Moshe Gildenman was the commander of “Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group,” a partisan brigade that operated in the Polish-Ukrainian region of Volhynia and the Ukrainian province of Zhytomyr. (Courtesy of Yad Vashem.)
The twelve-year-old boy was fast asleep when the six armed men discovered him. He was lying by himself near a smoldering fire in the woods of the Polish-Ukrainian region of Volhynia. His head was resting on a violin case. It was just after midnight on January 4, 1943.
“Where did this little boy come from?” asked one of the men.
“He probably got lost in the forest,” responded their leader. “He’s probably also hungry. Let him sleep for now. When the soup is ready, we’ll wake him up so he can tell us who he is.”
The men lit a new fire. They melted snow in the aluminum boxes that they carried on their belts. When the water started boiling, they added some wheat and frozen meat.
“Wake up, young man!” the leader yelled, shaking the boy when the soup started to cook. “You shouldn’t sleep so soundly in the forest.”
The boy’s eyes cracked open and quickly closed. He rolled over and went back to sleep.
The leader grabbed him by the arms and sat him upright. The boy opened his eyes again. Seeing the strange men with their weapons, he jumped up. He tried to run away, but the leader gripped his hand.
“Don’t be scared, little boy,” the leader said. “We won’t harm you. We’re partisans. Do you know what partisans are?”
The boy knew exactly who they were. They were members of a Jewish guerrilla force. Freedom fighters who had escaped into the woods when the Germans and Ukrainians had come to liquidate their hometowns. From their hideouts in the forest, they launched paramilitary attacks and performed acts of sabotage on the Nazis and their collaborators.
“I know, I know!” the boy exclaimed, recognizing the patches of red fabric they wore on their caps. “I’ve been looking for you for the past three days.”
“What’s your name, boy?” the detachment leader asked.
“They call me Mitka,” the boy lied. He had learned to disguise his Jewish identity around strangers, even fellow Jews. He had adopted a name that implied that he was Ukrainian. His real name was Mordechai “Motele” Schlein, but he would not share this with the partisans for several months.
He did, however, tell them the partial truth about how he had ended up in the woods. Motele was from the Volhynian village of Krasnovka and had escaped into the forest in the previous spring, right after his family had been shot. He told the partisans that his parents had been killed along with other townspeople in retaliation for the burning of a German warehouse. The truth was that his parents and little sister had been murdered simply for being Jewish. As Motele explained to the partisans, he had lived in the forest by himself for the entire summer. When winter had arrived, he had gone into a nearby village and gotten a job as a shepherd for a rich peasant. After suffering months of physical abuse from the peasant’s wife, the boy had slipped back into the forest on New Year’s Day in the hopes of joining the Nazi-fighting partisans.
“I like you! We’ll take you with us,” declared the detachment leader, impressed with the boy’s resourcefulness. “You’ll be in Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group.” The detachment leader just happened to be Simcha “Lionka” Gildenman, the son of the “Uncle Misha” after whom the partisan brigade was named.
“Aren’t you afraid of being around Jews? Here in Volhynia, the Ukrainian children are afraid of being called ‘zhid,’” Lionka continued, invoking a Russian epithet for a person of Jewish descent.
“I’m not afraid of Jews,” the boy responded, turning his head and wiping away a tear with his sleeve. “They’re just like everyone else.”
Krasnovka
Motele was born in 1930 in Krasnovka, a small village near the border between Poland and the Soviet Union. He grew up in a sunken, straw-covered shack with his sister Batyale, who was two years younger than him. Their father Burtzik Schlein owned the shack along with a windmill and a garden. Their mother Chana took care of the family by preparing their meals, washing their clothes, and tending to the garden. In the nearby lake, she soaked flax that she would spin into linen at night. To further supplement the windmill’s meager profits, she raised geese that Motele and Batyale lovingly cared for.
Although Motele’s family was so poor that they could not afford shoes for him, his childhood was full of fun and affection. He spent his summers playing with his Ukrainian friends, who loved him for his bravery and sense of humor. He, in turn, enjoyed helping them take care of the cows and horses behind the village. As he rode bareback through Krasnovka on the peasants’ horses, nobody gave any consideration to the fact that Motele was Jewish.
Most of all, Motele loved music. One of his favorite activities was listening to his mother sing as she worked at her spinning wheel. His favorite song was a ballad about the 1903 massacre of Jews in Kishinev, the capital of the Romanian region of Bessarabia. There was also a blind lyrist who would often visit Krasnovka to beg. While the beggar sat on the ground, singing Ukrainian folksongs and accompanying himself on the lyre, Motele would cry as the music touched his soul. Some days, Motele would walk to the other side of the village to visit the lavish palace of Meir Gershtein, a wealthy plantation owner who was the patriarch of the only other Jewish family in Krasnovka. Peering through the iron fence that surrounded the estate, Motele would spend hours listening with fascination as Meir’s daughter Reizele played the piano while her teacher Solomon played the violin.
Motele wanted to make music. He carved a crude wooden flute, on which he taught himself to imitate birdcalls, to the delight of his friends. He would also try in vain to replicate the wonderful sounds he heard from the Gershtein estate—complex compositions such as a mazurka by Henryk Wieniawski. A handmade flute was the only instrument that Motele could afford, but what he really wanted to play was the violin. “When I grow up, I’m going to learn to play the violin like the plantation owner’s teacher,” he pledged to Batyale. “I’m going to be a musician.”
Motele finally got his chance to learn music in the fall of 1938, when Meir Gershtein’s wife—who was Motele’s third cousin—invited the eight-year-old boy to live with her family. In the afternoons, after Reizele finished her schooling, she and Solomon would go into the parlor to play music. Motele would become so mesmerized by the sound of Solomon’s violin that he would still be staring dreamily at the instrument several moments after they stopped playing.
One time, when Reizele and Solomon were playing a medley of Ukrainian folksongs, Motele started singing along unconsciously. Reizele exchanged a glance with Solomon and whispered, “Pianissimo.” As they played softly, Motele’s voice resonated throughout the parlor. When they finished, Reizele ran over to Motele and kissed him on the cheek. “What a dear child you are!” she exclaimed. “What a great ear you have for music! Solomon, you must begin teaching him the violin.”
And so Motele’s dream became a reality. Solomon started to give him violin lessons on an instrument that Reizele’s little brother Shunye had lost interest in playing. Motele quickly proved be a good student. He was intelligent and remarkably talented, he picked things up quickly, and he was always eager to learn. Solomon spent every free moment helping his young prodigy develop his talent, even after Motele decided to move back into his parents’ house in the spring of 1939.
Motele’s carefree childhood ended on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. As the German army occupied the western part of the country, thousands of Poles, mainly Jews, fled eastward. Several Jewish families escaped to Krasnovka, including one that stayed with Motele’s family and told them horrific stories of German atrocities.
