).100 This open dialogue stands in stark contrast with Gebeleva’s Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 208 own childhood and with the childhood experiences of other second-generation witnesses. The next generations are learning about and witnessing to the Holocaust and even the events of the Minsk ghetto through education and understanding. One of the children in the class she visited provided a remarkably profound description of the Holocaust, calling it ‘the most monstrous pogrom in the history of humanity” (95).101 Gebeleva is strengthened by their understanding of the Holocaust and wants the same for the children of her native Belarus as well as for children all around the world. Svetlana Gebeleva, mirroring her father’s leadership role in the Minsk ghetto underground, has become the founder of a network of next-generation witnesses who are expanding their community to create a place for remembrance, commemoration, and reclamation today. Her postmemoir is her declaration that the best way to honor her father’s life is to follow his example of leadership and give voice to his story, transmitting the practice of witnessing the Holocaust to subsequent generations who can provide their own testimony of the murders of the Minsk ghetto.

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 209

Chapter 3: Hearing the Holocaust: Gross-Tolstikov’s Fictional Account of his Grandmother’s Childhood

Before the War: An Introduction to Maia and Minsk During the Holocaust, the line between childhood and adulthood was exceptionally blurry.

This ill-defined boundary is one of the major concerns in Zhan Gross-Tolstikov’s novella, In

Captivity in My Hometown.102 Born in 1979 in Minsk, Gross-Tolstikov moved to the United States twenty years later. His fictional account, Captivity in My Hometown, describes his grandmother’s experience during the Holocaust. This genre selection reflects a change in both who is writing— the third-generation—and the concepts that this generation wants to address—an evolution of transmission that lead to genre and thematic transformations. Following this pattern, Gross-

Tolstikov introduces new narrative possibilities in the accounts about the Minsk ghetto when he relates his grandmother’s story as a fictional novella rather than a memoir. He is also able to address a new thematic concern about the nature of childhood during war. His protagonist, nine- year-old Maia, is living at an age in which she should be attending school, playing games, and interacting with friends; however, she is living at a time when the reality of her daily existence includes providing for her family, working for German soldiers, and running deadly errands for partisan brigades. The question that Gross-Tolstikov poses in his novella centers around this juxtaposition. How can one define childhood during the Holocaust, and what are the children growing up during this period experiencing? He pens an account of Maia’s prewar life, in part, to provide a stark comparison with her childhood during the war. This description of Maia’s nature during her early childhood allows the reader to comprehend the vast difference in her other childhood experience only three years later. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 210

Gross-Tolstikov paints a picture of his grandmother as a vivacious and captivating young girl right from the start of his short novel. The story begins rooted in a child’s life experiences: attendance at school and a friend with a teddy bear. The young protagonist’s name is Maia. The reader becomes acquainted with this six-year-old girl on August 26, 1938 in the Belarusian town of Osipovich. She comes onto the metaphoric stage correcting her mother’s pronunciation and is quickly introduced to an important friend of her parents. The man, who turns out to be an educator at the local school, inquires as to her age and is told she’s six years old. When she informs him that her birthday was in May, he mentions that she’s six and a half and since seems like an intelligent girl, he’ll give her special permission to start first grade early. What the adults in the room are unaware of is the fact that young Maia proceeds to check his math in her head: concluding that it has only been four months since her birthday, which is not half of twelve, and therefore she is not yet six-and-a-half. This priceless glance into Maia’s mind leaves the reader chuckling, all the while feeling delighted with Maia’s intelligence. She may be young, but her logic is sound enough even to combat an adult’s.

The next episode reinforces the image of Masha’s intelligence and loveable nature. The scene opens on Maia’s first day of first grade with her sitting in the principal’s office, awaiting a reprimand. It quickly becomes apparent that Maia was not paying attention in class, but looking out the window and daydreaming. When her principal asks about her behavior, she comments that everything they were learning was nonsense. The principal then asks to see all of her notebooks with schoolwork in them. He notes aloud that they are all correct. To that comment, an exasperated

Maia replies that of course they are; the work is too easy. Within the first quarter of her early admittance to first grade, Maia is advanced to second grade. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 211

Gross-Tolstikov further introduces Maia’s character while providing a simultaneous glimpse into interwar Minsk life. His insight is simple yet unexpected: relations between Jews and other nationalities were strong. His novella paints an unanticipated picture for his readers, that of a tolerant interwar Minsk full of Jews. Gross-Tolstikov’s interwar Minsk introduces the readers to many realities of life in Minsk at that time. As Andrew Sloin elucidates,

“Carved from the northeastern provinces of the Pale of Settlement, the Soviet

Republic of Belorussia constituted part of the historic homeland of Eastern

European Jewry. At the time of the Soviet census in 1926, the 407,000 Jews living

in Belorussia constituted 8.2 percent of the republic’s urban population of roughly

5 million people. Jews constituted half of the republic’s urban population and

formed majorities or pluralities in virtually all major cities, including Minsk,

Vitebsk, Bobruisk, and Gomel.” (2)

The reader’s next view into Maia’s life as a young Jewish girl living in the BSSR occurs two years later. Maia’s family is moving to Minsk, and she stops packing to receive a present from a friend, the young boy who lives next door. Her friend, affectionately known as Mishka, asks if she’d like to play with him before she moves away. In her already predictably adorable manner, Maia scolds him explaining that she is packing and therefore too busy to play. Her serious and responsible nature is softened, however, with human tenderness when she hands a copy of Robinson Crusoe to her friend providing him with a memento to remember her by. His response is also telling,

“Robinson Crusoe. It’s not a gift—it’s a treasure! I don’t read very fast yet, like you, but I will definitely learn to read quickly, quickly—like you. And to write! Maika, may I write you in

Minsk?” (11). Not only does his reaction to her gift highlight her continued intelligence in relation to her peers, it also introduces new elements to her character: Maia is generous, kind-hearted, and Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 212 a good friend. Significantly, she and Mishka hope to stay friends. The reader has no idea whether

Mishka is Belarussian, Jewish, or another nationality entirely. These children are unaware of the difference just one year before the formation of the Minsk ghetto. They are good friends regardless of nationality. In response to her gift, Mishka leaves, returns at a run, and presents Maia with a stuffed bear. “A mishka (teddy bear) from Mishka,” he jokes, telling her to keep the bear in remembrance of him. This exchange of gifts and the obviously strong bond between two young children regardless of nationality demonstrates the simple times that the children were living in, which only makes the juxtaposition with what comes next all the more disturbing.

The children’s biggest desire in this moment is connection to each other despite separation.

Significantly, the answer to Maia and Mishka’s problem seems to be the same as the solution to

Gross-Tolstikov’s problem: writing and memory. These are two common tropes of literature on the Minsk ghetto, that are being explored very early on in Gross-Tolstikov’s novel. The suggestion of a letter—a written form of communication to perpetuate memory—also informs the reader about the author’s own artistic choices. Gross-Tolstikov is commenting on the nature of the written word and its innate ability to preserve memory. He is commenting on his own choice to pen his grandmother’s story. Without writing and physical reminders of affection, there will be no memory. This simple truth is obvious to the childhood friends; similarly, Gross-Tolstikov writes his grandmother’s story as a way to remember and create a physical object to remind him of her and her experiences. For Gross-Tolstikov and his young protagonist alike, the written word and physical objects represent memory.

Literary Techniques After establishing a link between the written word and memory, Gross-Tolstikov begins to employ literary techniques to enhance the landscape of his story. One of the most compelling Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 213 devices that Gross-Tolstikov employs throughout the beginning of his story is foreshadowing, especially in conjunction with the theme of the lost innocence of children of the Holocaust. Sharon

Cohen defines a child of the Holocaust “as any Jewish child, thirteen or under at the start of the persecution in their country, who survived in German-occupied Europe by whatever means, whether in hiding, as a partisan, in the ghettos, on the run, or in the camps” (1). The reader of

Gross-Tolstikov’s novella understands this definition implicitly but is forced to endure the dread that comes with Maia’s gradual realization of what it means to be a child of the Holocaust and to survive “by whatever means.” As Maia straddles the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, a carefree life and war, the forewarnings of the text enhance the impending doom the reader feels as the end of Maia’s innocence approaches. For the sophisticated reader, each detail is leading up to the formation of the Minsk ghetto, and therefore, each choice Maia makes as the German invasion approaches is steeped with significance. The opening scene of June 22, 1941 again presents Maia in her childlike innocence. She is playing a game, and the reader can almost hear her chanting the nonsensical rhyme as she plays, “To drive, to hold, to run, to offend. To listen, to see, and twirl, and breathe, and hate, and depend, and endure.” As the rhyme continues, “To drive, to hold, to run, to offend…,” the reader is left to wonder if this is the moment that this carefree young girl’s childhood will be rudely interrupted by war (14)103. However, Maia is fine and runs off down the street, idly noticing that many stores are closed. Maia is excited as the newspaper she reads announces the opening ceremony of Komsomol Lake,104 but she disregards the significance of the paper’s date. No papers have been published in three days. Each of these events foreshadows the German invasion, so while the reader worries, Maia skips home and convinces her mother to let her attend the ceremony. The sense of foreboding reaches its peak as the knowledgeable reader considers the possibility that unless she returns promptly, Maia will be alone outside of Minsk Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 214 proper and away from her family when panic ensues after the news is announced that the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.

In addition to foreshadowing, Gross-Tolstikov also utilizes a complex narrative voice to show how Maia grows from childhood to adulthood, her reliability as a narrator increasing proportionately with her life experience. At the beginning of the novella, telling the story from a child’s perspective not only evokes sympathy in the readers, it also allows for inconsistencies in the text itself. As a child, Maia is a somewhat unreliable narrator. Her worldview is simple, so the reader is able to see the world crash down through the lens of a child. However, in many ways, this childlike misinterpretation of events is best able to capture the true emotion of the actual

German occupation of Minsk—the unexpectedness of Germany invading an allied land, the confusion of deciding what to do when your country is attacked, and the necessity of falsely comforting words in such a frightening scenario. Like others alive in the Soviet Union at the time,

Maia will always remember where she was when she heard Molotov announce the German invasion of the Soviet Union over the radio. Yet, unlike others, her youthful innocence allows her to hear the declaration of war, hug her mother to feel better, and then lay down to sleep. She is awoken in the night and overhears her father and mother discussing the radio broadcast. Her mother debates fleeing the city, but her father will not even consider the possibility. He says that everything will be fine in a few days. Maia overhears this conversation and is too naïve to recognize her father’s reassurance for the hopeless platitude that it is. Instead, Maia wakes on June

24, 1941, just three days later, ready to return her library book. Again Maia’s narration of events demonstrates her childlike interpretation of the world around her. With the benefit of hindsight, the readers of the novella know that Maia’s reaction is naïve. However, Gross-Tolstikov is deliberately using Maia’s age to place the reader in the shoes of someone living in Minsk in June Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 215

1941. Her youthful narrative voice enables the reader to comprehend the thought processes and feelings of the time, overcoming the hindsight bias of knowing what is about to occur in Minsk in late June 1941.

Maia’s childlike character is developed in the next scene. In her desire to return her library book, the reader becomes acquainted with Maia’s personality and her faith in a world full of comprehensible laws and consequences. If Maia does not return her book to the library today, there will be a penalty at school. She will become a thief. The situation is black and white to Maia, and no city on the brink of war is going to stop her from abiding by her moral code. Another simplistic attitude comes into play: the city might be unsafe at night, but during the day only good things happen. This simplistic belief in good and evil and in correct actions resulting in beneficial consequences is about to be shattered once and for all, as Maia leaves home to return her library book. True to her childlike understanding of the world, Maia fails to notice anything wrong in the city as she walks to the library. She does not see anyone out on the streets, but she does not think much of it. Even as a plane comes swooping down out of the sky, Maia immediately assumes it to be a Soviet fighter. Her worldview is shattered as another plane appears just below the Soviet plane.

Maia finally begins to see a clear picture of Minsk at war. Where before the street was deserted, she hears someone cry out about the enemy plane. She runs into a nearby basement as bombs descend. Her knees are bloody; she can’t see more than an arm’s length in front of her face; and people have turned to ransacking their own city. In the chaos that ensues, Maia’s worldview transforms in front of the readers’ eyes. At eight years old, she is much too young to carry the burden of the complexities of reality, but the reader sees her as she forgets entirely about the book she was returning to the library. Becoming a thief, as she was so concerned about before, no longer Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 216 matters. In fact, Minsk, her home, is full of thieves. Anyone out of the street is busy stealing good from local shops and storage sheds. One man even yells at her to «брысь отсюда» using jarring language often associated with stray dogs to get her to leave him and his findings alone. Maia’s black and white understanding of the world—of law and order and of the general goodness of people—transforms in an instant. Neglecting to return a library book is of very little concern when there are foreign enemies in your skies and your own people are robbing each other, treating you like a dog to be shooed away. The situation escalates further as Maia realizes this man is not alone in his actions. “What are you doing? That’s not allowed,” she shouts aloud her simplistic view of the world (22).105

Later she runs across a gang of teenage boys recklessly throwing rocks at the German planes as they sweep low to make passes to drop bombs over the city. Maia sees this and unlike the looting situation, she even considers joining in. While stealing is bad, fighting against the enemy is not. However, Maia quickly realizes the true dangers of the game the boys are playing.

One young man, her neighbor, is shot dead in the middle of the street. She goes up to the body and does not realize what has happened until she sees the hole puncturing his skin. Interestingly, it is not the blood seeping out of the wound that she recalls, but rather the wound itself. A hole where there should not be one. This is also symbolic of the bombed-out holes rapidly forming throughout the city. A part of the city’s identity is being carved out by this violence, and Maia’s youthful innocence is first blown apart as she witnesses the destruction and death of the war.

Maia runs home to discover that the barrack she’d been living in has burnt to the ground.

She finds her mother—younger brother in one arm and suitcase in the other—and a few other neighbors hiding among the large roots of a grove of apple trees. She runs to her mother, hugging her tight, and repeating “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.” Physically that might be true, but Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 217 psychologically, Maia is not the same eight-year-old girl who left the house earlier that morning.

Her understanding of morality has been challenged and another child killed. Despite her repeated claims, Maia will never be the same again. Still, her youthful and optimistic spirit is not entirely diminished; as Maia, her mother, and brother pull away from the grove, she repeats Molotov’s words from the radio broadcast of two days previously, for the first time reciting what will become her auditory refrain later in the text: “Our cause is just… Our enemy will be defeated… Victory will be ours!” (25).106 Despite all the death and destruction Maia faced in a single day, she clings to the comforting phrases of Molotov’s speech.

Although Maia’s faith in humanity has the resiliency of a child, Maia’s mother experiences a severe emotional blow when she hears that the government officials abandoned the city. They have fled east with their families. This seems to be the final straw, and Berta Aizikovna decides that her husband’s faith in the speedy defeat of the Nazi soldiers is unwarranted. She loads into a full truck with her two children and single suitcase. The rest of her earthly belongings have been consumed in the fire that destroyed her home. Aboard the truck, she and her children climb over the others in an attempt to find somewhere to sit. Finally packed like sardines into the back of the truck, Maia echoes Molotov’s speech. Yet for the knowledgeable reader, cramming people into this truck only foreshadows the душегубки that will later gas thousands of prisoners of the Minsk ghetto. This scene functions as another sign that is presented deliberately by the author to cause his readers to think about the fate awaiting young, intrepid Maia and her faithful mother.

While the reader was introduced to Maia and her worldview, optimism, and intelligence, the narrative has also been slowly adding characters who contribute to her understanding of the war in order to form a fuller picture. At first, other characters were viewed from the lens of Maia’s perspective of them. For example, she overhears her mother and father discussing whether to flee Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 218 or remain in Minsk as the war is beginning. The reader is privileged to hear the parents’ thoughts on the status of the city and even to get acquainted with their personalities and their relationship, but these things are only accomplished through Maia’s gaze. However, with the introduction of a one-armed veteran who drives the truck Maia and her family use to flee Minsk, the reader’s worldview opens up to include a new perspective. It is imperative to note that the reader is now benefitting from the viewpoint of someone with a disability. Maia provides a child’s lens on the events of the war, and the one-armed soldier named Savelii provides another noteworthy and experienced perspective. Gross-Tolstikov is deliberately choosing to demonstrate the effects of the war on the opposing characters: the naïve and the world-weary as well as those on the margins of the population: the young, the disabled. In addition, he is deliberately putting his readers in a place to sympathize with characters who are already so deserving of concern, but he compounds the situation by creating characters who are even more pitiful in the present context. Despite his disability, however, the one-armed soldier rises to face his challenges. He, like Maia, demonstrates characteristics that quickly endear him to the reader. First, he is a hero. He has fought and presumably lost his arm for the Soviet cause against the Nazis. In addition, he stops the truck to seek aid for his fellow soldiers. He could have easily only worried about himself, but instead insists on changing course and spending more time inside the dangerous city limits of Minsk rather than saving himself. His selfless bravery is coupled with sheer grit in the face of danger as well as an ability to make the best of a difficult situation. When the truck returns to help the rest of his troop, they are shot at by German planes. Many of his already wounded comrades are killed. Savelii, with his one arm, helps to move the bodies to the side of the road. He even notices that there are bullet holes in the empty sleeve of his shirt and is able to consider himself somewhat fortunate for already having lost his arm. He does well under pressure, helping both the people in the truck and his fallen Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 219 and living comrades, while trying to see the silver lining to an otherwise terrible situation. Like

Maia, Savelii quickly becomes a character the reader can root for.

The Characters of Minsk Maia and Savelii’s first interaction only serves to further endear both of these main characters to the reader. After travelling all day to reach a club in Smilovichi, where members of the group think they can sleep, they approach the door only to find it locked. Maia gathers her last ounces of strength and approaches the club with a run and a smile, hoping to keep her mother from worrying about one more person. She is putting her mother’s needs before her own. Similarly,

Savelii notes that no matter how many times the other members of the group knock on, kick at, and yell through the door, it does not open (31). Just as Maia senses her mother’s concern, Savelii senses the group’s helplessness and does something to change the situation. He winks at Maia and asks her if she’d like to see a magic trick. He goes about the whole process with showmanship and gallantry. In reality, he simply asks her to close her eyes as he removes a bobby pin from her braid.

Berta Aizikovna comes over and observes as Savelii quickly inserts the pin into the door’s lock.

Meanwhile, he chats with Maia and attempts to distract her so that she won’t notice his actions.

Finally, with a great deal of show, he opens the door to the empty club. The group quickly begins spreading hay onto the cold, hard floor and is sleeping within minutes. This first interaction demonstrates more than just two characters’ kind natures. It shows that, even at such a tender age as Maia, they are both able to recognize and respond to a need. They are willing to put others, even strangers’ desires, above their own. The whole novella is constructed around the concept of good people, who, even in a poor situation, put themselves before others. It is written in such a way as to make the story of the Minsk ghetto accessible to everyone and to create sympathetic protagonists that the reader is cheering on. In essence, the book is written for the readers, to educate them about Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 220 life in the Minsk ghetto and to help them recognize the unjust treatment of good people, who had done nothing to deserve the treatment they are about to receive.

Not only is Gross-Tolstikov reimagining his grandmother’s childhood experience in the

Minsk ghetto, but he is also acquainting readers with the transition between the free, forward- thinking Minsk of the early 1900s and the Minsk of the Holocaust. He spends over a third of his novella recounting the immediate prewar period before the formation of the ghetto. In this way, the city of Minsk becomes a character as much in need of a backstory, physical description, and personality as Maia, her mother, or Savelii. Deliberately demonstrating the cosmopolitan nature of the city and its inhabitants, Gross-Tolstikov introduces readers to the unlikely friendship of an eight-year-old Jewish girl and a Russian Red Army soldier. The two genuinely care for each other and come together to take care of the others who were forced to find accommodations in a club in

Smilovichi. Savelii helps her to escape from German soldiers and Russian traitors, as she devotes every waking moment to working to pay for small necessities like potatoes and milk. They are unlikely compatriots, not only because of age and gender, but because of nationality. However, nationality itself is not mentioned in the novel until page 35. And the citizens of Minsk are not the ones to think about it. It’s the German police who ask Savelii if Maia is Jewish, and he answers in the negative, saying that she’s his niece. Maia herself is never even introduced as Jewish. The readers are left to assume that if she ends up in the ghetto, she must be; however, Maia herself seems entirely unconcerned about her nationality. She interacts with the neighborhood boy— receiving a bear from Mishka and throwing rocks at German planes with another group—but never provides descriptions to indicate whether they too are Jewish or not.

In fact, the question of nationality is entirely absent throughout Maia’s portion of the text except in relation to the dynamic of Soviet versus German, friend versus foe. In one instance, Maia Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 221 is walking home after a long day of work, carrying a three-liter container of milk and sack of potatoes, which constitute her wages for the day (42). She is stopped by two police who begin to question her.

“What is it in your bank?” the policeman asked.

“Milk.”

“Did you steal it?” the second frowned.

“I told you, she’s a Jew.”

“I earned it!” - the girl answered confidently, involuntarily backing away from

the police.

“Let me try,” one of them demanded. (42)107

In a truly hypocritical moment, two grown men stop a lone eight-year-old girl on the street. They question whether she has stolen the milk and potatoes she carries, as though this is a likely possibility when she is so young and so encumbered by everything she is carrying. Not to mention the fact that she is walking clearly out in the open and in view of anyone who happens to walk by.

They question her integrity, while attempting to steal the milk themselves. Against all evidence to the contrary, they accuse her of being a thief because she appears to be Jewish. Luckily Savelii comes along, and with the help of a distraction from Maia—she drops the sack of potatoes—and in the chaos, he is able to take the men by surprise and incapacitate them. It is the conversation directly after this event that really informs the reader of Maia’s state of mind on the concept of nationality. Notably, the police were the ones to bring the idea of identity to her mind in the first place by using a derogatory word to call her a Jew. So even before she runs with her milk and potatoes, Maia turns to Savelii and asks in a simple, childlike manner, “Uncle Sava. . . Why did you do that to them? ... They are our [people], they spoke Russian” (43).108 The stark contrast Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 222 between Maia’s understanding of nationality and the police’s come through very strongly in this scene. Anyone who speaks her language—who doesn’t bomb her hometown or shoot down her neighbor—is a friend. Despite all she has witnessed in the past week, Maia trusts people simply because they are also Soviet citizens. She trusts Molotov when he says that “their cause is just and they will prevail” and she expects that all other Soviets will do the same. To Maia, nationality doesn’t divide people. Language does. Different sides of a war do. But she cannot immediately grasp the idea of betraying her country, of working for the Germans, of accusing someone of stealing, simply based on nationality. In this instance, a child is being held up as the one with morality. She understands right from wrong and, for her, nationality does not factor into that distinction.

Thematic Concerns Over the course of the novella, the reader is privileged to witness the way that Savelii’s outlook on human nature evolves and how this transformation subsequently affects the way Maia views the world. Over the course of their stay in the club in Smilovichi, Savelii makes different statements regarding his view of humanity. Early in the morning on June 25, 1941, the day after they arrived in Smilovichi, Maia awakes and goes out to the club’s courtyard. Outside, she has a conversation with Ivan Matveech, another person who fled Minsk in the truck. He offers her a piece of candy. In her typical rule-abiding fashion, Maia explains that she is not allowed to have candy until after breakfast. At which point, Ivan Matveech remarks that they may not have breakfast at all. As always, Savelii is the one to reassure and rescue Maia. “We’ll have it, we’ll have it,” he reaffirms (33).109 His optimism contrasts perfectly with Ivan Matveech’s attitude of the world. Even though Savelii has learned that life can be difficult and leave you without an arm, he has managed to keep a positive outlook on life. “The world is not without good people,” he Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 223 explains to Maia. Savelii is confident that there will be people willing to help them in their difficult plight. He believes in the goodness of humanity and shares that with Maia early on in their stay in

Smilovichi. However, his time in the village on the outskirts of Minsk seems to do what his time in the army could not. After the two police stop Maia, Savelii’s outlook on the world seems to change. The rules and order of life that was so apparent in the military and is so apparent in Maia’s way of thinking is lacking early on in this war against the Germans. Now his own men have defected to the other side and two full grown men are deliberately targeting an eight-year-old girl for her milk and potatoes. It is after this scene that Savelii reluctantly agrees to teach Maia to wield and throw knives to protect herself. Interestingly, he agrees to teach her to throw knives much quicker than he agreed to teach her to spin a knife between her fingers. It seems the longer they stay in Smilovichi, the more Savelii realizes that Maia’s childhood is already ending. The world she lives in now is drastically different from the world she lived in five days ago. He commences his lesson with one overarching statement, contradictory to the one made only twelve pages before,

“Man by his very nature is a beast” (45).110 The optimism that Savelii had when they first reached

Smilovichi just days earlier has been decimated. Savelii may still believe that there are good people in the world, but man’s nature is evil. The five days in Smilovichi have done what years in the army could not. Savelii has lost his faith in humanity. The order of his old life, fighting for a specific cause against an equal opponent, no longer exists. Subsequently, his faith in humanity is also gone. Savelii is willing to teach a child to fight with knives because he honestly believes that she will need such a skill in the future. This introduction to the theme of the nature of humanity demonstrates how Maia will question and consider what it means to be human over the course of the novel. Is it simply a physical state in which one is considered human based on attributes and appearance? Or does it contain a moral significance in which one is not truly human if their Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 224 behavior is unworthy of belonging to that group? And, finally, what do the answers to these questions signify in relation to the victims, bystanders, and perpetrators of the Holocaust? Just as

Savelii’s personal definition of what it means to be human evolves over the course of the novella, so too does Maia’s perspective shift. Her view as a nine-year-old girl unaware of divisions between nationality is forced to change over the course of the novella. Maia is compelled to pose difficult questions as she explores what it means to be human under the most inhumane of circumstances.

