And Then They Shot Him
This piece, my reflections on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, appears in The Jewish Standard this week.
A look at uncounted victims of the Holocaust by bullets
“Eastern Europe’s Killing Fields,” ran the subhead at the bottom of the New York Times. Underneath it, the caption read, “Many of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were killed by executioners’ bullets, historians have learned.”
It was Tuesday morning, the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It was also the second day back at school after the end of yeshiva break. Following a week of vacation where my children stayed up every night until the wee hours playing Minecraft and Assassins Creed, they were reluctantly rolling out of bed at daybreak and trudging out into record low temperatures, waiting at frozen street corners for their school buses.
After seeing everyone off, I spread the paper out on the dining room table and flipped to page A10. “Shedding Light on a Vast Toll of Jews Killed Away From Death Camps,” blared the headline. According to the Times article, the Holocaust generally is associated with concentration camps. Historians are now learning that a million and a half Jews were executed in forests and villages across Eastern Europe, in the Ukraine, in Belarus, and in parts of Russia.
For some unfathomable reason, the Times photo editor chose to illustrate the article with a picture of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
There’s a certain conversation you have when you tell people that your parents are Holocaust survivors. “Really?” they say respectfully. “What camp were they in?”
“They weren’t in a camp,” you explain. “They were hiding in the forests, running from place to place.”
This is followed by what my sister calls The Look. Then some kind of variation on this statement: “Oh, so they didn’t really suffer. They had it pretty good.”
That he “had it pretty good” would be news to my dad. Usually, his war stories end with the words, “And then they took him into the forest and shot him.”
Sometimes, the “him” in the story is his 15-year-old brother, Yehuda. When their bunker — a hole tunneled into the side of a hillock — was discovered by a passing hunter, my father, my grandfather, and another brother threw themselves into the latrine pit. Understanding that there was no room for him, Yehuda shoveled dirt over his father and brothers to hide them. Then he climbed out to face the SS.
Sometimes the “him” in the story is my great-uncle Aron. Aron had a gift. He built bunkers. And his bunkers weren’t just a hole in the floor, or a space hollowed out behind a false wall; Aron engineered bunkers that could hold 50 people. He secreted one under three feet of earth in a root cellar, so that suspicious soldiers armed with shovels couldn’t find it. Aron built bunkers with electricity stolen from Gestapo headquarters; Aron built a bunker with a real working toilet; Aron built a bunker with a shower he made from a car radiator.
Uncle Aron was hiding out in the Ukrainian forests when he was captured. The German soldiers barked, “Don’t move, or we’ll shoot!” Fearing that he might be tortured, that he might reveal the locations of the bunkers he’d constructed, Aron moved.
Sometimes, the “him” in the story is Aunt Devora, who lived in the city of Drohobych, just 11 miles away from my father’s hometown, Podbuzh. Dad remembers being sent to Drohobych one summer to stay with his aunt and her wealthy merchant husband. The family consensus was that my father was too thin. Aunt Devora was assigned the task of fattening him up.
“What happened to her, Dad?” I asked him, the first time I heard this story. “Where is she now?”
“What do you think?” he replied. “They took her into the forest and shot her.
“And her husband, and her children, too.” Before the war, there were around one hundred Szapiros living in the Galitzia/Drohobych area, Dad says, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Of this hundred, four survived.
The New York Times article cited Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest who became intrigued with the “Holocaust by bullets” after his grandfather was captured and held in Rava-Ruska, a camp for French prisoners of war in Ukraine. In the camp, his grandfather told him, life was hard. But, he hinted darkly, there were others for whom it was much worse. Though he refused to talk about it, eventually Father Desbois discovered that one of his grandfather’s jobs as a prisoner was filling in mass graves for Jews.
Father Desbois made it his life’s work to discover unmarked Jewish execution sites throughout Eastern Europe. Going from town to town in the Ukrainian countryside, he began by checking in with the local priest and telling him of his mission. Invariably, someone would come forward. Aged villagers who were children when the Jews of their town were killed and buried in a patch of wasteland behind the houses (or in a storage vault in the market square, or a nearby quarry, or a scarred clearing in the forest), yearned to unburden themselves of their memories, to confess to the priest what they had witnessed before their stories died with them.
