Episode 1: The World Beyond the Trees

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I was born in nineteen three in the Soviet Union. My childhood was not the best. I was so hungry when I was three years old. And I would go easily. Yasha doesn't hear bread. Yasha doesn't hear bread. Many, many people died from hunger.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

That was the voice of Yasha Gendelman. It was recorded in 2008 in Denver, Colorado, as he sat in his apartment kitchen in front of an old camcorder I found lying around.

unknown 0:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Now I was recording. One of the ones you had to strap to your hand. Remember those?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Did you get that back?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

That's Yasha's wife, Lilia. She's off camera putting together a meal. You might hear her clamoring around a bit in the background. I never politely reminded her that we were recording. One, because I didn't know if I would ever do anything with the footage. And two, because you never ask a Russian Jewish babushka to stop cooking. That would make Yasha my dadushka or grandfather. Besides that thick Russian accent, you might not tell him apart from any other white-haired grandpa who enjoys sharing time and a meal with his grandchildren.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

This guy is hungry. Bring him some bread.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

But behind Yasha's zest for family gatherings, a good laugh, and a hearty loaf, there lay a story, worlds apart from the table full of food before us. A childhood defined by scarcity, war, and the existential threat of tyranny. On that particular day, I wasn't just there to visit and enjoy one of Grandma Lilia's feasts. I was there to hear that story. Growing up, I knew my grandfather came from the Soviet Union, that his family was Jewish, and he was a little kid when World War II broke out. Scattered throughout my upbringing was the occasional account from my father or other family members about Yasha's village in Belarus that was among the first to face the threat of the Nazis. The heroism of his mother, the tragic death of his oldest sister, and his family's harrowing escape. Like most old family tales, it all seemed distant when I was young. It wasn't until I got older and went off to college that those scattered pieces of my grandfather's past began to pull at me. I guess it's something that comes with age, that urge to understand where we come from, to find out how our old family stories fit into the impossibly large scheme of things, and how it all might help us find our own place in the world. I decided it was time someone got my grandfather's whole story. So, one weekend when I was back home, I called Yasha out of the blue and asked if I could interview him about his childhood. I could tell the question caught him off guard. Why me? My life is boring, he said. Yasha was never one to talk about his past. But by the time I arrived, his wife had somehow managed to assemble a full five-course meal. And once the quintessential bottle of vodka emerged from the cupboard, Yasha found himself warming to the moment as well. Over the next several hours, as that bottle was slowly drained of its contents, Yasha recounted the perilous journey that defined his childhood. He described his birthplace under Stalin and his family's daily struggle for food in the early days of communism.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

I was in the street all day long. I couldn't walk straight.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

He told of his father's untimely death, leaving his mother to fend for six children alone at the threshold of war. In vivid detail, I would learn how they fled their hometown by river when Nazi Germany invaded in 1941. How they went on the run for years. Hitler's forces leaving destruction and terror in their wake. Enduring ceaseless hunger, cold, hard labor, and the harsh realities of the Soviet evacuation. I found out that not everyone made it alive. With the memory on that old camcorder running low, Yamasha concluded with how he settled in Ukraine after the war, met my grandmother. I didn't tell you how you met my wife, but you escaped two sons and managed to escape to America to start a new life. By the time I left my grandparents' apartment that day, I was still processing everything I'd heard. I stashed the mini-discs containing Yasha's life story in a drawer in my college apartment. And went back to my life. A year went by. Then ten more. Life got in the way. Then Yasha passed away. It's strange how a person's legacy shines brightest only after they're gone. That day in my grandparents' apartment and those grainy recordings suddenly became something I could hold on to. And I found myself listening to them all over again. But this time, I heard it all differently. I heard a story of immense hardship, but also of family. Of loss, but also banding together in its wake. Typical of its time, Yasha's tale is a tragic one. But it's not about tragedy, not really. It's about a young boy growing up in spite of it. Stories like Yasha's aren't rare, but they're rarely given the light they deserve. And that's what brings us to this podcast. My attempt to share what he lived through. Not just for him and my family, but for all those like him whose voices remain buried in history. In the episodes that follow, you'll hear about Yasha's adventures, struggles, triumphs, and tragedies while navigating an unprecedented and dangerous world. And you'll hear it all through his own words. Along the way, I'll do my best to provide context and help paint a fuller picture of the time and place in which he lived. Okay, now for four days. So where were you born?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Start there.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

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.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

