The feared security services—the SS and Gestapo—were commanded from a regional headquarters in Chortkov. Kommandant Kelner, chief of the Gestapo’s “Jewish section” for the region, turned out to be the master manipulator directing the implementation of our torment.
We played against teams from other camps and also with German clubs from the nearby towns. They had good athletes who were generally healthier than we were, but we played hard and smart and most of the matches were competitive.
Since their side had lost the war, the German athletes did not act superior to us. When I trained with Germans in boxing or playing soccer, they kept their mouths shut and it was strictly about sports. I never heard a nasty word.
Every story has a beginning, as the saying goes. Mine starts in Skala in the 1930s. Sadly, this first decade of my life coincided with the last decade of the town’s storied Jewish history. Jews had lived in this place for hundreds of years, pursuing a way of life built on tradition, faith and commerce, and coexisting with the local Polish and Ukrainian populations. Tragically, that willingness to live and let live despite ethnic differences would soon and forever be swept into the abyss.
The David Marcus Club hosted social mixers on Sunday afternoons. It was on one of these occasions that I first noticed a young girl who was pretty and smart and confident. She was a few years younger than me, not yet 18 and still going to high school. She was there with some of her friends and I was with Herbie. We began talking and I learned her name was Florence, or Feige in the old country.
I realize we will have to go around to the back to find the little barn in the alley, where I hid in a hayloft while police guards searched for me. Like a dog catching wind of a scent, I hurry through a gate. I feel like my young self and, in my excitement, begin rushing faster as my family straggles behind. I wonder, will the barn still be standing after more than half a century?
We soon learned that the Red Army’s hold in the Podolia region was still tenuous. It was said that a whole SS division was encircled but still fighting in the vicinity of Kamenets, across the river to our southeast. Then one morning, less than two weeks after our deliverance, the military situation turned drastically. News spread through town that the German division had broken out of Kamenets and was advancing directly on Skala.
We rolled down the main street of the regional city Chortkov, where I had never been before, but heard much about. I saw that it was more densely built up than our small town but all the stores had boards on their windows. On the road to Tarnopol, we turned to the northwest at a crossroads and continued onward for another hour.
Eventually we ended up in a town with a name very much like our own town, Skalat with a ’t’ at the end. It was one in a line of positions northwest of Tarnopol to which Russians forces had regrouped.
The next morning I was feeling down, thinking I would have to go to live with Olenka after all. Then there came a knock at the door. On the step stood a ragged Jewish couple. They introduced themselves as the Peckers, Isser and Tziril, and explained they had wandered into Skala in search of shelter. I let them in and gave them food and hot tea.
My success with milk pails in the market did not go unnoticed by the authorities. One day a Red Army sergeant showed up at my door and introduced himself as Mikhail, a former tinsmith by trade. He was not a Jew, but he proposed that we should work together to supply tin wares for the barracks mess.
At first I declined, explaining that I was just a one-man shop without any ambition to become a supplier for the Soviet Army. But Mikhail replied that in the great Soviet Union all businesses must serve the people.
While eating, we were joined by the men’s ranking officer, a handsome man in an officer’s uniform. He sent two of his men with me to get Tateh, who was so weak that the two beefy soldiers carried more than he walked down to the square to meet the captain. “My congratulations on your survival. I’m sure it took great courage and resourcefulness,” Kaminin said.