Page 14 - LEIBY

14 Leiby – Border Smuggler

replied. “Each loaf weighs five kilos and we divide it up between
twenty people instead of fifteen. We also add water to the soup
as needed, and so no one starves.”

Leiby was charged with the task of bringing more and more
refugees to the camp, and he worked hard to do his job as well as
he could. Additional zemlyankas were dug, more huts were built
out of tree branches, the portions of bread became smaller and
the soup more watery, but no one in the camp ever complained.
Just the opposite – every new group of Jews that Leiby and
his fellow partisans succeeded in smuggling out of the city and
bringing to the camp was cause for true celebration.

The soviet groups, however, were not willing to let Leiby go so
easily. The forest was like home to him, he knew every path and
every swamp like the back of his hand and could find his way
anywhere, even in the pitch darkness – invaluable qualities in
the partisan army. And so, although Leiby considered himself a
member of the Bielski camp, he also spent time in the partisan
military units, carrying out dangerous and daring missions, for
the most part with resounding success.

Just as Leiby knew the forest so well, he also knew the residents
of the forest – the good-natured Belorussian farmers, the savage
Ukrainians, the silent Cossacks, always poised for battle, and
the frigid Russians. And despite the generations-old rabid anti-
Semitism that flowed in the Slavic partisans’ veins, the war and
the shared hatred of the enemy somehow unified them all, and
Leiby made some good friends in the partisan troop.

Where were those friends now?

The lucky ones had found government jobs, and Leiby had met
his friends in a number of prominent positions. One was the
administrator of the local jail; another became deputy mayor
of his town. Yet another was the director of supplies in the city
council, and some, like Stefan, served in the police force. The
former partisans who did not have such luck had been sent to
fight on the battlefront, and many met their deaths there.

Stefan stretched out on the couch in Leiby’s living room and