Violins of Hope (27 page)

The beggars included a blind man singing psalms while accompanying himself on a lyre, a one-legged veteran of the Russo-Japanese War playing an accordion, an elderly woman with a swollen and bandaged cheek, and several other destitute and handicapped drifters hoping to elicit sympathy from the holiday travelers. Motele sat on a wooden stool at the back of the crowd and placed a clay bowl he had purchased in the market between his feet. He tuned his violin, strummed a few strings, and began to perform one of the many Ukrainian folksongs he had learned in Krasnovka. The folksong was “The Ant,” a song about a woman whose work is so underappreciated that she asks God for wings. Motele would sing a stanza and then play the melody on his violin.

Although Uncle Misha had specifically chosen Motele for this assignment because of his ability to blend in with Ukrainians, the beauty of his singing and playing far surpassed that of the other beggars. He quickly attracted a crowd. When he finished the folksong, the onlookers threw coins into his bowl and slipped dumplings into his backpack.

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the back of the crowd. The congregation parted to make way for a German officer who was marching toward Motele. The officer stood in front of the boy. The young violinist was so engrossed with the music that he did not notice him. Finally, the officer tapped Motele on the shoulder with his riding crop. Raising his head and seeing the German uniform, Motele jumped to his feet and bowed.

“Come with me,” the officer commanded.

Motele felt his breast pocket to make sure he still had his forged documents. He calmly placed his violin back in its case, collected the coins from his little bowl, and followed the officer.

After walking a few blocks, they arrived at a building that was flanked by several German limousines and motorcycles. They passed an armed guard at the entrance and ascended a flight of stairs to a large restaurant where German officers sat around tables eating, drinking, and talking loudly. The officer marched Motele to the corner of the room, and whispered to an elderly man who was playing the piano.

“Can you read music?” the pianist asked Motele in Russian, assuming that the boy was an ethnic Ukrainian.

“Yes.”

The pianist dug through his sheet music and produced the score to Ignacy Jan Paderewski's popular Minuet in G Major, op. 14, no. 1. From a political point of view, the work was an interesting choice for the venue, given that the recently deceased Polish composer had raised money for Hitler's Jewish victims. From a musical standpoint, it was an excellent selection for a pianist attempting to accompany an unknown twelve-year-old street musician. The melody begins simply, moving stepwise in easy rhythms, and only increases in difficulty as the piece unfolds. If the boy stumbled early on, it would have been easy for the pianist to gracefully improvise a quick conclusion to the failed experiment.

But Motele was no ordinary street performer. He was a talented and well-trained violinist who had actually played that very minuet several times before, in the Gershteins' palace with Reizele playing the piano. At first, Motele's new pianist played only the accompaniment part with his left hand, listening intently to the young violinist's playing. As he gained confidence in Motele's abilities, the pianist added more harmonies with his right hand.

The restaurant grew quieter and quieter as the diners interrupted their conversations to listen to the beautiful duet. When Motele and his accompanist finished the coda—a tour de force of virtuosic passagework—the diners responded with vigorous applause. The Nazi officer who had discovered Motele was so pleased with the violin playing that he offered the boy a position entertaining the guests at the Soldiers Club for two hours during lunchtime and from seven to eleven in the evening. In return, Motele would receive two reichsmarks a day, plus lunch and dinner.

Motele protested, returning to his cover story of needing to find his father in Zhytomyr. He added that he would then have to return to Listvin to care for his sick mother and three small siblings. When the officer promised to find out if his father was in Zhytomyr and, if so, have him transferred to Ovruch, Motele was left with little choice but to accept the job.

Motele immediately visited Karol and asked him to convey his predicament to Uncle Misha. The partisan commander recognized the opportunity and ordered Motele to remain in Ovruch and report everything he observed through Karol.

