The Shimon Greenhouse’s story (2)

(continuation; part 1 

In 1942, my brother and sister decided to go to the partisans, but the partisans rarely accepted Jews without weapons. Mendel and Henya worked as well in the military camp, and mainly dealt with weapons brought from the front. They managed to steal a few guns – every time they used to steal one. At the end of the week we received food: a loaf of bread, which included 50% sawdust, and 50% flour, which was already almost uneatable. In addition to the bread, we got a few kilos of potatoes, but rotten. Then my brother dismantled the gun, the main part was put into a loaf of bread, the rest hid in the potatoes and let me move. I managed to get some guns.

My brother organized a group of young people and transferred people to the partisans. And he repeated it several times… he even managed to transfer two soldiers of the German army. I think they were not Germans – probably, the Dutch, the anti-fascists.

The Judenrat was already different, headed by dishonest people, sometimes even criminals, and the Jewish police as well… on the threshold. They sold, bought, made all sorts of deals among themselves. There was one Jewish policeman, hated more than the Germans. He always beat us, laughed and said, “I’ll call a German officer, he’ll shoot you.” Such was his preferable joke. Finally the Judenrat learned that my brother was involved with the partisans. They arrested him. In the winter, dressed only in one shirt, he was brought into the cellar and told he would be handed over to the Germans. His friends collected many valuable things, and they gave a ransom to the chief policeman and the head of the Judenrat. These people agreed to release my brother, but he had to sign a document that he would stop guerrilla activities, and if not, the Judenrat would transfer the entire family (including me and my sister) to execution.

Everywhere around Krasnaye, for example, in Haradok, Alyakhnovichy, Radashkovichy, even in Maladziechna, all the Jews had already been killed. But the young men were transferred to us because the Germans needed the manpower. This is how the Krasnaye ghetto grew, and along with the nearby camp, included about 5,000 Jews.

We felt the end was coming, still life was going on in the ghetto. Even before that, activists had opened Jewish schools, a chess circle (I played chess from time to time, and later at the university I was the champion of the faculty, and the leader of the Maladziechna region in draughts), even a small theater. My brother and sister also took part. By the way, my brother had a girlfriend and my sister had a boyfriend.

In the ghetto people helped each other, but sometimes also cheated. Trade was quite active. With a knife on their throat the inmates continued to trade and tried to cheat… and I still remember even more ugly thing. A group of hooligans traveled with policemen. The Germans did not allow women to become pregnant, but if a woman was close to the Judenrat, it somehow passed. They prepared a large list, and when they saw that the pregnant woman was waiting for the birth, and when her husband went to work they broke into the house, tossed her on the ground, and danced on her belly. They waited for the fetus to get out, and if he was dead, they laughed, and if he was still alive, they killed him.

The school was organized by the youth and some teacher, I do not remember exactly. There were many teachers in the ghetto. We returned from work after six in the evening. We usually went for an hour to study math or Hebrew. It was not exactly a school. There were two synagogue buildings in the ghetto, where families also lived. But there were parts still separated as holy places. Activists put tables and chairs. We used to come – 20, 10 children, sometimes 5 – and every evening we used to learn a little. Sometimes I went to see theatrical plays (I don’t remember much about them, I think some of the inmates wrote them themselves, there were many talented people in the ghetto).

Teachers and students of the Таrbut school in Krasnaye before WWII. Mr. Iekutiel (Kushel) Greenhouse, Shimon’s father, was the head of the school’s council. He seats in the 2^nd row from below (3^rd from the right).

The theater was also set up by young people, including my brother and sister. There was mutual help – many Jews came from other places with empty hands, and they received food, a place to dwell… All the system was well organized, but I do not remember the names of the organizers. But I remember another act of heroism. There were two sisters in the ghetto, and one of them had a baby. She had no husband. She must have been a Communist – and someone, apparently, laid information to the Germans. They broke into her house and asked where was the Communist. Then her unmarried sister said, “I’m a Communist,” so they shot her on the spot. She sacrificed herself in order to continue life of the mother and the baby.

I remember that some inmates constructed a radio (we picked up the receiver ourselves), and listened to what was going on at the front, in Russia. In the year of 1942 great battles were fought near Leningrad, near Moscow, and in 1943 the battle of Stalingrad… We understood that the Germans would probably lose this war.

