Yakich - The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine

The commander confessed that his men did prefer their earth apples skinned. The next day the young woman with one blue eye and one brown and her elderly mother received permits allowing them to work in the kitchen. The boy whod been separated from his sister hid in a sack of potatoes. He told himself: I am a potato, I am a potato. Potatoes have eyes but no ears. I mustnt move, potatoes dont move.

If the Germans come, dont make a sound, potatoes dont speak. But I must breathe on behalf of the potatoes. And if I get hungry, I must eat the hardest one. The ex-mistress of the SS guard was assigned to the Kartoffel Haufen : the heaps of rancid potato discards. She had to sort them to see if anything could be saved. Standing there in winter in the wet potato heap, the ex-mistress of the SS guard would freeze to the ground in her dress.

She tried her best to find at least five potatoes a day; for the Nazis had invented this job and the ex-mistress of the SS guard had to show them she was still valuable. One morning the young woman with one blue eye and one brown found the boy whod been separated from his sister hiding in the sacks of potatoes. She let out a cry. He was alive but there was nothing for her to do but send the boy whod been separated from his sister out to the potato heap. When the ex-mistress of the SS guard found the boy whod been separated from his sister behind the mound of potato peelings, she wanted to turn him in, knowing that the Nazis would shoot them both. He stuck out his hands and offered a cache of beet peelings hed discovered in the pile.

The ex-mistress of the SS guard took the beet peelings and gave them to the young woman with one blue eye and one brown, who gave them to her elderly mother, who rubbed them on her cheeks and arms so that she would appear healthy. In return, each day the ex-mistress of the SS guard and the boy whod been separated from his sister received two small, but fresh, handfuls of potato peelings from which they survived the war. All these years later, I cannot think of a more beautiful or true story. But the trouble is that it is principally a story, and in telling it I have made both you and me ugly. The actual lives that are lived in atrocious times and distant places can never be toldout of fear that they will be either too beautiful or too true.