Study Guide Joe Shasha Kubryk: Teenage Partisan Spy In the Beginning trucks. When Joe saw the Germans and their Ukrainian collaborators rounding up his Joe Kubryk (Shasha aka Shaiky) was a 14-year-old classmates, he knew he had to run for his life. who ran for his life before the Nazis could grab him He didn’t tell anyone his plans, because his off the streets and send him to his death. It was the parents—if they knew—would stop him. His summer of 1941, when Adolph Hitler, leader of the parents would never agree to go to the forests, Third Reich, the dictator of Nazi Germany, broke his and he couldn’t take his brothers and sister with pact with Joseph Stalin, the leader and dictator of him because they were too young. He loved them the Soviet Union, and attacked. all dearly, so pulling himself away from his family was very painful. Joe was born in the Russian Ukraine, not far from Odessa, on July 1, 1926. He grew up with his adopted cousins—Rivka, 11; Shlomo, 10, and Leaving Home All Alone Yakov, 8. Joe’s father Yitzchak owned a flour mill; his mother Fanny was a housewife. In August 1941, not long after his friends were taken by the Nazis, Joe felt that it was “now or never.” He never said good-bye, though he feared Antisemitism he would never see his family again. His heart was breaking, but he was strong. He took a loaf Before the war, the Kubryk family of bread, and with just the clothes on his back, didn’t experience antisemitism very left when his parents were too busy to notice. much because Yitzchak did business He kept on walking until he walked far away from with local Ukrainian farmers who liked the village. him and treated him politely. In school, most of the non-Jewish kids left the After trekking about eight miles, Joe found a Jewish kids alone, but if a bully cursed Ukrainian farmer who didn’t ask questions and at him, Joe says, “I never ran away hired him as a farmhand. The man didn’t think from a fight.” He used his fists when Joe was a Jew because Joe spoke Ukrainian he had to and stood up for his people. perfectly and didn’t fit the Jewish stereotype. Sometimes he took a good beating, too. And though Joe cried himself to sleep at night, “That was the way life was,” he says. he never let anyone see him doing it because he didn’t want to explain why he was crying. After the war broke out, Joe’s village was filled with Ukrainian fascists, Joe never let his co-workers know he was a Jew. who were anti communist as well as antisemitic. Joe Kubryk as a young boy in the This deception was made easier for him—because partisans. Source: Jewish Partisan They cooperated with the Germans to kill Jews. unlike most Jewish males—Joe wasn’t circumcised. Educational Foundation Archives. Joe says that before the war, many of these same Under Communism many religious practices people were jealous of their Jewish neighbors’ were forbidden, including the Jewish ritual of financial successes. Now they robbed and beat circumcision. “It’s weird, but true,” says Joe today. them with impunity. “That helped save my skin because when the Jews’ enemies wanted to make sure they had the right As soon as the Germans took over, they man or boy, they would pull down his trousers to established restrictions to persecute the Jews. check.” There was even a time when his friends On Fridays, they would entice the Jews to the defended him after someone called him a dirty market place by giving them permission to buy Jew. They said they’d seen him swimming at the food. Then, while the Jews would shop, the lake, and he couldn’t be possibly be a Jew because Germans would grab them and put them on he didn’t bear the mark of one. 1 Pinsk Brest Pripet Sarny Kovel LUBLIN CHELM Lutsk Rovno LVOV Ternopol Borislav LITHUANIA Presov BELARUS USSR POLAND from the ghettos that were formed in the UKRAINE surrounding cities and towns. Escaped POWs CZECHOSLOVAKIA from the Russian Army were the heart of these groups and trained everyone to fight. HUNGARY In all, there were approximately 3,000 people ROMANIA involved in partisan activity in Joe’s region. Every partisan group was a unit that conducted its own actions—spying and sabotaging German supply The shaded area in the upper map is The Partisans Find Joe lines on railroads and bridges. They went after the approximate area where Joe collaborators who gave Germans information, Kubryk’s partisan unit was active. Map drawn using 1937 borders Near the end of 1941, Russian partisans came and punished those who killed Jews and other scavenging