I Shall Live (10 page)

To a great extent I was now the center of Father's life. Before the war he had always been too busy, and I too young, for us ever to have had much in the way of conversation. Now we talked about many things. He was very proud of my scholastic achievements, and whenever there was a school meeting with the parents he would attend, to hear
praise and compliments from my teachers. It made me happy to give him such pleasure, and for the first time we became very close.

Thanks to my academic record, the head of the local Komsomol approached me about joining the Communist youth organization. One could not advance far in the Soviet hierarchy without joining the Communist party, and the Komsomol was a preliminary step to becoming a Party member. He told me that even though I was a refugee, it was important that the best student set an example politically as well as academically. I was unprepared for this and became somewhat flustered. To gain time, I told him how grateful I was, but that I wanted to think over such an important decision, and would let him know.

It was a real dilemma. On the one hand, it would be helpful if we were forced to stay for any length of time in the Soviet Union, and in any case refusing might mark Father and me as “enemies of the people,” which could result in a long trip to Siberia. On the other hand, it might present a problem in the more distant future; assuming Hitler's eventual defeat, it could jeopardize our chances of returning home. And more immediately distasteful was the prospect of having to attend still more of those boring, phony political meetings. In the end, we decided that I should say nothing, and wait to see whether the Komsomol leader would pursue the matter. He never did, but I suspected that I had made an enemy and felt uneasy about it.

May 1 was Labor Day, and one of the two most important Soviet holidays. (The other was November 7, the anniversary of the Communist Revolution.) The Party scheduled a big parade, in which all strata of society were to be represented. Students were to march first, followed by members of the various trade organizations, farm co-ops, municipal employees, members of the local Communist
Party, and so forth. As always, the units of the Red Army, featuring a tank brigade, came last.

May Day 1941 was a beautiful day. We were all gathered in the schoolyard, where the teachers were trying to organize us, when the principal rushed in breathlessly and informed me that I had been chosen to lead the parade. I was given an enormous red flag to carry; luckily it wasn't windy, or I might have been swept away.

So here I was, marching all alone at the head of the parade, the great red flag rippling and swirling around me. As I entered the town square, I saw that it was jammed with thousands of spectators. Trying to keep a straight face at the thought of Father's astonishment when he saw me leading the procession, I marched past the stands filled with local dignitaries, looking for him in the crowd. Unfortunately I couldn't spot him, but this story became one of our favorites.

On the war front, nothing much was happening. England seemed safe now from invasion; Hitler had missed his chance, if ever there had been any. Still, Hitler's domination of Europe was complete for the time being, and we knew we were in for a long wait. Our only hope for the future was still America. We heard rumors that the Germans were concentrating their forces on the Russian border, which was alarming; the Russian-Finnish war had lowered our estimate of the Red Army's strength.

I became friendly with our math teacher, Mr. Urbaniak. He was a Pole who had spent most of his life in the Soviet Union, a graduate of Leningrad University who had taught high school there before being sent to Ołyka. He realized that I was capable of much more than our school curriculum required, and offered to tutor me in advanced math at his house after school. He and his wife, who was also a teacher, were near retirement age and had no children. They both took a liking to me, and I spent hours learning math from Mr. Urbaniak while Mrs. Urbaniak fed me tea and cookies. I developed
a fondness for trigonometry, and spent many hours at home solving the complicated problems that Mr. Urbaniak set for me.

Graduation day came, and again I received a prize as the best student. I was even prouder of a gift from Mr. Urbaniak, an old trigonometry book that he had received as a prize when a student in Leningrad. He inscribed it, “To Henry Orenstein, the best student I ever taught.” Later, when we were on the run, I carried this book with me as long as I could.

At the end of May, Sam and Felek arrived in Ołyka to spend their summer vacation with us. We were a little cramped all in one room, but very happy to be together again. The weather continued beautiful; we went swimming together and took long walks. But we hadn't heard from Mother in weeks, which worried us.

Talk of German troop concentrations on the Russian borders intensified. The BBC was predicting that an attack was imminent; one broadcast even pinpointed June 22. We weren't sure whether these reports represented anything more than wishful thinking by the English, who were naturally weary of resisting Hitler all alone. But in any event, Ołyka was more than a hundred kilometers from the border, and we didn't feel immediately threatened even if war should break out.

The Soviet radio and press gave no hint of potential trouble. Soviet freight trains loaded with grain and other supplies continued rolling to Germany. Whenever she was mentioned on the Soviet radio, it was in the usual neutralist vein. Soviet criticism was still reserved for the capitalist West. We decided that since the Russians weren't worried, why should we be, and continued to enjoy the beautiful spring and summer of 1941.

June 22 1941, was a beautiful sunny day. It wasn't hot yet, and a gentle breeze made it even more pleasant. I got up early that morning and went to a park where school kids played soccer and basketball. I noticed a few people in a cluster, talking excitedly. Early that morning the Germans had attacked Russia.

So this was it. All kinds of thoughts were racing in my mind: the excitement of a gigantic struggle between two large armies, fear of the Germans, hope that all this could somehow lead to the end of the war. I rushed home with the news. Sam, Felek, Father, and I spent the whole day talking, worrying, hoping. Since we were a hundred kilometers from the border, we felt that we were in no immediate danger. The Soviet army was very large and well equipped; even at worst, it would certainly not collapse as quickly as had the Polish army.