In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had secretly divvied up Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland on September 17. The Soviet occupation brought about many changes in Krasnovka, most notably the nationalization of the Gershtein estate. After the Gershteins were forced to move to a neighboring village, their palace was turned into Krasnovka’s first school, which Motele attended. Solomon was retained as one of the teachers. He continued to give Motele violin lessons after lunch.
A period of relative stability ended on June 22, 1941, when Germany violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by invading Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. Once again, people started escaping eastward.
“Everyone is fleeing,” Motele’s mother Chana told his father. “Maybe we should go with them.”
“Let’s wait awhile,” Burtzik responded. But he became less confident in his answer with each passing day. Others were abandoning their houses, but how could he and Chana leave the windmill that his great-grandfather had built? And how would they bring Motele and his little sister Batyale?
By July 1, it was too late. The Germans had occupied Krasnovka. They stormed the town with the roar of engines and the heavy footfalls of boots. They arrested the village chairman and hanged him. They ordered that his body be left swinging from the gallows for three days as an example for the rest of the village. The villagers secreted themselves in their shacks, but the Germans simply went door-to-door, demanding food.
A truck with twelve German soldiers pulled up in Motele’s yard. Weapons drawn, they entered the house and sat down at the table. Chana served them eggs, fresh bread, and butter, which they ate without speaking a single word. They just stared at Chana from beneath the steel helmets that they had not even bothered to take off. As Motele and Batyale watched from the cracked door to the adjacent room, the eldest of the Germans suddenly stood up and went into the yard. A few moments later, Motele and Batyale heard several gunshots. The commander came back in and threw to the floor three bloody geese that were still convulsing and flapping their wings.
“These geese must be ready to eat in one hour,” he ordered Chana.
Chana just stood there, pale-faced and frozen with horror.
The German grabbed her arm and stared angrily into her frightened eyes. “One hour,” he commanded. “Do you understand?”
After the Germans stepped outside, Chana started crying. Wiping away her tears with the side of her head scarf, she started plucking the geese.
Batyale entered the room and hugged her mother from behind. “Don’t cry, Mama,” she pleaded. “We still have lots of geese.”
“I’m not crying because of the geese,” Chana answered. “I’m crying over our own fates. God knows if we’ll survive these murderers.”
Meanwhile, the German commander had ordered Burtzik to wash the dirt and mud off his truck. Burtzik filled a bucket with water and fashioned a brush from straw. When the commander saw Burtzik scrubbing the truck, he became irate.
“You dirty Jew,” he shouted, frothing at the mouth. “Why are you ruining the paint on my truck?”
He slapped Burtzik in the face. Then, noticing clean white sheets hanging on a clothesline, he grabbed the laundry, balled it up, and threw it at Burtzik.
“Clean with this, you damned Jew,” he spat.
Motele had come running out of the house when the German had started screaming. He watched angrily as his father bit his lip in pain and resumed washing the truck.
The Nazi Occupation of Volhynia
Immediately upon occupying Volhynia, the Germans initiated a plan to completely wipe out its Jewish community. They received ample assistance from local police and towns-people whose anti-Semitism and xenophobia made them willing participants in the genocide. “The element that settled our cities, whether it is Jews or Poles who were brought here from outside the Ukraine, must disappear completely from our cities,” declared the editor of the newspaper Volhyn on September 1, 1941. “The Jewish problem is already in the process of being solved, and it will be solved in the framework of a general reorganization of the ‘New Europe.’”82
In the first wave of mass murders, fifteen thousand Jews were killed by the German death squads with the assistance of the Ukrainian police. By October 1941, subsequent waves of killings would result in the deaths of an additional thirty thousand Jews. The slaughters slowed when the Germans realized that they could exploit Jewish laborers rather than kill them. By this time, the vast majority of the surviving Jews of Volhynia had been relocated to cramped ghettos and labor camps, where starvation and disease claimed even more lives.
Although they were the only Jews left in Krasnovka, Motele’s family avoided being banished to a ghetto because Burtzik’s work at the windmill had rendered him indispensable to the town. Burtzik was, however, subjected to the Nuremberg Laws. The Nazis confiscated his grain and put severe restrictions on how much he could earn by milling the villagers’ grain. He was also required to wear the yellow Star of David, which immediately ostracized him from his fellow villagers.
One of these villagers was Burtzik’s closest neighbor Pavlo Fustamit, whose family had lived next to Burtzik’s for three generations. Burtzik and Pavlo grew up together, herded cattle together, and served in the military together. As adults, they collected wood together and helped each other buy cattle. They were like brothers. Their wives also became close friends, visiting each other almost hourly to borrow something, seek advice, or just chat. The women would garden together, spin flax together, and help each other with various other chores. When Pavlo’s house was burned down by lightning, he and his wife Maria moved in with Burtzik and Chana until Pavlo could build a new home. But after the Nazi occupation, Pavlo and Maria avoided Burtzik and his family. They stopped visiting. They would turn their heads away if they saw them on the street.
Motele was also shunned by his former friends. At the beginning of the school year, he went to Gershtein’s former palace to reenroll in classes. Along the way, he passed a group of Ukrainian children playing in a park. As soon as they saw him, they started chanting, “Jew! Jew!” Motele did not react. He just lowered his head and kept walking.
He walked into the familiar schoolroom and noted a new portrait of Hitler on the wall. “Good morning,” he said.
“A Ukrainian doesn’t say ‘good morning,’ but ‘glory to Ukraine,’” responded one of the three teachers seated at a round table. None of them bothered to look up from the books they were reading.
“I’ve come to enroll in this class,” Motele mumbled hesitantly.
“What’s your name?” one of the teachers asked. Although he was still looking down, Motele recognized him as a geography teacher who had always been mean to him.
“Mordechai Schlein.”
The mean teacher jumped up and stared at Motele with hatred. “You zhid!” he shouted. “Who let you in here? Run away quickly. Don’t you know that Jews are forbidden from attending school?”
Motele left the room as fast as he could, leaping down two and three steps at a time on his way out of the schoolhouse. He did not stop running until he reached a large field far from the village, where he fell to the ground and sobbed uncontrollably.
That winter was very difficult for Motele’s family. They had always lived simply, but they had at least been able to avoid poverty. Now that the Nazis had limited what Burtzik could charge for his services, they barely had enough to survive. To make matters worse, the millstone in the windmill had worn down and needed to be replaced if Burtzik was to continue to protect his family by being useful. To save what little money they earned for the new millstone, the family ate only potatoes the entire winter.
In addition to nearly starving to death, Motele’s family almost froze. Since the villagers refused to lend Burtzik a horse, he was unable to get wood for the fire. It was up to Motele and Batyale to walk two miles to the forest. Digging through the deep snow with their bare hands, they would search for twigs that they could load onto their little sled. Crying because they were starving, freezing, and exhausted, they would endure taunts and insults from Ukrainian children on their way home.
