On October10, 1943, the Red Army sprinted over Dnieper River and got a foothold. Abrasha's army reached the left bank opposite to Kiev. Hitler considered the largest Soviet city in his jaws more important than Italy and moved some of his troops from to Kiev. Thus, once again, the Red Army saved many American and British lives there later. What was Kiev like then? Not a war zone yet, but the city without people looked dead. Besides, the ruins, once-proud buildings, mansions and cars were deserted, looted, or burnt.
"The SCHMUCKING pavement... will hospitalize a mountain goat," Roma the Scatterbrain cursed a few weeks later when he tripped on a main street. He used a stronger rhyming epithet, but it is not a schoolyard to cite it here.
Disgruntled characters - mostly Ukrainian policemen, albeit Germans too - assaulted and murdered whenever and whomever they wished with no provocation, broke into homes and businesses, seized the property and turned fancy neighborhoods to the hoods. To be noted by the thugs was not good for a prudent person.
The folks were terrified, seeing uniforms or the armbands on the civilian clothes in the streets or the public transport, and detoured to avoid attention. Idleness and alcohol tormented the deranged thugs reveling in the sense of their significance. Just about anybody who was a nobody could humiliate, rob and murder at random at any minute.
Sometimes, a wild unbridled swarm formed to participate in a major event. The detachment, deprived of human hearing, vision and reasoning, listened to no one, destroyed and burnt everything destroyable and burnable, tore every thing and body to pieces on its way to hysteria. It is just what Comrade Lenin had in mind: "An idea can capture masses and become a material force." That force could drive to any insanity. A similar picture Roma observed three decades later when he hardly avoided making himself a target. It was neither a war nor another epoch -just another zone, namely peaceful Detroit, USA, 1976. Although the mob had neither uniforms nor armbands.
A year in a war was counted as three in calculating pensions for the military service in Russia. Nobody counted the years the general populace spent in the occupied cities back in Russia or USA. Germans rounded up the people outdoors, in movie theaters, public baths, and houses. They checked out the Soviet identifications listing so-called nationality. Soviet officials gave no reason for existence of that notorious bloody paragraph. For purely racist segregation, one presumes. Germans sent the fit locals to slave in German farms and factories. Brunets and long-nosed people were required to have not only the proper paragraph, but to get an expert medical opinion too. They dropped trousers right on the spot.
Once, in 1942, Ukrainian neighbors dragged Roma's future friend, five then, to the police. He was a swarthy, long-nosed Osset. His mother produced the right papers, and Germans released him.
After the main massacre, Germans converted the Babi Yar site to a temporary camp and transported thousands of victims from other parts of Ukraine for extermination. It took Syret's name from the nearby neighborhood. Carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, and other artisans served the needs of the SS men and of the Ukrainian guards there. They killed the workers within a few weeks.
Of course, thousands of civilians, in retaliation for just one or two of them breaking the Nazi order, ended in the ravine too. So did the Soviet prisoners of war. Second to the Jews, they were the largest group (3.3 million) perished or murdered altogether in Europe.
If occupiers were brutes, then Ukrainian policemen were much worse. They terrorized the populace in Kiev and prisoners-of-war in the Darnitza concentration camp.
Germans did not make a ghetto, because Kiev had Babi Yar. But when they liquidated the ghettos in other occupied territories, the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police blockaded the places, hunted escapees, and escorted Jews to their execution in pits.
Despite pro-Nazi activities and even formation of their own division SS "Galichina," Herr E. Koch - occupied Ukraine's German commander -denigrated Ukrainians and ordered his subordinates "dealing with that nation, inferior in all aspects, to have no social contacts with Ukrainians." In 1943, Roma's future subordinate Nina was six. She looked typically Jewish, like her father killed in action. Her mother was a typical Ukrainian.
They remained in occupied Kiev, where even a nobody needed pure luck to survive. The mother was lucky enough to be neither a Jew, nor a Gypsy, nor a loony, nor a commie, nor a Soviet official, nor a radio owner. Nevertheless, she committed offenses, for which she should be shot several times. She neither handed over the felt boots, food, and fuel above the prescribed three days ration to nor informed the Germans of and hid her own enemy - the little dirty Jewess, or more precisely, Jewish-Ukrainian hybrid.
The German occupation made no good. The terrible hunger left them only the grate and skin. They looked like the Red Army stunted nags, half-dead from the lack of fodder. On his way to Kiev with a Red Army field hospital, Roma observed people, like stray dogs and cats, with such glistening eyes.
Not to starve to death, the mother scrapped some old clothes together and went, along with her daughter, to a village to barter the rags for food and stay with her relatives there. On the road, a German open truck stopped, and the undisciplined soldier-driver maliciously violated his superiors' order and offered them a ride.
