WAYS OF DEATH. NOTES OF GHETTO-SURVIVOR

(Fragment of the manuscript by Josef Kapler, Alexander Tokarev's grandfather)

October 17, 1941.

Germans and Romanians failed to take Odessa with a direct attack. Only a day later, when they discovered that nearby trenches were empty, they started to approach the city slowly and cautiously.

They entered Odessa without a single shot.

Fascists moved along the streets carefully, expecting a trap.

All was quiet and calm. The inhabitants were grimly standing by their houses.

Painted faces of Romaninan locotenents and smug expressions on the faces of German officers wearing tall caps. Disgusting.

We fastidiously closed the doors and windows of the apartment. No glass was left in the windows after the bombings—we replaced them with cardboard and sealed them with glued paper, but we could still hear even the faintest noise from the street.

We were speaking in whispers. The drawn-out whistling of a Romanian guard could be heard from below; then he started humming a doina. The soldier had a good voice, the song was beautiful…

***

Early in the morning the yard keeper knocked on our door and said that the German headquarters had ordered all men to register at the militia office of the 4th district. My brother-in-law and I got dressed and set out. From the militia office we were transferred to the courtyard of the Kherson City Hospital. Several queues stretched across the yard. All the men were lined up in military fashion, four to a row. Standing and waiting. We were surrounded by a Romanian squad. German SS were also there. There are several thousand men, while still more are waiting outside, in the street. The queue to the Romanian officer, who searched everyone's pockets and took all valuables, is moving slowly. A clerk sitting nearby records names and surnames. Some of the people in the queue have started casting away documents that might incriminate them; other sorts of objects and even revolvers drop from their pockets into the grass. They did this whenever guards would get involved with something else and move away.

A scream. The officer slapped the man he was registering twice in the face because he was not showing him enough respect.

“La tine este jidan?”

The hurt guy is silent. A kick in the stomach. He falls and cries in pain:

“I don't understand—what does he want?”

“Are you a Yid?” asks the translator.

“Cross my heart, I'm Russian!”

The beaten man is taken to a different line standing outside the fence, in the street. After that they started beating almost everyone: because of a trade union ID, a Soviet document, or being a jidan. The guard approaches my brother-in-law and asks him to turn over his knife. The knife is taken out.

“Jidan?” asks the guard.

“I am a Jew!” corrects my brother-in-law.

A blow in the teeth, a kick in the stomach. I volunteer my knife adding a couple of silver rubles, and give all of it to the guard. He smiles. Suddenly his face contorts; he throws himself on the guy behind me like a vulture and snatches his watch… Several heavy blows complete the robbery. I see a lot of scenes like that one. It goes on almost all day long. Eventually everyone was registered and lined up in the street. Women were standing on the sidewalk waiting to give some food to their loved ones. But the guards would not let anyone near.

A command to move forward. A long procession is led military fashion toward Slobodka-Romanovka. On the square between Slobodka and the city everyone was standing as if watching a parade.

An officer's command: Germans step up. They did and were sent home. After a speech by some colonel about the victories won by Germans and their allies over the Reds and about how Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad were to be taken soon, all the rest were lined up once more and, in closed ranks, dispatched to search for mines set up before the withdrawal from Odessa. They made us move fast and often had us running. I am not young, with my asthma and heart condition. I was out of breath and felt I could fall any moment. But those who get behind or fall are killed, so I force myself to keep on running.

Slobodka. Past the psychiatric hospital, near a suburban village we had a small rest break. Then we were rushed back to the city, and after that—to Moldavanka via Prokhorovskaya (Khvorostina) and Dalnitskaya (Ivanova) Streets. Along the way a doctor who was among us was undressed by hooligans, so he ran in his underwear. People laughed at him. It was already dark, but they kept urging us on and we ran breathless and under threat of death had to stamp our feet—in the hopes we'd hit a mine!.. It got cold. They told us to sit down on Golikovskaya Street, across from the factory, to spend the night on bare ground. The unclothed barefoot doctor was shivering and crying.

