Death in Minsk
Most Americans who have heard of Minsk know it as the place where Phoebe’s physicist boyfriend on “Friends” went to work or from Bette Midler’s song “Rochelle, Rochelle” in Seinfeld,
“Well, you made a long journey from Milan to Minsk… You never stopped hoping; now you’re in a Pinsk…. When the naysayers ‘nay’ you picked up your pace. You said nothing’s going to stop me so get out of my face. I’m having adventures all over the place, Rochelle, ROCHELLE!”
It turns out that the capital city with the most comedic name, has one of the least funny histories. Our peace group arrived in Minsk, the capitol city of Belorussia, on an endorphin high induced by three weeks of traveling around the Soviet Union training for the 1988 Moscow Peace Marathon. Minsk was our sixth and final training stop before heading to Moscow for the big race. In training terminology, this was to be the “cool down” phase with only 3 miles of running a day instead of the usual 8–15 miles.
My arrival predated Rochelle by a number of years but with a few adjustments (New York instead of Milan) the lyrics pretty much captured the dynamic of my life. This trip was my answer to death. Two years after my beloved Dad died of cancer and my best friend was dying of AIDS (not a livable disease in 1988). He encouraged me to go so I arrived in Minsk thinking I knew and understood something about death.
Upon arrival at the airport, our hosts presented the statistics to us. Tucked between the Baltics and Ukraine on the Western Front, Belorussia suffered the highest percentage of death in the Great Patriotic War (our WWII). One out of every four people died and only 10 buildings were left standing after the Nazi invasion. 2,290,000 people gone, the equivalent of killing everyone in DC, Vermont, and Montana today.
It was strange, we traveled all this way as peace runners and had forgotten about war and its essence, which is death. We had grown too comfortable with the words peace and war; they lost their meaning like any word when you repeat it over and over until it becomes gibberish.
Our hosts took us on an excursion 54 km. North East of Minsk. We were greeted by a “Square of Memory” that consists of three birch trees symbolizing life and an eternal flame for the 25% who died. The Square is part of a memorial complex located in Khatyn, one of 628 Belorussian villages that were burned to the ground. The foundations for each of the 26 houses were restored along with a chimney that rises to the original height of the house. Each chimney has an electronic bell that rings every 30 seconds.
The villagers were not particularly worried when the Nazi soldiers arrived on the morning of March 22, 1943. They had been there before and left peacefully after taking the goods they wanted. This time they herded every man, woman, and child into a barn, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. Soldiers stood outside the barn and opened fire to make sure no one got out alive. Of the 155 villagers, 147 died that day, including 75 children. Five children hid and survived, two adults were away visiting friends. They missed one man, Yuzif Kaminsky, 56 years old. At the entrance to the memorial is a 6 meter bronze statue of Kaminsky carrying the limp body of a child in his arms, his son. The statue is called “The Unconquered Man” but there is no victory here. This is war, war is death, and it is not forgotten.
That night every American adult in our peace group found someone to have sex with. This might have been triggered by the need to reaffirm life in the midst of so much death or, perhaps, a display of arrogant me-generation defiance from a bunch of spoiled, stubborn Americans insisting on a happy ending to every story. A few days later, I ran a 3:40 marathon, a personal best.
In 2019, I returned to Minsk. It was now the capital city of Belarus, an independent country. I arrived to conduct a seminar having spent 27 years as a community development activist in Siberia. This time no statistics upon arrival and it was clear on the trip from the airport to the Hotel that a lot had changed. My only free time to explore was before the seminar started so I went for a 6AM walk.
Across the four-lane highway next to my “BonHotel- Perfect Place to Work and Sleep” ,and up a slight hill was an old church and graveyard. Entering the stone archway I was reminded that some things never change or get better over time. I looked at the graves to my left, 1944, 41, 41, 42, 44, 40, 44, 40, 40, 43, 43, 43, 44… a cluster of death that can be found in some American graveyards but none of these dead are soldiers. They are 50 year old men and women, 12 and 13 year old girls and boys. Some of the gravestones are very simple with just a name and a date of death or “killed”. Others are more elaborate with photos of the dead. One of these had a photo of a sister who survived and a Virgin Mary like image for the 18 year old sister who did not.
Every grave was haunting, but Ekaterina Vasilovna Kleyankina broke my heart. Born March 19, 1926 and died June 22, 1944, age 18. She was a year younger than my mother, Cissie Williams who spent World War II in Chevy Chase Maryland. Ekaterina’s 3-foot gravestone featured a backlit, waist-up image of her in a striped top and ring on her left middle finger. Light brown, chin length hair parted on the side, clear-skinned face with slim, pursed lips and wide set eyes that glare at you. It is a look not of anger but condemnation for everything lost because man allowed certain forces to be set in motion that placed her in the worst place to be at a time when in her part of the world there was no good place to be. You don’t have that experience in an American graveyard, we have no reference point.
Last summer, death and Minsk visited me at home. My Russian friend Lesiya came with her computer gaming teen-age son Max to visit us in the Altai Republic. A super smart, tall blond banker, she still lives in Akademgorodok, the science center of Siberia, where we first met over 20 years ago. Her Maltese husband commutes to co-parent. Prior to this, our relationship existed around group activities.
Sitting at the kitchen table one day, Lesiya told me about her Grandmother. Neonilla Aleksandrovna who was born in a village 174 km. from Minsk. She married Pyotr Grigorovich and they had three daughters, Elena, Ludmilla, and Inessa (Lesya’s Mom) the youngest born in 1940. Life was good, even idyllic, Pyotr was a big deal as head of the Dominovich Village forestry service. When the Nazi’s arrived in 1941 he was immediately arrested. Neonilla hunkered down with her daughters to survive. She watched as her partisan teenage brother died being dragged by a wagon through the Village with a star carved into his chest . Two years in, 14 year old Elena was taken to Germany to serve as a housemaid.
Neonilla and her daughters did survive and she lived to be 106. She and Inessa spent their last years living with Lesiya and Max in Akademgorodok. After years of never knowing what happened to Pyotr, they were told that someone saw him at Dachau where he died not long after arriving. Aunt Ludmilla is still alive and continues to have flashbacks. Recently, she told Lesiya about watching the occupiers hang a Doctor’s daughter to get him and his wife to confess to being partisans.
Lesiya and Gen X Max grew up enlightened by Neonilla and Inessa. The “lucky” ones who grew up not far away from the place where the endless tolling bells, chimneys, and empty foundations are still surrounded by the glowing birch trees where 75 incinerated children played. Stories about life in a Village where there were no safe spaces or possibility for self-care. I worry that not enough Americans understand death that is not the result of an unfortunate illness or accident. Death that is a strategic outcome, the byproduct of a choice, collateral damage. Rochelle was right, it is a long journey to Minsk, but it is an important one.