Molotov’s speech from June 22, 1941 becomes a refrain to Maia throughout the narrative.

After hearing the speech once, she is able to recall a portion perfectly and will quote it as she sees fit. Significantly, though, Maia never heard the full speech. She heard the beginning at the attempted opening of Komsomol Lake, but missed the majority of the speech as she ran home.

Only arriving in time to hear the final call to action—a call to unity, a call to strengthening the party, and a call to victory. The speech as Maia heard it is as follows:

The Soviet government and its head, comrade Stalin, have ordered me to make the

following announcement:

Today, at 4 o’clock in the morning, German troops have entered our country,

without making any demands on the Soviet Union and without a declaration of war.

They have attacked our borders in many places and have subjected our towns -

Zhitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas and some others - to aerial bombardments

during which more than 200 people have been killed or wounded. … This attack is

unheard of and is a treacherous act that has no equal in the history of civilized

peoples. The attack on our country was launched despite the fact that a non-

aggression treaty between the U.S.S.R. and Germany has been signed and that the

Soviet Union has observed all conditions of this treaty in full honesty. The attack Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 225

on our country was launched despite the fact that during the whole period this treaty

has been in force, the German government has never once been able to dispute our

observance of this treaty. The whole responsibility for this raid on the Soviet Union

lies in its entirety in the hands of the Fascist German government.

…

The government calls on you, citizens of the Soviet Union, to close the ranks around

our triumphant Bolshevist party, around our Soviet government and around our

great leader, comrade Stalin even further. Our cause is just. The enemy shall be

defeated. Victory shall be ours. (16-18)111

It is the middle portion which describes the details of the attack—the time and place of the invasion, the effects of Germany’s actions on other countries, the comparison between this war and the Napoleonic War—that Maia misses as she rushes home, only to catch the tail-end of

Molotov’s speech. Ringing in Maia’s ears are the names of the cities attacked, the justness of the

Soviet Union’s position in the war, and the resounding call to victory. This is her frame of reference at the beginning of the war, and it affects the way that she understands her family’s situation for the full first day of the war as she sees people looting and fleeing Minsk and throughout the duration of their stay in Smilovichi. Despite her dealings with people who steal and betray their country, Maia is able to see a bigger picture, painted by Molotov himself. Whenever people perform actions that are immoral or unjust, Maia is able to hold on to the words of Molotov’s speech as reassurance that the Soviet Union is in the right. She clings to the final message of the speech, “Our cause is just. Our enemy will be defeated. We will be victorious!” This sense of righteousness and ultimately of victory help Maia through difficult times of manual labor, poverty, and persecution. Even after all she has endured and after finding out that the government officials Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 226 of Minsk fled the city, Maia is naively bolstered by the words of a far-off leader, who assures victory. And while these empty statements give her courage in the early days of the war and throughout her time in Smilovichi, the reader is left to ponder how much comfort this speech will bring the young girl when she is confined to the ghetto.

One obstacle that Maia is constantly confronting stems from Savelii’s idea that “man by his very nature is a beast” (45).112 To Maia’s confusion, this concept continues to include both

Russians and Germans. After being accosted by the police who attempted to steal Maia’s milk and potatoes, Maia, her mother, Savelii, Ivan Matveech, and others from the club go to the market.

Berta Aizikovna sacrifices her husband’s pocket watch for some lard. Maia, hungry and observing the actions of her mother and friends, spots a stand with apples. The man at the stand convinces her to trade her shoes for six apples. Although Maia questions the soundness of such a choice, he puts her at ease explaining that it’s the summer and implying she doesn’t need them now (47).

Trusting Maia concurs, and generous Maia later offers her mother and brother her hard-earned apples. Again, Maia is seeing that there can be bad people among the Soviets too. Her naivete is slowly diminishing. She has witnessed how Belarussian men betrayed the Soviet Union and joined the police, and now she is experiencing how her own citizens are also willing to take advantage of a young girl without parental supervision. However, for every bad deed the Russians commit, a

German must come along and do something hundreds or even thousands of times worse.

Therefore, just as Maia is hobbling along handing out apples, the group witnesses the first truly terrible and cruel acts of the novel.

The following scene further complicates the question of what it means to be human as Maia sees Jews being treated as animals for the first time. While Maia may have caught onto the persecution of Jews when she was stopped for her milk and potatoes, it is not clear to the reader Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 227 that Maia is aware of the level of antisemitism and consequently, the level of danger, that she and all Jews are in. However, it becomes increasingly clear as the next scene progresses. The group is walking back from the market when a herd of cows begins crossing the road. Good Soviet citizens that they are, the group stops and waits for the cows to cross. However, the rumbling of a motorcycle foreshadows the dreaded arrival of German soldiers. The moment is rich in sensory detail. The group can hear the engines of the motorcycles as slowly the same repeated German phrase grows louder and louder. As the dust behind the herd of cows begins to clear, a line of men of all ages comes slowly into view (49). This is Maia’s initial acquaintance with the yellow patches113 the Jews are forced to wear. However, the German soldiers do more than simply single out the Jews as a distinct group of individuals with bright patches, they escalate the situation by comparing the group of Jews to the herd of cows that were on the street moments earlier. The similarity between the Jews’ yellow patches and the cows’ brands is implicitly drawn. In this moment, Maia is able to witness how Jews are being treated not simply as inferior than other humans, but as animals—marched in lines, yelled at, labeled, and marched to their deaths.

Questioning the Nature of Bystanders Although Maia may not be able to recognize all of the injustices and intricacies of what is happening in the distance, she is able to grasp a very similar situation which happens right in front of her eyes. In this scene, Gross-Tolstikov again utilizes an individual situation to represent what is occurring on a city, country, and even continent level. As a whole, Gross-Tolstikov’s novella functions in this same manner. His description of his grandmother’s experience in the Minsk ghetto is representative of the experience of all the Jews in Minsk and even of the Holocaust generally. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 228

This is one of the rare moments in the narrative in which the story is told from outside of

Maia, Savelii, or Berta Isaakovna’s point of view. The two cowherders are overheard having the following conversation:

- They must have driven the Jews from all over the place. There are a

hundred people here, or even more.

- Where are they taking them? - asked the second boy puzzled.

- I don’t know where. You see, they’re going along Varshavka ... And from

there to the farm, which is behind the Jewish cemetery.

- In Kurovishche, beyond the Silichev forest, perhaps?

- Aha.

- How do you know?

- My father told me that all the Jews will be shot there,” the shepherd

replied, lowering his voice a little. - They’ll bury them there.

- For what? – his partner asked, startled.

- “Zhids,”114 the shepherd shrugged and cracked his whip, urging the cows

that had departed from the herd. (49)115

Like many other scenes in the novella, this conversation tells the reader more about Gross-

Tolstikov’s understanding of the Holocaust than about the Holocaust itself. Gross-Tolstikov displays two young villagers as types of bystanders: conscious and unconscious. The first speaker is aware of what is about to happen to the Jews of their village and other villages. Even witnessing what is happening, the second boy cannot comprehend it. These two reactions mirror the understanding that people living in Minsk during the time would have had. Even Maia herself probably cannot understand all the implications of what she is seeing, although her mother and the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 229 other adults might. In this way, the bystanders duplicate the reactions of the victims and echo their unanswered question. The young boy’s haunting query—“for what” reason are the Jews about to be murdered—cannot adequately be answered. The other boy can only provide one word as justification for mass murder: “Zhids.” It is interesting to note that in this one word, the boy is deliberately choosing to use the lexically and emotionally charged derogatory term for a Jew, rather than the neutral one, “evrej”. This mention of Jews indicates a real turning point in the narrative. There was no allusion to Jews in the whole text until page 35, and in the fifteen pages since that first reference, the use of the term has been evolving at an ever-increasing rate. Now, the reader is to this scene in which a group of Jews is visually identified by their yellow patches, and soon two young cowherders will discuss the imminent deaths of Jews, a group of women will lament their inability to save them, and German soldiers will ask Maia’s group if Jews are present.

This transition from complete absence of Jewish presence to the center of attention reflects the absolute reversal of ideas of nationality in less than two months. Where before the reader was seeing the neutral term for a Jew, now the pejorative word “Zhid” has become the commonly applied moniker of the Minsk Jews.

Despite the condescension and dismissiveness with which the word “Jew” could have been uttered, it does nothing to answer the question “why” these people are being marched to their deaths. The lack of answers is a marked stylistic tool of Gross-Tolstikov’s novella. When something cannot be explained or rationalized away, when his medium of literature fails to answer the questions he is posing, Gross-Tolstikov only voices the question. Indicating to his readers that it is up to them to ponder and find their own answers because even seventy-five years after the

Holocaust, Gross-Tolstikov himself is still left with questions that seem impossible to answer Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 230 satisfactorily. The bystanders and victims of the day could not answer the “why” of the Holocaust, and even today the world is unequipped.

Returning to the theme of bystanders, Gross-Tolstikov explores the motives of their various actions of those featured in this scene. He reiterates the idea of conscious and unconscious bystanders, speculating how many Soviet civilians knew what was happening to their Jewish neighbors during the summer of 1941. Based on the interaction between the two shepherds, it is clear that Gross-Tolstikov is suspicious of at least some complicity. While he clearly blames the elder of the two shepherds for knowing the fate of the Jews and doing nothing, he also has compassion for some people and their motives. For example, when Savelii and Ivan Matveech witness what is happening, Savelii has to almost physically restrain Ivan Matveech from taking action that would certainly get him killed. Although he laments the Jews’ lack of knowledge about their fate, Savelii explains that by not revealing their fate prematurely, “we are doing a good deed,

[and] we will be rewarded in heaven” (50).116 Gross-Tolstikov reveals this morally ambiguous stance, not condemning or agreeing with Savelii’s actions but allowing for the assumption that they were undertaken with good intentions. Similarly, a group of women who were following the column are overheard arguing about what they should have done as onlookers. One suggests scratching at the Germans’ eyes while the men run off in different directions; another adds that they could have thrown rocks. Then a third mentions how they don’t need to worry for themselves, but they do need to fear retaliation for their children’s sake. Another says that the men in the column should have resisted and fought their captors as they clearly outnumber them. These suggestions, while possibly also shared during the events of the Holocaust itself, are more commentary on Gross-Tolstikov’s perception of the understanding of the Holocaust today. In his view, the general public questions why bystanders did nothing to save their neighbors and why the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 231

Jews themselves did nothing to resist. In this moment, Gross-Tolstikov acknowledges how these types of statements are both inaccurate and unhelpful. It is impossible to know who had knowledge and what their motives were behind the actions they took. In addition, it is impossible to know what each reader would do in a similar situation. However, Gross-Tolstikov presents the question to each of his readers: if audience members were in the situation of the cowherders, the women following the column, a member of Maia’s group, or walking in the column themselves, what would they do? How much of the situation would they even grasp? And what would be the motives behind their decisions? Again, Gross-Tolstikov is asking a hypothetical question and not providing an answer. He only attempts to reframe and humanize the situations that people were put in; then, he leaves his readers with questions to answer, both on a personal and on a societal level.

After witnessing the imminent deaths of Jews from afar, Maia and her group are confronted with the same possible fate themselves. As they are watching the column of Jews being led away, two German soldiers ride up on a motorcycle, demanding to know whether there are any Jews in

Maia’s group. Savelii attempts to deflate the situation by answering that everyone is Russian, while covertly signaling that the Jewish women and all of the children should move behind him. The group attempts to convince the soldiers that they are simply going to work with children and their possessions in tow, but realizing the absurdity of such an outing, one of the soldiers points a rifle at them. In this moment, Savelii and Ivan Matveech face the same choice that the cowherders and group of women faced just moments ago. They can silently watch the Jewish members of their group be unjustly arrested or more likely killed, or they can resist. In this instance, the informed- bystanders-turned-potential-rescuers deliberately puts themselves in the path of danger. Ivan

Matveech begins to struggle with one opponent. Wielding his carving knife, Savelii is able to kill one soldier, but falls to an unexpected round from the other. Ultimately, Savelii sacrifices himself Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 232 to protect the other members of his group. Maia stands as a witness to his heroic death and takes his knife as a physical memento of her memory of him before fleeing the scene with the rest of her group. She finds some comfort in her mother’s words that Savelii “will live forever in her heart”

(53).117 Her mother’s words prove true though, as more than seventy years after Savelii’s death

(and despite the countless other deaths that Maia witnessed in her life), Maia still remembers his sacrifice. She remembers his choice not to be a bystander when doing so could have saved his own life. She remembers him so well that he is now immortalized not only in her heart, but in the pages of a novella written by her grandson. The memory of Savelii, then, lives on not just in Maia’s heart but has become an intergenerational memory. He represents the small group of people that were willing to sacrifice their lives for the Jews. And while Gross-Tolstikov attempts to understand some of the onlookers like the shepherds and the group of crying women, it is clear that he remembers, respects, and honors the man who was willing to fight for his country in the army, to work days on end to feed her and her family, and ultimately to die protecting a group of people he had known for only a week. The brevity of their relationship did not limit Savelii’s love for Maia, and the duration of their separation does not lessen Maia’s gratitude for his selfless sacrifice.

Seventy-five years after his death, Gross-Tolstikov relies on Savelii’s example to demonstrate the heroism of those who moved beyond bystanders to save the lives of others like his grandmother.

Moving into the Ghetto Over the course of the past month, Maia’s understanding of the world has been repeatedly challenged. By August 2, 1941 her understanding of rules and order continues to conflict with the way people are living. She has been faced with the loss of her home and loss of loved ones. Maia’s optimism up to this point was always unflagging. However, it has now been over a month since

Savelii was killed, and the readers do not know the Maia they will encounter in this passage. Her Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 233 family has walked back to Minsk and they are finding the indications of the Nazi occupation: physical signs which warn that thievery is punishable by death, bodies in the streets, and their own home, uninhabitable and charred from a fire. Incredibly, it seems as though Maia and nothing in her situation has changed. She may have returned to Minsk, but she is again walking many kilometers—although this time without shoes. She is encountering dead bodies, and again one of them is close to her own age. In the wake of all of these similarities to the circumstances of

Savelii’s death, Maia utters her first complaint of the novel, explaining that she can’t continue walking because her feet hurt. It is as though the homelessness, hunger, and death have all finally caught up with her. And only in this moment do they see a sign detailing the creation of the Minsk ghetto. The entry ends with Maia’s question, “Mom, what is a ghetto?” (56).118 Her question reverberates the feeling of foreboding that Gross-Tolstikov has been cultivating throughout the first half of the novel. The unanswered plea manages to convey the dreaded horror that awaits

Maia and her family in the ghetto. While it seems as though nothing could be worse than the incurable fatigue, hunger, thirst, killing, and senseless death that Maia has encountered up to this point, the readers feel in their hearts and know in their heads that an even worse fate awaits Maia and her family in the ghetto.

While staying with her grandmother in the ghetto, Maia takes another step toward adulthood, again proving that she can take care of her family. This scene illustrates her coming of age story. When they arrive back in the city on August 2, 1941, they are forced to try and find

Maia’s grandmother and stay with her in her home. Significantly this is after the ghetto has already been formed. So while Berta Aizikovna and her daughter already found the sign about the formation of the ghetto, the reader can’t be sure if they read the sign and were aware of how precarious their situation wandering about Minsk was. This scene is full of contradictions about Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 234 how her family perceives her age and maturity level. First, Berta Aizikovna cannot get into the grandmother’s home, so Maia devises a plan and climbs in through the window. While she needs her mother’s help to get up to the window, she proves that she is capable of developing and executing a strategy to help them find shelter. When they get into the house, her grandmother reveals to her mother that she knows where their male family members are hiding. Then the two begin to discuss how they will take food to the men. This discussion includes an exchange that reveals a lot about how the older generations perceive Maia. The grandmother, Toiba, curses. Berta

Aizikovna quiets her, glancing at Maia. Toiba responds that Maia was not listening, to which Berta

Aizikovna responds, winking in Maia’s direction, “That one hears everything” (58).119 It becomes clear that Berta Aizikovna knows that her daughter is perceptive of her surroundings. Therefore, it stands to reason that she believes her eight-year-old daughter to be aware of the things that are going on in Minsk—the German occupation, the looting and bombing of the city, the persecution of the Jews, and most recently, the formation of the ghetto. However, despite her assurance that her daughter is aware of what is happening in the city, she does not want her going out into it.

When Toiba suggests that Maia be the one to take food to the men, her mother disagrees vehemently. It’s one thing for Maia to understand what is happening in the city, but it’s another for her venture out into it. While her grandmother does not realize how perceptive Maia is, she does trust her to go about the city undetected. Ultimately, it is not either of the matriarchal figures who has the final say. Maia herself pronounces, “Mom, don’t be afraid, don’t worry. … Grandma is speaking correctly … I will go here, there, and back like a mouse. No one will notice… honestly, honestly” (58).120 In this moment, eight-year-old Maia asserts herself. This is the climax of Maia’s personal development. She has heard what her mother and grandmother think about her personality and abilities, but she is able to consider them and then make her own decision. She has seen fellow Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 235

Jews led to their deaths and witnessed how Savelii sacrifice his life for her and their group. She is ready, even at her tender age, to do the same. She will risk her own safety to feed the male members of her family, regardless of how the female family members perceive the danger. Maia is coming of age.

Despite her quick assimilation into adult life, one of the first scenes of Maia’s life in the ghetto involves her attending school. It is September 1, 1941 and just as on any other September

1—including those before the war—Maia is attending the first day of class. This repetition of prewar life in Maia’s prewar setting, Minsk, seems to suggest a sort of normalcy that is being reestablished after leaving the club in Smilovichi. While the readers do not get much information about settling into the ghetto a month previously, nor do they know what has happened in the month since, there are small indications that, as much as possible, life has returned to normal: they are living in their grandmother’s home and now Maia is attending school just like she would have before the war started. However, this false sense of normalcy and security that has presumably been present to some extent over the past month is obliterated in an instant. At school, Maia is daydreaming, looking out the window onto the playground in a scene reminiscent of her prewar days, when she sees German soldiers drive up in trucks and begin putting children into them. The teacher also realizes what is happening and bolts the door to her classroom. She smashes another window open with a chair and begins sending students out the window, appointing a path they need to use to run to safety. Maia is one of the last students left in the classroom, when the German soldiers break down the classroom door and incapacitate the teacher. She manages to flee out the window, cutting her hand on the broken glass pane, as she escapes for home.

Although she arrives home in safety, the reader is left with the image of Maia’s frantic escape coupled with the cries of children being loaded into trucks. While breaking into clubs and Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 236 houses has not had any negative consequences thus far, in this moment, Maia realizes the true danger that can come from forbidden spaces. She is forced to confront the reality that breaking into somewhere has become easier than breaking out of somewhere. Just as she was confined to a classroom with innocent children being captured by full grown men carrying guns, so too is her family trapped in this ghetto, unarmed and with a sick mother, old grandmother, and young toddler.

While Maia may have succeeded in escaping from her classroom, the thought that she may not be able to ultimately escape the ghetto has been planted in her mind and the readers’. The familiar façade of the past month is shattered. Later that night, Maia overhears her mother and grandmother discussing the fact that she will not return to school until after the war ended. This is one more thing that she excelled at and really enjoyed in her previous life that has been taken away. The conversation also shatters the thinly coated veneer that maybe they will be safe if they simply stay in the ghetto and follow orders. Maia hears her mother and grandmother speculating that the young male children were picked up for forced labor and the young girls for forced pleasure. In this scene, not only is the concept of freedom and escape obliterated, but also the idea that life will ever go back to the way it was before the war.

After her interrupted day of school, Maia begins spending her days searching for food.

Caught between childhood and adulthood, the ghetto and the outside world, Maia is now in charge of providing for her family. When Berta Aizikovna and her little brother want to eat, Maia has to find food for them. As her grandmother suggests, it is much safer (and easier) for Maia to leave the ghetto than for her mom to do so. However, Maia’s established pattern of breaking and entering, escaping across transgressional boundaries has been called into question. This action was first established by Savelii, when he demonstrated the “magic trick” of breaking into the club.

Maia herself even broke into her grandmother’s home in order to find somewhere for her family Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 237 to stay. This pattern continues throughout the narrative as Maia escapes into and out of the ghetto.

However, after her first day of school, Maia is more aware than ever of the danger she faces in doing so, even if she tries to convince her mother that she is the best person for the job. As a child, she is much less conspicuous than an adult and therefore, much safer. Maia reiterates this point in order to comfort her mother. She tells her that she’ll go to the market in the Russian zone of Minsk and return quickly enough that her mother won’t even “have time to miss her” (64). Then, her mother mentions the horror of having to send her daughter thieving outside the ghetto. She is appalled that her daughter must do something so immoral. The Maia of two months ago, when the

Germans had just invaded the Soviet Union and begun bombing Minsk, was in complete agreement with her mother. She was appalled by the number of people looting throughout the city. She berated one man for his unethical choice. However, since June, Maia’s understanding of morality has become refined. Her sense of the complexity of morality is much more advanced than it should be at such an age. She recognizes that stealing is wrong in most situations, yet feels she is justified in her current choice. She cites the highest authority she knows, to prove that her actions are ethical.

She justifies stealing vegetables, saying, “No one is stealing, mom. Lenin commanded us to share.

So we share” (64).121 The statement is simplistic and full of confidence in the founder of the Soviet

Union. However, the reader cannot be certain if Maia actually believes what she is saying, or if she is simply trying to absolver her mother of her guilt. On the one hand, she is young and clearly believes Molotov’s claim that the Soviet army will defeat Germany. Maia clearly displays a belief in the political dogma of the day. She has been raised a good, young Soviet citizen and easily espouses the ideology she has been taught. On the other hand, in the same scene Maia also demonstrates the ability to lie to her mother to protect her feelings. After hearing Maia calm each of her mother’s concerns, the reader alone is left to witness how she mutters her fears to herself as Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 238 she is leaving the ghetto. “Oh mom… if you only knew how scared I am… every time,” Maia expresses her true feelings to the air around her (64).122

In this scene, the dual nature of Maia’s personality is outlined. At this halfway point in the novella, it is obvious that Maia’s sense of self- and familial preservation has caused her to grow up. She is able to comfort her mother by lying about her own fears. She is also able to justify stealing and to refine her old moral code in order to feed herself and her family. At the same time, the youthful naivete of a nine-year-old girl lingers, even in one who has faced so much hardship and death. Despite all that she has seen and done, Maia still believes in the Soviet system she has always followed. While lying to her mom and stealing food, she simultaneously mentions Lenin and Molotov. She has retained her belief in the justness of the Soviet cause and in the Soviet system that her leaders espouse. This is a moment of middle ground for the girl. She is both clever and deceitful as well as naïve and trusting. This scene depicts one of the evolutionary stages of Maia’s mental transformation from a young, innocent girl to an experienced, suspicious one. Her age has not changed but circumstances show that her moral compass is evolving while her political views and faith in the Soviet system have yet to do so. This scene portrays a middle ground in Maia’s psychological and ethical development, which is happening faster than it possibly should for any nine-year-old.

The First Major Pogrom of the Minsk Ghetto and the Concept of Soundscape On November 6, the eve of the celebration of the October Revolution, Maia is busy coloring a card for the upcoming holiday when she hears from her mother that she needs to go sleep at Aunt Anya’s house. Berta Aizikovna has heard that the holiday won’t be safe in the ghetto.

In response, the reader gets one of the few times in the text that Maia acts her age and complains like a typical child. She says, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 239

“Well, mom … We need to go to Aunt Anna’s all together. Tomorrow is a

holiday after all. …“

“That’s just the point,” mother sighed heavily. “People say that you need to be

careful. You never know what the Germans will come up with concerning the

Jews in the ghetto. Still, it’s the holiday of the October Revolution. And to them,

that is like a thorn in their side.

“What of it?” Maya shrugged her shoulders. “What are these Germans, aren’t

they people too? Don’t they love to celebrate? Even if it’s not their holiday.”

(67)123

Like any young girl, Maia wants to celebrate the holiday with her family. This suggests a few things about her life over the course of the past three months in the ghetto. First, despite the numerous tragedies she has survived up to this point—seeing Jews marched off to their deaths,

Savelii’s death, witnessing the burnt remains of her own home, and barely escaping her first day of school alive—Maia has been able to maintain her optimism and her faith in the Soviet cause.

The card she is making is covered in flags and skipping children. Her desire to celebrate the holiday not only attests to her young age but also to her faith in the greatness of the Soviet Union and in

Molotov’s promise that they will be victorious over their German occupiers. In addition, Maia has maintained her goodness. While her mom is able to innately understand why the Germans might be prone to violence on a Soviet holiday, Maia still believes in the inherent goodness of all people.

Unlike the Germans who have so simply labeled her a Jew and been able to decide her whole personality, belief system, worth, etc. based on this categorization, Maia is unable to do likewise.

When she thinks of the Germans, she assumes that they are people. She endows them with humanity and merriment. While German soldiers have literally penned her into a ghetto simply Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 240 because of her nationality, she does not reciprocate in her understanding of them. She assumes that they are human, not German but human, and therefore love to celebrate just like any Russian, Jew,

Kazak, Armenian, etc. Despite all that has happened to her since June, Maia still values individuals and considers all humans to have similar natures and desires. Despite the way she is being treated, she has remained uncontaminated by the notion that one group of people is different or better than another. She asserts her own humanity by endowing her enemies with the same humanity that she gives herself and everyone else.

After the argument about leaving for her aunt’s house, it is only after mother and daughter’s cheeks are stained with tears that Maia leaves home. In her typical self-sacrificing fashion, Maia even offers to carry her sleeping younger brother Gen’ka to her aunt’s home. This is just another piece of evidence that three months in the ghetto have not been enough to break Maia’s spirits or transform her personality. While she may have been able to adjust her rigid moral code to include stealing to feed her family, she has not changed it so entirely that she values her own life before the lives of others. Although her brother would probably be heavy and could possibly cry and draw attention to Maia escaping the ghetto, she is willing to risk her life to protect her brother from the possibility of danger. However, her mother tells her to leave her brother with her and sends Maia on her way. Their farewell is both touching and concerning. The sense of foreboding that is prevalent throughout the text appears again in this section. The reader educated on the history of the Minsk ghetto knows that this is the eve of the first major pogrom in the ghetto. Maia, her mother, and the reader all sense that this may be the mother and daughter’s final parting.