The happy couple obliged in the truck body. It was already filled with Ukrainians. The happiness was short lived though. "Stop!" the fellows-countrymen shouted and banged on the driver's cab.
"A little dirty Yid is among us."
The German obliged, got out of his cab and looked at the little disturber of the Olympian calm: "All to be off!"
The traitor of his own Führer and great German nation did not shoot, put the couple in his cab, drove to and dropped them in their village.
As the touchy and exciting consequence of that episode, years later, Roma had no qualms working for German expatriates in Iowa and Toronto, then spent five years in the courts for his defense from and offense against them.
In the spring of 1943, some Ukrainian policemen deserted with their arms to join the Ukrainska Povstanska Armyia (Ukrainian Insurgent Army). Others retreated westward with the German forces and were incorporated into the Ostbataillone and the Ukrainian National Army later.
In July 1943, when the Red Army started to recapture the occupied territories, Germans put forward obviously the most important task of erasing all ghastly evidence of Babi Yar's mass carnage. In mid-August, they embarked on the task of exhuming and cremating the ravine's corpses.
That is why Germans sent not all their prisoners to the grave in Babi Yar and surprised 327 inmates (including 100 Jews) from a nearby Syrets concentration camp. The guards led the captives toward Babi Yar and, instead of shooting, just chained them together with clamps on the ankles and a large padlock. Then the jailers lined the men up, checked everyone's chains, provided a dinner, and placed the prisoners in the ravine's dugouts with guarded iron doors, and with a watchtower's machine-guns always aimed at them.
Since then, the guards checked the chains three times a day. Yet they tolerated the ropes that inmates attached to their trousers' tops to suspend the chain and relieve the tortured ankles. After the check up, the guards reported happily to a certain Topaide, the German commanding officer: "In the heavenly team there are so and so live corpses."
At first, the captives put railway rails on the ground. Then they topped that with the granite monuments and tombstones removed from the Jewish cemetery and still bearing the inscriptions. The iron fences from the cemetery were next. Finally, they covered the furnaces with wooden logs doused in gasoline or heating oil.
The job was a top secret even for the German suppliers. They brought food, logs, and oil only beyond the ravine. Then the guards' trucks moved the stuff farther.
On August 18, 1943, bulldozers opened the mass graves. During six weeks, the prisoners hooked and pulled the corpses out of the mass grave in the ravine to the top ground. Each German slave master with a sharp iron whip and an open pistol holster handled five men and shouted, "Schnell! Schnell!" all the time. They shot on the spot and burnt, sometimes on the stake, those who fell ill, lagged behind, or talked. The guards on the slopes kept their machine-guns at ready too.
Not a day passed without shooting five people at least, some inmates committing suicide. That is why Germans brought the replacements in every day.
"The front moves here," the newcomers said. "Listen to the faraway sounds of blasts."
On the high ground, inmates removed rings, earrings and other jewels, clothing and footwear from the bodies before putting them on the cremation pyres, 2,000-3,000 bodies per fire. The prisoners used pliers for the victims' golden teeth, Men hardly breathed. The Germans could not withstand the lively scenery and stink, drank vodka and water all the time, and were replaced very often. Yet they did not allow the prisoners to wash even the hands.
Did Kurenevka's (Podol's part of Kiev) dwellers guess what was going on in Babi Yar when the thick black smoke covered the sky and the wind brought the stink of burnt flesh? It was well beyond their imagination.
Fire did not destroy the bones. The slaves crushed the half-burnt bones on tombstones with wooden rams, sieved the matter, and crushed the big remains again, then mixed everything and spread the stuff over the surrounding vegetable gardens and dirt roads. The thorough job left no trace of the mass grave.
While the Red Army advanced closer and closer, the Germans became more and more anxious.
"The work is very slow," the higher-ups shouted at Topaide and started the chain reaction. "Wake up the prisoners earlier and punish more to finish the job quicker."
"You're too cordial," Topaide yelled at his German guards then. "Beat them up."
Authorities around the world always and everywhere have used carrot-and-stick policies. After the inmates had their share of the stick, he had the inmates lined up and promised a bit of carrot to come their way.
"I'll take those working well to Zhytomir, Berdychev and Lvov. The rest will stay here," he said and pointed to a furnace.
The executions went still on in Babi Yar, the bodies going directly to the furnaces. The last in line were Germans' own servants and the collaborators that knew too much.
A gasenvagen came to the ravine almost daily. Germans opened the door and had captives unload the corpses and put them into the fire. Sometimes the machine arrived with the people inside still crying and knocking on the walls.
Once, the gasenvagen came filled with naked dead girls. Some held handkerchiefs with hidden rings, earrings and watches. The Germans chuckled and joked. The girls were the sexual slaves the retreating gangs could not take along.
