The Night Sparrow

One day my mother went to work and never came back. The three of us were left without parents.

—Alla Rakovshchik, Prisoner, Minsk Ghetto

Minsk, Belorussia, October 1941

On her way home, Elena Bruskina saw twelve women she’d presumed were dead reappear. The full dozen. Her breath hitched. People sent to jail usually vanished. Her thoughts slid to her father and her older brother, Yakov, arrested months ago with hundreds of other men from the ghetto. There were no charges. No trials. No letters from Siberia saying they’d been exiled. No sign of them whatsoever. In her heart, Elena knew they were gone forever, but without proof, without bodies, graves, or a funeral, she didn’t know how to mourn. She was frozen in grief.

Elena strained to see the twelve women marching ahead of her, guarded by German fascists in crisp black uniforms and brimmed caps. In the drizzling rain, the women were ghostlike with wispy, hunched silhouettes.

Twilight had set in and Elena was on her way back to the Minsk ghetto with hundreds of other women after their shift at the Oktyabr Garment Factory. She appreciated this in-between time, when she wasn’t loading and unloading crates or imprisoned in the ghetto as if she were a convicted criminal. Walking to and from work was the only part of her day where she could almost remember what it felt like to be a university student, to be free.

Almost.

There was the Lower Bazaar, a popular department store where her mother had shopped for coats and hats, now hollowed out by a bomb. One block later, balconies hung precariously from the brick veneer of an apartment building. Glass had been blown out of the windows, making them look like black cavities. Up ahead, the Nazi flag, hoisted above the Government House, pulsed in the wind, the black swastika a menacing emblem of, ironically, white pride. On the other side of the street, pillars were the only remnants of another government building. Elena tried to recall Minsk before the Germans invaded in June, but it was getting harder and harder to see the past through the wreckage.

The column of workers turned onto Fruktovaya Street. Aspen trees lay across the muddy road like bones. Elena’s feet smarted with fatigue as she stepped through puddles in wide tank treads. Her leather boots, which had come apart at the toes, sloshed with rainwater. She shivered, then looked up at the sky, vast and heavy with grayish-blue clouds that hung so near to the ground, she felt as if they might swallow her whole. This, the sky, the weather, was the only constant in a new and terrifying world rife with uncertainty.

“Weitergehen! Don’t stop.” A soldier lashed a couple of women with a birch rod as if they were cattle.

Elena flinched. She felt Tsila, beside her, go tense. Tsila had a temper that could flare in an instant. This was one of the first things Elena had noticed when they’d met as children at Young Pioneer Camp. Tsila had smacked a boy in the face for making fun of her chubbiness. Seeing a girl stand up to a boy had filled Elena with awe and a touch of envy. She’d wanted to be like Tsila, outspoken and decisive. But here she was, about to turn twenty-two in December and just as quietly tentative as she’d been all those years ago.

Now she could see Tsila’s anger in the way her nostrils flared, in the way she drew her small teeth over her bottom lip. Elena squeezed her hand. Tsila crushed her fingers until they were numb.

“Faule Juden. Lazy Jews,” another soldier shouted.

Elena cringed at the way the words spewed from the guard’s tongue. Jagged. Ugly. Mean. Before the war, she’d been in her final year of studying German at university, “the language of civilized people,” her father used to say with pride. Until the Germans bombed Minsk. She wondered how something once beautiful and refined could suddenly become crude and heinous. She regretted the years she’d spent learning the enemy’s language.

“Ich habe keine Geduld fur Faulheit. I have no patience for laziness.”

She caught the skull insignia on the guard’s cap. In German, it was called Totenkopf, death’s head.

“Why didn’t I see this coming?” she mumbled.

“Nobody knew who Hitler was,” Tsila said grimly, “or what he would become.”

“True,” Elena conceded. Not one word about fascism had been written in any newspaper or discussed on the radio before the German invasion. It seemed as though Hitler had waved a wand and turned rational, law-abiding Germans into Jew-killing nationalists overnight. “But we can’t blame one man for corrupting an entire country,” she added.

“It had to start somewhere,” said Tsila. Elena looked at her friend through the misty rain. “But why isn’t anyone stopping him?”

The rain had ended by the time the column of workers reached the ghetto. The air was dank and smelled of gunpowder and urine. Above the wooden roofs, orange and lavender slivers of light trimmed the evaporating horizon. A policeman with a withering glare stood at the gate. Elena, head down, filed past him into the ghetto. She queued with the rest of the workers at the labor office to be counted and searched. This was the moment she dreaded every day, the moment they might ask about Masha. Her seventeen-year-old sister had escaped the ghetto soon after her father and brother disappeared, to volunteer as a nurse for the partisans. Though Elena was fairly certain Masha’s name had, by a stroke of luck, gone missing from the list of residents, there were no guarantees. If a guard happened to notice Masha was absent, she and her mother would be shot.

