Alone on Ice Floe

By Michael Rosen

This book is based of the back memories on the of retired major of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Isaac (Grigory) Tovbin. The memoirs of Major Tovbin, who served in the NKVD, MGB, KGB, MVD from 1941 to 1972, formed the basis of this book. Isaac (Grigory) Tovbin died in 2010 at the age of 88 and was buried in Israel at the cemetery of the city of Kiriyat Motzkin. Most of Major Tovbin’s service took part in Ukraine. In his story you can see historical parallels between Second World War and modern war in Ukraine. Story of Major Tovbin is foreword for present tragedy of Ukraine and Russia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Rosen
• Release date: Aug 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005800857

Book preview

64

Michael Rosen

Alone on the Ice Floe

(Memoirs of a Chekist*)

This book is based of the back memories on the of retired major of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Isaac (Grigory) Tovbin. The memoirs of Major Tovbin, who served in the NKVD, MGB, KGB, MVD from 1941 to 1972, formed the basis of this book. Isaac (Grigory) Tovbin died in 2010 at the age of 88 and was buried in Israel at the cemetery of the city of Kiriyat Motzkin. Most of Major Tovbin’s service took part in Ukraine. In his story you can see historical parallels between Second World War and modern war in Ukraine. Story of Major Tovbin is foreword for present tragedy of Ukraine and Russia.

* Chekist/Cheka man - this is how Russia refers to the agents of state security system.

Content

Part 1. War

Chapter 1. State Security Sergeant

First Special Mission

Chapter 2. Defeat

The General

Stalingrad

Chapter 3. Sonya

Chapter 4. Again to front

Young Guard

Secret of Jewish Treasures

Hungarian Tragedy

Way Home

Part 2. Days of peace

Unsinkable Captain

Between Two Knifes

Punishment is not big. You are to undergo a sentence

Secret Trains

We’ll Settle up, Comrade Colonel!

Loud Case

War against Genghis Khan

Professor Shereshevsky

Drugs

Women’s Colony

Who Beheaded the Hero of Labor?

Between two Knifes Again

At the End

The short biography of author

Footnotes

Part 1

War

Chapter 1. State Security Sergeant

At the end of his years, Grisha realized that insomnia is the lot of old people. You wake up in the middle of the night and you can't close your eyes until the morning.

It hurts there, it hurts there. Old people say: If nothing hurts at night, then you are already dead!

Such thoughts often come to Grisha at night, although he is not afraid of death. He walked with death for so many years that he’d got used to it’s inevitability. We all really want to live a little longer, to find out what will happen to the children, grandchildren, and even to this close and incomprehensible country, where the fate has thrown him. Only sores torment constantly, but Grisha found a method of dealing with them: "You need to dive into the sea of memories and, as deeply as possible. Then the stormy, sometimes dangerous, even unthinkable, events of a lived life pop up before your eyes. The stream of memories, as if washes away weakness, illness, old age, and takes you to another world.

Grisha grew up in a remote shtetl (Jewish town) in Western Ukraine, where most of people did not even see a steam locomotive. He was in the fourth grade when the school switched from Jewish language Yiddish to Russian as the language of studies. Grisha was the first student in the class, and he was the first to learn not only to read and write in Russian, but also to quote the poems of Soviet poets in Russian.

The new school’s principal, a communist, appointed Grisha as chairman of the council of the pioneer detachment. This did not please his parents. His mother was especially indignant when club of pioneers was opened in the building of former synagogue. Mother secretly keep up Jewish traditions. On Shabbat, she lit candles, while previously closed window shutters. Neighbors could inform against her, and this would interfere with the career of her son Gershik. She was dreaming, like any Jewish mother, to see Gershik as a doctor or a lawyer.

Grisha's father was a mere worker. He worked all his life as a molder in a faience factory and was a union member. He was indifferent to religion, but did not want to offend his wife. Workers were sometimes given pig lard in rations. Then he took his sons and secretly from his wife went with them into the forest. There, the sons fried mushrooms and potatoes with bacon on a fire, and the father drank Chekushka (bottle) of vodka with this appetizer.

When Grisha was sixteen years old, he was solemnly presented with a Komsomol ticket. A year after graduating with honors from the ten-year school, he was called to the district military registration and enlistment office.

A swarthy young man in a commander's tunic with a sleeper on blue buttonholes bored Grisha with his eyes and bombarded him with questions. He was interested in Grisha's success in foreign languages and marital status. Grisha answered quickly, without hesitation. Only after being asked if he has relatives abroad, Grisha hesitated for a second, but then cheerfully answered: No way, comrade captain of state security! After this interrogation, Grisha was tormented by his conscience. For the first time, he was cunning in the face of Soviet power. After all, he heard from his mother that her sister lives somewhere in America, who fled there with her husband during the revolution.

Soon he received a summons from the military registration and enlistment office. Him, the only one of all the graduates of the school, in the fall in Moscow to take exams at a special military school. Grisha was filled with joy. Finally, his dream comes true. He will leave a boring, disgusting place and break out into a beautiful seething world, which he often saw in magazines and movies.

Only when he said goodbye to the appearance, something stabbed in his heart and tears appeared in his eyes. He suddenly saw her for the last time. From the memories of the house, anxiety crept into my heart again. He received a letter from home a week after the start of the war, and since then no hearing or spirit. Anxiety for his parents washed over him.

