ONLINE
NEWSLETTER
(No.
1/2006- January 2006)
Editor: Fran Bock
Albert Lapidus: My War Childhood
A Prisoner of the Ghetto and
Partisan of World War II Remembers
by Albert Lapidus (Translated from the Russian by Irina Bindler) My childhood was singed by War. From the many thousands of
prisoners of the Ghetto, just a few dozen were able to survive. I was among
them. There are fewer and fewer witnesses of those terrible years, and it
impels me to take up the pen. Part
I: Ghetto Family My memories of pre-War
life are connected with my grandmother, Mina. If my parents told me that we
were going to Grandma’s that evening, I stayed happily excited the
whole day. I loved my grandma very much and felt sorry for her because of her
illness. She suffered badly from arthritis and could walk only with crutches. My grandmother wasn’t so
religious that she observed all traditions, but she enjoyed when all her
family got together on Passover, Hanukkah, and other holidays. At age of
seven, I was the oldest grandson. All of her grandchildren stood near her bed
and everyone got a candy. It was a ritual.
My
grandma was very proud of her sons. Nobody was allowed to criticize them; she
was the only one who could do so. However, she was very happy when her
neighbors admitted that her sons were the best. My grandmother was our
family’s favorite person. She
was very sociable and hospitable. All our relatives and friends --- even my
father’s friends who came to our town for business --- liked to go to visit
her. They enjoyed talking to her, admired her worldly wisdom and soft humor.
Her guests always felt very comfortable at her modest, warm place. Before the War, Grandma had even invited
one lonely stranger to live in her house. Her name was * * * My grandfather Abram was an
exceptionally quiet person. Life hadn’t been fair to him. In the First
World War, he was poisoned by gas and taken prisoner. He came back home
disabled, blind in one eye. He couldn’t work any more, although he used
to be a good joiner. All day he would sit in the kitchen near the Russian
stove, smoking and coughing. If one of his children or grandchildren got
sick, he became depressed and very quiet. My
grandparents had five children: four boys and a girl named Masha, who was the youngest. The three oldest --- Semen,
my father
War Begins Every family had their own
sorrow and happiness, their own small and big problems. But suddenly, the
most terrible tragedy happened to all of them... the War. From the beginning,
All
of our family got together at Grandma’s place. What should we do? Our grandma couldn’t walk, and to
leave her alone was out of the question.
So we decided to stay in town. Many other families with sick and
helpless elderly made the same decision. But the middle of My
father and his brother Semen carried Grandma to that house with their hands.
The next day when we went back home to get some clothes, our house had
already been bombed. * * * My father was getting ready to
go to War. He considered it to be his duty. It was very hard for him to leave
his son, pregnant wife, old and sick parents. When he left, they all tried to
restrain themselves, but I couldn’t; I was crying bitterly. Terrified
by fire, bombing and death, I was shocked to be apart from my father. I
was very close with my parents. They never really punished me if I did
something wrong. They just might stop talking to me for a couple hours and
that was unbearable enough. I wasn’t spoiled at all. I never had many
toys and gifts, but I was always very happy and grateful when I got some. And suddenly, all that stopped. My serene
childhood was left behind. Hunger...
fear of being killed... grief from loss of dear friends and relatives... that
was what I could expect now.
Albert Lapidus
in 1944 * * * Nazis entered I
knew couples who used to live in love and harmony before the War, and then
betrayed their Jewish spouses to save their own lives. According to Nazi
orders, husbands and wives in mixed marriages were forbidden to stay
together, and had to live on different sides of barbed wire. Some non-Jewish
husbands or wives even pretended to be Jewish and voluntarily became
prisoners of the Ghetto. I personally knew such a family. Our friend Efim Aginski and his Russian
wife Nadia lived together in the Ghetto. Later they were able to escape and
fight against Nazis. Before
we moved to the Ghetto, my mother had a close friend named Dasha. She visited us very often and was like a member of
our family. One day during the War we met her on the street. “Aunt Dasha, Aunt Dasha,” I
gladly called her. She gave us a hateful look and passed by. It
was hard to accept this reality. From loud speakers installed on Nazi’s
cars we heard, “Juden kaput, Juden kaput!” Once when I went into the street, our
neighbor’s son, who was about 13 years old, grabbed me, drove me into a
fence, and maliciously spoke through his teeth, “Soon all of you Jews
will be dead.” I was frightened awfully, and told my mom. She asked me
to stop going into the street. But
the street attracted my attention. Not far from us, on ...Columns
are moving very slowly, raising dust from the street. I am standing, choking
down my tears, hoping to see his dear face.
Dirty, unshaven, exhausted; they are all very much alike. At one
moment it seems to me that I recognize my father. “Daddy! Daddy!”
But to approach the column is forbidden and the escorts shoot without
warning. No, this is not my daddy. He would definitely recognize me. Worried
and confused, I come back home. Tomorrow there will be another column of
prisoners and another hope to see my father... I
was close to a nervous breakdown, crying all night long and calling Daddy. My
mom forbade me to go into the street. Even adults tried not to go there. It
was very dangerous. Any Nazi could come and shoot you only because you were a
Jew. Every day we found out about people who had been shot or hanged. The
Nazis established their own orders and rules. Then on * * * A few days later on
July 20, the German commandant ordered all Jews to move to the Ghetto. There
were 80,000 Jews in It
is amazing how memory has kept all the details of our movement to the Ghetto.
