Maya Isaakovna Levina was born on December 20, 1935, in Minsk, into a large family: grandfather Borukh, grandmother Dora, father Isaac, mother Sima, and five children – Iosif (born in 1929), Valya (born in 1932), Maya, Sarra (born in 1938), and Lyuba (born in 1940). The Levins lived on 2nd Severny Lane, in a cozy wooden house with a small front garden.
The head of the family was grandfather Borukh, one of the finest cabinetmakers in the city. His workshop was located right in the yard, and the children would watch breathlessly as elegant furniture emerged from under his skilled hands. Father Isaac worked as a drayman, transporting all kinds of goods. He owned a dark-colored horse whom the children adored.
Their mother, Sima Iosifovna, was the true keeper of the home. As Maya later recalled, she never lost her composure. Her mother always knew the right words – to praise someone, encourage them, or sometimes gently scold them if they deserved it. Pain and hurt seemed to disappear beneath her tender touch. Maya watched in fascination as every morning her mother combed her long dark hair, which fell below her waist. “As she ran the comb through it, my mother would lift her head slightly upward – her face was so beautiful: refined, well-proportioned features and gentle eyes.”
They lived comfortably and never went hungry. Their table was always filled with vegetables from their own garden – tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, onions, and garlic. Maya especially loved her mother’s draniki: only she could make them so golden, delicate, and crisp.
On Shabbat, the Levins would gather around the common table. Grandfather would recite the prayer, giving the meal a special sense of solemnity. On Sundays, the parents went to the market and always brought back treats – candies, cookies, toys. New Year’s was an especially joyful occasion: their father would bring home a fir tree, and the whole family decorated it together.
The children were close-knit, and the older ones looked after the younger ones. There were many books in the house – usually bought by their father – and Iosif loved reading more than anyone else. Maya envied her brother (a fifth-grader was practically an adult!) and Valya, who had already started school. Their mother would reassure her: soon it would be Maya’s turn to study as well. In the summer, the children herded goats in the meadow beyond the gardens and played with their shepherd dog, Avva. …A happy, cloudless time. Back then, in childhood, it seemed as though it would never end.
But one Sunday, everything changed. The adults suddenly began discussing something anxiously, and the word “war” was heard – until then unfamiliar and not yet truly frightening. The children bombarded Iosif with questions – he understood everything, after all – but their older brother only frowned and stayed silent. Five-year-old Maya, waving a toy hammer, declared: “When the German comes, I’ll hit him right on the head!..” The adults smiled, but anxiety still showed in their eyes.
Neighbors began hurriedly leaving their homes and going somewhere far away. The Levins prepared to leave as well. Their father loaded the family onto a cart, and they joined the stream of refugees moving eastward along the Mogilev highway. But the road quickly turned into hell: German planes circled overhead, bombs exploded around them. They moved slowly, while little one-year-old Lyubochka cried in the exhausted mother’s arms. Realizing that they would not be able to get far, the Levins returned to Minsk.
Their native city was unrecognizable: buildings mutilated by explosions were shrouded in black smoke, and panic reigned everywhere. Looting spread rapidly – warehouses and shops were being ransacked. The Levins’ neighbors spoke about what was happening at the Kommunarka confectionery factory. Huge vats of molasses stood there – people scooped it out with buckets, and some fell into the enormous containers and drowned. And soon afterward, the Germans entered the city…
About three weeks of relatively calm life passed – as calm as life under occupation could possibly be. Once again, the house was filled with agitation. Exchanging worried glances and sighing quietly, the adults packed their belongings into a large cloth and tied it into a bundle. Father and Iosif dismantled the huge iron bed… The Levins were moving into the ghetto.
They were forced to exchange their familiar, beloved home for a small wooden building on Sukhaya Street. There, where the entire Levin family crowded into a single room while fellow sufferers lived in the neighboring ones, a new and terrifying countdown began. Onto their outer clothing, on both chest and back, their mother sewed yellow patches – the identifying marks imposed on Jews. Food was catastrophically scarce. Soon the family’s supplies of flour and salt ran out, and they were forced to survive on potato peels.