Crumpled and ground into the dirt by the enemies and circumstances, the prisoners did not feel worthless. No matter what had happened or what would happen, they did not lose their value.
"A crumpled and dirty money bill is worth the same as the new one," a nameless inmate said. "Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who love you. The worth of our lives lies not in what we do, but in who we are."
Scabies ate the filthy, sooty bodies of the half-clothed walking corpses stinking of rotting flesh and having just a little physique. Yet their spirit defied everything that the Nazis had done to them and was set on surviving in order to tell the world about Babi Yar.
Once a miracle happened. A German guard allowed a certain Fedor Savertanny to step away from his group to satisfy his call of nature. Then some bosses distracted the guard's attention. Fedor managed to get rid of his chain and escaped to the city.
Fedor's miracle resulted in the shooting of 15 inmates in retaliation. That is why the prisoners agreed to escape only as one group. Sixteen men started digging a tunnel in the barracks with their bare hands, camouflaged the hole and put the dirt under the bunk beds. But a certain Nikon, one known informer and ex-policeman, informed the Germans. They shot all diggers and had them put onto the furnace.
Once, an inmate pulled the corpses out. "My wife and two daughters!" he screamed. "That's her neck's scar after the surgery she had just before the war."
In the evening he came to the dugout. "My wife and two daughters, ten and twelve, could not flee from Kiev," he sobbed. "I went to the front on the first days of the war, was captured, and heard nothing of them."
"The only person who is with us our entire life is we," the young philosopher said. "Don't sob because it's over, smile because it happened. You experienced a nice woman, had lively girls, and can recall all the happiness you've had. I'll die without experiencing even a girlfriend. Cherish those moments and count your blessings, not your curses. The number of breaths we take doesn't measure our life. The moments taking our breath away do."
A certain Yasha (Jacob) Kaper could not sleep that night. If we open the door padlock and attack the guards, at least some people will escape and tell the world about all this, he thought.
"Let's find the key matching our big padlock," he said to Volodya Kuklya and Leonid Kadomsky. "I know the key type. The bottom corpses - the Jews - are absolutely naked; the middle layer is half-naked, and the top ones - the gentiles - are dressed. Most of them have keys in the pockets. They locked their flats and apartments and took the keys with them when they left." Then Yasha explained what to look for.
"Bring only the right key type to the dugout," he said. "The guards search us always. Don't have more than one key in a pocket. The noise will kill you."
Only Yasha brought a new key every day. The couple found nothing suitable, they said. After a few days, Yasha bothered them no more.
"I have several suitable keys," he said to a certain Trubakov and Doliner. "If you shield me near the door from the guards when they give out our meals and from other inmates, I'll test the keys in the padlock."
Jewish luck! After another two days, one key matched. Yasha hid it near his sleeping spot.
While pooling the corpses, the inmates were on the lookout for sharp metal pieces. That is why mishap almost botched Yasha's plan. A German guard checked the cuffs and touched a hard object in a nameless conspirator's pocket.
"Turn the pocket out!" he ordered.
Scissors fell out.
"What had you taken the scissors for?" Topaide himself beat the poor fellow.
"To cut my hair."
"Lie! To cut the rivets on the chains."
"No."
The savage beating brought still the same answer. When the prisoner fainted, he was thrown into the fire. Under the flame he regained consciousness, screamed, and died horribly.
On September 29, 1943, there were no corpses anymore. The prisoners removed the camouflaging fences. When the Germans ordered to erect another furnace, the men understood for whom the furnace would burn. The Germans lined them up, whispered something and looked at the road.
The big bosses did not come, and the Germans put the men into the dugout.
"Vogt, a guard, whispered to me that tomorrow would be our last day," a certain Yakov Steyuk, an interpreter, told the conspirators. "Someone else said that they waited for their higher-ups. That is why we're still alive."
"I've got the key," Yasha said to a certain Budnik. He came back with Steyuk. They asked for the key.
"Later tonight, we remove our chains, open the door, and run away," they said.
While the men helped each other to get the chains off, four Germans approached the dugout and opened the door.
That's the end, Yasha thought.
He was wrong. The Germans brought in two big pots of potatoes. The Last Supper! Did they read the bible or what?
The conspirators told other inmates of the plan. Everyone was quiet, but nobody slept.
At midnight, Yasha got up, but people were afraid to take their cuffs off.
He got pincers, broke the rivets of his clamps and helped all those he trusted. At that time Volodya Kuklya carefully inserted the key into the padlock, all his extremities trembling. At first he failed to press hard enough through the barred door. Finally, he made one turn.
A German guard heard the clink and came up to the door. Kuklya ran away. The guard pointed his flashlight to the padlock and tried the door.
Everything was fine until Kuklya tripped over the pots while running.