The Massacres Resume
In the spring of 1942, the ethnic cleansing of Volhynia resumed with brutal intensity. The Nazis began systematically liquidating the ghettos, starting with women, children, and the elderly who were unfit to work. Close to twenty thousand Volhynian Jews were killed in the first stage of these renewed massacres, which commenced in May and lasted until mid-June. The second phase resulted in the complete destruction of the ghettos in Rovno and Olyka and the murder of ten thousand Jews. It was the third stage that did the most damage. It began in August and lasted more than two months. The killing teams, often operating in several districts at the same time, murdered 150,000 Jews, effectively obliterating what was left of Volhynia’s once-vibrant Jewish community. A final stage, in November and December 1942, completed the ethnic cleansing by eliminating the 3,500 skilled laborers who had remained in the ghettos. This left alive only a few thousand Jews who had managed to hide or escape to the forests, many of whom would later die of starvation or during partisan battles.
The massacre that took place in the Volhynian city of Korets on May 21, 1942—the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot—resulted in the slaughter of 90 percent of the town’s Jewish population. One of the few survivors was a forty-four-year-old civil engineer by the name of Moshe Gildenman, who later related the horror of the Korets massacre in gruesome detail. “Near a pit twenty-by-twenty meters long and three meters deep stood a table with bottles of cognac and food,” he recalled. “At the table sat a German with an automatic pistol in his hand. Frightened and despairing Jews were pushed into the pit naked, six at a time. The German ordered them to lie on the ground, face down. Between one sip of cognac and the next he shot them. Among the 2,200 Jews the Germans shot that day were my wife and my thirteen-year-old daughter.”
The killings lasted for twelve hours. That evening, Gildenman and the other survivors met in the synagogue to rend their garments and say Kaddish for the dead. While others were mourning, Gildenman’s thoughts turned to rage and retribution. He heard a voice cry out from inside himself: “Not with prayers will you assuage our grief for the rivers of innocent blood that was spilled—but with revenge!”
As soon as the Kaddish was over, Gildenman banged the table. “Listen to me, unfortunate, death-condemned Jews!” he called out. “Know that sooner or later we are all doomed. But I shall not go like a sheep to the slaughter!” Gildenman vowed that someday he would exact his revenge.83
On September 23, 1942, with the Germans and Ukrainians surrounding the Korets ghetto for its final liquidation, Gildenman, his son, and several other men escaped to the forest. Combining Gildenman’s engineering background with their thirst for revenge, the partisans staged a series of sophisticated attacks, killing Nazis and acquiring their weapons. The group’s many successes included a number of cleverly engineered attacks on trains, railways, and bridges that prevented the Germans from transporting much-needed reinforcements to the Eastern Front. Taking its name from Gildenman’s partisan moniker, the outfit became known as “Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group.” It would be this partisan brigade that Motele would join in January 1943.
One day, Motele was approaching his family’s home when he saw the Nazi-appointed mayor of the village enter the courtyard with four German soldiers. Fearful of coming face-to-face with the Nazis, Motele darted into the windmill. He climbed up to the top floor and looked out a round window at what was happening below.
While the mayor leaned against the well, nonchalantly brushing the dirt off his boots with a twig, the four soldiers entered the house. Suddenly, Motele heard his father cry out. Several gunshots were followed by the heartrending screams of Chana and Batyale.
Then there was silence. A shudder went down Motele’s entire body. His hair stood up on end. He knew instantly that his parents and sister were dead. He would be next if he was not careful. He decided to run away as soon as he could get out of the windmill safely.
The mayor walked into the house and reemerged a few minutes later carrying a bloody sheet into which he had packed several stolen items. He walked back to the village, followed by the Nazi murderers.
As Motele continued to watch from his hiding place in the windmill, the neighbor Pavlo Fustamit appeared. Pavlo ran into Motele’s house and stuck his head out the window.
“Maria!” he shouted. “Quick, bring a sack!”
Maria walked over with an empty bag and entered the house. After a little while, Pavlo came into the yard with a large featherbed that Motele’s mother had painstakingly made. He ripped the quilt apart, dumped out all of the feathers, and took the empty cover back into the house. When he reemerged a few moments later, the quilt cover was filled with stolen items. Maria followed behind him, nearly doubled over under the weight of her heavy sack.
Convulsing with quiet sobs, Motele watched through tearful eyes as the mayor returned.
“Until the regional commander takes over the windmill, it has to be sealed,” the mayor explained to Pavlo.
As the mayor walked toward the windmill, Motele scampered down from the top floor and hid behind an old crate. His heart pounded and his head spun. He felt dizzy.
“Is there anyone here?” the mayor called out, opening the windmill’s only door. “Come out, because I’m nailing the door shut.”
Motele heard the door close, followed by the hammering of nails. He breathed deeply, but did not leave his hiding place. He lay there for a long time, crying softly.
When night fell, Motele decided to make his escape. He found a rope and tied one end to a post. He pushed the other end through a small hatch on the top floor. He climbed through the hatch and slid down the rope fifty feet to the ground.
Motele’s heart pounded as he approached his house. As soon as he walked through the door, he froze. In the moonlight he could see Burtzik lying in the middle of the room, covered in blood. His eyes were still open. Chana was on the bed, one bare foot draped off the side of the bed into a pool of blood. Young Batyale lay nearby, underneath a chair. Her face was flat against the floor. Her little hands were stretched out, frozen in her last moments of desperation.
“Blood . . . blood,” Motele said to himself, in shock over what he was seeing. “I no longer have anyone. They’ve all been murdered. I have to run away from here, as quickly as possible. They’ll murder me, as well.”
Before he left, he noticed his father’s little prayer book on the floor near his feet. He picked it up, pressed it to his lips, and put it in his pocket. He quickly ran out of the house.
He had no sooner reached an old pear tree that stood near the border of the yard than he saw Pavlo coming down the road. Motele quickly scampered up the tree and watched as Pavlo walked to his own house. As Motele climbed down, he suddenly remembered the Gershteins’ violin, which he had secreted in the hollow of the very tree in which he was hiding so the Germans would not confiscate it.
Motele grabbed the violin from its hiding place and pressed it to his heart. It was his last reminder of better times. He ran into the dense forest with only one thought in his mind: “Run away, the farther the better. Escape from these evil people.”
Motele in the Forest
As Motele would later tell Lionka and the other partisans who would discover him in the woods, he spent the summer after his flight in the forest. Walking eastward, toward Belarus, he lived off wild berries and mushrooms. Whenever he came across a town or village, he would hide in the bushes until it got dark and steal potatoes from a garden on his way out of town. When he needed to sleep, he would build himself a bed out of moss or grass and use his violin case as a pillow. He was initially scared of living in the forest, but he quickly became more confident as he developed his survival skills.
