This is a tribute and a personal evocation in a literary form of the murder during the Holocaust of more than 200,000 Jews in the Baltic States, slaughtered by the SD Einsatzgruppen but also by autochthonous civilians and members of auxiliary troops from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. I have written a number of articles on this subject and personally visited Ponar (Lithuania) where 100,000 people were killed by bullets (70 % of them Jews) and Rumbula (Latvia) where in just two days – 30 November and 8 December 1941 - 28,000 Jews were killed, innocent civilians: children, women, elderly people and men, in good health, sick or unable to walk.
WAR
Saturday had been a warm day and so had been the night leading to Sunday. It had been a pleasant day despite the persistent rumors of war coming soon.
Very early this Sunday morning, just before dawn, there had been weird rumblings, sounds in the sky, as if gigantic bumblebees had suddenly decided to invade the air. Many adults had woken up, nervous, anxious. The Germans were not the only ones capable of atrocities as they had already proved in Poland. The Soviets, too, were brutes. Just a week ago, sounds had broken through the night serenity as NKVD organs had invaded homes and taken men, and sometimes entire families, to be deported to Siberia.
Soon enough, crashing sounds resonated, and soon enough there was not any doubt any more about the cause of these sounds. They were definitely coming from the sky. From airplanes. The rumors must have been true. Something awful was truly happening. Windows and doors were cracked open, eyes looked at the sky, perceiving reddening colors waving above roofs or houses far away. Flames, fires, certainly. Caused by bombs. The younger generations of Jews had not known war, but the older ones remembered how artillery fire sounded like. And these far-off echoes one heard now were similar to these dreadful incoming shells.
And then, suddenly, fear gripped them. The Jews. Who saw what they imagined was the beginning of war and what they had feared most. A war that would see German troops coming to their country, to their homes. Because they already knew what kind of particular hell their brethren in Poland had been going through since September ‘39. There had been tales, there had been rumors, there had been verbal reports, there had been clandestine whispers brought on by courageous men and women coming directly from the ghettos of Poland and speaking of unthinkable acts of barbarity committed there by the Nazis.
But suddenly, hope surged again.
They realized that the Soviet Army, the invincible Red Army, was on their side. That these brave soldiers would defend them, protect them. They sighed with some degree of contentment. They were in good and safe hands.
