Episode 4: Land and Sea

SPEAKER_00 0:01

In this chapter of Yasha's story, Jewish people they knew already if you want to survive, you need to start staying with Germans. We need to cross Caspian Sea. But during the night, I start feeling terrible. All my gas was out. They put us in a train. We spent on this train almost three months. The people became like animals.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Hundreds of thousands of Jewish families were displaced when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union during World War II. Those who evaded Nazi death camps were faced with a perilous journey eastward in order to survive. This is the true tale of one of those families, told by the son who lived through it all. His Russian nickname is Yasha, and this is his story. As Captain Heinz Grote climbed the icy steps toward the peak of Europe's tallest mountain, he smiled through gritted teeth. That's because, despite the extreme weather conditions on Mount Elbrus, he knew that at the top, a moment of national glory awaited him. It was August of 1942, and as a soldier in Nazi Germany's 1st Mountain Division, his orders were to lead a detachment of elite mountain troops to the summit, plant a Nazi flag, and record the evidence. The previous month, Adolf Hitler had authorized a plan geared toward capturing the territory home to Mount Elbris, the Caucasus region in the southern Soviet Union. After months of setbacks on the central and northern fronts, the unquenchable Nazi war machine was lured by the rich oil reserves of the Caucasus, which offered both fuel and a strategic foothold against the now tenacious Soviet resistance. Captain Grot and the rest of the 1st Mountain Division were seasoned soldiers, having already fought their way through Ukraine and Poland. Now, they were integral participants in Hitler's plan, dubbed Operation Edelweiss, after the hardy mountain flower native to Europe's alpine climates. But as they peered through field glasses at the mountain range standing between them and the invaluable oil fields beyond, they became distracted by a monster. At more than 5,000 meters or 18,000 feet above sea level, the peak of Mount Elbrus towers above the surrounding mountains. And despite the challenges of ascending it, the temptation was too strong for the rugged Alpine troops, who became hypnotized by the propaganda value of claiming the highest point in all of Europe as their own, and symbolizing their intentions to conquer the region that Nazi Germany so desperately needed. As it turns out, Mount Elbrus' glaciated peak is at far too high an altitude to spot any vegetation, not to mention Operation Edelweiss's namesake flower. Instead, as they reached the summit and proudly drove the German battle flag through the perennial crust of ice and packed snow beneath, Captain Grote and his men would have been treated to a much larger scale panorama of the entire Caucasus region. Through any breaks in the clouds, they could gaze out over the vast expanse below, taking in a bird's eye view of the territory they needed to conquer to achieve their military objective. The soldiers might have even extended their gaze toward Origin Akize, a city situated some 180 kilometers to the southeast, and one of the most crucial objectives standing between them and the invaluable oil fields beyond. It also happened to be the place where Yasha and his family had settled the previous year. After fleeing their home in Belarus at the onset of the German invasion and chilling rumors of Nazi atrocities, boarding a barge down the Pripyat River through Ukraine, and enduring a stint on one of Stalin's infamous collective farms, they had finally found their way to the Caucasus, where Yasha's grandfather and the sanctuary of the mountains offered them a place to stay outside the war's reach. But as the summer of 1942 approached, so did the culmination of Operation Edelweiss. And with it, the distant rumble of German artillery through the mountain valleys.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

It's already 42. The Germans, they progress. They came closer and closer, and people started to run from the city.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Courtesy of Captain Grott and his men, a Nazi flag rippled atop the tallest peak in Europe. And down below, crucial cities like Rostov on Don, considered the gateway to the Caucasus, were falling to German forces one by one. The war was again creeping ever closer. But this time, the approaching conflict brought with it a peril of a more personal nature for Yasha and his family. Unlike in Petrikov, where his mother was faced with the decision of staying or leaving, there was no choice to be made this time, but rather an imperative.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Jewish people, they knew already. When I left my small town, it was rumors. Nobody knows exactly, nobody told us it. But in that time, we already know that we need to run. If you want to survive, you need to not stay with journals.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