“Pass?” a hefty policeman grunted at Elena.

She showed him her worker’s pass.

“Turn out your pockets,” he said gruffly. “Open your coat.”

She unbuttoned the oversized woolen coat that used to be Yakov’s. It was all she had left of him. She tugged the two inside pockets up. One was sticky from Kara-Kum candy wrappers, and there was a gray feather in the other pocket. Elena’s heart stirred, remembering how her brother was forever bringing injured animals home, birds mostly, with broken wings, setting them free when they were strong enough to fly. The policeman roughly probed her thin waist, searching for food.

She fought the urge to yank his fleshy hands from her body.

“Go to Yubileynaya, Jubilee Square,” he said, after he’d finished groping her.

“The square?” Elena said, piqued by the schedule change. Her routine, though exhausting, held her in place.

“No talking,” he barked.

Tsila grabbed her elbow and yanked her forward, onto Opanskaja Street. Elena pitched at the steely German voices ordering people from their homes. At the sight of a soldier dragging an old woman down the street.

“Where are we going, Mama?” a child’s sleepy voice said, in Yiddish.

“Faster,” a man barked in German.

Elena prayed her mother hadn’t been forced into this chaos. A baby’s cry set off a chorus of wails. Within minutes, the street was jammed with people on their way to the square that was, in fact, a long, narrow triangle encompassing one hundred square meters, about the size of two ice surfaces used for Bandy, an outdoor game Yakov had played on skates, using a stick to hit a ball into the opposing team’s net.

“They must have roused the entire ghetto,” Tsila said, astonished. “Impossible.” There were seventy thousand Jews in the ghetto, far too many to fit into the square.

Something hard cuffed Elena’s shoulder blade. She jolted upright. A flailing boy, in his mother’s arms, had whacked her with his bare foot. She tried to move out of his kicking range but there was nowhere to go. She and Tsila were hemmed in by ghetto residents. She couldn’t even move her arms.

Elena’s breath quickened as they descended upon Yubileynaya Square, in the center of the ghetto. Frenzied voices rose as the sun fell to the horizon. It all felt so orchestrated, as if she were in an audience waiting for the curtain to rise. From the corner of her eye, she spotted a camera pointed towards a brawny German officer standing still in the middle of the square. She was overcome by a rattling sense of doom.

She gripped Tsila’s arm. “I need to get out of here.”

“If you sprout wings let me know,” Tsila replied, deadpan. “Because unless you can fly, you’re stuck. Look.” She gestured at the guards surrounding the square. Brandishing their guns like trophies.

Elena curled her fingers around Yakov’s feather. It bolstered her spirits, touching it, knowing it meant something to her brother.

“Attention, Juden,” the officer in the center of the square announced, in a leaden voice.

Armed guards prodded the twelve women into a row behind the officer. The women’s arms were tied behind their backs. Signs around their necks claimed they’d refused to work.  Refused to work? Elena reeled with disbelief. Two weeks earlier, the women had been inexplicably dismissed from the factory where she worked. Unemployed, they no longer qualified for rations. The Germans barred children and nonworking adults from receiving food. The women had begged to be reinstated. Instead they were thrown in jail.

“Silence, Juden,” the officer shouted.

The crowd hushed.

“Before you are twelve women,” he continued. “For malingering and refusal to work, they will be shot.”

“That’s a lie,” Tsila burst out.

The officer glared at her. She met his scowl with unblinking eyes. Elena was stunned to silence. These women had done nothing wrong. Nothing to warrant a public execution.

An old man with sidelocks and white whiskers was forced at gunpoint to blindfold the women.

Elena’s knees went weak. She’d heard hundreds of gunshots in the five months she’d lived in the ghetto. She’d seen bodies sprawled on the ground in pools of blood. But she’d never seen anyone killed. She felt herself sway backwards but there was nowhere to fall. There were too many people behind her, keeping her on her feet. Three German soldiers aimed machine guns at the women.

There was a collective gasp.

Elena pinched her eyes shut.

Bullets exploded from barrels. Bodies thumped to the ground. In that moment, Elena knew for certain her father and brother were never coming home. In that moment, she knew the extent of Hitler’s venom.

“Juden, geht schnell in eure Häuser! Jews, get to your homes quickly,” a soldier barked.

Elena’s gaze fell to the center, to the dead women. They used to be daughters, sisters, mothers, wives. When would the Germans come for her?

“Go home.” A fascist soldier loomed over Elena and Tsila.

Elena turned. In her mind, she kicked the bastard in the groin. She shuffled through the crowd pouring from the square onto adjacent streets. The silence was eerie. Not even the flutter of birds overhead.

