chapter 31
The last war
(the ending)
It was said after the war that those three men weren't conscripted but had been left behind on purpose to help organize partisan warfare in their native land that was so conveniently overgrown with thick deciduous woods. To give themselves more room for maneuver, they joined the occupation police, skillfully using their position to supply partisans with useful information and food. Occasionally, they stealthily left notes for the occupants, warning them of partisans' vengeance if they so much as dared to touch any of the local women. I think it was some comfort for poor women to know that their protectors, whom the occupants really feared, were hiding in the woods not far from their dwellings.
In soviet movies about the Second World War partisans usually blew up railways or bridges or, at the very least, houses with some occupants inside. It's a pity but I can't remember much about partisan activities near my mother's village. No explosions anyway, except, perhaps, another funny story, which, as far as I can remember, was one of my mother's favourite tales. It definitely showed how cunning the three Ukrainian policemen were. Though, following German pronunciation, people usually called each of them “polizei”. Actually, they should have said one “polizist” and three “polizisten”, but the villagers didn't know German so well back then.
Obviously, every time the occupants tried to find partisans' hiding place, those three guys helped them to comb the forest. I imagine what a picturesque group it was: in the vanguard there was the human shield of local people walking in line among the trees under the supervision of three agile “polizei”. And just behind the villagers there were the occupants treading cautiously in their wake with their machine-guns at the ready. They never found anything or anyone, though. Knowing the forest much better than the occupants, those smart “polizei” used to organize everything so nicely that somewhere in the thicket partisans surreptitiously joined the villagers and all of them together continued to circle among the trees. I'm afraid I forgot whether the partisans left the group of their catchers while they all were still in the forest or went with them to the village and returned to their earth-houses hidden in the thicket in the dead of night. But I still remember how my mother smacked her lips with pleasure while telling me this story, which was quite understandable. The occupants really looked rather stupid there. Besides, it undoubtedly showed that at least half of the village knew about their three “polizei” true activities but kept silent about it.
It was not something unusual, of course. No partisan movement could ever survive without the help and the support provided by the local population. My teenage mother was also eager to help partisans but was rejected as a daughter of “an enemy of the people”. It might seem incredible, but even then, during the occupation, the iron grip of Stalin's punitive bodies was still wrapped tightly around people's minds. But what struck most unpleasantly here was that the man who wrote false information against my grandfather felt comfortable under both regimes: Stalin's and Hitler's. During the occupation, he rented a local mill. Later, it would undoubtedly be considered as collaboration with the enemy, but he was farsighted enough to give (in secret) some part of the flour to the partisans. So the man was quite alright when the Soviet power came back. Not to mention that in 1947, when so many people starved to death, he had enough grain to feed not only his family but even his chickens. The only thing that the man couldn't really live through was the censure of all the village after they suddenly found out that he was an informer.
Coming back to the story of the three “polizei” helping partisans, I can only say that it was very popular among the villagers and looked rather like one of those legends that had always circulated in the village. Yet the fact is that the men really worked as spies without any exposure for almost three years. Maybe this gave them a false sense of security and that's why they failed in the end. I suppose they had a radio, well hidden somewhere in a safe place. So, unlike their fellow-villagers, those three men were aware of the Red Army approaching their parts. Perhaps, in their joy, they drank too much on that day, and that's how they were caught, while driving across the fields in the direction of the forest, sprawled in their cart full of victuals for the partisans.
The Germans would have paid them no attention, as they had done so many times before, but on that day the men were singing soviet war songs at the top of their voices. No wonder people couldn't help but admire their reckless bravery. Someone must have seen them singing in their cart and then being arrested, because the news about it quickly spread around the village. But after that there was nothing - the men seemed to have disappeared without leaving a trace. Just like my unfortunate grandfather in 1938. My poor mother had been waiting for him to come back for years, not knowing that soon after his arrest and a parody of a trial he was executed. The German occupants had nothing to do with my grandfather's tragic end, of course, but they used the same methods as Stalin's apprentices.
In the story of the three “polizei” I can definitely see the same pattern. Evidently, the Germans didn't tell the truth to their relatives. For a few weeks after the men's disappearance, one of the wives was seen walking anxiously around the village, asking if anyone had heard something about her husband. She couldn't find out anything. People would never have known what really happened if soon after the liberation one man hadn't come to the village and told them what he had seen with his own eyes a month or so before. As it turned out, he was hiding in the attic of a derelict house at the edge of the forest at the time. From his hiding place he could clearly see a small glade, where, to his horror, he suddenly spotted the dark figures of the Germans bringing three half-naked men. Unable to move, he had to watch how they were mercilessly beaten by their tormentors and then forced to dig their own grave.
The spring was already in full swing when the poor men's bodies were exhumed and reburied at the local cemetery. By that time, they were completely unrecognizable - not only because of the decay but also because of unmistakable traces of torture that had distorted their features. Still, there was no doubt about their identity as one of the wives recognized a scrap of fabric with a peculiar pattern that stuck to one of the bodies. No one in the village had such a shirt except her husband and he was definitely wearing it on that unfortunate day. This horrible ending seems rather unsuitable to the story of three “polizei”. The first half of it would fit in a good war comedy. There is something disgusting in people's ability to make nice comedies about war. I can't deny that I watched some of them and couldn't help laughing. But the ending of this story undoubtedly shows an unadorned face of a real war in all its atrocious ugliness.
When I am thinking of those politicians, who are sitting just now in their luxurious offices, planning the next war and rubbing their hands in anticipation of future profits, I imagine that if they only were able to feel what real war was, they would never dare to start it. Unfortunately, I can't be sure even in that because I have recently developed a harmful habit of reading the news every day. And every time when I try to remember what I've just read, I have an unpleasant sensation that, while I was reading, a discordant chorus of ill-assorted voices was shouting nonsense at me. But the main thing is that the more I read the news, the more it seems to me that most of the people, and especially their leaders – the rulers of the destinies that is – are just maniacs with an unhealthy thirst for self-destruction. It looks like the life and death of notorious dictators, such as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Ion Antonescu haven't taught them anything. I know I should stop it - reading the news, I mean, as it's not in my power to stop the madness of the world.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