As soon as dawn began they started chasing us across the mine field again. A restless run until lunchtime, and then rest in a destroyed school in Moldavanka. I felt hungry. Yesterday went by without food and even without water. Today families began bringing some food. They were allowed in. They would find out our whereabouts by some miracle. In the evening they assigned us to different floors. I got to the third one. The floor was covered with broken glass. I fell asleep under a table but soon was awakened by a shout. They were beating a Jew. First they robbed him, and then they beat him up. You could not interfere or they would do the same to you. It is crowded. Not everyone can fit inside the school. Many sleep in the yard surrounded by guards. The soldiers are not wasting their time—they grab wallets with money, knives, rings…

In the morning of October 20 they herded us to Bolgarskaya (Budennogo) Street. There was an announcement that there was going to be another registration in the school yard, but this time we'd be broken up by nationality. All but Jews could go home. Jews were taken to yards destroyed by the bombings. We are standing in a file waiting for our names to be taken down. Evening is approaching. Many of us have been beaten up by soldiers who took a dislike to our Jewish looks.

Verfluchte and jidan.

***

Only Jews were herded along the streets, through Vorontsovka, toward the Jewish cemetery.

“Why there, out of town, to the cemetery?” asked an old man next to me, his voice trembling.

“I don't know.”

“Are they going to shoot us?” he starts to whisper “Shelah Isroel.”

“I don't know!”

I involuntarily begin to recall my life; I regret I didn't leave as soon as the war began, that I didn't walk away on foot with my family, that I had been scared by the difficulties… We passed the Jewish and Russian cemetery. They herded us further on—toward the prison. There we stopped.

“Are all Jews really going to prison? They won't fit. There are about a hundred and fifty thousand Jews in Odessa!” The old man is worried again.

“They might have found another space in addition to the prison,” I said quietly.

We were let into the prison. The gates closed behind us.

***

Between the gates and the main building everyone was brought to a halt to listen to the rules and orders of the prison governor. He does not speak Russian, so they ask a Bessarabian Jew to translate from Romanian. The governor said that Jews would remain here for maybe a month, so they should behave themselves and not try to escape. An escape is punishable by death. His every order should be unfailingly obeyed, also under the threat of death. Jews must point out communists, Komsomol members, and all activists among them. Jews must also surrender all their gold, watches and other valuables, or be put to death. People tried to ask questions but the prison governor—“ghetto governor” as he called himself—said it was not a Bolshevik rally and told us to go to our cells. It turned out that lower stories of that huge building were already occupied. They were filled during the day.

Men, women, children. Not just the cells on two stories of that rather spacious building but passageways and corridors as well were filled with people. We were herded to the third floor but it was also soon overcrowded like a barrel full of herring and we were taken to the fourth—the last—story by an almost ruined spiral staircase leading to the attic. Over sixty people were packed into that rather small cell. Men, women, and children. Everyone lay on top of one another on the bunks, on the floor, and even under the bunks. Anxious silence. Lights out. Nobody is asleep. Children and women are crying. Speaking in whispers. Keenly listening to the faintest noise coming from the yard, from the corridor, from the street. Occasionally, shots are heard. Through the window we can see the flames of a big fire, a glow. At night there are several bursts of gunfire in the yard. Screams of dying people…then everything goes quiet.

In the morning I go to relieve myself. The toilet is on the second storey. It is the only one for several thousand people. A nauseating stench. I hold my nose and go in. Men and women are squatting together, without embarrassment. There is leakage everywhere. My boots step into the slush. I start to vomit. The slush seeps into the corridor where people are lying…

I sneak into the prison yard. There is a second toilet for other buildings there. The same picture as upstairs. People relieving themselves together. They do not consider us human.