On the day of the first major pogrom in the Minsk ghetto, the soundscape comes alive. As a member of the third generation, Gross-Tolstikov creates a soundscape that mirrors the soundscape of the survivors’ memoirs. Gross-Tolstikov himself likely encountered the narrative Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 241 of the Holocaust through sound—through his grandmother’s retelling, through lectures in school and at the university, through Hollywood films and documentaries, through museum docent’s voices, and through the recorded testimonies of many survivors. This is how the third generation has become acquainted with the Holocaust, and this fact shines through Gross-Tolstikov’s novella.

Aarons and Berger explain it thus, “Third-generation stories are more often than not overheard and unevenly pieced together. . . The modes of discovery must draw upon a collage of sensations, affects, competing and broken memories, implied and circuitous hints, sideways references and whispered asides, a whiff of knowing…” (Aarons and Berger 4-5) [emphasis added]. This aspect of hearing and overhearing the Holocaust bleeds into the scene when Maia wakes up early on

November 7, 1941, ready to return to the ghetto to see her mother and brother. Her aunt Anya convinces her to stay for a glass of tea and hopefully to say goodbye to her cousins before she leaves. It seems obvious to the reader, if not to Maia herself, that her aunt is hoping to convince her to stay outside of the ghetto as long as possible. The feeling of foreboding and premonition that accompanied Maia’s flight from the ghetto the night before has not dissipated even in the morning light. As the water for tea is boiling, two events occur almost simultaneously to add to the suspense. The whistle of a teakettle accompanies Maia’s reflections as she and her grandfather look out the window to the Jewish cemetery.

“What’s there, daughter?” asked grandfather, shuffling across the room to

the window.

“It’s not calm somehow, papa,” she answered. “It seems as though

something is happening at the Jewish cemetery.”

“What could be happening there?” snickered Gavril Petrovich. “It’s a

cemetery after all. … There isn’t a quieter place in the world.” (70)124 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 242

The auditory implications of this moment are significant. Maia senses that something there is not right. Something is happening. This something, repeated twice, emphasizes the sense of the unknown, of imminent danger, which increases simultaneously with the volume of the whistling kettle. It is all brought to an abrupt stop as the final episode in the series of events occurs: a loud knock on the front door (70). The moment of silence afterward is possibly the eeriest moment of all. Maia’s grandfather had just said that quieter places than cemeteries don’t exist, yet with this one striking moment of silence, reality contradicts his words. The truth of his statement has been debunked, and the sense of fear and foreboding that Maia and then her aunt and now grandpa were feeling leaks out from the pages of the novella to affect the reader. It is as though the moment the door opens, and the current silence is shattered, life as Maia knows it will change.

A neighbor woman barges into the apartment indicating a cessation of the momentary stillness. Afterwards a few pleasantries are exchanged in an automatic, almost automatized manner. Then this concept of sound is reintroduced into the text. Instead of simply asking what is happening or how things are going, grandmother Anna asks her neighbor “что слышно” or

“What’s up?” (70). While this is a simple and vague request for information, the word choice is deliberate. Containing the root ‘слыш,’ or ‘to hear,’ the author signals to the reader that the auditory element of this scene is not concluded. The author is triggering his reader to connect the following scenes about the first major pogrom in the ghetto with sound. In answer to that question

“что слышно,” Maia receives a callous, unaffected answer that informs her of the imminent deaths of her friends and loved ones in the ghetto.

“Like what? Since five o’clock this morning in that… that ghetto,” the woman

answered calmly drinking her tea. “People say, they themselves saw how the Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 243

invaders drove a column of Jews to Yubileynaya Square, and from there straight

along Sukhaya Street to the cemetery . . . to dig holes.”

“Everyone?” Maia asked fearfully.

“Not everyone. How could you take them all?” Aunt Anya brushed the question

aside. “A number of them.”

“It doesn’t matter how many; they’re all still people,” said Aunt Anya.

“And you, Maika, are you listening with your ears pricked?” strictly answered

Grandmother Anna. “I told you, go, get water.” (70-71)125

In this scene, the theme of humanity and the concept of the soundscape overlap. Maia is able to see a juxtaposition between those who value human life and those who do not, and this insight intersects with the sounds in the apartment as well as the sounds coming from the ghetto. These seemingly irrelevant noises “emanat[e] from a given landscape to create unique acoustical patterns across a variety of spatial and temporal scales,” forming a soundscape of significance, which penetrates the entire text of the novella (Pijanowski 204). With the emphatic statement, “they are all people,” Maia’s kind-hearted aunt, who is willing to risk her life to save her niece, demonstrates that she is able to recognize the humanity inherent in all people. Meanwhile, her neighbor sits unaffected, calmly sipping her tea. As she brings her news to a close, the neighbor refers to Maia’s ears again triggering the idea in the reader’s mind that sounds will be important in the following scenes. Her words seem to imply that while there is a moment of silence in Maia’s aunt’s apartment, the ghetto resounds with the grunts of hard labor, the clings of shovels hitting rock, and the soon-to-be screams of the dying.

Naturally, it is through another sound-based process—the whisperings of Minsk’s inhabitants—that Maia finds out about the state of the Jews in the ghetto the next morning. She Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 244 wakes before her aunt and her family and goes to Jubilee Square to find out how her family fared in the pogrom. Again, the noises of the situation are important: Maia overhears “quiet conversations”126 and “fragments of phrases”127 that allow her “to collect in her imagination a full picture of the events of the day before” (76).128 These overheard whispers are in direct opposition with the clangs of shovels hitting rocks, the roars of the душегубки, and “the despondent screams of women and cries of children [that] filled the frozen air” the day before (76).129 These illusory sounds echo in Maia’s brain, allowing her to guess what fate befell her mother and baby brother, which causes her to walk around the city, lost and crying. She eventually goes into a barn to cry in private. However, someone is already in the barn and hears her weeping. At the tender address

«милая моя», Maia mistakenly thinks the woman’s voice is her mother’s. She quickly realizes that she misheard. However, it isn’t until she believes that she hears her mother’s voice talking to her in the barn that Maia really accepts the fact that her mother and brother have been murdered

(76). The impossibility of hearing her mother’s voice again, the complete irreproducibility of that sound is representative of Maia’s greater loss. She cries because the rumors she heard were true, these low-pitched sounds and the imagined voice of her mother confirm that she is gone for good.

Essentially, it is the lack of noise, the inability to reproduce a specific sound, that triggers Maia’s acceptance of the reality of her mother’s death.

In juxtaposition with the terrifying soundscape of the first major pogrom in the Minsk ghetto, the sound associated with a. young child helps Maia begin to recover from her previous trauma. After acknowledging her mother’s likely death, Maia agrees to live with this unknown woman—Aunt Glasha as refers to herself—and to be a nanny to her mute three-year-old son, Gena.

It is the fact that her son shares a name with her deceased little brother that really causes Maia to agree to the new living arrangement. It is unclear how long Maia has been living with Aunt Glasha Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 245 and Gena, but one day her biological aunt happens to walk by with a Soviet German woman. She sees Maia and quickly proclaims that Maia is returning home to live with her. It is as Maia is leaving Glasha and Gena that Gena utters his very first word, “Maia.” His evident love of his young nanny rings out through the courtyard twice in succession. This expression of pure childlike love seems to be a turning point for Maia, a small indication of healing. Just as the sound of a motherly voice triggered Maia to accept the inevitability of her mother’s demise, so too does the sound of Gena’s voice begin the process of healing. Gena’s first word, Maia’s name, is the sound that reawakens her again to the possibility of living.

At the Radio Station Gross-Tolstikov further utilizes the concept of the soundscape to bolster the theme of humanity as Maia interacts with the German soldiers at the radio station. The next two episodes contrast dramatically with the brief moments of respite found with Aung Glasha and young Gena.

Almost immediately after walking away from Gena’s cries of love, the three women hear the gruff cadence of a German man speaking in his native tongue. He speaks with the Soviet German woman they are walking with, asking if Maia is Jewish. The woman answers in the negative, asserting that

Maia is her daughter, another German like himself. Luckily the three women are allowed to leave in peace. However, Maia returns to her aunt’s home to find out that German soldiers have occupied a portion of their apartment and transformed it into a radio station. It seems that nowhere in Minsk is safe. The ghetto proved itself deadly, but both Aunt Glasha and Aunt Toiba’s apartments are also surrounded by German soldiers. Linking this past experience with Germans with the upcoming episode, the readers are able to understand more about Maia’s moral compass and her outlook on people. When Maia returns to live with her aunt in her suddenly shrunken apartment— the Germans cordoned off one entrance and section of the building as a radio station—she returns Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 246 to pondering the essence of humanity. She ponders to herself, “How could some Fascists cruelly execute Soviet citizens, while others have fun laughing, fooling around in the snow like little children? What were the radio operators she knew doing in their free time? Given that all of them, both the first and the second, were completely identical, ordinary people, albeit from a different country, one people with the same holidays and weekday joys” (81).130 According to the narrator,

“she could not wrap her head around it” (81).131 Maia again attempts to understand what is happening to the people of Minsk. Noticeably, she is not concerned about Jews or Russians, but all Soviet citizens. This idea reflects both her political upbringing as well as her current position, which has enabled her to observe suffering among the Jews and the Russians. It is all around her, and because all Soviets regardless of nationality are able “to have fun, to laugh, [and] to play in the snow like children,” she cannot fathom how the German Fascists can brutally murder. Further it is important to note that even Soviet Germans like her aunt’s friend are not numbered in her mind with the German Fascists. It is a small group of people that she cannot understand how to fit into her definition of “people.” However, the most important element, unmentioned in her thoughts, is that they are to be classified as people in her mind, even when they don’t afford her the same courtesy.

This notion of defining the fascist Germans is further complicated by Maia’s first interaction with one of the German soldiers. He approaches her and asks if she would accept a candy bar in exchange for cleaning the radio station floors. There are a few significant elements to this scene. First, the German soldier speaks to her in Russian. With his language choice, he acknowledges that he is the one asking for a service and puts himself in a vulnerable position. He fumbles through the language, speaking clumsily and mispronouncing words. Second, the soldier could have easily bullied Maia into the position. He is clearly in a position of physical and political Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 247 dominance, and yet he chooses not to assert it. For the same reason, he could have chosen to withhold her payment once she completed her task. Yet, he pays her and even asks for her services in subsequent days. This is so reminiscent of her days living with her mother, Gena, and Savelii in the club in Smilovichi, that Maia and the reader are forced to acknowledge the similarities. Again,

Maia is being paid with provisions, which she again shares with her family, for her assistance in domestic tasks. However, in this instance, Maia is not helping other Belarussians. She is working for German soldiers. This association complicates the idea of German personhood in her mind. As she finishes mopping the floor of the radio station, Maia reflects that all men are dirty and helpless at cleaning. In this instance she is equating Germans with Soviets. She does not categorize them by nationality like the Germans have done the Jews, rather she is able to recognize differences between different types of Germans: the Soviet German neighbor who risked her life to save a young Jewish girl, the German soldiers who killed Savelii, the German soldier who let her pass late at night, and now the German radio-operator who proves to be a fair employer. Maia’s encounters with different German soldiers and her aunt’s friendship with a Soviet Jew create a distinct difference between the way that Maia perceives the world and the way that others around her do. While Maia’s moral compass adjusts as she encounters new situations, her definition of humanity is unyielding. No matter what a group of people does to her, she will not cast negative aspersions on them as a group. She is able to see distinct human beings, even when she has already been mercilessly classified into a group and treated without regard for her individuality.

Maia’s landscape and soundscape are constantly evolving. She so quickly moves from place to place: her home in Minsk to the club in Smilovichi, the ghetto, her aunt’s home, Aunt

Glasha’s home, her aunt’s now-shrunken apartment, etc. Her jobs evolve in a similar manner. First she works odd jobs for food in Smilovichi, then works at the local market and steals from gardens Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 248 outside the ghetto. She helps raise Gena for shelter and then begins cleaning the German soldier’s radio station. In such a shifting world, the sounds around Maia mirror the constant flux that is her life. Interestingly though, there are some sounds that stay with her no matter her circumstances.

One of the constants in Maia’s soundscape is oration. No matter where she is living or working, moments surrounding the spoken and written word are particularly important. On the day the war began, the day Maia’s life transformed from one of order to chaos, she heard Molotov’s speech broadcast at Komsomol Lake. Although it contrasted with his initial message of occupation,

Molotov’s assurance of victory rippled out across the lake. As Molotov’s voice echoed out over the crowd, his words were considered, dissected, rejected, and repeated amongst the people standing around the lake. His message grew quickly both in volume and in support. It is therefore, unsurprising that Maia refers to that message and to that moment over and over in the first half of the novel. It is one of the loudest moments in the novel, eclipsed only by the noise of the bombs dropping on Minsk. However, unlike the bombs, Molotov’s speech reverberates past the initial occupation of the city. It is still in Maia’s head and in her heart. Therefore, it is unsurprising that when Maia hears about the German soldiers’ failure to take Moscow on December 12, 1941, the message is one of hope, heard at a deafening volume with resounding implications.

Despite promising her aunt that she would not help the German soldiers clean the radio station again, Maia is still working for them on December 12, 1941. In fact, she has been working for them enough that four of the soldiers really trust her and have even left her alone in the station.

Maia, curious and intelligent, has figured out how to work the radio and decides to listen to music.

When she turns the radio on, it is not music that plays but a speech from Moscow explaining that

German soldiers have failed to take the Russian capital. The words ring out into the otherwise silent radio station, “Attention! Attention! Moscow is speaking! … In the last hour, the German Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 249 plan for encircling and taking Moscow was foiled. The defeat of the German troops on the outskirts of Moscow …” (82-83).132 The loud announcement rings through the otherwise silent radio station—at once a message of hope and a possible retaliatory death sentence if the German soldiers return to see a Soviet girl using their radio to listen to a message of their defeat. While it becomes too much of a risk to have such words echoing in the otherwise empty radio station, Maia can’t stop herself from seeking out the sweet sounds that she is hearing. Instead, she uses headphones to complicate the soundscape further. She stifles the noise of the radio broadcast to the outside world, but she is still able to hear it herself. While on the outside, everything is silent, Maia’s internal world is full of noise. The words impact her as words seem to do in the novel. She is able to get further details, and luckily the broadcast changes to music as one of the soldiers enters the radio station. She is able to hum a few bars of a piece of classical music, and he simply tells her he likes the sound before she leaves for the day. Ultimately, the lesson of the day is that sounds can be perilous, but Maia is drawn to the hope mixed with danger that she hears in the sounds of a German radio broadcasting a Soviet victory.

Interwoven with the exploration of the Maia’s soundscape is the theme of humanity. Maia’s attempt to define humanity is also present in her every interaction with the German soldiers who work at the radio station. After she returns home from cleaning their floors the first time, her aunt and uncle warn her away from her work. They explain that it isn’t safe and that they don’t trust her employers because they are German soldiers. To Maia, however, first and foremost they are simply men. She comments, “At the Germans’ place I washed the floors. … It was immediately apparent, that men live there” (81).133 Despite all of the harm that has come to her and her family and friends at the hands of German soldiers, Maia does not have predetermined biases toward the men at the radio station. They fall into her simplistic view of the division between men and women, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 250 but she does not extend that division to nationality. Her upbringing in cosmopolitan Minsk has not taught her to think along these lines, and she has few preconceived notions about the men she’s working for. Despite her knowledge that they are on different sides in a war, she is able to contain her judgements to them as individuals rather than part of a group who has overrun her city and murdered her people.

These soldiers do not remain long in the narrative, but one is even given a name and his conversation with Maia is recorded. After she is caught listening to music, she hums a few bars of the song to Fredrick who sings along with her. It is a love of music that transcends national boundaries. Despite their inability to communicate well, they have a mutual understanding of and respect for classical music; they are able to find common ground in its sounds. Their relationship develops further as they converse. While much of their language is simple and accompanied by gestures, there is a desire to communicate about music, work, and wages and to show appreciation to each other. They even have enough mutual respect to attempt conversing in each other’s languages. Further along in the conversation, Fredrick switches from German to broken Russian.

His speech is reported thus, «Карачо убират. Молодес Майя.»134 His incompetence with the language only adds to their relationship. It signals to Maia that he is willing to humble himself enough to talk to her in her own language. He is setting aside his pride in order to compliment and thank her for the work that he is paying her to do. Coming from an adult and employer, this simple sign of respect on Fredrick’s part shows respect for the young girl. He clearly values her efforts and appreciates their acquaintance. He trusts her to listen to the radio and does not hesitate to ask her to return, even leaving her alone again despite her clear knowledge of how to use the radio equipment. Maia’s response «Данке шон»135 indicates linguistically that she understands both his verbal message and the respect he is paying her. Despite differences in age, gender, nationality, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 251 politics, and even war, the two indicate a reciprocal regard through their use of language, another interesting element to add to the soundscape of the novel. In this way, the soundscape of the novella supports Maia’s exploration of what it means to be human.

Dreams and Coming of Age The doors of Maia’s life are constantly revolving. There are many people who come and go in her life. In general, her life is in a constant state of flux. Despite all of the change that she encounters, Maia is always living according to her own set of moral principles: she values people as individuals and without preconceived notions, she believes in earning her living, and she supports her family even if sometimes the work is less than desirable. Maia’s work ethic and her determination to earn everything she has is admirable and strong. She even feels this way around her own family, so one night in December of 1941 when Maia is asked to go get water, she doesn’t refuse, despite the difficulty the task presents her and despite the fact that she’d already been working all day at the local outside market. That wintry night Maia comes home from work and her grandmother asks her to fetch water. Without complaint, she carries the buckets and shoulder yoke down the hill to refill the water. On the way back, she has difficulty carrying all of that weight up the hill. She struggles not to spill the water and to take each step in the deep snow and ice. At some point in the climb, she falls down the hill, soaking her wet clothing and bruising her body.

Despite this, she sees the grandmother watching out the window and returns to gets the water a second time. Her determination, endurance, and strength of will allow her to eventually get the water home. At which point, her grandmother complains about how long it took her to fetch the water, and Maia faints to the floor.

She is unconscious for four days, and during this time has a dream. This is the outstanding metaphysical moment in the novel. Every other occurrence in Maia’s life is just part of a harsh Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 252 reality, but this moment is a glimpse into her inner desires and into her beliefs which are being shaped by the war environment. Significantly, this dream is induced by trauma. Therefore, it triggers remembrance of the biggest shock that Maia has faced in her short life: the unverifiable deaths of her mother and brother. The dreamscape is not beautiful or scenic, rather it is set in real life and relies on Maia’s experience over the past year of the war. She is looking out the window of a moving truck, and when she turns to look inside the vehicle, Maia sees her mother and sleeping brother. Maia’s face splits into a grin, but her mother frowns. Even in her dreams, her mother does not want to see her. She forcefully tells Maia to wake up. Her message is simple: Maia must live.

She must live for everyone, for her mother and her brother and for everyone (88). The word

‘everyone’ is emphasized in its repetition. It’s a rather adult thought for one so young, yet it is right after receiving this vision that Maia begins to work proactively against the Nazis. By doing so, she is both fulfilling her mother’s request to live and simultaneously putting herself in danger.

Maia awakens from this dream and has the desire to live for her family who has died; yet she also wants to follow the other half of her mother’s injunction: to live for everyone. Maia chooses to do this by endangering herself and risking her life delivering messages to the underground in order to allow others to live. She isn’t simply living for those who had died; she is now living in order to prevent more people from dying. Her life seems to have found a purpose that is bigger than herself alone. Just like Maia has always provided for her family—from the club in Smilovichi to the Minsk ghetto, from cleaning the radio station to carrying water home—everywhere Maia goes she is sacrificing her time and her strength to bring about a better life for others. Significantly, it is this exact characteristic that caused her to faint and brought on the dream of her mother. She is being told to live for everyone just as she has always done, but to live for herself too. That is what her mother and brother would want. She is being given permission to find happiness in life and to live Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 253 to the fullest extent. In true Maia fashion, she then decides to risk her life helping the underground because helping other really brings her true joy. This dream and the injunction by her mother are a set up for the climax of the novel.

A Soundscape of Silence The next scenes are when two former acquaintances are brought back into Maia’s life in quick succession. She runs in to her dad’s old friend, who she refers to as Uncle Slava. She begins working for him, assisting in the care of his elderly mother. As she does this, Maia finds out that he is working with the underground. Quickly thereafter, Maia encounters her Uncle Shura, who she almost does not recognize at first. She catches him up on the death of her mother and brother and the unknown whereabouts of her father. He explains that he deserted from the army. She reconnects the two men, who played soccer together years ago, and Slava is able to help Uncle

Shura to obtain papers and get a job working in the tobacco factory, which also doubles as undercover work for the underground.

Maia is performing increasingly more work for the underground. When her Uncle Shura runs away to join the partisans, she is asked to embark upon a dangerous mission to deliver him new documents. The mission is bookended by discussions on Maia’s age. Before she leaves, her aunt explains the mission in patronizing detail. In response, Maia comments,

“What? Am I a little or something?” the girl grinned.

“The fact of the matter is that you’re very adult,” she smiled affectionately. “An

adult beyond her years … Therefore, I am really counting on you. I would not send

you so far away for any other reason.”

“I know the city,” answered Maia. “The Voroshilovskii factory? It’s a bit far, of

course, but I will get there quickly.” Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 254

“It’s not only far away, but also very dangerous,” Aunt Anya warned a second time.

“Everything will be fine, Aunt Anya. Don’t worry.” (100)136

In this moment, Maia’s age and ability are called into question for the final time in the novella.

Although she is responsible and has been working for almost a year, she is still only nine-years- old. This makes her someone who can move about the city without suspicion, but it is also a reason for concern for her aunt. Yet Maia feels like an adult. And as in this situation, she is being trusted with adult responsibilities. In calming her aunt’s fears, Maia reemphasizes her position as an adult.

She is the one taking care of her aunt, taking on adult responsibilities, and taking over the role of comforter in their parent-child relationship. This scene portends the climax of the novella, in which

Maia’s coming of age story is finally complete. Although Maia is given enormous responsibilities, in this moment her age is still being called into question. By the end of the next scene, however,

Maia will have been forced to endure so much that her age will not be questioned again through the duration of the novella.

This episode in the woman’s area of the camp is the prelude to the climax of the novella in which the harsh reality of childhood during the Holocaust is brought to life by a startling and violent soundscape. The climax of Maia’s story is the central element of the soundscape that Gross-

Tolstikov has been creating. Maia travels across the dangerous landscape of the city of Minsk in order to meet up with a man named Adam, who will take her to the partisan camp to deliver documents to Uncle Shura. While her daylong passage through the city is not depicted in great detail, the reader has a sense of how tiring, terrifying, and lonely the walk must have been. When

Maia finally meets up with Uncle Adam, he calls her by nickname: “Maechka.” The two syllables of the diminutive are so comforting after such a long sojourn, yet when Maia goes to reply, she is quickly silenced (101). This short interaction, preceded by the hours of personal silence that were Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 255 part of Maia’s trip across the city, sets the tone for the rest of the scene and for the climax of the novel. Maia is now with another person, but in essence, she is making a lone and silent sojourn to save a family member, one of the few she has left. Under the cover of darkness, they commence their descent into a steep ravine. Maia falls and blood drips from her knees. She endures the pain and the darkness in silence—another sign of this 9-year-old girl’s maturity—marking her descent as lonelier even than the rest of her day when she walked unaccompanied. After another hour, they are joined by three silent, unknown, and armed partisans, who all follow Adam to the camp. This non-interaction is in sharp contrast with the enthusiastic greeting Maia receives when the group finally meets up with Uncle Shura. “‘Well, hello, niece!’ Uncle Shura exclaimed joyfully, jumping up to meet the girl. After spending several hours in complete silence, Maia’s ears perceived his voice as though through the speaker of a megaphone. She clapped her hands over her ears and yawned widely, rushing her ears to adapt. (101)137 Uncle Shura’s greeting is violently loud in comparison with the rest of Maia’s interactions that day. While it should be a moment of reunion and rejoicing, Maia is only jarred from his exuberance and exhausted from the day’s events. She covers her ears and yawns deeply. Over the course of the day—and the entirety of the novel—

Maia has been conditioned to fear noise for its destructive and revelatory power. As the novel approaches its climax, Gross-Tolstikov deliberately reinforces this negative association between noise and safety. In this way, “The trope of muteness, predominant in Holocaust narratives of all sorts, functions in [Gross-Tolstikov’s] fiction deliberately and explicitly to raise and explore connections and disjunctures among fictional constructs, textual omissions, and historical events.”

(Horowitz 1-2) Even at a reunion with her Uncle Shura and her second cousin Nina—a relative she didn’t even know was still alive—Maia is deliberately depicted as being wary of sound and its possible consequences. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 256

There is a subtle trigger to indicate the growth in Maia’s character development when she arrives at the partisan camp. After delivering the documents, Maia is reacquainted with her second cousin. They go to a woman’s room and catch up on each other’s lives as Maia’s cousin nurses her baby. In this instance, Maia is being grouped with the women. She is not sent to sleep with the children but is clearly invited into a feminine space and converses with her cousin about serious matters. They share their grief over the loss of her family, and like with her aunt, Maia finds herself in the position to reassure someone older than her that she is okay. Despite her hardships, she explains that she doesn’t have time to grieve. She has too much work to do. Over the course of the past year, Maia has embraced her role as protector, breadwinner, and underground messenger. In response to this decade-old adult, her second cousin says, “At your age, you should be playing with dolls, not playing at war. … Well, yes, we will defeat the Fascists and start to live anew”

(102).138 Again, Maia’s age and experience are a source of sorrow for others because they are a direct representation of a lost childhood; however, her strength and courage in the face of true adversity also provide her listener with courage: they will destroy the Fascists and live after a new manner. Maia’s age, which is called into question more and more over the course of the novel is ultimately a strength for those around her. She represents the resilience of the Jewish and Soviet people. With her typical refrain, Maia emphasizes the strength she is bringing to the people of

Minsk: “Our cause is just,” Maia agreed, yawning often. “Victory will be … ours. That’s what

Comrade Molotov said” (102).139 Interestingly, this quote highlights the dichotomy of Maia’s age.