“See you tomorrow?” she said to Tsila.

“Tomorrow,” Tsila replied, with a resolve that centered Elena. Tsila turned right, towards the other end of the ghetto. Orphaned after her parents were shot, she lived with her grandparents and a handful of cousins.

Elena held the collar of her coat tight around her neck as she walked, head down, against the brisk north wind. Her calloused hands stung. The joints in her fingers were swollen and tender. Her flimsy gloves had been mended so many times she could barely see the original green strands of wool.

The staccato burst of gunfire strafed her mind. Was Masha all right? She hadn’t heard from her sister in a few days. Ordinarily, Elena wouldn’t be too worried, but after seeing those women executed, all she could think about was Masha looking the wrong way at a member of the Gestapo and . . . it was too horrible to imagine.

The wind propelled her forward, blowing her long, chestnut hair over her broad shoulders. She walked faster, turned onto Flaksa Street, and approached her ramshackle wood house with its caved-in roof, boarded-up windows, and crooked front door.

A child in the neighbor’s house let out a plaintive cry. Starving, no doubt. Elena hesitated before opening her door. The one-room interior reminded her of who she’d become and what she’d lost. She longed to run as far from the ghetto as she could go, but the chances of escaping alive were next to impossible. Besides, she could never abandon her mother, who was increasingly despondent as time went by without a word from Yakov and her father. Elena leveled her shoulders. She opened the door and nearly crashed into her mother, who was waiting for her with a stricken expression. Her mother’s words brought a quick rush of blood to her throat.

“Masha’s been arrested.”

Arrested? The house receded to a dense fog as the news about Masha plunged into Elena’s head.

“Why?” she managed.

Her mother ran her fingers through her hair. Once a sleek, ear-length bob, it was now a tangle of gray that hung like string to her bony shoulders. “Masha was caught helping injured Red Army soldiers escape from the hospital,” she went on, her voice breaking.

Elena paled. “How do you know?”

Her mother regarded her with puffy eyes. “One of her friends told me. She saw Masha taken away yesterday.”

Elena slumped against the door.

“She . . . she was betrayed. Someone told them Masha was smuggling in clothes and false papers for the soldiers.” Her mother clasped her shawl with knobby, arthritic hands that had aged drastically in the four months they’d lived in the ghetto. “Why would she—”

“Who’s there?” Mr. Volkhov interrupted, from the wooden slab he used as a bed in the back corner. “Is that you, Vera?” Elena slouched at his nasal, wistful voice. He had to be at least seventy years old and sounded as if he had pneumonia when he breathed. The years were etched on his face and his skin hung from his bones like dripping candle wax, and though he claimed to be “stone deaf,” he had a remarkable knack for hearing private conversations. And for some crazy reason, Mr. Volkhov believed Elena was his dead wife.

“Vera’s gone,” Elena replied, impatient.

“Gone? For goodness’ sake, Vera, I can hear you.”

A rustling sound from the opposite corner.

“Hush,” said Mrs. Drapkina to her three young daughters, huddled on their wooden bed slab. Mrs. Drapkina, a buxom woman, had a soft, motherly air. Her husband had vanished with Elena’s father and brother.

“I shouldn’t have let Masha leave,” Elena’s mother sobbed. “It’s all my fault.”

“Vera, did you bring the wood? It’s cold in here.”

“Go back to sleep,” Elena told Mr. Volkhov.

She wrapped her arms around her mother. “You begged Masha to stay.” She felt the sharp edge of her mother’s shoulder blades and held her tighter. “Even after the hospital told her they didn’t want Jewish volunteers, Masha dyed her hair blond and said she was Russian, remember?”

Her mother’s head bobbed against her chest, and for a second, Elena saw herself as a child, in her mother’s arms. Elena clung to the image, reluctant to let go of the past where she was carefree, where her mother took care of her, not the other way around.

“No wonder you’re cold,” Mrs. Drapkina was saying to Mr. Volkhov. She spoke as though she were talking to a child. “Your blanket is on the ground. Here.” She laid the threadbare blanket over the old man.

“You’re not Vera,” he sputtered.

“She’s gone,” Mrs. Drapkina replied, kindly. “She died on the way to the ghetto.”

“That’s a lie. I just heard her voice with my own ears. Where is she? Why are you keeping her from me?”

Elena was crushed by Mr. Volkhov’s disoriented grief.

“Close your eyes,” Mrs. Drapkina said to him in a soothing tone.

“There’s nothing you could have done to stop Masha,” Elena went on, softly, to her mother. “And you know she would never refuse anyone in need.”

Her mother pulled away and looked at Elena with expectant, honey-brown eyes. “Why haven’t they come home yet? Your father and brother are not criminals. They should be here, with us.”

