Shouts were coming from the wood. “What is it?” Nagel asked.—“I don’t know, Untersturmführer,” a noncom said, “I’ll go see.” He went into the wood. Some Jews were shuffling back and forth, dragging their feet, their eyes fixed on the ground, in the sullen silence of dull men waiting for death. A teenager, crouching on his heels, was humming a nursery rhyme and looking at me with curiosity; he put two fingers to his lips; I gave him a cigarette and some matches: he thanked me with a smile. The noncom reappeared at the entrance to the woods and called out: “They found a mass grave, Untersturmführer.”—“What? A mass grave?” Nagel headed toward the wood and I followed him. Under the trees, the Hauptscharführer was slapping one of the Jews, shouting: “You knew, you bastard! Why didn’t you tell us?”—“What’s going on?” Nagel asked. The Hauptscharführer stopped slapping the Jew and answered: “Look, Untersturmführer. We’ve discovered a Bolshevik grave.” I approached the trench dug by the Jews; at the bottom, you could make out moldy, shriveled, almost mummified bodies. “They must have been shot in the winter,” I observed. “That’s why they haven’t decomposed.” A soldier in the bottom of the trench stood up. “It looks like they were killed with a bullet in the neck, Untersturmführer. NKVD work for sure.” Nagel summoned the Dolmetscher: “Ask him what happened.” The interpreter translated as the Jew spoke. “He says the Bolsheviks arrested a lot of men in the village. But he says they didn’t know that they were buried here.”—“These scum didn’t know!” the Hauptscharführer exploded. “They killed them themselves, you mean!”—“Hauptscharführer, calm down. Have this grave filled in again and go dig somewhere else. But mark the place, in case we have to come back for an investigation.” We returned to the cordon; the trucks were arriving with the remaining Jews. Twenty minutes later the Hauptscharführer, beet red, joined us. “We’ve come across more bodies, Untersturmführer. It’s not possible, they’ve filled the forest.” Nagel called a little meeting. “There aren’t many clearings in this wood,” a noncom suggested, “that’s why we’re digging in the same places as they did.” While they talked, I gradually noticed long splinters of very fine wood stuck in my fingers, right under the nails; feeling around, I discovered that they went down to the knuckle, just beneath the skin. This was strange. How had they gotten there? I hadn’t felt anything. I began to pull them out delicately, one by one, trying to avoid drawing blood. Fortunately they slipped out easily enough. Nagel seemed to have reached a decision: “There’s another part of the wood, over there, it’s lower down. We’ll go try on that side.”—“I’ll wait for you here,” I said. “Fine, Obersturmführer. I’ll send someone to get you.” Absorbed, I flexed my fingers several times: everything seemed in order. I walked away from the cordon along a gentle incline, through tall weeds and flowers, already almost dry. Farther down began a wheat field, guarded by a crow crucified by its feet, its wings spread out. I lay down in the grass and looked at the sky; my soul spread calm and flat over the field, gently lazing out to the rim of the woods. I closed my eyes.

Popp came to find me. “They’re almost ready, Obersturmführer.” The cordon with the Jews had moved to the lower part of the wood. The condemned men were waiting under the trees, in little groups; some were leaning on the tree trunks. Farther on, in the woods, Nagel was waiting with the Ukrainians. Some Jews at the bottom of a trench several yards long were still throwing shovelfuls of mud over the embankment. I leaned over: water filled the ditch; the Jews were digging with muddy water up to their knees. “That’s not a trench, that’s a swimming pool,” I remarked rather dryly to Nagel. He didn’t take the remark too kindly: “What do you want me to do, Obersturmführer? We’ve hit an aquifer, and it’s rising as they dig. We’re too close to the river. But I’m not going to spend all day having holes dug in this forest.” He turned to the Hauptscharführer. “Fine, that’s enough. Tell them to get out.” He was livid. “Your shooters are ready?” he asked. I understood that they were going to have the Ukrainians shoot. “Yes, Untersturmführer,” the Hauptscharführer replied. He turned to the Dolmetscher and explained the procedure. The Dolmetscher translated for the Ukrainians. Twenty of them came to stand in a line in front of the trench; five others took the Jews who had dug, and who were covered in mud, and made them kneel along the edge, their backs to the shooters. On an order from the Hauptscharführer, the Askaris shouldered their rifles and aimed at the Jews’ necks. But the count wasn’t right; there were supposed to be two shooters per Jew, but they had taken fifteen Jews to dig. The Hauptscharführer recounted, then ordered the Ukrainians to lower their rifles and had five of the Jews rise again and go wait on the side. Several of them were reciting something in a low voice, prayers no doubt, but aside from that they weren’t saying anything. “We should add some more Askaris,” suggested another noncom. “It would go faster.” A little discussion followed; there were only twenty-five Ukrainians in all; the noncom suggested adding five Orpos; the Hauptscharführer argued that they couldn’t deplete the cordon. Nagel, exasperated, made a decision: “Continue as is.” The Hauptscharführer barked