A Crime against Childhood
This is a story from the collection of Nakba stories that I am writing. The Nakba was not just a crime perpetrated by Zionist Jews against Palestinian Arabs. Jews have suffered from their own Nakba for centuries. The events in that (fictional) tale deal with the extermination of 30,000 Jewish Ukrainians at Babi Yar. It is adapted from a chapter of my novel MAGNETITE
Everybody had been expecting it, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact notwithstanding. His sister Olga had come for a visit from Odessa with her Captain and their three kids. Anton loved playing with them and Father had sternly warned him not to get them overexcited just before being put to bed. Suddenly the radio which was cracking away in the background started broadcasting martial music, and a solemn voice announced that the Nazi invaders had crossed the border and taken Lvov. There was little doubt that in a matter of days they would be in Kyiv.
Rudi was surprised that Father, who hated the Russians for what they had done to the Ukrainians, causing the holodomor, which cost three million lives, did not rejoice on hearing the news. He was very suspicious of the Germans and knew about their racial laws. Not only was his grandfather a Tatar, but Mama had a Jewish grandmother, and feared that past slights with neighbours and the need for ration coupons might bring these things out in the wash. Anton who ignored family history was over the moon. The Germans will help us liberate ourselves from the yoke of that murderer Stalin, he said. Anton was studying Law at Taras Shevchenko and his fellow students had convinced him that there was a big chance that this fellow Adolf Hitler, ridiculous though his moustache was, would help them get rid of the commies. Father had his doubts. Rudi who had never been interested in studies, but was a good enough car mechanic, tended to follow his big brother in everything. If Anton said Hitler was a good thing, then he went along with that. Mama said nothing — whatever Father said must be right. But then Anton, her favourite son said the opposite, so he must be right too. The Captain was obviously in a high state of bewilderment, and had been pacing up and down the floor for some time. He had decided that under the circumstances, he had no alternative but to rush back home to join his regiment.
‘Olga, take your brother with you when you go back to Odessa, it will be safer for him,’ mother had entreated. Rudi was not sure.
‘Whatever for? Why do you want me to go to Odessa?’
‘First, it will be safer for you, then you can more easily cross over into Turkey, and then go to America… this country is fucked up,’ said his father. He trusted neither side.
Rudi shook his head, he was going nowhere, he would stick with Anton and go wherever the latter decided. Finally the Captain, Olga and the kids left, and Father acted like a punch drunk boxer, staring in front of him, saying not a word, not even when spoken to. Then suddenly, for no reason that Rudi understood, Anton made a U-turn. His friends must have told him to be wary of the Nazis. They were patriots who hated the communists and the Nazis about equally. So he and Rudi put a few things in their bags, and left. We will link up with the Ukrains’ka Povtans’ka Armiya, he finally decided. That’s our best bet, he assured the younger brother. He had been told to go to Park Askoldova Mohyla where he would meet some like-minded young men who would then proceed together to an address where they would become members of the Armiya. But when they arrived in the park, they were met by some fierce-looking individuals, some of whom knew Anton, and it turned out that they were committed to the Nazi invaders. To Rudi’s surprise they talked Anton into changing his mind once again and the brothers ended up joining them. Rudi felt that he had no choice, convinced that under the wings of Anton he would be safe. They were taken to a secret camp where they met a huge army of volunteers, a sort of welcoming party for the Einsatzgruppen, little knowing what their real agenda was.
Anton was recognised as excellent officer material, and when the Germans arrived, he was strongly recommended to them. He was subjected to the intense propaganda necessary to revive the dormant anti-semitism that Ukrainians had been disciplined into controlling by the Bolsheviks who even sent people to prison for saying the derogatory “Zhid” rather than “Evrei”. Anton conveniently wiped off any lingering memory of their Jewish ancestor. He was promptly made an officer of the Waffen SS of the Einsatzgruppen and in next to no time he had 1000 men under his command. He relished his new uniform and Luger, and gloried in the company of his new friends, drinking vodka and schnapps every night with them. Rudi had to satisfy himself with being a foot soldier, but he was happy to bask in the glory of the illustrious brother.