"What's the matter?" the German shouted.
"We're fighting over potatoes," Steyuk, the interpreter, said. The German roared.
"They are fighting over potatoes," he told another guard walking on the dugout top. "They don't know that tomorrow they will need nothing."
"We'll try again after the guard change," the inmates decided.
When everything calmed down, Kuklya silently made the second key turn, removed the key and opened the padlock. Then the inmates killed Nikon the Informer in his sleep and rushed out of the bunker en masse. Those with metal pieces attacked the guards. The rest just ran out.
The machine-gunner did not shoot. He was afraid of killing his own in the darkness and fog. Yet, out of 325 prisoners who broke out, 311 were shot during the attempt and on the following morning. Only 14 survived.
The Soviet regime ignored the hundreds of thousands murdered in Babi Yar. The devil's dozen years passed, but the local and foreign calls for a monument grew stronger and stronger. The government, sickened to death, gave in and put a dam across the ravine mouth.
This is where Roma sped up - inadvertently, unwittingly, and indirectly - the ravine demise. What a schlimazel! Not some dumb statistics, but his relatives' wretched fate interlaced his own life that elapsed against the background of those events.
In 1958, he moonlighted as an electrician at Petrovski Brick-works. He did not know that when their excavators and water jets dug out the bulk materials for the bricks in the quarry, the pumps drew the slurry into Babi Yar. They turned the ravine to a pond. The engineers thought the solids would settle down and the water would flow to Dnieper River.
In 1961, rains overfilled the pond, ruined the dam and flooded the densely populated area between Babi Yar and Dnieper. At the hill bottom, the morning traffic stopped, the passengers remaining in the vehicles. Suddenly it became obvious nobody was perfect. Creators are great in their intentions - not in their execution. The Almighty Himself did a sloppy job. Babi Yar's slopes had a propensity to landslides. As to the human landscapers, the mud in the pond did not settle down. It rushed in a ten-meter-high wave, swallowed up, swept away and buried every thing and body, except the old psychiatric hospital the Germans used to take care of the patients in their time. The building was built like a fortress, and people stood on its roof.
Militiamen and soldiers cordoned the zone till a tall fence was erected. In a few months, the water found its way to the river and the mud dried up. The workers cut the passage in the soil for the only through streetcar line there and fenced it off so that nothing could be seen through and over. No cameras were allowed. Even commercial flights were diverted from the area.
The media gave a severely deflated body count and forgot to mention the firemen, militiamen, and soldiers who cordoned the initial flood zone and were swallowed by the mud. In a few years, the corpses were dug out from the dried-up mud. They were in the same positions the disaster struck them - like in Pompeii.
Persistence paid off. The glorious Soviet workers excavated the landslide soil, moved it back to and filled up the Babi Yar ravine, erected residential and industrial buildings right on the killing, burying, and burning spots.
The landslide spared the Jewish cemetery on the top of the hill. The bulldozers did not. They swept away the graves, monuments, coffins, and remains - the city needed a television center and an amusement park in that place. The authorities generously allowed the Jews to claim the remains. Most relatives were dead or failed to find the proper graves in that chaos.
Abrasha's youngest brother Buzya's grave and monument had the same fate.
The bulldozers did not erase the memory of the place though. During Khrushchev's "thaw," Babi Yar became a place of pilgrimage. Among those demanding a memorial were writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Viktor Nekrasov. In 1961, poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko published "Babi Yar." His poem started with "No gravestone stands on Babi Yar." A year later, Dmitri Shostakovich set the poem to music. The poem and the musical setting had a tremendous impact in and beyond the Soviet Union.
Brave Jewish souls blamed the authorities in broad daylight, but the granite plaque appeared overnight (in 1966) with the inscription that a monument would be erected in memory of the victims, no Jews being mentioned.
Thereafter, on every anniversary of the first shooting, at that plaque, one or another, as Nazi friends would say, Wertvoller Politischjude - politically useful Jew - and traitor of the Jewish nation delivered a memorable speech devoted to Zionists' underhand plotting and brutality.
"Jews are often the greatest anti-Semites." Roma explained that fact to his German-born employer in Canada years later. "I try to be objective as a computer, but I still remain unprincipled and biased. For example, Italians invented Fascism, Russians concentration camps, but I prejudice only Jews."
"Why them?"
"It's safer. I'm one of them. The most annoying is that Israelis stubbornly write from the wrong side. The rays of hope are the Russian immigrants reforming them properly."
Finally, in 1974, the authorities erected the 50-foot-high bronze sculpture about a mile from the massacre spot:
"Here, in 1941-1943, the German Fascist invaders executed over 100,000 citizens of Kiev and prisoners of war."
What citizens? What for?
The king of half-truth was kaput. Long live Dr. Goebbels' disciples!
