Chernobyl

'That's it,' Didchuk agreed. 'They are falling into that ravine. I thought we would stop there, by the scientific institute, so that we, too, could pay our respects. But Mrs. Smin wants to go just a little farther — ah, yes, we are stopping here. She says this is the real Babi Yar. She says she does not care much for the monument,' he finished unhappily.

The car stopped. The teacher looked at Aftasia Smin for instructions, then shrugged and opened the door. 'Mrs. Smin would like us to get out and look around here.'

'I thought she was afraid of radiation or something,' Garfield said doubtfully.

'She is not,' the teacher said, and trailed the old woman meekly up a grassy slope. Candace Garfield followed with her husband, perplexed. 'I don't have much film left,' Candace fretted, taking her camera off her shoulder.

'Please,' said Didchuk hastily, glancing back. 'It would be better not to take any pictures. Because of the television tower. A transmission tower, after all, is a legitimate military objective in case of war, and such things may not be photographed.'

'Well, I'll just take a picture of the apartments, then.'

'Please,' he said abjectly, looking at the cars whizzing by along the road as though he expected a troop of soldiers to leap out and arrest them.

Aftasia stopped at the crest, looking out over the little valley. Then she turned and spoke rapidly to Didchuk, who translated. 'In September of 1941,' he said, 'Hitler decided to put off taking Moscow for a few weeks while he conquered the Ukraine. He ordered his troops to take the city of Kiev. Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold it. Hitler won. His armies passed to the north and the south of the city, then they joined together. Four Soviet armies were surrounded, more than half a million men. Most of them were killed or captured, and the Germans entered Kiev.'

Aftasia was listening patiently to the English translation. When Didchuk paused and looked inquiringly at her, she thrust a hand out toward the city and spoke in rapid Russian. The teacher flinched and said something, but she shook her head firmly, gesturing him to go on.

'Mrs. Smin says to tell you that when the Nazis occupied Kiev, many ill-informed Ukrainians welcomed them. They even—' He hesitated, then said miserably, 'They said things like, well, like, forgive me, 'Thank God we are free of the Bolsheviks' and 'Now we can worship God again!' Well, it is true, though perhaps there were not as many people like that as Mrs. Smin suggests.' Aftasia rattled on. Didchuk nodded and relayed the message: 'So when the German officers arrived, some Kiev people, even leaders, even Party members, came out to greet them with the traditional gifts of bread and salt, to show they were welcome. The Germans only laughed. Then they got serious. They stole everything, Mrs. Garfield, even the pots and pans from the people's kitchens.'

He paused for the next installment. 'Some Ukrainians even went to work for the Germans. Not simply as farmers or that sort of thing, you understand. As their allies against the Soviet Union. There were even Ukrainians who acted as police for the Germans. There were some — there was a man named Stepan Bandera, another named Melnik, others — some who led bands of guerrillas even before the Germans occupied the city, attacking the rear of the Red Army even while they were fighting against the invaders. They even wanted to join with the Germans to form a Vlasovite Army—'

'A what?' Garfield asked, frowning.

Didchuk seemed reluctant to answer. 'Well, it was not only Ukrainians who became traitors; there was a Russian named Vlasov, a famous general; he was captured, and then he formed an army of Soviet soldiers who actually fought on the German side. But Mrs. Smin asks me to tell you about the Ukrainians. Some Ukrainians. When the Red Army liberated Kiev in 1944 they found posters — I'm sorry to say, Ukrainian posters — pictures of people tearing down the hammer and sickle, with slogans like 'Down with the Bolsheviks' and even, excuse me, 'None will cease to fight while our Ukraine is enslaved by the Communists.'' He was sweating now. He gave Aftasia an imploring glance, but she rattled on and doggedly he translated.

'The Ukrainians, of course, were fools. The Germans starved them and enslaved them and shot them. But some of them still tried to lick the boots of the Nazis. Especially about the Jews, because — please, I am just saying what she tells me, it is not true. Altogether. Because the Ukrainians hated the Jews as much as Hitler did. (But only a few of them, believe me!) The Ukrainian Nazi-lovers helped the Germans round up the Jews in the Ukraine. They robbed them, they stripped them, they put them into the death cars that went to the concentration camps.

