“end THE BONDAGE! AND LET IT BE ENOUGH!”
Khayke Gvinter told us about one time in 1943 when a German punitive brigade crossed over in black trucks from the other side of the Bug, and massacred a group of Jews. She was among those shot and left for dead in a mass grave:
I endured all the hardships.
I was in the concentration camp. They killed everyone. But they didn't [shoot] me in the heart or head—I was lying like that [she shows how she was lying on her side]. They wounded me [she points at her shoulder and her lower back]. They killed men, women. Oy! There was this Max from Chernivtsi. As long as I live I won't forget him. The wife was pregnant and they stuck a knife in her, cut off her breast. The hands with fingers! And the child they choked with the cord. God—what I have seen!... She was pregnant, and had another child... a six-year-old boy. What a beautiful little boy, a pale boy. I can still see him before my eyes... he was shouting “Mama! Mama!” The German stabbed and ordered him to go. They gave him a candy or something. I remember! I saw it ! I ran away before they could kill me. I saw how they were laying them down. They were putting them down face first. They began to shoot from behind. They were running. From there they fell immediately into the grave.... Then they went to liquor it up in the forest. They went into the forest and they left behind some type of hole, a pit. Somebody—I don't know who, I don't know, I can't tell, maybe it was Jesus, Who knows?—But he gave me a hand. He pulled me out. And I came back to the camp. The gate, it was called the portal. And I was terrified. Blood was pouring from me. Oy.... It was in '43. It was when I was in Pechera.She told us the story again on another occasion, this time adding the song she remembers Max singing, which has been seared into her memory:
In the camp... there was this Max and he had a wife, a beautiful pale wife, a real beauty, and a child.
They killed him [Max] first. They turned him around toward the grave, threw him into the grave and shot him. Then the wife began to shout: “Max! Max!” Then they killed her too. And this little child, five years old with blue eyes, he stood before me—such a beautiful child.... “Mama! Mama! Where are they taking you? Mama!” And they turned his little head away and gave him a candy or something, I don't remember—I was a child. And they took him to his mother and killed him too. All three of them. But before that, he would sing this song—Max would. I will never forget it as long as I live. It goes like this:Afn yidishn beys-oylem iz a shreklekher vint,
Dort lign di yidn azoy vi di hint.
Funem himl a blik,
Af di idelekh gib a kik,
Leshn shoyn op dos fayer,
Un loz shoyn zayn genig!
Vey adonoy,
Farvos shlogt undz der nyemets azoy?
Lesh shoyn op dos fayer,
Un loz shoyn zayn genig!
Altitshke yidn mit di grove berd,
Me hakt zey, me brakt zey, me varft zey tsu der erd.
Funem himl a blik,
Af dayne yidelekh gib a kik,
Lesh shoyn op dos fayer,
Un loz shoyn zayn genig.
Kleyntshike kinder fun der muters brist,
Me hakt zey, me brokt zey, me varft zey afn mist.
In a Jewish cemetery there is a terrible wind,
There the Jews lie like dogs.
From the heavens take a look,
Cast a glance at the little Jews:
Blow out the fire already,
And let it be enough!
Oh God,
Why do the Germans beat us like this?
Blow out the fire,
And let it be done!
Elderly Jews with gray beards,
They hack them, they break them, they throw them to the ground. From the heavens take a look,
Cast a glance at your little Jews:
Blow out the fire already,
And let it be enough!
Little children taken from their mothers' breasts,
They hack them, they break them, they throw them in the rubbish.
She broke down in tears, unable to continue: “And this I lived through!” she groaned, shaking her head. Gvinter preserved the song, as though to hold onto the memory of Max and his family.
She knew he would have no other memorial. Gvinter's memory of that terrible episode is embedded within this song, which she sang for us on two occasions. Unable to fully articulate the trauma of the moment in words or in a coherent narrative, Gvinter resorted to song to communicate her suffering, as though to distance herself from the moment. At the same time, the tune is a mnemonic device transporting her back to that moment. Her voice quivered and she broke down into tears when she sang it, each time reliving the horror.The song itself is derived from another Yiddish song from Bessarabia and Bukovina that laments the anti-Jewish atrocities committed by Ukrainian brigands during the 1919-1921 pogroms. The song likely entered Transnistria with the deportees, and was reworked to refer to Nazi atrocities. Thus, Gvinter learned it from Max, the deportee from Chernivtsi. In the earlier version, the singer alludes to Eicha, the biblical Lamentations, and includes the same refrain, begging the heavens to “cast a glance” and “let it be enough” as well as several lines from the verses, including “little children taken from their mother's breast” who are “thrown in the rubbish,” and “elderly Jews with gray bears,” who are “thrown to the ground.” The crucial difference between the two versions, though, is that the biblical references have been dropped. Gvinter does not associate her song with Eicha, most likely because the biblical book had no resonance for her, if indeed she had ever heard of it: she no longer lives in a world in which daily events are measured in accordance with biblical precedents and archetypes. Other versions of the song that were recorded in Polish ghettos during the Second World War also include verses about holy books being torn to pieces and synagogues turned into stables, both of which are excised from Gvinter's variant. By the time Nazi atrocities began in Pechera, the holy books had already been forgotten and many of the synagogues had already been reallocated, if not to horses, then to communists.49