When the autumn brought cold winds and rain, scavenging food became much more difficult. Berries were no longer in season, mushrooms were increasingly hard to find under inches of fallen leaves, and potatoes had already been harvested from their gardens. With only a thin linen shirt, one pair of pants, and no shoes, Motele was also freezing. The weather was even affecting his violin case, which was starting to swell from the moisture. Motele had not played the violin in months, because he was afraid that someone would hear him. He would, however, occasionally open the case and run his hand gently over the strings. Just this small amount of physical contact with his instrument was enough to bring him comfort.
When the cold rain became too much to bear, Motele hid his violin under a fallen tree and walked into a village. He knocked on the first door he came to and was welcomed by an elderly farm woman who found him a job working as a shepherd for the richest farmer in the village. Motele went back into the forest and reclaimed his violin, which he hid under a pile of straw in the woodshed. In return for caring for two oxen, four cows, and ten sheep, Motele was given a jacket, a pair of pants, and a pair of boots.
The rich farmer Karpo was a quiet and kind man who treated Motele well. His wife Christia, on the other hand, was a hateful woman who lorded over Motele and her servant girl Dasha with verbal and physical abuse. Even worse was her son Pyetro, an anti-Semitic policeman from nearby Dombrovitze.
“This is our new shepherd?” Pyetro asked upon seeing Motele. “For some reason, he has very curly hair like a zhid. Come closer to me, boy.”
Although his heart was pounding, Motele approached Pyetro with every ounce of courage he could muster. “Glory to Ukraine!” he cheerfully greeted the policeman, using the salutation he had learned from the Nazi schoolteachers in Krasnovka.
Pyetro stared into Motele’s shiny black eyes. “The ‘Our Father,’” he said, referring to the Christian prayer. “Do you know it?”
Motele had grown up with Christian Ukrainian children. He had learned their customs and their prayers. He recited the prayer in one breath.
“Even though you’re a Christian,” Pyetro conceded, “you do have the hair of a non-Christian.”
That settled the matter until New Year’s Eve, when Christia discovered among Motele’s belongings the little prayer book that had once belonged to his father.
“You’re a zhid!” she said, confronting Motele when he entered the house that night.
“Everybody says that I look like a zhid,” Motele responded matter-of-factly. “Even your son Pyetro said that I have the hair of a non-Christian.”
“Then what’s this?” Christia demanded, triumphantly holding up the prayer book.
“Where did you find Seryozha’s little book?” Motele exclaimed, quickly inventing a Jewish friend. “He gave it to me to play with for a day and I lost it. We almost got into a fight over it.” He calmly grabbed the book and slid it into his pocket.
“I told you that you are picking on this poor child for no reason,” Karpo scolded his wife. “He’s a true Christian soul, and you want to turn him into a Jew.”
“Tomorrow our Pyetro will come,” Christia responded, not willing to concede defeat. “He’ll interrogate the boy as necessary and will establish whether he is a zhid or a Christian.”
On New Year’s Day, when the family departed for church, they left Motele behind to guard the house. The interrogation would come after the church service. Motele had planned to simply disappear while they were gone, but was overcome with a thirst for revenge. He thought of the Nazi teacher who had humiliated him in Krasnovka and of the beatings he received from Christia. He thought of his old neighbors Pavlo and Maria Fustamit, who had shunned his father and then looted his house. He thought of his murdered family. It was not fair that the self-proclaimed Christians would celebrate their New Year while he would be forced back into the forest. Someone had to pay.
Motele grabbed his violin, climbed into the attic, and set the straw roof on fire. Hiding behind buildings, he quickly made his way through the village and into the forest. As soon as he reached the tree line, he heard screams. The church bells began to sound an alarm. Motele turned around. As he disappeared into the forest, he watched the flames from Karpo’s house shoot into the sky.
The servant girl Dasha had told Motele stories of the partisans who had occupied the forests surrounding the village. These brave combatants were killing policemen, ambushing military depots, and sharing their loot with the poorest farmers. Inspired by the tales of their bravery, Motele had made up his mind to find them. After three days of his wandering around in the forest, they found him. And so the boy who called himself Mitka joined Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group, which by then was receiving tactical support from the Red Army. Motele proved to be a clever and daring young operative with a knack for intelligence and espionage.
Motele the Young Partisan
Shortly after Motele joined the Jewish Group, Uncle Misha himself sent the boy on a mission. Motele was to spy on a group of Hungarian soldiers who had arrived in Lubin, a village located three miles from their partisan camp.
“When they stop you and ask who you are, what will you say?” Uncle Misha asked Motele before dispatching him.
“I’ll tell them that I’m from the village of Kristinovka and that I’m looking for a white cow with red patches and a broken horn,” Motele smartly replied, without even thinking about it. “The cow separated from the herd and went in the direction of Lubin.”
Barefoot in his short linen pants, with a bag over one shoulder and a whip in his hand, Motele looked every bit the part of a shepherd. He walked right through the village, innocently strolling past the Hungarian soldiers who were going from home to home gathering eggs and cheese. When he reached the center of the village, he came upon six large wagons. Next to the wagons Motele discovered a fat Hungarian cook, whom he befriended by chopping wood for him and by stirring his soup. While Motele was working on the soup, the cook dozed off. Motele noticed that the cook had left his pistol on a bench and thought to himself, “Once I have a pistol like that, I’ll be a real partisan.” He quickly removed the cook’s pistol from its holster and slid it into his bag.
As Motele was heading out of the village, he happened upon a Hungarian soldier who was mounting a horse. The soldier dropped his whip and signaled to the boy to pick it up for him. To avoid looking suspicious, Motele ignored his pounding heart and calmly handed the whip to its owner. As soon as the soldier rode off, Motele ran quickly back to the forest.
After recounting his experience for Uncle Misha, Motele reached into his bag and dramatically produced a Belgian Colt. “Come to the other side of the marshes,” he said gleefully to Lionka, grabbing his new friend by the hand. “You can teach me how to shoot!”
“Wait a second before learning how to shoot!” Uncle Misha interrupted. “You haven’t reported to me the findings of your reconnaissance mission. I sent you to Lubin to find out how many Hungarians are there and how they’re armed, not to steal pistols from sleeping cooks.”
Motele’s face turned bright red. “I told you that there were six wagons,” he retorted angrily. “If we assume that there are five men to each wagon, then there are thirty Hungarians. The cook makes thirty-one, and the commander makes thirty-two. There cannot be any more than that because Hungarians are not partisans who are willing to ride ten to a wagon.
“They only have one heavy machine gun, like our Maxim,” he continued, referring to the bulky machine gun that took several people to operate. “I saw it on a wagon, hiding under a heavy green tarp. It looks like they came to Lubin to get some wheat because I saw new bags painted with swastikas on one of the wagons.”
