The Riddle Of Babi Yar by Trubakov Ziama

Author:Trubakov, Ziama [Trubakov, Ziama]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

V.THE DESPERATE SEVENTEEN

From our first days at Babi Yar Volodya Kuklia, Yakov Kaper, and I never stopped thinking about the escape. We reviewed dozes different versions and rejected them all. The recent incident with the tunnel was a sad lesson to learn from. And still, we wouldn’t give up.

With extreme caution we vegan to select a group of the most trusted comrades. In addition to the three of us, it included: Lionya Doliner, Volodya Davydov, Danyil Budnik, Yakov Steyuk, Fillip Vilkis, Leonid Kharash, Leonid Ostrovsky, Zhora Bazhenov, Kalashnikov (I don’t remember his first name), Vladimir Kotliar, Kiva Krichevsky, Boris Yaroslavsky, Anton Baranovsky, Senya Berlyand. The desperate seventeen!

But all of us would never gather at the same time -- it would give us away immediately. We had to observe the rules of secrecy, even though we have never been taught this ‘science’; we just had to work it out all by ourselves.

When Yasha Kaper and I discussed a proposal, only few of us knew about it: Yakov would tell only Budnik and I would tell only Davydov. And each of them would only tell one person. This way we passed all the necessary information and discussed all the questions. While working, whenever we had a chance, we would exchange short phrases, which were meaningful only to us. An outsider wouldn’t have clue what we were talking about…

I have already mentioned that there were six teenagers working with us in the camp. The conditions, unendurable for adults, proved to be detrimental for these boys. Four of them had already died, the fifth one was just recently ‘transferred’ to the oven. The remaining boy, Kolya, was stout and muscular. I believed he would survive in this hell. How wrong I was to think that such a miracle was possible!

Once, during breakfast, Kolya attempted to stealthily take one more ration of bread. He was caught in the act and made to kneel with his hands up. He had to stay in this position until everyone finished eating. To make the matters worse, the Sturmbannführer, the head of Sonderkommando, came and asked why the boy was punished.

After hearing the guard’s report he called Kolya over to the table and graciously allowed him to take food. This sudden act of kindness alerted me and as watching from the corner of my eye what was going to happen next.

In response to Kolya’s joy, the Sturmbannführer told him (through the interpreter, of course) that since the guards wanted him to kneel, this was how he should eat his bread -- on his knees. As soon as the boy raised his hand with bread to his mouth, a shot rang out. The boy fell dead on the floor before he could take a bite of the Nazi treat. Bloody bread indeed…

On the executioner’s order we lifted Kolya, walked down the pit and put him on the oven. In his dead fist he was still clutching his portion of bread for which he paid with his life. I couldn’t keep

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