When night fell, he sent us off with a little boy as our guide, who was to smuggle us onto the other side. The boy led us across some fields and through bushes in such darkness, that when we stepped on the river bank we could not see that we were near it. Everything is going on as planned, but when the boy begins to unmoor the canoe, we are suddenly deafened by cracks of nearby shots and blinded by exploding flares. Our guide vanishes somewhere, and a German patrol pops up two steps from us and orders us to stop and put our hands in the air. Having lit us carefully with torches and found out that they had to do only with women, the Germans stop treating us so strictly but they still took us to their post located in some Ukrainian’s cottage.
Even though they know that we are Jewish, [3] they treat us very kindly and are friendly at the post. They not only treat us to supper, but also hold a council of war later as to how they could help us. As it brings no positive effect, the only thing we can do is to go to sleep. The Germans wake us up at two o’clock in the morning. They have come up with an ingenious idea: we would cross in the same canoe! So they escort us back to the river. The soldiers tie a rope to the canoe so that the current does not carry it off its course, and my two friends get in (I have not fitted in) and depart from the bank. The current is so strong that it carries the canoe so far away that it gets stuck between poles of a small bridge, which burned down during the military operations. Terrified, the Germans pull the rope and after a lot of effort they manage to tow my friends back. Tough luck, the crossing has failed. We return to the post in a gloomy mood. The Ukrainian in whose cottage the Germans are quartered unexpectedly comes to our aid: he offers to transport us to the other side. “Very well, then”, we agree. The next morning, before we leave, they give us a bunch of commands and recommendations (for instance, if we come across a Bolshevik patrol, on no account can we say that German soldiers helped us cross; instead, we should say that we were trying to flee from the Soviet side and that the Germans turned us back, etc., etc.), and we set out for the third time. On the way the Ukrainian tells us that he can understand us and that he sympathises with us and that he would flee to the Soviet Union himself were it not for his family and farm, etc. Having transported us to the other side, he refuses to accept any [4] remuneration – not even a ring.
But we have really bad luck. Having walked three steps from the river, we come across a Soviet patrol. Asked what we are doing there, we are so surprised
LVO V AN D SOUTH EASTERN REGIONS [ 34] 500