It was Belarus. The time is the time when I was born a few years after that was a very hard time because it's after the revolution, it is just 10-12 years after the revolution, as the country was completely not in order.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Yasha is referring to the Russian Revolution. He was born on June 15, 1930, just over a decade after one of the most brutal uprisings the world had ever seen set the stage for a bloody civil war that would shape the course of Russian history. On one side, you had the Bolshevik Red Army, revolutionaries rising up in the name of communism. And on the other, the rival White Army fighting to prevent the establishment of a communist order. The violence that ensued led to the death of millions, not to mention the rise of a political ideology that would result in the suffering of countless millions more. In 1921, after several years of bloodshed, the White Army was defeated, and the nearly 400-year-old Russian monarchy came to an end. In its place, the Communist Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR, and Yasha's birthplace, Belarus, became an obligatory member. Then, in 1924, six years before Yasha was born, a man by the name of Joseph Stalin seized the reins of power. And things started to change in the newly donned Soviet Union.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Stalin's policy, especially to make it in Ukraine, it is next state to Belarus. They have a piece of land and they produce some products, wheat. But the Soviet Union criticizes that it's not good. Everything's supposed to be working for the government.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Stalin's collective farms were a prime symbol of the new Soviet system. Under the communist banner of working together for the greater good, this new mode of agriculture eliminated individual ownership of land and consolidated small, privately owned farms into larger, government-controlled collectives in order to, supposedly, increase production for all. The problem was that farmers were then forced to work on these collectives and were brutally punished when they didn't meet quotas set by the Soviet government. Long story short, people were stripped of control over their own labor. And, as is so often the case in Soviet history, the promise of a so-called prosperous new way of life didn't quite pan out in the real world.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Stalin made artificial hunger, especially from Ukraine. Many, many people died from hunger.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Stalin's response to protests against his mandates. In what became known as Holodomor, translated from a Ukrainian term meaning to kill by hunger, Stalin seized grain from the rural population, executed at least 30,000 kulaks or wealthy farmers Stalin saw as a threat to his new regime, and reduced or cut off food supplies to areas where resistance was high. All of this contributed to a man-made famine designed to crush defiance and punish those who didn't fall in line. It's hard to even wrap your head around that much starvation and death in such a brief period of time in what was a developed, albeit troubled, country. And for those who did manage to survive, what must life have been like? Grim reminders include the thousands of civilians who were convicted of cannibalism and reports of posters printed by the Soviet government that declared to eat your own children is a barbarian act.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

What I was told by my sisters that I was so hungry when I was three years old. I would go in the street. It's a small a small town. The street was small, it was no cars, nothing. And I would go in the street and say, Yasha doesn't hear bread. Yasha doesn't hear bread. A child is not because I'm begging, just impression of every it is so hard for a child at three years old.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

I found this anecdote so telling. Yasha was born into a life where he woke up every morning starving and without any means of his own or his family of eight to put enough food on the table. So he goes out into the street and proclaims his lack of bread. But he finds it important to clarify.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

It's not because I'm begging.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

That's right. What he was doing as a famished three-year-old on the streets of Petrikov wasn't begging. I don't know if you caught it in the background, but even his wife interrupted her cooking to dub it complaining. That's all. Just something else kids complained about. This might be in English as a second language issue, but if what Yasha had to do to try and get a scrap of bread is complaining, then I'm not sure what you'd call my groans when I don't get my morning latte within an hour of getting out of bed. If there was ever a righteous time to be a beggar, this was it. Yasha's deliberate clarification that he wasn't, as small a detail as it may seem, is symbolic. Not only of the kind of person he became as an adult, but of the normality of hunger when he was a child.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

And I was the sixth child in my family. I had four sisters and a brother. And it was not easy because just my father worked. My one mother was in house with the kids. A lot of problems. Six kids. Six kids is just like this. A year and a half next one. A year and a half next one. I was the last one. But we could we survive somehow. We got a piece of land, buy the house, we grow potatoes, some stuff like this to be easier. But it's come 1939. My father died suddenly. One day he went to work and didn't come back. It's tragic, even from point of view to support the family. We lost the main breadgiver. It was very, very hard.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yasha was nine years old when his father died. That's the age when most young boys revere their fathers as heroes, before their flaws and failings are detectable to young eyes. This was perhaps the first of many truly formative events in Yasha's young life. He was old enough to understand what death meant, but likely not to grasp what death really is. He had to accept in the blink of an eye that he would never see his father again without comprehending why. I can only imagine the conversation Yasha's mother was forced to have with all the children, somehow finding the resolve in her own state of grief to explain that they were now on their own. And perhaps even worse, that they had no choice but to move on. With the breadwinner, or breadgiver, as Yasha put it, gone, there was too much to do, too much to figure out. Excessive lingering, wandering, or even mourning were surely luxuries they could not afford. They had to survive. This is the first time we get a glimpse into the strength of Yasha's mother. Growing up, I often heard tales of my great-grandmother, told over vodka and admiring smiles. She was referred to in the family as Itka. If Yasha is the hero of this story, Itka is most certainly the heroine. You'll hear why later on, when she makes a decision to which I and many of my relatives owe our very existence. But for now, the resolve to pull herself and her family through this unspeakable tragedy, all while keeping her six children fed, is enough to earn admiration. Somehow, some way, they made ends meet. But neither Itka nor anyone else had any control over the political dominoes that were about to fall. Ones that would be the catalyst to change not only their lives, but the lives of millions.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Your husband was a member of the communist party.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

