Beyond the Shadow of Night Page 15

  Mykhail thought for a second about self-preservation. He thought it stank. Or perhaps he no longer cared; there wasn’t much of him left to preserve. “I’m Ukrainian,” he said. “And if you call me Russian again, I’ll make you kill me.”

  At this, every trace of humor dropped from the guard’s face. He walked back, dragging Mykhail along by his knees. That wasn’t hard; the guard was a couple of inches shorter than Mykhail but he was fit and well fed. As he pulled Mykhail back he cracked his rifle against the back of Mykhail’s hand, making him drop the moldy bread into the mud.

  They stopped at the fence, where the guard spoke in Ukrainian as if a switch had been flicked. “You’re Russian,” he said. “You’re Russian and you’re a pig. You’re a filthy, disease-ridden pig.” He lifted his rifle up to Mykhail’s throat. “So go on, Russian pig. Make me kill you.”

  Mykhail said nothing, just froze and looked the man in the eye.

  After a while the guard withdrew his rifle, smirked, and started walking off.

  “Ukrainian!” Mykhail shouted out after him. There was no reason, no logic, no element of self-preservation. It was suicidal. Perhaps that was the idea.

  Within seconds the guard was standing above him again. This time he didn’t raise his rifle, so Mykhail repeated the word, sensing the end—the end of his suffering. His heart didn’t race; it had no energy for that.

  The guard burst into mocking laughter. “You’re a brave man,” he said. He pointed to Mykhail’s face. “Is that where you got that scar, from fighting?”

  “I’m not brave,” Mykhail replied. “Look around you. What do I have to lose?”

  The guard cast his eye over the mass of bodies—alive, dead, and a hundred stages in between. “I’m Ukrainian too,” he said. “Tell me, where are you from?”

  “Dyovsta,” Mykhail replied.

  “I’ve heard of that.” The guard thumbed his chest. “I’m from a tiny village near Tarnopol in Galicia.”

  Mykhail had heard about Ukrainian men joining the SS—that there was actually a Ukrainian SS regiment—but never quite believed it. Here was proof.

  “You must really hate the Russians,” the guard said.

  “I remember what they did to my people,” Mykhail replied. “In the early thirties.”

  “Me too. Stalin’s starvation. Yet you fought alongside them?”

  Mykhail shrugged, and winced at the pain in his emaciated shoulders. What could he say? He could mention that the Russians effectively prevented his mama having more children. But so much had come to pass since he’d struggled with his principles on the issue.

  Then the guard said, “You hate the Germans too?”

  Mykhail cast a lazy arm at the prisoners behind him. “The Germans who keep me in this living hell? Germans who treat us worse than animals?”

  “But what if you were allowed out of the camp?”

  Mykhail, puzzled, hesitated. “To where?” he said. “For what purpose?”

  “Labor is needed in Germany and elsewhere. People we can trust. Just tell me you’re not Jewish.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You know, if you’re lying I will find out, and I really will kill you.”

  “Do what you need to. I’m not Jewish.”

  “In that case I could recommend you, and you could get out of this place.”

  “What would you want in return?”

  The guard grunted a laugh. “Don’t fool yourself; you have nothing I might want in a million years.”

  Mykhail, for weeks thinking he couldn’t feel any more wretched, now felt one inch tall. But the guard didn’t need to ask twice, and Mykhail didn’t need to take another look at the POW camp.

  Mykhail was dragged out of the camp the very next day—not told anything, just ordered into a truck at gunpoint. He was taken to somewhere they called the Trawniki camp. It was a strange place, a kind of training facility in Poland for people who should have been enemies of the Germans but had been “persuaded” to work for them.

  Mykhail was confused, although he did find out why the guard at Kiev had saved him: he was on a commission of sorts for providing reliable labor for the German war effort.

  Mykhail spent the first few weeks at the camp getting his health back—that and getting used to sleeping in a bed again after so long sleeping in muddy fields. He had no idea what they needed him for, but in time they assessed every aspect of his skills, involving tests and interviews.