By this time, rumors had turned to fact. In Yasha's native Belarus and all throughout Nazi occupied territories, the persecution of Jews was no longer sporadic, but methodical. Horrifying tales of families torn from their homes, villages burned to the ground, and the execution of entire communities were no longer the subject of terse whispers. They were irrefutable, increasingly visible to those willing to look. And it was all part of a much larger, more heinous plan. Behind closed doors, Hitler and his inner circle had been coordinating what they called the final solution to the Jewish question. That is, how they would transition from an isolated, localized killings that had been terrorizing occupied Europe to outright extermination of an entire people. They were building an industry of death. And while the blueprints were still fresh, the foundation was already being set. Hundreds of ghettos had begun sprouting up across occupied Europe. Walled-off portions of cities where Jews were held, forced to live and work in large numbers alongside overcrowding, festering hunger and disease. At the same time, local Nazi authorities seized Jewish property and businesses en masse and began laying railroad tracks toward ominous labor camps in the countryside, the predecessors to what would soon become factories of mass murder. For Jewish families dispersed along the Eastern Front, there was no more solace to be had in willful ignorance or hope. It had become irrefutably clear.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

And we went to the station. And on the station we find a train that uh was filled with big equipment for manufacturers and the lot of people. It's an open company. And we sit between this uh this big big machinery, machinery for the factories. We sit between this machinery, and we went to the gospel sea.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

The city of Orginikidze provided Yasha's family with the hiatus from the constant motion and the incessant clatter of railroad tracks that had come to define their lives in the weeks and months after fleeing Petrakov. But that train, both literally and metaphorically, was about to leave the station yet again. And the distance they had traveled so far paled in comparison to the Odyssey they were about to endure. First, they were headed toward the world's largest inland sea. But this time, instead of the suffocating soot and dust of a coal train, they rode in the open air alongside machinery. Sitting piecewise atop the train cars in their dormant state, the random components of Soviet industry likely appeared as alien hunks of metal and wire, especially to a young boy. But Yasha probably shared more in common with his inanimate travel companions than he knew. In a desperate attempt to keep vital infrastructure out of the hands of the enemy, the Soviets had the colossal task of building and relocating factories and equipment to the east, away from the front lines and the clutches of the advancing German army. It's very likely that, much like Yasha and countless other families, this equipment was on the run, en route to the Soviet Union's guarded interior. And so, side by side in flight, it was machinery and mankind, refugees of metal and flesh, the collective lifeblood of the Soviet war effort, both vital in their own right, to a nation's hope and survival. Of course, none of this grandiose symbolism would have meant a thing to Yasha and his family of six, who didn't have the luxury of such contemplations. Their only concern was what mortal trials awaited them at the end of the tracks. And as the shores of the mighty Caspian Sea began materializing in the distance, they were about to bear witness to the sheer scale of the situation they were in and the human company they unknowingly kept. And surely, it would all make them feel even smaller than they did alongside that big Soviet machinery.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Like the Caspian Sea, they said, okay, we don't go anymore, you need to stay here. We went to the on the shore of the Casped Sea. It is another severe people. So many people on the on the shore. We need to grow. Because we cannot go in any any direction. Because journals were waiting from every side the cover of the roads. And we need to go just through the sea. Because that's why it's so many people on the shore. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Up to this point, it's been easy to view Yash's story as exclusive in a way, as if his family's journey was theirs alone, their circumstances somehow set apart from those around them. We've only caught brief glimpses of fellow travelers, like extras on the set of a grand play, their stories hidden behind the main script. For me, as the familial narrator of my grandfather's story, this whole project has felt especially personal at times. But as Yasha tells of their arrival at the shores of the Caspian and describes, quite poetically, I might add, the other sea of humanity they came upon. This somewhat selfish perspective starts to shift. We are all promptly reminded that Yasha's family wasn't alone in their journey. Far from it. As thousands upon thousands, displaced by the war and limited in their escape routes by the rapidly encroaching enemy, converged on the crucial body of water that separated war-torn Europe from the yet unscathed lands of Central Asia. Some of them were new arrivals like Yash's family, fresh off a train from somewhere west or north. Kiev, Stalingrad, or even Moscow. Luggage in tow, they were quickly swept into a throng of confused voices and anonymous faces, all frantically looking for where to go or who to talk to next. Others had already been looking and waiting, at times for days, to secure their transport across the sea, occupying the patchwork of makeshift encampments extending as far as the eye could see. Despite where they came from, how long they'd been there, or where their final destination lied, they all had one thing in common: a story. Just like Yasha, they were living normal Soviet lives somewhere before the war. Before a foreign invader displaced them and turned their lives upside down. They had all been on the run, traveling some unknown distance, traversing roads, rivers, and railways, avoiding German bombers, enduring cold, hunger, and countless personal trials along the way. They too had lost loved ones, left people, pets, and belongings behind, their whole lives in so many cases, in a desperate quest for survival. Gazing out into the cascading Caspian waves, they all wondered when they might cross, where they would land, and what future awaited them when they got there. Suddenly, Yasha's seemingly unique story becomes one chapter of a much larger collective narrative. A single tile and a living, breathing mosaic of the war's upheaval. And we're reminded of the thousands of others that had brought their own harrowing tales and losses to the shores of the Caspian. Memories of the previous year still fresh. Surely, a podcast like this could be made for each and every one of them, as long as they survived the war, managed to escape communism to the West, stayed healthy long enough to remember the intimate details of it all, and had a family member who somewhat impulsively decided to ask about it over a couple shots of vodka and some good Eastern European cooking. I at least consider myself lucky to have known someone who satisfied all these conditions, that he happened to be my grandfather, and that I have access to one story that survived among so many that didn't.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Because the seat is a very water. I don't know if it's a name.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