'But that was not fast enough for them. So then, on September twenty-eighth, the Germans posted orders all around Kiev to say that all Yids — excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Garfield, that is the word Mrs. Smin says was in the orders — must report the next day with warm clothing and all their valuables.' There was a single sentence from Aftasia. 'She says, 'I did not report.' '

'Well, of course she didn't,' Garfield put in, scowling. 'By then everybody knew that when the Jews were ordered to report, it meant the concentration camps.'

Didchuk translated, then listened as Aftasia Smin, shaking her head vigorously, spoke in angry tones. 'She says,' he said uncertainly, 'that they did not know what that meant. She says' — he glanced about apprehensively—'that because of the, ah, the — what can one call it? — because, that is, of the special relationship that existed at that time between the Soviet Union and the German nation — just before the invasion, that is—'

'Ah,' said Garfield, understanding. 'The Hitler-Stalin pact.'

Didchuk flinched. 'Yes, exactly,' he said weakly. 'The, ah, pact of nonaggression. At any rate, she says that for that reason nothing was known in the Soviet Union of German anti-Semitism. It had not been reported.'

'For Christ's sake! How could they not know?'

Didchuk said obstinately, 'I was not born then, Mr. Garfield. It is Mrs. Smin who says that even the Jews didn't know, and I suppose she is right. So all the Jews reported as they were told, almost all, and the Ukrainian Nazi police and the SS troops rounded them up and marched them out here. To this place. Babi Yar.'

Garfield glanced around with a puzzled expression. 'I heard of Babi Yar, sure, who hasn't? But I thought it was, like, a valley, way out in the country.'

'At one time it was a valley, Mr. Garfield. It has been filled in so this road could be built, and then the city grew to take it in. But this is Babi Yar, yes, and they were all taken here. Men and women. Grandmothers. Little children. Even babies in arms. And they were made to strip naked, a few dozen at a time. And then the Germans shot them, and buried them, right here in this valley. You are looking, Mrs. Smin says, at one hundred thousand dead Jews.' He stole a quick glance at Aftasia, and added, almost in a whisper, 'I do not think it is quite that many, perhaps.'

'My God,' said Candace, clutching her husband's arm. 'That's unbelievable.'

'Yes, exactly,' Didchuk said quickly. 'It could not have been a hundred thousand of just Jews. Everyone knows there were also Party members, hostages, gypsies — oh, the gypsies were hunted quite as much as the Jews, though, of course, there weren't as many of them. And, as Mrs. Smin asks me to tell you, the Jews who failed to report were hunted down. Not just by the Germans. They were chased by Russians and Ukrainians as well because, you see, if someone reported a hidden Jew, he was granted the right to take what he liked from the Jew's belongings.'

He glanced at Aftasia Smin almost hopefully, as though he thought his work over. His face fell as she went on.

'Well,' he sighed, 'there is more she wants me to say to you. Later, when the heroic Soviet armies counterattacked and were in the process of driving the Hitlerites out of our land, the Germans got scared. They did not want all those bodies found. So they captured some more prisoners, and forced them to dig up as many of the bodies as they could.' He wrinkled his nose unhappily. 'They had been buried for several years, you understand. They were quite decayed, of course. Often, they fell apart. Then the Germans made their prisoners take down the headstones from a Jewish cemetery that was here — it was where the television station is now, Mrs. Smin says — and put the stones together to make big ovens. And in those ovens they burned the bodies. With wood they cut from the forests that were around here then. A layer of logs, a layer of Jews, and they burned them all.'

As he paused, Aftasia said something in a somber tone. 'Yes, yes,' Didchuk said impatiently. 'She wants me to be sure to tell you this part, although it is not a pleasant subject. She says to tell you that after the burning, the Germans took the ashes and the bones. They crushed them, and spread them on the farms. She says that this made the cabbages grow very well. She says that since then she does not care to eat cabbage.'