Finally, all the snow melted and spring arrived. I stood outside Aunt Helena’s home one fine morning; it must have been the first week of March 1944. The sun was beating down and I could feel the earth below me beginning to move again. Soon, the first shoots of flowers would be stretching through the soil to soak up those golden rays. It was a wonderful feeling. I looked across to the east. Back towards Vinnitsya. I pushed down an urge to run in that direction. I knew it was too far and also that I risked running into trouble, but what difference would it make? We knew the trouble was coming our way, in any case. It was like being a prisoner in your own land.
Later that same day, Aunt Helena, Yaroslav and Oleg all went together to a small neighbouring village to visit an elderly relative of Yaroslav’s. Father and I stayed behind. We ate a supper and played cards into the evening while listening to the radio. We were sitting back in our chairs sipping at cups of tea, and I have to say, in that moment, I felt quite content.
Then something happened that made us sit up. There was a tremendous din in the distance, it sounded like an angry mob. It got louder. We heard some rumblings and some engines roaring. Then, there was a heavy clunk of boots that got nearer and nearer. We sat and listened in horror as the clunking came up the steps to the front door. It flew open. Nazi soldiers stormed in, waving their rifles around. The one in front yelled at us, ‘Out! Get out of here now! We have orders to clear this town, to get everybody out!’ Before we could even react or say anything we were grabbed and hauled to the doorway and ordered to put our boots on, with rifles pointing at us and with the same orders barked at us over and over again. We grabbed our coats, and our hats and gloves and we were pushed down the steps and down Aunt Helena’s approach to the road. There were hundreds of townspeople there, all being shepherded down the road leading west, out of Stanislaviv.
It was getting dark. We had no idea where we were going. Some of those marching alongside us shouted out questions like ‘Where are we going?’ or ‘What’s going on?’ They were told to shut up and keep moving. Anyone that was struggling, or too weak to keep up was hauled back up onto their feet and told to keep going, or those nearby were ordered to help them. I walked with Father. We said nothing to each other. We both knew we were heading in the wrong direction, but there was nothing we could do about it.
Chapter 7
Ukrainian proverb: Only three things in life are certain - birth, death and change
It was dark when I woke up and my body was aching so badly I thought it would never stop, and then I realised I was lying on a wooden floor. Lord knows how many miles the Nazi soldiers had taken us, but we must have walked for many hours.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Within a minute, maybe two, I got accustomed to the darkness. All around me were sleeping people, many of them moaning and calling out as they slept. Some were thrashing around, restless in their slumber. I looked up to a window in that wooden hut and there was a moon sitting in the sky, watching over us. If only we could find some energy from somewhere, like the light from the moon, then maybe we could fight back, but we were powerless. All we’d been able to do was be herded along, like cattle. I cursed the Nazis; and the Soviets. They treated us as if we were less than human. I longed for the day when we could change things and reclaim Ukraine as a free country in its own right and drive the invaders out.
The ache in my muscles eased off a little as I stood up and stretched. In the dusty blackness I could just about see Father lying on the floor next to me, sleeping. Despite all our efforts, we hadn’t managed to make it back home and we were further away than ever, but I didn’t blame Father. Maybe it was meant to be that way somehow.
In the murkiness, I managed to make out the door to the hut and I moved towards it, taking care not to step on anyone. I opened the door and stepped outside. There was a Nazi guard right outside the door, he was smoking a cigarette. He turned towards me and his eyes gleamed, ‘Halt. Where are you going?’
‘Excuse me,’ I replied, ‘I’ve just woken up, and I need some air.’
‘Well, we have our orders, and you must stay inside the hut.’ He gestured with his rifle for me to go back inside. I looked over his shoulder and, on the horizon I saw an orange glow. It was unusual. It flickered and flared and I also heard some very faint bangs, like explosions in the distance. There was dust in the air, swirling in the early morning breeze, I could feel it on my face and I raised a hand up to shield myself. The soldier stepped forward, ‘Back inside! Now!’ He glared at me, and I stepped backwards into the hut. He slammed the door. I sat down next to Father who was still asleep and tried to get comfortable, with my coat wrapped around me to keep out the chill.
Before long, others around me began to wake up. I saw Father stirring and he pushed himself up into sitting, ‘Stefan? Are you there? Stefan, is that you?’
‘I’m here, Father. Right next to you. I put an arm around him.’
‘Thank God. Thank God you’re still here with me,’ he whispered, ‘but where are we?’
I couldn’t really answer him. We could have been in Timbuktu for all I knew,
‘It’s all right, Father. We’re okay in here. It’s warm and dry.’ I tried to reassure him, but was also trying to calm myself. I was scared. We all were. I could feel it in the air around me. Any minute the Nazi soldiers could line us up and slaughter us. That kind of thought was creeping into the head of every person in the hut, paralysing every nerve and every cell inside us. We were like statues, hardly daring to move or breathe. There we sat while the gloom turned into daylight outside. No one said very much to each other. Some people clasped their hands together and whispered prayers. Those people had a calm about them, like they’d accept whatever was to come, and be ready for it. Others, like Father and I, just sat very still. Inside my head I was praying too. The walls of the hut were closing in on us.
