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Authors: Bryna Kranzler
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a word.
Toward nightfall, we gained the top of a hill and saw beneath us masses of Russian soldiers lying sprawled on the ground. It was a bivouac area where other refugees from the battle had assembled, waiting for someone to feed them, help them to write a few words to their families and, only if absolutely necessary, re-form them into battle-worthy units.
Drawing closer, I was startled to hear someone call my name. It was Berezin, a friend from my original platoon. We embraced each other, and I asked about our Jewish friends.
The news was mixed. Korotkin and Smelnikoff had been killed or captured in the last battle. Our strong man, Grabasz, was unharmed, but my friend Rosenberg, while in the hospital, had fallen into the hands of a “tailor” who had shortened one of his legs. And Krug had gotten a bullet through his eye and, by now, was probably dead.
I begged Berezin for some bread, which I shared with Glasnik and Pyotr, who suddenly burst into the most bloodcurdling oaths that he would be a friend of the Jews for the rest of his days. I was baffled by his passionate conversion. Glasnik’s tefillin and my piece of bread hardly seemed enough to induce such a miraculous transformation.
But late that night, as we sat huddled around a small fire, Pyotr, who had managed to wheedle a drink or two, came lurching over to us insisting that he owed us his life. In what way did he owe us his life? Because in the brutish, Vanya view of the universe, it was a miracle that Glasnik and I hadn’t murdered him or left him to die during our long trek back from our positions, though we had had countless opportunities to do so. And, in his superstitious mind, it was equally obvious that only the magical powers of Glasnik’s tefillin had somehow kept us from fulfilling our bloody intentions.
As proof that he no longer harbored any ill feeling toward us, he demanded to be allowed to kiss Glasnik’s tefillin once again. I braced myself for an eruption of drunken rage. Just as it looked as though blood were about to flow, Glasnik put a finger to his lips and, round-eyed with solemnity, explained that the tefillin were sleeping now.
Pyotr seemed to consider this and then nodded, sat down by the fire, and was soon snoring. Glasnik and I, strolling out of range, agreed it would be unwise ever to turn our backs on this man. His oaths might have sprung from a heart bursting with sincerity, but how far could one trust a man who remained convinced that only “magic” had kept us from doing to him what he would cheerfully have done to us?
Chapter 7. The Phantom Synagogue
With our new regiment, we were loaded onto trains, overcrowded as before. After the Devil-only-knows how many days of such tourism, we awoke early one morning to find our train pounding into a city we were told was Harbin. A maimed soldier had once told me that Harbin, a Chinese city, had a sizable Russian colony, largely owing to the capital and enterprise of Siberian Jews . And while he had not seen it with his own eyes, he also thought there might be some kind of synagogue, established by either Russian or Cathayan Jews.
I was relieved to hear this because I had, for some time, been anxiously counting the days and, according to my calculations, Yom Kippur began that very evening. Harbin was the only place in all of China where I might yet have a chance to spend Yom Kippur in the midst of a congregation.
It was not altogether a matter of piety, on my part. After hearing some of the returning wounded tell of what went on at the front, I was not very optimistic about surviving the year to come. This made me doubly determined to be in a place of holiness tonight where I might plead, for my parents’ sake if not my own, to be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life. Perhaps I also had a more selfish reason: if Avrohom was still alive, no power on earth would prevent him from attending, either.
No one knew whether
Toward nightfall, we gained the top of a hill and saw beneath us masses of Russian soldiers lying sprawled on the ground. It was a bivouac area where other refugees from the battle had assembled, waiting for someone to feed them, help them to write a few words to their families and, only if absolutely necessary, re-form them into battle-worthy units.
Drawing closer, I was startled to hear someone call my name. It was Berezin, a friend from my original platoon. We embraced each other, and I asked about our Jewish friends.
The news was mixed. Korotkin and Smelnikoff had been killed or captured in the last battle. Our strong man, Grabasz, was unharmed, but my friend Rosenberg, while in the hospital, had fallen into the hands of a “tailor” who had shortened one of his legs. And Krug had gotten a bullet through his eye and, by now, was probably dead.
I begged Berezin for some bread, which I shared with Glasnik and Pyotr, who suddenly burst into the most bloodcurdling oaths that he would be a friend of the Jews for the rest of his days. I was baffled by his passionate conversion. Glasnik’s tefillin and my piece of bread hardly seemed enough to induce such a miraculous transformation.
But late that night, as we sat huddled around a small fire, Pyotr, who had managed to wheedle a drink or two, came lurching over to us insisting that he owed us his life. In what way did he owe us his life? Because in the brutish, Vanya view of the universe, it was a miracle that Glasnik and I hadn’t murdered him or left him to die during our long trek back from our positions, though we had had countless opportunities to do so. And, in his superstitious mind, it was equally obvious that only the magical powers of Glasnik’s tefillin had somehow kept us from fulfilling our bloody intentions.
As proof that he no longer harbored any ill feeling toward us, he demanded to be allowed to kiss Glasnik’s tefillin once again. I braced myself for an eruption of drunken rage. Just as it looked as though blood were about to flow, Glasnik put a finger to his lips and, round-eyed with solemnity, explained that the tefillin were sleeping now.
Pyotr seemed to consider this and then nodded, sat down by the fire, and was soon snoring. Glasnik and I, strolling out of range, agreed it would be unwise ever to turn our backs on this man. His oaths might have sprung from a heart bursting with sincerity, but how far could one trust a man who remained convinced that only “magic” had kept us from doing to him what he would cheerfully have done to us?
Chapter 7. The Phantom Synagogue
With our new regiment, we were loaded onto trains, overcrowded as before. After the Devil-only-knows how many days of such tourism, we awoke early one morning to find our train pounding into a city we were told was Harbin. A maimed soldier had once told me that Harbin, a Chinese city, had a sizable Russian colony, largely owing to the capital and enterprise of Siberian Jews . And while he had not seen it with his own eyes, he also thought there might be some kind of synagogue, established by either Russian or Cathayan Jews.
I was relieved to hear this because I had, for some time, been anxiously counting the days and, according to my calculations, Yom Kippur began that very evening. Harbin was the only place in all of China where I might yet have a chance to spend Yom Kippur in the midst of a congregation.
It was not altogether a matter of piety, on my part. After hearing some of the returning wounded tell of what went on at the front, I was not very optimistic about surviving the year to come. This made me doubly determined to be in a place of holiness tonight where I might plead, for my parents’ sake if not my own, to be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life. Perhaps I also had a more selfish reason: if Avrohom was still alive, no power on earth would prevent him from attending, either.
No one knew whether
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