The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod by Avrom Bendavid-Val Page A

eat. It was already three days. We were starving, literally starving. Our tongues were hanging out, we were pale, we were … it’s a miracle we didn’t eat each other. We picked any leaves we could find, and we ate them, and we usually threw up. We ate snow.
    I was twelve years old. I got my period. I didn’t know what it was all about. I was lying next to my dad; we were all lying close to each other in the bunker. I woke up, and I was such a bloody mess from my neck to my knees, and my father was also a bloody mess from his neck to his knees. I didn’t know if he was bleeding, I didn’t know if I was bleeding. Where did it come from? Did somebody choke him? Did somebody kill him? I got hysterical, I started screaming and crying. My mother took me out with my cousin, a lady cousin. They took me under a tree. There was a puddle of water. They washed me up, and they told me about the birds and the bees. I didn’t have any social life out there, but they started to warn me about getting pregnant and so on.
    There was another bunker not far from us. There was a father, a child, and a few other people, all from Trochenbrod. The little girl wasn’t more than three years old. The little girl got very very sick, and she died. They had to leave their bunker because somebody spotted them. And they spotted us. So we all left our bunkers and we left the little girl under a pile of leaves, and we figured maybe the next night, when it all calms down, we’ll go and bury her. When we came back to bury her, she was breathing! Just barely. My mother put her on her bosom, and my father was breathing in her mouth, and her father was … I mean, it was a scene like not even the movies, it was like animals in a jungle. All the adults gave her drops of water in her mouth, sometimes even spitting in her mouth, and held her close to their bodies to give her warmth, and found pieces of food for her, and … and gave her new life. They all together gave her back her life. She survived the war with her father: two out of seven in her family, and she had a wonderful life after the war.
    Warm weather finally came again, and we moved to a different part of the forest, because we were afraid that with spring coming shepherds or other people from the villages would be going into the woods and would spot us. We were hearing too many noises, so we were afraid. We went to a bunker about three or four miles away. When the leaves came out we started living out in the open more, and we built a little fire one time. We had no idea, none at all, what was going on outside, even if the war was over or not.
    Once we were near a sort of orchard, and the trees were beginning to produce fruit, just the beginnings of the apples, very far from ripe. My brother went out to get those. We were outside the bunker because as I said, there were leaves on the trees already and they were sheltering us. We were looking and waiting for him to come back, and all of a sudden we see horses. There’s a soldier on one horse, and on another someone in civilian clothes but with a rifle, and on a third horse another soldier with a rifle. One of them is holding my brother. They caught him stealing the apples. They told him to lead them to where he came from. He was a little boy, and he led them to our bunker. When we saw the Germans, Ukrainians, whatever they were coming toward us with my brother on one of the horses with the soldier, we knew it was the end. We decided as soon as they come with my brother, we’re all going to start running. Again we all said good-bye to each other, kissed each other good-bye. We were glad it was over. We didn’t even really care anymore.
    But it turned out to be the partisans! Russian partisans! Liberation had come! A third miracle! I have never seen such tears and laughter and screaming, and hysterics. There was such mixed emotions, happiness that the worst of our hardships was over, that we had survived, and deep deep sadness about all those who