She is both young as demonstrated by her simple faith in a promise over the radio. Yet she is also old enough to understand the strength of the words she is reiterating. And her yawns are a sign of both her youthfulness and her age. She is exhausted from walking all day on a secret mission for the partisans, yet her curling up to sleep as she can barely keep her eyes open is the spitting image Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 257 of a young child. Maia is coming of age much younger than most people, and her bifurcation between old and young underscores the enormous amount of growth she has undergone in the past ten months.

After talking with her second-cousin Nina, Maia is roused from her dreary state by a sharp, piercing whistle. Such an earsplitting sound in the midst of the dark, quiet night is obviously a sign of danger, and Maia flees with her cousin and the other women. That single shrill sound is augmented by panicked sounds of the partisans running in different directions across the camp.

Soon the explosions and black smoke of grenades join the chaos. The women and children like

Maia and her cousin with her baby are all running toward a nearby bog to hide. The men stay behind trying to fight off the encroaching Nazi soldiers and to allow the women time to escape.

This moment of chaos is full of bursts of noise and a loud background of gunshots and groans as the women in the foreground of the scene manage to move so inaudibly that Nina manages to hear

Maia’s teeth knocking together as they sit in the cold water of the bog. This fact alone is indicative of the speed at which they travelled, they must have gotten far away from the camp to be able to hear such a small noise. The chattering teeth indicate the absolute silence of the scene, creating a striking auditory contrast with where the men are fighting in the background. It is literally so quiet in the bog that Nina can hear Maia’s teeth. Maia attempts to be as quiet as possible, willing her teeth not to chatter and staying frozen in place, hoping not to make a sound, until she sees women disappearing into the water of the bog. With a deep sense of foreboding, Maia can no longer be silent and asks her cousin if the women are drowning. In reply, her cousin simply silences her as more women slip under the water, never reappearing. This eerie, silent scene set in a dark bog foreshadows the events that will come next. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 258

In short bursts, Nina whispers that the women are sitting low to the ground in the water, making them close to invisible. She shows Maia what to do, and as the two submerge themselves almost entirely in the water, Maia bites her teeth together as hard as possible to keep them from making any noise. However difficult it is for young Maia to sit in the icy water, it is impossible for Nina’s baby who shatters the near-silence with its cries. The noise grows as the women around them begin to mutter angry suggestions under their breath. “Quiet your child!” “I would…”

“You’re going to kill us all!” The final layer of the soundscape is added in the form of German shouting punctuated by the baby’s increased cries. The German screams morph into accented

Russian, “Come out! Women and children will be spared!” (104).140 A splash is heard as one of the soldiers falls into the bog, and silence reigns again.

It is in this climatic moment when young, resilient, hardworking, prideful, intelligent Maia is put to the ultimate test. She proves herself to be all of the things that the reader assumed leading up to this moment. Nine-year-old Maia has performed almost inhuman tasks through every crisis in the novel; she has survived the murder of her brother and mother, Savelii’s death, and risked her life working for the underground. In this instance, she has travelled 24 hours to deliver life- saving identification documents to her uncle and is now fleeing for her life in unfamiliar territory with absolutely no sleep. She and the other women of the partisan camp are being cornered by

Nazi soldiers. It is against this backdrop that Maia’s soundscape is the most vivid. The environment is charged with scrambling, splashes, heavy breathing, unintelligible German commands, gunshots in the distance, and an infant’s crying. This cacophony is suddenly and violently contrasted both auditorily and visually. Suddenly everything becomes silent.

Although it is unlikely that everyone and everything has stopped making noise, it is Maia’s perception of the noise around her that clues her audience in to her feelings of the events. As Miller Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 259 explains, “soundscapes can be understood only through peoples’ perceptions” (728). In this moment, the sole sound Maia is conscious of is a sudden and foreboding silence, accompanied by the image of a white blanket rising to the surface of the bog. One of the most devastating situations from the memoirs of the Minsk ghetto is being relived in this fictional account: Maia’s cousin Nina has drowned her baby in order to protect the women’s position. The silence of the moment speaks louder than any words ever could. The world is empty; the silence, real or imagined, punctuates the senseless death of this innocent baby with abrupt finality.

Soon after the baby is killed, the partisans rally and are able to fight off the Nazi soldiers.

The women eventually end up back at the camp, and Maia goes looking for her second cousin. On her way, she overhears other women gossiping. They each have something different to say about the fate of Nina’s baby and her choice in ending her child’s life. One remarks that she could never commit such an act; another claims that Nina waited too long. These thoughtless and cruel remarks echo in Maia’s ears as she alone goes to look for her most-likely grieving cousin. The war has transformed the world and its inhabitants into cruel gossips, who make thoughtless comments and accusations a mere hour after an infant is drowned. These jarring sounds echo in Maia’s ears, as only the nine-year-old girl-turned-woman seeks out the traumatized and guilt-ridden mother.

When Maia finds Nina, the atmosphere is again silent, hearkening back to the silence of moments before when her child died. This recurring silence accompanies the recurring image of death. Maia finds Nina in her room where Maia was sleeping so peacefully before. Now, however, Nina’s body is hanging from the end of a rope, jerking. Maia rushes to Nina’s side, pulls out Savelii’s knife, and cuts Nina down from the rope. Two abrupt sounds follow: a thump as Nina’s body hits the ground and sputtering noises as Nina’s body begin to breathe again. Maia has saved her cousin’s life. The juxtaposing sounds in this scene mirror Maia’s emotions over the course of the passing Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 260 minutes. She went from disgusted by the woman’s whispers to horrified at the silent scene of her cousin’s body swinging from a rope to immensely relieved at Nina’s first cough.

The realities of the Holocaust are nearly impossible for a nine-year-old girl or a member of the third-generation to express. After all, the third generation is deeply concerned and affected by their grandparents’ Holocaust experiences. As Eva Hoffman expounds, “It seems that the impact of the family legacy continues in the third generation. The grandchildren of survivors are still deeply affected by their elders’ experiences, memories, accounts” (185). This is clearly true in Gross-Tolstikov’s account of the drowned baby and the attempted suicide of his grandmother’s cousin. The soundscape, then, becomes a tool that allows Gross-Tolstikov to bring even the darkest moments of Maia’s experience to life. The horror of Maia’s experiences during the Holocaust cannot be rationally laid out by a nine-year-old girl or a deeply affected grandson; however, through the literary device of the soundscape, these horrors scream out from the pages of the novella. They bring to life the one moment during the Holocaust when Maia was not only a witness to death but was also able to save the life of her few remaining family members.

Five Years Later It’s the spring of 1950 and Belarus is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary as a member of the Soviet Union. Our protagonist, Maia, is now 17-years-old and walking through a park that was built after the war to celebrate the newly rebuilt Minsk. And just as her city has been reconstructed, so too has Maia’s life. This fact slowly becomes apparent as Maia sits on a bench, observing a family walking through the park. It is the image of typical, happy family. There is a husband and wife with two children: a girl and a boy. What sparked Maia’s attention was the couple calling their young, wandering daughter’s name—“Maia! Maia!”—asking her to return to them. Instead, the little girl who shares our protagonist’s name approaches Maia and sits on the bench next to her. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 261

She is inquisitive and curious and intelligent. She’s about to start school, just like the young Maia at the beginning of the novel. And like the Maia of nine years ago, she also has a little brother named Gen’ka. However, unlike the older Maia, this Maia still has her family. She will not be forced to endure the trials and trauma that our protagonist suffered. She will remain the vivacious, intelligent, young girl that she is and will not be forced to grow up at the age of nine. She will have no reason to undergo her coming of age story so young. In this moment, it is as though Maia is glimpsing what her life could have been like without war and persecution and the ghetto. As the young Maia leaves, 17-year-old Maia begins to cry. They are both tears of sadness for the people and possible future that she lost, but also tears of hope for the possible joyful and happy future that her young counterpart will be able to have. Gross-Tolstikov seems to be demonstrating that five years after the war, Maia is wrestling with the wounds of her past. They have left permanent scars.

However, she still recognizes the bright future of those who are growing up in this new, reconstructed Minsk. This is a new city with a new park on a beautiful spring day. Spring. The beginning of new life. Maia finds it five years after the Holocaust, and five years after the

Holocaust, Maia starts her own new life and her own new family.

As Maia is wiping away her tears, a man named Zhen’ka comes and joins her on her bench.

He asks what is wrong, and when she doesn’t vocalize her pain, he goes on to tell her that he has joined the army. In contrast with her silence, he sings a song about serving his country and quotes a Maiakovskii poem. He mentions her dream of a big family and asks her to wait for him while he is gone. The two decide to get married, again citing Maia’s desire for a family, which as evidenced by the previous scene, she has not had for years now. This desire to reclaim what she lost in her previous life, as much as possible, is evidence of progress, if not some degree of healing. Minsk was rebuilt, as evidenced by the park they are sitting in. Families have been re-formed, as there is Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 262 now another young Maia with the opportunity to grow up in an intact family unit. Maia is finally able to begin her own family, reclaiming the tiniest piece of what she lost. Now, she will have children to share her memories with. She will tell them of her mother and Gen’ka, of Savelii who gave his life to save hers, and of her baby cousin who didn’t survive to even walk or talk. She will share these memories of her old family with her new family, specifically with her someday grandson, who will then write her story sixty-seven years from the day she got engaged.

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 263

Conclusion The Minsk of 2020 is the capital of a country that celebrates its Day of Independence on

July 4, the day that the Red Army liberated Minsk. It is a city that has opened its doors to tourism and the possible financial benefits that tourists inevitably bring. It is a city that, at its heart, is still

Soviet. The largest streets in Minsk are full of 1950s Soviet architecture; the main post office looks like a tribute to one of Stalin’s Socialist Realist buildings, and unlike in other former Soviet

Republics, in Belarus, the secret police are still known as the KGB. Arguably, this connection to

Soviet times is stronger in Minsk than in any Russian city. With such strong ties to the Soviet past, it is no surprise that the Great Patriotic War Museum of Minsk presents a narrative of a strong, militaristic victory in the Second World War, but barely recognizes the events of the Minsk ghetto specifically or the Holocaust generally. Inside the museum there are 11 exhibits, and only one of them mentions Jews, and only nominally at that. So how do the members of the first-, second-, and third-generations writing about the Holocaust in Minsk combat a narrative that remains so Soviet in nature? The answer lies in the question. They write. First-, second-, and third-generation Jews who know the story of the Minsk ghetto continue to share it. They write and publish in a variety of media and languages in order to transmit their message of the Minsk ghetto to the world.

However, this phenomenon of memorialization of the Minsk ghetto is not new. It has been going on for decades, beginning with commemorative efforts, which took place during the war itself.

The various populations of Minsk, devastated by the losses incurred during World War II and the Holocaust, were forerunners in commemorative efforts. Before any other city in any other country, the inhabitants of Minsk were making strides in commemorating their dead. The

Belarusian population wanted to commemorate the lives lost and the military accomplishment of being the victors in World War II. Therefore, the first World War II Museum in the world was opened in Minsk on October 22, 1944, in the midst of a devastated city and the war itself. Similarly, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 264 the Jewish population wanted to commemorate the lives lost in the Holocaust and the military resistance that came with being active participants in the partisan war efforts. The steps toward remembrance actualized in the form of a memorial obelisk that the citizens of Minsk designed to commemorate the 5,000 Jewish causalities of the third major pogrom in the Minsk ghetto. Just as the Great Patriotic War Museum was the first of its kind, so too was the monument to the victims of the Minsk ghetto the first public Holocaust memorial, erected in 1947. Despite these forerunners of commemorative practices, the drive to remember the Holocaust was quickly buried in the Soviet

Union just as it was abroad. In fact, the obelisk erected in 1947 was nearly torn down in the 1970s.

Eventually, it remained standing but neglected. Meanwhile, the story of the Great Patriotic War continued to be told and retold. The memory of the murders of the Holocaust in Belarus was slowly being covered by the military victory of World War II. It was not until the fall of the Soviet Union that survivors were provided a platform to publish their account of the events of the Minsk ghetto, and at that point, they were striving to repaint the broad-stroked canvas of the Great Patriotic War with a fine paint brush of the Holocaust experience within the Minsk ghetto. Their audience almost wouldn’t recognize the painting because it was so different from the way the war had been remembered for the past fifty years. As Gustavo Corni explain, “The principal motivation in the impulse to write is probably to be found in the awareness that the Jewish community, secluded in a number of closed ghettos, was isolated from the world outside and found itself without a voice”

(Corni 215). In the case of Belarus and specifically Minsk, even after the war, even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Jews were indeed left without a voice. The story of the military victory of the Great Patriotic War had overtaken the tragedy of the Holocaust, and while the outside world may have recognized Jewish suffering, few Belarusians did and almost no one else was interested in the story of Soviet Jews. The writers of the Minsk ghetto, from the first- to the third-generation, Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 265 nevertheless, put pen to paper hoping to change the way that the war was remembered, striving to find a place for the story of the Minsk ghetto within the party-line Belarusian memory of the military victory of World War II. These writers were determined to include their own story and the story of their families within this whitewashed view of history. They would bring their own stories and the story of the Minsk ghetto to light.

Over the course of the eight decades since the Holocaust began, people have wondered what motivated Holocaust survivors to write about their experience. While some have questioned whether remembering such atrocities is preferable to forgetting them, the survivor-memoirists of the Holocaust answer this question with an implicit ‘yes’ simply by sharing their testimony.

Despite the painful recollections and the trauma that certainly comes along with such remembrances, the first-, second-, and third- generations answer unanimously and affirmatively that the Holocaust does indeed need to be remembered. While their decision to remember and their form of remembrance—writing—is the same, often the motivations behind this form of remembrance differ. The members of the first-generation, the survivors themselves, tend to view remembrance as a way to simultaneously witness to their own survival and to the loss of dear friends and family. For the second-generation, writing often takes on the form of self-exploration, of giving voice to the tragedies that were constantly present in their lives without being fully brought to light in the home and in the world. Finally, the third generation is able to begin to tell the survival story in a literary framework, focusing on genre and characters in order to provide a new life to a story that they hope to help outlive its original authors.

In many ways, each of these generations write in response to the fact that Holocaust survivors are dying. The survivors themselves tend to record their experiences as they age. There are various reasons for this practice. In many cases, survivors did not feel as though their stories Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 266 were of interest to the world. This was not without reason. The evidence is clear in the growing popularity of The Great Patriotic War Museum and the decline in visitors at the obelisk commemorating the victims of the third pogrom in the Minsk ghetto. The experiences these survivors faced were not part of the official narrative of remembrance. Further, some survivors were not ready to relive the memories that accompany the retelling of such an experience. Many, especially those in cities like Minsk, were subject to censorship. Regardless of the reason for the delay in writing, the eventual motivations behind publication seem to share a common thread: the desire to witness to the existence of the survivor and to the lives that the victims led. First, Young addresses the concept that the writing of the survivor functions as evidence of survival. He relates,

As insistent as the survivor-memoirist is on establishing evidence of the crimes

against him and his people, in the end it might be said that, like the diarist-victim

who documented his own activity as a diarist, the memoirist documents nothing

more persuasively than his own existence after the Holocaust. … A survivor’s

writing after the Holocaust is proof that he has defeated the “final solution”; it is

indisputable evidence that he now exists, a notion that no survivor ever takes for

granted. (Young Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust 37).

This notion of survival also extends to include the second- and third-generation. Without the survivors, they would not exist. On the other hand, the concept of survival never exists without knowledge of its counterpart—that of death. Those who so value the simple fact of their existence do so out of recognition that many of their loved ones perished. As DesPres beautifully explains,

“This debt to the dead…is reinforced by the special kind of identity which survivors

share. In the camps men and women were reduced to a single human mass. They

all looked alike—the same filthy rags, shaved heads, stick-thin festering bodies— Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 267

and the same hurt and need was each one’s lot. Survivors are not individuals in the

bourgeois sense. They are living remnants of the general struggle, and certainly

they know it. Firsthand accounts of life in the concentration camps almost never

focus on the trials of the writer apart from his or her comrades, apart from the

thousands of identical others whose names were never known. Books by survivors

are invariably group portraits, used to provide a perspective on the common plight.

Survival is compassion and care, and both expose the illusion of separateness. It is

not an exaggeration, not merely a metaphor, to say that the survivor’s identity

includes the dead.” (DesPres The Survivor 37-38)

The survivors recognize that they are the last person alive who remembers many of those

Holocaust victims they personally knew and loved. Their remembrance can only be perpetuated if their memories are recorded and subsequently shared with readers. Hence, the evolution from the first-generation memoirs of the Minsk ghetto into the second- and third-generation accounts. The later generation writers on the Minsk ghetto recognize that even the survivors, their loved ones, are aging. They too want to preserve memories, and in this instance, not just the memory of the victims, but also the memory of the survivors. They want the future generations of their families to be able to hear the memories of their parents and grandparents. The survivors are testifying that they live, and that through their survival, the memory of the victims may be perpetuated beyond the grave. Their children and grandchildren further testify to the survivors’ lives, to their experiences, and to their continued existence through their posterity even after death.

The commemorative and literary priorities of each generation of writers on the Minsk ghetto varies. Their narratives all work together for a single purpose: remembrance. However, the form of that remembrance has evolved over time. The aim of this dissertation has been to portray Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 268 that evolution, to show the different priorities placed on commemoration by the different generations, and to depict the different genres and literary techniques each generation used to accomplish their goal. In essence, the goal of this dissertation Is to sketch the shape of Holocaust remembrance of the Minsk ghetto in literature. Roskies and Diamant write, “It did not take a generation for a literary response to the Holocaust to be born. But it took at least two generations for its history to acquire a shape . . . It is a story . . . without an ending” (Roskies and Diamant 8).

As the reader of this dissertation is better able to determine the shape of the narratives of the Minsk ghetto, or the evolution of commemorative practices in literature, patterns begin to emerge. The story of the Minsk ghetto and its retelling—its evolution from survivor’s testimony to second- generation postmemoir to third-generation fictional account—is an interesting base for comparison with the evolution of memory of other ghettoes and camps. How are they remembered? Do the writers of places like the Warsaw and Łódź ghetto or the Terezín concentration camp make similar literary and genre choices? Do we see the same trends in their writing as in the writing on the

Minsk ghetto? If so, what are the implications? Would one be able to predict the ways in which

Holocaust remembrance will continue into the future? What would this overarching pattern indicate about Holocaust survivors and their descendants as well as the future of Holocaust testimony? In contrast, what if the accounts of the Minsk ghetto are unique among the body of

Holocaust memoirs? What does that tell us about the Minsk ghetto and the people who lived there?

By posing all of these questions, I simply want to recognize that the work of this dissertation is not complete. There are many questions about the evolution of memory of the Holocaust left to explore. This account works as a springboard, not only to acquaint interested readers with the story of the Minsk ghetto, but also to begin a broader discussion on how the story of the Minsk ghetto functions within the more expansive body of Holocaust literature. The things written and recorded Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 269 by these authors are finally being brought out into the light and also viewed as a collaborative effort, and therefore become a point for analysis and understanding. Hopefully, with the understanding of how the Minsk ghetto has been remembered in literature, readers and scholars will begin to perceive how, not only the Minsk ghetto, but the Holocaust in general, will be remembered generations from now. Hopefully it will also teach us something about the ways in which catastrophe is remembered and allow for reflection on how we can do a better job of remembering deeply traumatic events over time. There is a lesson to be learned in how each generation processes their grief and suffering, and we owe it to the survivors and writers of the

Mink ghetto to consider the implications of their words.

Each of the writers of the Minsk ghetto—Smolar, Kransoperko, Rubenchik, Treister,

Gebeleva, and Gross-Tolstikov—participated in bringing back remembrance of the Minsk ghetto.

While survivors wrote memoirs drawn from their personal experiences, subsequent generations created and utilized other genres in order to explore the postmemory of the Holocaust. The goal of the children and grandchildren was to transform a familial memory into a cultural one. While

Minsk itself may continue to remember a whitewashed version of history with the military victory of the Great Patriotic War as its message to its inhabitants and the world, the memoirists of the

Minsk ghetto write, stating that they remember more than the victory. They remember the German occupation, the countless murders of the Jews, and those who rose up to resist the Nazi regime in ways less recognized than those displayed in a museum. In fact, each first-generation survivor explicitly stated that their motivation for writing was two-fold: transmission and resistance. Their children and grandchildren share the same motivation. Though the genre and contents of their memoirs may differ from those of original survivors, their intent to restore remembrance is the same. Especially as Holocaust survivors are aging, the subsequent generations take up the mantle Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 270 to perpetuate the ideals of the first. They write to prove that continued transmission and resistance are still possible, even as the survivors are dying.

The Belarus of today is a country comprised of roughly ten million people. Very few of them are Jews. However, the story of the Jews of Minsk, once half the population of that city, lives on in the literature penned about the Minsk ghetto. Just as the survivors wrote to declare their existence, to commemorate the dead, and to transmit the memory of the Minsk ghetto to the world; so too do their children and grandchildren. They write to resist the cursory remembrance that the

Holocaust is granted in Belarus today. They write to educate people in Belarus and abroad about the events of the Minsk ghetto as a form of persecution very different than that of Auschwitz. They write to transform the simple representation of World War II in Belarus into a more complex and accurate picture of Soviets and Jews suffering and resisting side-by-side. Through their accounts, the writers of Minsk ghetto hope that the once bright past of a multiethnic Belarus—one where people of different ethnicities and beliefs lived and worked side-by-side—can become more than a glossed over page of the Belarusian past but rather an integral part of modern-day memory.

Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 271

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Sanford 276

1 До войны я знал, что есть такое слово. За него привлекали к суду. Надо было быть уж очень убежденным антисемитом, чтобы так дорого платить за «скромное удовольствие» обозвать кого-то жидом. Ликвидация церквей, костелов, мечетей, синагог и смешанные браки вопрос о национальности перевели в какую-то виртуальную плоскость. Я не был евреем. И я не был русским. Я был никаким.

2 In many cases, this occupation by German soldiers later informed reactions to the initial occupation of Minsk by Germans on June 24, 1941.

3 The Belarusian original was published in 1984.

4 The English translation was published in 2011; the Russian original in 2007.

5 Translations in this chapter are not my own, unless indicated. In the cases of Smolar and Krasnoperko’s work, translations were completed decades ago and are already part of the inherited memory of the Minsk ghetto. The translations of Rubenchik and Treister’s works were completed at their instigation in the last decade. These translations are already part of the inherited memory of the Minsk ghetto; therefore, I provide them as they stand.

Снова ходили на свое пепелище. Не могу выбросить ключ от квартиры, который никогда уже не понадобится. В ушах звучат слова отца: — Вот вам, дочушки, ключ от квартиры, а я — на фронт. — Что, уже есть повестка из военкомата? — Да нету пока, но надо идти… Поцеловал нас на прощание и пошел… Потом началось то, о чем и вспоминать жутко. Бомбежки, пожары, заваленное газоубежище, из которого бабушке, Инночке и мне чудом удалось выбраться. Из пылающего города на Могилевское шоссе нас вывел сосед, работник белорусского радиокомитета. — Идите на восток,— посоветовал он на прощание,— а я с красноармейцами. Мы в колонне беженцев — голодные, бесприютные. Бабушка идти не может, сердце слабое. Мы с Инной ведем ее, помогаем ей, беспомощной, как можем. Беженцы растянулись, бредут по шоссе. Сбитые ноги, заплаканные глаза, детский плач. И эти бесконечные бомбежки… Добрели до Дукоры. Бабуля больше не может идти. Обессиленные, падаем на сено. И снова бомбы! Следом слышатся рокот мотоциклов, крики, чужая речь. Немецкие мотоциклисты в Дукоре. Неужели Минск занят? Нас выгоняют с гумна, выводят на улицу. Там уже толпа беженцев, тех, кто уцелел во время бомбежки. Приводят к магазину. Немцы выносят разные вещи, трясут ими перед нами, суют силком в руки. Мы понимаем, для чего это делается — идет киносъемка. Потом начинают хватать людей… — Коммунистен! Юден! …Страшный, тяжкий путь назад, в Минск. Что нас ждет? Знаем уже, что дом наш сожжен. Только ключ в руках… Думаем о маме. Может, она вернулась из Волковыска? Может, уже ищет нас? …И вот мы в Минске. Нет ни мамы, ни отца. Я в ответе за бабулю, за сестренку. Ищем пристанища.

6 Город горит. Самолеты с крестами утюжат Минск на бреющем, почти задевая фонарные столбы. Не бомбят и не стреляют — берегут остатки кварталов, в которые войдут через пару дней. С запада накатывается гул канонады. Пожалуй, со взятием Берлина придется подождать. Город горит. Поэтому народ грабит магазины, склады, предприятия. Пожарные машины прорываются сквозь горящие улицы к базам; дюжие пожарные грузят мешки с мукой и под вой своих сирен уезжают. Люди грабят с разбором. Полоснет мужик ножом по мешку, а там не то, что ему надо,— пошел дальше. Люди бродят по колено в муке, крупе, соли и сахаре.