People realized the tragedy of the situation. They knew they were not only leaving
their homes and their pasts, but life itself. Our family joined the stream of
other Jewish families. My mom was holding my hand very tight; she was afraid
to lose me. My two grandfathers helped Grandma with her wheelchair. There
were non-Jews on the streets --- Russians, Belarussians,
Poles. They watched us, prisoners of the Ghetto; some with curiosity and
others with anger. But we could also see eyes full of tears and compassion. The
last day of moving Jews over to the Ghetto was Our
family of eight people was placed in a small room on The
best treat was a piece of bread. One day, Masha’s
friend gave us half a loaf of bread. We divided part of it equally into eight
pieces and ate it right away, the rest we put in the kitchen cabinet. All
day, my thoughts were about this bread. Many times during the day I
approached the cabinet... slowly opened the door... but being afraid that I
might not be able to resist pinching a piece, hurried away. When
it was impossible to stand hunger, my mom sent me to bed very early.
“You won’t starve so badly, my boy, while you are
sleeping.” She was on her last month of pregnancy and it was extremely
hard for her. She fainted very often. When her girlfriend Mira, a nice and
kind woman, visited us, she always brought some food and tried to give it to
Mom very tactfully, because she was afraid to hurt her with pity. In
the end of September, religious and non-religious Jews celebrated Yom Kippur,
and Mira invited Mama. “Everything you see and hear will impress
you,” she said. As always, Mom took me with her. When we entered the
room, an old tall man greeted us. He was very handsome, with gray hair and
gray beard that contrasted with his black biblical eyes. Even now, after so
many years, I still can remember his face. The man put on Tales and began to
sing. Not many people in that room could understand Hebrew words, but such
beautiful music expressed everything we had experienced lately. It touched
our hearts and we all cried. I
also remember the Yom Kippur of 1941 because one week later, my mom gave
birth to my little brother. He was born in a small, one-level wooden house on
...Mom is
sitting on the bed holding her adorable, helpless little baby. Her flesh and blood. “What is going
to happen to him?” She drowned in tears. “What is going to happen
to him...?” We
named him Vadim. One day my mom took him outside
and met Father’s friend, Nathan Vaingaus. He
looked at my brother and said, “Looks exactly like his father. I am
sure * * * All the history of my
long-suffering people shows that basically, Jews were very solid in grief and
sorrow. But I can’t say that all Jews in the Ghetto lived like one big
family. It wouldn’t be true. There were many bad people who were capable
of betrayal. The Nazis created a Jewish police from those who wanted to save
their own lives at the cost of others’. People hated and despised them,
but also were afraid of them. Those who survived the Ghetto don’t like
to remember that shameful fact. The
Nazis also created a Jewish committee called “Judenrat”
to help them complete their orders, every one of which ended with
“...shooting for non-fulfillment.” The president of the committee
was Ilya Mushkin. One of
the main duties of Judenrat was to create teams of
workers. Nazis were interested in skilled men who would work for them for
free. Jewish people worked at plants and factories, at railway stations and
in different repair shops. Each man in the Ghetto had to work. Every morning
columns of workers, guarded by Nazis and their dogs, went out of the gates of
the Ghetto. Not everybody came back. Many of them were killed as soon as they
got out of town. Nazis
constantly made raids in the Ghetto. On one day they would grab and shoot
only men, other days only women. They didn’t
want to waste ammunition to kill children, so they fractured their little
skulls by hitting them against a brick wall, or broke their spines. The best
entertainment for them was to toss up a baby and catch him on a bayonet. Nazis
were killing us not only with bullets but also by hunger. Those who worked
got three tablespoons of soup and some bread once a day. They didn’t
eat it, but brought it home to share. In order to survive, we had to exchange
our clothes for food with non-Jewish people on the other side of barbed wire.
It was very dangerous. If the patrol saw you approaching, they would shoot
you without warning. That is why it had to be done quickly and carefully.
There was no time to check what we got; we had to trust our trading partners.
Most of them were people from nearby villages who came to One
of these exchanges was so disgraceful I will never forget it. My mother had
gathered everything we had left --- Father’s last pair of shoes and his
only suit --- and tossed it over to the other side of barbed wire. Our
trading partner offered us 15 pounds of flour for them. It was unbelievable
treasure for us. We thought we were so lucky. But when we opened the bag,
inside we found chloride with just a little flour on top. Mom could hardly
separate the flour, so she baked us chloric latkes.
We were stunned by the guile of the miller (that’s what we called him).
What evil can hide deep inside some people’s souls! The War certainly
uncovers the very bottom of a human’s soul. * * * Before the War, people lived by
themselves in their own shells. It was completely different in the Ghetto ---
everybody had the same fate and barbed wire was one for all. I remember
neighbors got together to discuss something, hoping to hear better news.