1939. A pivotal year, not only for our protagonist, but for the whole of Europe. While Yasha grappled with the death of his father and welcomed a new communist brother-in-law to the family, two of the most powerful leaders in the world were playing a perilous game of geopolitical chess. While Stalin needed time to build up his military and fortify the still young Soviet Union against external threats, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany were looking to conquer new lands in the East for the so-called German master race. Although Stalin's communism and Hitler's fascism put their nations on an inevitable crash course, both leaders knew that they could gain temporary strategic advantages by making a deal. And so, in August of 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany did just that. It became known as the Molotov Ribbentrol Pact, and it guaranteed that each country could go about its global agenda without fear of aggression by the other. Those, at least, were the public terms. But while the two heads of state shook hands above the negotiating table, underneath there was a more sinister transaction afoot. A secret protocol, known only to a select few in each country's government, quietly divvied up Eastern Europe between the two superpowers. It was a game of territorial government. Give and take, with one country in particular serving as the vital piece in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany's game plan. A dual invasion was on the horizon, destined not only to directly alter Yasha's life, but transform the course of history. Aficionados will know it as Nocturne in E-Flat Major, one of his greatest creations. Chopin composed this masterpiece in the early 1830s, when he was in his early 20s, and still an emerging composer. In fact, he was still teaching piano at the time, and he dedicated it to a student of his. What a nice gesture. But I doubt that lucky student, nor Chopin himself, realized that this composition, along with his numerous other works, would come to symbolize a nation and its struggle for independence. In the fall of 1939, these cascading notes would have been broadcast on radio sets across Poland as a beacon of pride and patriotism for a people whose country was facing the looming threat of invasion. Chopin was Polish, and nearly a century on from his death, his birth country found itself caught in the middle of two posturing tyrants, an unfortunate geographical stepping stone for territorial conquest. In his neighbor to the west, Stalin saw an opportunity to reclaim Polish territories that harbored a large number of ethnic Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians, who he declared were being oppressed by the Polish government. Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, saw Poland as the first step in his imperialist expansion in the East. So, on September 1st, 1939, just over a week after his covert deal with the Soviet Union went into effect, Hitler's army marched across Poland's western border, setting off alarm bells around the globe.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Germany has invaded Poland and has bombed many times.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

In the West, Britain and France quickly declared war against Nazi Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Western Europe.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

General mobilization has been ordered in Britain and France.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Perhaps using the resulting shockwaves as cover, Stalin quietly prepared to make good on his end of the pact. Just over two weeks later, he ordered his troops into Poland from the east. The two superpowers quickly overwhelmed Polish forces, who surrendered on October 6th. The dual occupation had begun. While Hitler secured his grip in the west of the country, which included, by the way, banning the music of Chopin and other symbols of Polish culture, Stalin moved to impose his order in the East. By November, the Soviet Union had established satellite states in its newly annexed territories, and hundreds of the country's best Communist Party members were dispatched to install the policies of Soviet rule.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

My brother-in-law, because he was a member of the Communist Party, they sent them in this in in this uh territory region. In this area.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

To install Soviet rule because before it was born. And because my father died in that time. It was very tight in my family. My sister, she went with this with your husband because this is in former Poland. They decided to take me.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Okay, there's a lot going on here. To recap, Yasha's new brother-in-law was a member of the Communist Party. His name, by the way, was Max. Max had married Tanya, Yasha's oldest sister. And when the Soviet Union took their piece of Poland, Max took both Tanya and Yasha with him to his new posting there. Yasha now found himself away from home for the first time. And although the burden of feeding a family of three may have been easier than a family of seven, they were now that much closer to a shared border with Nazi Germany. And little did they know, Hitler would soon betray the Soviet Union, putting them at center stage for the largest military ground invasion the world had ever seen.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

It's very close to the border with now Germany because Germany took a piece of woodland. But in two years, it's been two years the second towards one and we were very close to the world. And because every day, every day was something we didn't have places to go to to um hide from from bamboo. And because my brother in love with a big shop, they gave us a car and they took us each time, they took us to the forest to sit there and wait until the plane goes away from here.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