Crowds of thousands people in the yard. You run into acquaintances you haven't seen for years. Everyone is depressed, their faces swollen with tears. Only some Romanian and Bessarabian Jews seem happy for some reason. Their joy is suspicious. The “happy” Jews carry sticks which they use to force people into the crowded and stuffy buildings. Some plead to these Itsels, as they are called, promising a reward “in case it turns out well”… The Itsels take those making these offers to the translators' room and there they start bargaining openly. Golden rings, diamond rings, simple watches, golden watches, chains, fives, tens—those words are declined by the Itsels in all cases. A day's leave to go to town for food with a Romanian pass costs two golden rings, a two-day leave – two tens, a three-day—a golden watch, etc. Those Itsels were reverently called “foremen”, even though nobody appointed them. But the Romanian administration of the ghetto prison enjoyed watching the “foremen” viciously beat up their kin, the Jews. They laughed with pleasure at the sight of it. Particularly cruel was “foreman” Zalamon. He accepted gold and beat those who gave it to him surpassing in his mastery of swearing even the Romanians, who were quite skilled at it. Many paid for those excursions into town with their lives. However, a life was not worth much in the prison. A lot of people did not have food, even bread. Some of them were grabbed right from the street, while others did not have food even at home.

On October 21 they began taking men and women to work. Several armed Romanians came upstairs to our cell shouting:

“Haide! La lucru!” 1

If you gave them sugar or soap they would politely bid farewell and leave. But a couple days later you had to give them watches or money. Having taken those, they would make you go downstairs to the yard anyway. It was with great difficulty that one could escape on the way and return to the cell later by another route.

Those who were taken to work on October 21 came back in the evening. That was somewhat reassuring, and people stopped fearing work. However, on October 22 none of the eight thousand people taken to work returned. Some said they were sent to the village of Dalnik on the order of German-Romanian military administration; others that they were shot on the spot where many Romanians had died during the siege of Odessa.

In the morning of October 28 we saw gallows with six hangmen in the street near the prison. I recognized two of the dead people—they were my colleagues and friends, Victor Brodsky and Kostya Chertkov, attorneys from Odessa. Later we found out that they had received a pass from a “foreman” and went to town. At the exit they were caught and hanged. There were a lot of such gallows in the city at every crossroads, every corner, and every square. The military administration posted an order that 200 Jews will be killed for each dead German or Romanian officer, and 100 for each soldier. The German headquarters was blown up and several dozen officers with it. Revenge was raging in Odessa. They would seize people on the street, throw a noose around their necks and hang them. By some miracle, a new group of Jews was brought to the prison on that day. They told us about what was happening in the city. It was brimming with gallows.

***

The terror in Odessa continued for several days. Nobody would come out into the streets. People were hiding in cellars and attics. A couple thousand prisoners were taken somewhere every day never to return. Some rumors said they were shot with machine-guns near Dalnik, and others that they were sent to the village of Bogdanovka to special camps for Jews. On the morning of the 25th, “foremen” and soldiers announced that Bessarabians were allowed to go home to Bessarabia. Bessarabians, who were rather numerous, were happy and started packing their sacks with cloths and food. “Foremen” were running from one cell to another herding the Bessarabians downstairs into a column. Terror was not over and it was hard to believe in such “mercy” to Jews, even if they were from Bessarabia. Spiteful smirks on the faces of Romanians and their stooges, the “foremen,” were also suspicious… Next to me was a young Bessarabian woman with a girl of about ten. She was also packing her bundles to go.

“You know,” I said to her, “wait a couple more days. If there is an order to let Bessarabian Jews go, they'll do so later as well. This sudden freedom is too suspicious. After all that's happened!..”

She began thinking.

“I'll take your advice,” she set her bundles down.

And half an hour later we saw from the window a huge column of Bessarabians—women, children, and old people—assembled. There were about ten thousand people in it. As the column was leaving the gates, sacks with cloths and food were being snatched from everyone. Soldiers threw them in enormous piles and into sheds that were unlocked for that purpose. The Bessarabians were crying and pleading to get at least some of their things back… The soldiers were adamant:

“You don't need anything. You are going home. You'll find everything there!”

The column was led to the street, put in order and taken not towards the train station, but along the Lustdorf Road to the Artillery Gunpowder Warehouses. When the Bessarabians left, soldiers began scouting cells again, to take men to work.

