.riff 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? If I can't Beat Your Best Deal Margolis Household Furniture 6 Mile, -1 BIk. W. of Schaefer INTERIOR DECORATOR SERVICE 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." Russian Prison for Artist: Insight Into Madness 5 lbs. of MATZO, 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 OUR 33rd YEAR SHARPENING the PENCIL On All Name Brands Furniture and Bedding •SCHOOLFIELD •SELIG •S1MMONS •SEALY •SERTA •SPRING AIR •LA-Z- BOY •STIFFEL LAMPS •KROEHLER •AMER1CAN •BURLINGTON •BASSETT •BARCALOUNGER •LANE •UNQUE 13703 W. McNichols 342-5351 Hrs. Mon thru Sat. 9:30 til 5:30 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.