Within less than an hour, Uncle Misha acted on Motele’s report by attacking the Hungarians in Lubin. Just as Motele had calculated, there were thirty of them. Uncle Misha’s men killed them all and took their supplies.
One Sunday in the spring of 1943, Motele was sent on a new mission—one considerably more daring than simply spying on a brigade of Hungarians. Whipping a horse that was half dead from starvation and disease, Motele drove a wagon loaded with bran bags toward the village of Bielko. When he was just outside the village, Motele stopped and climbed down from the wagon. Looking around to make sure that he was not being watched, he unscrewed the bolt that secured the right front wheel and threw it into the bushes. He rode into town, announcing his arrival with the loud screeching of the ungreased wheels. He stopped right in front of a large wooden house that was the headquarters of the most powerful police force in the region, including forty Ukrainian policemen and six German soldiers. Six policemen came out of the building to investigate the noise while a German soldier watched from a window, laughing at the young Ukrainian peasant’s primitive transportation.
Motele climbed down from the wagon and made a spectacle out of checking the front right side. “I lost the bolt from the front wheel.” He started to cry, hitting himself in the head with his fists. “What will I do now? My father is going to kill me!
“The bolt must be in a forest not far from here,” he continued. “How will I go on?
“Would you please hold on to my horse while I run and look for the bolt?” he asked the policemen who were standing there poking fun at the weeping boy. Before they could respond, he handed one of them the reins and started back toward the forest. He walked with his head bent down, studying the ground. Every few steps, he would kneel down as if he were searching for something. When he reached the dense forest, he slipped into the woods and disappeared. He ran as fast as he could for five hundred yards and stopped. Putting two fingers in his mouth, he whistled loudly. Immediately, he heard a similar whistle from not too far away. Lionka and two other partisans appeared out of nowhere.
“Did you deliver the present?” Lionka asked.
“I delivered the present not only to the police station, but also to the six policemen and two soldiers who were guarding it,” Motele said, laughing. “Oh, did I fool them!” He did two somersaults in celebration.
After Motele had left the police station, the policemen had continued to stand around, laughing at the poor state of the horse and its driver. When Motele did not return, the policemen decided to move the horse and carriage into their courtyard. Unable to coax the horse into pulling the wagon, one of the policemen started unloading the bran bags. He had gotten two bags on the ground and was unloading the third bag when there was a violent explosion. The bag had been connected to a bomb the partisans had placed at the bottom of the wagon.
The bags, the wagon, and horse entrails went flying through the air. Four of the policemen were killed and the other two were seriously injured. A piece of the wooden wagon struck the German soldier who was standing in the window, gouging out an eye and knocking out all of his teeth. When the peasants came running out of their homes to see what was happening, they saw hundreds of pieces of paper. These were leaflets that had been in the bran bags. They had been hurled into the air by the explosion. The paper slowly floated down, covering the roofs, the yards, and the road like fresh snow. The leaflets, which the Red Army had airlifted to Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group just a few nights earlier, boasted of the German defeats on the Eastern Front. They warned the Ukrainians that those who continued to collaborate with the Nazis would be punished by the approaching Red Army.
It was not until May 21, 1943, more than five months after he joined Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group, that Motele finally disclosed his true identity to the partisan brigade. His confession came as Uncle Misha was mourning the first anniversary of the murders of his wife and daughter. Uncle Misha, Lionka, and ten other partisans from Korets decided to leave their camp to say Kaddish in private. Noticing that Motele was following them, Uncle Misha ordered him to return to the camp.
“What kind of holiday is today?” the boy asked.
“Today marks exactly one year since the Germans murdered our family,” Uncle Misha replied.
“The Germans also murdered my parents.”
“But we are Jews and we are going to say a prayer to our God.”
“My father told me that all people have one God. I won’t bother you. Let me come with you.”
Uncle Misha relented.
By the time the partisans reached their destination on the other side of the swamp, the sun had already set. They nailed two rows of candles on a wide tree stump, and lit them. One of the partisans took out a prayer book and led the evening prayer. When that was finished, the mourners tearfully said Kaddish. When the partisans were finished, they heard Motele slowly reciting the last line of the Hebrew prayer: “Peace upon us and upon all Israel, and say Amen.”
Astonished, the partisans turned to the boy who was standing in back of the group, holding a small prayer book in his hand. It was the book that Motele had taken from his father’s house. He had kept it with him ever since.
Large tears were rolling down Motele’s cheeks. He ran up to Uncle Misha and wrapped his arms around his neck. “Uncle Misha, I’m a Jew, too!” he exclaimed.
The partisans were stunned. Why had the boy lied about his Jewish heritage? There was certainly no stigma for being a Jew in Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group.
“First of all, what’s your Jewish name?” Lionka demanded, feeling betrayed. “Second, why didn’t you tell me that you’re a Jew? Do you think that being a Ukrainian is a greater honor?”
“My real name is Motele, which is what I want you to call me from now on,” the boy finally divulged. “Secondly, I didn’t reveal my Jewish identity because from the day the Germans occupied our territory, I suffered so much as a Jew that I felt safer not identifying myself as one, even when I was among friends. Besides, it seemed to me that as a Ukrainian I would have more opportunities to avenge the deaths of my parents and my only sister.”
Fighting alongside the partisans under his true Jewish name, Motele continued to demonstrate astonishing skills and confidence.
On July 6, 1943, Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group was attacked by two German fighter planes while attempting to cross a river. When a partisan radio operator named Mania got stranded on a small island in the middle of the river, she shot herself to avoid being taken alive and possibly tortured for her secret codes. As the partisans watched in disbelief, her body fell into the thick undergrowth that surrounded the island and disappeared. Losing Mania meant also losing their radio batteries, which she had packed in a cigar box in her leather satchel. It was through that radio that they received critical tactical information from the Partisan Movement Central Headquarters in Moscow. It was through that radio that they would need to dispatch an SOS signal if they were to have any hopes of surviving the German attack.
“I can swim over to Mania and rescue the satchel containing the batteries,” Motele volunteered.
“That’s impossible,” Uncle Misha replied. “The Germans will see you as soon as you surface.”
“They won’t see me,” Motele said confidently. “I’ll swim underwater.”
“How will you be able to stay underwater for so long?”
“I can stay underwater for several hours. Let me show you.” Motele got undressed, crawled over to the shore, and plucked a reed out of the ground. He put one end in his mouth and blew through the reed as if it were a straw. “I can swim all the way to the Volga with this reed!” he exclaimed.
He climbed into the water and disappeared. All that was left was the other end of the reed, barely sticking out of the water. Uncle Misha and the other partisans watched as the reed made its way across the river. As the Germans surveilled the partisans from the opposite shore, the reed made it to the island. The bushes swayed a bit before going back to being still. Then the reed started working its way back to the partisans. Motele triumphantly emerged from the water with Mania’s satchel. An hour later, the Russians heard the partisans’ signal and were able to come to their defense, thanks to Motele’s heroic swimming.