Everybody liked the stories of the barber, Lazar. He was considered the most informed one.
And although we knew that many of his stories were not true, we wanted to
believe him. The most fantastical rumors raised hopes in us. There was some
talk that the Soviet government and Germans had made an agreement for the
exchange of Jews and German prisoners of war. Or another rumor was that
American Jews collected gold in order to redeem all Jewish people from
Hitler, and then help them get to The First Pogrom It is human nature to
memorize the most amazing things because they look like a miracle. For as
long as I could remember, my grandmother Mina couldn’t walk more than
two steps without crutches. Then when she became a prisoner of the Ghetto,
she was so shocked that she gave up crutches and began to walk. But she
didn’t walk for very long. *
* * The first Pogrom happened on At
dawn we heard a noise. Somebody looked out of the window. There were a lot of Nazis on our street. In
panic, we were dashing around the room. In a minute, they loudly knocked at
the door. ...That’s
it, this is the end, no chance to survive, nowhere to hide... Suddenly
my Uncle Semen shouted out, “To the attic!” The day before when
we had looked for a place we could possibly hide, nobody mentioned the attic
because it was such an insecure cover. But the knock at the door gave us no
time to think. Mom grabbed the baby, but Grandma said, “During the
First World War, Germans didn’t kill infants. Let him stay here. Save
Albert.” So helping each other, we began to climb to the attic.
Grandparents couldn’t do it; it was beyond their abilities; they had to
stay downstairs. When Grandfather
opened the door, a soldier hit him and knocked him down. My grandparents were ordered to leave the
house and formed in a column. One of
the soldiers began to climb to the attic. He was very close. We already saw
his head through the darkness. And suddenly, a miracle happened: the lid to
the attic jumped back and hit him. He cursed and went back down. Before
sending away the long line of people, the Nazis decided to make a quick
double check of the houses. They stopped in our house again. In that moment, my little brother began to
cry. The soldier took him and gave him to somebody in line. They were all
killed in a nearby We
stayed in that attic more than five hours. After the Pogrom was over, we came
down. It was quiet, dead quiet. I couldn’t believe that I would never
see my little brother, my grandma and grandfathers again. Looking at every
little thing that used to belong to them broke our hearts. “We
didn’t even say good-bye,” said Aunt Masha.
After these words, we all burst into tears. Uncle Semen was sitting on the
floor hanging his head down. His face became gray and pointed. In his
forties, he looked like an old man. * * * To stay there any longer was
very dangerous. We had to go to my Uncle Iosif’s
on Iosif’s place was extremely small, and we could
hardly find space on the floor to sleep. We stayed there, not knowing that my
father was not far from My Father’s Journey Father’s first combat took
place near Once,
after walking all night long, he fell asleep under a tree. He was awakened by
a strong kick in his head. When he opened his eyes, he saw two Nazi soldiers
standing above him. By afternoon, the Nazis had captured a lot of people,
formed them in a column, and under escort of four armed soldiers, walked them
down a country road. It was a very long day. Just one thought was on
Father’s mind: to run, to run now before they reached a camp, because
then there would be no chance to escape. While the soldiers stopped in a
small meadow to get some rest, the prisoners managed to arrange a quick plan.
They decided that while walking through the wood, they would imitate a fight
between each other. When the guard’s attention was distracted, they ran
away. But many of them were not able to run far enough and were shot by Nazi
soldiers. My father was among those fortunate to escape. So
that he would not die from hunger, he had to make quick stops in small
villages. Some locals were kind enough to give him a piece of bread or a bowl
of soup, but they were afraid to let him stay overnight. Others unchained
dogs on him. Walking
four days with no food, he finally reached a big village. Strength was leaving him. He headed to the
corner house asking for some food, but a sudden “Halt!” stopped
him. It was the second time he was captured. Soldiers searched him and sent
him to a barn with other prisoners.
