Violins of Hope (26 page)

Motele grabbed his violin, climbed into the attic, and set the straw roof on fire. Hiding behind buildings, he quickly made his way through the village and into the forest. As soon as he reached the tree line, he heard screams. The church bells began to sound an alarm. Motele turned around. As he disappeared into the forest, he watched the flames from Karpo's house shoot into the sky.

The servant girl Dasha had told Motele stories of the partisans who had occupied the forests surrounding the village. These brave combatants were killing policemen, ambushing military depots, and sharing their loot with the poorest farmers. Inspired by the tales of their bravery, Motele had made up his mind to find them. After three days of his wandering around in the forest, they found him. And so the boy who called himself Mitka joined Uncle Misha's Jewish Group, which by then was receiving tactical support from the Red Army. Motele proved to be a clever and daring young operative with a knack for intelligence and espionage.

Shortly after Motele joined the Jewish Group, Uncle Misha himself sent the boy on a mission. Motele was to spy on a group of Hungarian soldiers who had arrived in Lubin, a village located three miles from their partisan camp.

“When they stop you and ask who you are, what will you say?” Uncle Misha asked Motele before dispatching him.

“I'll tell them that I'm from the village of Kristinovka and that I'm looking for a white cow with red patches and a broken horn,” Motele smartly replied, without even thinking about it. “The cow separated from the herd and went in the direction of Lubin.”

Barefoot in his short linen pants, with a bag over one shoulder and a whip in his hand, Motele looked every bit the part of a shepherd. He walked right through the village, innocently strolling past the Hungarian soldiers who were going from home to home gathering eggs and cheese. When he reached the center of the village, he came upon six large wagons. Next to the wagons Motele discovered a fat Hungarian cook, whom he befriended by chopping wood for him and by stirring his soup. While Motele was working on the soup, the cook dozed off. Motele noticed that the cook had left his pistol on a bench and thought to himself, “Once I have a pistol like that, I'll be a real partisan.” He quickly removed the cook's pistol from its holster and slid it into his bag.

As Motele was heading out of the village, he happened upon a Hungarian soldier who was mounting a horse. The soldier dropped his whip and signaled to the boy to pick it up for him. To avoid looking suspicious, Motele ignored his pounding heart and calmly handed the whip to its owner. As soon as the soldier rode off, Motele ran quickly back to the forest.

After recounting his experience for Uncle Misha, Motele reached into his bag and dramatically produced a Belgian Colt. “Come to the other side of the marshes,” he said gleefully to Lionka, grabbing his new friend by the hand. “You can teach me how to shoot!”

“Wait a second before learning how to shoot!” Uncle Misha interrupted. “You haven't reported to me the findings of your reconnaissance mission. I sent you to Lubin to find out how many Hungarians are there and how they're armed, not to steal pistols from sleeping cooks.”

Motele's face turned bright red. “I told you that there were six wagons,” he retorted angrily. “If we assume that there are five men to each wagon, then there are thirty Hungarians. The cook makes thirty-one, and the commander makes thirty-two. There cannot be any more than that because Hungarians are not partisans who are willing to ride ten to a wagon.

“They only have one heavy machine gun, like our Maxim,” he continued, referring to the bulky machine gun that took several people to operate. “I saw it on a wagon, hiding under a heavy green tarp. It looks like they came to Lubin to get some wheat because I saw new bags painted with swastikas on one of the wagons.”

Within less than an hour, Uncle Misha acted on Motele's report by attacking the Hungarians in Lubin. Just as Motele had calculated, there were thirty of them. Uncle Misha's men killed them all and took their supplies.

One Sunday in the spring of 1943, Motele was sent on a new mission—one considerably more daring than simply spying on a brigade of Hungarians. Whipping a horse that was half dead from starvation and disease, Motele drove a wagon loaded with bran bags toward the village of Bielko. When he was just outside the village, Motele stopped and climbed down from the wagon. Looking around to make sure that he was not being watched, he unscrewed the bolt that secured the right front wheel and threw it into the bushes. He rode into town, announcing his arrival with the loud screeching of the ungreased wheels. He stopped right in front of a large wooden house that was the headquarters of the most powerful police force in the region, including forty Ukrainian policemen and six German soldiers. Six policemen came out of the building to investigate the noise while a German soldier watched from a window, laughing at the young Ukrainian peasant's primitive transportation.