Motele Blows Up the Soldiers Club
In August 1943, Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group was operating in the dense forests of the northern Ukrainian province of Zhytomyr. Despite growing tired of their grueling life in the woods, the partisans were bolstered by the latest radio reports of the success of the Red Army, which had gained the upper hand on the Eastern Front during the Battle of Kursk just weeks earlier. The Russians were now advancing westward, liberating towns and capturing Germans along the way.
Although the Soviet leaders had ordered the partisan commanders to suspend their sabotage missions until they could be reunited with the Red Army, Uncle Misha was not ready to end his quest for vengeance. He was planning a surprise attack on the nearby city of Ovruch to destroy the train station and the large bridge that served as main gates to the Eastern Front.
From an informant named Karol, Uncle Misha learned that the Orthodox church leaders in Ovruch had convinced the German and Ukrainian police to allow visitors to enter and leave the city without documentation on August 20. This would allow everyone to freely celebrate the First Feast of the Savior. Uncle Misha decided to take advantage of this temporary lapse in security by dispatching several partisans to Ovruch to familiarize themselves with the town, to find out which military units were stationed there, and to assess the residents’ allegiances. He also wanted to confirm Karol’s report that the police department was prepared to surrender to Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group and hand over their weapons.
In addition to the partisan spies, Uncle Misha sent Motele and his violin to Ovruch. While the partisans were gathering intelligence, Motele was to join the group of beggars soliciting alms in front of the church. Posing as a street performer, Motele could surreptitiously observe the spies and immediately report back to Uncle Misha if they were discovered. Motele was even provided with counterfeit documents, forged by a partisan who was a former stampmaker, indicating that he was Dmitri Rubina from the Ukrainian village of Listvin. If he was questioned, Motele would simply reply that he was traveling to the city of Zhytomyr to find his father Ivan, who he had heard was being held in the German prisoner-of-war camp there.
The beggars included a blind man singing psalms while accompanying himself on a lyre, a one-legged veteran of the Russo-Japanese War playing an accordion, an elderly woman with a swollen and bandaged cheek, and several other destitute and handicapped drifters hoping to elicit sympathy from the holiday travelers. Motele sat on a wooden stool at the back of the crowd and placed a clay bowl he had purchased in the market between his feet. He tuned his violin, strummed a few strings, and began to perform one of the many Ukrainian folksongs he had learned in Krasnovka. The folksong was “The Ant,” a song about a woman whose work is so underappreciated that she asks God for wings. Motele would sing a stanza and then play the melody on his violin.
Although Uncle Misha had specifically chosen Motele for this assignment because of his ability to blend in with Ukrainians, the beauty of his singing and playing far surpassed that of the other beggars. He quickly attracted a crowd. When he finished the folksong, the onlookers threw coins into his bowl and slipped dumplings into his backpack.
Suddenly, there was a commotion in the back of the crowd. The congregation parted to make way for a German officer who was marching toward Motele. The officer stood in front of the boy. The young violinist was so engrossed with the music that he did not notice him. Finally, the officer tapped Motele on the shoulder with his riding crop. Raising his head and seeing the German uniform, Motele jumped to his feet and bowed.
“Come with me,” the officer commanded.
Motele felt his breast pocket to make sure he still had his forged documents. He calmly placed his violin back in its case, collected the coins from his little bowl, and followed the officer.
After walking a few blocks, they arrived at a building that was flanked by several German limousines and motorcycles. They passed an armed guard at the entrance and ascended a flight of stairs to a large restaurant where German officers sat around tables eating, drinking, and talking loudly. The officer marched Motele to the corner of the room, and whispered to an elderly man who was playing the piano.
“Can you read music?” the pianist asked Motele in Russian, assuming that the boy was an ethnic Ukrainian.
“Yes.”
The pianist dug through his sheet music and produced the score to Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s popular Minuet in G Major, op. 14, no. 1. From a political point of view, the work was an interesting choice for the venue, given that the recently deceased Polish composer had raised money for Hitler’s Jewish victims. From a musical standpoint, it was an excellent selection for a pianist attempting to accompany an unknown twelve-year-old street musician. The melody begins simply, moving stepwise in easy rhythms, and only increases in difficulty as the piece unfolds. If the boy stumbled early on, it would have been easy for the pianist to gracefully improvise a quick conclusion to the failed experiment.
But Motele was no ordinary street performer. He was a talented and well-trained violinist who had actually played that very minuet several times before, in the Gershteins’ palace with Reizele playing the piano. At first, Motele’s new pianist played only the accompaniment part with his left hand, listening intently to the young violinist’s playing. As he gained confidence in Motele’s abilities, the pianist added more harmonies with his right hand.
The restaurant grew quieter and quieter as the diners interrupted their conversations to listen to the beautiful duet. When Motele and his accompanist finished the coda—a tour de force of virtuosic passagework—the diners responded with vigorous applause. The Nazi officer who had discovered Motele was so pleased with the violin playing that he offered the boy a position entertaining the guests at the Soldiers Club for two hours during lunchtime and from seven to eleven in the evening. In return, Motele would receive two reichsmarks a day, plus lunch and dinner.
Motele protested, returning to his cover story of needing to find his father in Zhytomyr. He added that he would then have to return to Listvin to care for his sick mother and three small siblings. When the officer promised to find out if his father was in Zhytomyr and, if so, have him transferred to Ovruch, Motele was left with little choice but to accept the job.
Motele immediately visited Karol and asked him to convey his predicament to Uncle Misha. The partisan commander recognized the opportunity and ordered Motele to remain in Ovruch and report everything he observed through Karol.
The Soldiers Club was one of many restaurants that the Germans had appropriated as havens for soldiers on their way to the Eastern Front. It was a place where they could strengthen their resolve with great music, gourmet food, French wine, and pretty Ukrainian waitresses who served them in more ways than one. While playing his violin, Motele was able to track the numbers of units and the types of uniforms worn by German soldiers on their way to the front. He also eavesdropped on the conversations of the few who returned. Between lunch and dinner he surveilled the streets of Ovruch, taking note of everything for his reports to Karol.
Despite impossible conditions, young Motele was somehow able to conceal his disdain for the Nazis. He even earned their trust and friendship. A regional commandant who spent every evening at the Soldiers Club went so far as to have a little German uniform and cap tailored for Motele, to the delight of the other employees at the Soldiers Club.
Motele also discovered that the fat cook would prepare his best dishes in exchange for performances of his favorite song, “Rose-Marie.” Motele dined in the kitchen, which was located in the basement of the Soldiers Club. He usually ate his lunch before playing in the afternoon and returned for his dinner after he was done every night.