The roof was covered with straw. My father noticed that one corner
looked thinner than others. When everyone fell asleep, he made a hole in the
roof, climbed through it and ran away. His
journey to us continued to be extremely dangerous and difficult. At one point he was lying frozen and
unconscious in the woods when a priest’s wife found him and took him
in. Father spent a few days in their place. Although they knew he was a Jew,
they were very kind to him. They got him warm clothes, gave him some food and
prayed for him. * * * In the middle of November my
father came to “Why
do you speak with Jew? Who are you, what is your religion?” he asked my
father. “I
am a Pole.” It
is amazing that policeman happened to be a Pole. He began to talk Polish, but
my father couldn’t keep up the conversation. “You
are not a Pole if you cannot speak your language.” “Nobody
taught me Polish.” “Tell
me Polish prayer.” “How
would I know prayer if it was forbidden to pray by the Soviets.” “I
am taking you to prison.” And
then something happened, some kind of inexplicable miracle. The policeman
took my father to the gates of prison and suddenly asked again, “Where
are you going?” “I
am looking for my family.” “And
where does your family live?” Knowing that our house had been
bombed, Father named that address. “All
right, go. I don’t want to take sin upon myself.” Making
sure that the policeman did not follow him, my father walked around the
Ghetto, and later, in the dark, made his way in. But where to go? He remembered that his brother Iosif’s relatives used to live on ...There
is a knock at our door. Here he is --- my father. Emaciated. Unshaved. Gray-haired. It is impossible to
describe our happiness when we saw him. We couldn’t imagine that five
months after the War began, we could meet him here,
in the Ghetto, surrounded by barbed wire... “You
came here to die with us, to go to one grave together,” Mom says
through tears. “No,
I won’t let you die. We won’t stay here. We will run away; we
will definitely run away...” I
was listening to my daddy with hope and delight because in contrast to us, he
was a man who overcame fear. We were still mourning over our killed ones. But
even Father from time to time said, “I am late. Just one week
late.” The Second Pogrom During the first Pogrom 13,000
people were killed. Reichminister Gimmler himself came to inspect the Ghetto and left
dissatisfied with the slow destruction of the Jews. So the second Pogrom
happened on November 20, and took away 7,000 lives. We
had moved to my father’s friend’s house illegally, and lived
there on After
the second Pogrom, the streets were patrolled by Nazi soldiers. A few hours later, the officer who made
rounds of the houses was furious to see us there. He posted a sentry to watch
us. It was very cold outside and in order to stay warm, the guard was walking
back and forth. My father noted how long it took the guard to go along the
house. “There
is one chance in ten,” he said. “When the guard walks back from
us, we will use a few seconds to hide around the corner and then run
away.” We were lucky, our escape turned out well, and we found
somewhere else to live in the Ghetto. * * * Soon, the Pogrom-emptied houses
were occupied with more Jews deported from Love Still Exists The Ghetto had become a real
conveyor of death. People were going through a lot of grief, sorrow, and
constant expectation of dying. But the instinct of self-preservation helped
them to become dull to reality. And what is more, the young people started to
fall in love. Sadly, the duration of their love depended not on the strength
of their feelings, but on whether they survived the Pogroms or not. I
remember the love story of one young couple, Sima Katznelson and Zyama Ozerskai. Sima was
exceptionally beautiful; Zyama had such a charming
and contagious smile that everyone looking at him began to smile, too.
Unfortunately, their love didn’t last long. At
that time, the Nazi’s top officer, Rube, was given a new assignment as
an assistant to the commandant of the Ghetto. Rube was known for his extreme
cruelty. Every night a big black car entered the Ghetto to take away
residents of one of the houses. Nobody knew whose house would be next. Rube continued to create new methods of intimidation
and torture. He gave orders for his men to select thirteen of the most
beautiful women and bring them to the Jewish cemetery. Sima
was among them. They all were stripped naked, raped, and then shot. Zyama was very depressed. Life without his beloved one
lost any meaning for him. He was shot during the next raid. * * * Around the same time, Nazis
killed my Uncle Iosif. His family’s life
turned out to be very tragic. It is hard to imagine what his wife Sonya was
going through, watching her children starving to death and being powerless to
help. The two oldest boys, Fima and Leva, were very quiet. They never complained, but their
eyes --- which looked especially big on emaciated faces --- were very sad.
Twins Sara and Borya cried only in the beginning,
then got very weak and had no strength to cry. They just whined pitifully and
moaned. Watching her babies dying from
hunger and having nothing to feed them broke Sonya’s heart. Relatives
tried to convince Sonya to give up the babies to the Jewish orphanage. “...They
will get some food there. At home, they’ll starve to death.” “How
can I do it? How can I give up my babies...?” Sonya
was drowning in tears. She suffered fear for her babies, and felt guilt that
she had nothing to feed them. Her heart was a clot of pain and despair. Not only the residents of the house, but even the walls cried
witnessing Sonya’s unbelievable torment. Finally she decided to give up
her babies. But the Jewish orphanage accepted only orphans who had nobody,
not even relatives. That is why there was only one sad way: to leave babies
on the porch and quickly go away. Preparations
were very hard. Then early one morning, Sonya and her sister Fira put the babies on the porch. A little later, an
elderly woman opened the door, got the twins, gave a sad look around --- she
felt that someone was watching her --- and went back in the house. Not blame,
but compassion was written in her eyes. “...If
a Jewish mother takes this step, it must be her last hope...” Every
day relatives went to look at Sara and Borya
through the window. They tried to hearten Sonya, although her babies got
weaker and weaker. Ten days later, other babies were sitting on their bed.
Relatives kept it from Sonya; they pretended to visit the babies. But the lie
didn’t last long. One week
later, Sonya was killed during a raid. Fima and Leva became orphans. Orphanhood is very hard --- even in peacetime --- but in
the Ghetto it was just terrible. Relatives and neighbors tried to get some
food for the boys. One could bring a
potato, others a piece of bread or soup. People didn’t let them starve
to death. All
day long, snuggling up to each other, they were looking through the window,
waiting for their mom. They still hoped she would come. When somebody opened
the door, they would run to see who came... and then with heads hung, return
to the window. Lying in bed at night, they cried bitterly. They were very attached to each other,
apparently afraid of being separated forever, so Fima
and Leva were always together. One
fatal day, the Nazis made a raid on the streets and in the houses. The boys hid in the hall closet. When
soldiers threw men out of the house (the raid was only upon men this time),
one of them accidentally touched the closet. The door opened, and a soldier
saw the frightened boys and shot them.
