August 1920
At night, Aunt Friedka sat in Papa’s chair next to the stove, mending Nechama’s stockings or making a skirt for me out of Mama’s old apron.
Orphans, I thought bleakly. Since Mama went to be with Papa, Nechama and I are orphans. What a horrible word. I moved a little closer to Aunt Friedka. But we’re with Aunty, in our own house. Aunty is our … rock. Aunt Friedka’s lips were pursed tightly and her eyes were unreadable, her face as closed as it had been since they had finally brought Uncle Pinchas home from the army.
In the six months that had passed since Mama died, Nechama had been unable to sleep without both Aunt Friedka and me holding her, so we all slept together in Mama and Papa’s old bed. One night we were beginning to prepare for bed when Aunt Friedka said, “Shh!”
We were startled by her sharp tone. Then I heard it, too. Far away, people were crying out and there was the sound of thunder. No, it wasn’t thunder, it was horses’ hooves. Men were shouting and women were screaming.
With a crash, the door flew open and a voice yelled through the opening, “Pogrom! Hide! Run away! Pogrom!” And the voice was gone.
Aunt Friedka was on her feet in a bound, like a mother lion. “Food? Money? No, just go.” With one shove she pushed us through the open door, rushed out herself, and slammed the front door behind us.
My mind was racing, jumping. I had my family photograph safe with me; I carried that always in my pocket. “The candlesticks, Aunty!” I shouted. “We must save Mama’s brass candlesticks.”
Nechama joined in with a wail. “My doll!”
“There’s no time. Save our lives!” my aunt shouted back. Her face was open again and I read it clearly: Aunt Friedka was frightened, terrified. My stomach dropped so fast I almost vomited.
Aunt Friedka was barricading the house with crazy haste, blocking the door with a huge wooden bar that was usually stored just under the eaves and locking it with a key that hung on a chain she always wore. I’d never thought to ask what the key was for. She grabbed Nechama with one hand and clutched my wrist with the other, a cold fierce grip that felt like iron. Then we ran, away from our home.
“Where to?” I gasped as my legs pumped.
“Away from the noise. To the shul.”
Ahead, in the light of the full moon, I saw whiteness everywhere.
Am I going mad? I thought. I see snow but it’s not falling from the sky. It’s not snow, it’s … Floating through the air and piling up in drifts were thousands and thousands of feathers. I turned my head to stare as Aunt Friedka pulled us along. Feather beds and feather pillows lay slumped on the ground. They had been sliced open and tossed out of the windows of Jews’ homes. Broken chairs and splintered tables had been smashed by axes or hurled onto the rutted path.
“Oh God, oh God,” Aunt Friedka whispered, and Nechama whimpered. There was no one in sight, and only the sound of screaming from somewhere behind us.
Then we heard a roar in front of us, and Aunt Friedka suddenly changed direction. She pulled us off the road and down a muddy alley and half fell, half knelt behind a wooden fence. It was the same cracked fence where Nechama and I would hide with our girlfriends while we waited for the boys to come out of school.
We peered between the planks and my eyes widened. Twenty, maybe thirty peasants swarmed in and out of the synagogue, their excited faces lit by the flaming torches they held high. One of them carried an open bottle of vodka and many were unsteady on their feet. They were looting the synagogue with loud determination. Some dumped piles of worn prayer books into the mud. Several gleefully rattled the silver bells and silver chains and engraved shields used to decorate the Torah scrolls.
When one drunken man ran past, clutching under his arm a velvet Torah cloth with its rich golden embroidery, I stuffed my whole hand into my mouth to keep from gasping. He was one of the farmers whose stall my mother used to visit in the market. Two peasants laughed triumphantly as they danced out of our synagogue brandishing the precious parchment scrolls between them. The scrolls that we treated with such loving care. The tiny black letters that our Torah reader followed respectfully with a carved silver pointer rather than touching them with his own finger. The two men cavorted and stumbled, and the parchment ripped with a sickening sound.
