Babi yar, p.39
Babi Yar, page 39
If civilization is in danger today, if it is fated to decline and perish, it will do so with the enthusiastic assistance of credulous people. They seem to me more dangerous than the most brazen leaders, because everything is done with their co-operation. Meanwhile their numbers are becoming depressingly large, and one can discern in the future such Babi Yars, Oswiéçims and universal Hiroshimas as we have not yet dreamed of.
I would like to be mistaken. I pray that I am.
I tell only the story of how it all comes about.
I do beg you, all human beings, to come to your senses.]
KIEV WILL BE NO MORE
1. When Gunfire is Good to Hear
The rumble of gunfire reached us from across the Dnieper. Darnitsa, Svaromye, Vigurovshchina and Trukhanov Island were already ablaze. The railway station was crammed full of Germans and Volksdeutsche being evacuated from the city. Refugees passing through from Rostov, Kharkov and Poltava said the Germans left only the bare earth as they retreated.
The bridges over the Dnieper were blown up, along with the people being driven from the other bank who were on them at the time. Their bodies fell into the Dnieper with the girders from the bridge.
At night Soviet reconnaissance scouts appeared out of nowhere on the beach of Trukhanov Island and shouted: ‘We shall soon liberate you!’
The last, frantic arrests were taking place. Grabarev from Zverinets was executed: it really had been no accident that he stayed behind.
Everything that could be removed from the factories was carried away; in the offices they even unscrewed the doorhandles and window catches and removed the lavatory basins. The Germans were getting out.
Quite by chance, the old mare Mashka had a bit of luck. A German offered Degtyaryov five sacks of grain, and they had to be fetched, so Maskha was harnessed up and I went along as driver.
The German soldier was a very pleasant, smiling character. The sun was warm, and he unbuttoned his tunic and lay back in the cart.
I flicked Mashka with the reins, but she was determined not to trot. Then the soldier asked me, in sign-language, to let him drive the cart. I moved over.
Obviously knowing what he was doing, he took the reins, whipped up the old mare and off she went at the gallop. The cart began to rattle and bump about, nearly overturning; the soldier stood up, and it was clear that he had worked on a farm somewhere. His eyes sparkled, and he drove the cart with much relish and pleasure, immediately becoming a very ordinary and familiar figure, like some Ivan Svinchenko from Litvinovka.
I was in a good mood too, and I wanted to talk to him, but my German vocabulary was very small. I tried to dig something out of my memory.
‘What’s that?’ I asked in German, pointing to the columns of smoke on the horizon. ‘Is it fire—fire, eh?’
The soldier looked at me and smiled, as if to say: What are you asking for, as though you didn’t know, and spreading out his arms he said:
‘That’s the war, sonny. That’s the Bolsheviks.’
‘Where’s the front?’ I asked.
‘Front here, right here.’ The soldier let the whip hang down and his arms hung loosely at his sides. ‘Dnieper—front. Dnieper—frontier. Here is peace. Bolshevik there, German here.’
That’s the way you’d like it, I thought to myself. So you’d be ready to settle for that now, would you? But you won’t get away with it.
‘I have a little boy like you.’ The German pointed at me and patted his pocket. ‘Kurt—very good boy.’
I asked him to show me, knowing that it would soften him up. I never came across a German who didn’t carry photographs with him, and when they showed them they always became very sentimental, sad and thoughtful.
The soldier eagerly brought out his wallet. There was his Frau, with an infant in her arms, a very plain-looking woman with a pockmarked face. And there was the little boy, looking rather like Shurka Matso. The soldier was trying to explain something to me by drawing little circles on the picture with his finger; I didn’t understand him, but nodded none the less. At that moment we went round a bend, the cart tipped and he put his arm round me to make sure I did not fall off. Just like a father caring for his son. I was very moved by this: I had already forgotten my father long ago.