On Google, I typed in the word “Drohobych” and clicked on “Images.”
Pictures popped up. Quaint onion-domed churches. Pretty nineteenth-century architecture. Wide city streets. Charming townhouses that could be in London, or Greenwich Village. Grand, ornate structures that clearly once were synagogues and have been re-purposed into something else.
I scrolled down. More pictures swam into view. German soldiers aiming their rifles at four men standing against a wall, their hands linked for courage. Nazi officers standing above a trench cut among the trees, a trench stacked high with bodies. In a clearing, a memorial shaped like a grave marker, commemorating the Jews of Drohobych, massacred and buried in the Bronica Forest. A wooded glade, featuring hillocks and dips covered in fallen leaves. Under these hillocks and dips in the forest, the caption clarifies, are unmarked mass graves.
My father’s stories came to life. I tried to imagine a 15-year-old boy named Yehuda standing among the trees with his hands up in the air. I tried to visualize my grandfather leading the remnant of his family through these woods in the dead of night, carving a hiding place into a mound of earth.
The true horror of this story is this: In 2014, an article about “Eastern Europe’s Killing Fields” is news because the scope of the killing still is unknown. The investigation continues, 69 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, because in hundreds of towns and villages where German soldiers rounded up the local Jewish population and shot them, there were no survivors.
The number we are all familiar with is six million.
In fact, we have no idea how many Jews were really murdered. And it’s likely we never will.
Helen Maryles Shankman’s short fiction has appeared in many publications, including The Kenyon Review and JewishFiction.net. Her debut novel, The Color of Light, is available on Amazon.
A look at uncounted victims of the Holocaust by bullets
“Eastern Europe’s Killing Fields,” ran the subhead at the bottom of the New York Times. Underneath it, the caption read, “Many of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were killed by executioners’ bullets, historians have learned.”
It was Tuesday morning, the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It was also the second day back at school after the end of yeshiva break. Following a week of vacation where my children stayed up every night until the wee hours playing Minecraft and Assassins Creed, they were reluctantly rolling out of bed at daybreak and trudging out into record low temperatures, waiting at frozen street corners for their school buses.
After seeing everyone off, I spread the paper out on the dining room table and flipped to page A10. “Shedding Light on a Vast Toll of Jews Killed Away From Death Camps,” blared the headline. According to the Times article, the Holocaust generally is associated with concentration camps. Historians are now learning that a million and a half Jews were executed in forests and villages across Eastern Europe, in the Ukraine, in Belarus, and in parts of Russia.
For some unfathomable reason, the Times photo editor chose to illustrate the article with a picture of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
There’s a certain conversation you have when you tell people that your parents are Holocaust survivors. “Really?” they say respectfully. “What camp were they in?”
“They weren’t in a camp,” you explain. “They were hiding in the forests, running from place to place.”
This is followed by what my sister calls The Look. Then some kind of variation on this statement: “Oh, so they didn’t really suffer. They had it pretty good.”
That he “had it pretty good” would be news to my dad. Usually, his war stories end with the words, “And then they took him into the forest and shot him.”
Sometimes, the “him” in the story is his 15-year-old brother, Yehuda. When their bunker — a hole tunneled into the side of a hillock — was discovered by a passing hunter, my father, my grandfather, and another brother threw themselves into the latrine pit. Understanding that there was no room for him, Yehuda shoveled dirt over his father and brothers to hide them. Then he climbed out to face the SS.
Sometimes the “him” in the story is my great-uncle Aron. Aron had a gift. He built bunkers. And his bunkers weren’t just a hole in the floor, or a space hollowed out behind a false wall; Aron engineered bunkers that could hold 50 people. He secreted one under three feet of earth in a root cellar, so that suspicious soldiers armed with shovels couldn’t find it. Aron built bunkers with electricity stolen from Gestapo headquarters; Aron built a bunker with a real working toilet; Aron built a bunker with a shower he made from a car radiator.
Uncle Aron was hiding out in the Ukrainian forests when he was captured. The German soldiers barked, “Don’t move, or we’ll shoot!” Fearing that he might be tortured, that he might reveal the locations of the bunkers he’d constructed, Aron moved.