for food at Joe’s farm, and he heard innocent people. one of them speak the Jewish language, Yiddish. Curious, he asked them who they were. “Russian Eliezer Lidovski, a Jewish commander from partisans,” came the reply. “Who are you?” Baranowich, formed the junior secret service, the Condrezweytka Maladoyogie, a few months When they heard he was Jewish and alone in after Joe arrived. Joe and the other teenagers the world, they said, “You are one of us,” and took then began serious training to fight against the him to one of three camps in the dense, jungle- Germans and their collaborators. like forest of Drohobicz, near Lvov (Lemberg). Joe was brought to Kopakof, the commander-in-chief of the partisan brigade who appointed Joe as his Teen Spies in Training aide-de-camp/valet. It became Joe’s job to serve The training involved courses in spying—learning his meals, shine his shoes, clean his revolver and how to recognize guns, artillery pieces and take care of other basics. officer’s insignia to determine a man’s rank. The The people in the forest came from all different boys and girls learned how to track and mark a walks of life. There were dentists, doctors, trail and how to behave if they were caught. If shoemakers, tailors, farmers, storekeepers—people they gave up information, thousands could die. who came from hamlets and large cities, isolated So they were “toughed-up” in training, taught farms and the best universities. Some had escaped secret codes and the rules of espionage. 2 The teens were taught to leave information at person’s life. “If three of us were on a mission to More Information “drops”—pre-determined, secure places in a barn, the same village and had separate assignments, on the Jewish haystack or other location. All the information we each had to do our jobs because otherwise partisans the junior agents gathered was left at those innocent people would die. We created a code spots; then it was gathered by partisans and to signal if the mission needed to be aborted— The Jewish Partisan relayed back to commanders at the base. if other kids could get it done differently, they Educational Foundation recommends these would try; if they couldn’t, we would send a When training was over, the student spies were resources for further message to our supervisors. Necessity made us tested in the field. Older partisans dressed like information. smart,” says Joe. “If we were successful, great; Nazis hid where teens were sent to scout out but not every mission was—about 80% were.” a territory. Each young spy was “captured” by Books “Nazis.” Joe remembers: “You were caught Jewish Resistance in between a hammer and a nail. If you spilled Mission, Not Impossible Occupied Eastern Europe the beans the Germans would shoot you—or the by Reuben Ainsztein partisans would kill you for betraying them. I was The Junior Secret Service was vital to the The Jewish Resistance caught by one of the ‘Nazi’ partisans who loaded resistance. The goal of the adult partisans was by Lester and Lazar Eckman his gun, put it in my mouth and said he would to kill Germans and prevent military, medical shoot me if I didn’t confess to being a spy. He and food supplies from getting to the eastern insisted I was a partisan. I said it wasn’t true, front. The teens were their secret weapon. They Films spied on German troops with impunity by posing that I was just a kid who worked in the village, The Partisans of Vilna, a and if he wanted to, he could come with me and as beggars asking for food, and as they moved film by Aviva Kempner. I’d introduce him to my boss.” through the area, platoon by platoon, they Available for rental in VHS counted men, checked equipment, saw who the in some independent video ranking officers were and where stores. they were camped. The following short films The soldiers would chase them are available online at: off like a flock of annoying www.jewishpartisans.org/ students/films crows, but the teens always returned. Eventually they wore Introduction to the Jewish the Germans down; they were Partisans given food, and got close enough Partisans Through the to get information. In the late Eyes of the Soviet afternoon, one of the partisans, Newsreel dressed as a village farmer, would Living and Surviving in come and collect it from a drop. the Partisans: Food, Joe Kubryk (front row with white pants) and the partisan unit he fought with. Source: Jewish Partisan Educational Messages were written on color-coded paper. Winter, Medicine and Foundation Archives.