The Soldiers Club was one of many restaurants that the Germans had appropriated as havens for soldiers on their way to the Eastern Front. It was a place where they could strengthen their resolve with great music, gourmet food, French wine, and pretty Ukrainian waitresses who served them in more ways than one. While playing his violin, Motele was able to track the numbers of units and the types of uniforms worn by German soldiers on their way to the front. He also eavesdropped on the conversations of the few who returned. Between lunch and dinner he surveilled the streets of Ovruch, taking note of everything for his reports to Karol.

Despite impossible conditions, young Motele was somehow able to conceal his disdain for the Nazis. He even earned their trust and friendship. A regional commandant who spent every evening at the Soldiers Club went so far as to have a little German uniform and cap tailored for Motele, to the delight of the other employees at the Soldiers Club.

Motele also discovered that the fat cook would prepare his best dishes in exchange for performances of his favorite song, “Rose-Marie.” Motele dined in the kitchen, which was located in the basement of the Soldiers Club. He usually ate his lunch before playing in the afternoon and returned for his dinner after he was done every night.

One day, on his way back upstairs after lunch, Motele noticed that one of the storerooms across the dimly lit hallway from the kitchen had been left open. He peered into the darkness and discovered a large cellar filled with empty wine cases, herring barrels, and other discarded items that had clearly been forgotten.

On the wall opposite the doorway was a jagged crack, presumably the result of a nearby bomb explosion. Motele, who had heard numerous tales of sabotage from other members of Uncle Misha's Jewish Group, stopped in his tracks. He realized that if he filled that crack with explosives he could blow up the Soldiers Club and kill all of the Germans inside. Every time he passed the open storeroom, his resolve became greater. He eventually shared his idea with Karol. Uncle Misha eagerly approved the plan and instructed his explosives expert Popov to work out the details with Motele.

The beginning of the autumn harvest season meant that peasants were traveling between Ovruch and the surrounding fields with increasing frequency. The German soldiers guarding the city had grown tired of searching their wagons and had become less meticulous in their inspections. This allowed Motele to leave the city in Karol's wagon unnoticed under a cartful of straw sheaves for bundling wheat. The German guard who allowed Karol to pass over the bridge out of town never suspected that underneath the heap of straw twists was a Jewish boy who planned to blow up his comrades.

Motele rendezvoused with Popov three miles outside Ovruch. After discussing the thickness of the stone walls and how long the wick would need to be to give Motele ample time to escape, Popov calculated that it would take forty pounds of explosives to bring down the Soldiers Club.

Motele returned to Ovruch in Karol's cart, then snuck out to the forest again a few days later. This time, Popov taught Motele how to construct a bomb and insert a detonator, a lesson that Motele had watched him give before. Popov gave Motele the explosives and sent him back to Ovruch with instructions to hide them at Karol's house.

That evening, after finishing his dinner and saying good night to the cook, Motele crept into the storeroom. He hid his instrument inside an empty barrel and left the Soldiers Club with an empty violin case. When he returned the next day, his case had a few pounds of explosives hidden inside. After his lunch, he snuck into the storeroom and swapped the explosives for his violin.

Motele repeated this process over the next several days, until he had successfully hidden all forty pounds of explosives in the cellar. Whenever he could, Motele would return to the storeroom to break off the stones that surrounded the crack in the wall and replace them with the deadly material. When he had packed all of the explosives into the wall, he inserted the capsule detonator and the long wick that Popov had given him. He hid everything behind a pile of garbage.

At the same time, Motele and Karol were working on an escape plan. Every day, they would visit the river that borders Ovruch, pretending to be fishing or swimming while actually looking for an area that would be shallow enough for Motele to cross during his getaway. On their way to and from the river, they would note the streets and gardens through which Motele would have to run on his flight out of town.

The only aspect of the plan that remained unresolved was when to detonate the bomb. The perfect opportunity finally presented itself when a division of the SS came through Ovruch on its way to try to salvage the increasingly hopeless situation on the Eastern Front. The success of partisan sabotage of the railroad had forced the SS division to abandon the train and instead travel eastward by road, stopping at Ovruch for the night.