The Germans were firmly ensconced in the city before the end of July, and as pockets of resistance began to mushroom up almost everywhere, especially among party members, harsh measures had to be resorted to. Thus hostages were taken and summarily shot pour l’exemple, which Rudi found difficult to accept. He was not entirely an enemy of the communists, and he began to wonder why the Germans who had supposedly come to liberate his nation were now shooting them dead for something done by someone else.
One day, when he was repainting the walls of the mansion on Naberezhne Shose which the Germans had taken over, he heard Anton laughing in the next room, and peeping inside, he saw him drinking with his crony Herr Major Werner Weisskopf; the latter caught sight of him, and called him in.
‘You are the brother of that famous man here, ja?’ he asked, pointing at Anton. Rudi did not know enough German to understand all that was said, but enough to nod assent to this.
‘I say, Anton, why don’t you ask your brother to go get us a couple of nice Ukrainian chicks with big tits for tonight?’ Rudi understood every single word this time, and that proved a turning point in his attitude to the invaders. Ukrainian women were not de facto whores! He was pleased that the German had so clearly overstepped the mark. He had expected that his fearless brother would tell the man in no uncertain terms where to get off, but Anton only burst out laughing and ordered his brother to get back to work. In German.
Anton’s success seemed to have gone to his head, and the younger brother could not understand his devotion to those arrogant foreigners. However, the fact that they were both in the Einsatzgruppen meant a few privileges for the family, extra coupons, protection from possible harassment, and in those increasingly difficult times, one wore a nose peg and learnt to smile mechanically.
Rudi did odd jobs for his new masters, fetching and carrying, a bit of car maintenance, and was glad that he was not officer material. If he had been asked to do anything overtly militaristic, he would have run away. He could not fail noticing that people who had more or less welcomed the invasion, had soon had a change of heart, after having seen the “superior Germans” at close range. Not Anton though. Father who had kept quiet at first was now calling the Germans the enemy, and begging Anton to dissociate himself from his murderous friends. Rudi was shocked when he heard the brother talk about the necessity of breaking eggs if one wanted to eat an omelette. But the younger brother had little choice doing what he was doing, although running away to Odessa was something he often thought about. However, Odessa was faraway, and the only possibility of getting there would be across the dense forests, as the roads would be teeming with Anton’s friends. If only I could steal a boat and sail it down the Dniepr… he began dreaming. If only…
Then came the bombshell. The family with its Jewish skeleton in the cupboard had neither loved nor despised the Jews of the city. True Jews and gentiles did not really mix much socially, but he had had some good Jewish friends at school. There had been some acts of sabotage in the city, which everybody understood to be the work of the communist partisans, which must have included Jews. As far as he could see, they were like everybody, most were hard-working and honest and all loved telling funny stories. You were supposed to recognise them by their large schnoz, but he was never able to pick anybody up. Anton suggested that the only real test was to take a peep at their pecker.
He was bemused, to say the least when one late autumn evening, he read one of the many posters the Germans put out in public places, to the effect that all Jews of the city of Kyiv and its environs had to come, on Monday the 29th of September 1941 by 8.00 a.m., to the corner of Melnykov and Dokterivsky streets near the Jewish cemetery, with documents, money, valuables, warm clothes, linen etc… for relocation. Whoever of the Jews, the notice went on, does not obey this order, and is found in another place, for whatever reason, shall be summarily shot. Any citizen who enters an apartment that has been vacated, and takes ownership of items will likewise be shot.
Suddenly he remembered that he had been asked by his team leader to be early for work on that Monday, and he wondered whether he would be working for the relocation movement mentioned on the poster. Once he was in the depot to which he had been assigned, some trucks came and they were ordered to climb aboard, and were taken to the corner of Melnykov and Dokterivsky streets, where already some apprehensive Jews were beginning to assemble, loaded with suitcases, bags or bundles. They exchanged glances with each other but scarcely said a word. You did not need to be a genius to guess that something even more sinister than deportation was afoot.