There was a secret trade – we bought bread, and other food. We sang songs almost every week. One of the houses gathered young people, maybe even every day, I did not always participate, I was only 12. The songs were rather optimistic than not. I also remember that we had all kinds of jokes. We worked in the military camp, sorting and repairing weapons. When the train arrived from the front with broken tanks and weapons, we always laughed and said: “This is redemption, here comes our rescue.” We looked out the window, worked – and saw the train approaching and we were always happy. We knew what was happening on the fronts, listened to the radio, and somehow everyone got news. Mainly, what was happening on the Russian front, less in America.

I do not remember that we were overcome by despair at work. We cooked our food, laughed, joked to raise our spirits.

We saw that the end was approaching, because all the Jews around us had already been killed. We, several families, lived in a large hall. The floor was made of wood. There was a large cellar in the house, so we built a wall and made part of the basement a pit. And I remember that Purim evening was about to come. In the morning – apparently on Friday – we saw that the Germans were entering, they were surrounding the ghetto, and we understood that this was the end. The Germans came when the men went to work in order to prevent the resistance. We, 30 people, entered this pit, and my other grandmother put down the boards and put all kinds of rags and mattresses on them. We heard the Germans break into the house and shoot my grandmother. I do not even remember her name – probably, Golda.

And we sat in the pit. At first we had some food and water, and after a few days (we could not leave, there was a guard outside) the water was almost over. The elders started giving us water in very small doses. We had one little girl – maybe she was two years old. And she screamed very hard, we were afraid the Germans would hear. She wanted more water – they would not let her, but they let her drink urine, and she roared even louder. We were afraid that the Germans would find us, and forced her mother to strangle her. The mother tried, but she had no strength – neither moral nor physical. So two men tried to kill the child. We could not cry, we were afraid to cry, so they would not hear us. But after 20 minutes we hear her voice, though rather hoarse. She stayed alive, after the war we were keeping in touch, she left for America, I think. After the war she could not talk, she had a lot of throat surgery… There were signs of strangulation on her neck.

On the fourth day, the Germans allowed the local population to start looting Jewish property. And we heard over our heads the name of our family, where the father, the mother… and these people are so happy, they began taking everything, robbing… and by the evening they started knocking on the floor, saw that there was something there, and thought it was “Jewish wealth.” They began fighting for the property, two German policemen came and said, “We are at work now, do not open the floor today, we also want to take part in the Jewish good, we will come tomorrow morning.” The ghetto, it was near the Usha River.

We knew we had to go toward the partisans. We saw a big fire, felt the smell, as if they had roasted meat. Later we were told us that there was a huge stable near the river, the Germans took all the Jews from work (they said that all dwellers had to be disinfected) and burned them. Among the victims were my brother and sister. I think that a few thousand Jews were burned alive. We were told that the river was red with blood, which for several days was spilled from the barn, and when the Jews tried to get out of the fire, the Germans pushed them back into the fire with long sticks. The Germans brought dozens of small Jewish children, put them on bayonets. And they competed with each other, who would sink deeper into the fire. And then they celebrated the massacre with vodka, sausage, cigars…

Portrait of brother Mendl and sister Henya, which is hung in Shimon’s flat. Petah-Tikva, June 2017.

We walked as if it was in a dream. On the way, the Germans or the local police shot at us, and half of us were killed. When we were on the field – they shot, when we entered the forest, they stopped, they got bored. It was like that a few times. Of the thirty people, 10 remained, perhaps 12.

Excerpt from the list of victims of the Krasnaye ghetto taken from the book: С. В. Старыкевіч. Красненскія таямніцы. Маладзечна, 2012. Shimon’s father, brother and sister listed there under the name «Грингавш» (Greenhawsh).

The local population did not hand us over to the Germans, on the contrary, they showed us how to go toward the partisans. And two days later we reached a guerilla unit. The partisans did not welcome us with flowers, but they did not do us anything wrong either. They allowed us to join their troop, to be close. But for me it was even a worse time than in the ghetto. I had no shoes, and my pants were all torn. We picked leaves from the trees, lit a fire, sat down and warmed our bodies a bit, and meanwhile our faces were getting ice. Then I turned and warmed my face. At that time there were still no dugouts. This lasted for a month or more, in the spring of 1943. Afterwards I was drafted into the partisans, I was 13 years old.

In this unit – it seems, named after Voroshilov – there were several Jews. They came and chose comrades, and they recruited me too. The rest of the Jews – women, the elderly – dug earth-houses. We reached a huge swamp, only occasionally encountering the islands where it was possible to dig a hole, but there, too, if dig too much, you reach the water. And the rest were marshes, where no one walked, perhaps for decades. And I remember there were only two stitches to go through. If a person slipped and fell into the marsh, and no one helped him, then the man would disappear without a trace.

