Read Online The Accidental Anarchist by Bryna Kranzler - Free Book Online
Authors: Bryna Kranzler
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them properly), and try to find the rest of our battalion.
I saw some faint indications of where the road our battalion must have taken had once been, but by now the snow was hip-deep and we couldn’t make much progress. If we didn’t move quickly enough, the snow would bury us, and our bodies would not be found until the Chinese farmers returned for the spring planting. We decided to return to our trench to share the night with our comrades, but we could no longer find it.
Glasnik suddenly refused to go on. He took out his tefillin , bared his left arm, which instantly turned as blue as skimmed milk, bound the leather straps around his arm and skull, and prayed by heart, saying the shema with all the fervor of someone bidding farewell to life. I watched him enviously. My own tefillin were in my pack, but my fingers were too frozen to unbuckle it.
Pyotr, who in Petersburg had, more than once, been known to tear the tefillin from the head of a Jewish recruit, stared at Glasnik like a cat ready to pounce. I braced myself for the showdown. Better to die this way than get a bullet in the back. But instead, Pyotr crossed himself. Was he trying to provoke me? But as Glasnik removed the tefillin and touched them to his lips, Pyotr suddenly lunged and seized them. Before I could intervene, he dropped to his knees, kissed the tefillin , and begged them to spare his life.
While I stood open-mouthed, he handed them back to Glasnik and insisted that, before he died, we must forgive him for the sins he had committed against Jews. I got fed up with his whimpering and threatened him. If I heard any more talk of dying, I said, I’d shoot him down like a dog. We had to think about surviving. Pyotr gave me a strange, frightened look, but calmed down.
We kept moving along what appeared to be the road, but the snow was falling so heavily that we could barely see one another. I ordered each man to hold onto his neighbor’s belt. Partly walking, partly crawling, we dragged ourselves through the waist-high snow. Surely, somewhere in this vast, empty country there must be some remnant of a Russian army.
Pyotr suddenly called my attention to a group of dark figures on the horizon just ahead of us. They were impossible to identify, but they didn’t move like Russian soldiers. We loaded our rifles and waited, but the dark figures seemed content to let us to make the first move. Half-blinded by the white steam pouring out of our mouths, we aimed our rifles, and I gave the order to fire. Our rifles exploded in a deafening volley. The recoil made my shoulder feel like a block of ice struck by a hammer. I motioned to the men to take cover, but there was no return fire. Nothing but a couple of high-pitched howls. Now we could see that the dark figures were wolves, feasting on our dead, and no doubt waiting to make a feast of us, as well.
It tore at my heart to think that, somewhere in this glacial wilderness, my brother’s body might be lying exposed to the hot, sharp jaws of such creatures. I was so incensed by the wolves’ disrespect for our fallen comrades that I began to fire. Whether or not my comrades understood my thinking, they began to fire, too, until we had killed most of the wolves.
Suddenly, I wondered why I had ever have thought of wanting to die. I needed to hold on to hope that I would still find Avrohom alive. Who was to say that he wasn’t, at the same time, praying for his own death out of grief over my probable demise? Then the two of us would be complicit in unnecessarily causing great pain to our parents. That gave me strength to urge myself and the men forward.
Afraid to abandon ourselves to the deadly seduction of sleep, we plodded through a wilderness of hills and valleys choked with snow. The following day, we were briefly encouraged to find other lost soldiers, numb, half-dead, emaciated, and with blackened faces, who attached themselves to our little column. Not one of them said
I saw some faint indications of where the road our battalion must have taken had once been, but by now the snow was hip-deep and we couldn’t make much progress. If we didn’t move quickly enough, the snow would bury us, and our bodies would not be found until the Chinese farmers returned for the spring planting. We decided to return to our trench to share the night with our comrades, but we could no longer find it.
Glasnik suddenly refused to go on. He took out his tefillin , bared his left arm, which instantly turned as blue as skimmed milk, bound the leather straps around his arm and skull, and prayed by heart, saying the shema with all the fervor of someone bidding farewell to life. I watched him enviously. My own tefillin were in my pack, but my fingers were too frozen to unbuckle it.
Pyotr, who in Petersburg had, more than once, been known to tear the tefillin from the head of a Jewish recruit, stared at Glasnik like a cat ready to pounce. I braced myself for the showdown. Better to die this way than get a bullet in the back. But instead, Pyotr crossed himself. Was he trying to provoke me? But as Glasnik removed the tefillin and touched them to his lips, Pyotr suddenly lunged and seized them. Before I could intervene, he dropped to his knees, kissed the tefillin , and begged them to spare his life.
While I stood open-mouthed, he handed them back to Glasnik and insisted that, before he died, we must forgive him for the sins he had committed against Jews. I got fed up with his whimpering and threatened him. If I heard any more talk of dying, I said, I’d shoot him down like a dog. We had to think about surviving. Pyotr gave me a strange, frightened look, but calmed down.
We kept moving along what appeared to be the road, but the snow was falling so heavily that we could barely see one another. I ordered each man to hold onto his neighbor’s belt. Partly walking, partly crawling, we dragged ourselves through the waist-high snow. Surely, somewhere in this vast, empty country there must be some remnant of a Russian army.
Pyotr suddenly called my attention to a group of dark figures on the horizon just ahead of us. They were impossible to identify, but they didn’t move like Russian soldiers. We loaded our rifles and waited, but the dark figures seemed content to let us to make the first move. Half-blinded by the white steam pouring out of our mouths, we aimed our rifles, and I gave the order to fire. Our rifles exploded in a deafening volley. The recoil made my shoulder feel like a block of ice struck by a hammer. I motioned to the men to take cover, but there was no return fire. Nothing but a couple of high-pitched howls. Now we could see that the dark figures were wolves, feasting on our dead, and no doubt waiting to make a feast of us, as well.
It tore at my heart to think that, somewhere in this glacial wilderness, my brother’s body might be lying exposed to the hot, sharp jaws of such creatures. I was so incensed by the wolves’ disrespect for our fallen comrades that I began to fire. Whether or not my comrades understood my thinking, they began to fire, too, until we had killed most of the wolves.
Suddenly, I wondered why I had ever have thought of wanting to die. I needed to hold on to hope that I would still find Avrohom alive. Who was to say that he wasn’t, at the same time, praying for his own death out of grief over my probable demise? Then the two of us would be complicit in unnecessarily causing great pain to our parents. That gave me strength to urge myself and the men forward.
Afraid to abandon ourselves to the deadly seduction of sleep, we plodded through a wilderness of hills and valleys choked with snow. The following day, we were briefly encouraged to find other lost soldiers, numb, half-dead, emaciated, and with blackened faces, who attached themselves to our little column. Not one of them said
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