Sanford 277

7 Полдень. Небо потемнело от армады самолетов. Друг Юрка насчитал 50. Мы — мама, сестра, Юрка и я — легли на пол в спальне, сунув головы под кровать (это, между прочим, нас и спасло). В голове, под кроватью, опять какая-то бравурная мелодия, вроде «броня крепка и танки наши…», и горькое сожаление, что война окончится без моего участия. Бомбы ложатся все ближе. Дом ходит ходуном. От предпоследней вылетели все стекла: наклейки не помогли. Последней бомбы не услышал. Сколько минут или часов пролежал, не знаю. Очнулся, задыхаясь от печной пыли. Все ломит и болит, но руки, ноги и, главное, голова при мне. Как-то удалось выбраться из-под обломков печи. Но Боже! Надо мною ни потолка, ни чердака — чистое июньское небо и мертвая тишина (слух вернулся только вечером). Из-под развалин торчат три пары ног. Стал откапывать. Потом все очухались, помогли сами себе. В синяках и ссадинах, но живые. Странное ощущение бездомности. Так 24 июня для меня началась настоящая война.

8 Город пахнет пожарищем и горелой человечиной — запах, который невозможно ни описать, ни забыть. Почему-то запомнилась кровать, зацепившаяся за перекрытие третьего этажа разрушенной бывшей больницы. На кровати, на растяжке, висит бывший больной.

9 In this chapter, I have retained the Soviet language used to describe the Nazis that was common during this time. Terms like Hitlerite and German Fascist are included in the translations to provide accurate linguistic evidence that suggests the feelings associated with the Nazis. Where possible in my own writing, I strive to avoid such language while providing an accurate linguistic sample of my own day and age.

10 A literal translation of this term from Russian to English would be “soul extinguishers.” The dushegubki were the gas vans used in the Minsk ghetto.

11 Quotes in Hersh Smolar’s account The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans against the Nazis come from a translation of the Yiddish original (Fun Minsker geto) into English by Max Rosenfeld.

12 Эсэсовцы ворвались после полуночи. Точно эсэсовцы, потому что на рукавах у них были красные повязки со свастикой. Взломать двери они не смогли. Тогда разбили окно и проникли через веранду. Их было четверо. Автоматов у них не было, только пистолеты с длинным стволом – парабеллумы. Старший, вероятно, офицер, выкрик по–немецки: – Есть золото? Сдавайте! Отец сказал, что золота у нас нет. Откуда у рабочего человека с большой семьей может быть золото? Тогда этот старший дал какую–то команду трем сопровождавшим его. Те молча повиновались и встали у двери и окон. После этого началось что–то страшное. Офицер схватил старшую сестру Хаю и потащил ее в отдельную комнату. Она кричала и сопротивлялась. Этот изверг изнасиловал ее, а потом застрелил. Другой немец схватил сестренку Дину. Она вырвалась и, защищаясь, начала бросать с него посуду с комода. Немец рассвирепел и открыл стрельбу. К нему присоединился и офицер. Он убил маму, которая пыталась закрыть своим телом Мину и Софу, ранил в живот братика Гесла, лежавшего на печке. Потом несколько раз выстрелил в папу. Папа упал и подмял меня под собой. Он спас мне тем самым жизнь. Я вся была в крови и притворилась, что убита… Сколько времени продолжалось это убийство, я не знаю. Помню только, что офицер сказал что–то эсэсовцам, и все они ушли. Я еще не понимала, что мои родные мертвые. Казалось, они спят. Я начала каждого будить, трясти, чтобы привести их в сознание. Очнулся только Гесл на печке. Он стонал и просил пить. Я помогла ему спуститься и дотащила до кровати…

13 The English translation differs from the original Russian text. Это было самое кровавое убийство, которое мне пришлось увидеть во время войны. Ничего подобного до этого и после этого я никогда не видел. Иной раз мне кажется, что такое не могли совершить нормальные люди. В Минске это был разгар облав, арестов, допросов и убийств.

14 Orthodox

15 Живем в зале бывшего кинотеатра, что на улице Раковской, напротив хлебозавода. Таких бедолаг в зале — человек сто. Семьи отгораживаются друг от друга одеялами на проволоке. Sanford 278

Продукты добываем в обмен на вещи, найденные под развалами нашего дома. Я меняюсь с немцами: мыло на хлеб, табак, сахарин. Торг честный. Мы им бросаем свой товар из окна второго этажа конторы хлебозавода, они нам — свой. Вдруг кто-то хватает меня за шиворот, тащит на территорию завода и швыряет в темный подвал. Начал выть, но быстро понял, что это бесполезно, и впал в анабиоз. Сколько просидел, не знаю. Выкупили меня за пять кусков мыла. Потом оказалось, что пацан, похожий на меня, бросил в окно, вместо мыла, булыжник. Отвечать пришлось мне.

16 я увидела такое, что глазам своим не поверила. Думала, что Тэма спит, и на цыпочках вошла в комнату. Старуха сидела на кровати и в свой лапсердак зашивала… золото. — Ты ничего не видишь, девочка,— сказала она. — Не видишь и не знаешь. Но я все видела. В руках Тэмы была золотая монета, которую она прятала в подкладке. Это ошеломило меня. Я всегда считала, что золото является собственностью государства. — Знаю, о чем ты думаешь, девочка. Мои внуки тоже когда-то удивились, когда я показала им эти десятки. Еще до революции на харчах да на одежке экономила, наживала это золото. На черный день прятала. Тэма при мне зашила и второй пятиалтынный. Потом надела лапсердак, распрямилась, пальцами ощупала место, где спрятано, ее богатство. — Этим нелюдям не дам! Стрелять будут — не дам!

17 7 ноября 1941 г. Не знаю, от кого мать прослышала о погроме, но в 5 часов утра, проскочив через еще не замкнувшееся окружение, бежим по свежему снегу через еврейское кладбище в единственное место, где можно спастись, — к моей «второй маме» Юзе, домработнице, прожившей в нашей семье 14 лет. Она, рискуя жизнью (в коммуналке от соседей ничего не скроешь), продержала нас три дня, накормила, обогрела. Вернулись мы, потеряв «свой» кинотеатр — район был уже отрезан от гетто. И опять мы — бездомные.

18 После того, как мы уехали на работу, рано утром немцы и полиция окружили часть гетто. Их оцепление находилось на улицах Кустарной, Димитрова, Подзамковой, Немиге, Шпалерному переулку, Островского, Опанского и части Республиканской. Всем объявили, что нужно взять с собой вещи - мол, предстоит отправка на работу в другой город. Люди в домах стали собираться. Но немцев не устраивала та медлительность, с которой все это осуществлялось. Последовал приказ городским властям, юденрату, жандармерии: всех евреев с указанных улиц выгонять из квартир силой оружия. В ход пошли плетки, хлысты, приклады. Люди не успевали одеться. Кругом - брань, ругань, лай собак, плач детей, вопли женщин. Эсэсовцы и их помощники литовцы и полицейские с криком требовали: - Шнель, шнель! - Скорее, скорее, скорее! - подгоняли они, а своих помощников поучали: - е раздумывать, не размышлять! Гнать их прикладами! В колонну строили всех, в том числе детей и стариков. И люди стали догадываться: все, что /тверждают власти - это обман. Какая может быть забота со стариками и детьми? Каждый чувствовал, нто их ведут на уничтожение. В колонне начались крики, причитания, взрослые прощались с детьми, женщины рвали на себе волосы. А молчаливое оцепление повело колонну в сторону улицы Опанского. Когда появились автоматчики с собаками, страх людей усилился. Они стали с проклятьями бросать свои пожитки. А сзади колонны двигались подводы, и полицейские подбирали и складывали на них все брошеное. Колонну погнали в Тучинку, к карьеру. Там уже заранее были подготовлены рвы. Тучинка - это населенный пункт примерно в 7 км от Минска, недалеко от села Медвежево. До войны именно здесь добывали глину для изготовления и обжига кирпича. Палачи и решили использовать это место для истребления безвинных людей. Варварский метод уничтожения заключался в следующем. Людей подгоняли к яме и ставили у края лицом к углублению. - Файер! - звучала команда офицера. По спинам обреченных строчили из пулеметов. Большинство сразу падало в яму, а тех, кто еще был жив и корчился в предсмертных конвульсиях, каратели сталкивали пожарными баграми на убитых. Сразу же к месту расстрела подгоняли другую партию, снова звучала команда и раздавались пулеметные очереди. Не все пули достигали цели. Особенно часто палачи не попадали в детей из-за их роста. Тогда охрана их просто живьем сталкивала вниз, а на них падали убитые из очередной расстрельной партии. Sanford 279

С короткими перерывами строчили пулеметы. Люди падали, и в глубокой яме образовалась огромная кровавая масса человеческих тел. А потом на краю ямы появились полицейские из юденрата. Их привели и спустили вниз укладывать штабелями трупы. Адская работа. Многие из них рыдали, а тех, кто медлил или отказывался выполнять порученное, тут же немецкие офицеры расстреливали.

19 Колонна начала движение, больные и немощные стали спотыкаться и падать. Конвоиры тут же на мостовой таких сразу пристреливали. Воспользовавшись суматохой, кто-то пытался бежать. На них натравливали собак. Злобные овчарки настигали жертву, валили на землю, рвали одежду, впивались в тело...

20 Внимательно всматриваюсь в противоположный берег реки. По ту сторону гетто, кажется, тихо. Правда, справа, с Немиги, слышится гул. Он нарастает, приближается — едут машины. Но ведь необязательно, чтоб они ехали в гетто, успокаиваю себя. Возвращаюсь назад. Не верю глазам. Машины рядом. Из них выскакивают солдаты в немецкой форме, окружают район. Успеваю забежать в дом, кричу: — Погром! В одно мгновение все одеты. Мама прижимает' к себе Инночку, зачем-то хватает буханку хлеба, отдает мне. Потом помогает бабушке завязать платок, надеть ботинки. Благоразумная, рассудительная Дина говорит: — Это, кажется, последний эпизод… (Любимое выражение Дины: «Жизнь — это цепь эпизодов». ) Нас выгоняют из дому. На дворе уже много народу. Видно, успели нагнать из соседних домов. Красавец Дворкин. Его высокая фигура и седая голова видны издалека. Рядом его дочка, длиннокосая Зиночка. Инженер Лившиц. Он подходит к нам, снимает шляпу, здоровается. Удивительно, в такой момент… Думаю, что сейчас нас будут расстреливать около этого красного кирпичного дома. Боже мой, они расстреляют нас у дома, где совсем недавно жила моя подружка Тата — Танечка Дроздова, которую вместе с родителями выселили отсюда. Нас в самом деле толкают к стене. Немцы начинают считать людей, распихивают их в разные стороны. Хоть бы не разлучили нашу семью. Идет какая-то сортировка. Отчетливо слышу два слова: «Leben», «Tod»[6]. Значит, в одну колонну они толкают людей, которым еще предназначено жить, В другую — тех, кого поведут на расстрел. Мы попадаем в последнюю. Люди понимают положение. Пытаются из колонны смерти перебежать в колонну жизни. Вдруг наступаю на что-то мягкое. Передо мной сине-белое лицо девочки. Узнаю его. Это соседка Сима Котлярова, подруга Дины. Тормошу ее, прошу: — Вставай! Дина говорит: — Она не встанет: ее убили. Хотела перелезть через проволоку. До этого мозг работал необычайно точно, удивительно ясно. Теперь ничего не могу понять: — Она убита? …Солдаты окружают нас. Куда ведут? Вверх по Димитрова. Может, к Юбилейной площади? К юденрату? Колонна конвоируется с обеих сторон, через ряд. Наш ряд, в котором бабушка, мама, сестра и я, без конвоиров. Но они идут спереди и сзади. Тех, кто вырывается из колонны, тут же расстреливают. Вспоминаю, что в руках у меня хлеб, и начинаю есть. Невероятно, но я хочу есть. Протягиваю хлеб маме. Она удивленно смотрит на меня. Куда все-таки нас ведут? Это же колонна смерти. Неужели действительно на смерть? Нет, не верится! Впереди в колонне возвышается фигура старой Тэмы. Она идет прямая, непреклонная. Дворкин держит за руку свою длиннокосую Зиночку. Дина поддерживает мать и старшую сестру Эру, которая едва переставляет опухшие от голода ноги. В этой же колонне инженер Лившиц, недавний студент Сеня Поплавский, Зора Стронгина — веселая певунья, бывшая пионервожатая, семья Низовых, их двойняшки, десятилетние Марлен и Сталина… И все они, наверно, тоже не верят в свою гибель. — Я хочу жить! — вдруг прорезает тишину голос нашей Инны. И снова тишина. — Мама,— слышу я шепот своей мамы, которая обращается к бабушке. — Надо спасать детей… Попробуем бежать на том повороте. Держись за меня. — Я не смогу, ноги не идут…— отвечает бабушка. — Спасай детей. Беги с ними… Sanford 280

— Как же мы без тебя? — Я не смогу… Спасай детей… Мама велит мне содрать латку с груди. Сама сдирает с себя и с Инны. Со спины содрать невозможно, увидят конвоиры, которые идут сзади. Нет, на Юбилейную площадь нас не ведут. Уже вывели за границы гетто. Гонят по улице Опанского. И вдруг по левой стороне улицы навстречу колонне движется подвода. Вот-вот она поравняется с нами. — Прыгайте на подводу,— мама выпихивает нас из колонны. Мы вскакиваем на подводу, мама за нами. Селянин бешено гонит коня. Сзади суматоха, крики, стрельба. Выстрелы нам вдогонку. Но мы уже далеко от колонны. Срываем желтые латки со спины. — Бегите! Спасайтесь! — кричит селянин. Прячемся в каком-то разрушенном здании. Мама сама не своя: — А бабуля наша пошла, пошла, бедненькая… Глаза у мамы незрячие. — Куда их повели? Родная ты моя, мамочка… Мы все плачем. Отчаянию нет конца. Выходим из руин. Куда идти, куда деться? Остановились на площади Свободы. Смотрим, люди направляются в костел. Вспоминаю, как мы, пионеры, когда-то занимались антирелигиозной пропагандой. Дожидались верующих после службы и говорили им, что религия — опиум для народа. Мама говорит, что нужно зайти в костел. Подумают, что и мы верующие. — Постоим немного, погреемся и пойдем… В костеле все стоят на коленях. Мама велит и нам сделать то же самое. А я стою, не могу… Мама умоляюще смотрит на меня, шепчет: — Не привлекай внимания… Нас же схватят. Когда окончился молебен, выходим из костела. Куда идти теперь? К друзьям-белорусам? Опасно для них и для нас. Дорога одна — снова в гетто.

21 The English translation differs slightly. The first paragraph in the English translation is not included in the Russian original, which is included here: Тут нас надоумил папа. Старшим - мне и одиннацилетнему братишке он сказал: - Посмотрите, сынки, сколько пустых домов кругом. А там ведь разбиты полы, перегородки, рамы, стропила. Все из дерева... Мы стали заготавливать вязанки сухих хороших дров. В ход пошли балки из разрушенных домов. Мы таскали этот пиломатериал. А потом начали его продавать, вернее, выменивать. За вязанку добротных дров можно было получить какие-то продукты.

22 Страшная вещь — голод. Все время хочется есть, кружится голова, качаешься от слабости. Думаем о хлебе — наяву и во сне. Жуем обрывки бумаги, соскребаем мел с печки… Иной раз кажется, что теряешь сознание. Боюсь, чтобы этого не заметила мама… Но она все видит. Отдает свой хлеб. Делится своей пайкой Инночка. Неужто у меня такие голодные глаза?

23 Зимой дома холодрыга, а если не сподобишься прихватить с работы какие-нибудь обрезки, то и мороз. На входе в гетто колонны часто шмонают — отбирают «дрова». Непонятно, правда, что они потом с ними делают. Об электричестве нечего и думать — в гетто его нет. Освещаемся свечами, которые я научился отливать в стеклянной трубке из найденного где-то парафина. Иногда используем лучины. Потом приспособил снарядную гильзу под карбидную лампу. До сих пор запах карбида возвращает меня в гетто. Запахи, как и мелодии, способны переносить человека в прошлое ярче любых воспоминаний.

24 The term ‘malina’ is related to the Hebrew root for “reside” and “residence.” For example, in Hebrew “malon” is “hotel.” However, the word ‘malina’ in Russian also means raspberry. This is used in prison slang to mean a fugitive’s “hideout location.” While Treister provides the second etymology, it is likely that the term was brought into the Russian vernacular through Hebrew or Yiddish.

25 По фене (воровскому жаргону) «малина» — это тайное убежище, где воры отсиживаются и отдыхают после «трудов праведных», вдали от правоохранительных органов. Сейчас, правда, и воры другие, и малины у них на Канарах или в Швейцарских Альпах, но речь не об этом. В гетто «малинами» назывались убежища, в которых узники прятались от погромов. Sanford 281

Трудно перечислить все варианты «малин» — они зависели от местных условий, количества скрывавшихся и фантазии их создателей: ложные стенки или фронтоны, оставляющие свободное пространство для укрытия; погреба с замаскированными люками, иногда за пределами дома, с подземными ходами к ним; крайняя комнатушка, дверь в которую заставлялась шкафом. Возникает естественный вопрос — кто маскировал крышки погребов, задвигал шкафы, камуфлировал входы? Это делали старики, сознательно отдавая свою жизнь ради хоть какой-то надежды на спасение детей и внуков. (Информация для моралистов, рассуждающих о покорности обреченных.) К сожалению, жертвы часто оказывались напрасными, так как у карателей были свои методы: собаки, простукивание стен, гранаты, дымовые шашки в погреба и т. д. Ну а после погрома 21-23 октября 1943 года (последнего), многие через несколько дней сами выходили из «малин» на верную смерть. Убежища годились лишь для кратковременной отсидки. Случалось, ребенок начинал кричать в тот самый момент, когда каратели шарили по квартире. Тогда ребенка душили… Куда там Федору Достоевскому с его «слезой невинного ребенка»! Мой скромный «малиновый» опыт сводится к одной ночи, которую я просидел среди десятка других несчастных в узкой щели между двумя стенками. После этого решил, что помирать лучше на свежем воздухе.

26 Мама завернула маленькую Тайбу в шарф и заторопилась к бабушке. Но что это? Издалека она увидела разбегающихся людей. Послышались выстрелы, крики, лай собак. Задыхаясь, мама добежала до бабушкиного дома на Зеленом переулке. - Где дети? - спросила она с порога. - Дети не приходили, - с удивлением ответила бабушка, ничего не подозревая. Она сама собиралась идти к юденрату. Мама быстро положила Тайбу на кровать и велела всем спускаться в „малину". Бабушке Ципэ она взволнованно сказала: - Я побегу искать детей. Он и не могли далеко уйти. Дойдя до угла Зеленого переулка и пересечения улицы Ратомской, она увидела бегущих навстречу людей и цепь немецких автоматчиков. Путь был перекрыт. Она поняла, что поиски продолжать невозможно. Бегом вернулась в дом, вылила на пол ведро воды (это делалось, чтобы собаки не учуяли сидящих в укрытии людей). Крепко спящую Тайбу она решила не трогать, не тащить в душное укрытие. Только прикрыла шарфом, чтобы она не была заметна на кровати и быстро спустилась в „малину". Через несколько минут немцы ворвались в дом. Они стали крушить все вокруг: ломали мебель, швыряли посуду, открывали шкафы и выбрасывали одежду. Эсэсовцы искали людей и не находили их. Раздался один выстрел, потом второй и наступила тишина. А в подполье, затаившись, сидело 11 человек. Кроме мамы, бабушки, там еще прятались мамина сестра Фрейда с двумя дочурками: пятилетней Хаей и Даной, которой было два с половиной года. Там же скрывались ребе Пейсах с женой и еще несколько человек. В это же время я с отцом работал на ремонте четырехэтажного дома. Был теплый день. Открыв окна, мы штукатурили верхние комнаты дома, принадлежавшего генерал- комиссару В. Кубе. Когда до нас издалека донеслась стрельба, я забрался на крышу. Оттуда отчетливо было видно, как на Замковой и Димитрова собаки с лаем бросаются на людей. Помню до сих пор картину, увиденную с крыши. По улице ковылял старик на костылях и рядом с ним двое маленьких детей. Там же стояла крытая машина, в которую прикладами, дубинками загоняли людей. Много позже я узнал, что в ее герметический кузов до отказа наталкивали до 70 человек и душили выхлопными газами. … Вслед за мамой из укрытия стали вылезать измученные, обессиленные, исхудавшие люди. Четверо суток они просидели без воды и пищи. От них исходил невообразимый запах испражнений. Ведь туалета в „малине" не было, выйти наружу было равнозначно самоубийству. Особенно страшно выглядела бабушка Ципа. Голова трясется, впавшие щеки бледны, как мел, глаза безумны. На вопросы она не отвечала и ни с кем не хотела разговаривать. Мама рассказала, что маленькая Дана, дочурка Фрейды, все время плакала, просила пить. Никто не мог ее успокоить. Ребе Пейсах все время молился, просил Всевышнего, чтобы она замолчала. Не помогало. Тогда ребецун сказала: - Во имя спасения всех нужно принести в жертву ребенка... Бабушка Ципа хотела взять ребенка к себе. Но тут она почувствовала, что кто-то задушил девочку, потому что малышка затихла... Sanford 282

Я видел, что мама тоже была на грани помешательства. С воспаленными глазами, распущенными волосами, она выглядела, как безумная. Папа стал ее успокаивать. А шарф, в который мама закутала Тайбочку, весь был в застывшей крови и с двумя простреленными дырками. - Ву из майн Тайбеле!* - раздался ее вопль. Наступила мертвая тишина.С расширенными от ужаса глазами папа и мама смотрели друг на друга. Они не верили, они еще не могли осознать всего случившегося. Они осталлись без младших детей. Без Эльки, без Хаи, без Ерухама и без маленькой Тайбы, которую назвали по имени папиной сестры, погибшей в первом погроме в гетто. В тот день папа стал совершенно седым. А бабушка Ципа, наконец, произнесла несколько слов. Но что это были за слова! Чуть слышно она прошептала, что не хочет больше жить... С этого момента она перестала говорить и не притрагивалась к пище. Мы пыталлись ее кормить силой, но было бесполезно. Она мычала и мотала головой, отталкивая от себя людей. Через месяц она умерла. Думаю, что не из-за отсутствия пищи, а от горя. * - Где моя Тайбочка! (идиш).

27 … Какое счастье идти без проклятых желтых кругов, да еще по тротуару!

28 Часами лежу в лопухах у самой проволоки (где-то в районе нынешней Ямы). Внизу, за проволокой, Свислочь — ее русло тогда проходило намного ближе. Перед рекой — татарские огороды, а там — брюква, свекла, морковь… словом, деликатесы. Лежу, как охотник, поджидающий добычу. Наконец, вблизи — никого. Бросок под проволоку, и в мешке — килограммов десять добычи. Значит, еще пару дней не помрем с голоду.

29 В этот день в доме Темкиных радость. Сеня принес домой кусок сала и яйца. Вообще в последнее время юноша частенько незаметно убегает в город. Мужества и ловкости ему не занимать. Ну просто па глазах вырос, и такой отчаянный! Глаза серые, блестящие. И такая решимость в лице. Днем была радость. А ночью… Дом Сени стоит возле самого ограждения. Спят в гетто чутко, прислушиваются к каждому звуку. Сеня первым увидел немцев, которые окружали дом. — Прячьтесь! Бегите! — закричал он, разбил окно и выскочил на Шорную, за ограду. Когда вернулся домой, застал только мать. Она спряталась под кроватью, и ее не нашли. Все в доме были перестреляны. Сестру Сени Ривочку нашли на Обувной. Она пыталась бежать. Ее закололи штыком.

30 Концевой, наверно, лет сорок пять, пятьдесят. Невысокая, грузная, с седой головой, с внимательными серыми глазами. Клара Ефимовна — врач-гинеколог. В гетто она без работы. Как и мы, Клара Ефимовна — чернорабочая фирмы «Готце — Лейман», (Готце и Лейман — хозяева фирмы). Плетей Концевой достается больше, потому что она слабая, немощная. В городе ее знают. Бывает, если нет поблизости патруля, к проволоке подходят женщины и просят позвать доктора Концевую или передать ей что-нибудь. Это ее довоенные пациентки — роженицы. Рискуя жизнью, они приходят сюда, чтобы помочь доброму человеку. Находят ее и там, где мы работаем, на Свердлова. Немцы называют эту улицу по-своему — Siegesstraße. Мы удивились, что на этот раз к ней подошел мужчина. Видим его встревоженное лицо. Он что-то говорит Концевой, по-видимому, просит о чем-то… Клара Ефимовна что-то тихо шепчет. Мужчина исчезает… Концевая приближается к нам. — Девочки, я должна идти, надо помочь его дочке — ей плохо. Это мои друзья… — А если вас спросят? — Я должна идти… Молча смотрим, как скрывается она в развалинах за нашей уборной. Слава богу, этого никто не заметил… Утром ответственная за колонну, Ева Хазина, называет цифру: сорок. Стража нас по списку не пересчитывала. …Спускаемся в подвал брать тачки. Там нас ждет Клара Ефимовна. Она протягивает иголку с ниткой. Ася прячется с ней в углу, пришивает ей желтые латки. — Девочка родилась,— с нескрываемой радостью шепчет Концевая. Мы выходим на улицу, впрягаемся в тачку. Вскоре возле сквера видим мужчину, который приходил к ней вчера. Хотел убедиться, что с доктором все в порядке. Едва приметным кивком он прощается. Вскорости мы узнаем обо всем. Sanford 283

Приходил к Концевой отец роженицы. Муж ее в Красной Армии. Роды преждевременные. В больницу везти нельзя. Она была известным партийным работником, могут схватить. Отец давно собирался отвезти дочку в Несвиж к своякам, да не успел. Потому и пришлось просить давно знакомого доктора, друга. Риск явно с обеих сторон, но иного выхода нет. Мы смотрели на Клару Ефимовну. Как помолодело, похорошело ее лицо! — Я сделала свое дело,— говорит она. …Он вновь появился здесь, дедушка новорожденной. Ищет глазами Клару Ефимовну. Оглядываясь, подходит к нам: — Передайте доктору… У нас все хорошо. Девочку назвали ее именем… …Передавать было некому. Клару Ефимовну застрелили во время облавы.