  It was soon after these that he was summoned from his barracks and marched to a worryingly official-looking building, into a room dominated by three men seated behind a large desk.

  The men talked in German among themselves, then Mykhail heard his name and they all perused sheets of paper before one of them looked across at him and spoke in passable Ukrainian.

  “They say you’re good with engines, Petrenko?”

  “I’ve repaired tractors and—”

  “Speak up!” another one of the men said.

  Mykhail cleared his throat and decided to speak with a measure of confidence, hoping it wouldn’t be taken as a sign of insolence or arrogance.

  “I was brought up on a farm, and when the farm first acquired a tractor I learned the basics of how it operated and how it needed to be maintained. I became well known throughout the surrounding villages for being able to diagnose and fix most mechanical problems. From there I learned about civilian vehicles—both gasoline and diesel—and during the last few weeks of fighting in and around Kiev I was responsible for tank maintenance.”

  The three men looked slightly shocked, and Mykhail could feel his heart racing, wondering if he’d said too much, but eventually they started muttering among themselves, after which Mykhail was marched back to the barracks none the wiser.

  The next day he was taken to a workshop, the inside of which was almost entirely filled by a large tank. In front of the three men he’d seen the previous day, he was asked what he knew about the vehicle.

  Still unsure what the hell this was all about, Mykhail decided he had little to lose and a lot to gain, so spoke again with confidence.

  “It’s a German model,” he said, “whereas I’m more familiar with Soviet tanks.” He sauntered around the vehicle, peering at the air intake, checking the brackets around the exhaust, opening the engine cover and tapping his fingers on a few of the components inside. “But the principles are much the same,” he continued, and proceeded to explain—from the fuel and air intake to the compression cycle and to the emission of exhaust gases—precisely how the engine operated, to the approving nods of the onlookers.

  They were clearly impressed, but still didn’t tell Mykhail what they had in mind. And he didn’t dare ask.

  Soon afterward he was shipped out of the training camp, with no idea where he was going or why.

  When he arrived, it seemed a pleasant place—a small settlement of huts and buildings in the middle of the countryside. It even had its own dedicated railroad station, with the name “Treblinka” on the platform. A set of carriages pulled up, holding more people than seemed possible. The people looked quite ill and were shoved this way and that by guards with rather nasty-looking dogs. Mykhail was told not to look at them—which was difficult considering the number of people—and was shown to his quarters. The building was like an army barracks, not much more than a shed, but it was a palace compared to the hell of the POW camp.

  He was told he would be collected for work within the hour, and decided to spend that time resting in his bunk, which was still a paradise of sorts and to be savored.

  As well as rumors about Ukrainian SS divisions, there had always been rumors about secret camps hidden all over Germany and the countries under its command, where conditions were desperately poor for prisoners—mostly Jews.

  Mykhail wondered whether this was one such camp. He was unsure for two reasons. For one thing, there weren’t many guards or other staff. For another, there simply wasn’t the room—perhaps only twenty or thirty buildings, mostly s
mall. And Mykhail didn’t feel like a prisoner, although he told himself never to show complete trust in anyone.

  After a while he heard voices outside and sat up. The doors opened and a handful of men came in. They were speaking Ukrainian. Mykhail immediately felt better: this far from home, these men were as good as brothers. He got up and introduced himself. They talked openly of the routine of roll call, mealtimes, and suchlike. They weren’t exactly happy, but they looked to be in relatively good health.

  Then Mykhail said, “So, what’s the purpose of this camp?”

  They all stopped what they were doing for a second and glanced at one another. One gave Mykhail a very worried look.

  “I mean, what have you just been doing?”

  Still they didn’t speak.

  “You’ll be told what part you play in good time,” one of them said.

  Mykhail was puzzled. These men were all able-bodied, and although slim didn’t look dangerously ill. So whatever they were doing, it wasn’t harming them.