With perceived safety just a sea length away, and German forces cutting off escape routes on all other sides, coupled with the lack of suitable civilian transport and the sheer number of people waiting to cross, the Caspian was simultaneously a gateway and an obstacle. When their turn finally arrived, Yasha and his family were once again faced with the precarious voyage. But this time, it was Mother Nature that would test their mettle and their equilibrium. Rolling in from the depths under the cover of darkness, a nautical nemesis was about to push young Yasha's gastrointestinal fortitude to its limit. And from the deck of that time-worn Caspian sea tanker, he and his co-passengers were about to find out, up close and personal, just what stuff they were really made of.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Okay, and this I need to tell this story. Because we closed the light. Motto Mann. I didn't care what to what was going on with it. Yeah, it was empty. And they said, okay, but what happened will happen.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

My grandfather's lifelong aversion to boats is infamous among our family. Only Lilia, his wife, and my grandmother could ever coax him onto the sea. And that was only due to her particular penchant for ocean cruises, upon which Yasha was often lured with the promise of all inclusive tequila and a hefty supply of dramamine.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

And you know, it's just in one hour I felt like fine. If it doesn't continue. And that was fine.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

I'm not sure I can overstate the relief that Yasha and his fellow pale-faced travelers must have felt at arriving back on solid land. And as they regained their senses and realized where they had actually come to shore, they may have found more than one reason to rejoice. After the previous year full of repeated upheaval, danger seemingly always at their heels, and with the nautical miles they had put between themselves and the war torn lands from which they had embarked, the sandy eastern shore of the Caspian must have felt a world away from the chaos to which they had become so accustomed. And in a way, The now stable ground beneath them belonged to a new continent. They had officially crossed over into Asia. But any tired night and empty-gutted celebrations they could muster were to promptly be proven premature. Despite the seemingly unending overnight voyage they had just endured, it was only the prologue to the next landing of Yarsha's journey, which would test a whole lot more than just his sea legs.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

All of these people from the other side of country came to this side. And there was a bunch of people on this side. This manufacturer is still it's a very big is a very high point for the government because it produces them in the water. But is that time?