an order and the Askaris raised their rifles. Nagel advanced a step. “At my command…” His voice quivered; he was making an effort to master it. “Fire!” The burst of shots crackled and I saw what looked like a red splatter, masked by the smoke of the rifles. Most of the men killed flew forward, face down in the water; two of them still lay there, huddled at the edge of the ditch. “Clean that up and bring the next ones,” Nagel ordered. Some Ukrainians took the two dead Jews by the arms and feet and threw them into the ditch; they landed with a loud splash of water, the blood streamed from their smashed heads and spurted onto the Ukrainians’ boots and green uniforms. Two men came forward with shovels and started cleaning the edge of the ditch, throwing clumps of bloody earth and whitish fragments of brain in to join the dead men. I went to look: the corpses were floating in the muddy water, some on their stomach, others on their backs with noses and beards sticking out of the water; blood was spreading out from their heads on the surface, like a fine layer of oil, but bright red; their white shirts were red too and little red trickles were flowing on their skin and in the hairs of their beards. They brought the second group, the five who had dug and five others from the edge of the wood, and set them on their knees facing the ditch, the floating bodies of their neighbors; one of them turned around to face the shooters, his head raised, and watched them in silence. I thought about these Ukrainians: How had they gotten to this point? Most of them had fought against the Poles, and then against the Soviets, they must have dreamed of a better future, for themselves and for their children, and now they found themselves in a forest, wearing a strange uniform and killing people who had done nothing to them, without any reason they could understand. What could they be thinking about all this? Still, when they were given the order, they shot, they pushed the bodies into the ditch and brought other ones, they didn’t protest. What would they think of all this later on? Once again, they had fired. Now we could hear moans coming from the ditch. “Oh hell, they’re not all dead,” the Hauptscharführer muttered.—“Well, finish them off,” Nagel shouted. On an order from the Hauptscharführer, two Askaris came forward and fired again into the ditch. The groans continued. They fired a third time. Next to them others were cleaning up the edge. Once again, a bit farther, ten more Jews were being brought up. I noticed Popp: he had taken a fistful of earth from the large pile next to the ditch and was contemplating it, kneading it between his fingers, smelling it, even taking a little in his mouth. “What is it, Popp?” He approached me: “Look at this earth, Obersturmführer. It’s good earth. A man could do worse than live here.” The Jews were kneeling down. “Throw that away, Popp,” I said to him.—“They told us that afterward we could come settle here, build farms. It’s a good region, that’s all I’m saying.”—“Be quiet, Popp.” The Askaris had fired another salvo. Once again, piercing shouts rose up from the ditch, moans. “Please, dear Germans! Please!” The Hauptscharführer ordered them finished off, but the shouts didn’t stop, we could hear men struggling in the water, Nagel was yelling too: “They shoot like lame idiots, your men! Make them go down in the hole.”—“But, Untersturmführer…”—“Make them go down!” The Hauptscharführer had the order translated. The Ukrainians started talking agitatedly. “What are they saying?” Nagel asked. “They don’t want to go in, Untersturmführer,” the Dolmetscher explained. “They say there’s no point, they can shoot from the edge.” Nagel was red. “Make them go down!” The Hauptscharführer seized one by the arm and pulled him over to the ditch; the Ukrainian resisted. Everyone was shouting now, in Ukrainian and German. A little farther on, the next group of Jews was waiting. Enraged, the chosen Askari threw his rifle on the ground and jumped into the ditch, slipped, floundered among the corpses and the dying. His comrade went down after him, holding on to the edge, and helped him get up. The Ukrainian swore and spat, covered in mud and blood. The Hauptscharführer held out his rifle. On the left we heard several gunshots, shouts; the men from the cordon were shooting into the woods: one of the Jews had taken advantage of the commotion to cut and run. “Did you get him?” Nagel called.—“I don’t know, Untersturmführer,” one of the policemen replied from a distance.—“Well then go look!” Two other Jews suddenly dashed to the other side and the Orpos started shooting: one of them fell immediately, the other vanished into the woods. Nagel had taken out his pistol and was waving it around, shouting contradictory orders. In the ditch, the Askari was trying to press his rifle against the forehead of a wounded Jew, but he was rolling in the water, his head kept disappearing beneath the surface. The Ukrainian finally fired blind, the shot took the Jew’s jaw away but still didn’t kill him, he was struggling, catching on to the Ukrainian’s legs. “Nagel,” I said.—“What?” His face was haggard, the pistol hung from his arm.—“I’m going to go wait in the car.” In the wood, we could hear gunshots, the Orpos were shooting at the fugitives; I glanced fleetingly at my fingers, to make sure I had taken out all the splinters. Near the ditch, one of the Jews started weeping.