"Mrs. Pensky, how far away is Ozeryany from Mr. Feschuk's village of Orelets?"
"Ten or twenty kilometres away," she responded.
Mr. Vincent walked over to the long wooden table on his side of the courtroom and then he reached down and picked up a black and white photograph. He walked over to the witness stand and handed the photograph to Mrs. Pensky.
"Please take a look at the photograph," Mr. Vincent said. "This is a photo of Danylo Feschuk when he was nineteen years old. Do you recognize him?"
Mrs. Pensky took the photo in her hands and stared at it. She even raised her glasses and squinted at it again before handing it back. "No," she said. "I don't recognize this man."
"I have no more questions, your honour."
Mercifully, a break was called.
"I need some fresh air," said Kat to her mother as they stood up, stretching their legs.
"Why don't you take the subway home?" suggested Orysia. She was tired herself, but she could see that this was even harder on her daughter. This was why she hadn't wanted her to come in the first place. "You could start supper for me," Orysia continued.
There was nothing that Kat wanted to do more than to get out of the courthouse. She was still trying to sort out all that she had heard. However, she had a feeling that the worst was yet to come, and she had to hear it with her own ears.
"I can't go home right now," said Kat.
Orysia looked at her watch. "You've still got ten minutes before the hearing starts back up. Why don't you at least get some fresh air?
"That's a good idea."
Not wanting to wait for the elevator, she ran down all five flights of stairs. It felt wonderful to stretch her legs.
Kat breathed in a lungful of fresh cold air as she stepped outside the main entryway, then blinked a few times to get used to the natural light. A fine dusting of snow had fallen since the morning, making everything that much brighter and cleaner looking.
She walked down the street a bit, just for the feel of the wind on her cheeks, and as she did so, she looked at the jumble of buildings around her — new skyscrapers and old churches all on the same block. She tried to imagine what this street might have looked like five decades ago in the midst of World War II.
"He did it, you know."
The voice spoke so close to Kat's ear that she gasped. She swung around and came face to face with the protester. Seeing her up close gave Kat a shock. She had known that the woman was old, but with their faces just a few inches apart, Kat realized that it wasn't just age that had etched the lines on the woman's face. Unspeakable horror, untold grief. It was all there for the world to see.
"How do you know?" asked Kat.
"They were all like that," said the woman. "They are all war criminals."
"Do you mean to tell me that you think every single Ukrainian auxiliary policeman was a war criminal?" asked Kat.
"Every one," replied the woman emphatically. "You and your family should kneel down and pray. Pray for forgiveness until your knees bleed."
Kat was taken aback by the hate in the woman's voice. Kat could think of nothing to say. She turned from the woman and walked back to the courthouse.
The next witness was a rheumy-eyed man whose sparse grey hair was combed from one side over to the other in a vain attempt to hide the fact that he was almost entirely bald. This man spoke no English, and so two translators had been called in: one for the defendant and one for the plaintiff.
Mrs. Caine stood in front of the witness box. "Can you please state your name?"
The plaintiff's translator mumbled something to the man and the other translator nodded in agreement. The man answered.
Kat hardly needed a translator. The man was speaking Ukrainian.
"My name is Pavlo Abramovich," said the man. "I was born in 1924 and raised in the village of Orelets."
"Do you know this man sitting here?" Mrs. Caine asked, pointing to Danylo.
"Yes," he replied. "I will never forget that man."
"Why is that?" asked Mrs. Caine.
"That man helped the Germans. He was a collaborator."
"Did you witness him helping the Germans?"
"Yes, I did," said the witness, nodding emphatically. "I will never forget. It was in the summer of 1941. The Germans had gone through the village and rounded up all the Jews and the Communists. Mr. Feschuk was given the job of punishing us."
"What punishment did he give you?" asked Mrs. Caine.
"He pointed his pistol at us."
"Did he threaten to shoot you?"
"Not in so many words," replied the man. "We were very frightened. We thought he was going to kill us."
"What did he do to you?" asked Mrs. Caine.
"He pointed the pistol at us, ordered some of us to get down on the ground, and then he made us do push-ups."
Kat didn't think it was very nice of her grandfather to make people do push-ups, but for the life of her, she didn't see how this constituted a war crime. She heard rustling behind her, so she turned around. One of the men from her church had his arms crossed and a sour expression of disbelief on his face. Another man shook his head and tsk-tsked under his breath.
Mr. Vincent stood up.
"Were you a Communist during World War II?" asked Mr. Vincent.
Mr. Abramovich sat up straight in his chair. "Yes," he replied. "Even in the face of the Fascist invasion, I stayed true to my political beliefs."
"Mr. Abramovich," said Mr. Vincent. "When Mr. Feschuk made you do push-ups, was that the punishment you expected?"
The witness shook his head. "I was surprised that he didn't kill us," he said.
"No more questions," said Mr. Vincent.
Mrs. Caine then called her last witness of the day. Miss Lily Solonenko was a wheelchair-bound woman with closely cropped white hair and papery thin skin. She too spoke Ukrainian and still lived in the village of Orelets. Through the translators, she explained that she was a six-year-old girl in the summer of 1941.
"What do you remember about the defendant, Danylo Feschuk?" asked Mrs. Caine.
"He was my neighbour," said Miss Solonenko. "I remember the first day he wore the armband of the auxiliary police. It scared me, but he told me that I had nothing to fear from him."
"Did you witness him harming any of the villagers?" asked Mrs. Caine.
"Not the villagers," replied Miss Solonenko, "But he was one of the guards at the prisoner of war camp."
"Can you explain," asked Mrs. Caine.
"Yes," replied Miss Solonenko. "There was a barbed wire enclosure where the Germans kept Soviet prisoners of war. The conditions were very brutal. The men were not given food or water. They were basically herded into the enclosure and left to die."
"Can you tell me what you saw regarding Mr. Feschuk?" asked Mrs. Caine.
"Yes," said Miss Solonenko. "These men were Slavs just like us. There were even two boys in there who had relatives in our village. Germans were starving them to death. It was terrible. One night I looked out from my attic window, and I saw Mr.Feschuk standing with the German guards. I was so shocked. Even the other auxiliary police wouldn't stoop so low as to help guard the POW camp."
Mr. Vincent stood up to ask his questions. "Miss Solonenko, did anyone in the village try to feed the prisoners of war?"
"Yes," she replied. "But they weren't successful. My own mother once threw over a loaf of bread. A dozen poor starving men lunged for it at once, but instead of bread, they got a bullet in their head. The prisoners of war were not to be fed. Bread in a POW's mouth was punishable by death."
"Did any of the villagers try to release the POWs?" asked Mr. Vincent.
"How could they do that?" asked Miss Solonenko incredulously. "The Germans would have rounded up a dozen or more villagers and hanged them in retaliation."