We drove into the grain store; the soldier confidently produced his papers, carried out the sacks and humped them on to the cart. That was the way to steal! Meanwhile I had thought up some sentences to use on the way back. and when we set off I said haltingly:
‘Have your ever killed a man?’
He answered quite simply:
‘Ja, ja.’
‘How many?’
He used the whip on the mare, nodded his head:
‘Plenty. War.’
‘Jews? Women? Children?’ I pressed him with questions.
At last he understood what I was getting at, eyed me a little, then smiled knowingly and wagged a finger at me, saying:
‘Bolsheviks!’
I studied his hands. They were the big hands of a farm worker, with thick, calloused fingers and broken nails. He was obviously a very skilful operator who stole and sold grain belonging to the government, took a whole pile of money from Degtyaryov for it, smiled and went on his way. I never saw him again and never shall see him, but he engraved himself on my memory, perhaps because he put his arm round me like a father. At all events, because of him the whole frightful situation became even more confused for me. Those men who operated the machine-guns in the Yar had probably been the same sort of people, who knew how to handle horses, had unattractive wives and big-eared little boys. They would boil up their coffee on a bonfire, grasp the handle of a machine-gun as if it were the handle of a plough and shoot, and then go back and boil some more coffee and tell each other jokes …
Before going out on the street I always looked around carefully. On one occasion I stuck my nose out of the door and ducked back in again at once—a crowd of men, young and old, including some boys smaller than me, were being herded down the road. Off to Germany.
Grandpa took some old clothes, worn-out winter boots and galoshes down to the market to exchange for a couple of potatoes. A soldier stopped him and took the sack off him. Gramp was very upset and followed the soldier for a time. They came to a group of Germans who had lit a bonfire [and were amusing themselves with a little boy, making him shout: ‘Stalin kaput!’ which he did very willingly, for which they let him lick out a saucepan.] The soldier threw the old boots and galoshes on to the bonfire: it turned out he didn’t really want them, but the sack.
‘What wicked people they are!’ said Gramp when he had hurried back home, sobbing. ‘From one lot of good-for-nothings to another! [It was easier to be poor under our own people than it is with these.] Let them all perish and rot, let them be struck by God’s thunder and lightning!’
Meanwhile the thunder, but Soviet thunder, continued rumbling away. People were stopping on the streets to listen, climbing out on to their roofs, peering across the Dnieper to the east and listening to the powerful, triumphant roar of the guns.
From the direction of the ravine there floated streaks of dark, oily smoke and sometimes, when the wind blew it across, it was difficult to breathe for the smell of burning hair and flesh.
2. Towns Abandoned without Interference by the Enemy
Soviet troops forded the Dnieper and crossed to the right bank, the Kiev side. The rumble of guns could now be heard from the north, from beyond Pushcha-Voditsa and Vyshgorod.
GERMAN TROOPS ATTACK SUCCESSFULLY ON NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN SECTORS OF FRONT
Führer’s headquarters, September 25th
At many points on the middle Dnieper the enemy attacked bridgeheads to the east of the river. To the north of Cherkass German tank units destroyed some small enemy boats.
On the central sector of the front to the east of the railway junction of Unech and to the south of Smolensk fierce defensive battles are still going on. Without any interference on the part of the enemy the cities of Roslavl and Smolensk have been abandoned after their complete destruction and the demolition of all important military installations.*
TO THE POPULATION OF THE CITY OF KIEV
The west bank of the Dnieper and the city of Kiev will be defended by German forces with all means at their disposal. Parts of the city of Kiev close to the Dnieper will become a military zone.
In the next few days German troops will be taking up their positions there. To avoid unnecessary casualties among the population and to ensure that the military operations can take place without interference the military zone in the city must be cleared … I hope that, in its own interest, the population will carry out this order without resistance.
All people found in the forbidden zone after the stated time without a special pass will be severely punished.†
Our house was inside the evacuation zone. My grandfather and my mother debated anxiously whether to leave or not. Grandpa carried into the cellar everything we had left, then we carted bucketfuls of earth into the barn and spread it on the floor, laid out the onions on top of it, trampled it all down and scattered straw and hay on top. Nobody would ever find them.