Father and grandfather worked at a sawmill, while Iosif worked as a stoker: the twelve-year-old boy spent entire days unloading coal. They returned home utterly exhausted and silent. Their mother heated water so the men could wash at least a little, and she cleaned their clothes and underwear.
Columns of people often passed beneath the windows along the street. Armed guards drove them toward the Jewish cemetery. Later, black covered vans began appearing – “gas vans.” Iosif warned the younger children: if you see them, hide immediately! But did they ever listen to him? Whenever another column or vehicle appeared, the children would run through the courtyards to the cemetery gates and, hiding behind the caretaker’s hut, watch what was happening. And the sight was horrifying: people were lined up along pits and shot. The Germans and policemen threw white powder – lime – into the pits and then covered the bodies with earth. The executioners would leave, and then the children crept closer to the pits – in places, the ground was still moving…
A child’s psyche adapts quickly even to the most terrible things – perhaps that is why they were not afraid of the sight of death. They never spoke at home about what they had seen, fearing punishment. And yet they were terrified of armed men: at the mere sight of them, they scattered at once. They understood that whenever such men appeared in the ghetto, it meant disaster – executions, pogroms, raids.
Later, while reading literature about the Holocaust in Belarus, Maya learned about the six major pogroms in Minsk: November 7 and 20, 1941; March 2 and 31, and July 28, 1942; and October 21, 1943 – atrocities that claimed the lives of around one hundred thousand Jews. But at the time, it seemed to her that the entire two years and more of the ghetto’s existence had been one endless monstrous pogrom.
On November 7, 1941, during the first major pogrom, her father was killed. After that, her mother seemed suddenly bent beneath the weight of grief, more and more often wiping tears from her face.
One of the most important words for the prisoners of the ghetto was “malina.” It had nothing to do with raspberries; it meant a hiding place. “Malinas” were built in almost every house. The Levins had one too: grandfather and father had dug out a shelter beneath the floorboards. The “malina” had two entrances – one through a wardrobe and another through an opening beneath the stove. The Levins and their neighbors hid there together. Beneath the floor it was cramped, dark, and terrifying. Maya tried to stay close to her mother, who held little Lyubochka in her arms. The older children understood: not a sound in the malina. But how could that be explained to a one-year-old child?
…One day, cries rang out in the street: “Pogrom! Pogrom!” Everyone rushed into the “malina” and fell silent. From outside came the blood-chilling screams of the doomed, the orders and shouts of policemen, gunshots, the heavy stomp of iron-shod boots. Suddenly, footsteps sounded directly above them. Fearing that Lyubochka might cry out, their mother pressed the child’s head tightly against her chest. The thick silence seemed almost tangible…
Soon it was over. After waiting for some time, people began emerging from the shelter one by one. Their mother came out carrying Lyubochka. Sima bent anxiously over the little girl – but she was silent… Maya would remember her mother’s scream forever: it held so much pain and despair. Pressed tightly against her mother, Lyuba had suffocated in the “malina.”
Their mother did not cry. Grandfather and Iosif dug a small grave at the Jewish cemetery and raised a little mound of earth above it. After that, six remained in the family: grandfather, mother, Iosif, Valya, Sarrochka, and Maya.
But the Levins’ suffering did not end there. Maya would never forget that sunny spring day in 1942. Their mother was preparing food while the children sat by the stove playing with Sarrochka. Suddenly, the door flew open and policemen entered the room. They ordered their mother to get dressed and come with them. Over her dress she put on a cardigan and tightened her hair more firmly beneath her scarf. The policemen hurried her along. She took Maya by the hand so they could go together, but Iosif pulled his sister away. Their mother picked up Sarra in her arms and walked out of the house.
Where had they taken their mother? Why? For how long? These questions whirled through the little girl’s mind. She clung to Iosif and burst into bitter tears, as if already sensing that her mother would never return…
Several days later, Iosif came back from work and said that their mother had been hanged. Maya did not immediately grasp his words. But her brother took her by the hand, and together they walked to the square near the Judenrat building – the organ of Jewish “self-government” created on German orders. In the small park, about ten people hung from the gallows. At first Maya did not recognize her mother among them. Her long dark hair fluttered in the wind, her head thrown back. Sarra was not beside her mother – they never saw their sister again…
In the summer of 1942, grandfather followed their mother in death: during another pogrom, he failed to reach the “malina” in time and was taken away. Maya remained alone with Iosif. By then, thanks to the help of acquaintances, Valya had been placed in an orphanage in the Russian part of the city.
