Michael Treister GLEAMS OF MEMORY VISIT TO KGB COVER OF A PARTY-MEMBERSHIP CARD Михаил Трейстер ПРОБЛЕСКИ ПАМЯТИ ВИЗИТ В КГБ ОБЛОЖКА ПАРТБИЛЕТА 2 Copyright 2011 Michael Treister All Rights Reserved. This book has been translated into English with written permission from the author, Michael Treister, and the publisher of the first edition, The Minsk Historical Workshop, represented by Director Kuzma Kozak. The first edition Gleams of Memory. Memoirs, Reflections, Publications was published in 2007 in Minsk, Belarus in Russian and German. For this edition, the chapter “Gleams of Memory” was expanded, and the chapter “Cover of a Party-Membership Card” was added. This is the first English translation of the book, and the translator’s notes have been added to the English translation. Copyright 2011 Михаил Трейстер. Данная книга была переведена на английский язык с разрешения ее автора Михаила Трейстера и издателя первого издания книги, Исторической Мастерской в г. Минске, представляемой ее директором г-ном Кузьмой Козаком. Первое издание книги Проблески памяти. Воспоминания, размышления, публикации на русском инемецком языках было осуществлено в Минске, респ. Беларусь, в 2007 году. Для настоящего издания глава «Проблески памяти» была расширена, кроме того в книгу добавлена новая глава «Обложка партбилета». Данное издание является первым переводом книги на английский язык. Текст перевода снабжен примечаниями переводчика. 3 Contents / Содержание Part I English Translation / Перевод на английский язык .................................. 4 Part II Photographs / фотографии ..................................................................... 89 Part III Russian Original Text / Русский оригинал ............................................ 120 4 Part I English Translation Часть I Перевод на английский язык 5 Michael Treister GLEAMS OF MEMORY VISIT TO KGB COVER OF A PARTY-MEMBERSHIP CARD 6 Contents Heart’s Bitter Memory ................................................................................................. 8 The Holocaust and the Jews’ Resistance to the Nazis in Byelorussia ........................ 9 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ........................................................................................... 12 VISIT TO KGB .......................................................................................................... 50 COVER OF A PARTY-MEMBERSHIP CARD .......................................................... 61 DOCUMENT EXTRACTS ........................................................................................ 70 Inventory of Michael Treister’s Publications Used in the Book: ................................ 88 7 Historic consultant: Kuzma I. Kozak Editor: Victor L. Lyaskovsky Editor of English Translation: Judy Solway Translated from Russian by Victoria Treister [Translator's notes are in square brackets.] Author's notes are unbracketed. 8 Preface Heart’s Bitter Memory It has been 65 years since the Minsk Ghetto was fully annihilated by Nazis. Minsk Ghetto was one of the biggest on the territory of the former USSR occupied by Nazis during World War II. This book was written by Michael Treister, who was a prisoner of this ghetto from the first day of its establishment and who was able to survive due to his courage, thirst for life, and many lucky coincidences. The book tells the reader of the Minsk Ghetto’s short history and a story of the tragic destinies of its prisoners, who went through all the tortures of hell. The author of the memoirs was not a passive victim, but a person who offered resistance to the Nazi machine of people-annihilation. He defended the Motherland with arms in his hands and avenged his relatives’ and friends’ deaths. That is why this book contains, besides the story of his struggle for survival in the Minsk Ghetto, his experiences in the partisan detachment. In spite of the fact that hundreds of books have been written on the partisan warfare during the Great Patriotic War, hardly anything is known of the participation of Jews in it. The present memoirs, to some extent, fill in this gap and discredit the myth that Jews allegedly went to their death obediently, like “a herd to a slaughter-house”. By the way, the considerable contribution that Jews made to the fight against the Nazis on the occupied territory could have been even greater, had the partisan command not hindered from joining partisan detachments those Jews who had managed to survive the annihilation actions and to flee from the ghettos. By profession, Michael Treister is an electrical engineer and was head-engineer in many projects; at the same time he has an undoubted literary talent, which has enabled him to create veracious memoirs, distinguished by his passionate and precise style. Such a book cannot fail to rouse the