Then I saw the rabbi. He stood silently outside the synagogue, beside a villager who kept one big hand on the rabbi’s long white beard and the other hand around a thick wooden club. The rabbi’s yarmulke had been knocked off and his black coat was covered in mud. His eyes were closed; his lips moved in silent prayer. I saw him only for a moment before I closed my own eyes. But I couldn’t close my ears.
“Where’s the money? Where did you hide your Jewish money?” someone shouted at the rabbi.
“Moneylending bloodsuckers!” someone else yelled.
Then the first voice shouted again, “This is for killing our Lord Jesus Christ!” There was the sound of a blow and a dull grunt.
My aunt pulled us up and away. I didn’t ask where we were running to this time. If the synagogue was not safe, where could we possibly go?
As we stumbled along, a strong smell of smoke filled my nose and I heard crackling.
“They’re burning the houses,” a woman called out as she ran past. Aunt Friedka hesitated, then followed her. On the edge of the village, standing alone, was the large barn owned by the dairyman. The woman ran up to the big wooden door and disappeared inside. Aunt Friedka led us after her into the blackness.
Nechama and I had gone into the barn many times to buy milk since we sold our goat. The familiar smells surrounded us. The cows were all inside, their halters making a clinking sound as they shifted uneasily.
Feeling her way across the hay scattered on the floor, my aunt pulled us to the very back. Then we all scrambled up the ladder into the loft. The woman and her family were also hiding there, and we looked at one another in shock. I knew the children from Shabbes mornings at the synagogue, but we didn’t exchange a word. Everything was upside down; everything was awful.
“We can see the whole village from here,” Aunt Friedka said, hurrying over to the open window.
I followed her. It didn’t look like our village. The sky was a strange color from the smoke and the fiery light. Houses flamed like giant torches, their insides black and their outsides an angry red. Dark figures crossed and recrossed in front of the fires, moving quickly, carrying things, throwing things.
The biggest fire was in the tallest building, a beautiful tall building, a building of beauty. The synagogue was burning.
“We’re going to be trapped up here,” came a sob from the woman we had followed. “They’ll burn the barn. Out, children. We’ll run down to the river.”
The other family half climbed, half fell down the ladder and were gone. I started to follow them, but Aunt Friedka’s hand caught my shoulder. “Better to risk burning than to be out there in the night where they will beat and stab us to death for sure,” she said.
Nechama burst into loud tears. A violent shudder went through my body. How can this be true? Oh, Mama, Papa, please make this just a very bad dream.
I turned back to the window. “Aunt, look!” I cried, pointing down at the cobblestone road that led away from the village square right past the barn.
Screaming and running in sheer terror, falling and getting up to run again, was a crowd of Jews, old people, children, women clutching babies, my neighbors and my friends. Soldiers riding high up on huge snorting horses were chasing them, herding them like animals. They wore uniforms I’d never seen before, with high shiny boots, and carried long whips. Their faces were terrible with excitement and I could hear their hoarse shouts—they were Russians.
“Cossacks,” Aunt Friedka spat out. “So that’s who gave the villagers their chance to turn on us.”
Suddenly a number of Jews broke away from the screaming crowd and rushed toward the barn. Several Cossacks chased them, jumping off their moving horses, landing skillfully on their feet, and running into the barn.
“Please no, not in here,” Aunt Friedka cried. She rushed over to the ladder to look down and I was right behind her. Nechama wept into my back, but her voice was almost lost in the hideous screams below.
The Cossacks pulled out long knives. As if they were slaughtering cattle, they began to kill everyone in the barn. I saw. I saw people running, blinded by blood pouring from their heads, cut down from behind, and finally still. Men. Women. Children.
I didn’t realize that Aunt Friedka was sobbing until the sobbing stopped and my aunt’s breath caught loudly. A Cossack had noticed the ladder, was looking up at us, had one hand on the ladder, was climbing up with his knife raised.
I shrieked. Aunt Friedka moved quickly. As the Cossack’s head reached the level of the loft, she lifted her skirt and kicked hard. I heard a grunt and for a moment the man swayed, his left hand clutching tightly to the wooden floor of the loft. He was so close I could smell vodka on his breath, could see his eyes clouded with rage. Then he took one step higher, lifted his right hand, and stabbed furiously, stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. Aunt Friedka gasped, pushed her hand against the sharp knife as if she could stop it, as if she could stop anything. And then she fell heavily on top of Nechama and me.