On that day my brother-in-law, Genah Kosov; his wife Rahil, my sister-in-law, doctor Kosova with her eight-year old boy Kotya; and her sister Anya were brought to prison.

From our cell they took to work me, both my brothers-in-law, Shwartzman, my neighbor from our building, and several others. I was struck by what I'd just seen and decided to tell this group about it. While walking down the crowded stairs, Zinovy and I hid in a darkish passageway and returned to our cell by another route. There I crawled under the bunk, and the women hid me behind bundles and their legs. For a couple hours I was motionless. Women were on guard and began coughing in case of danger.

Evening arrived. We, six men in all, began climbing the spiral staircase to the prison attic. The staircase was rusty, many of the steps were missing, and it was barely holding itself together. But we did climb to the top eventually. We closed, or rather lowered, the heavy attic door, barricaded it at the top with wooden and iron beams, and felt our way into the attic in complete darkness and silence. We lay down by a vent. The night was dark and the guards downstairs could not see us. We were actually at the height of the sixth floor. Still, we cautiously avoided looking through the vent.

We made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the dirt floor. It was cold and quiet. Only rats were rustling nearby.

Several hours passed. We were extremely tense. If they catch us here, it's the firing squad or the gallows. We did not sleep and all you could hear was a sigh every once in a while. Suddenly we heard distinct explosions, one after another. Two of us quietly got up and approached the vent which opened onto the Lustdorf Road. Everything was alight. A bright flame of raging fire.

“I think the artillery storage is on fire. It must have been blown up,” said one of the watchers at the vent.

“Hush, hush!” We wanted to silence him. “Bend down!”

A terrible realization crossed my mind. And as if to answer it, death screams of thousands of people came from afar. They were coming from the flame. A lot of gun shots. Finally, everything went quiet. Dead quiet. The light of the fire made fantastic patterns on the attic beams.

“That's the direction Bessarabians went today!” whispered Zinovy.

“I'm afraid they are dead.”

“This is the way all will go,” the old man who was with us began a quiet prayer.

Silence again. It is cold. We are huddled together.

In the morning, at dawn, we quietly went around the entire attic and found a second entrance on its other end. We blocked it with scrap too. Then we returned to the center. In a dark, barely noticeable corner we found a large square water tank. It was rusty and empty and dry inside. We all fit in it, lay down, and began to listen. We spent all day there without food and water. Our second night in the attic was spent in the tank as well…

On the morning of October 27, hunger drove us out of the attic. We carefully climbed down, snuck into the cells and fell upon croutons and bread. We drank a lot of water, which was rather filthy and was brought from a well in the yard with great difficulty.

Before we even finished our modest breakfast, the door opened and soldiers together with a “foreman” showed up on the threshold.

“Haide! La lucru!”

We offered them everything we had: a golden chain, a ring, a watch. The soldiers took it all, smiled, and took us downstairs anyway.

“That's it! We screwed it up! It will be hard to get out now! This is the last day of my life!” thought I.

***

We were taken to the second prison yard. There was one SS squad with a machine-gun and automatic rifles, and another one consisted of Romanian soldiers. They ordered us to take spades already standing right there. They recorded everyone's names. We lined up and went out the gates. In the street we were surrounded by a squad that outnumbered us. And there were a hundred and twenty one of us. The machine-gun was following us.

We were walking as we were told, in a straight column, with spades on our shoulders. It was a sad walk. A lot of the old men were praying. We were walking toward the gunpowder warehouse. There were dead bodies on the sidewalk. We would stop, dig pits, throw the bodies in them, cover them with dirt and walk on. The corpses had been robbed; they were wearing nothing but underwear, not even shoes. They had wounds on their heads and blood on their undergarments. Some had their skulls and faces crushed.

We arrived at the artillery warehouses and went behind the barbed wire. All that was left of the buildings were smoke-covered walls; ceilings and doors were gone. Human body parts, and corpses without heads, legs and arms were scattered near the building. Their clothes were partly burned. The warehouses reeked with suffocating smoke and the stench of charred human bodies that was driving us mad.