Thirteen-year-old Iosif, mature and courageous far beyond his years, became involved in the underground resistance and worked as a guide for the partisans. Risking his life, he led people out of the ghetto to the partisan detachments operating in the Pukhovichy district.
In October 1943, it became Maya’s turn, along with several dozen other children, to escape from the ghetto. Iosif waited for a gloomy, foggy day – perfect weather for an escape. To travel all together in one crowd would have been madness; it would immediately have drawn attention. Iosif divided the children into pairs, each small group moving behind the next within sight of one another. With extreme caution, frightened by every shadow and every sudden sound, they walked for three days – hungry and freezing. Seven-year-old Maya was the youngest of them all and quickly lost her strength. The boys took turns carrying her on their backs. Finally, on the fourth day, half-dead from exhaustion, they reached their place of salvation – the village of Porechye in the Pukhovichy district, where the partisans were based.
They arrived at the village swollen from hunger, covered in lice, scabs, and sores. How had these starving, disease-ridden children managed to walk a hundred kilometers? Where had they found the strength? God alone knows.
The escapees were brought into a large peasant house and seated around a table. Like hungry wolf cubs, they watched every movement of Aunt Galya, who had been entrusted with feeding them. She poured baked potatoes onto the table. My God, how they grabbed at them – racing one another for every piece! Whenever a potato fell, dozens of children’s hands instantly reached for it. Then a wooden trough appeared on the table, filled with flour mixed into hot water. They greedily swallowed the thin gruel – probably the most delicious food they had ever tasted…
The partisan command now faced a difficult question: what should be done with the children? Many liked the idea of organizing a partisan orphanage, but it proved impossible to carry out: the detachment’s positions were under constant attack from punitive forces. So the commanders appealed to the villagers for help and suggested that the children be taken in by local families.
The children were lined up in pairs, and a partisan led them down the long village street. Women came out from the yards and took children from the line – some one child, some two, and others even three. In this way, they found new relatives, new loved ones, a new home. The children were bewildered; many did not understand what was happening. But all of them sensed that these people treated them with compassion and that they were no longer in danger.
Almost at the very end of the street, Maya noticed a young woman standing by a gate. She pressed a handkerchief to her face and looked at the girl. The woman’s name was Nastya. She was the one who took Maya in – wrapping an arm around her shoulders and leading her into the house. It was warm and cozy there. Nastya sat the girl down at the table. For the first time in a very long while, Maya ate from her own bowl – and still could not satisfy her hunger. Soon she became heavy with exhaustion and fullness. Nastya laid her on a bed: beneath her head was a pillow with a white pillowcase, and over her a blanket. The girl fell asleep immediately. She woke up with a start: where was she, where was Iosif? Nastya helped her sit up and handed her a mug of milk.
Later, Maya recalled how much effort Nastya had spent helping her return to a normal state: combing lice from her hair, treating the scabs on her skin, washing and cleaning her. Afterward, the girl could hardly recognize herself in the mirror: it was as though the prewar Maya Levina had returned – only far more serious and grown-up.
Still, Maya’s lively, infectious laughter, which had always been part of her nature, soon returned as well. She adapted quickly, though at first she was afraid to stray far from Nastya. Together with Nastya and her mother, the girl went into the forest to gather mushrooms and berries and collect medicinal herbs; with Nastya’s father, she went fishing. Things turned out fairly well for Iosif too – he had been taken in by a kind elderly couple.
Alas, peaceful life did not last long. The Germans suspected the villagers of Porechye of helping the partisans, and their failures at the front only deepened their cruelty, which they took out on civilians. Punitive raids were carried out against the village several times. Germans and policemen burned houses, drove away livestock, and seized people. The villagers hid in the forest, which could only be reached by crossing a vast swamp. During one of these “marathons” (as the raids were called – perhaps because survival depended largely on speed and endurance), Iosif and his foster parents failed to escape in time. The Germans captured them and took them away somewhere. That was how Maya lost her brother. Only Nastya remained…