22

Russians

AS I WROTE EARLIER, the Lebrecht family cared for me until I had regained my strength. With the end of the war in sight, they invited me to remain with them, for better or for worse.

Some days, it appeared that it would be for worse. We didn’t even consider leaving the apartment. Berlin was in absolute shambles. The Wehrmacht was falling apart, and much of the defense of the city had been assigned to the Hitler Youth. Between the fantastic losses Germany had suffered fighting and dying on two fronts and the large number of desertions, there weren’t many adults left able to fight.

As it was, the racket of small arms fire increased daily. Rumor had it that the Russians would invade the city with tanks as well as infantry. All of this made the idea of being outside much too dangerous for the ordinary civilian. It was now May 1, 1945, and to anyone with eyes to see, the invasion was imminent. The Russians could literally arrive at any minute.

That night, most of us were unable to sleep. The din created by rifle shots and artillery rounds grew louder and more frequent. Near dawn, we began hearing sounds that seemed to be glass shattering. People were screaming in the background, but we dared not open the door to find out what it was all about.

I was sitting on the couch with Heinz and Horst beside me. Jenny and Leo were sitting on chairs at a small table against the wall. All of us were tired, but we were also afraid, worried about what would happen when the end finally came.

Even though we knew it was inevitable, it was still a shock when it finally happened. With a tremendous roar, the door to the apartment crashed to the ground. Through a cloud of dust, two Russian soldiers charged into the apartment, their machine pistols drawn and leveled at us. Two more entered immediately behind them.

For a moment, we all froze. Then we rose to our feet, our hands above our heads. My greatest fear was that they would shoot us before we had a chance to say anything. I’d had more than my share of weapons pointed at me in the last few years, but there was always someone who spoke German on the other end. I was deathly afraid that we would be killed before we had a chance to reveal ourselves as refugees.

One look at the soldiers told me instantly that if anyone made a wrong move, it would be their last one. The Russians had suffered terribly over the last few years. Their homeland had been invaded, raped, and looted by Germans, and they were wild for revenge. Now, they were fighting house to house with their hated foe, and it was obvious that these four were as hyped on adrenaline as it was possible to be. It was a miracle that they had not already started shooting.

They were dressed in olive-brown, high-collared blouses and had rope belts around their waists. Their pants were stuffed into their boots. I had never seen anything like them. If they hadn’t been so terrifying, they might have been funny.

They glared at us with battle-hardened eyes, obviously eager to destroy something. They started yelling and cursing in Russian, which none of us understood.

“Wir sind Juden!” we shouted. “We are Jews!”

One of them yelled back, “You are liars!” he screamed. “Hitler killed all the Jews. You are Nazi scum living in a Nazi headquarters and we are going to enjoy killing you.”

To my surprise, I realized that I could understand him. He was speaking what seemed to be a bizarre, broken German. Something about it made me recall the Yiddish language that my relatives spoke in Kovno. If I concentrated, I could just barely make him out.

“No, it is true! We are Jews!” we screamed over and over again, at the top of our lungs.

My heart was racing. If we could not convince them that we were Jews, we were doomed. They would kill us all! Jenny was crying. We kept repeating, “We are Jews!” over and over again.

It occurred to me that just repeating “We are Jewish” wasn’t convincing them. I had relatives in both Kovno and Moscow. I had to try something different.

“I can prove it!” I asserted. “I have an uncle in Moscow who is also Jewish!”

The Russian soldier was not impressed. Was he ignoring me or did he not understand me?

I repeated it, “I have an uncle in Moscow who is Jewish!”

Now he listened. “Yes?” he asked. “What is your uncle’s name?”

I had a problem. I had only met my uncle twice, the first time when he was on his way to a university in Toulouse, France, and then again when he was traveling to a university in Prague. I was nine during his first visit and ten during the second. I remembered very little about either occasion, not even his name.

What was his name? I ordered my brain to remember. And then, from some dark recess of my overstressed mind, it floated to the surface.

“Boris!” I yelled. “My uncle’s name is Boris Levin!”

That produced an immediate response. The Russian’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

“I don’t believe it,” he announced. “What does this Boris Levin do? What is his profession?”

What does he do? A good question and one I was at a total loss to answer. I had been lucky to remember his name. Now I had to come up with the profession of a man I hadn’t seen in more than a decade and had only met as a small boy. When he had visited us, he had talked about things that a ten-year-old would be interested in. Unfortunately, that didn’t include what he did for a living.

I wracked my brain, knowing I had only seconds before their patience was exhausted.

Once again, a memory surfaced that I did not even realize I possessed. In my mind, a picture formed of my uncle talking to my father about electrical motors. My father had been having problems with some of his motors, and Uncle Boris was giving him advice.

“He’s an electrical engineer!”

More than ever, surprise distorted the soldier’s face. “What did you say?” he asked.

“He’s an electrical engineer,” I announced. “Boris Levin is an electrical engineer.”

The soldier paused and scratched his chin. “Maybe you’re telling the truth,” he said. “When I was in school, I recall studying something written by a Boris Levin. I read it when studying to become an electrician.”

The Lebrechts, who still stood with their hands above their heads, gave a collective sigh of relief, as if granted a stay of execution, which is exactly what had happened.

The soldier put down his gun and said something to his comrades. They looked at him, perplexed, but also lowered their weapons. We slowly put down our hands.

The soldier who had been talking to me turned and addressed his fellows. They were speaking Russian so I couldn’t understand them, but from the tone of their voices, it seemed that they were confused as to why they were being told not to kill us. Perhaps they were disappointed that they weren’t going to have a chance to loot the place. Impatient to continue their mission, the three of them turned, walked over the door that still lay on the ground, and left.

The Yiddish-speaking soldier now turned to me, a friendly smile on his face, his initial hostility having evaporated.

“I am also Jewish,” he said to me, “and I am from Moscow. When we saw the swastika on the door, we assumed that this was a government building and we were prepared to deal very harshly with whomever we found here. That is why I called you liars when you claimed to be Jewish. We assumed that anyone we found here would be a Nazi.”

He lingered for a few minutes, talking of his life before the war, explaining that he was an electrician. I couldn’t understand exactly what type of work he did, but I got the gist of it. He spoke about the German invasion and how Nazis had brutalized the Russian people, raping Russian women and killing hundreds of thousands of men. Now all the Russian soldiers thought about was revenge.

Diploma from Toulouse University in industrial electrics, earned by Uncle Boris. He also earned a degree in electrical engineering and authored several books dealing with these subjects.

He gave us some chocolate that he had taken from another house. Then he took out a piece of paper and a pen.

“What is your name?” he asked me.

“Dagobert Lewin,” I replied.

“I am going to give you a pass that you must present to any other Russian soldiers you encounter. It will say that you are a victim of the Nazis and a friend of the Russian people. Without this pass, you might be arrested, so be sure to show it to any Russian soldiers who might stop you.”

“When will the fighting stop?” Leo asked, unable to restrain himself any longer.

The soldier gave him a smile and said, “Nazis aus, Hitler kaput.”

And with that, he bid us adieu and trotted after his fellows. After he left, we fell into each other’s arms, shaking with relief. Jenny was crying. Once again, fortune had favored us to an almost miraculous degree. By all rights, we should have been lying on the floor, our bodies riddled with machine gun bullets. Instead, we sat, as warm and safe as anyone in Berlin, waiting for the conclusion of a nightmare that had haunted the dreams of an entire world.