First Special Mission

The military echelon reached the front line of the South-Western direction without any special adventures. The gloomy sky was covered with dark rain clouds, and the German planes did not appear. Already at the entrance to the town of Izyum, where the headquarters of the guards motorized rifle division, where Grisha was assigned, was located, the sun came out. The locomotive hummed uneasily. The soldiers poured out of the wagons, and the rain-soaked black field was covered with gray overcoats. But Grisha continued to stand, pressed against the wall of the car. The Chekist should not panic, although his knees trembled treacherously. The Messerschmites, after dropping a series of fragmentation bombs and twice passing machine-gun fire along the echelon, flew away. Several motionless bodies in gray overcoats remained on the black, soggy ground.

The next day after Grisha's presentation, on the appointment of the head of the special department of the division, the department's employees lined up in the basement of the burned-out school. The head of the department, no longer a young, undersized Major Shamrov, went up to Grisha, pulled him by the collar of a brand new tunic and said, drawing out his words: Well, newcomer, what are you going to show to front-line soldiers?

The major walked several times along the formation and began to outline the operational situation and special assignments for the operatives. From his confused speech one could understand that the division, after a heroic offensive, was on the defensive and preparing for a new offensive. There arrive many young inexperienced fighters. There is evidence that the fascists are sending their agents from amount the traitors who have surrendered to the enemy into the captivity. They need to be hunted down and destroyed immediately!

The next day, Grisha handed over his flaunting overcoat, commander's tunic and brand new genuine leather boots, which he received after graduating from college, to the supply room of the commandant's platoon. In return, he was given an overcoat with a charred skirt, empty gray loops of a private, and a tunic covered with suspicious stains. Instead of a boot, there are gray rotations and worn boots that smell unpleasantly of strangers' sweat. Now he is an ordinary marching company, who, due to the bombing, lagged behind his unit.

The city of Izyum, besieged on the banks of the Northern Donets River, was half destroyed by German bombs. After a snowy winter, spring floods hall the streets of the city. Endless cycles around turned into a solid swamp. In the sticky Ukrainian black soil, even horse-drawn carts got stuck tightly, not to mention commercial military equipment. Spring slush suspended the battle activities. Two warring armies froze against each other.

The division that Grisha got into was formed in the Far East and took part in battles with the Japanese back in 1937. In November 1941, when a mortal threat loomed over Moscow, it was transferred to the defense of Moscow. The division commander, Colonel Bogdanov, received the rank of major general for participating in the defeat of the Germans near Moscow. Then the division was transferred to the South-West direction. During the winter offensive in bloody battles, the division lost most of its personnel and now, increasing in defense, was replenished at the expense of marching companies. These marching companies, formed in the Kazakh steppes from Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, were sent there during the increase in dispossession of the thirties. In this regard, special attention was required to the morale of the department. At the crossing there was a uniform pandemonium. The bridges that the German bombers did not have time to destroy were washed away by the flood. The crossing towards thousands of people and cars was used by numerous ferries. Ferries were constantly bombed, and they got stuck among the flooded rivers. Reinforcement soldiers, who were constantly visiting from reserve regiments, enjoyed the long hours of waiting for the crossing. Hungry and frozen soldiers find themselves warm and, despite the danger of bombing, lit fires in the forest initiative. The soldiers also had nothing to eat. The miserable dry ration that they were given in the reserve regiment, they had eaten long ago. They have not yet reached the front, where they were supposed to give out food and weapons. Not far from the crossing, the soldiers found a collective farm field with unharvested potatoes. They roasted half-rotted potatoes on fires and ate them.

Grisha walked around the encampment buzzing with angry obscenities several times, trying to notice the most sociable soldiers. Around one of the fires was especially crowded. The soldiers were talking lively. From the side of the crossing, from time to time, heart-rending cries and obscenities from platoon and company commanders could be heard. They demand their soldiers to cross. Their places around the fires were taken by others from the newly arrived marching companies. Only two soldiers, one with a red beard, and the other with a wheat forelock peeking out from under his earflaps, stayed by the fire. They struck up conversations with friends as they approached the marchers.

Grisha, having settled down not far behind a bush, pretended to doze off. He, hiding behind his overcoat, was closely watching to this soldier. Grisha saw some paper in the redhead's hands. He showed this piece of paper to the soldiers sitting by the fire. Suddenly, the suspicious soldiers fled. Grisha discovered them already at another soldier's fire, at the other end of the forest.

Grisha immediately came up with a plan. He quickly dug up with his hands a few mud-covered potatoes, from their coats, and went up to the fire. He spoke in a plaintive voice in Ukrainian: Let me bake these potatoes, lads. Haven't eaten for two days!

- Sit down, poor fellow! - said the red-bearded man and turned to the soldiers sitting by the fire: Look, lads, what the Jewish Bolsheviks are doing! They send you to death and don’t give you food!

He carefully looked at Grisha's mud-stained face, at his burnt overcoat and torn boots, and asked: And you, poor fellow, can you read? Grisha looked frightened at the redhead: I studied somehow, we had five classes in the village ...

- So, you are literate, - the redhead interrupted him - Here, read this paper to people. Today I accidentally found on the road. He handed