There was a curse and a thud. The Cossack must have lost his balance and dropped off the ladder to the barn floor. Nechama let out a high-pitched scream, but I was past screaming. I waited silently for the Cossack to climb back up again and finish his job. We were going to be killed. I waited.
Below, the screams had turned to a few faint moans. I heard a sudden sharp command, rapid footsteps, then the beat of horses galloping away from the barn. Silence.
After a few minutes, perhaps a long time, Aunt Friedka’s body became unbearably heavy on top of me. I couldn’t think; I refused to think. With all my strength, I managed to crawl out from under my aunt, and I pulled Nechama out, too. Then, dragging my sister, I crept away from the ladder. Just a little farther, Devorah, I told myself, just a little farther. If we can only get to that hay at the far end. No one stopped us. I crawled and dragged, crawled and dragged, then I curled around Nechama and pulled hay over both of us. There was dry hay dust in my mouth and wet blood all over my dress. Not my blood. Not Nechama’s.
“Shh,” I said to Nechama, without feeling anything at all. “Don’t start screaming again or I’ll cover your mouth to keep you quiet.” Nechama turned wide, crazy eyes on me, but she gave only a few last desperate hiccuping sobs. I put my arms around my sister. I don’t remember anything more after that.
Loud rustling in the straw woke me the next morning. I was frozen from cold and shock and my arms were stiff from holding Nechama. I saw two large, unlaced boots approach across the loft, a woman’s stockings rising above them. Slowly I lifted my head above the hay and looked up at a strangely familiar face. It was Panya Truda, the Christian villager who used to keep our cholent warm for Shabbes lunch and who had washed our clothes once a week when we had had money to pay her. Panya Truda’s face was white and her hands were shaking as she reached down to touch Nechama’s still body. Nechama stirred in her sleep and Panya Truda gasped.
“Stay still,” she ordered me. “I will send my daughter to find someone to take you away.”
Then she shut her eyes for a moment. “O Lord Jesus, help the babies, they are the only ones,” she muttered.
I knew I should not think. I felt for the photograph in my pocket and kept touching it with my icy fingers. It seemed a long time before Panya Truda and her grown daughter came back with two blankets, which they wrapped around Nechama and me, completely covering our heads and eyes. They lifted us up like bundles, then carried us down the ladder and across the barn. Panya Truda sobbed softly as she stumbled over large objects on the ground.
Outside, there was a bitter smell of smoke. Burning torches in the night. I would not think. Nechama and I were put down onto something quite soft. I could tell from her quick breathing that she was awake and terrified.
Then Panya Truda drew the blankets down from our heads, and I could see that we were lying in the back of a cart with a layer of hay on the bottom. Panya Truda was standing between us and the barn so that she blocked our view. She whispered urgently, “Devorah, Nechama, this man is taking his cart back to Pinsk. It is far away. He said he will take you with him, to some Jews there. I have put bread and cheese and milk for you right here in the cart. Do not come back. There is no one left here. May your god forgive us.”
She spoke briefly to a stranger sitting at the front of the cart. He clucked to his horse and the cart began to move away from the village. Soon we rounded a curve and I could no longer see Panya Truda standing still in the center of the track. The driver was looking straight ahead as if he didn’t want to know what he was carrying. I huddled down into the hay, pulled my little sister back into my arms, and tried to sleep again, stroking Nechama’s head when she cried softly for Mama.
I don’t know how many days we rode. Once, the driver drove the cart hurriedly off the road to make way for a band of rough-looking young Polish boys, and another time he had to wait while a large group of soldiers trudged past. “Reds,” the driver called the soldiers as he spat at their backs from a distance. “Bloody Reds. May Jesus Christ save the souls of the sweet Czar and his family.”
I kept silent. I hugged Nechama and fingered my photo of Papa and Mama, baby Nechama, and me as a little girl. We were all together in the photo.