One day, on his way back upstairs after lunch, Motele noticed that one of the storerooms across the dimly lit hallway from the kitchen had been left open. He peered into the darkness and discovered a large cellar filled with empty wine cases, herring barrels, and other discarded items that had clearly been forgotten.
On the wall opposite the doorway was a jagged crack, presumably the result of a nearby bomb explosion. Motele, who had heard numerous tales of sabotage from other members of Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group, stopped in his tracks. He realized that if he filled that crack with explosives he could blow up the Soldiers Club and kill all of the Germans inside. Every time he passed the open storeroom, his resolve became greater. He eventually shared his idea with Karol. Uncle Misha eagerly approved the plan and instructed his explosives expert Popov to work out the details with Motele.
The beginning of the autumn harvest season meant that peasants were traveling between Ovruch and the surrounding fields with increasing frequency. The German soldiers guarding the city had grown tired of searching their wagons and had become less meticulous in their inspections. This allowed Motele to leave the city in Karol’s wagon unnoticed under a cartful of straw sheaves for bundling wheat. The German guard who allowed Karol to pass over the bridge out of town never suspected that underneath the heap of straw twists was a Jewish boy who planned to blow up his comrades.
Motele rendezvoused with Popov three miles outside Ovruch. After discussing the thickness of the stone walls and how long the wick would need to be to give Motele ample time to escape, Popov calculated that it would take forty pounds of explosives to bring down the Soldiers Club.
Motele returned to Ovruch in Karol’s cart, then snuck out to the forest again a few days later. This time, Popov taught Motele how to construct a bomb and insert a detonator, a lesson that Motele had watched him give before. Popov gave Motele the explosives and sent him back to Ovruch with instructions to hide them at Karol’s house.
That evening, after finishing his dinner and saying good night to the cook, Motele crept into the storeroom. He hid his instrument inside an empty barrel and left the Soldiers Club with an empty violin case. When he returned the next day, his case had a few pounds of explosives hidden inside. After his lunch, he snuck into the storeroom and swapped the explosives for his violin.
Motele repeated this process over the next several days, until he had successfully hidden all forty pounds of explosives in the cellar. Whenever he could, Motele would return to the storeroom to break off the stones that surrounded the crack in the wall and replace them with the deadly material. When he had packed all of the explosives into the wall, he inserted the capsule detonator and the long wick that Popov had given him. He hid everything behind a pile of garbage.
At the same time, Motele and Karol were working on an escape plan. Every day, they would visit the river that borders Ovruch, pretending to be fishing or swimming while actually looking for an area that would be shallow enough for Motele to cross during his getaway. On their way to and from the river, they would note the streets and gardens through which Motele would have to run on his flight out of town.
The only aspect of the plan that remained unresolved was when to detonate the bomb. The perfect opportunity finally presented itself when a division of the SS came through Ovruch on its way to try to salvage the increasingly hopeless situation on the Eastern Front. The success of partisan sabotage of the railroad had forced the SS division to abandon the train and instead travel eastward by road, stopping at Ovruch for the night.
At around three in the afternoon, their cars and motorcycles began to arrive at the Soldiers Club. The restaurant quickly filled with high-ranking SS officers in their formal attire. Motele’s violin and the piano accompaniment could barely be heard above the din of clanking dishes, clinking glasses, and loud laughter. Motele and the pianist were forbidden from taking any breaks as the guests got drunker and as the cigar smoke thickened. The intoxicated officers requested tangos and waltzes, occasionally insisting that the musicians play only “their song.” At one point, a red-faced German at one of the tables started screaming wildly, “Play ‘Volga, Volga,’” referring to the popular “Volga Song” from an operetta by Franz Léhar. Another officer stumbled around the restaurant hugging a bottle of cognac while tearfully singing, “My father does not know me, my mother does not love me, and I cannot die because I am still young.”
Motele’s fingers ached from the nonstop playing and his eyes burned from all the cigar smoke. But he continued to play. “I’m playing for you for the last time,” he thought to himself as he smiled at his applauding audience. “Eat, drink, and be merry, you accursed Germans. These are your final hours. I’ll play so well for you tonight that you’ll be blown apart dancing.”
It was not until eleven that night that the pianist finally convinced the manager to let him and Motele relinquish the responsibility for entertaining the officers to the guests who could play the piano. Motele went downstairs to the kitchen, where he told the cook that he was too tired to eat his dinner after playing the violin for eight hours straight.
He left the kitchen and entered the hallway. Groping around in the darkness, Motele found the storeroom door and quietly closed it behind him. Using the dim light from a small grated window as a guide, he located the detonator and ignited it. He hastily ran out of the cellar, down the hallway, and up the stairs. Slowing as he approached the soldier who guarded the exit, he extended his right arm and proclaimed a sarcastic “Heil, Hitler!”
The guard, familiar with the affable young violinist in his little soldier’s uniform, amusedly responded, “Ach, you little Ukrainian swine!” And Motele vanished into the darkness.
After running for two hundred feet, Motele heard a violent explosion behind him. The ground shook and windowpanes shattered. He heard police whistles and sirens and saw red flares illuminate the sky over Ovruch.
Terrified and euphoric at the same time, Motele hid himself from view by flattening his body against the buildings as he escaped. He ran into the river, holding his violin above his head with both hands to protect it from the cold water that reached up to his neck. Glancing backward, he saw an enormous fireball shooting into the sky.
When Motele reached the other side of the river, five armed partisans from Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group plucked him out of the water and into their wagon. They quickly disappeared back into the safety of the woods.
For a few minutes, Motele was speechless, overwhelmed by the success of his mission. Then, raising his clenched fists to the red sky, he declared in a trembling voice, “That is for my parents and my little sister Batyale!”
Motele’s Last Mission
By October 1943, the male adults in Uncle Misha’s Jewish Group had been incorporated into various divisions of the Red Army and the women and children partisans had been sent out of harm’s way. The Russians wanted Uncle Misha to stay behind the lines as an engineer, but he declined. “I have a final account to settle with Hitler in Berlin,” he insisted.84 He and Lionka became snipers in the Red Army’s 141st Rifle Division.
Motele was also instructed to leave the combat zone. He, too, refused. “I’m not a child anymore,” he argued tearfully. “I’m already more than twelve years old. I can act as a small scout in the front and be just as useful as I was in the forest.
“I’m an orphan,” he continued. “And I don’t have anybody other than Uncle Misha and Lionka. I don’t want to part from them.”
Uncle Misha was able to intervene on Motele’s behalf, convincing the commanding officers to allow the boy to stay in his regiment.
On the morning of October 14, Uncle Misha, Lionka, and Motele found themselves in a trench, pinned down by a constant barrage of German bullets and mortars. They had been under attack since the night before, when they had been discovered laying land mines. By the time dawn broke, the river embankment in which they had found refuge was littered with the bodies of dead soldiers and horses from the bloody battle.