Sometimes, the “him” in the story is Aunt Devora, who lived in the city of Drohobych, just 11 miles away from my father’s hometown, Podbuzh. Dad remembers being sent to Drohobych one summer to stay with his aunt and her wealthy merchant husband. The family consensus was that my father was too thin. Aunt Devora was assigned the task of fattening him up.
“What happened to her, Dad?” I asked him, the first time I heard this story. “Where is she now?”
“What do you think?” he replied. “They took her into the forest and shot her.
“And her husband, and her children, too.” Before the war, there were around one hundred Szapiros living in the Galitzia/Drohobych area, Dad says, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Of this hundred, four survived.
The New York Times article cited Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest who became intrigued with the “Holocaust by bullets” after his grandfather was captured and held in Rava-Ruska, a camp for French prisoners of war in Ukraine. In the camp, his grandfather told him, life was hard. But, he hinted darkly, there were others for whom it was much worse. Though he refused to talk about it, eventually Father Desbois discovered that one of his grandfather’s jobs as a prisoner was filling in mass graves for Jews.
Father Desbois made it his life’s work to discover unmarked Jewish execution sites throughout Eastern Europe. Going from town to town in the Ukrainian countryside, he began by checking in with the local priest and telling him of his mission. Invariably, someone would come forward. Aged villagers who were children when the Jews of their town were killed and buried in a patch of wasteland behind the houses (or in a storage vault in the market square, or a nearby quarry, or a scarred clearing in the forest), yearned to unburden themselves of their memories, to confess to the priest what they had witnessed before their stories died with them.
On Google, I typed in the word “Drohobych” and clicked on “Images.”
Pictures popped up. Quaint onion-domed churches. Pretty nineteenth-century architecture. Wide city streets. Charming townhouses that could be in London, or Greenwich Village. Grand, ornate structures that clearly once were synagogues and have been re-purposed into something else.
I scrolled down. More pictures swam into view. German soldiers aiming their rifles at four men standing against a wall, their hands linked for courage. Nazi officers standing above a trench cut among the trees, a trench stacked high with bodies. In a clearing, a memorial shaped like a grave marker, commemorating the Jews of Drohobych, massacred and buried in the Bronica Forest. A wooded glade, featuring hillocks and dips covered in fallen leaves. Under these hillocks and dips in the forest, the caption clarifies, are unmarked mass graves.
My father’s stories came to life. I tried to imagine a 15-year-old boy named Yehuda standing among the trees with his hands up in the air. I tried to visualize my grandfather leading the remnant of his family through these woods in the dead of night, carving a hiding place into a mound of earth.
The true horror of this story is this: In 2014, an article about “Eastern Europe’s Killing Fields” is news because the scope of the killing still is unknown. The investigation continues, 69 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, because in hundreds of towns and villages where German soldiers rounded up the local Jewish population and shot them, there were no survivors.
The number we are all familiar with is six million.
In fact, we have no idea how many Jews were really murdered. And it’s likely we never will.
Helen Maryles Shankman’s short fiction has appeared in many publications, including The Kenyon Review and JewishFiction.net. Her debut novel, The Color of Light, is available on Amazon.
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Hey, Scott,I've read about that. Bizarre, right?
And your family's story...I remember. Absolutely tragic. There are so many stories still waiting to be told.
Helen, aren't all our family's stories absolutely tragic?
I guess they are. When you grow up with it, you don't realize it. I just came across this line in Coraline which, I think, helps me to understand why I like fantasy/paranormal so much--“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
I really, really love that quote.You know, I'm not watching the Socci Olympics. Since no one bothered to boycott the Berlin ones, I feel this need to do this now. No matter what anyone says, putting money in the pockets of the Russians helps to strengthen their own Nuremburg laws. Never Again - not for anyone.
"since no one bothered..." Not really accurate! 'Not enough people bothered ...' is better. http://pdfs.jta.org/1935/1935-11-05_0... Check out the JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency cable dispatch from November 5, 1935. Look at page 3: Movement Launched For Millions of Signatures Against Olympics. Obviously a failure. Look at page 5: Says Canada Has Accepted Olympic Invitation. The last paragraph mentions a cousin who did stand up. I believe he resigned his position as head of the Canadian Olympic Swim Team, or something to that effect, rather than participate. We (our family) lost many members in or near Berdichev around June 21, 1941. So many stories that will never be told. So few ears that would listen anyhow.