Picture it. The streets are patrolled by men in uniform carrying guns, checking papers, conducting searches. Your brother-in-law tells you they're the good guys, but you see them arresting people of the town and dragging them away, even when it doesn't seem like they did anything wrong. You overheard adults on the street talking about the war in the West. About how a German dictator is causing chaos and destruction across Europe. Whispered rumors about who might be next. As time passes, the men in uniform appear more and more on edge. One day, they start putting up signs, building fences, and setting up checkpoints. It seems like they're preparing for something. Something big. Although you don't really understand most of it, you can feel the tension in the air. And then you hear it. You're walking home from school, and a sound from the sky makes your heart race and stomach drop. Suddenly, the streets are in chaos. Everyone is running in different directions, confused, panicked. The men in uniform are shouting orders, but you can't make sense of what they're saying. You instinctively start running too, toward home. When you get there, there's a car idling outside. You see your sister and brother-in-law who hurry you into the backseat. You ask them, what's happening? They tell you, everything is gonna be okay. We're going somewhere safe. But as the car speeds away, you can still hear that piercing howl over the engine. Except now it's accompanied by a low rumble in the distance. You're scared. But then something strange happens. The pavement gives way to dirt, and then the crunch of leaves and twigs under the tires. Suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by towering birch trees. The car stops and the engine spurs to a halt. As you look around, you realize there are no more men in uniform, no more running or shouting. Although you can still hear those unsettling sounds in the distance, the soft earth muffles them, like they're coming from a different world. Your senses shift. You look up, and the thick cover of forest canopy shields you from the summer sky above. You're with your family, who assure you again, everything is gonna be okay. You inhale deeply. Suddenly, you feel safe. I know it might seem strange to extrapolate Yasha's experience in this way. It's hard to know how much an 11-year-old truly understands about the dangers of war. But knowing what we know about his childhood up to this point, there's something comforting, at least to me, about Yasha's temporary transition away from civilization, from the unforgiving pavement and brick of cities and towns, to the solace of nature. Off the street and into the forest. We get the impression the street wasn't a great place for kids like Yasha. When he didn't have bread, the street was where he went to look for it. When his friends and neighbors struggled for survival, the street was where he saw them struggle. His father walked out into the street one morning on his way to work, and then never came back. In Petrakov, where Yasha spent the first nine years of his life, the street was where everything bad happened. And now Yasha finds himself in a new town, and its streets are where those intimidating men in uniform patrol, and where you first heard that sound, that terrifying howl in the sky. Maybe, just maybe, that forest where Yasha, Tanya, and Max sought refuge in the initial days of the invasion served as a welcome change from everything Yasha was used to. Like a kid hiding under the covers when he's afraid of the dark, maybe those towering birches and the tranquility of nature provided a sense of security for Yasha, making him feel small and protected, allowing him to temporarily forget the chaos and uncertainty of the world beyond the trees. No matter how he coped with what was going on around him, the reality of the situation was inescapable. A new kind of danger was coming. And Yasha would soon be forced to balance the innocence of childhood with the grim realities of war.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Bamben last a couple days like this. After that, they decide to take out the people that came from the Soviet Union. They sent a train. At that time, my sister got a sandwich. My brother-in-law took us, my sister, child, and me, and put it in the train. The train was parked already with people. We couldn't see it just standing. But our home, where I came from, is on the way of this road from the train. And when the train came to this station next to our town, we decided to go away from this train to come to my mother and to stay with them.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

After two years in Lunaniec, Yasha was heading home, but surely not in the way he anticipated. As he stood there on that crowded train alongside Tanya and her cradled newborn, scanning the uneasy faces of his fellow Soviet evacuees, I can't help but wonder how he perceived his abrupt departure from occupied Poland. And moreover, the man who brought them there. Before the bombing started, we don't know what role Max and his comrades played in the occupation and perhaps oppression of Lunanets and surrounding areas. But looking back, I find it hard to reconcile his job as a member of the invading communists, with his role as husband and caretaker in Yasha's family. With the death of his father and separation from his mother still fresh, would young Yasha have turned inward from Max, who took over as the default man of the household in Lunaniec? Or would he have looked up to him as a heroic new big brother? Was Yasha insulated from Polish people, only interacting with other Soviet families in similar stations as Max? Or was he exposed to the outside world, perhaps even making Polish friends, but just too young or too distracted to understand what was really going on around him? Looking back, I wish I had the fortitude to ask Yasha these questions, and so many more. Perhaps this is where my novice status as an interviewer bears its ugly head. But the truth is, I had no end in mind when I sat down at the table across from Yasha that day. I was simply interested in my grandfather's story. And lacking much context or nuance, all I could do was sit there, make sure my early 2000s camcorder was still recording, and listen. And as I listened to Yasha conclude this first chapter of his childhood, and we decided on a short break, his face relaxed into a slight smile. Perhaps the simplest explanation applies, and it was just the steaming hot plate of beef cutlets now sitting on the table between us, courtesy of Grandma Lilia. But something tells me he was still there, somewhere in southern Belarus, on a train approaching Petrikov, about to arrive back home. 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.