A little over four hundred yards away, they noticed a group of Russian officers trying to hide in a shallow trench. Every time the officers moved, their golden epaulettes sparkled in the sun.
“Look, Uncle Misha!” Motele exclaimed, pointing toward a cluster of bushes close to the Russians’ trench. “Something is stretching along the ground like a blue snake.”
Uncle Misha quickly spotted the group of Germans in blue-gray uniforms stealthily crawling through the bushes toward the Russians. The partisans tried to warn the Russians, but their shouts were drowned out by the cracks of gunfire, the whistles of mortars, and the resulting explosions. They could not shoot the Germans, as their automatic weapons only had a range of two hundred yards.
“I’ll run to warn them,” Motele volunteered.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Uncle Misha retorted. “The Germans will see you before you even get a chance to run halfway there.”
“They won’t notice me. I’m small. I’ll run hunched over and hide behind the dead soldiers and horses,” Motele responded. “Look! The Germans are already close. I’m going!”
Before Uncle Misha could stop him, Motele leapt out of the trench and darted toward the Russian officers. He zigged and zagged to avoid being targeted. Every twenty-five yards, he threw his body to the ground, waited a few seconds, and then took off running again. When Motele reached the Russian officers, they pulled him into their trench. Seconds later, they opened fire on the bushes where the Germans were hiding.
The Germans started running away. By then they had gotten so close to the Russians that there was nowhere to take cover. One by one, they fell to the ground dead.
The German artillery that had been bombarding the partisans and the Russians relentlessly since the night before changed tactics. They would cease fire every few minutes in an attempt to lure their foes out of their hiding places. After each temporary lull in the action, they would fire two dozen mortars into the area.
During one break from the fighting, Motele climbed out of the Russians’ trench and started zigzagging back to the partisans. When he was a little over thirty yards away, there was a sudden burst of fire from a German machine gun that had been camouflaged on a hill.
Motele threw himself to the ground. He waited a few seconds, and then picked himself up.
He had not even taken another step when the machine gun fired again.
Motele screamed and fell to the ground.
Uncle Misha and Lionka ran over to Motele and pulled him back into their trench. They ripped open his bloody shirt and pants and found that the entire right side of Motele’s body had been riddled with bullets. They tore off their own shirts and tried to fashion compress bandages that would stop the bleeding, but the damage was too severe.
“I wanted to be with you,” Motele explained weakly.
He grew weaker and paler with every passing minute. Uncle Misha held Motele in his arms. Silently crying, Lionka held Motele’s left hand and stroked his curly black hair. Uncle Misha and Lionka were so consumed with grief that they barely noticed the German airplanes that had started dropping bombs near their location.
Motele opened his eyes.
“Uncle Misha, when I die, will I be reunited with my parents?” he asked, his voice almost inaudible.
“Don’t talk nonsense, my dear child. You’re not going to die,” Uncle Misha said, trying to console him.
Uncle Misha promised to carry Motele back to the field hospital, where he would be patched up and returned to the regiment. The sadness in Motele’s eyes indicated that the boy knew he was dying.
“But when I die . . . will I be reunited . . . with my parents?”
Uncle Misha could not answer him. Tears streamed down his face. This was the first time he had cried in a year and a half. These were the first tears he had shed since his wife and his daughter had been killed during the Korets massacre.
Seeing Uncle Misha’s tears, Motele stopped waiting for an answer.
The noise of the artillery suddenly fell silent. A deathly stillness permeated the embankment.
“I will tell . . . my parents . . . and Batyale . . . how I avenged them . . .” Motele groaned quietly.
He did not finish his sentence. His entire body stiffened. With a contented smile on his face, the thirteen-year-old partisan gave up his brave soul.
Motele’s Violin
Uncle Misha ultimately underwent officers’ training in the Soviet Union. He entered Germany as a captain in the Red Army—bringing with him Motele’s violin—and was in Berlin when Hitler committed suicide. After the war, Uncle Misha worked at the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland before immigrating to Paris. In 1951, he moved to Israel, where he died in the city of Nes Ziona in 1957.
Motele’s violin was passed down to Lionka, who had become a lieutenant in the Red Army. After the war, Lionka returned to Korets and shot one of the Ukrainians who had assisted with the murder of his mother and sister. Lionka was tried in a military court and sentenced only to a few weeks of duty in a disciplinary battalion.
Lionka immigrated to Israel with his father. He eventually gave Motele’s violin to his own son Seffi Hanegbi, a tour guide in Israel’s Negev Desert. For many years, the instrument sat between clothes and blankets in the back of Seffi’s closet, collecting dust.
In the early 1990s, Seffi happened to meet Amnon, who was accompanying his wife Assi on a visit to the Negev. Seffi asked Amnon what he did for a living.
“I am a violinmaker,” Amnon replied. He had not yet started his work of restoring violins from the Holocaust.
“I will have to tell you a beautiful story someday,” Seffi promised.
In 1999, Seffi heard a radio program in which Amnon talked about the Wagner Violin and the other German instruments in his collection. This inspired Seffi to visit Amnon’s workshop in Tel Aviv and finally tell him the story of Motele Schlein’s Violin. Amnon pledged to restore the instrument, which still remained in the battered wooden case that Motele had used to sneak explosives into the storeroom of the Soldiers Club.
“It is a German instrument, very typical of what Jewish people had before the war,” Amnon recalls. “The violin was in good condition, because it was kept by the family the whole time.”
The only evidence of the instrument’s astonishing odyssey from Volhynia to Israel is a fingerprint on the back of the violin where the varnish was stripped off by coming into contact with alcohol. From the position and location of the damage, Amnon has surmised that at some point a drunken German at the Soldiers Club tried to grab the instrument, perhaps to play it himself.
Although Amnon would completely refurbish many of the other Violins of Hope, he decided to leave Motele’s instrument relatively unchanged. He made only minor repairs, replacing just the pegs, bridge, and soundpost to make the instrument playable for special occasions. Using prewar materials that he had inherited from his father, Amnon was able to restore the violin to its original condition.
Seffi subsequently donated the violin to Yad Vashem with the stipulation that it be available for performances. It has since become a permanent feature in Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum, in the Resistance and Rescue Gallery, which is dedicated to those who defied the Nazis. Motele Schlein’s Violin can be found alongside not only displays about rescue attempts and partisan camps, but also an authentic Schindler’s List.
Sixty-five years after Motele played his violin for the last time, the instrument came alive again on September 24, 2008. In a historic concert at the foot of Jerusalem’s Old City walls, a twelve-year-old boy named David Strongin was handed Motele Schlein’s Violin. He joined a dozen other children performing on the Violins of Hope in front of an audience of three thousand. Fittingly, the young musicians and the audience came together at the end of the concert for a moving rendition of “Hatikvah.”