Thank you Helen, for bringing this to light. I have goosebumps and tears in my eyes after reading your blog. Growing up shortly after WWII, I heard whispered stories about events that took place, but my family tried to protect my brother, sister, and I from so much of the horrors that went on. My father received medals for his service in the army as a Lt. but he kept quiet about his experiences during the war until many years later when my youngest son interviewed him for a report he needed to turn in on Veteran's Day. My father went to the shelf where my deceased mother kept a journal of his letters, photos, and medals and showed my son "what he did during the war.". It was the first time I had ever heard the stories. I supposed enough years had passed that he could begin to talk about what he saw. I learned later that he did share some of his stories with my older son, who to this day wears my father's dog tags. The horror of what went on in those years was unspeakable, so it was not spoken....it was unbearable, especially to the Jewish soldiers, and my father, one of the few Jewish officers in his day, had to endure his surrounding and watch his people being tortured and killed. The hurt and pain he felt and yet how he had to stay strong and unyielding so he could remain a leader to his men...I can't imagine where he got the strength to carry on... but that generation of men and women were the last of their kind I think. Superheroes in my eyes. I realize that my father was just a kid in his twenties when he witnessed the unthinkable. The millions of lives that were lost is not something that history should ever forget. So, thank you for bringing this to light and reminding and educating those of us who were not aware. At my father's funeral when he passed away just shy of 90, the army gave him a 21 gun salute. I didn't even realize that he was a purple heart recipient. I think the guilt of not only the survivors, but the American Jewish soldiers who came to save the day and discovered that when they arrived, they couldn't save everyone, weighed heavily on their hearts. No, this should never be forgotten.
Oh my God, Lesley, what a novel your father's story would make. Can you tell me what he did during the war? Where was he?
Brian wrote: ""since no one bothered..." Not really accurate! 'Not enough people bothered ...' is better. http://pdfs.jta.org/1935/1935-11-05_0... Check out the JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency cable dispatch..."Sorry I'm so late replying to this, Brian. I don't think it's ever too late to tell the stories! And I think people are still willing to listen. For me, the challenge is finding a new way to tell it. People have heard so much over the years that they think they've heard everything.
Helen, I would have to go look at my mother's records of my Dad's papers to get all the places he was. I know he was in Italy for quite a long time liberating thousands of Jews who were in hiding in that country, I believe he was in France, and I think also in parts of the coast of Africa too. They sent him so many places that I am not sure. .And exactly where else in Europe I don't know. I know he saw Mussolini strung up along with his mistress and had pictures of them hanging there, which I think he wasn't supposed to have. My sister and I will have to research if the photos are authentic, which they looked to be when I saw them years ago. My dad said the soldiers all took photos. Most of their film was taken from them. I don't know details because the "intense" stuff he wouldn't discuss, especially not with his daughters. He told my sons more than he ever told me. But that's not surprising since he spent his life trying to protect his girls. I don't think I have ever met a man I admire more. My mother's nickname for him was Clarkie, because when he was young he resembled Clark Gable. I wish I had asked him more questions.....I do know that he said said during the war many Jews in Italy were forced to give up their homes, businesses, personal items etc. thousands sent to the death camps. Most people are not aware of the role Italy played during the war. Probably because it paled compared to that of Germany.
Helen, I emailed my sister who said she would have to research the information about our father from the book/journal my mother made. This is what she wrote to me. "In answer to your question, off the top of my head I know Dad was in Italy, and Northern Africa. I know that he calculated the math as to where the gunner should shoot to hit the planes flying by (Africa part). I also know that when he was in Italy he spent a small time driving the guys back to their units from the hospital. Not sure of the other stuff he did, I just remember those two jobs. He had multiple jobs during the course of the war. I also know that he hooked up with a nurse at some point, but where I don't know And of course, the story of how when he was called to war he took the usual IQ test soldiers were given, he received a 100%. They were amazed, gave him another test and he again got a perfect score. So they sent him immediately to officers training and made him a Lieutenant because he was so smart. "
Helen, My mother used to brag (My father was an extremely humble man and never did) about how my father graduated high school at 14 because he skipped so many grades. I asked my father about this and he confirmed it and said this was the reason he didn't want my brother, sister and I skipped in school. (That was before the school system had gifted programs. Ironically that is what I did for over 30 years. I had gifted children of my own and so I taught the top 2% for most of my career.) But my father said he was always the youngest in his class, grew a mustache to look older, but could never really fit in or date because he was a little kid in with older boys. Girls didn’t wanted to go to the prom with a 14 year old. Also, he had to work to support his family at the time and he did a work study sort of program...he was bright enough to read quickly, take tests and score perfectly so he went to school in the morning, received his A's and then worked the rest of the day and gave the money to his mother. (His father was blind from cataracts.) His parents are interesting people too. (His mother was from Rumania and the Zalman family who were rabbis.) She married a Kloutchinsky and they owned a hotel in France in the early part of the 20th century.