Eventually, after many long minutes and hours, I was sitting with my knees tucked into my chest with my arms around my knees, and with my face folded down, when the door burst open. I looked up. Several Nazi soldiers, armed with rifles, stormed in with one of them issuing orders at us, ‘Right! Everybody out! Now!’
Everyone stood up slowly and straightened their clothes, and then we all wandered out into the lovely spring sunshine. It was a truly beautiful day, and such a relief to be out of that cramped wooden hut. The heat from the sun was mirrored by a wave of heat wafting across from the horizon. It was accompanied by particles of dust riding on a breeze that flew into our eyes and our noses, making us cough and splutter, and rub our eyes. Some of the soldiers had scarves tied around their faces and goggles covering their eyes; others simply pulled their helmets down over their eyes and walked with their heads down. They prodded us with their rifles and herded us away from the huts. Many hundreds of us were there, most likely from many different parts of Western Ukraine. I blinked away the dust and looked back at the huts. There were about 20 of them all in rows of five. We’d been staying in army barracks of some description. There were brick buildings nearby, but I didn’t have time to look any closer because the Nazi troops were shoving all of us away from the huts. All around me, people were crossing themselves and muttering prayers. We were marched to the edge of a field and then the soldiers ordered us to stop. They all ran across to trucks that were waiting at the side of a road some 50 metres away. They clambered aboard. Then, from the opposite end of the field charged many more soldiers, some of them carrying large metal cylinders, others with bundles of sheets and blankets. They split up into smaller groups, and rushed into each of the barracks. They came out again without their bundles or the cylinders.
A roar and a crackle followed as all of the barracks burst into flames, with glass shattering and black smoke billowing skywards. The soldiers ran past us, some of them spitting and cursing at us. They jumped into the waiting trucks, and an exodus then began. All the trucks roared into life. They didn’t hang around, in the space of a few seconds they were out of sight.
We were le
ft looking into what resembled the jaws of Hell. An inferno blazed away right in front of us and, in the distance, an orange glow flickered, betraying the fact that the Nazis were retreating and laying waste to our land by burning it to the ground.
A man stepped out from the crowd. He was an older man, with wisps of greying hair on his head and a beard to match. He held his hands up, ‘Listen! Listen to me, everybody! We must keep moving, and the only way we can go is west. We have to try to find water, and food. All we can do is head for the border, and hope that we can find some refuge somewhere.’
‘What do you know, old man, eh?’ shouted someone from the crowd.
‘Well,’ said the grey haired one, ‘can we go back into that?’
He pointed at the eastern sky. There were balls of fire dotted around everywhere. The retreating Nazis had torched everything they could. I wondered about Aunt Helena, Yaroslav and Oleg. I wondered where they might be, and whether their house was still standing.
As one, the crowd of people turned away from the flames and the ferocious heat and walked. We found a road, one that was heading west and we streamed onto that dusty track as we faced the dreadful fact that we needed to flee our beloved Ukraine. Inside my heart I was feeling a fire of my own. The invaders had forced us to leave our home and now we were being driven further into the unknown. I wanted to lift my head up and yell. I wanted to turn around and charge headlong at the Nazi soldiers, if any were still around, and let them taste the fury of a Ukrainian fist. But, because we’d been so repressed over so many years, I knew I needed to keep my head down and be quiet. That was how we’d survived so many brutal years.
We walked about a mile or so and then the crowd began to break up into smaller groups. Some walked in gangs of 20 or so, Father and I found ourselves in such a group. We stumbled along, men, women and children, gliding across that terrain as if we were in a dream, as if we were floating. It didn’t seem real. I thought about my home, my friends and most of all, my Mother. I really just wanted to be back home with her, all those miles away. But as we walked, I knew we were getting further away than ever.
The grey-haired one with the beard was at the front of our group. He seemed to have adopted us all, he was our leader. He strode purposefully on, and Father and I were drawn to him. We made our way through the crowd to be near him. We walked about a mile or so with the spring sun shining on us, but I couldn’t really get warm, I had shivers running down me, which didn’t leave me even when I pulled my coat tight around me.
Also, I was hungry and thirsty. Spending the night in a dusty old hut after walking so many miles had drained the life out of me, I was ready to drop. The grey- haired one, who we learnt went by the name of Peter, stopped at a part of the road where there was a dip. He looked across to the terrain at the side and waved an arm, ‘Come on, this way, we need to find some water.’ He led the way down into a wooded area and my ears pricked up as I heard a trickle of water. Many of us straightened up and broke into a trot as the sound of running water could be heard ever more clearly. It wasn’t long before we were standing next to a small stream.
