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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
22 Friday, October 27, 1918
Salisbury Depicts Horror of Mass Murder of Jews at Babi Yar
The greatest battles of
World War II, the most de-
vastating human losses —
over 30 million lives — oc-
curred on Russian soil in a
war hardly known to
Americans," states Harri-
son E. Salisbury, Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist
and well-known authority
on Russian affairs.
In his new book, "The
Unknown War," to be pub-
lished this week as a Ban-
tam Original, Salisbury
examines the epic struggle
between Hitler's Germany
and Stalin's Russia, from
the surprise attack of
4,200,000 Nazi troops on the
Russian border in June
1941 to the fall of Berlin in
1945.
A large format paper-
back, "The Unknown War"
contains 167 rare black and
white photographs, many of
which come from previously
unreleased film footage
taken by Soviet cameramen
assigned to produce the offi-
cial photographic record of
World War II.
The scope of the
Russian-German con-
frontation was mam-
moth. "Nowhere before
or since," notes Salis-
bury, "did such masses of
men and military mate-
rial collide."
Hitler's betrayal of the
non-aggression pact of 1939
caught the Soviets almost
completely off guard: the
Soviet Air Force was almost
completely demolished on
the first day of war; Kiev
was forced to surrender de-
spite Stalin's assurances to
the contrary ; the forced
evacuation of Tallinn pro-
ved a disaster. Yet the Rus-
sian people survived and
eventually triumphed.
Salisbury makes an im-
portant reference to the
Babi Yar horror. In his de-
scription of the Russians'
return to Kiev, after the de-
feat of the Nazis, he makes
this reference to the mas-
sacre of Jews at Babi Yar:
The Communist Party's
Central Committee build-
ing where Khrushchev had
his offices still stood. So did
the Academy of Science
building and the theaters.
But the Bolshevik Factory
went up as Khrushchev
drove into Kiev.
-
"Khrushchev and his
comrades walked down
the Kreshchatik and
turned into Lenin St. It
was a curious experi-
ence. Kiev, so noisy, so
gay, so full of life, was an
empty shell. A handful of
people began to emerge
from the cellars. As
Khrushchev neared the
Opera House a young
man came running to
him, screaming hysteri-
cally: I'm the only Jew
left! I'm the last Jew in
Kiev who is alive.'
"He told Khrushchev he
had a Ukrainian wife who
had hidden him in the attic
or he would have perished
with the other Jews.
"How many Jews died in
Kiev will never ben known.
The prewar population of
the city was about 850,000,
of which Jews numbered
about 170,000. About
three-fifths of Kiev's popu-
lation was evacuated before
the Germans entered. Prob-
ably 50,000 Jews remained.
"On Sept. 18, 1941, 2,000
posters were pasted up on
the walls of Kiev. They said:
All Jews of the city of Kiev
and its environs must ap-
pear at the corner of Mel-
nikow and Dokhturov
Streets (beside the cemetery)
at 8:00 A.M. on Septermber
29, 1941. They must bring
their documents, money,
valuables, warm clothing,
etc. Jews who fail to obey
this order and are found
elsewhere will be shot. All
who enter the apartments
left by Jews and take their
property will be shot.
Rumors promptly spread
that the Jews were to be
evacuated from Kiev.
"The posters had been put
up by Einsatsgruppe C.
Sondercommando 4A, a
1,50-man unit assigned to
deal with Jewish 'problems.'
This particular unit was at-
tached to German Army
Group South and was
charged with carrying out a
secret order issued by Hitler
in May 1941, calling for the
extermination of all Jews,
gypsies, insane, 'Asiatic in-
feriors,' racially and men-
tally `inferior elements' and
Communist functionaries.
"The Sondercommando
had not expected more than
6,000 Jews to answer the
summons. To their surprise
more than 30,000 gathered
at the street corner by the
cemetery. The Sondercom-
mando had to call in two
police regiments to help
with their task.
"The long procession
marched slowly along the
Lvovskaya Prospekt,
mothers with babies at
their breasts, children in
baby carriages, elderly
men and women, even
paralytics, pulled in hand
carts.