  Thinking he might have somehow offended them, Mykhail got back into his bunk and kept quiet.

  A few minutes later, someone else entered—a uniformed guard—and told Mykhail to follow him. He spoke Ukrainian too. He didn’t utter another word until they reached a narrow path, camouflaged on both sides. He told Mykhail it was referred to as the Himmelstrasse. Mykhail clumsily repeated the word, and then the guard told him in Ukrainian what it meant: “Road to Heaven.” A polite smile played on Mykhail’s lips. Was this man joking? It sounded a strange name for a path.

  That was when Mykhail heard the noise—a distant throbbing—which got louder as they walked on. At the end of the Himmelstrasse they came to another section of the camp, hidden from the rest, and Mykhail was led to a large brick building. At the nearest door—which was shut—a few people rested outside. Two were German guards, the rest appeared to be civilians.

  The civilians were naked. Mykhail could feel his body starting to tremble as his imagination ran wild.

  The throbbing noise was coming from inside this building. Now Mykhail recognized the noise: it was a big engine, whether diesel or gasoline he was too numb to consider. He was taken to the far end of the building, where the guard opened a door and told Mykhail to go in.

  It was some sort of pump room, quite warm and dark, with an oily smell. But the room was dominated by the sound and sight of something Mykhail knew well—an engine from one of the tanks he was used to working on.

  “You’re the mechanic,” the guard said. “Your job is to keep the engine running.”

  “All day?” Mykhail asked.

  “Most of the day, most of the night, every day, every week. You stop the engine when you are told to, you start the engine when you are told to. It must not break down under any circumstances. Your life depends upon it.”

  Mykhail glanced at two medium-bore pipes, which he determined from the orientation of the engine to be the intake and the exhaust. They both went through the wall into another room of the same building.

  “What is it for?” he said.

  “If fuel gets low you have to tell me or another guard. If you need to stop it for maintenance you must tell me or another guard. If there are exhaust leaks you must stop them and tell me or another guard. You must keep the level of carbon monoxide produced as high as you can. Do you understand all of that?”

  Many questions were rattling around in Mykhail’s mind. But he didn’t want to know the answers. He nodded, and the guard left.

  It wasn’t long before Mykhail found out why he was there.

  At first he didn’t know the full details, but he heard the screams and shouts coming from the other side of the wall, and wished the engine was even louder so it would drown out those sounds of a place worse than hell. Even deafen him, perhaps.

  And then, worse, there was a blur of the darkest emotions when he did find out, a sense that he wanted to be elsewhere, that this couldn’t be happening. There was a commotion, rifles being used. Mykhail was called outside. He was told that others were supposed to carry out the task, but they had refused and been shot. So Mykhail had to step in, removing the still-warm bodies from the chamber, dragging them away and dropping them into nearby pits dug deep in the earth.

  In the POW camp there had been constant physical suffering.

  Mykhail wondered whether this was any better.

  Chapter 17

  Warsaw, Poland, 1943

  Nobody spoke again of the food Rina was bringing into the Kogan household. It appeared in the kitchen, Mama cooked it, and they all ate it. It was mainly due to that food that the Kogans and the Slominskis survived into early 1943 in reasonable health. Papa often forced the idea home, saying this food was reasonable or the room was reasonably warm. It was only during the increasingly frequent arguments that Papa’s veil of optimism slipped, when he said in anger that even being alive wasn’t reasonable under the circumstances. Words were only words, but Asher knew Papa’s health was not good, the cough having now taken up permanent residence in his chest.

  One day, during a silent breakfast, there was another knock at the door. Everyone looked to Mama, who turned to Papa. He didn’t move for a few seconds. It was as though they all had now come to recognize an “official knock.” Mama offered to answer it, but Papa said no, and slowly got to his feet and ambled over.