It is said that one who is killed ransoms another from death. Who
knows, maybe my little cousins died to give me a chance to live. Hiding People began to create hiding
places called “malinas” in their houses,
or more often under the ground. To build a malina
was extremely difficult and risky, so people did it at night. If Nazis or
Jewish police saw freshly-dug soil outside of the house, they would shoot all
the residents. The most important thing for safety was to find out the right
entrance to a malina. In our home base, the Russian
stove was used as an entrance. We had dug out a trench under the house and
put along benches. Nazis
knew about the existence of malinas, but often
could not find the hidden entrances. So they burst into the houses and shot
through walls, ceilings, floors. It was a deplorable fact that often somebody
from the Jewish police helped them to find malinas. I
remember a terrible tragedy that happened in a malina
located under a floor. There was a young woman with an infant among the
people who hid there. When Nazis came in the house, the baby started to
cry. Every little sound from under the
floor meant death for all of the malina’s
inhabitants. The woman took a pillow
and covered the baby. When the Nazis left and everyone got up, the baby was
dead. Children of the Ghetto In the Ghetto, children were
doomed to death. Some of us died in gas chambers, others shot or buried
alive. If all Jewish children who were killed by Nazis could be revived and,
together, utter a cry of despair, the universe would probably shudder. * * * After the second Pogrom, our
family adopted a 12-year-old-boy --- a distant relative --- named Lenya, who literally had returned from the dead. A column
of people had been driven out of his town to a place where a grave had been
prepared. The Nazis ordered people to sit on the ground and wait for their
turn. They killed prisoners by groups of 20-25 people at a time. Lenya was in one
of the groups with his mother and little sister. When machine gun fire was
heard, his mother instinctively shielded Lenya with
her body. Everyone fell into the grave. Lenya heard
his sister mumbling, “My head hurts. My head hurts.” Then he
remembered nothing. When he regained consciousness, he didn’t know
whether he was dead or alive. “...My
leg is moving; it means I am alive. But why is it so hard to
breathe...?” Dead
people laid heavy on him. But the Nazis didn’t cover the grave and
left. In the dark, Lenya could hardly get out. Once
he did, he directed his steps to the Ghetto to us, to his distant but only
living relatives. He looked terrible: pale, shaking, clothes soaked in blood.
He cried and tossed at night, and was sad and thoughtful all day. Soon after,
he was captured during a raid and killed in a gas chamber with a group of
other children. * * * The most fearless people in the
Ghetto were children. They passed through barbed wire into the Russian area
showing adroitness and courage. Many
of them lost their lives for one potato or one beet, but nothing could stop
them. They looked for food everywhere, even rummaged in garbage and always
brought what they could find back to the Ghetto. Older children were notable
for their exceptional bravery and courage. I remember fearless Gregory Caplan, who was captured by Nazis when he was going to
meet with members of the Underground, and Willy Rubeczyn,
an untiring messenger in the Ghetto who later became a courageous scout in a
partisan detachment. It
was great luck if somebody was able to move their child through the wire and,
under a fictitious name, get him into a Russian
children’s home. Very
often Nazis and police arranged checks, cautiously peering at little faces
trying to recognize Jewish features. Among other orphans in Russian
children’s homes, Jewish children had to be very careful not to betray
themselves. This is a remembrance of
one Jewish girl called Lilie Gragais: “...I
was three years old. Children were saying that Jewish people have black
blood. I was afraid to cut my finger or to hurt my knee. What if they saw my
blood and found out that I am a Jew...?” They still starved terribly in the children’s
homes, but at least it was a chance to survive; in the Ghetto there was none. *
* * Thinking about saving my life,
my mom gave herself up to daydreams about meeting with our very good Russian
friends, the Zhykovskay family. She thought, “What if they were not
evacuated and might see us through the barbed wire? I would trust them with
Albert. They would save him.” Our good friendship had already been
tested by time and circumstances. When in 1937 Dimitry
Zhykovskay was arrested under Stalin, nobody but my
parents were brave enough to support and encourage
his wife, Varya. The Zhykovskays
had never forgotten it. You remember and appreciate good things as much as
you never forget betrayal and offense from people you knew --- those who were
afraid not only to talk to you, but even to look at you. But
the War watered down the sharpness of the horrible memories of Stalin’s
repression; the personal offenses stepped aside. People in the Ghetto had
only one goal: how to escape from this Hell and survive. The Underground By September 1941, the Ghetto
had an effective underground group, which later grew into a big secret
organization. The organizers of this group were Yakov
Kipkaeshto, Nathan Vaingaus
(who had assured us that Father was alive shortly after my brother’s
birth), and Gregory Smolyar. After Yakov’s death, Michael Gebelev
became one of the leaders. Knowing
nothing about the existence of the Underground, my father decided to go back
to fight together with the partisans. I felt safe when he was with us; it
seemed like nothing bad could happen. His self-control reassured better than
words. He said, “When I find the partisans, I’ll come for you or