SPEAKER_02 23:48

The Caspian city of Krasnivos in Turkmenistan became just one of countless overwhelmed ports, train stations, and other transit hubs across the Soviet Union, where evacuees landed in the tens of thousands, only to be rerouted to some other destination in the country's interior to work. Although it might not have seemed obvious at the time, Yasha's family had been called to duty. By mid-1942, the Soviet Union was in the midst of one of the largest conscription efforts in history. The losses of the first year of the war compelled Stalin to rapidly accelerate efforts to replenish and bolster the ranks of his military. In total, the war against Nazi Germany necessitated the drafting of just under 34.5 million Soviet citizens, including roughly 35% of the entire male population. But the call to service extended well beyond the battlefield. Those who weren't ordered to the front lines were mobilized too, not for combat, but to fill the gaping void in the Soviet workforce it created. The state leaned on two of its prime tenets, duty and labor, to call upon those not summoned to fight, the elderly, women, even children. Since the invasion began, they had been constantly reminded that, although soldiers fought the battles, the war could only be won by the entire Soviet people, who must band together through labor, perseverance, and sacrifice in order to defeat fascism. Factories had to keep running, production lines moving. Already dutiless and displaced, the state relocated countless evacuated families like Yasha's to key industrial areas across the country, not just for their safety, but to backfill workers taken by the draft. In this case, there was a chemical manufacturing plant being built in the Urals, and by some unknown criteria, a distant bureaucrat or committee had decided that Yasha's family would take part in its construction. And with the daunting trek it would entail to get there, the government would employ another of its instruments of control to make it official.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

But they say, you know, in Soviet Union, every person has a passport. Not to go outside the country, but a passport for inside. Every person gave a passport. Guys, there was a stamp that you came to the city. If you leave the city, it's a stamp with a passport. If you left the city, they check you, they know every every step. And they said, we need to took your passports away from you.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

In a country where freedom of movement was seen as a national security risk. The seizure of evacuees' passports was a calculated move, a way of ensuring total control over their relocation and preventing their ability to travel independently. The autonomy that, among other things, allowed Yasha's mother to make the decision to take her family out of Petrikov was handed away as soon as they surrendered their passports, placing all their fates squarely in the hands of the Soviet government. Well, almost all. Or more importantly, how she didn't end up in jail. But as you'll come to find out, this small act of defiance would be hugely consequential in her and her young son's future. For now, though, the Soviet government had the whole family destined for a chemical plant in the faraway Ural. Something tells me the state officials who ushered them onto that crowded train station platform weren't exactly forthcoming about what they were in for to get there.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

We spent this train on the stream. Moving. And stream.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Three months on a train. Really take a moment and think about how long that is. How much happens in your life in the course of three months? 90 days. And remember, this was no luxury escapade across Asia. There were no individual cabins, no big windows to watch the landscape go by. Quite the opposite, Yasha evokes the infamous sliding doors of the cattle cars that the Nazis would soon use to transport victims of the Holocaust to concentration camps.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

And you know, when it's a lot of people, people start arguing. I remember my mother said, whatever will happen. Don't argue that you're inside the table, at least. Because some people just almost start fighting each other. Because you don't have a room, you don't have what to how to share this food that they give you.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Ever since the days of the COVID pandemic, we are all a little bit more sensitive about our personal space. The term social distancing has forever been ingrained in our collective psyche. And when strangers get too close, we feel a little uneasy. God forbid, if they happen to sniffle. Now put yourself back on that tree. Erase any notions of social distancing or any personal space at all. In fact, this was forced social closeness to the extreme. Day after day, for three months, you're sardine, shoulder to shoulder, breath to breath, in the same close quarters with strangers. Men, women, children, crying babies, sick people, hungry people, people quickly approaching the end of their ropes. Night after night, you're sleeping, or more likely, being jostled awake on makeshift bumps, right alongside, above, and below those same people. There's not enough of anything to share. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. And you can figure it about the creature comforts that we've become so accustomed to in our daily lives. There's no air conditioning during the day. And only body heat at night. There's nowhere to freshen up. Not to mention have a shower. No privacy to use whatever receptacle constitutes the restroom. And far from sufficient air circulation to allow you to forget any of it. The next train station, wherever and whenever that is, is all you can look forward to in the short term. Somewhere you can step outside and get away for a spell. See something different and get some fresh air before embarking on the next long leg. As days blend into weeks, civility fades. Arguments start breaking out at the slightest provocation. But that's just the start of it. As the environment wears on people more and more, they start to forget that they are people. And more primal instincts kick in.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