"They reached the
entrance to the cemetery in
late morning or early after-
noon. There a barbed-wire
barricade had been set up.
The victims were made to
remove their clothing, pile
it and their belongings
neatly on the sidewalk.
"Then they were marched
in close-rank. columns to
Babi Yar, a ravine just be-
By HARRISON
SALISBURY
(Editor's note: The fol-
lowing article by Russian
expert Harrison Salis-
bury is the introduction
to Ruth Turkow Kamins-
ka's book, "I Don't Want
to Be Brave Anymore,"
published by New Re-
public Books.)
No one can read Ruth
Turkow Kaminska's touch-
ing story of her years in Sta-
lin's prisons and prison
camps without again ask-
ing: Why? Why did Stalin do
it? Why did he confine
thousands, hundreds of
thousands, millions of inno-
cent men, women, and chil-
dren to custody, driving
them year after year to
death through hard labor,
starvation, disease, and
sadistic- cruelty?
Why, in particular, did he
torment this woman, a
singer and actress, a woman
of no politics, as harmless a
human as might have been
found in the whole dismal
Soviet Union?
Why did he send into his
camps and jails Ruth's hus-
band, Adi Rosner, a gifted
jazz musician, as fine a
trumpet player as ever
blasted a tone from the
stage in Moscow?
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into empty garages, kept
overnight, and shooting re-
sumed in the morning. By
the time the exercise had
been completed the Sonder-
commando was able to re-
port that exactly 33,771
Jews had been killed in 36
hours. The ravine was
dynamited to put a cover of
earth over the bodies.
"As the German occu-
pation went on other vic-
tims were shot and
buried at Babi Yar, pos-
sibly 100,000 in all —
more Jews, Soviet POWs,
partisans, Communists.
According to a postwar
estimate made by a spe-
cial commission under
Khrushchev's chairman-
ship, about 195,000 per-
sons were executed by
the Nazis in the Kiev area.
*
"Before the German pull-
out the Sondercommando
had another task — to try to
conceal the extent of their
crime. Slave labor exca-
vated the site and burned
the remains of the bodies in
a pyre over a period of six
weeks.
"Babi Yar in the post-
Stalin years became a sym-
bol of German atrocities in
Russia, particularly against
the Jews — a symbol in
spite of itself, for Soviet
authorities were not eagP -
to perpetuate the memory
a crime directed so specifi-
cally against the Jews. At
one time there were plans to
bulldoze Babi Yar and put
up a housing development
or an athletic center. After
much bitterness a memorial
monument was finally
erected to `all' the victims,
Russian and Jewish, at Babi
Yar."
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ARNOLD MARGOLIS
yond the cemetery. Here
they were run through a
gauntlet, beaten with sticks
and truncheons by polizei
from the Western Ukraine.
In batches they were com-
pelled to lie face down at the
bottom of the ravine and
shot with automatic rifles.
A little earth was shoveled
over the bodies and another
row was made to lie down.
So me were simply
machine-gunned. Small
children were thrown in
alive. The ravine rapidly fil-
led with what one of the par-
ticipants was to call `a
glutinous mass:•
"It was arduous work for
the Sondercommando. A
squad would shoot for an
hour, then take a rest, being
replaced by another squad.
At nightfall the task was far
from finished. The remain-
ing victims were herded
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Well, there
is, of course,
an answer.
In Russia
there is an
answer for
everything,
no matter
how un-
pleasant and
irrational
that answer SALISBURY
may be. To begin with, Ruth
and Adi were Jewish, and
that almost automatically
put them under suspicion in
the darkening years of Sta-
lin's first postwar purges.
story2It is not idyllic by our
standards. It is idyllic only
by the hellish standards of
Stalin's system of crushing
every spark of life and con-
sciousness from his people
before throwing them —
emaciated, gaunt, and
disease-riddled — onto the
scrap heap of humanity that
Soviet Russia became under
his leadership.