Motele climbed down from the wagon and made a spectacle out of checking the front right side. “I lost the bolt from the front wheel.” He started to cry, hitting himself in the head with his fists. “What will I do now? My father is going to kill me!

“The bolt must be in a forest not far from here,” he continued. “How will I go on?

“Would you please hold on to my horse while I run and look for the bolt?” he asked the policemen who were standing there poking fun at the weeping boy. Before they could respond, he handed one of them the reins and started back toward the forest. He walked with his head bent down, studying the ground. Every few steps, he would kneel down as if he were searching for something. When he reached the dense forest, he slipped into the woods and disappeared. He ran as fast as he could for five hundred yards and stopped. Putting two fingers in his mouth, he whistled loudly. Immediately, he heard a similar whistle from not too far away. Lionka and two other partisans appeared out of nowhere.

“Did you deliver the present?” Lionka asked.

“I delivered the present not only to the police station, but also to the six policemen and two soldiers who were guarding it,” Motele said, laughing. “Oh, did I fool them!” He did two somersaults in celebration.

After Motele had left the police station, the policemen had continued to stand around, laughing at the poor state of the horse and its driver. When Motele did not return, the policemen decided to move the horse and carriage into their courtyard. Unable to coax the horse into pulling the wagon, one of the policemen started unloading the bran bags. He had gotten two bags on the ground and was unloading the third bag when there was a violent explosion. The bag had been connected to a bomb the partisans had placed at the bottom of the wagon.

The bags, the wagon, and horse entrails went flying through the air. Four of the policemen were killed and the other two were seriously injured. A piece of the wooden wagon struck the German soldier who was standing in the window, gouging out an eye and knocking out all of his teeth. When the peasants came running out of their homes to see what was happening, they saw hundreds of pieces of paper. These were leaflets that had been in the bran bags. They had been hurled into the air by the explosion. The paper slowly floated down, covering the roofs, the yards, and the road like fresh snow. The leaflets, which the Red Army had airlifted to Uncle Misha's Jewish Group just a few nights earlier, boasted of the German defeats on the Eastern Front. They warned the Ukrainians that those who continued to collaborate with the Nazis would be punished by the approaching Red Army.

It was not until May 21, 1943, more than five months after he joined Uncle Misha's Jewish Group, that Motele finally disclosed his true identity to the partisan brigade. His confession came as Uncle Misha was mourning the first anniversary of the murders of his wife and daughter. Uncle Misha, Lionka, and ten other partisans from Korets decided to leave their camp to say Kaddish in private. Noticing that Motele was following them, Uncle Misha ordered him to return to the camp.

“What kind of holiday is today?” the boy asked.

“Today marks exactly one year since the Germans murdered our family,” Uncle Misha replied.

“The Germans also murdered my parents.”

“But we are Jews and we are going to say a prayer to our God.”

“My father told me that all people have one God. I won't bother you. Let me come with you.”

Uncle Misha relented.

By the time the partisans reached their destination on the other side of the swamp, the sun had already set. They nailed two rows of candles on a wide tree stump, and lit them. One of the partisans took out a prayer book and led the evening prayer. When that was finished, the mourners tearfully said Kaddish. When the partisans were finished, they heard Motele slowly reciting the last line of the Hebrew prayer: “Peace upon us and upon all Israel, and say Amen.”

Astonished, the partisans turned to the boy who was standing in back of the group, holding a small prayer book in his hand. It was the book that Motele had taken from his father's house. He had kept it with him ever since.

Large tears were rolling down Motele's cheeks. He ran up to Uncle Misha and wrapped his arms around his neck. “Uncle Misha, I'm a Jew, too!” he exclaimed.

The partisans were stunned. Why had the boy lied about his Jewish heritage? There was certainly no stigma for being a Jew in Uncle Misha's Jewish Group.

“First of all, what's your Jewish name?” Lionka demanded, feeling betrayed. “Second, why didn't you tell me that you're a Jew? Do you think that being a Ukrainian is a greater honor?”