Then we nailed boards crosswise over the windows. Grandpa took a bag and went to see his friend the Gardener, while my mother and I made a hole in the hay stacked in the corner of the hay-loft and made a hiding place into which we put some dried crusts, a big pan of boiled potatoes and a flask of water. Then we sat back to await developments.
3. Degtyaryov’s Achievement
Earth has a very pleasant smell. I always enjoyed digging it. It’s even pleasant to sit in a trench, breathing in the smell of moist earth and studying the damp walls and the spade-marks in them. Especially in the spring, when you walk across earth that has been resting, or start to turn it over with a rake or a plough or a spade: it can make you quite dizzy, the pleasure of that smell …
I will make bold to say that people who have never had to burn up last year’s garden rubbish, or have never done some really hard digging in the smoke of a bonfire, to whom the smell of earth means nothing and who in all the bustle and care of life have forgotten what it is, are missing something very remarkable.
Consequently, when, as he was about to leave, Degtyaryov asked me to dig him a trench for his belongings, I dug down so deep in the ground that they had to pull me up by the handle of the spade. I also helped him to camouflage the hole with dark earth and stubble, though only time could hide it altogether.
A cart, loaded to the top with all kinds of junk and harnessed to the lucky old mare Mashka, stood in the yard. The old lady was crying, and Degtyaryov was shouting at her to keep her spirits up. He had decided to leave Kiev for the west.
People were trundling two-wheeled carts and children’s prams along the streets, getting themselves out of the battle zone. Mashka sadly dragged the cart up the hill past Priorka church, out into the open fields where I had once gone looking for fir trees. Degtyaryov did not dare go through the centre of the city, but made his way round the back ways which he alone knew, so as to come out on the main road a long way outside the city.
‘What are you turning your nose up at?’ he asked. ‘This is all very strange and exciting for you, I suppose. But I’ve been watching these perturbations all my life, and I know you’ve got to be quick to change the flags and the pictures. You’ll soon have the Reds here.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘The world is a large place, and sausage-makers can always earn a living. The Hitlers and the Stalins keep on fighting, but who’s to make the sausages? If God spares me I shall try and find a place where there are neither Fascists nor Communists. Let ’em all drown.’
‘Maybe you should wait a bit …’
‘Why? What they’re writing in the papers is just a pound of smoke. The Reds are already at Vyshgorod. Hitler’s already lost the bloody war, good and proper. Of course, I could stay on if I wanted to—take over some Soviet store or something. But it’s better to be your own boss. I’m making for the west.’
We left the outskirts of the city and the cart creaked along slowly through the open country. The line of telegraph poles with rusty wire hanging from them ran straight to the horizon.
‘Let’s say good-bye,’ said Degtyaryov. ‘We shall probably never see each other again … Cheerio. Look after yourself.’
‘You look after yourself.’
‘Don’t you worry about me! See here!’
He threw open the threadbare, baggy jacket he was wearing, and beneath it was a very full shirt covered with bulging patches. At first I didn’t understand. But then Degtyaryov shook his shirt and I heard the clank of coins. The patches were arranged unevenly round his chest, underneath his arms and even round his back. That shirt of his was worth millions, even billions in the money then in circulation.
Degtyaryov was grinning intensely at me, enjoying the impression he had made.
‘Feel them.’
I touched the patches, heavy as stones. I knew what he meant! He wanted someone to appreciate his wealth, the effort he had put in, his achievement. Those bulging patches contained his sweat, my sweat, the sweat of his wife, all the horses we had slaughtered. At last he could show someone all his gold, because I was staying behind, did not know where he was going and could not inform on him. We would in any case never see each other again, and he could afford to boast to me. Then he gave Mashka the whip and stepped out brightly alongside the cart, down the line of telegraph poles to the horizon.