At around three in the afternoon, their cars and motorcycles began to arrive at the Soldiers Club. The restaurant quickly filled with high-ranking SS officers in their formal attire. Motele's violin and the piano accompaniment could barely be heard above the din of clanking dishes, clinking glasses, and loud laughter. Motele and the pianist were forbidden from taking any breaks as the guests got drunker and as the cigar smoke thickened. The intoxicated officers requested tangos and waltzes, occasionally insisting that the musicians play only “their song.” At one point, a red-faced German at one of the tables started screaming wildly, “Play ‘Volga, Volga,'” referring to the popular “Volga Song” from an operetta by Franz Léhar. Another officer stumbled around the restaurant hugging a bottle of cognac while tearfully singing, “My father does not know me, my mother does not love me, and I cannot die because I am still young.”

Motele's fingers ached from the nonstop playing and his eyes burned from all the cigar smoke. But he continued to play. “I'm playing for you for the last time,” he thought to himself as he smiled at his applauding audience. “Eat, drink, and be merry, you accursed Germans. These are your final hours. I'll play so well for you tonight that you'll be blown apart dancing.”

It was not until eleven that night that the pianist finally convinced the manager to let him and Motele relinquish the responsibility for entertaining the officers to the guests who could play the piano. Motele went downstairs to the kitchen, where he told the cook that he was too tired to eat his dinner after playing the violin for eight hours straight.

He left the kitchen and entered the hallway. Groping around in the darkness, Motele found the storeroom door and quietly closed it behind him. Using the dim light from a small grated window as a guide, he located the detonator and ignited it. He hastily ran out of the cellar, down the hallway, and up the stairs. Slowing as he approached the soldier who guarded the exit, he extended his right arm and proclaimed a sarcastic “Heil, Hitler!”

The guard, familiar with the affable young violinist in his little soldier's uniform, amusedly responded, “Ach, you little Ukrainian swine!” And Motele vanished into the darkness.

After running for two hundred feet, Motele heard a violent explosion behind him. The ground shook and windowpanes shattered. He heard police whistles and sirens and saw red flares illuminate the sky over Ovruch.

Terrified and euphoric at the same time, Motele hid himself from view by flattening his body against the buildings as he escaped. He ran into the river, holding his violin above his head with both hands to protect it from the cold water that reached up to his neck. Glancing backward, he saw an enormous fireball shooting into the sky.

When Motele reached the other side of the river, five armed partisans from Uncle Misha's Jewish Group plucked him out of the water and into their wagon. They quickly disappeared back into the safety of the woods.

For a few minutes, Motele was speechless, overwhelmed by the success of his mission. Then, raising his clenched fists to the red sky, he declared in a trembling voice, “That is for my parents and my little sister Batyale!”

By October 1943, the male adults in Uncle Misha's Jewish Group had been incorporated into various divisions of the Red Army and the women and children partisans had been sent out of harm's way. The Russians wanted Uncle Misha to stay behind the lines as an engineer, but he declined. “I have a final account to settle with Hitler in Berlin,” he insisted.
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He and Lionka became snipers in the Red Army's 141st Rifle Division.

Motele was also instructed to leave the combat zone. He, too, refused. “I'm not a child anymore,” he argued tearfully. “I'm already more than twelve years old. I can act as a small scout in the front and be just as useful as I was in the forest.

“I'm an orphan,” he continued. “And I don't have anybody other than Uncle Misha and Lionka. I don't want to part from them.”

Uncle Misha was able to intervene on Motele's behalf, convincing the commanding officers to allow the boy to stay in his regiment.

On the morning of October 14, Uncle Misha, Lionka, and Motele found themselves in a trench, pinned down by a constant barrage of German bullets and mortars. They had been under attack since the night before, when they had been discovered laying land mines. By the time dawn broke, the river embankment in which they had found refuge was littered with the bodies of dead soldiers and horses from the bloody battle.

A little over four hundred yards away, they noticed a group of Russian officers trying to hide in a shallow trench. Every time the officers moved, their golden epaulettes sparkled in the sun.