It was between Krasnaye and Ilya, eastward, between Khatsenchytsy and Plieshchanitsy… There was a big forest.

We made dugouts for women, and life improved. And I was in the partisans, and the partisan units resembled an army. Planes with weapons were sent for us, supplies came from Russia. Many military officers and commissars arrived. There was discipline, like within military units. I do not remember that there was something anti-Semitic, the attitude toward us was generous.

The area came to be divided into three parts: the cities where the Germans lived and where the police stood; areas where the Germans were afraid to appear altogether, as if these were areas of the Soviet Union, and the third, the largest part, controlled by the Germans on the day, and by us at night. The population was quite friendly towards the partisans. They gave us food, so we did not even have to steal.

Our work included searching for German collaborators. Suppose we were told that in a certain village there were some families that helped the Germans, so we went there at night… We were interrogators, judges and executors at the same time. Usually the case ended with gunfire. I also participated in such operations more than once.

The Germans were more organized. If they were told – here, in this village people were helping the partisans – they would come at night, gather them all in the barn and burn them.

Of course, there were different people among the Belarusians. For example, the Starykievich brothers – one of them served in the police, another in the partisans.

You ask who taught me to shoot? There was enough weapons, you could go and train yourself. Every day we went and practiced. Explosives we stole from the Germans, or people from Russia took them off the plane for us. Almost every night the plane took off something – weapons, leaflets, or even officers.

We blew up trains carrying weapons to the front. I was not a big hero there even because of my age (I was only 13…) I remember having two friends. One was called Yasha, the other Sasha, he was maybe 17 years old, not from our town. We were friends, but we never talked about what was going on, and I did not even know if they were Jewish or not. There were many battles, in one of them we tried to blow up a German bunker. They fired so much that we could not even raise our heads. So Yasha got up, blew a grenade near the bunker, and we could move forward.

You remember, of course, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg. By the way, his grandson was a student at my school in Petah Tikva, a good chess player. Ilya Ehrenburg wrote an article entitled “Retaliation.” And the Soviets sent us in the plane thousands of newspapers with this article, like a newsletter. I remember that every partisan fighter kept this article in a pocket close to his heart, and that gave us additional strength against the Germans.

And so we went on. The bullet hit Yasha’s heart and this article. For a long time I kept home the newspaper with a hole, and covered by blood. Now I do not know where it is.

We caused such damage to the Germans that they decided to liquidate our guerrilla unit. They brought troops from the front – and began to push us deep into the forest. We had a horse, and we were carrying weapons, and the horse fell from the stitches. And then, if the gun pointed at me (remember, when a German almost killed us at the woman’s house) I see only from time to time, this horse I see all the time… He looks at you, his legs begin to disappear, you see only his mouth, his eyes begin to disappear, you see ears, and then the ears begin to disappear – and as if nothing had happened… This picture does not leave me until today.

Then we hardly got out of that trap, in one of the battles I lost parts of my fingers due to an explosion. There were no medicines, not even clean water. The swamp had yellow water with lots of small insects inside. And someone squeezed my hand too hard and it began to rot. It was already in the summer of 1944, when the Red Army liberated the district, and there they set up a hospital – temporary, without medication… They took me there. When the doctors arrived, they did not understand why I was still alive. They decided for an amputation, but there was a young doctor there, a military man, he said, “Give him to me, I’ll try to come over”. He took a saw and started cutting… I immediately lost consciousness.

Next to the camp, of the hospital, there was a distillery. The doctor found bottles with 95% alcohol and brought them to me. And that alcohol burns everything inside, so he taught me how to drink it. Take some juice or water – do not mix, just pour alcohol, some more juice. Then the alcohol goes around, enters the belly, and there it spreads… I immediately lost consciousness, and he continued the operation and saved my hand, I do not know how.

Then my mother and I went back to Krasnaye. Our house burned down, everything burned, but it was just a part – a stone building, something like a warehouse, and we started dwelling there. It was winter, the water became ice and my hair was freezing on the pillow. I had a dog and a cat, and it was so cold that when I sat at the table, they clung to me to keep warm. Then I found some iron stove, but I probably did not fix it properly. At night, smoke came out of the burning furnace and we all lost consciousness. In the morning, the neighbors saw that the house was closed, no one was there. They came in, took us out, wiped us in the snow… but the cat and the dog died. Man is stronger than any animal.

I have told you only some of the cases in which I was on a threshold of death.

(to be continued)

(translated by Igor Shustin)