[lbo-talk] "The Earth of Priyatin," by Ilya Ehrenburg

[Chris Doss]

Voila the translation. I think this is probably one of
the very first accounts of the Holocaust.

The Earth of Priyatin
by Ilya Ehrenburg
Published in Red Star, November 26 1943

On April 6, 1942, in the city of Priyatin in Poltova
oblast, the Germans murdered six thousand Jews -- old
men, women and children -- who had not been able to
leave for the East.

"Why did the Germans kill these Jews?" is an idle
question. In this very same Priyatin they have killed
hundreds of Ukrainians. In the settement of Klukovko
that killed two hundred Belarussians. In Grenoble,
they kill Frenchmen, and in Crete, Greeks. Murdering
the defenseless is the reason for their existence.

They led the Jews out on the Greben road. They led
them up to Pirogovskaya levada, three kilometers from
Priyatin. Pits (CD - "posmestitelnie yamy"; They
latter word means "pits," and I don't know the first.
I think this means "mass graves") had been prepared
there. They undressed the Jews. The Germans and police
then separated the women's and children's things. They
drove them into the pit five people at a time and shot
them with submachine guns.

I cannot make myself speak about the executions of
nursing infants: I have no words to do it justice. I
would now like to relate a story about the torment of
Pyotr Levrentevich Chepurchenko. The Germans got him
ready at 3 pm. Along with him, the Germans prepared
over three hundred residents of Priyatin. They were
given shovels. They saw the Germans murdering
children. At 5 pm, an officer commanded: "Fill it in!"
Cries and groans rose from the pit. Under a light
layer of earth half-dead people were moving, and
Chepurchenko says, "The earth was in motion..."

Suddenly Chepurchenko saw his neighbor and friend, the
Jew Ruderman, a head of a felt factory, was rising
from the earth. Ruderman's eyes were full of blood; he
was all covered in blood. Ruderman was screaming,
"Kill me!" From behind, someone cried in reponse,
"Kill!" -- it was another acquaintance of
Chepurchenko, the cabinetmaker Sima, wounded, but not
dead. A dead woman lay by Chepurchenko's feet. A
five-year-old boy climbed out from under her body and
cried out, "Mommy!" Chepurchenko then fainted -- he
saw and heard no more.

Pyotr Levrentevich Chepurchenko is alive, but his life
is bitter: he cannot forget April 6, 1942. He says,
"it was on the second day of Easter..." -- and falls
silent. He looks into space, listening. What does he
see? The boy, pulling at his murdered mother? The eyes
of Ruderman? The Germans killed him, Chepurchenko, as
well on that terrible day.

I would like to tell this to the soldiers of our
motherland. When you see the Germans, remember the
earth of Priyatin. Remember the five-year-old boy. You
also have such sons and brothers. Your conscience will
not let you rest while the despots are walking the
earth. It is late to talk. It is late to be shocked.
Now there is only one thing to do: kill these
conscienceless and vile killers.

Nu, zayats, pogodi!

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