The Kindly Ones

On Sunday we put the posters up all over the city. The Jews were asked to gather the next morning in front of their cemetery on the Melnikova, each with fifty kilograms of luggage, to be relocated as settlers in various regions of the Ukraine. I had my doubts as to the success of this ploy: this wasn’t Lutsk anymore, and I knew that rumors had seeped through the front lines about the fate that awaited the Jews; the farther east we got, the fewer Jews we were finding; they were fleeing before us now with the Red Army, whereas in the begi

The Grosse Aktion began on Monday, September 29, on the morning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Blobel had let us know this the day before: “They will atone, they will atone.” I had stayed in my offices in the palace to write a report. Callsen appeared on the threshold: “You aren’t coming? You know very well that the Brigadeführer gave the order that all officers should be present.”—“I know. I’ll finish this and then I’ll come.”—“As you like.” He disappeared and I went on working. An hour later I got up, picked up my cap and gloves, and went to find my driver. Outside it was cold; I thought about going back in for a sweater, but decided not to. The sky was overcast; fall was advancing; soon it would be winter. I passed by the still-smoking ruins on Kreshchatik, then went up Shevchenko Boulevard. The Jews were marching west in long columns, in family groups, calmly, carrying bundles or backpacks. Most of them looked very poor, probably refugees; the men and boys all wore Soviet worker’s caps, but here and there you could also make out a soft hat. Some were coming in carts drawn by bony horses, loaded with old people and suitcases. I had my driver make a detour, since I wanted to see more; he turned left and went past the university, then veered off toward the station by Saksaganskaya Street. Jews were coming out with their things from the houses and mingling with the stream of people flowing by in a peaceful murmur. Almost no German soldiers could be seen. On the streetcorners these human streams merged, grew larger, and went on; there was no agitation. I drove back up the hill away from the station and rejoined the boulevard at the corner of the great botanical garden. A group of soldiers was standing there with some Ukrainian auxiliaries and were roasting a whole pig on an enormous spit. It smelled very good, the Jews passing by contemplated the pig with yearning, and the soldiers were laughing and making fun of them. I stopped and got out of the car. People were pouring out of all the side streets and coming to join the main flow, streams merging into a river. Periodically, the interminable column stopped, then started up again with a jolt. In front of me, old women with garlands of onions around their necks were holding the hands of kids with ru

I left. I hadn’t given any directions to my driver, but he followed the flow of Jews, toward Melnikova Street. Still almost no German soldiers were visible; just a few checkpoints at the crossroads, such as at the corner of the botanical garden, or another one where Artyoma joins Melnikova. There, I witnessed my first incident of the day: Feldgendarmen were beating some bearded Jews with long curly sidelocks in front of their ears, rabbis possibly, dressed only in shirts. They were red with blood, their shirts were soaked, women were screaming, ripples ran through the crowd. Then the Feldgendarmen seized hold of the rabbis and took them away. I studied the people: they knew that these men were going to die, that was obvious from their anguished looks; but they were still hoping that it would just be the rabbis, the pious.

At the end of Melnikova, in front of the Jewish cemetery, some antitank barriers and barbed wire made the roadway narrower, guarded by soldiers from the Wehrmacht and some Ukrainian Polizei. The cordon started there; after this bottleneck, the Jews could no longer turn back. The sorting zone was a little farther on, to the left, in an empty lot in front of the immense Christian cemetery of Lukyanovskoe. A long red-brick wall, rather low, surrounded the necropolis; behind, some tall trees barred the sky, half bare or else still red and yellow. On the other side of Degtiarovska Street, a row of tables had been set up in front of which the Jews were made to line up. There I found some of our officers: “So, it’s already begun?” Häfner motioned his head to the north: “Yes, it started hours ago. Where have you been? The Standartenführer is furious.” Behind every table was a noncom from the Kommando, flanked by an interpreter and some soldiers; first the Jews had to hand over their papers, then their money, their valuables and jewelry, then the keys to their apartments, legibly labeled, and finally their clothes and shoes. They must have suspected something, but they didn’t say anything; in any case, the zone was sealed behind the cordon. Some Jews tried to argue with the Polizei, but the Ukrainians shouted, struck them, sent them back into the line. A stinging wind was blowing; I was cold and regretted not having brought my sweater; from time to time, when the wind rose, a faint crackling noise could be heard; most of the Jews didn’t seem to notice it. Behind the row of tables, our Askaris were bundling the confiscated clothing into trucks; the vehicles set off for the city, where we had set up a sorting center. I went to examine the pile of papers, thrown in a heap in the middle of the lot to be burned later on. There were torn passports, workbooks, union or ration cards, family photos; the wind was carrying away the lighter papers, the square was littered with them. I gazed at some of the photographs: snapshots, studio portraits, of men, women, and children, grandparents and chubby-faced babies; sometimes a shot of vacation scenery, of the happiness and normality of their lives before all this. It reminded me of a photograph I kept in my drawer, next to my bed, in high school. It was the portrait of a Prussian family from before the Great War, three young Junkers in cadet uniforms and probably their sister. I don’t remember where I found it, maybe during one of our rare outings, in a thrift store or a postcard shop. At that time I was very unhappy, I had been placed by force in that horrible boarding school after a major transgression (this all took place in France, where we had gone a few years after my father’s disappearance). At night, I would examine this photo for hours on end, by moonlight or beneath the covers with a little pocket flashlight. Why, I wondered, couldn’t I have grown up in a perfect family like that one, rather than in this polluted hell? The Jewish families in the scattered photos seemed happy too; hell, for them, was here, now, and they could only lament the vanished past. Beyond the tables, the Jews in underclothing were trembling with cold; the Ukrainian Polizei separated the men and boys from the women and little children; the women, children, and old people were loaded into Wehrmacht trucks to be transported to the ravine; the others had to go on foot. Häfner had joined me. “The Standartenführer is looking for you. Watch out, he’s really in a rage.”—“Why?”—“He’s mad at the Obergruppenführer for imposing his two police battalions on him. He thinks the Obergruppenführer wants to take all the credit for the Aktion.”—“But that’s idiotic.” Blobel arrived, he had been drinking and his face was glistening. As soon as he saw me he began railing at me rudely: “What the hell have you been up to? We’ve been waiting for you for hours.” I saluted him: “Standartenführer! The SD has its own tasks. I was examining the arrangements, to prevent any incidents.” He calmed down a little: “So?” he grumbled. —“Everything seems in order, Standartenführer.”—“Good. Go up there. The Brigadeführer wants to see all the officers.”