You need people need to go. You understand what it's mean, need to go. They forgot even who is a man, who is a woman. They will sit next to next.

unknown 34:06

They became animals, people.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

You cannot imagine what it's meant. Three months to spend in this train.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

And not just with those in our families or immediate social circles, but with complete strangers. People with whom we have no real advantage of getting along. Although it's easy to overlook at times, we've evolved to the capacity to not only coexist side by side, but work together to create vast empires and complex societies full of innovation, progress, and, in most cases, collectively beneficial civility. But then, there are always reminders, like this one, that despite our elite evolutionary echelon, we are still far from perfect. It's when our advanced humanity is put to the test, we can start to see cracks in the facade. And we're reminded that despite the miraculous strides our species has made, we are still just highly sophisticated animals. As a pretty severe introvert myself, just talking about the scenario on that train sends a shiver down my spine. It's hard for us to truly imagine what this experience would have been like. How a 12-year-old kid like Yasha would have coped. But as weeks turn to months, it's not at all hard to imagine the resolve of those passengers. Their ability to dig deep inside and find that thing humans have, that uncanny ability to act civilized in a group of others, quickly devolving into the primal, animal-like state of survival he describes.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

And my sister, my oldest sister, with a child, she has a passport. He said, You know what? We spent maybe a month already on this train. We came to a big, big city. It's called Kashkent. It's a very big city. And my sister said, I am not going anymore. I have my passport. I will stay here, and then we will find each other. We couldn't go with you because we didn't have passports. Without a passport in Rabbi, Soviet Union, you will put you in jail. She left the train and we went for it.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

I mentioned in the introduction to this podcast that in part, Yash's story is about family, about sticking together in the throes of extreme hardship. Surely the events of the past year were underscored with plenty of back-and-forth reassurances between members of the family. We have to stay together. We'll get through this. The kinds of consolations where even those of us in less turbulent times find the strength to endure the tough periods in life. I imagine Tanya's decision to split off from the rest of the family was marked with similar reassurances. It's just temporary. We'll find each other again. Goodbye for now. But the truth is, no one had any idea what dangers lie ahead. And there was no way to guarantee what tomorrow held. Not to mention when, how, or even if they would see each other again. Deep down, Tanya must have known that. But we have to remember, Tanya wasn't just a sister and a daughter in Yasha's family. She was a mother herself. She had a child of her own, and all he knew of life was instability. Born into the epicenter of one of the most tumultuous periods in history, his susceptible young senses had already absorbed a lifetime's worth of chaos, all from the vantage point of his mother's arms. I have to think the horrible conditions on that train and the daunting trek that still lay ahead were merely the last straws in a collection of hundreds for Tanya. It was a mother reaching her breaking point, and like all parents, just wanting a better life for her child. And with her passport safely tucked away, she had maintained the freedom to seek it. The city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was famously known as the city of Bread for its relative abundance, and was the dream destination for countless evacuees on the Eastern Front. And so, Tanya did what many of us couldn't fathom doing. Collected her luggage, took her son and passport in hand, looked into the faces of her siblings and mother, and did the hardest thing. Say goodbye. Over the next two months, while she navigated a new life on her own in an unfamiliar city, her family's existence would remain confined to the maddeningly familiar, narrow world of that train car. And like the snow-capped Urals that at long last began appearing on the horizon, the mounting distance between them cast an ever-growing shadow over the likelihood of finding each other again.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