The twelve women’s cowering faces flickered past Elena’s eyes. She shook the image away and clutched Yakov’s feather. “I think we both have to realize they’re not coming back.”

Her mother blanched. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Her hollow cheeks were wet with tears.

Elena sagged.

“I’m cold,” Mr. Volkhov mumbled.

“There’s no more wood for the stove,” said Mrs. Drapkina.

“Your father and brother will return, and so will Masha,” Elena’s mother said, obstinate.

“But you can’t—”

“Vera?” Mr. Volkhov interrupted. “Is that you?”

Elena’s fingers curled into her palms. She was fed up with Mr. Volkhov. She was fed up with her mother’s refusal to accept the truth. And she was fed up with having to talk about private matters in front of people she lived with yet barely knew.

“Shhh,” said Mrs. Drapkina, to Mr. Volkhov.

“Vera . . . Vera . . .”

His waning voice shifted to fitful snores. Mrs. Drapkina returned to her girls, cowering on their narrow slab.

“See for yourself.” Elena’s mother dried her cheeks with her shawl. “Masha’s friend gave this to me.” She retrieved a paper triangle from the pocket of her long, brown skirt; only letters folded into triangles, making them easy for censors to open, were distributed. She handed it to Elena.

Mama,

I am tormented by the thought that I have caused you great worry. Don’t worry. Nothing bad has happened to me. I swear to you that you will have no further unpleasantness because of me. If you can, please send me my dress, my green blouse, and white socks. I want to be dressed decently when I leave here.

Your Masha

“You see?” her mother said, triumphant. “It doesn’t sound as if she’s afraid, does it?”

Elena reread the letter, noting her sister’s shaky handwriting. Elena admired her sister’s courage, defying the Nazis, while she rotted away in the ghetto, following orders like a sheep.

“She’s fine, yes?” her mother was saying. “And she’ll be home soon.”

“We knew there would be risks when Masha joined the partisans,” Elena said, tiptoeing around her words to keep from worrying her mother too much, yet trying, at the same time, to be honest.

“She hasn’t hurt anyone . . .” her mother said.

“That’s not entirely true, Mama. The Red Army soldiers she helped will return to their regiments and shoot fascists again.” Elena paused. “And she is Jewish.”

“Masha has no time for religion,” her mother scoffed. “She is a proud Communist like me.”

“It doesn’t matter if Masha is religious,” Elena said, exasperated. “She’s Jewish by blood. Her name is Jewish.”

“She is fighting for Stalin, for our homeland,” her mother argued.

Elena looked at her mother, vexed by her foolish devotion to Joseph Stalin, their despotic leader and Hitler’s equal when it came to murdering innocent civilians. “The Germans see Masha as Jewish. They wouldn’t care if Masha wore a cross around her neck. To them, she is a Jew.” Elena’s family, like most of the ghetto inhabitants, was far more Soviet than Jewish. She’d rarely set foot in a synagogue, though her father had insisted his children chant Shabbat prayers, light the candles, and observe the High Holidays. And she had fond memories of her late, bearded grandfather, her mother’s father, singing her to sleep with Yiddish lullabies.

Her mother brought her shaky fingers to the lata, the yellow patch on her blouse, identifying her as a Jew, or a “kike,” one of the demeaning terms used by the fascists. Ironic, as she’d supplanted her Judaism for Communism years ago.

These compulsory patches made Elena see, for the first time in her twenty-one years, that being Jewish was more than a hindrance. Before the fascist occupation, all citizens had been considered equal—men and women, Jews and Christians. Religion had been banned; Stalin had shut down all the Yiddish schools, publications, and theaters.

People worshipped their Motherland, the Soviet Union, as well as Joseph Stalin. Just as the Germans revered Adolf Hitler. We’re caught between two evil regimes, she thought. Even if we’re triumphant, we won’t gain our freedom, we’ll still be Soviet citizens.

“We must see about getting your sister’s dress to her after roll call tomorrow.”

Roll call? Elena was disturbed by the thought of returning to Yubileynaya Square for the obligatory Sunday meeting, of her mother seeing the women’s dead bodies lying in one long row.

“I know the emerald-green blouse Masha wants,” her mother chirped on, as if Masha had written from Pioneer Camp. “She looks so pretty in it.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t expect too much.”

“What do you mean?”

Elena racked her brain for the right thing to say. “It’s just, I don’t think you should get your hopes up.”

“But she hasn’t hurt anyone,” her mother repeated, urgent. “She is a nurse. She helps people.”

Elena lowered her gaze. “Yes she does.”

“And that green blouse brings out her eyes, don’t you think?”

“Yes it does.” She brushed tears from her cheeks. She folded her arms across her chest, aching for Masha.