Thus, Ruth Turkow
Kaminska's story is in es-
sence a cautionary tale. At
every point, harsh as her
fate was, she was saved
from ultimate horror by
various factors. One was
sheer chance, the luck of the
draw. As Ilya Ehrenburg
once said, she had a lucky
ticket.
Secondly, they were not
Russian at all. They were
Poles who had been swept
up into Russia willy-nilly,
when Hitler and Stalin
agreed to divide Poland as
part of the Nazi-Soviet pact Another factor, quite
of 1939, which unleashed- clearly, was her own strong
World War II. will. She never gave up.
Thirdly, they were ar- And finally she was a
member of one of the world's
tists, musical artists, and most famous theatrical
not ordinary artists 'ft
families.
that. They were cele-
brated and famous, and
they were celebrated and
famous for Western
music and Western
styles, just at a moment
when Stalin had swung
the helm sharply toward
Socialist Realism and
basic Russian
chauvinism.
And then there was the
fact that they were a caref-
ree young couple who
enjoyed living their own
lives, heedless of party line
and propaganda.
Well, when you add that
up it is not surprising that
they were swept up by Sta
lin's secret police in 1946. It
is a wonder they were
allowed to roam the Soviet
Union and trip the light
fantastic as long as they did.
In the annals of Soviet
prison camp life Ruth Tur-
kow Kaminska's story is not
notable. She did not die of
typhus. She was not raped
by brutal prison guards. She
was not even beaten uncon-
scious by her interrogators.
Compared to millions of
prisoners her experience
was idyllic. Bear that in
mind when you read her
Her mother was Ida
Kaminska, star of Warsaw's
Jewish Art Theater. Her
father was Zigmund Tur-
kow, an almost equally
famous actor. Ida
Kaminska was now married
to Meir Melman, another
famous actor. Nor was this
the family's first generation
in the theater. They were
known from one end of
Europe to the other and in
America as well.
Adi Rosner, born and
educated in Germany, was
just as well known as a band
leader, trumpeter, and
composer. And the fact that
Ida Kaminska was in War-
saw, not in the Soviet Union
(having made a timely exit),
was a decided help, even
though her influential
friends could do little dur-
ing the worst Stalin years.
Ruth's
connections
helped with money and
influence. How little they
helped is also amazing, but
no more amazing than the
fact that her whole arrest
and imprisonment was il-
legal from start to finish.
She was not a Soviet citizen,
had violated no Soviet laws,
and even under Soviet law
should not have been com-
mitted for more than six
months — not five years —
for the trivial offense she
was falsely charged with
committing.
It is these circumstances
that make Ruth Turkow
Kaminska's story so impor-
tant an another example of
the pointless cruelty
Stalinist Russia was capa-
ble of — a tendency, alas,
still not fully eradicated
from the Soviet criminal de-
tention system.
In other circumstances
one would describe this as
the "Soviet criminal justice
system," but nothing would
be more absurd than to
associate the word "justice"
with the operations of the
Soviet judicial mechanism,
its police, and its jails.
Ruth was saved by Sta-
lin's death March 5, 1953.
By that time she had served
her term of exile, but the
constant and increasing
difficulties that the police
put in the way of her living a
normal life were the inevit-
able portents of re-arrest
and worse suffering. But the
death of the old dictator
produced a major ameliora-
tion of police practices,
which, despite such abomi-
nations as police insane
asylums for dissidents, con-
tinues to this day.
Had Ruth and Adi Rosner
lived in normal times in a
normal country their life
undoubtedly would have
been marked by trials and
tribulations, largely flow-
ing from their own storn
temperaments. But there is
no reason to believe that
stark tragedy would have
overtaken them.
By the chance of coming
to age in Poland just as
Adolf Hitler and Josef Sta-
lin opened the terrible
minuet that each thought
would make him master of
the world, their existence
moved off the conventional
rails of exuberent young
love onto the path of doom
and danger. Despite all
perils Ruth Turkow
Kaminska survived to tell
her story. It bears our
closest attention.