“My real name is Motele, which is what I want you to call me from now on,” the boy finally divulged. “Secondly, I didn't reveal my Jewish identity because from the day the Germans occupied our territory, I suffered so much as a Jew that I felt safer not identifying myself as one, even when I was among friends. Besides, it seemed to me that as a Ukrainian I would have more opportunities to avenge the deaths of my parents and my only sister.”

Fighting alongside the partisans under his true Jewish name, Motele continued to demonstrate astonishing skills and confidence.

On July 6, 1943, Uncle Misha's Jewish Group was attacked by two German fighter planes while attempting to cross a river. When a partisan radio operator named Mania got stranded on a small island in the middle of the river, she shot herself to avoid being taken alive and possibly tortured for her secret codes. As the partisans watched in disbelief, her body fell into the thick undergrowth that surrounded the island and disappeared. Losing Mania meant also losing their radio batteries, which she had packed in a cigar box in her leather satchel. It was through that radio that they received critical tactical information from the Partisan Movement Central Headquarters in Moscow. It was through that radio that they would need to dispatch an SOS signal if they were to have any hopes of surviving the German attack.

“I can swim over to Mania and rescue the satchel containing the batteries,” Motele volunteered.

“That's impossible,” Uncle Misha replied. “The Germans will see you as soon as you surface.”

“They won't see me,” Motele said confidently. “I'll swim underwater.”

“How will you be able to stay underwater for so long?”

“I can stay underwater for several hours. Let me show you.” Motele got undressed, crawled over to the shore, and plucked a reed out of the ground. He put one end in his mouth and blew through the reed as if it were a straw. “I can swim all the way to the Volga with this reed!” he exclaimed.

He climbed into the water and disappeared. All that was left was the other end of the reed, barely sticking out of the water. Uncle Misha and the other partisans watched as the reed made its way across the river. As the Germans surveilled the partisans from the opposite shore, the reed made it to the island. The bushes swayed a bit before going back to being still. Then the reed started working its way back to the partisans. Motele triumphantly emerged from the water with Mania's satchel. An hour later, the Russians heard the partisans' signal and were able to come to their defense, thanks to Motele's heroic swimming.

In August 1943, Uncle Misha's Jewish Group was operating in the dense forests of the northern Ukrainian province of Zhytomyr. Despite growing tired of their grueling life in the woods, the partisans were bolstered by the latest radio reports of the success of the Red Army, which had gained the upper hand on the Eastern Front during the Battle of Kursk just weeks earlier. The Russians were now advancing westward, liberating towns and capturing Germans along the way.

Although the Soviet leaders had ordered the partisan commanders to suspend their sabotage missions until they could be reunited with the Red Army, Uncle Misha was not ready to end his quest for vengeance. He was planning a surprise attack on the nearby city of Ovruch to destroy the train station and the large bridge that served as main gates to the Eastern Front.

From an informant named Karol, Uncle Misha learned that the Orthodox church leaders in Ovruch had convinced the German and Ukrainian police to allow visitors to enter and leave the city without documentation on August 20. This would allow everyone to freely celebrate the First Feast of the Savior. Uncle Misha decided to take advantage of this temporary lapse in security by dispatching several partisans to Ovruch to familiarize themselves with the town, to find out which military units were stationed there, and to assess the residents' allegiances. He also wanted to confirm Karol's report that the police department was prepared to surrender to Uncle Misha's Jewish Group and hand over their weapons.

In addition to the partisan spies, Uncle Misha sent Motele and his violin to Ovruch. While the partisans were gathering intelligence, Motele was to join the group of beggars soliciting alms in front of the church. Posing as a street performer, Motele could surreptitiously observe the spies and immediately report back to Uncle Misha if they were discovered. Motele was even provided with counterfeit documents, forged by a partisan who was a former stampmaker, indicating that he was Dmitri Rubina from the Ukrainian village of Listvin. If he was questioned, Motele would simply reply that he was traveling to the city of Zhytomyr to find his father Ivan, who he had heard was being held in the German prisoner-of-war camp there.