‘Wait!’ Peter held up his hand again as many of us threw ourselves down to take a drink. ‘We must make sure this water is fit to drink before we take any.’ He walked up and down, looking closely at the water, and the surrounding area, before nodding his head and waving us forward. We all plunged our hands in and took a good drink. I threw water over my face and freshened myself up.
Everyone spent a good few minutes enjoying the gift of that cool, clean water and then we all got back up onto our feet, refreshed and ready to walk on. We made our way back up to the road and carried on heading west. Behind us, in the distance, we could hear faint explosions. In front of us, a long winding road led to who knows where. It was a beautiful spring day, and the birds were singing in the trees all around us. Up ahead in the distance, towering above the horizon, were the Carpathian Mountains, with their jagged peaks running right across our view, jutting into the billowy clouds. They sparkled in the morning sun, and looked so beautiful that I wanted to reach out and touch them.
‘That’s where we need to get to,’ Peter pointed at the mountains, ‘we’ll find more water, and maybe some food there.’
Nobody was arguing with him. Our empty stomachs spoke just as loudly, and Peter seemed so sure. He had a confidence like iron, an unshakeable belief. We simply couldn’t doubt him, or maybe we just followed blindly because we didn’t know what else to do?
Our weary footsteps dragged us along, and we kept our eyes down much of the time, so we didn’t have to think how far we had to go. After a few miles, it could have been three or four, maybe five, none of us were counting, a fork in the road appeared. Peter held up an arm and we stopped. Heavy tyre trucks were evident on the right fork, while the fork to the left curved towards the mountains. Peter waved us to the left, and we carried on.
Before long, however, we reached a small village, where we weren’t welcomed. Several village men came out armed with axes or hammers and stood glaring as we walked past. These people were barefoot and clothed in rags. Their houses were ramshackle and falling apart, with bundles of straw packed into some of the roof areas to plug the gaps. The local church had cracked window panes and crumbling walls right there before us. The graveyard next to it was like a bomb site. Gravestones had been knocked over and broken, clumps of grass sprouted up out of every available crack and crevice, and a soft breeze blew leaves around; they gathered in corners and crept over paths, making the graveyard look a shambles. Many of the fields and meadows in the area were overgrown and derelict. All we could do was keep walking and hope the villagers wouldn’t try to rob us. We huddled closer together and followed Peter as he led us on, past the stares and the clenched fists.
A collective sigh of relief was exhaled as we made our exit from the other side of that village, but the mountains didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Our trek towards nothing and nowhere continued, at least that’s how it felt. We didn’t count our steps, we just placed one boot after another as if it were the first step.
Around midday we stopped and found a shady area to cool down in. Peter took this opportunity to speak to us, ‘Listen to me, my friends. The Lord is with us. He will guide us. We must be strong and keep our faith. The mountains are overflowing with life, and once we get there, we’ll find food. I’m sure of that. We can find some shelter and survive. The Lord will provide for us.’
Peter led us in prayer, but I was becoming more and more desperate, I just wanted to find somewhere to stay until it was safe to go home, but that was becoming more and more uncertain, I could only see a long journey into darkness stretching out in front of me.
Like wounded soldiers, we staggered on, each step like walking through mud, each heartbeat like a hammer blow banging us backwards. Worn down, we finally arrived at the foot of the mountains. By then, it was early evening and the heat around us had lifted up and floated away. The sun was dropping down onto the horizon, its golden orange glow tracing a line all along the jutting mountain rocks. I pulled the collar of my coat up around my ears. The chill of the evening was creeping into my bones. We huddled together and gazed at the majestic splendour of the mountains, but the vision in front of us couldn’t take away the hunger inside us.
Peter scanned the plateau. He paced up and down, and we watched him, wondering what he would suggest next. Suddenly, there was a rustle in the undergrowth, in several places. We looked again at the plateau, and I thought I saw some movement behind one of the bushes. It was moving. Then, another bush moved, and some twigs snapped, the echo of this cracked around our ears and I felt my whole body spring to attention. Were we about to be attacked by wolves, or some other mountain creature? I looked at Peter to see his reaction. He was perfectly still, just watching.
Then, some figures emerged from above us. There were four of them, clad in black and holding rifles. They clambered down the plateau with practised expertise, and every nerve inside me wante
d to scream as I wondered whether they would try to rob us, or just cut us down where we stood. Peter stepped forward, ‘Greetings to you. We come in peace. We’re just ordinary people and we mean you no harm. Please, can you tell us where to find food and shelter?’
The four approached until they were right amongst us. They held their rifles at the ready. One of them was looking at me. I tried to avoid his gaze; I didn’t want to annoy him. After all, he was holding a rifle.