And we came to this Urals in that time. It's already winter coming. And there is almost almost Siberia. It's very close to Siberia. It is so cold we came in in the beginning. I remember it is November, in the beginning of November.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

The average winter temperature on the Urals ranges in the single digits Fahrenheit. But if I were Yasha, I would have been happy disembarking on the dark side of the moon if it meant not spending any more time on that train. As they stumbled out, famished and disheveled, into the stark Russian winter of November 1942. I wonder if the passengers had enough wits about them to comprehend exactly where they had landed. Not to mention just how far they had come. The distance between where they had embarked nearly three months earlier in the arid desert of western Turkmenistan and where they were now at the threshold of the great coniferous forest of Siberia spanned not only immense mileage, but a diverse patchwork of the Soviet Union's many geographical and human landscapes. From the rolling dunes of Uzbekistan to the windswept Kazakh steppe, the meandering rivers of the Central Plains to the sweeping forests of the vast Russian Taiga, their journey through the heart of the Soviet Union was expansive, covering around 5,000 kilometers, 20 degrees of northern latitude, and a medley of Soviet settlements, from isolated countryside villages to bustling urban sprawls. Of course, the passengers' immediate surroundings were growing more monotonous by the day. As they toiled on board, their only exposure to the outside world being a series of bleary Soviet train stations, it must have seemed as if time had slowed to a crawl. But outside, time, as it is one to do, marched relentlessly forward. As they progressed north, summer gave way to fall. Fall to the brink of winter. And as inevitably as the world continued to rotate on its axis, the rest of mankind turned on without them. While they hunkered on that train, wrestling with their own humanity, the Soviets fought to turn the tide of the war in the besieged city of Stalingrad. As they rummaged for something, anything, to occupy the dragging hours, American soldiers were engaging in the first major offensives against the Japanese in the Pacific. Each night when they closed their eyes, desperate for some peace and quiet, scientists in a quiet town in New Mexico were secretly ramping up their work on the Manhattan Project, racing to develop a bomb that would put an end to it all. Despite what's etched in history books, the grand drama of the Eastern Front is undeniably set against countless scenes like Yasha's, played out on more intimate stages across the Soviet Union, in cattle cars and train stations, on roads and railways, among the shores, boats, and ports of rivers and seas. Places where not thousands, but millions of Soviet evacuees from all walks of life, young and old, rich and poor, Jews and non-Jews alike, by choice or by decree, arrived and departed in an endless procession of the war's displacement. There it is again. That jarring reminder that Yasha's story, while important in its own right, is a case study, a single data point in the raw evidence of displacement on an incomprehensible scale. Altogether, one of the largest evacuations in history, with an estimated 16.5 million Soviet citizens making their way toward the interior. For those still counting, that's 16.5 million unique stories. Each surely feeling just as personal to their protagonists as Yasha's does to us.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

And we came to the city is called Berezniki.

unknown 44:56

It's a very famous now city.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

It's a name because of this chemical factor.

SPEAKER_02 45:05

For those who had made it this far, their arrival in cities like Berezniki marked a transition in their narratives. Not away from danger, but toward new enemies. Scarcity, hunger, the elements, and the rigors of wartime subsistence. Yasha, his mother, and three remaining sisters may have escaped Captain Grote, his 1st Mountain Division, and the rest of Hitler's forces, who, thousands of kilometers away, were laying siege to the Caucasus in Operation Edelweiss. But now, they faced some new and some hauntingly familiar challenges in one of the country's vital industrial heartlands, where the Soviet Union was marshalling its resources, building its defenses, and drawing the lifeblood of its resistance, materials and people included. In the next chapter of Yasha's story, his family begins work on a chemical plant and is given unlikely shelter within the barren walls of a Soviet circus. But the show had long since left town, and the frigid Russian winter will expose the stark realities of their new existence and what it takes to survive as refugees inside their own borders. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others and leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. And don't forget to follow to stay involved in the story. There's more to come. I hope you'll join us again.