4. Caught and Not Caught
As I was on my way back, lost in my thoughts, I suddenly looked up and found I was in trouble. It was too late to do anything—the street was cordoned off by Germans who were bringing boys and old men out of the houses.
I immediately put on my most successful act: I made myself as small as I could, pulled my cap down over my forehead and went straight up to the soldiers. I must have looked rather funny because they seemed pleased, as though they had been waiting for me; they even laughed. There was a group standing by the fence and they put me among them.
As they moved down the street the soldiers drove our little crowd along with them. Three of them with rifles watched over us, while the others combed through the houses. We were all silent, and in this quiet, calm manner we passed some six houses. There was a loud noise from the next house: it sounded as if furniture was being tipped up, and a shot was fired. Our escorts became nervous, peering anxiously into the yard.
I dashed off as though I was trying to set up a world record. As I ran to the corner I heard a shot intended for me. Quick as lightning I glanced round and saw the whole crowd running in all directions.
There was much more shooting when I was already round the corner, and I don’t know how it all ended, because I kept running for another couple of miles before taking refuge with the Gorokhovskys, rushing into their house and hiding away behind a cupboard. My legs had saved me once again.
Kolya was at home on his own. He listened eagerly to my story and told me that his mother and grandmother had taken their belongings down to the church, where the old ladies from the whole of Priorka had gathered, intending to sit there praying until our own troops returned. His grandmother had taken Zhorik to the cellar of the priest’s house to prevent him being caught. But Kolya wasn’t yet fourteen and could go around as free as the wind, and he had got hold of some grenades …
‘Where did you get them?’
‘Stole them off the Germans. Careful—they’re loaded!’
I seized the grenades greedily.
‘Give me a couple.’
‘Take ’em, only let’s go and pinch some more.’
I stopped to think. I hadn’t really recovered from the scare I’d got from the round-up, but on the other hand I very much wanted to have a weapon. And, whatever else, my legs certainly served me well.
‘All right, stand up next to me,’ I said.
Kolya stood up. We were exactly the same height; he was just a little thinner.
‘Could you really tell that I’m fourteen?’
‘Not on your life,’ said Kolya, encouragingly.
We scrambled quite openly over the fence of the anti-aircraft training school, which was packed with soldiers, and walked across the yard as though it belonged to us.
The soldiers were gazing out of the windows, looking bored: some were trying to get tunes out of mouth-organs; others were cleaning their weapons; nobody took any notice of us. It was one thing when they were rounding people up and quite another when they were relaxing.
At the back door we found a rifle leaning against the wall, and we studied it carefully.
Just round the corner, smoke was rising from a field kitchen and a fat, red-faced cook was stirring around in the cauldron, a cigarette drooping permanently from his mouth. It had burnt right down and was sending acrid smoke up his nostrils, but it didn’t seem to bother him. We stood by the kitchen and watched, but he took no more notice of us than he would of a couple of mongrel dogs sitting licking themselves by the stove.
We went right round the house a second time, and the rifle was still propped up against the wall. We walked up to it, snatched it and dived into the cellar, a disused stoke-hole. One of us kept watch while the other hastily wrapped the rifle up in straw and paper. Once we had made a clumsy parcel we took it by the ends, threw it over the fence and climbed over ourselves.
Kolya fetched some cartridges from his store and we went off to a piece of open land where they had been building some houses before the war, but where there were now only trenches and the remains of the foundations from which all the bricks had been removed. We unwrapped the rifle and tried to work out how it worked, and once we had decided we stood a brick on end for a target and proceeded to shoot.
There was always a lot of shooting going on, so we didn’t take any particular precautions. The rifle recoiled on our shoulders like a blow from a heavy fist, and I was rather taken aback. Once we had knocked over a few bricks we decided to go and see where our bullets were going when they didn’t hit the brick. It turned out that they were landing a long way off, right in a street where lots of people were passing. The good Lord spared them.
