shoot straight are being pressed into the bloodbath of the Eastern Front.
I am told that in the early days of the partisan operations they did come under attack from the Luftwaffe, whose planes were roaming freely in the skies, but when the quick victory they had expected is denied in Russia, it becomes obvious the German High Command has more pressing problems than Belarusian partisans.
On one memorable occasion, the Germans haul several 105 mm howitzers to the eastern end of the Kurapaty forest and begin lobbing shells at what they think is our location. They miss us by several kilometres, shattering a broad swatch of trees that after another attack, this time from our axes, makes good firewood.
The guns are obviously in much greater demand elsewhere and despite our attempts to sabotage them, after two days of killing only trees, they are successfully loaded aboard a train and shipped east to kill Russians.
By the spring of 1943, the Germans have pretty well given up trying to root us out of our forest lairs and settle instead on increasing patrols in usually vain attempts to protect vital rail lines, bridges, roads and buildings. As I have already told you, what we did in Belarus is by far the most successful of all the resistance movements in Europe.
I have no doubt that even if the Red Army had not arrived in June of 1944 to liberate us, we partisans would have done it on our own. I often wish that is what had happened. We would certainly have been better off.
As the winter snows fade away, it becomes apparent that I am being kept away from the riskier ventures. It troubles me deeply since I have every reason to believe I have been as effective at sabotage as any others in our group. I take part in a couple of minor raids on truck convoys, but even then, my role is kept to a minimum, far from flying bullets.
When I ask what is going on, I am met with nothing but shrugs. None of my comrades knows what’s up either, only that they have orders that my life is not to be placed at risk.
It is mid-summer when I find out why.
There’s a stir in our camp. Word quickly flies around that none other than Urie Labonak,* one of the most famous partisan leaders, has arrived from Moscow.
*FACT: Russian state archives lists a U. Labonak as a key partisan commander.
My life is about to take a dramatic turn!
Soviet caricature. Inscriptions—Ideal Aryan must be: tall (above Göbbels), slim (above Göring), blond (above Hitler). The author of this caricature is famous political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, who died on the 1st of November, 2008, at age 108.
Chosen
“YOU WILL HELP US KILL the Generalkommissar!” Realizing I don’t understand, Labonak impatiently adds, “Kube, Wilhelm Kube, you’re going to help us kill him!”
I am stunned! Labonak gets up from behind a small table covered with maps. He’s a short but powerfully built middle-aged man; thick thighs bulging through the ill-fitting Red Army uniform he’s wearing. Still unable to fully understand what’s happening here, my mind is thinking, “Pear! The man is built like a pear!”
He circles the table and stands in front of me. “Stand up,” he orders. “Look me in the eyes.”
I don’t hesitate.
“Yes,” he gleefully shouts to several nearby aides, “they are a beautiful blue; perfect. Take off your hat.” This time he almost does a little dance. “Yes, look at that, almost blond!” He walks slowly around me, peering intently at my head as though to check that my hair is the same light colour on all sides. “Yes, yes, yes, wonderful, wonderful. Say something to me in German.”
“What?” I ask.
“Come, come—say something in German, let me hear your German; they tell me it is very good.”
I rattle off a couple of words.
“No, no. Give me some sentences, tell me what a wonderful fellow I am or something like that,” and he chuckles.
So, standing there in the stifling heat of a sod hut, bathed in sweat and confusion, I break into German and tell one of the most powerful men in all of the Soviet Union that I really do think he is a wonderful fellow and so is everyone else in the entire partisan movement. This mighty little pear of a man breaks into a toothy smile, claps his hands in approval and dismissal and my fate is forever sealed! It seems my German is good enough to qualify me for what I fear will be a suicide mission.
The Hot Water Bottle!
IT HAS NEVER BEEN CLEAR to me whether Yelena Mazanik was Wilhelm Kube’s lover or his maid. Some history books say the former, others the latter. One thing I have no doubt about is that if she is having sex with the Generalkommissar, the mass murderer of Minsk children, it’s not for love of anything but her country.
She certainly doesn’t hesitate when the partisans make contact with her and ask if she will help kill him. “With pleasure,” is what she is reported to have replied.
And so it is agreed that some kind of bomb with a delayed timer will be the method that gives Yelena the best chance of carrying out her dangerous mission and escaping. It is Yelena herself who comes up with the brilliant solution. “The hot water bottle,” she says. “He’s got circulation problems, so I put a hot water bottle in his bed every night to warm his feet. Can you put a bomb inside a hot water bottle?”
It takes our explosives experts only a few hours to figure it out. Moscow is providing us with small amounts of plastique and detonators to be used only for blowing up important bridges. We don’t think Stalin or anyone else around Red Square will object too strenuously if we nick off a little bit of it to blow up a German general, especially one as nasty as Wilhelm Kube!
The problem is how to get the plastique, detonator, and timing device into a rubber bottle and then fill it with hot water.
It’s a somewhat embarrassed young woman who almost immediately hits upon the answer. “A condom,” she says. Eureka! And thanks to our Nazi friends, who usually have their pockets full of them, condoms are one of the few things we’ve got plenty of around here. Put the explosive, the detonator, and the timer into a condom, tie off the top, drop it into the bottle, and then you can add the hot water whenever you want! Brilliant! Except for one problem…since we don’t know when we’ll be able to plant the bomb under Herr Kube, how do we rig up a timer that won’t go off until well after Yelena has fled?
In the end what they design is fairly simple. I have no idea exactly how it works, but they rig it up in such a way that screwing the top of the hot water bottle on tightly will activate the timer, which is made from a pocket watch. It gives whoever plants the bomb exactly one half hour to make a getaway.
All that needs to be done now is get the bomb into Yelena’s hands.
“Easy,” says Moscow, “No problem. No problem at all. Just find a partisan who can pose as a German officer. Put him in a captured car or a motorcycle with a sidecar, have him drive into the heart of Minsk, past all the checkpoints, present the bomb to Yelena Mazanik, hang around until she plants it beneath Herr Kube, then flee the city with her when the deed is done. No problem!" Or words to that effect...
