Two days later, in order to save them a thirteen-hour drive one way up an even more terrible road, I chartered a plane to fly us from Odessa to Poltava to see the site of the former prison camp. We found the city hall where Emil had eaten and the hospital he’d helped rebuild.
The Poltava Museum of Local Lore was there, too, restored but closed to the public when we tried to enter. We walked around and found the museum director, Oleksandr Suprunenko, who at first refused to let us in due to ongoing construction. Then he learned that Emil had been a prisoner there, worked on the burial detail, and had sold the cooks firewood before escaping. The director laughed, told us his mother was one of those cooks, and led us on a private tour of the museum.
Suprunenko showed us photographs of gaunt and haunted prisoners rebuilding the museum. He took us to the basement and told us that, due to rampant diseases and death, the Soviets closed the Poltava camp in mid-1947, just a few months after Emil’s escape. The few survivors were sent to other camps to the east, some as far as Siberia, before other prisoners were brought in to live on another site and to finish rebuilding the city. Hearing that in the room where their father had slept before and after his daily trips with the death cart, Bill and Walter broke down crying.
They said that Emil rarely spoke of the prison camp, but there was no doubt that he left Poltava a far different man than the one who went in. Before his imprisonment, Emil had done little of note, doubted God, and believed that the best way for him and for his family to survive the Communists and the Nazis was to rely on himself, keep a low profile, and have little apparent ambition. After Poltava, however, their father turned deeply spiritual and daring. Emil seemed to see miracle and opportunity everywhere he looked and took massive risks that he was rewarded for throughout the rest of his life.
“Something or someone changed my dad in that camp,” Bill said. “What? Who? How? I don’t know. He wasn’t a big talker. But he had to have had allies in the prison camp. One or two men he could talk to and trust. I guess you’ll have to figure out a way to explain it.”
I already had a sense of what, who, and how, because the month before, in Barlad, Romania, I interviewed ninety-eight-year-old Gheorghe Voiculescu, whose experiences and outlook on life would form the basis of Corporal Gheorghe’s character. Mr. Voiculescu was sharp, funny, and truly seemed to glow and radiate goodwill as we spoke.
He distinctly remembered talking to and helping ethnic Germans on the Long Trek as they went west in the spring of 1944. Before then, Voiculescu had fought at Stalingrad in the brutal battle at the Elbow of the Don, where he was concussed and wounded by shrapnel from a mortar bomb. He told me he woke up from the blast and knew with absolute certainty that he was blessed, that he was going to live through the war, and that he was going to become a beekeeper. Voiculescu did walk through the rest of the battle unscathed, with Soviet soldiers and tanks running right by him, when so many around him died.
At the end of the war, Voiculescu escaped from two Soviet prison camps before being sent to a high-security camp on the Sea of Azov. He was released after four years of hard labor. Upon his return to Barlad, Voiculescu was hailed as a hero for being one of the few survivors of the Elbow of the Don. In recognition, he was promoted to and retired from the Romanian army with the rank of colonel.
Voiculescu worked for a time in a factory after his release but used much of the money he earned to finally fulfill his dream of becoming a beekeeper, which was a lifelong passion. Constantly extolling the wonders of honey, royal jelly, and beestings, he outlived three wives and celebrated his hundredth birthday in April 2020.
The real Corporal Gheorghe was, without a doubt, one of the more remarkable and enlightened individuals I have ever had the privilege of meeting.
Two mornings after we visited the prison camp and wondered about Emil’s transformation, Walter and I were leaving Ukraine to fly to Germany and Poland to follow Adeline’s escape route, and Bill was going home to Montana.
At breakfast at the airport before our flights, the Martel brothers told me that no matter what had really happened to their father in Poltava, they felt like they’d come full circle in their own lives, at peace with all they had endured, blessed for all they’d been given, in awe of their parents’ love, courage, and determination, and profoundly and endlessly thankful for the long, perilous journey they took as boys, when their family risked everything and ran with the wolves in search of freedom.
Sitting there with Bill and Walter at the airport in Kiev, moved and inspired, and just a few days before I started writing down the story of Emil and Adeline Martel, I scribbled in my notebook the words that I’ll use to finish their tale.
“This is an American story, an immigrant story, a spiritual and universal story. May we all dare to chase such dreams, experience such grace, and lead such miraculous lives.”
—Mark Sullivan, Bozeman, Montana, July 21, 2020
The Martel family, before the Nazi invasion, Pervomaisk, Ukraine, March 1941.