31 Вон немец бросил собаке хлеб. Та не стала есть. Подобрать не успели. Какая-то девочка опередила нас. Издалека видим тьму-тьмущую людей, которых гонят по Советской. Опять военнопленные… Колонны приблизились к нам. Какая-то девушка бросается к немцу, охранявшему колонну. — Lieber Herr,— показывает она на пленного. — Das ist mein Bruder…[3] —Сует бумагу, должно быть, какой- то документ. Удивительно, но немец выталкивает пленного из колонны. Девушка тянет его в руины бывшего кинотеатра «Красная звезда». — Вот это дивчина! — говорит пожилой человек, что стоит рядом. — Молодчина. Не первого уже спасает.

32 Обстановка в гетто настолько стала напряженной, что только бегство могло избавить нас от очередной облавы и уничтожения. Так мы и сделали, когда вечером услышали приближающуюся стрельбу. Жили мы тогда в доме на 2-м Опанском переулке. Проволока, ограждавшая гетто, была совсем рядом. Не колеблясь, мы решили бежать. Втроем: мама, Ёха и я - подлезли под проволоку и рванули в сторону кирпичного завода. То было место работы сестры, и она потянула нас туда. Расстояние до завода довольно приличное - больше шести километров. … В ту ночь самым страшным для нас был понос от страха. Туалета в здании не было. И мы стали ходить в мусорный ящик, который находился в конце коридора. Что будет утром, даже не подумали... Когда стало светать, услышали, что открывается дверь. Света не было. Вошла уборщица и зажгла керосиновую лампу. Вонь в коридоре стояла невозможная. И уборщица стала ругаться и проклинать тех, кто это сделал. А Ёха, увидев женщину - свет от лампы осветил ее лицо, подбежала к ней, стала целовать и плакать. Уборщица была ее знакомой. Несколько раз сестра обменивала у нее вещи на продукты, которые ей привозили сельские родственники Старого Села. Доброе лицо женщины преобразилось. Она поняла, что пока не стало светло, нас нужно спасать. Главное, чтобы соседи нас не увидели. И она повела нас к себе домой, дала что-то поесть. Она разбудила мужа (дети спали в другой комнате) и спросила, как быть. - Пусть пока скрываются у нас. Только дети не должны знать... С этими словами он полез на печку, а нам велел забраться под их широкую кровать и лежать там тихо. Так мы в необычных условиях, под боком у немецкой охраны, находящейся на кирпичном заводе, провели целый день и ночь. А когда опасность миновала и мы узнали, что расстрелы прекратились, хозяева нас проводили. Без приключений мы вернулись в гетто. Звали нашу спасительницу Наташа Шунейко. Спасая нас, она и ее муж рисковали своей жизнью. Бесстрашная Наташа не только тогда помогла нашей семье. И в дальнейшем она убедила Ёху, что мы должны всей семьей обязательно уходить в партизанский отряд. Если мы хотим остаться жить, говорила Наташа по-белорусски: „Трэба з гетта цякаць у лес".

33 Промозглое, слякотное утро. Асю Воробейчик и меня схватили во время облавы. Налет, как всегда, неожиданный, внезапный. Бросили в машину, повезли. Куда везут? На тот свет? Крепко держимся за руки. Не раз договаривались с ней: если поведут на расстрел, либо падать, либо бежать. Привезли нас быстро. Выгрузили, пересчитали. Осматриваемся и видим: мы во дворе Дома правительства. Когда-то говорили, что архитектор, по проекту которого построено это здание, был им недоволен. По его мнению, дом некрасив. Мы и раньше не разделяли этого мнения. А теперь глядим — не наглядимся. Но спохватываемся. Теперь в нем они, звери. Такие, как этот, большой, с рыжими глазами. Он стоит перед нами, помахивая плетью. Потом вызывает меня с Асей и что-то приказывает. Мы не понимаем. Он кричит, хлещет плетью у наших ног. Мы пугаемся. Он смеется. Потом показывает на рулон рубероида, лежащий на земле. Догадываемся, что приказывает поднять его. Ничего не получается. Немец хлещет плетью по рукам. Sanford 284

Вздуваются кровавые полосы — ужасная боль. Что делать? Как же мы, две слабые девчонки, можем поднять этот огромный рулон? Я берусь спереди и пробую взвалить на плечи этот проклятый рулон. Ася пытается поднять сзади. Рулон не поддается. Слышу пронзительный крик, оглядываюсь—Ася лежит с окровавленным лицом. Бросаюсь к ней. — Zurück! Я все же подбегаю к подруге. — Он меня… плетью по голове… Я вызволяю Асю из-под рулона. Ее сводят судороги. Она подымает на меня светлые глаза. Мы прижимаемся друг к Другу. Рядом снова слышится посвист плети… С этой поры Ася заболела падучей.

34 Вот какова судьба друзей Мары Энтиной, которых она знала по школе. …Сема Маршак. Эсэсовцы остановили его на улице. — Почему без заплат? А Сема заупрямился, не хотел их носить. Сколько ни просили, не пришпиливал, не пришивал. Так он отстаивал свое человеческое достоинство. Эсэсовцы приказали ему копать яму. — Для чего? — запротестовал Сема. Ему пригрозили пистолетом. Сему закопали живым… …Додик Герцик. Мара говорит, что имя этого юноши люди должны произносить с гордостью и благодарностью. Замечательный, мужественный юноша! — Он очень доверял мне,— рассказывает Мара. — Мы ведь знакомы еще со школы! От него я слышала вести с фронта, сводки Совинформбюро. в последнее время Додик после работы часто не возвращался в гетто. Вместе с друзьями слушал по радиоприемнику Москву. А потом Додика не стало — его схватили, пытали, повесили…

35 И еще не забуду другой случай, происшедший недалеко от меня и показавший всю глубину безжалостности гитлеровских вояк. И еще не забуду другой случай, происшедший недалеко от меня и показавший всю глубину безжалостности гитлеровских вояк. И вот я вижу, как на много метров впереди меня шагает подросток в ватовке. Как только он заметил коменданта, с перепугу почему-то рванул в сторону колючей проволоки. Это было по улице Сухой, где жили немецкие евреи. На ту беду пацан под проволокой зацепился и не мог оторваться. Ни назад, ни вперед. Заметив это, комендант подошел и хладнокровно наступил мальчику на шею. Тот стал от боли кричать и дрыгать руками и ногами. Готтенбах спокойно достал из кобуры пистолет и сделал два выстрела в голову мальчика. Потом комендант снял ногу с шеи убитого и также хладнокровно, как шел раньше, продолжил свой палаческий путь...

36 Погиб старшина юденрата Илья Мушкин. Все говорят, что это был хороший человек: разумный, справедливый, мужественный. Он делал все, чтобы жертв было меньше. Это настоящая утрата. Рассказывают, что Мушкин вызволял даже из бункера. Там обычно сидели приговоренные к смерти. Я несколько раз видела Мушкина. Высокий, красивый, статный. В манере держаться — достоинство и сдержанность. Он вызывал доверие. Его повесили. …На месте Ильи Мушкина — некто Иоффе из Польши. Каким окажется этот?

37 A late nineteenth century Socialist anthem translated from the French original, “L'Internationale.”

38 Ноэми Руднянская, Софа Сагальчик и Лина Ной. Пожалуй, они были самыми красивыми девушками в гетто. Нельзя забыть трагическую историю Ноэми. Софа Сагальчик погибла в одном из погромов. Sanford 285

А Лина Ной… Как бы я ни старалась описать внешность девушки, сделать этого не смогу. Ясно вижу ее бледно-смуглое лицо, большие светлые глаза, пышные пепельные волосы. Фигура высокая, движения красивые, походка стремительная, гордая. Лина стала жертвой одного из злодеяний немцев. В гетто была проведена облава и схватили девушек — самых красивых. Их привезли на Площадь рабов, потом заперли в сарае. Они кричали, плакали, стучали в двери. Понимали, что их ждет. Там провели всю ночь. Утром девушек повели на расстрел. Сеня Темкин видел, как их вели. Видел и то, о чем теперь рассказывают в гетто. Когда девушек подвели к воротам кладбища, одна из них запела «Интернационал». На нее набросились, сбили с ног. Это была Лина. Вместе с другими ее поволокли на кладбище, приказали раздеться. Лина сопротивлялась. С нее силком содрали одежду. Девушек расстреляли за то, что они были молодые и красивые.

39 This account was added to the English translation; it is not included in the original Russian memoir.

40 Это произошло в первых числах марта сорок второго. После студеной зимы земля еще была замерзшей, на не чищенных улицах лежали сугробы снега и подтаявшего льда. И хоть много было расстреляно евреев в гетто в этом третьем погроме, жизнь там продолжалась. Вероятно, такое положение не устраивало оккупационные власти. Последующие события это подтвердили... Мама с младшими детьми в тот момент находилась в доме у дяди Моще по Заславскому переулку. Такой „кочевой" образ жизни она выбрала, потому что боялась облав и погромов. А у дяди было сооружено надежное укрытие. Как только с улицы доносились выстрелы, все быстренько спускались в „малину". Когда стрельба прекращалась, все снова переходили в дом. О „малине" дяди Моше стоит рассказать особо. С внешней стороны она была похожа на обычный дворовой туалет. До войны именно такие сооружения стояли в каждом дворе. О ватер-клозетах тогда даже не мечтали. Так вот этот „туалет" - обыкновенная деревянная будка с выгребной ямой - стоял на взгорке. И это возвышение так искусно и скрыто подкопали, что внутри свободно помещались более двадцати- тридцати человек В момент тревоги каждый, кто укрывался там, должен был войти в туалет. В полу подымалась крышка и был специальный спуск вниз. Нужно было приподнять одну ступеньку. Крышка с внутренней стороны запиралась на прочный засов. Маскировка туалета тоже была продумана. На второй ступеньке было круглое отверстие и вокруг человеческие экскременты. Немцы или полицаи, обнаружив такое, быстро заткнув нос, закрывали дверь туалета и удалялись.

41 В гетто после этого погрома тоже было множество трупов: в домах, во дворах и на улицах. Полицейские- могильщики стаскивали их к Яме, находившейся на углу Заславской и Ратомской улиц. Эту операцию было легче делать, потому что дорога шла вниз под гору. Могильщики зацепляли застывшие на морозе человеческие останки багром, а иной раз веревкой или проволокой и тащили по обледенелой земле. То была страшная процедура. Пока полицай дотянет несчастную жертву до места погребения, от трупа оставались одни кости, потому что все остальное стиралось на намерзших колдобинах. Внизу, в Яме тоже находилось несколько могильщиков с баграми. Трупы они подтягивали к штабелю и складывали их, словно это были дрова. Так потребовал от них через переводчика прибывший на автомобиле какой-то высокопоставленный офицер. Я был свидетелем происходящего. Наш дом был в 200 метрах от этой ямы. С другом Муней мы даже помогали спускать останки людей на дно ямы. Под вечер всех убитых, наконец, притащили с ближайших улиц. Приехала машина с саперами. По распоряжению старшего из саперной команды в мерзлой стене полицейские выкопали большое углубление. Нас оттуда прогнали и заложили взрывчатку. Мы видели только, что по знаку офицера саперы подожгли быстро горящий шнур. Прогремел мощный взрыв. От происшедшего обвала земля накрыла братскую могилу. Весной, когда снег стаял и в Яму побежали ручьи, многие тела расстрелянных всплыли. На ближайших улицах невозможно было дышать от запаха разлагающихся трупов. И снова немцам пришлось привести туда полицейскую команду, чтобы закрыть могилу землей... Sanford 286

Как очевидец, подтверждаю, что некоторые приходили туда, поднимали колючую проволоку, пробирались к трупам в надежде найти пресловутое еврейское золото. Но ничего они там не находили, только рисковали своей жизнью. И снова немцам пришлось привести туда полицейскую команду, чтобы зарыть могилу землей.

42 Конец рабочего дня. Отто выстраивает колонну, ведет в гетто. …Вокруг лужи крови на снегу — следы погрома. Навстречу бегут люди. Ко мне бросается Инна с какой-то женщиной. Боже мой, я едва узнаю маму. Живая! Только маму действительно не узнать! Желто-синее лицо, какие-то серые волосы, пальто на ней длинное- длинное. Да, это мама, страшно похудевшая, потому и пальто стало длинное, болтается, как на вешалке. — Живы, живы,— я плачу от радости. Замечаю рядом Отто. — Мама, это он спас всех… Мы смотрим ему вслед. Он направляется с Эдит и Линдой в зондергетто. Я спрашиваю, был ли там погром. — Нет,— отвечает мама,— их еще не трогали. Юля тоже обнимает маму. А где Ася? Жива ли ее мать? — Я искала ее, не нашла. Все, кто остался в живых, прибежали сюда,— говорит мама. Мы бежим на Обувную, к Асе. Двери распахнуты, она сидит на кровати бледная, окаменевшая. Ася осталась одна… Все, кто был в укрытии, живы. Мама рассказывает: — С утра началась паника. Задержали рабочие колонны. Мы поняли, что вашу колонну раньше выпустили за ворота. Потом началась стрельба. Гетто оцепили. Мы успели спуститься в погреб. Инночка прижалась ко мне, дрожит. Ноги, спина, руки немеют. И о тебе думаю, о папе, о бабушке… А потом,— мама замолкает… — Они стреляли в наш погреб,— продолжает соседка-врач Гита Ефимовна, стискивая виски. — И стреляли долго-долго. — Нашли вход? — Нашли… Только не спустились вниз, а стреляли с лестницы… Хорошо, что погреб длинный, мы забились в самый дальний угол. Вдруг слышим: «Да нет там никого. Видите, не кричат… Эх, взорвать бы этот кагал!» — Я думала, что бросят гранату,—«дополнила маму Гита Ефимовна. — Как хотелось выскочить наверх, кинуться на этих нелюдей. Только подумала: выскочу — всех выдам. Какая красивая женщина Гита Ефимовна! Высокая, стройная. Глаза яркие, синие. Волосы каштановые, связанные на затылке большим узлом. — А знаете,— вдруг говорит мама. — Вчера у меня был день рождения.

43 Никому о ее внезапном исчезновении нельзя было говорить. Находиться дома тоже было опасно. Ведь каждую минуту могло нагрянуть гестапо и за уход члена семьи в партизаны всех сразу расстрелять. Разные нехорошие мысли лезли в голову. Мы с мамой стали ходить по близким знакомым и просились пустить переночевать. Дома оставаться боялись.

44 Позднее отец нашел комнатенку и мы перебрались жить туда. Толюшку (отец у него русский) отправили в город к Лене Соколовой, и она его приютила…» «…Никак не укладывается в голове… Наметить для уничтожения район… Собрать людей, которые жили в нем, всех без исключения, старых и детей, и погнать к загодя подготовленным ямам. Бросают людей туда живьем… Потом обливают горючим… Гестаповцы, кому еще не наскучило, продолжали стрелять в эту шевелящуюся яму… После погрома в больницу прибежала врач Лившиц, жена рентгенолога, которой удалось выбраться из ямы. Она была в ожогах, изувечена. Рассказывала, что людей сбрасывали в ямы и сжигали. …А я все вспоминаю, как мы пережили этот погром, как показывала немцам справку о том, что я врач, заведующая отделением инфекционной больницы. Даже позднее комендант гетто Гаттенбах говорил, что работники инфекционной больницы будут уничтожены в последнюю очередь I Вспоминаю, как получила несколько ударов прикладом, когда показывала эту бумажку. Потом, когда меня с дочкой и трехлетним внуком стали заталкивать в машину, по этой справке, к счастью, один из немцев отпустил. Sanford 287

Вспомнила, как нам, «помилованным», приказали стоять на мокрой мостовой на коленях и смотреть в одну точку. Мой внук, трехлетний Толик, все спрашивал, правильно ли он стоит. И дрожал от холода, как осиновый листок… …А когда вечером мы вернулись домой, увидели пустые квартиры. Совсем стемнело, с работы пришли соседи, два брата, семьи которых были уничтожены. Один из них перерезал себе вены, второго я всю ночь стерегла. А дочка моя старалась успокоить его. Утром прибежал мой муж Женя, которого накануне увели на работу в город. Женя все смотрел на нас, не верил, что мы живы. Здесь же лежали убитые: мать и ребенок…»

45 Видимо, Рута задумала это давно. Ее соседка Шэва Озер говорит, что накануне Рута старательно отглаживала детский матросский костюмчик. Шэва еще удивлялась: зачем? Дом, в котором перед войной жила Рута, не сгорел, и она взяла с собой в гетто и документы, и кое-что из вещей. Эту матроску тоже. С вечера она несколько раз примеряла костюмчик на Костика, кое- где ушила, потому что рубашонка и штанишки на мальчугане болтались. Потом долго учила его: — Скажешь: я Костя Дамянов. Мой отец болгарин… Утром Рута одела на сына матроску, подошла с ним к колючей проволоке. Шэва стояла неподалеку и все слышала и видела. Когда охрана прошла мимо, Рута проделала в проволоке дырку, выпустила мальчика за ограждение. — Стой тут, сынок, не отходи. Подождала, когда полицай повернет обратно и подойдет к ним, даже сама позвала его: — Сюда! Сюда! Полицай удивился: — Что за цирк? Почему он здесь? — Послушай меня, послушай. У него отец болгарин. Его зовут Костя Дамянов. Вот метрика. — Рута просунула через проволоку документ. Полицай покрутил метрику в руке, переспросил малыша: — Так кто ты? — Я Костя Дамянов… Папа — болгарин,— испуганно залепетал малыш. — Ишь, вызубрил! Сколько твоему здыхлику лет? — Шесть ему, шесть. Там все написано. — Рута умоляюще смотрела на полицая. — А тебя как зовут? — Рут Столярская. Рута. Полицай передернул плечами. — Во имечко!. . А где его отец, болгарин твой? — В Игарке. — Сослали? — полицай издевательски ухмыльнулся. — Нет, нет. За неделю до войны в командировку поехал. — Чего надо? Говори скорей. И так с тобой валандаюсь. — Отведите мальчика в город. В детский дом. Вот, возьмите. — Рута сняла с пальца кольцо. — Золотое, обручальное. Полицай цапнул его, зыркнул по сторонам. — Что еще у тебя есть? — Ничего… Малыш сообразил, что происходит. — Мама, я не пойду с ним! — Иди, Костик, иди, сынок. Полицай прикладом отпихнул ребенка от ограды. — Пошли. Рута вдруг испугалась: — Ты не убьешь его? Не убьешь? Она пролезла через дырку в ограждении, побежала следом. Из-за поворота показались немцы и полицаи. Один из них вскинул автомат… Рута пошатнулась, упала, потянулась вперед руками.

46 Помню, забавное приключение произошло однажды и со мной. Утром к бирже труда подали машину. Был я проворным малым и вскочил на нее первым. Подъезжаем к воротам гетто. Полицейские автомобиль не пропустили, а велели водителю остановиться. Все поняли, что Sanford 288

будет проверка. Что делать? Сейчас меня ссадят. Недолго думая, подлез под юбку женщины, поджал ноги и затих. Слышу команды полицаев. Душа моя ушла в пятки - верная смерть. Но они смотрели между рядами и считали людей. Ничего не заметив, полицай дал команду ехать. Машина тронулась, я вздохнул свободно и вылез из своего укрытия. Это произошло так внезапно, что женщина даже не успела сообразить, что произошло.

47 В тот день во время облавы охрана поймала более десяти мальчишек. Несчастных избили прикладами, затолкали в кузов грузовика. Жандармы повезли их к еврейскому кладбищу на улице Сухой. Там у самых ворот ребят расстреляли, только один спасся, Янкеле Купер. Отчаянный был сорванец, помню, ходил в красном пальто. Это он нас вовремя предупредил о нагрянувшей облаве. На следующий день после происшедшего я встретил его и спрашиваю: - Янкеле, как тебе удалось от фрицев убежать? - Они боялись до меня дотронуться, увидев, какой я завшивленный...

48 В лагерь, в сопровождении четырех еврейских полицейских, приехал самый влиятельный человек гетто, начальник биржи труда Наум Эпштейн. Через несколько минут по «лагерному телеграфу» стало известно, что будут отбирать тридцать шесть особо ценных специалистов по заявкам немецких предприятий, утвержденным генеральным комиссаром. Тридцать шесть человек, без которых немцы не могут обойтись даже временно, несмотря на жесткий график «окончательного решения». Нетрудно догадаться, каковы были мои шансы попасть в эту группу. И вот картина. В центре плаца, у небольшого столика — Эпштейн со своими полицейскими. В руках у него список. Толпа заключенных наседает, стремясь пробиться поближе, чтобы хоть что-то услышать. Их, с помощью прикладов и собак, оттесняют охранники лагеря. Между толпой и столиком, брезгливо морщась, ходит комендант лагеря с парабеллумом в одной руке и с бамбуковой палкой — в другой. Наконец наступает тишина, совершенно неестественная для такого количества людей. Даже собаки заткнулись, будто чувствуя ответственность момента. Миг звенящей тишины между жизнью и смертью. Звучат имена и фамилии, и вслед за каждой почти мгновенный выкрик: — Есть! — и толпа неохотно исторгает из себя очередного счастливца, который бежит к столу. Звучит очередная фамилия: — Наум Розин! Над плацем повисла бесконечная тишина аж на целых полсекунды, то есть на мгновение дольше, чем надо, чтобы этому самому Розину откликнуться, если он жив. Но он молчит, и, прежде чем истекла эта вечность, звучит чей-то хриплый голос: — Есть! Оказывается, это мой голос, и я, будто во сне, проталкиваюсь к столику. Эпштейн, знавший меня и, вероятно, этого Розина, удивленно взглянул, но промолчал. Ну а я приткнулся к группе «счастливцев», чувствуя себя среди этих аксакалов абсолютно инородным телом. Но все же стою… Группа собрана и построена в колонну по двое. Комендант делает последний обход, видит тощего шестнадцатилетнего «особо ценного специалиста» и, ничего не говоря, бьет его бамбуковой палкой по стриженой голове и палкой же указывает на толпу. Эпштейн и на это смотрит молча. А что ему еще оставалось делать? Кожа черепа рассечена, кровь заливает глаза. Пробираюсь к крану, смываю кровь, достаю из кармана и напяливаю свой драный «кемель» (шапкой и не назовешь) и, заметив, что комендант отошел в дальний угол плаца разбираться с толпой, делаю последнюю попытку: за штабелями кирпича опять пробираюсь к группе, уже готовой к выходу. Вижу тревожный взгляд Эпштейна, понимаю, что он мне сочувствует. Понимаю и то, что очередной подход коменданта будет для меня последним. Но думать уже поздно. Я пошел ва-банк. Становлюсь в хвост колонны. Комендант, судя по звукам его парабеллума, наводит порядок где-то на правом крыле плаца. Ему пока не до нас. И я, бросив последний взгляд на знакомые лица в толпе, выхожу с группой из этой преисподней. Итак, не доживший до этого дня Наум Розин, которого я никогда не знал, и Наум Эпштейн подарили мне кусок жизни, составившей для всех «счастливцев» около двух месяцев (до октября сорок третьего), а для меня, волею судьбы, растянувшейся на 65 лет. Когда встретимся с ними на том свете, низко поклонюсь обоим. (Если вы заметили, я пишу, что из лагеря не «бежал», а «ушел». Так оно и было. Бежать из лагеря СС на ул. Широкой было невозможно.) Sanford 289

Далее события развивались уж совсем сумасшедшим образом. Почти на входе в гетто нашу группу догнала машина с очень высокими военными чинами, которые обругали, а затем и избили Эпштейна. Оказалось, что выпустили людей по одному списку, а у этих чинов на руках был другой, тоже утвержденный и тоже на 36 человек. Часть уже освобожденных состояла и в этом, втором списке, а часть — нет. При этом, общее число 36 не должно быть превышено. Поэтому Эпштейн получает новый приказ: всех освобожденных посадить на ночь в КПЗ при геттовской бирже труда (была такая камера, куда помещали пойманных при облавах). Назавтра разобраться и тех, кто входил в оба списка, выпустить, остальных вернуть на Широкую и вместо них освободить специалистов по новому списку, которые не были учтены в старом. (Надеюсь, я вас еще не совсем запутал?) Поскольку Наум Розин, царство ему небесное, входил в оба списка (видно, был, действительно, ценный специалист), я под его именем, с благословения Эпштейна, утром был выпущен на свободу, то есть в гетто. До сих пор не понимаю причину его хорошего отношения ко мне. Вернулся домой, стараясь не засвечиваться, так как в гетто уже был списан в расход (разумеется, как Михаил Трейстер). Мать меня не сразу узнала — так изменили меня дни, проведенные в этом аду. Один из моих соседей, начальник полиции Розенблат, как я писал, был уже ликвидирован, а другой полицейский, Шульман, сделал вид, что меня не знает и не видит.