The Soviet radio made no announcement until late in the day. When it came, it was, of course, typical Soviet propaganda: “The heroic Soviet army will deal the treacherous fascist invaders a
crushing blow,” and so on. Even the master of treachery himself, Stalin, apparently found it difficult to believe that Hitler, his new friend and ally, would launch such a massive attack against him without the slightest provocation or warning. Even though we were caught in the middle, we felt a certain satisfaction at the ignominious end of the cynical pact between those two despots.

Once again, as in September 1939, it was likely that Sam and Felek—and this time perhaps I as well—would be mobilized. And once again, it all became academic because of the rapid advances of the German army. By the third day of the war we watched, with dis-belief and broken hearts, Russian tanks and soldiers fleeing east in a disorderly retreat. Soon the BBC confirmed German claims of having dealt the Soviets a smashing defeat, and those menacing low-flying Stukas appeared in the skies without challenge from Soviet fighter planes.

Once more we discussed our options. We might flee with the Russians; the problem there was that Father was ill with asthma and had a double hernia, and it would have been very dangerous for him to embark on a long journey without knowing whether medical care would be available at any point along the way. We felt—as events were to prove, correctly—that almost certainly we would have been caught by the rapid advance of the German armies, and would have found ourselves somewhere in the Ukraine without the conveniences of our temporary home in Ołyka. The idea of escaping into the forests, as a few young people were thinking of doing, we never seriously considered, mainly because of Father's health.

Hitler had not yet begun his systematic destruction of the Jews. After the collapse of Poland there was a wave of atrocities, usually forced marches on which tens of thousands of Jews, mainly men, were killed by the Einsatzkommandos. That was followed by
a period of increasingly dehumanizing policies: Jews were sealed into ghettos, were forced to surrender most of their money in the form of “contributions,” and were made to suffer many indignities. But there had been no mass killings including women and children, as yet. The speeches of Hitler and his lieutenants included a great deal of rhetoric concerning their plans for rendering Europe free of Jews (
Judenrein
), “stamping out the Jewish vermin,” and so forth, but only the extreme pessimists could believe that Germany, a nation of poets, philosophers, musicians, and scientists, a nation that had given the world Beethoven, Goethe, and Kant, could actually embark on a program of deliberate mass extermination of the Jewish people as a whole, including innocent children, helpless old people, and women.

So we decided to wait for the arrival of the Germans and their occupation, hoping that we would survive somehow, that the Russians, with the help of “General Winter,” would eventually defeat Hitler as they had Napoleon in 1812, and that America would sooner or later enter the war and rescue Europe once again as she had in World War I.

We thought too that in the meantime we might find a chance to rejoin the rest of our family in Hrubieszów. It was now a year and nine months since we had left home, and we missed them more than ever.

Meanwhile, the Russian retreat was becoming a rout. Demoralized Soviet soldiers came through Ołyka, sometimes without their weapons. On June 27 we heard for the first time the threatening rumble of artillery in action. The Stukas were flying low over the town, attacking anything that moved. Clearly it was a matter of hours before the Germans arrived, and so we, together with many others, sought refuge in caves in the hillsides of the main road on the outskirts of Ołyka.

Never will I forget the entry of the German army into Ołyka. First we heard the distant roar of hundreds of approaching vehicles, which became louder and louder. Then we heard commands shouted in German, and a large column of the German army came into sight—first motorcycles, then tanks, trucks filled with soldiers, artillery, and hundreds of foot soldiers. The column was moving along in a very orderly fashion; the soldiers' uniforms were clean and fresh, as though they had never seen battle. Officers in open command cars were barking orders and talking to each other loudly. It looked more like a parade of a victorious army than a combat force. There was fear in our hearts; the Germans sounded harsh and arrogant, and we were awed by the power and efficiency of the German war machine.

Even though we had expected it, we were still surprised by the warmth and enthusiasm with which the Ukrainian population met the Germans. Women threw flowers at the soldiers, people ran up to them waving greetings and offering them bread and salt as a
symbolic gesture of friendship. There was no sign of any hostility. Apparently the Ukrainians were not aware of Hitler's opinion of them—indeed, of all Slavs. They didn't know that they were classed as
Untermenschen
(subhumans), and that plans were already under way to exterminate most of them to make room
(Lebensraum)
for the Germanic peoples.
*

The first couple of weeks under the German occupation were not so bad for the Jews as we had feared. The German army passed quickly through the Ołyka area in pursuit of the Russians, meeting only sporadic resistance. If any Germans remained behind in Ołyka, we didn't see them. A few Ukrainians had been appointed by the Germans to take over local government, and there was no shortage of food or other basic commodities.

The rapid advance of the German army and the Red Army's inability to hold any defensive lines took everyone by surprise. Every day German newspapers and radio gave the names of the cities newly fallen to the onrushing Germans: Zhitomir, Minsk, Smolensk. The German war communiqués spoke of gigantic encirclements, with entire Soviet armies surrounded and annihilated. Five hundred thousand Russians were trapped in a huge pocket in Byelorussia, six hundred thousand in the Ukraine. Most were killed or taken prisoner. The Germans seemed unstoppable.