send somebody to get you. I will not leave you here.” Early
in the morning, four people --- my father, Abram Gantman,
Lev Gurevich, and David Kantor
started on their way. There was stinging frost, and the temperature dropped
to -22 degrees F. By the end of the day, they reached Soon
my father managed to get in touch with the Underground and started to work
there. His duty was to create efficient groups from prisoners and later take
them out of the Ghetto to the woods. In the beginning of 1942, the
Underground numbered twelve groups with ten people in each. Group leaders
were members of the Underground Committee. For secrecy and safety, people
from one group were not supposed to know people from the others. For
the first time in The Underground Committee called up prisoners of the Ghetto
to get armed. Some prisoners that were weapons specialists had been hired by
the Nazis to work in their munitions factories. They risked their lives to
steal pistols, rifles, machine guns, and other arms. A few workers were
caught and hanged in front of others. People managed to find mediators in the
Russian area who helped them exchange clothes, watches, or jewelry for
revolvers, pistols, grenades. Little by little, the Ghetto was arming itself. * * * My father was assigned by the
Underground Committee to be the leader of one group. Very often members of this group got
together in our place. During their meetings, I had to walk near our house
and watch carefully. If I saw anything suspicious, I was supposed to let them
know right away. I was very proud of their confidence in me, and sometimes
displayed unnecessary vigilance by giving false alarm. * * * The beginning of 1942 was very
difficult for people in the Ghetto. It was common to see an emaciated person
who was slowly dragging his feet, carrying a corpse on a sleigh to the
cemetery. People were dying so often that there was not time to dig separate
graves. Dead bodies were stacked all in one grave. An epidemic of typhus
started in the Ghetto. The hospital couldn’t accommodate all the sick
people, and the Nazis had warned Judenrat that if
an epidemic took hold, they would annihilate the Ghetto. And they would have
definitely kept their word, because they were afraid that the disease could
spread out to their army. But doctors risked their lives by stating the wrong
diagnoses on the papers --- instead of typhus, they
claimed pneumonia, dystrophy, or something else. Some doctors and nurses got
contaminated from patients. But neither Judenrat
nor the Jewish police reported the epidemic to the Nazis. They realized that
if the Nazis destroyed the Ghetto, they would also be killed. And
again, a miracle happened. Without the right medications and under conditions
of crowdedness, lousiness, hunger and exhaustion, the epidemic of typhus
stopped. The total annihilation of the Ghetto was prevented, or at least
delayed. The Third and Fourth Pogroms The Nazis performed the
systematic destruction of Jews punctually, according to their schedule. The
third Pogrom took place on The
Nazis caught everyone who didn’t have a chance to hide in a malina. Realizing that they couldn’t get as many
victims as they’d planned, Kube made an order
to shoot columns of workers returning to the Ghetto. This shocking violence lasted a whole day.
There were puddles of blood on the ground because the frozen soil
couldn’t absorb them. We
hid in a malina located under our house on The Nazis didn’t limit themselves to one bloody
massacre in March; another came later, on the 31st. Sometimes it seemed like
it was beyond human power to struggle for life in such Hell. But hidden
reserves of strength that we had never suspected in peacetime became awake at
very dangerous moments. My father used to say, “We should try not to
think about things we cannot change.” Being a person of strong will, he
learned to control not only his words and acts, but also his thoughts. This
quality was very important for work in the secret organization. Leaving the Ghetto Behind The Underground Committee was
gradually establishing communication with some partisan detachments.
Messengers were sent to the Ghetto to help groups of prisoners escape.
However, there were a number of failures and some messengers got captured by
the Gestapo. The most serious shock for the Underground was the arrest of its
leader, Michael Gebelev. In
order to prevent prisoners from escaping, the Nazis created a rule: if
someone from the columns of workers disappeared on his way to or from work,
all members of this family and his neighbors would be killed on the same day.
But the Underground found a way around that situation. Doctors in the
hospital prepared nameless death certificates and brought them to the
department of Judenrat that registered all
prisoners. The manager of this department was Boris Dolskay,
a secret Underground member. Before the War, Boris was a well-known actor and
producer in the Yankee Kupala Theater. Now in the
Ghetto, people considered him a betrayer since he was working for Judenrat --- when in fact, he
was doing everything he could to help save them. He entered names of people
who were going to escape onto the blank death certificates. Those named were
struck off the workers’ registration list. It was important to have the
Underground working at Judenrat. * * * The Nazis became very
innovative when it came to showing us their power. On Sundays, under threat
of death, the whole population of the Ghetto had to gather on *
* * The group that was headed by my
father completed preparations for escaping the Ghetto, and we left. It is
hard to describe our feelings when we found ourselves on the other side of
barbed wire; we started to rip away the hated yellow stars, a long-awaited
moment in a prisoner’s life. People smiled to each other through tears.