49 И когда ночью на этой улице раздавался рев машин, это означало только одно. Минут через 20-30 где-то рядом слышались крики, проклятия, автоматные очереди, лай собак. Через полчаса все затихало, а затем — звук уходящих машин. У стервятников закончилась ночная смена. Утром, поднимаясь по Обувной к месту сбора колонны, прохожу мимо очередного выбитого дома. Вокруг — на тротуарах, фундаментах, стенах — кровь и мозги (стреляли разрывными). Кругом автоматные и винтовочные гильзы, бутылки из-под водки. Иногда догоняю возы с высокими бортами. Груз накрыт брезентом с бурыми пятнами, из-под брезента свисает то рука, то нога. За каждым возом широкая красная полоса. Груз колышется. Еще не остыл. Возы идут к Сухой и по ней налево, к кладбищу. Мне — направо, на Юбилейную площадь, к своей колонне. Сбором и вывозом трупов руководит геттовская (еврейская) полиция с белыми повязками. В цехе некоторые верстаки пусты. Причины никто не обсуждает, даже мастера немцы. Были периоды, когда это повторялось почти каждую ночь и каждый раз, при звуке ночных машин несчастные узники гадали, не по их ли душу… Как правило, даже не прятались в «малины» — не успевали. Еще лет пять после войны при звуке ночной машины я просыпался в холодном поту.

50 Роза хорошо знала немецкий язык и, когда пришли немцы, стала переводчицей. Этим она воспользовалась и помогала евреям Минского гетто. Она была отважной девушкой и много раз ходила к партизанам. О ее мужестве и подвигах никто еще не писал, и я делаю это впервые. Роза спасла много людей. По заданию минских подпольщиков она уводила евреев в лес. И делала это несколько раз. На ее долю выпала страшная судьба. Беда все-таки ее настигла. Кто-то Розу предал, а, может быть, ее выследили. Схватили ее и отвезли в тюрьму, которая была на улице Володарского. Тогда мы поняли, что оттуда, из гестаповского застенка, она уже не выйдет. Над ней долго и изощренно издевались. Мне рассказал ее друг Гопл Дулец, что какой-то палач втолкнул ей в горло канализационную трубу и привязал ее к ней, чтобы отходы лились внутрь... Этим она и отравилась, умерла в страшных муках...

51 Нашим глазам открылась такая картина, что ее невозможно описать. То были плоды нацистских злодеяний за три дня погромов - двуколки с трупами вперемешку с окровавленными частями человеческих тел. Особенно много таких двуколок было у ворот кладбища. Никто убитых не убирал. Так как Сухая улица шла под гору, а беспрерывный дождь разбавил людскую кровь, то красные лужи и ручьи разливались по улицам гетто, по наклонности к юденрату. Мы постояли несколько минут молча. Тогда же мне подумалось, что такое нельзя будет забыть. Мысль та оказалась сущей правдой. Прошло больше чем полвека, а двуколки с трупами евреев Минского гетто я до сих пор вижу во сне. (По этим своим жутким сновидениям я сделал коллаж, близкий к реальности. Пусть читатель представит эту страшную картину.

52 Поскольку в гетто оставались мои родные, стал ходить по начальству и добиваться, чтобы направили туда проводником. И добился. Sanford 290

Моя задача: привести фармацевта, мыловара, оружейника. Можно с родными. Разрешили вывести своих, но с условием: общее число не должно превышать 10 человек. Большие группы, как правило, обречены на гибель. Кроме того, добыть аккумулятор, радиодетали, медикаменты и, если можно, оружие. Группу доставить в Старое Село, откуда сводную команду поведет другой проводник. Все четко и понятно, как обычно бывает в теории. Путь из пущи до Минска почему-то выпал из памяти. Возможно потому, что прошел без ЧП. Стоял сентябрь 1943г. Гетто в сильно урезанном виде доживало последние недели, а может быть, и дни. Медлить было нельзя. Стал искать нужных специалистов. Хоть и сидел инкогнито, стали ко мне захаживать разные люди. Да не с пустыми руками. Запомнил двух визитеров. Один -- с парабеллумом в новенькой кобуре и тремя обоймами патронов (сказал, что с ним пять человек). Другой протянул завернутый в газету круглый столбик длиной сантиметров десять, который поразил меня несоответствием объема и веса. Оказалось, в столбике уж не помню сколько штук золотых десяток. А довеском к ним -- шесть человек. Но приказ есть приказ, а конспирация -- конспирацией: я никуда не уходил и никуда не собираюсь. Даже близким моим знакомым Люсе и Розе Цукерман сказал то же самое (к счастью, они остались живы, и это позволило мне после войны перед ними извиниться). Надеюсь, Люся и Роза как бывшие партизанки поняли, что я выполнял приказ. (Их дядя, мой коллега по цеху, весельчак Борис Цукерман, находясь в партизанах, в разведке был взят карателями живым и четвертован. Вообще, для партизана плен означал мучения, которые трудно даже описать: надевали на голову раскаленный докрасна котелок, голым привязывали к муравейнику, разрывали надвое лошадьми или двумя березами и т.д. Избавить от мучений могли только пистолет или граната, если успеть ими воспользоваться.) Группа подобрана. Сбор -- в котельной геттовской инфекционной больницы по ул.Сухой. Выход в два часа ночи. И тут началось то, чего я не мог предвидеть. В котельной, как выяснилось, ютилось много разного люда: чудом уцелевшие от погромов, лишившиеся жилья, словом, по-нынешнему -- бомжи. К ним присоединились узники, прослышавшие, что сколачивается группа. Тут я увидел и сына своего коллеги по цеху Шолома Каплана, и знакомую молодую женщину Клару с дочкой. Взял с собой и их. Короче, набралось человек 25- 30. С одной стороны, я понимал, что с такой компанией шансы выйти из города равны нулю, а с другой -- знал, что изменить ничего не могу, даже время выхода. Сделал единственное, что мог: приказал обвязать обувь любым тряпьем, чтобы пройти по ночному городу потише. Итак, ровно в два часа ночи режем проволоку по ул.Опанского и выходим навстречу судьбе. Совершенно немыслимым образом нам удалось выйти за пределы города, который тогда кончался где-то за Кальварийским кладбищем. Уже одно это до сих пор считаю чудом. Осложнения начались потом. Перейдя шоссе, мы оказались на большом картофельном поле в треугольнике дорог. Предстояло пересечь следующую из них. И вдруг на той, которую собирались перейти, - взрыв. Залегли в мокрую ботву, слава Богу, достаточно высокую. По всем трем дорогам -- машины, сирены, прожектора, гортанные звуки команд. Уж не знаю, что там у них стряслось, но можно представить наше состояние, тем более, что рассвет для нас в этом месте был бы равносилен смерти. Наконец, слегка утихло, и мы почти по-пластунски пересекли дорогу, но не ту, которую наметили (там еще было шумно), а другую, где почти не было движения. Это сбило с намеченного курса на Старое Село. Стало ясно, что этой ночью до цели нам не добраться. Рассвет застал вблизи большого кустарника, в котором мы и укрылись. В кустарнике передохнули. А потом началась дискуссия. Я был за то, чтобы днем разведать дорогу, а движение продолжить ночью. Взрослые возражали: идти надо днем: недавно в кустарник заглянул пастушок, его чем-то задобрили и взяли обещание никому о нас не рассказывать. Но все понимали, чего стоит это обещание. Победили взрослые. Трое молодых разведали дорогу, и мы разбили всех на три группы. Эти группы во главе с разведчиками должны были двигаться в нужном направлении с интервалом в 20 минут. Моя -- последняя. Вышла первая группа, за ней -- вторая. Пришло мое время. Я -- впереди, за мной, метрах в пятидесяти, остальные. Рельеф сложный: подъем, перевал, глубокая впадина и опять подъем на лесистую гору -- где-то за ней Раковское шоссе. На подходе к перевалу вдруг услышал в низине какую-то сухую трескотню, растворенную в широком осеннем пространстве. Это меня даже не напугало, а как-то озадачило. Махнул своим, чтобы залегли, а сам пополз к перевалу, заглянул вниз и увидел картину, которая до сих пор стоит перед глазами. В низине, слева от тропы -- сруб, возле сруба немцы в упор расстреливают вторую группу, полицаи палят из винтовок вдогонку первой, которая бегом поднимается на лесистую гору и уже частично скрылась в редколесье. Вижу, как и там падают Sanford 291

люди. (Позднее, при встрече подвели итог: вторая группа уничтожена полностью, в первой убито около половины.) Я вернулся к своим, приказал быстро спуститься к кустарнику и только внизу рассказал о том, что случилось. Произошло очередное чудо: каратели не пришли. Видно, решили, что больше никого нет. Можно представить, в каком состоянии мы дождались ночи. До сих пор не могу сказать, кто был прав в нашем споре. Если нас выдал пастушок, то -- взрослые, а если нет, то -- я. (В этом случае, досидев в кустарнике до темноты, мы могли бы сохранить группу.) Но история, как известно, не имеет сослагательного наклонения. Случилось то, что случилось. Не мне судить, есть ли моя вина во всем этом, тем более, что главные сторонники дневного перехода погибли, и спорить уже не с кем. До Старого Села шли в обход две ночи, но добрались в полном составе: фармацевт Смолянский с дочерью, Клара с ребенком, Шолом Каплан, мама, сестра Нюта, я и еще два-три человека, имен которых теперь не помню. До Налибокской пущи (места дислокации отряда 106) объединенную команду вел уже другой проводник: девчушка по имени Катя. За сутки прошли около 80 километров. Ноги были сбиты в кровь -- в конце пути многим пришлось срезать сапоги. Все же дошли без потерь.

53 В результате второго похода сестры в Минск она вывела к партизанам троих детей и двенадцать взрослых. Среди них были два хирурга. Партизанам доставили много медикаментов и хирургического инструмента, пишущую машинку и батареи для радиопередатчика. Все это передали в бригаду минские подпольщики, а принесли в лес сами те, кто вышел с Ёхой.

54 Сестра всех предупредила, чтобы взяли с собой только самое ценное: серьги, брошки, золото, то есть все то, что можно было у крестьян обменять на оружие. Она каждому объяснила, что идти будем ночью, поэтому очень важно наблюдать друг за другом, чтобы в темноте не потеряться. Я и Гинда сбегали на базар. На припрятанные мною немецкие марки накупили махорку, спички, сахарин, соль, бинты для перевязки и многое другое. Всего уже не припомню... Место сбора Ёха назначила в конце 2-го кирпичного завода. Дорогу до него все хорошо знали. А оттуда начиналась дорога, ведущая в Медвежево. Возбужденная сестра каждого подробно инструктировала. Первым долгом, не оставлять следов, уходить скрытно, не группироваться, соблюдать дистанцию. Уже стемнело, когда мы в разных местах ста ли нырять под колючую проволоку и уходить через русский район в сторону 2-го киричного заода. Меня нарядили, как жениха, в куртку, новую зимнюю шапку-ушанку, чтобы особенно не выделялся еврейский нос... Уже много времени мы в дороге. Прошли двенадцать километров. Вдруг узнаем, что Ёха дальше идти не может. Выясняется, что она падает с ног от усталости и... очень хочет спать. Причина понятна: ведь она более двух суток не спала. Женщины по очереди стали помогать ей идти, лишь бы не стоять, а двигаться вперед, подальше уйти от города. … Теперь мы свободные люди. Маршрут в Старое Село принес нам свободу и человеческое достоинство. … Каждый надеялся найти оружие. А с ним обязательно уйдем в Налибокскую пущу, станем настоящими партизанами.

55 Итак, шесть человек в том числе и я, оставшихся в Старом Селе, продолжали искать оружие. Ежедневно мы уходили в лес, как на работу. Но это была тяжелая жизнь скитальцев: каждый вечер просились на ночлег, добывали пропитание. Порой даже приходилось отдавать вещи за то, что тебя накормят и дадут возможность ночевать в тепле. Весна брала свое. С каждым днем солнце все больше прогревало воздух, звенела капель. И мы приспособились ночевать на сеновалах, в сараях и других местах. Иногда в селе появлялись партизаны. Каждый раз мы просили их забрать нас в отряд. Многие сочувствовали, кормили, но прав для определения в отряд не имели. Бывало отведут подальше от Старого Села в другую деревню, наберут для нас хлеб, молоко, уст- роят переночевать. … А мы упорно продолжали искать оружие. И вот однажды мне все-таки повезло. В лесу я заметил странный бугорок, стал ковырять его и наткнулся на металлический ствол. Очистил от земли и вытащил целый карабин, весь смазанный жиром. Видно, какой-то крестьянин нашел его и припрятал. Вот так находка! Радости моей не было конца. К прикладу прикрепил ремень, сняв его со штанов, и подпоясался веревкой. Я сразу почувствовал себя взрослым. Sanford 292

56 Я подошел и стал просить его взять меня в отряд. Иван Казак внимательно посмотрел на меня и спросил: - А что ты у нас делать будешь? - В разведку ходить! - выпалил я. Он улыбнулся и покачал головой: - Молод еще... - А моя сестра, ее зовут Евка, ведь ходит по вашему заданию... - Ёха твоя сестра? - Да, она моя сестра. - А карабин у тебя чей? - Мой! Сам нашел,- с гордостью признался я Казаку. Узнав, что у меня есть собственный карабин, комиссар сказал одному из своих подчиненных: - Возьми этого пацана с собой. Он молодец, сам себе карабин добыл. С этим карабином я прошел всю войну до самого освобождения.

57 Вспоминаю свое первое партизанское задание. Стою в дозоре на окраине деревни Лисовщина. Перед этим мне объяснили, куда я должен смотреть. Если увижу малочисленную группу людей - подпустить поближе, чтобы убедиться, что это не полицаи. Если появятся полицаи - дать один выстрел вверх, если увижу машину - дать два выстрела вверх. Опытный партизан показал, как это делать. … Никто не идет. Я простоял так часов пять. Мне казалось, что прошла целая вечность. Наконец, появились два партизана. … Так закончилось мое первое партизанское задание. Хоть прошло оно без происшествий, но возвращался я гордый, что полуголодный выдержал нагрузку, до блеска надраил ржавые детели и дисциплинированно стоял на посту. Партизан привел меня в дом, там было много вооруженных людей. Было дымно от курева. Мне налили большую тарелку жирного картофельного супа и дали много мяса. Я ел без конца, никак не мог насытиться и остановиться. На столе в большой миске еще оставалось много мяса. „Такого нельзя допустить",-мелькнула мысль. Я прорезал карман с внутренней стороны, как делал в немецкой столовой, и стал кидать мясо туда, оно падало за подкладку на дно куртки. Потом встал, подошел к командиру и спросил: - Могу ли я отлучиться на два часа? - Куда? - последовал вопрос. - Хочу подскочить на другой конец деревни проведать маму... И двоюродная сестренка там, и другие из гетто... - Это нужное дело.- Командир оказался хорошим человеком, отпустил меня и еще дал с собой для всех буханку черного хлеба. Мама еще не была принята в партизаны. В сарае ютились пять взрослых и малолетняя Гинда. К ним тогда присоединились несколько вновь прибывших. Они скитались и не всегда добывали еду. Я прибежал к своим, отдал маме буханку хлеба и мясо. Партизанские харчи оказались очень кстати. Когда стал уходить, опять увидел ее слезы, опять было тягостное прощание. Маму я после этого не встречал около года, но знал, что она жива и где находится.

58 Главным впечатлением, я бы даже сказал — потрясением от встречи с Красной Армией, если не считать обретенной надежды, стали песни. Они обрушились на нас настоящей лавиной. Между прочим, в отряде по вечерам тоже пели, причем, как ни странно, преобладал сибирско-казачий репертуар, вроде: «Бродяга Байкал переехал», «Ты гуляй, гуляй, мой конь» и т.д. Пели «Катюшу» и «Землянку», иногда и «Свадьбу Шнейерсона». Новых военных песен почти не знали, а тут в первый же вечер у огромного костра мы услышали десятки ранее совершенно неизвестных, созданных в период войны. Это и «Вечер на рейде», и «Темная ночь», и «Случайный вальс», и «Шаланды», и «Соловьи», и «Смуглянка». Перечислять бесполезно, сейчас их знают все, а в тот вечер они были для нас полным открытием. И все это под гитару и аккордеон. А как пели! И ребята какие! Молодые, крепкие, пропахшие порохом и пылью военных дорог. Ясно было, что до Берлина их уже никто не остановит. А если потребуется, то, как писал К. Симонов, дойдут и до Мадрида. Это была гигантская пружина, которая сжималась от границы до Москвы и Сталинграда, а сейчас, распрямившись, сметает все на своем пути. Именно такое ощущение я испытал в ту ночь, слушая эти песни под треск костра и шум ночного леса.

59 [Ж]изнь была тяжелой, полной опасностей. По несколько дней без пищи мы двигались по болотам. Приходилось питаться подножным кормом: ягодами и крапивой. Sanford 293

Большим подспорьем была конина. Когда натыкались на убитую или утонувшую в болоте лошадь, мы вырезали куски мяса и жарили на костре. Правда, опасность была, что по дыму немцы обнаружат нас. Поэтому вдали от костра в разных направлениях выставляли дозорных.

60 Троих подростков из гетто: меня, Янкеле Купера и Хаимке Гольдина - поставили в дозор. Старшим назначили более опытного Ваню Хохлова. Через сутки он сказал: - Вы оставайтесь здесь, а я пойду в отряд и принесу для всех еду... Так у нас было заведено... Но как ушел он, так мы больше его не видели. Мы в дозоре еще находились двое суток почти без пищи. С разных сторон были слышны выстрелы. Видимо, в эту переделку попал наш Хохлов. Потом мы пошли в сторону расположения отряда в надежде найти там что-то поесть. Хорошо, что догадались подойти скрытно. Возле землянок мы увидели немецких солдат. Они, оказывается, обошли нас стороной. Мы двинулись в сторону болота, куда гитлеровцы боялись сунуться. Но и нам нельзя было пройти там из-за глубоких и топких мест. Ко всему , в то время нас заедали тучи комаров. Представить это невозможно. Комары не только жалили лицо и руки, но проникали под одежду. Втроем мы бродили по болоту, порой погружаясь в трясину по грудь. Потом снова выбирались на сухое место. Говорят, „голод - не тетка". Мы вынуждены были на вторые сутки снова вернуться к отрядной стоянке. Там уже никого не было, все разгромлено, но нашли кое- что из пищи. Подкрепились и снова в путь. Прошло, может быть, пять суток. Несколько раз попадали в непроходимые болотистые места. Однажды стало слышно движение людей, шум нарастал. А мы сидели в болоте по пояс. Убегать некуда, ибо выйти на открытое место - это верная смерть. Потом стали видны люди. Одеты они были в разные одежды. Значит, не немцы. Но идут в нашу строну. Я вскинул карабин и крикнул: - Стой, кто идет?! Так всегда было принято для выяснения, кто такие. - Свои,- ответил кто-то. Командую: - Один - на переговоры! Они подумали, что нас много. Мы приблизились друг к другу. Когда партизаны поняли, что нас всего трое, стали смеяться. Вместе с парламентером мы пошли к командиру. Тот, узнав о том, сколько нас, стал хохотать. Трое подростков напугали целый отряд.

61 В отряде имени Пархоменко, созданном в основном евреями Минского гетто, командир зачитал приказ, гласивший, что следует освободиться от партизан-евреев, находившихся в отряде вместе с женами. Этот командир собственноручно расстрелял одного из первых партизан, пришедших из гетто в отряд, Рубенчика Генаха..."

62 Одну историю я должен рассказать из нашей партизанской жизни. Мне очень хочется вспомнить о партизане-еврее Подберезкине. За высокий рост, большую физическую силу его у нас называли Петр Первый... Родом он был из местечка Городок. В отряде его ценили за умение ориентироваться, за хорошее знание местности. Главное - он был отличным специалистом-подрывником, участвовал в рельсовой войне, пускал под откос составы. Командование стало ему давать самые сложные и ответственные задания Однажды он с небольшой группой из десяти человек совершил успешную акцию: подорвал поезд Железнодорожное сообщение в сторону фронта немцев было остановлено на много часов. Группа подрывников благополучно добралась до пущи. По дороге, добыв самогон, сало и хорошие продукты, партизаны на радостях хорошенько выпили Пьяные, они продолжали путь на базу. Путь не близ- кий, через лес на телеге быстро двигаться невозможно. Подберезкин сидел спереди и правил лошадью. На телеге, кроме него, были еще трое. Вдруг партизан, по имени Козлов, тихо сказал другому: Группа подрывников благополучно добралась до пущи. По дороге, добыв самогон, сало и хорошие продукты, партизаны на радостях хорошенько выпили Пьяные, они продолжали путь на базу. Путь не близ- кий, через лес на телеге быстро двигаться невозможно. Подберезкин сидел спереди и правил лошадью. На телеге, кроме него, были еще трое. Вдруг партизан, по имени Козлов, тихо сказал другому: - Кто стрелял? - спросил старший. - Откуда? Никто не верил, что это сделал свой партизан. А пьяный̆ Козлов отвечает: - А хрен с ним, одним жидом будет меньше... Большинство возмущались диким поступком Козлова. Кто-то спросил: - Что же мы скажем, когда приедем на базу? Sanford 294

- Скажем, что напоролись на немецкую засаду и в бою его убили. Дело обычное. На то и война. Подберезкина закопали на обочине на том же месте, где случилась эта трагедия. В могилу рядом с ним положили личные вещи, в том числе и оружие, молча поехали дальше. Все-таки большинство было удручено происшедшим. Может быть, так бы и приняли версию о засаде. Но партизаны из Городка горбатый Рубель, Михл Лицкий, швея Баши-Голде, наша поэтесса Брайнэ и командир Цофин почувствовали, что в этой истории не все ладно. Они стали вести собственное расследование. Когда выезжали на задание, у местных жителей, где проходила дорога, допытывались, не произошел ли там бой с немцами, не попал ли кто- нибудь из партизан в засаду или был убит полицаями. Больше всех инициативу проявлял командир взвода Гершн Цофин (впоследствии после войны он репатриировался в Израиль). Обо всем он доложил в особый отдел и требовал провести расследование. В то время в отряде уже соблюдалась строгая дисциплина, была постоянная связь с командованием и особистам пришлось доложить о происшествии в штаб бригады. Оттуда последовал приказ: найти виновника, судить и наказать перед строем. Особый отдел легко докопался до истины. Да и сами партизаны не одобряли бандитскую выходку антисемита. Решили устроить публичное дознание и суд. На поляне весь личный состав партизан построили полумесяцем. Виновниками признали командира отделения и рядового партизана Козлова. Помню даже вопросы, которые им задавали. У командира отделения спросили: - Почему ты не доложил об этом убийстве сразу, когда прибыл в отряд? - Я был пьяным. - Почему ты скрыл правду? Он промолчал. Да ему и нечего было сказать. Спрашивают у поляка Козлова: - Почему ты убил боевого товарища, рисковавшего вместе с тобой? Опять все услышали ответ мерзкого антисемита, ненавидевшего евреев: - А хрен его знает... Перед строем партизан был зачитан приговор. За скрытие правды о трагическом случае при выполнении боевого задания командиру отделения -расстрел, за убийство своего товарища - к партизану Козлову применить высшую меру наказания, лишить его жизни через повешение. У партизан суд был скорый. На глазах у всех приговор был приведен в исполнение. Повесили Козлова тут же на суку дуба, росшего на поляне. Так распорядилось командование, чтобы больше не повторялось подобное. У партизан суд был скорый. На глазах у всех приговор был приведен в исполнение. Повесили Козлова тут же на суку дуба, росшего на поляне.

63 И вот один подвыпивший партизан из соседнего дома зашел к нам. Давно приглянулся ему мой карабин, стал он мне предлагать обменять на его винтовку: I Давай, байструк, махнем. Дам я тебе еще в придачу гранату и три обоймы с патронами. Я не согласился. Тогда, он припёр меня к стене, выхватил пистолет, наставил на меня и говорит: - Не отдашь - убью! Видимо, он думал, что я из породы робких и трусливых. - Нет! - сказал я. - Карабин ни за что не поменяю! Я подумал, что он отстанет. - Ах ты, жидёнок! Считаю до десяти: раз... два...три... Вдруг откуда ни возьмись - Ёха с автоматом. Она спала в соседней комнате. Ей видно кто-то .шепнул: „Там твоего брата убивают...". Она схватила свой автомат за ствол и со всей силы ударила пьяницу по руке, державшей пистолет. Тот даже ойкнуть не успел, повалился на пол и сломал руку. Так как в тот момент медицинской помощи ему не оказали, остался он инвалидом на всю жизнь. А Ёху, учитывая её боевые заслуги, даже не наказали.

64 Боевая работа пришлась по вкусу не только мне. В отряде рос авторитет подростков, у которых было оружие. Мы были бесстрашны, это ценили наши товарищи. Они старались нас брать в разведку...

65 - побил рекорд по сидению на гауптвахте, причем, самое любопытное, все за дело; - впервые в жизни увидел молящегося еврея и еврея, соблюдающего кашрут даже в тех совершенно немыслимых условиях, что заставило о многом задуматься; Sanford 295

- обрел настоящих друзей, многие из которых, пройдя испытание временем, состоят в этом качестве по сей день; - понял, что человеческая жизнь бесценна, но есть кое-что и поважнее.