They stopped us between two buildings. We stood still, surrounded by SS and Romanians with machine-guns. We were waiting for an order to dig our own graves.

A German officer yelled in broken Ukrainian:

“Before they left Odessa, Bolsheviks shot many thousands Germans, Romanians and Jews here. We buried Germans and Romanians ourselves, and you should bury Jews… Collect the scattered bodies in one pit. Dig some dirt and cover the corpses that are in the warehouses, but do it so they can't be seen! Start working right away!”

There were broken boards lying nearby. Prisoners used them to make barrows. Body parts and corpses were taken to a pit filled with water. Dead bodies were thrown into it. The pit was large, but in two hours it was full, and we had to dig another. It was soon filled to capacity as well. They ordered us to cover the pits with dirt and to carry the rest of the corpses to the warehouses and also cover them with dirt. I was carrying bodies in barrows and suffocating from the stench… My heart was beating fast… I would rest for a couple minutes while the others laid a corpse on the barrow.

They gave us a five-minute break. I glimpsed a golden ring, documents, and money. I picked up the ring and the passport, which was Bessarabian. Nearby I found another one, also Bessarabian… All the documents were Bessarabian!.. Those who had been happy thinking they were going home died here, those who kissed the murderous soldiers. Women, children, the elderly! How many did we take to the pits! We buried mutilated children's and women's arms, legs, heads! Babies who were still nursing, two-year-olds—what was their crime?..

The five-minute break was over.

The huge warehouse was crowded with bodies. Several layers of them… Over two thousand. All had been recently burned: a faint white smoke smelling of char was still coming from under them. Soot-covered faces were petrified with horror. One of the corpses, absolutely naked, stands above all of them. A women is clutching a child to her breast. Mother and daughter, all charred, are lying like a toppled black marble sculpture… There are a lot of such blackened statues here. Char and decayed human meat… I began to faint and fall down. A gun-butt poking me in the back made me come to… I picked up the barrow I'd dropped and went for more of my grisly load…

The transfer of the bodies was over. Now we had to shovel dirt. We had to make a quarter arsheen 2 layer. There was not enough dirt. Work was under way in 9 warehouses. All of them were stuffed with corpses. By my co-workers' and my own calculations, over 30,000 people were murdered at the artillery warehouses. The sun was setting when we finished our work. They told us to gather the spades and line up. We did. Officers counted us. All were present. We are waiting to be told to dig another grave, this time for ourselves.

“I'm warning you,” says the same officer, “that all of you, if asked, must answer that you were dismantling barricades! If even one of you says he was here, all will be shot!”

We began rapidly walking toward the prison. It was already dark when we turned our spades in at the first prison yard. I made my way to my cell with great difficulty and instinctively crawled under the bunk instead of taking my place, and blocked myself from sight with bundles of clothing. I could not sleep. Charred corpses were standing before me. At night Romanians and SS came—they were looking for those who'd worked at the artillery warehouses that day.

I got off again. That night almost all the people who had worked with me were exterminated.

***

I was under the bunk for 24 hours. I was the only male left in the cell, so Romanians stopped coming for “workforce.” There was no more reason to yell La lucru. My sister-in-law, Marusya, fed me so that no one would see, shoving dried bread under the bunk. Sometimes she would give me a couple sips of precious dirty water. The head of the ghetto would issue passes to town in exchange for valuables. My neighbor from our building, Goldstein, a Romanian Jew, bought passes for four people with Zinovy's watch, a rare chronometer. Those who went were myself, Goldstein, and another of my neighbors—Rofman. That was when an order to let everyone return to town before November 1 was issued. But we couldn't wait. We were too eager to go home, see our families, eat and drink plenty of water.

They released women, children and the elderly. I already looked like an old man and could join the crowd unnoticed. We, those who gave the bribe, left with the first group of women. I blessed the sky and land when I was finally outside the prison gates.

1 Come on! To work! (Rom.)
2 About 18 sm (translator's note).