There were enough people, men, women and children, to fill the Lobanovsky Dynamo Stadium twice over, gathered in the area, and they were ordered to line up and proceed along Melnykov Street in the direction of Kurenivka. They were accompanied by a large number of armed Einsatzkommando. Every now and then, a soldier shot someone for no apparent reason, and the sight of the corpses on the road must have struck terror in the breast of everybody — which was obviously the aim of the Nazis. They walked in silence, full of foreboding, and Rudi was ordered to follow in the truck. They overshot Kurenivka and in the distance ahead, they could catch a glimpse of the ravines of Babi Yar. Babi Yar! Where he and Anton and other friends used to play cowboys and Injuns. They had spent days there during the school holidays, he knew every ridge, every dip, every rock. It had been a place of fun. What were they going to turn it into?
By now everybody had realised that the invaders had a whole new meaning for the word relocation. Rudi realised that he was powerless to do anything. He was no hero. He suspected that he might even be a coward. He kept marching, hoping that it was not going to be as bad as he feared. First the Jews had to drop their belongings in a large cordoned area, after which they had to take off their shoes and all their clothes including underwear, before being taken to the ledge.
He saw someone he had seen at Naberezhne Shose and knew as Standardtenführer Paul Blobel who seemed to be in charge of the operations, give the nod to a team of subalterns, and they in turn gave the order to their team of trigger-happy shooters with machine guns to start the execution. As the victims fell on the ground lifeless or dying, other members of the Einsatzcommando pushed them down the ravine with their feet. They did this with an incomprehensible viciousness, as if it were the dead who were the guilty men. The sound of gunfire would not cease for a single second until it was dark on that dark day in September. Rudi would always be shocked when he remembered how, in view of its enormity, the massacre generated such little wailing and screaming. Everybody was stunned into silence, he thought.
He watched this scene in a state of shock. Someone pushed a bottle of vodka towards his mouth and he took a swill. At first he thought he was going to be sick, but a second gulp put him right. Some people in his group seemed just as shocked as he was, but there were others who seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, like something they would like to tell their grandchildren some day. Yes kids, your granddad was there at Babi Yar, on that great day when we shot thirty thousand “Zhids” and kicked them into the ravine.
Then came the order that Rudi and his team, provided with pistols, were to go down among the dead and dying and finish off those who had not yet died. In later years, every time Rudi remembered that day, the people he had finished off, although he knew that he was putting them out of their misery, he would feel sick in the stomach, and six decades later, he still had nightmares.
He had no choice. Had he refused to obey orders, he would have joined the thirty thousand. Maybe he would have been better off. As he descended down the ravine he was assailed by images of him scrambling down there in his carefree childhood days, and he felt guilty of committing a crime against childhood. All his life he would feel like he had murdered childhood. With trembling footsteps he approached his first victim and shot him as he raised his head with a look of entreaty in his eyes. He convinced himself that the dying man was begging him to put him out of his misery. He shot about twenty more telling himself that he was carrying out an act of kindness, sparing them a prolonged agony or stopping them being buried alive. All his life he would imagine that a mountain had collapsed on him and that he was drowning in solid earth. He will swear to his dying days that he experienced no thrill of any sort. He had wished that a man had many lives, so he could have allowed one of his to be used in an act of defiance against those Nazi murderers, but you have only one life, and he did not have the wherewithals to be a hero of the Soviet Union.
At first Rudi had not been able to believe the evidence of his own eyes when he caught sight of Anton among the officers in command of the operation. There he was, his big hero of a brother, laughing his head off, armed with a Luger, shooting Jews in the head and kicking them down the ravine with the same gusto as he used to kick a ball into the goalmouth of the opposing team. He was enjoying himself and relishing every moment.
That night, he slept not a wink. He had a temperature of 41, and was delirious. He kept seeing the images of the day. His German officer had warned them against taking a day off the next day. You haven’t seen nothing yet, he added with a laugh, there is more vermin to exterminate. Father was so worried that he sent for Anton, but the moment the older brother came into the room, Rudi became more disturbed, shouting, I don’t want to die, tell him not to shoot me, Father. Anton laughed, and said, silly boy, I ain’t shooting nobody, I am Anton, your loving brother. Rudi was sure he saw a gun in his hand and that he was going to put a bullet in his head. He was terrified, and buried his head in Mama’s breast. Mama, help me, tell this man to go away. Father explained that the boy had been worried about going to work. Tell him not to worry his silly little head, he told Father, what’s the point of having a powerful brother if he will let small things like that worry him?