66 По замыслу гитлеровских властей остатки еврейского населения необходимо было отправить за город к местам „экзекуций" и уничтожить. С вечера 20 октября 1943 года территория гетто была окружена войсками СД и полицейскими батальонами. Утром следующего дня всех евреев погрузили на машины и вывезли в Тростенец. Кто сопротивлялся или уже не мог передвигаться из-за голода, распухших ног и болезни, того расстреливали на месте. Если у карателей существовало подозрение, что в погребах или в других укромных местах скрываются люди, они взрывали такие укрытия гранатами. 67 Небольшое количество евреев еще существовало в гетто до конца 1943 года. Именно существовало, а не жило. Это было нищенское прозябание горстки голодных и одичавших людей, которые прятались в подвалах домов, в редких сохранившихся „малинах". Немцы и полицаи охотились за ними, ревностно выполняя приказ из Берлина - стереть с лица земли Минское гетто („фрай фун юден"). Но евреи со свойственным любому человеку желанием не умирать прежде времени, тем более насильственно, продолжали сопротивление. К каким только способам не прибегали они, лишь бы остаться жить. В это самое время в конце улицы Сухой, за трамвайным кольцом, где начиналось еврейское кладбище, небольшая группа узников гетто предприняла беспрецедентный шаг: они осмелились замуровать себя в специально вырытой пещере- укрытии. Цель была одна - любой ценой выжить и дождаться прихода воинов- освободителей. Это было настоящее чудо, когда несколько семей сумели почти девять месяцев в абсолютной темноте, почти без пищи и со скудными запасами воды прожить в нечеловеческих условиях под землей. … Я хочу рассказать о пятерых выживших в этом заточении, о нашей удивительной встрече, которая произошла в Израиле спустя 60 лет, когда я готовил к выпуску второе издание моей книги. Слово Фиме Гимельштейну и Лизе Левкович: - Мы скрылись в этой пещере в октябре 1943 года. Тогда нас было 28 человек. Инициатором и руководителем нашей группы был печник Пиня Добин. Он ушел в пещеру вместе со своей семьей: старой матерью, женой и двумя сыновьями Борисом и Семеном. Извозчик Эля с женой, бухгалтер Берл и пожилой часовщик, женщины средних лет Рася с сыном Мариком Гухманом, Рахель с маленьким сыном, Муся и дочка швеи Леи. Еще две девушки и дети, имен которых не помним. Кратко расскажу о жизни в пещере. Она была вырыта на территории еврейского кладбища под бетонным перекрытием разрушенного дома. В двух отсеках оборудовали стеллажи. Каждая семья старалась запасти побольше сухарей и других непортящихся продуктов. Готовились к добровольному заточению несколько месяцев. Взяли самые необходимые вещи. Для хранения воды притащили трехсотлитровые бочки. Печник Пиня Добин, чтобы замаскировать вход в наше необычное укрытие, сделал лаз и приготовил материал для его замуровки изнутри кирпичами. Первое время, чувствуя себя в относительной безопасности, люди жили дружно, не унывали и верили, что дождутся Красной Армии и освобождения. Дети придумывали себе незатейливые игры, пела грустные еврейские песни Марыся, много шутила неунывающая Рахель. Чтобы не выдать себя своими разговорами и шумом, мы избрали необычный образ жизни: спали днем, а бодрствовали ночью. Со временем к этому режиму привыкли, потому что больше всего находились в темноте. Была коптилка, свеча и лучины. Но светом старались не пользоваться. Не все могли вынести такую жизнь. Первой умерла самая старая женщина Хая-Сора. Ее похоронили здесь же в пещере. Потом ушел из жизни пожилой бухгалтер Берл. Через несколько месяцев все поняли, что мы можем погибнуть от жажды. В бочках кончилась вода. Мы только увлажняли пересохшие губы. Больше всего страдали дети. И тут случилось чудо. Однажды Пиня обнаружил недалеко от могилы, где похоронили бухгалтера, мокрый песок. Он стал разгребать это место и из-под земли начала сочиться талая вода. По-видимому, она просачивалась из-за интенсивного таяния снега. Несколько дней мы радовались этому, заполнили доверху бочки, пили воду до отвала... А потом наступил страх, что вода эта нас затопит. Все перебрались на верхние полки стеллажей, а вода все прибывала и прибывала. Радость сменилась отчаянием. Но есть Бог на свете. К концу недели Пиня обнаружил, что вода стала спадать. Прошло, наверное, уже пять месяцев. И молодежь стала роптать и проситься, чтобы их выпустили на волю из этой могилы. Парни и девушки готовы были уйти к партизанам. Но наш вожак Пиня Добин не соглашался. Это значило, по его мнению, посылать людей на верную смерть. Убеждения его старшего сына Бориса на него не действовали. И все-таки две девушки уговорили его. На дворе уже март, весна... Они обещали установить контакт с партизанами и вернуться, чтобы вывести всех в лес. Как ушли, так их больше никто и не видел. Sanford 296

Стала проситься на волю тетя Рахель, свояченица Пини. Он доверял ей и надеялся, что она не выдаст тайну пещеры. - Лучше идти вдвоем, - наставлял он Рахель. - Возьми с собой Мусю. И деньги соберите, у кого остались. Они могут пригодиться... Надо что-то купить от цинги. Выход из подземелья был удачным. На Юбилейном рынке Муся встретила знакомую белоруску Гану. До войны они работали на обувной фабрике. Гана повела их к себе домой, накормила хлебом и каким-то варевом. Они ели и плакали. Потом не выдержали и рассказали, что пять месяцев живут в пещере под землей. Где находится их укрытие - не сказали. А Гана, переживая, тоже плакала. Она им сказала, что в гетто евреев уже больше нет. Немцы всех истребили... На дорогу белорусская женщина дала им хлеба, луку, чесноку и соли. Потом и сам Добин установил связь с другой женщиной, которая жила рядом с кладбищем. Оказалось, что она знакома с Ганой. Это успокоило осторожного Пиню. Очередной его выход, и он приносит в пещеру добрую весть - партизанскую листовку. Из нее все узнают, что советские войска наступают и недалек тот день, когда они будут в Минске. В тревожном ожидании люди в пещере даже перестали замечать, *что совсем уже нечего есть. О том, что Минск освобожден, в пещере мы узнали на вторые сутки. Большинство из оставшихся тринадцати живых выползли на свет божий на четвереньках. Воины, освободившие4 город, помогали нам. Потом прибыло командование и среди них, говорили, приехал и сам Илья Эренбург. Вызвали военврачей. Ведь мы ослепли от постоянной темноты, ходить уже не могли.

68 Возвращаюсь рано утром в расположение отряда, чтобы получить завтрак на всех, кто стоял со мной в дозоре. Прошел полпути и вдруг вижу, что на обочине дороги спит немец. Быстро осмотрелся кругом - никого больше нет. Загнал патрон в патронник и громко кричу: - Хенде хох!* От внезапного окрика немец вскочил, как ужаленный. Я держу оружие на прицеле и командую ему по- немецки: „Бросай оружие и иди вперед!" Он выполнил приказание, а автомат его я подобрал. Подумал: „Хорош трофей!" Велел ему идти вперед и не оглядываться. Пройдя немного я уже чувствую запах еды от кухни, так как мы приближались к нашему отряду. Командую ему, чтобы снял мундир, сапоги, а в них положил свои часы и все связал ремнем. Это было раннее утро. Смотрю, немец дрожит и узел с верхней одеждой держит перед собой. Повел я его в штаб отряда мимо землянок. Стали выходить партизаны и хвалить меня, что трофеи добыл. Обычно партизаны ценные трофеи, добытые в бою с немецкими карателями, забирали себе. Я же жадности не проявлял и охотно делился такими вещами с друзьями. В штабе нас встретил начальник штаба Резницкий. Он хорошо говорил по-немецки и стал допрашивать солдата. А тот продолжал дрожать и попросил, чтобы ему вернули отнятую одежду. При этом на скверном русском сказал, что партизан он не убивал и неожиданно заплакал. Мне почему-то стало его жалко и с разрешения начштаба Резницкого я вернул пленному брюки, сапоги и китель. Помню, он признался на допросе, что у него имеется много ценных сведений и готов все рассказать, если его доставят к высшему командованию … * - Руки вверх! (нем.)

69 увидели страшный образ проявления народной мести: на высоких березах сверху висело что-то большое, непонятное и в порванной одежде. Вокруг каркали вороны. Остановились, подошли поближе. Присмотрелись. Такого я еще никогда не видел. На двух рядом стоящих березах болтались, привязанные за ноги, две половинки человеческого тела. Они выглядели так, как будто разрублены строго пополам сверху донизу, кроме головы. Внизу на земле валялась форменная офицерская фуражка с черным лаковым козырьком и эсэсовской кокардой. По-видимому, партизаны, поймав немецкого офицера-эсэсовца, наклонили березы друг к другу, к каждой привязали по одной ноге гитлеровца и, совершая казнь, отпустили их... Идем дальше. Впереди неглубокая речушка. Через неё - небольшой мостик. Голый немец (вокруг валялась уже слегка подопревшая его одежда), обкрученный весь веревками, висит вниз головой. Его распухшее тело, облепленное мухами, привязано к мосту. Голова и шея - в воде. Можно было себе представить мученическую смерть этого фашиста, глотающего воздух и захлебывающегося... Такие пытки придумали партизаны, озлобленные зверствами карателей. Они были доведены до такого состояния, что спокойно совершали казнь и потом смотрели на предсмертные муки извергов. Такая была ответная реакция, месть за погибших и замученных родных, друзей, боевых товарищей.

Sanford 297

70 И вот мы в Минске. Въехали со стороны Каль- варии. Вышли на Юбилейной площади недалеко от бывшего юденрата. Уже нет на том здании тревожащей надписи на немецком: ГОЕШАТ. Все вокруг разрушено, много сожженных домов - остались лишь фундаменты да кирпичные трубы. От увиденного у меня защемило сердце, хотелось плакать - когда мы уходили, еще оставались люди. Дом наш на Зеленом переулке остался цел, но в нем жили совершенно чужие люди. Когда мы вошли, они стали нагло утверждать, что откупили у хозяев, даже назвали сумму. - Вот это да! - от неожиданности я рассмеялся. - А мы кто такие? Когда папа заявил, что он хозяин этого дома, они не поверили: - Не может того быть! Всех евреев здесь убили. В том числе и хозяина... Я много помогал ему хлебом, картошкой...- и он осекся, замолк, видя наше настроение. Конечно, без документов мы доказать ничего не могли. Нам они все же выделили комнату, где мы переночевали. Утром от соседей узнали, что в огороде у „хозяев" закопано много добра... Днем на следующий день пришла Ёха, участвовавшая в партизанском военном параде. На плече у нее висел автомат, она была в партизанской беретке с красной ленточкой. Сестра решительным тоном приказала: - Ищите себе жилье, где хотите, а из нашего дома выбирайтесь! Видя, что ее слова не действуют на нового „хозяина", Ёха сняла с плеча автомат и выстрелила вверх. Из комнаты выскочила перепуганная женщина и заголосила: - Што гэта робыца, людзей уб1ваюць! Ратуйце! - До завтрашнего дня, чтобы вашей ноги здесь не было. Понятно? - сестра сначала говорила спокойно, а потом перешла на крик: - Мы воевали, а вы наживались! Вон из нашего дома! Если добром не уйдете, то будете там, где мои братья и сестры! Это были люди, которые нажились на страданиях и горе евреев. После убийств и расстрелов они пробирались в те дома, где уже никого не было в живых, и забирали самые ценные вещи.

71 Эйфория первых дней свободы быстро прошла. Возвращение в Минск было грустным, а для большинства — трагическим. Очень многим возвращаться было некуда, да и не к кому. Это больше походило на посещение кладбища. Мы с мамой и сестрой являлись редким исключением — втроем остались в оккупации, втроем ушли в лес, втроем вернулись. Правда, оказались мы бездомными. Поскольку вселиться в свою квартиру не могли: дом был разрушен бомбой 24 июня 1941 года. Таким образом мы, будучи голыми, босыми и голодными, оказались к тому же и бездомными... Огромной радостью стало получение первых писем от старшего брата из Самарканда и среднего — с фронта. Значит, вся наша семья была жива. С крышей нас выручили родители одноклассницы моей сестры, предложив проходную комнатку в своей квартире по улице Берсона. Полагаю, что одной из причин этого жеста было желание смягчить отношение к ним властей. Один их сын воевал в Красной Армии, другой — служил в полиции. По слухам, был водителем душегубки. В этой ситуации помощь, оказанная партизанской семье, являлась как бы смягчающим обстоятельством. Комната представляла собой «распределительную коробку» площадью около 6 кв.метров с четырьмя дверями. Две из них были забиты, а проход с улицы на кухню завесили одеялом. Потом одеяло заменили фанерной перегородкой. Так и прожили около 10 лет. В первые недели редко выпадали спокойные ночи. Начались бомбежки «второго поколения». Уходя, немцы бомбили город, пытаясь разрушить то немногое, что не успели. Запомнился человек с оторванными ногами под Западным мостом. В одну из ночей бомба попала в железнодорожный состав с боеприпасами, после чего этот горящий эшелон сам до утра «обстреливал» город в радиусе 2-3 километров своими снарядами. Это была ночь сплошной канонады. До утра снаряды свистели над крышами домов и взрывались где-то вблизи. В памяти осталась единственная ночь, проведенная в бомбоубежище под малой церковью Петра и Павла (на Немиге). Крики женщин, плач детей, мат мужиков, которые «приняли для храбрости», и полное отсутствие любого воздуха, уже не говоря о свежем. Можно добавить, что туалета не было, а если и был, то прямо тут же... После этой ночи мы с хозяином квартиры Лявонтием, похожим на Тараса Бульбу, отрыли во дворе щель и залезали туда по сигналу тревоги. Вновь, как и 24 июня 41 года, я лежал, прижавшись щекой к влажной земле, ходившей ходуном, и казалось, каждая очередная бомба была нацелена не просто в меня, а конкретно в мой затылок. При этом сбрасываемые на парашютах огромные карбидные фонари нестерпимо ярким белым светом бесконечно длящейся молнии освещали не местность и даже не лежащего рядом «Тараса Бульбу», а именно мой затылок.

Sanford 298

72 При первом побеге в партизаны мне уже приходилось ходить по хатам в поисках еды, ну а если говорить прямо — побираться. В первые дни в Минске, оставшись без всяких средств к существованию, я опять вспомнил: «от сумы не зарекайся». Кажется, район продуктовой «бомбежки» лежал где-то за Юбилейной площадью. Оружие мы сдали только после партизанского парада 26 июля 1944 года, а пока оставить автомат было негде, поэтому ходил с ним. Картина, надо сказать, была живописной. Заходит пацан с автоматом и просит чего- нибудь поесть. Как правило, кормили. Иногда даже кое-что давали с собой. Побирался недолго. Потом появились хлебные карточки и кое-какие побочные способы заработка. Пришлось вспомнить и о своей сапожной профессии. Так проходили первые дни, недели и месяцы моей послеоккупационной жизни. Война еще продолжалась. 73 Запомните, Света, ваш отец—герой. Несите людям правду об отце, о героях Минского гетто. Обещайте, что продолжите мою работу. Я верю в вас.

74 болел душой за то, чтобы осуществилась цель моей жизни.

75 Долгий путь к заветной улице

76 Я постаралась как можно ярче, доходчивее рассказать о моем отце, о моем папе не только как о борце, герое, но и как о человеке в окружении семьи, друзей, соратников. Я стремилась показать историки его благородства, любви к людям, мужества и героизма. Все, о чем написано в этой книге, подтверждено документально. В моем домашнем музее отца собрано множество материалов о Минском гетто и его подполье.

77 Собранные мной в разных городах и весях воспоминания об отце, газеты, журналы и книги с моими публикациями о нем.

78 На моем столе портрет молодого красивого человека с открытым лицом, выразительными глазами.

79 Для нас, молодых, он был как бог: красивый, умный, честный, смелый.

80 … замечательный талант организатора. … Он был очень простой, отзывчивый, внимательный к людям, Миша в любой момент приходил на помощь. Вежлив и тактичен был до утонченности.

81 Это был энергичный, красивый человек. Он сказал, что надо включаться в подпольную борьбу с врагом. Я был зачислен в группу Занана Гусинова. Мы выполняли все задания, которые давал нам Гебелев. Это был настоящий герой подполья. Подпольный центр в гетто тогда возглавлял Смоляр. У него была кличка «Скромный.» Но если Скромный держался скромно, то Миша Гебелев всегда был в эпицентре борьбы. Фактически он был душой подполья.

82 «Я был там, на площади, откуда отправлял группу из гетто в партизанский отряд Миша Гебелев. Он должен был уйти с этой группой в партизаны. В грузовике оставалось одно место для него. Однако, увидев меня среди остающихся, он сказал: «Езжай ты, Симон. Я в следующий раз…» Я отказывался. Он настоял. Он умел убеждать. Он спас меня. А сам…» (стр. 79)

83 Перебравшись в 1994 году в Баффало (штат Нью-Йорк), где жили мои сестры с семьями, я не оставила своей мечты—восстановить имя нашего отца—героя. Мы с мужем искали близких нам по духу людей.

84 Анна Павловна много лет назад подарила мне надежду. 85 Дочь врага народа

86 “Единственная ее мечта была, чтобы узнали люди в республике и за ее пределами о том, как истязали, мучили, убивали фашисты евреев только за то, что они евреи. О том, как бесстрашно боролись патриоты за свободу за колючей проволокой, как шли на казнь с гордо поднятой головой.”

Sanford 299

87 “Простите за описки. Руки не работают. Но в голове материал держится. Он мною выстрадан, выхожен. Выхожен ногами, руками, душой и сердцем. Я жила и живу им. Это было прекрасные люди!”

88 моя совесть

89 Второй том книги «Их не сломила война» вышел из печати. Это наша большая победа. Победа в честь 65- летия Великой Победы!

90 Их не сломила война, не оставляет сила духа и сейчас.

91 много фактов из которой ка бы взяты из моей жизни

92 Это было как бы вновь расстаться с отцом.

93 «Света, положим их вместе к памятнику. Знаю, что 2 марта 1942 года в этой яме погибли твои родные, здесь были убиты мои мама и сестрёнка, мой дедушка. Отец мой погиб в гетто еще раньше.»

94 Я не мог не придти. Это было огромное событие в жизни города и не только еврейского населения. Думаю, всех взволновал тот факт, что справедливость на земле существует. Эта улица занимает большое место в моей жизни. … Она вдохновила меня на создание новых картин о Холокосте, которые тоже были представлены на моей выставке в исторической мастерской.

95 А посещение вашего музея дало возможность ярче представить их жизнь и те ужасные события, в результате которых их потомки оказались вдалеке от Белоруссии.

96 И вот она снова передо мной—родной город в праздничном убранстве. Опять радостные встречи с тетушкой, двоюродными братьями, сестрой, племянниками. Воспоминания о прошлом, новости для сегодняшнего.

97 непременно вернусь

98 Мы говорим о памяти. Но Память—это не просто так. Я думаю о том, что делать, как создавать условия, чтобы эта память сохранилась. Потому и ставлю эти вопросы в своей книге, надеясь, что на них найдутся ответы.

99 Главное, что он был Человеком.

100 Знают в школе о подвиге моего отца, минских подпольщиках и улице Михаила Гебелева. Я рассказываю и о Холокосте на территории Беларуси. Американские школьники знают, что такое Холокост. Тема эта выключена в программу урока истории. Школьники изучают ее, пишут сочинения и курсовые. Они изготовляют декорации к «Дневнику Анны Франк».

101 «Это самый чудовищный погром в истории Человечества!» 1 В плену родного города

2 “Гнать, держать, бежать, обидеть . . . слышать, видеть, и вертеть . . . и дышать, и ненавидеть, и зависеть, и терпеть.” … “Гнать, держать, бежать, обидеть . . .”

104 Комсомольское озеро

105 «Что же вы делаете? Так нельзя!»

106 “Наше дело правое … Враг будет разбит … Победа будет за нами!”

107А че это у тебя в банке? - поинтересовался полицай. Молоко. Sanford 300

Украла? - нахмурился второй. - Говорил тебе, Жидовка она. Заработала! - уверенно ответила девочка, невольно пятясь прочь от полицаев. Дай-ка попробую, - потребовал один из них.

108 «Дядя Сава . . . Зачем вы их так? ... Они же наши, по-русски говорили» (43).

109 Будет. Будет.

110 Человек по своей природе—зверь.

111 Советское правительство и его глава товарищ Сталин поручили мне сделать следующее заявление: Сегодня, в 4 часа утра, без предъявления каких-либо претензий к Советскому Союзу, без объявления войны, германские войска напали на нашу страну, атаковали наши границы во многих местах и подвергли бомбёжке со своих самолётов наши города — Житомир, Киев, Севастополь, Каунас и некоторые другие, причём убито и ранено более двухсот человек. … Это неслыханное нападение на нашу страну является беспримерным в истории цивилизованных народов вероломством. Нападение на нашу страну произведено, несмотря на то, что между СССР и Германией заключён договор о ненападении, и Советское правительство со всей добросовестностью выполняло все условия этого договора. Нападение на нашу страну совершено, несмотря на то, что за всё время действия этого договора германское правительство ни разу не могло предъявить ни одной претензии к СССР по выполнению договора. Вся ответственность за это разбойничье нападение на Советский Союз целиком и полностью падает на германских фашистских правителей. . . . Правительство призывает вас, граждане и гражданки Советского Союза, ещё теснее сплотить свои ряды вокруг нашей славной большевистской партии, вокруг нашего Советского правительства, вокруг нашего великого вождя товарища Сталина. Наше дело правое. Враг будет разбит. Победа будет за нами! Translation from tracesofwar.com.

112 Человек по своей природе—зверь.

113 While in other ghettoes it was common for Jews to wear yellow Stars of David on their clothing, the Jews in the Minsk ghetto were forced to wear simple yellow patches in the shape of a circle rather than a star.

114 Jews (a derogatory term)

115 - Поди со всего местечка евреев согнали. Человек сто тут, а то и поболее. - Куда это они их? - oзадаченно спросил второй мальчишка. - Знамо дело куда. Вишь, по Варшавке идут… А там на хутор, что за еврейским кладбищем. - В Куровище, за Силичев лесок что ли? - Ага. - А ты по чем знаешь? - Батька дядьке сказывал, всех евреев там стрелять будут, - чуть понизив голос, ответил пастушок. - Там и захоронят. - За что? - испуганно переспросил напарник. - Жиды, - пожал плечами пастушок и свистнул плетью, подгоняя отошедших от стада коров. (49)

116 «Очи же ничего не знают. … А мы доброе дело делаем, нам на том свете воздастся.»

117 Тогда он будет жить всегда… В твоем сердце.

118 Мам, а что такое гетто?

119 Эта все слышит.

120 Мам, ты не бойся, не волнуйся. … Бабушка правильно говорить… Я мышкой туда, сюда и обратно. Никто не заменит… Честно, честно.

Sanford 301

121 “Так, никто не ворует, мам, … Ленин завещал делиться. Вот мы и делимся”

122 «Ой, мамочка. … Если бы ты только знала, как мне самой страшно… Каждый раз.»

123 - Ну, мам, … надо к теть Ане идти, пойдемте все вместе. Завтра же праздник… - В том, то и дело, что праздник, - тяжело вздохнула мать. - Люди говорят, нужно предостеречься. Мало ли, что немцы придумают относительно евреев в гетто. Все-таки праздник великого Октября. А им это, как кость в горле. - И что с того? - пожала плечиками Майя. - Что эти немцы, не люди что ли? Веселиться не любят? Пусть даже не их это праздник. (67)

124 - Что там, дочка? - cпросил дед, прошаркав через всю комнату к окну. - Да не спокойно как-то, пап, - ответила та. - Будто на еврейском кладбище … что-то происходит. - Что там может происходит? - xмыкнул Гаврила Петрович. - Это ж кладбище… Тише места в мире не бывает.

125 - Как, что? Уж с пяти часов утра погром в этом… в гетто, - спокойно попивая чай, ответила женщина. - Люди говорят, сами видели, как оккупанты колонну евреев на Юбилейную площадь согнали… А оттуда прямиком по Сухой на кладбище… ямы копать. - Всех, - испуганно спросила Майя. - Да нет, куда всех, - отмахнулась бабка Савицкая. - Часть какую. - Какую никакую, а все же люди, - сказала тетя Аня. - А ты, Майка, что уши резвесила? - cтрого добавила бабушка Анна. - Я тебе сказала, поди, воды принеси.

126 «тихим разговором»

127 «обрывкам фраз»

128 «она собрала в своем представлении полную картину вчерашнего дня»

129 «воздух наполняли отчаянные крики женщин и плач детей»

130 “как одни фашисты могут жестоко казнить советских граждан, а другие веселиться смеяться, дурачиться в снегу, как малые дети, чем в свободное время занимались знакомые ей радисты. Ведь все они и те, и другие, совершенно одинаковые, простые люди, хоть и из другой страны, один народ, с одними и теми же праздниками и будними радостями”

131 “это никак не укладывались в ее голове”

132 “Внимание! Внимание! Говорит Москва! … В последний час. Провал немецкого плана окружения и взятия Москвы. Поражение немецких войск на подступах Москвы…”

133 «У немцев полы помылa. … Сразу видно, что мужики живут»

134 “You clean well. Good work, Maia.” This phrase utilized improper spelling and grammar to indicate a German accent.

135 “Thank you” in German. This phrase employs the Russian alphabet in order to indicate the accent present in speech. .

136 - Что я маленькая что ли? - усмехнулась девочка. - В том то и дело, что ты очень взрослая, - ласково улыбнулась та. - Не по годам взрослая… Поэтому я очень рассчитываю на тебя. Иначе бы, ни за что не послала бы тебя в такую даль. - Я город знаю, - ответила Майя. - Ворошиловский завод? … Далековато конечно, но я быстро доберусь. - Это не только далеко, но и очень опасно, - вторично предупредила тетя Аня. - Все будет хорошо, теть Ань. Не волнуйтесь. Sanford 302

137 Ну, здравствуй, племяшь! - радостно воскликнул дядя Шура, выскочив навстречу девочке. Проведя несколько часов в кромешной тишине, слух Майи воспринял его голос, как через рупор громкоговорителя. Она похлопала ладонями по ушам и широко зевнула, поторапливая слух к адаптации.

138 «В твои годы в куклы играть надо бы, а не в войну. … Ну, да, уничтожим фашистами заживем по новому»

139 «Наше дело правое, - часто зевая, согласилась Майя. - Победа будет … за нами. Так товарищ Молотов сказал»

140 «Выходите, люди! … Женщины и дети будут помилованы.»