reader’s feelings, as it clearly renders the atmosphere of the place and time that left one no hope to survive. It is necessary to reconstruct the Holocaust’s truthful history in order to prevent its recurrence. And it is especially necessary now because the events that have taken place in different countries recently make it clear how tenacious the Nazi ideology is. Neo-Nazis and their accomplices are trying to “prove” that the tragedy of the Jewish people during World War II is obviously exaggerated, if not fabricated. In a number of countries neo-Fascism and anti-Semitism are breaking out with new force, while there are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses and survivors of the Holocaust in the world. It is exactly for this reason that we must remember everything that happened to the Jews during the Second World War and must pass the memory of the Holocaust to the future generations. It is precisely this purpose that this book, written by Michael Treister, Vice-President of the International Union of Jews, serves. President of the International Union of Jews – Former Nazi Prisoners Academician Efim Gologorsky 9 Author’s Foreword The Holocaust and the Jews’ Resistance to the Nazis in Byelorussia The History of mankind is full of the tragedies of massacres, when a whole people was almost totally eliminated, such as the slaughter of Armenians by Turks, the so-called “social experiments” in Cambodia, the mass political murders in Indonesia and ethnic killings in Ruanda, and, those which are closer to us, Stalin’s repressions and the Cultural Revolution in China. But, even compared to all these outrageous mass crimes, the Holocaust stands out and occupies a very special place in History. The reasons for other massacres were religious hatred, territorial expansion, or fighting for “the happiness of future generations”, but during the Holocaust Jews were killed only for being Jews, or in other words, just for the mere fact of their existence. As Pope John-Paul II said: “The 20th century was a merciless attempt to annihilate the Jewish people”. While doing it, the leaders and ideologists of the Third Reich did not even try to conceal or veil the real motive for the massacre. Moreover, it was declared as one of the fundamental objectives of the Nazi state. It only remains for me to say that some European countries, including the neutral Switzerland, looked at the tragedy of the Jewish people quite indifferently and that some of them even refused to grant transit visas to Jewish refugees, which could have saved their lives. These are the facts that define the Holocaust as an absolutely exceptional phenomenon. Its result was the annihilation of six million Jews, which equals 60% of all Jews who had lived in Europe before the war. This number does not include those Jews who served in the Allies’ armies, first of all in the Red Army and partisan detachments, and were killed at war. These losses could be approximately estimated at half a million people. As for Byelorussia, for all the unparalleled nature of the Holocaust, the destiny of Byelo-russian Jews differs from what we know of the fate of people on other territories occupied by the Nazis. According to different sources, the loss of population in Byelorussia totalled from one-forth to one-third of the prewar number, which included the loss of 800,000 Jews, that is, almost 97% of the total number of Jews who had lived in the Byelorussian Republic before the war. In other words, only two to three Jews, out of one hundred, survived the occupation, namely, those who managed to flee from ghettos, to reach the partisan regions, and, most important, to be admitted to partisan units. There are reasons to believe that only one out of every three to four people who escaped from the ghetto was admitted by the partisans. The rest lie in unidentified graves along the roads leading to the forests. And there are thousands of such graves. Among those few who survived, some, mostly kids, were rescued by local people who helped Jews, risking their own lives and the lives of their families. It was heroism not less than a heroic deed on a battlefield. Nowadays, these modest heroes are awarded by the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem the title of “Righteous among the Nations”. In Byelorussia 700 people have been awarded this title and 50 of them still live. I am sure that there were many more of them, however, this search started in Byelorussia too late for some of them. Another specific feature of the Holocaust in Byelorussia was that, in this republic, Jews were annihilated totally. In Transnistria, for instance, due to specific conditions of the Romanian occupation, some prisoners of the ghettos could survive the war and even in the frightful concentration camps, like Maidanek or Auschwitz,