  He opened the door. There was a man. There were also soldiers. A few words were exchanged, then Papa turned back and called for Oskar to join him, closing the door behind them. The others waited, not speaking.

  When they returned inside, Papa did no more than bow his head, as if to hide his expression, while Oskar stared at the faces of the others, their mouths agape.

  “What’s happened?” Mama said. “What is it?”

  “We have to leave,” Oskar said. “They say it’s our turn.”

  Mama gave her husband a look of horror. “Is this true, Hirsch?”

  He nodded solemnly. “It . . . could be a good thing.”

  “What do you mean?” Rina said. “Where do you think they want to take us?”

  “Somewhere better than this,” he said flatly.

  “I agree,” Mama said. “Let’s try to hope. You never know, it could be a place with more room, perhaps space to grow our own vegetables again and even keep a few chickens.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rina said. “Haven’t you heard—”

  “Rina!” Papa said. “Don’t talk to your mama like that.”

  “But—”

  Rina shrieked as his fist hit the table.

  “Stop it!” He took a breath, coughed a little, and struggled to lower his voice. “The guards are rounding up the whole street. We have no choice. Thousands have been moved out in the last few days, and hundreds who argued have been shot dead. Do you want that?”

  Rina said nothing.

  “And look around you. Think of what we’ve been eating for the past year. We manage better than many, but it’s still mostly scraps hardly fit for animals. We all keep losing weight. Could it be any worse than this?”

  “When do they want us to leave?” Keren said.

  He sighed. “Now. We have to go now.”

  “This minute?” Mama said. “Without warning?”

  Papa nodded. “We each have to pack as much as we can into a single suitcase. The guards will accompany us to the meeting point next to the railroad station.”

  Nobody spoke for a few moments.

  Then Rina said quietly, “I’m not going.”

  “Oh, come on,” Mama said. “There might be jobs. Think of us living a better life. You heard your papa; it can’t be any worse than this broken shell of a home.”

  Rina shook her head. “But surely we all know the rumors. Papa? Oskar? Keren?” She looked at each of them in turn. “You must know all those people have gone to their deaths? And you, Asher.” She stared at him, her eyes wide and questioning. “You’re happy to simply give yourself up to these people?”

  Ashe
r opened his mouth to speak. Yes, he knew the rumors, but also knew not to talk of them for fear of upsetting people.

  “I say we should stay and fight,” Rina said. “Asher?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” he replied. “What do we fight with?”

  “Leave that to me,” she replied. “I have contacts.”

  “You know people who can supply guns?” Papa asked.

  Her face blushed. “I . . . I know people who need bullets.”

  Papa gave her a sideways look, then shook the thought from his head.

  “I say we stay,” she said. “Who’s with me?”

  Asher thought for a moment, torn between loyalty to his parents and the courage of his sister. “I am,” he said quietly. He glanced at the other shocked faces, then added, “I want to fight too.”

  “Well done,” Rina said. “And what about you, Oskar? Do you want to fight or leave the city?” She glanced at Sala, her belly now full and round. “I’m sorry, I forgot.”

  “Of course,” Oskar said. “There’s no way we could live in hiding places. Besides, I’m a pacifist. I will not point a gun at anybody on principle.” He looked at Sala, who held his hand and nodded agreement.

  “I agree with them,” Mama said. “I don’t want to kill people. And I certainly don’t want to stay here.”

  “Me neither,” Keren said.

  Mama turned to her other children. “Rina, Asher, come with us. Please.”

  Asher looked at Rina and felt her stare willing him on.

  “No,” Rina said. “I don’t trust them.”

  “We don’t know what awaits us at the other end of the train journey,” Mama continued. “But we know what’s here. It’s dangerous—very dangerous. This is the center of a war zone and we’ll be shot if we stay here. Maybe I’m optimistic, thinking of growing vegetables and keeping chickens, but it’s like your papa said, wherever they’re taking us, could it really be any worse than here?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rina replied. “It certainly could. So I still say we should stay and fight.”