I know after the war my mother once told me that shortly after she married my father, which was right after WWII, my Dad had trouble sleeping and would always wake up from nightmares in a cold sweat shaking and she would have to calm him down. He would go outside and smoke a cigarette and then go back to bed. We know that is PTSD. But, in those days, the men just dealt with it. It is no wonder he never talked about the war. We only heard glimpses of the things that weren’t horrible. I can’t imagine what he really saw and heard or encountered. I don’t know if he ever shared that with my mother.
I will have to find out more information. My Dad passed away a couple years ago and dealing with that it has been too painful to look into his past. I think that perhaps, the time has come to research his life. He was a quiet man who was strong in character and his actions, rather than his words spoke for him. And yet, it was his writing that made my mom fall in love with him. They met when he was home on furlough before he went overseas and as my mom told it, he looked just like Clark Gable in uniform. They wrote each other all through the war. Often he used a third person character...he sent her a stuffed animal, a donkey I believe he called Napoleon, and talked about the war and his surrounding through the donkey's eyes. She once read me some of his letters when I was little and I was shocked at the humor and the beauty of his writing. I had no idea. You see my father went to work, came home, threw a ball with my brother, spent weekends being a good Dad to his kids and worked hard. I didn’t know his past, just that he was stern but kind, and would do anything and everything for his family. My mother, had she been born in a different era, would definitely been an author or journalist. She had the gift of being an elegant writer and kept a journal from age 16 until she died at 76. My sister, who has the biggest space in her home, has her books. I only have the ones she compiled about my life. (She created a scrapbook/journals for each of her children and her husband.) She was a historian of sorts. In any event. I know my father had many responsibilities in the war and I heard bits and pieces of certain jobs when my youngest son interviewed him. But, he didn't talk about the deep, dark things he did. The ones that caused those nightmares. My sister and I never read the letters he wrote my mother.... after she died my Dad kept them and after he died it seemed like I was intruding on their privacy if I read them. Theirs was a true love story. One I wish I had the talent to tell. I hope this answers your question. Your brief inquiry has my head spinning. My sister and I live just few hours a part and will have to get together when time allows so that we can spend a day finding more about our father. Thanks for the push in the right direction.
Hey, Lesley--Thank you so much for telling me your family stories, so very different from mine.
Really, I don't know where to start. Your comment is so rich in stunning details. I'm particularly blown away by that part about your dad sending your mom a stuffed donkey and telling her about the war through the stuffed animal's eyes. What a memoir that would make.
You know, this crazy writing thing runs in the genes, Lesley. I hope you do chase all the details down. We, the next generation, are the keepers of the stories. I hope you keep me posted on what you discover.
Thank you Helen. I wish I could commission you to write about my father. Your eloquence and enriching writing style would do him justice. My sister was at work and just emailed me that she read that they wanted to promote my father to Captain but his superiors said they would not do that because he was Jewish. The same thing happened to her father-in-law. She said that when my Dad returned stateside his papers upon retiring said Captain Ben Kluchin. So, the army wouldn't promote him until he was back in the good old USA. That's interesting. I will keep you updated. My sister and I said we would schedule a meeting and do some research. It's hard to connect sometimes beyond email or the phone even when you are just a few hours away. She told me she wants very much to read your book too. So you now have two new fans!!!
In Poland, where there are virtually no Jews left, people are fascinated by Jewish culture, food, etc. Fascinated by a people that really longer exist (there). Hitler's (Y"S) intention all along.