my plan requires.
It’s early March and all the Jews have “disappeared” from the Opera House work camp that now accommodates some 20 of the “cleaner ones” like myself, all in reasonably good condition. It takes all of us to hoist the statue onto the base. The rest is relatively easy. With the assistance of two other “slaves,” we complete the crate well before the truck arrives.
As the time for my salvation draws closer, my heart begins to beat faster. Adrenaline pounds in my ears. “Stay calm,” I warn myself, “slow your breathing. Don’t give them a reason to suspect anything. Slow down, slow down!”
I touch my thigh. The thorn is still there! The panic abates.
As it is obvious I am the only one with the faintest idea of what is required to build a crate large and strong enough to protect a prize this valuable, the guards are only too happy to “let Igor do it.” If anything goes wrong you can guess where the fingers will point, which is exactly what I am counting on. That and the fact the Opera House guards are lacking in a good deal more than just crate-building skills. Describing these wormy slugs as not exactly Rhodes Scholars is an understatement!
Thus I had no qualms yesterday suggesting that while the top of the crate could be left open, a large tarpaulin was needed to cushion the statue against the bumps, jolts and flying stones bound to be encountered on the long trip to Berlin. When I saw the tarp unloaded along with the lumber last night, I knew for sure God hadn’t finished with his miracles!
My main worry is that my plans may be thwarted by the Berlin-bound truck arriving before I am able to hand my “loot list” to the good general. When a guard finally points at me and then to his watch, I breathe a sigh of relief. Almost 6:30; no sign of a truck yet. Out the front door the limousine pulls up, right on time, the list is slapped into the gloved hand, and I am quickly back inside. Now deadly calm.
As usual at this time of evening, my fellow “slaves” are gathered over the feeble heat of the furnace grate, devouring their meagre meal. The guards, also as usual, having finished their meal, are off in a far corner playing their nightly game of cards. No one pays the least attention to me. They aren’t really worried about anyone escaping anyway. All the doors are barred; besides, in our tattered and filthy clothes, and with no identity cards and Minsk crawling with German troops and police, where would we go? Unless you have outside help and a good plan, your chances of escape are virtually nil. I have both. God is my outside help. The time has come to implement my plan.
Quickly, in the darkness settling over the Opera House, I climb up the side of the crate, silently drop down inside, crawl beneath the tarpaulin draping the figure of Christ, wrench the thorn from the tape on my thigh and with an astonishingly steady hand ready to plunge the cold stone into my breast, I huddle against the base of the Cross.
With Christ’s feet caressing my head, I wait. And pray the truck will arrive soon. I know full well that the longer the delay the greater the chances of a guard noticing my absence. I have nothing to fear from my fellow inmates whose senses are so blunted by cold, hunger, fatigue, fear, and hopelessness they would scarcely notice if I, or anyone, dropped dead in front of them.
I need not have worried. The shouts and laughter of the card-playing guards are abruptly stilled by the whack of the massive front door of the Opera House being thrown open and a truck, a large one by the sound of its engine, backs up to the entrance.
Cards abandoned, the guards become the models of efficiency. I hear them shouting orders now, much running about, confusion, more shouts, more orders, and then the crate with its precious cargo—the statue and me—is jerked into the air.
For once I am glad of the starvation diet that has reduced my weight to the point where it will be masked by that of the statue.
For a moment my heart pounds as the crate tilts and we come perilously close to being spilled onto the floor. I clutch my weapon even more tightly. There’s more shouting and the dangerous tilt becomes slightly less precarious. Slowly, with much grunting, groaning and cursing in several languages, I sense us moving forward, until with a great thump and more shouting we land inside the truck, thank heavens upright.
This is something I had not considered. I don’t panic, but I am very worried. Instead of being loaded onto the back of an open truck, as I had expected, it is obvious from the sound that this time they have sent an enclosed van. I hear the door thud shut and a scraping noise that I fear sounds very much like a lock.
My plan has been to simply crawl out of the crate as we drive in the darkness through the Kurapaty forest that crowds the outskirts of Minsk, jump off the truck as it slows around some of the dangerous curves, then somehow hook up with a partisan group, several of which I know are operating there.
A simple plan made far less so by being enclosed and probably locked inside a van. As the truck lurches forward, I scramble out from under the tarpaulin but am confronted with a crisis. The top of the crate is within an inch of two of the truck’s roof. It takes me nearly half an hour to finally pry off sufficient boards from the side of the crate to allow me to squeeze free and roll onto the floor.
Now I am beginning to panic. With time running out, I’ve got to find a way to get out of here. I know we will soon be through the forest into open countryside and my chances of escape grow dimmer by the moment. I frantically attack the wooden rear door of the van with my stone thorn, hoping to somehow hack a hole large enough to get my arm out and reach the latch. I am only too aware that even if I can reach the latch but find it locked, my goose is cooked, as you Canadians would say.
Soviet partisans in Belarus 1943. The partisan on the left is carrying what appears to be a Soviet PPD-34/38. His companion is equipped with a Mosin-Nagant rifle (with factory bayonet), plus German bayonet/dagger (on waistband) and two RGD-33 hand grenades.
— Russian state archive
Freedom
I DON’T NEED TO FIND THE PARTISANS. They find me! I am digging frantically at the door with my stone weapon when the world explodes beneath me.
When I awake I am lying in what appears to be some kind of underground hut with my broken right leg encased in primitive splints fashioned from boards that look suspiciously like those which, when last I was conscious, enclosed a statue of Christ on the Cross and a stowaway. Strangely, I feel almost no pain from my leg, but my buttocks are screaming at me, as though someone has been digging around with a shovel. Which, as it turns out, is pretty much what has been going on.
My groans rouse an old woman who is nodding off in a corner. Stiffly, she rises to her feet and hobbles to the pile of rags that serves as my bed. Bending over in the dim light is a face the weather has beaten into something resembling a burlap bag. Picture Willie Nelson without the beard, bandana or guitar! Her laugh, as she holds up a jagged piece of metal nearly the size of my fist, reveals a fine set of gums but not a single tooth. Saying something in Polish that I cannot understand, she whacks her rump with the chunk of metal then yanks it away quickly with one hand while pointing to my rear with the other. Another laugh. I hate to say cackle, but in truth that’s more descriptive. An unlikely angel!
Someone, I hope to high heaven not her, has removed what is obviously a chunk of shrapnel from my buttocks. What I am able to piece together in the coming days is that, in fact, it is this old lady who set my broken leg, hacked out the shrapnel and patched up several less serious wounds to my legs and back, thus undoubtedly saving my life.
Even