I remember their words: “Better to be killed in battle than go to the
pit.” But the woods we had to reach to be safe was
not so close. “Mama, I will bear everything. I want to live so
much,” I repeated constantly. Soon, we were lucky to reach * * * What was going on? After the
March Pogroms, it was relatively quiet, not counting regular round-ups and
arrests. But in the end of July, the Nazis made a terrible massacre. On the
report to Because
we were not in the Ghetto during that Pogrom, I am recounting the memories of
a young prisoner named Phelix Lipskay,
who was an eyewitness to those bloody killings: “...People
were taken away on tracks in mobile gas chambers. Nazis and police entered
each house, shot through attics, threw grenades in basements. Shots and groans of dying people were heard
on the streets. Our group of 18-20
women and children hid in a small, tight malina ---
a hiding
place that was expected to accommodate only 5-6 people. We had no water, no
food. We realized that patient silence was our only salvation. It was very
hot. We were stifled with heat, burnt from thirst, and our hearts were wrung
with fear of death. Adults tried their best to ease our sufferings. On the third day, one woman gave us some
warm liquid with a nasty smell and taste, and persuaded us to drink it. It
was urine. By the fourth day, the columns of workers returned to the Ghetto.
Survivors were getting out from malinas. Streets
were covered with corpses. It was raining. Red water streamed down During that Pogrom 13,000 people were killed. The
village called Little Trostinetz became their
common grave. *
* * The other 2,000 prisoners were
annihilated on In
February 1992, an exhibition called “The Tragedy of Belarussian
Jews in 1941-1944” was opened in the Part
II: Partisans We Are Free Our group of 24 people escaped from the Ghetto on * * * We had reached Kolodinskay Woods,
43 kilometers from ...It is quiet, unusually quiet.
We are together around the fire and my father is delivering a speech. He
seems calm outwardly, but his voice shows his excitement. All of us are
happily excited; we are not prisoners anymore, but partisans looking forward
to fighting Nazis... Our
armament included four rifles, two revolvers, one pistol and a few hand
grenades. Someone asked, “How should we start?” “By
getting food,” was the answer. We were
very hungry. My father sent two men to a village to get some food. They took
two pieces of soap to exchange for food; during the War soap was of great
value. They came back at night, bringing a big bag of potatoes, two chickens
and a pot. We built a fire and cooked our first partisan’s dinner. How
tasty it was for us! We slept
on the snow on bunches of twigs. It rained all night long and we got soaked
to the skin. Exhausted from escaping, our people could hardly stand on their
feet, but it was decided that we would take three hour shifts at the guard
post. My father volunteered to keep watch first, then
chose his wife for the next shift. True, she didn’t know how to handle
a rifle. But while Mom was on guard duty, my father did not sleep; he stayed
awake to encourage her. She seemed to see Nazis behind every tree. Even the
owl’s cry horrified her. That is how I remember our first day in the
partisan detachment. * * * Gradually we began to
make our camp more comfortable. From the nearest village we got spades, two
axes and a hand-saw. We built huts and a kitchen table. At our first meeting,
my father, Israel Lapidus, was elected commander of
our partisan detachment. His main assistants were Sagalchuk
and Volf Locik. Sagalchuk was a gloomy and reserved person. Locik liked to talk a lot and got very annoyed if
somebody interrupted him. He always scared me when he was sleeping because he
kept his eyes open, an unessential detail that I’m surprised I can
remember. * * * Spring In the beginning of the War, some Soviet military units had
retreated from a battle through our woods. So when the snow melted, our
partisan group found their abandoned rifles and revolvers. But the thaw
brought me much suffering. I had escaped from the Ghetto wearing boots made
from felt called “valenki.” When the
snow melted and the weather got warmer, I was still needed them because I
couldn’t walk with bare feet on the pine cones. We changed locations often, so we had to
walk a lot --- and my feet looked awful! They became red with a bluish tint
and the skin was coming off from the heat. Everyone felt sorry for me, so
when they visited the villages they tried to get me shoes. My suffering
stopped when a young peasant came to our partisan detachment and wove me some
shoes out of reeds. It was a blessing! Our
bitterest enemies were mosquitoes. We
called them “fascists.”
Masses of mosquitoes devoured us alive. Our hands, legs, faces were
stung badly and scratched to blood. Sometimes faces looked like bloody
masks. My mom suffered the most. Their
bites became festering wounds on her legs.
A doctor from the nearest village gave her a little vial of alcohol
and told her to smear the wounds. It helped her to get rid of the infection.
Then we found a few Soviet parachutes in a big meadow; our pilots had
probably used them to bale out from crashing airplanes. We made tents from
the chutes, and also created smoke screens as a protection against the
mosquitoes. That helped for a short time. * * * Getting food was a great problem for us. In the beginning,
we traded for it in villages. But it wouldn’t be true to say that all
peasants were happy to share their bread, potatoes, and other food with
partisans. A native might say with anger, “We cannot live like this ---
in daytime we get robbed by Nazis and police, and in the evening you
partisans come.” Or one of them
could tell us, “You better go to my neighbor, Stepan.
He’s got much more than I do.”
This was in the spring of 1942, when Nazis had not yet begun burning
whole villages and killing the inhabitants. Later, when Nazis began mass
terror against natives, people realized that partisans were their defenders
and tried to help us as much as they could. And although we had to look for
food in villages, we never took the last from them. * * * Summer In the summer of 1942, Captain Nikitin
arrived in our area. He was sent to the German rear by Soviet headquarters;
his main task was to combine small partisan groups into one big detachment.
When Captain Nikitin met my father, it turned out
that they had known each other before. Nikitin’s
group was reinforced with soldiers who managed to escape prisons, and also
with the “pripisniki,” Red Army
soldiers unable to break out of Nazi encirclements. Pripisniki
wandered about the villages in search of food and a place to stay, finding
shelter in the houses of native women whose husbands had left to fight in the
War. Many pripisniki
later joined the partisans. Our small group also became part of Nikitin’s detachment, but not for long. The number
of partisans had increased rapidly. People were accepted without being
checked, and it was likely that the Gestapo had managed to place a few
informers among us. Somehow, every important military operation in our
detachment was known ahead of time by the Nazis. During one hard fight, the
Nazis outnumbered us and we had to retreat with losses, but the only way to
do it was through a terrible swamp. When we began to move, the Nazi snipers
were already cited in the trees around the swamp. I remember one partisan
getting shot in his cheeks and tongue. He couldn’t close his mouth and
walked with his tongue out, twisted with a bandage. He howled from pain. The
partisans leaned on their rifles so that they would not drown in the
quagmire. I could not pass across the swamp on my own. My father carried me
on his back. When he fell and started to drown, two partisans named Iosif Yankelevich and Gregory
Feldman caught me and helped Father out. In that moment, a bullet blew up the
swamp right in front of my nose. After that
battle, we had a meeting at which Captain Nikitin
announced his decision to break through the enemy’s defenses in the
rear. My father, however, thought that it was not a realistic plan, and
suggested that everyone decide whether they wanted to go with Nikitin or stay in our partisan detachment. Almost all of
us stayed with my father. Captain Nikitin and his group broke through the front line and
reached the Russians, where instead of being rewarded, he was arrested as a
German spy. But I remember him setting personal examples of bravery and valor
for the other partisans in our detachment. I can clearly picture him during
one hard fight with the Nazis, wearing a leather jacket with a Mauser pistol in his hand and a blue scarf around his
neck --- a gift from his sweetheart. Nikitin was
rehabilitated from prison in the 1950’s, and died shortly afterward. * * * My father’s group established connections with the
Ghetto’s Underground. Messengers from our detachment went to A
partisan’s life entailed great difficulties, but the realization that
we were not going to have any more Pogroms at night and would not be thrown
into a pit to be shot gave us the strength to bear all adversities. After all
we had been through, our immune systems were strong
and mobilized, keeping us free from most serious illnesses. Still, one of our
partisans --- Iosif Yankelevich,
who had earlier saved my father and me in the swamp --- caught typhoid fever.
He became very sick, his condition aggravated by lack of medication and
intense summer heat. Right at that time, a Nazi punitive group arrived at
village nearest our camp. Someone had probably informed them about us, so we
had to run. While crossing back over the swamp, Iosif
was carried by four partisans, with another team of four always ready to take
over. These people could have just
been quarreling over the biggest piece of meat or the best space in the tent,
but in a dangerous situation, all squabbles were completely forgotten. * * * My father conducted his first battle as commander on the
highway of Puchovichi-Staraya Dorogi.
Sixty partisans ambushed and attacked a column of ten Nazi cars and trucks.
The battle later turned into hand-to-hand combat. At one point the Nazis were winning, but
then my Uncle Semen jumped on a truck and shouted, “Fight them for
Little Trostinetz and Tuchinka!”
--- these were the places that had became common
graves for tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners of the Ghetto, including my
own little brother and grandparents. Inspired, the partisans struggled on
with bravery until 74 Nazi soldiers were dead and eight surrendered. Captured
weapons noticeably filled up our arsenal. During the days that followed this
battle, the partisans discussed the details. They stayed in a good mood.
Especially funny for them was my heroic act --- I had approached one of the
captive Nazi soldiers, pushed him and screamed out, “Hitler
kaput!” The rumors
spread among neighboring villages about the Jew-partisans that had destroyed
a big column of Nazis. Strange as it may seem, this fact did not make some
partisans from other detachments happy. Some liked to make fun of Jews and
their supposed reluctance to fight, but all of our group’s non-Jewish
members --- Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians --- saw Jews as very brave and skilled warriors
who never tried to hide behind the backs of others, never hesitating to risk
their lives. There was not one anti-Semite in our detachment, which was due
in part to the authority of our commander. The partisans all loved and
respected my father. That love and respect was well deserved. Some Battles, Some Who Fought Them The ability to be a good commander shows not only in offensive battle, but also in forced retreat that must be done with a minimum of people killed or wounded. Once, the Nazis began huge military operations against the partisans. Some detachments decided to hide their people on an island surrounded with an impassable swamp, believing that the Nazis would never go there. The locals called this island |
