THE SOUR VALLEY
By Mark Hardcastle
In the north-west corner of the Lublin district in Poland lies a little valley near the picturesque
village of Łuków. Originally named The Sweet Briar Valley for the fragrant bushes that once
dotted the peaceful landscape, it had been a favorite destination for generations of local Jewish
families—until November 1942, when something more sinister came to that quiet place: the men
of Reserve Police Battalion 101.
In October of that year, under SS leadership, the men of Battalion 101 began taking part in
“Operation Harvest Festival.” These mostly middle-aged reservists roamed the countryside
searching for wayward Jews under the standing Schiessbefehl—the shoot-to-kill order that gave
them carte blanche to “solve” the Jewish problem as they saw fit. Without remorse, they went
from house to house and farm to farm, hunting down men, women, and children who had not
already been sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka or executed during previous actions in the
district.
By November, Battalion 101 had descended upon the small village of Łuków, where they
discovered a pocket of two hundred Jews. They were loaded into requisitioned carts and
transported west of town, down a narrow road that led straight into Sweet Briar Valley. What
happened there that day ended the valley’s gentle name forever. From then on, the locals knew it
only as The Sour Valley, and no one with memory of the events dared travel there again.
1954
Hans and Irma Richter, along with their children—Lita, Oskar, Ernst, and little Ilsa—were
driving through the Lublin district on holiday while visiting Irma’s mother in Komarowka. Irma
was trying to lead them all in a chorus of an old German folk tune, but Hans, who had been
singing baritone, had drifted into silence. His attention was fixed on the bleak Polish countryside,
and on a memory long since buried.
Noticing his distance, Irma touched his arm.
“The children are hungry, darling. Couldn’t we please pull over?”
“Yes, of course, Liebschen,” he replied, searching for a turnout.
Irma leaned in and kissed his ear, running her fingers through his short blond hair.
“You looked a million miles away just now,” she said.
“Not quite that far, my dear,” Hans murmured as he spotted a meadow.
He eased the car across a shallow ditch and parked in the short weeds along the roadside. The
older children, cramped for hours in the back seat, exploded out of the car with pent-up energy,
startling the youngest Richter into a wail. Irma rescued Ilsa and set her on a blanket already
spread across the grass. From the trunk she retrieved the picnic basket and the wind-up
gramophone Hans had given her for their anniversary.
2.
Hans stepped out of the car slowly, staring at the surrounding timber. Removing his gloves, he
placed them absently on the dashboard. Ever since they had passed the sign for Łuków,
something inside him had begun to stir—a memory he couldn’t quite place, but couldn’t ignore.
The gramophone began to echo “Du und ich im Mondenschein” across the meadow and into
the darkened forest. Hans drifted into the aspens, scanning the trees and the faint remains of a
path winding through them.
It's the same place, he thought. It has to be.
A broken wagon hub lay rusting in the tall grass.
“The wagon,” he whispered. “One of them broke down from the weight.”
Irma’s voice floated through the music, calling everyone to lunch, dragging Hans reluctantly
back from the edge of remembrance.
After a meal of bread and Cambozola cheese, the children ran off again. Ilsa had fallen asleep on
the blanket. Hans brushed breadcrumbs from his tweed waistcoat.
“I’ll be back in a moment, Irma. It’s such a magnificent day—I want to stretch my legs before we
continue.”
“Of course, darling. Take your time.”
But he was already gone, crossing the meadow and entering the trees. The laughter of his
children followed him only so far before the forest swallowed the sound.
Hans followed the overgrown path to an unnaturally flat-bottomed clearing. The sight made him
chuckle softly, shaking his head in disbelief.
It was all still there.
He walked the perimeter of the valley, recalling where the gramophone had once stood, where
tables laden with sausages, chicken, potatoes and butter, and endless vodka had been set out by
Polish locals. He remembered where his battalion had lined up, waiting for the Jews to
disembark and surrender their belongings.
At the northern edge, he turned, adjusting his stance until he stood precisely where he had stood
twelve years earlier.
The valley floor, now lush with grasses and wildflowers, hid the irregular depressions of mass
graves beneath a thin layer of soil. To his left lay the chute—the natural corridor funneling
victims up the hill and into the line of fire. Grass covered it now, but once it had been mud
churned by hundreds of final steps.
He closed his eyes and thought he could hear them again, murmuring in terror. Their passivity
still angered him.
Richter snapped to attention.
“Ready!”
3.
He lifted his right arm.
“Aim!”
He brought it down in a sharp arc.
“Fire!”
1942
In the memory, SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Richter watched bodies topple into the pit. More
victims emerged from the chute: men, women, children. Again he raised his arm.
“Ready! … Aim! … Fire!”
A grotesque procession that lasted all day.
1954
Back in the present, Hans breathed deeply. He imagined he still smelled gunpowder. He began to
laugh—hard—filling the silent valley with mirth that did not belong there.
“What on earth are you laughing about?” Irma’s voice cut through the fog of his thoughts.
He spun and saw her—and the children—walking down the chute.
At the hotel in Łuków, Irma tried to reach him.
“If something has upset you, Hans, I want to know about it.”
“Nothing at all has upset me,” he snapped. “And I resent the idea.”
He grabbed his coat and stormed out.
How dare she think he could be upset by the past? Those were orders. He hadn’t chosen the duty.
And the Jews were enemies of the Reich—if they weren’t partisans, they helped them.
He found a tavern and sat in a booth by the window. The barmaid brought vodka—then
eventually the whole bottle. He drank furiously, cursing Irma and himself.
Through the rain-streaked window, he watched the villagers pass.
“Go on with your drab little lives,” he muttered. “Back to your hovels. You pass a man of
greatness. I could have snuffed you all with a flick of my arm.”
He raised the bottle to himself in a silent salute.
Outside, a hunched figure stood in the alley—dark coat, hat low. A truck passed, and the
headlights illuminated his face.
A bearded elder. With braids.
4.
A Jew.
A Jew Hans knew should be dead.
“It can’t be!” Hans lurched to his feet. “It simply cannot be!”
He fled the tavern and ran toward the valley as the sun bled across the sky. At the pit’s western
edge he dropped to his knees, clawing at the grass until he unearthed a broken set of porcelain
dentures.
He remembered the old man: pleading for his people, pawing at Richter’s tunic, ripping a button
free. Richter backhanding him. The dentures flying. The Luger shot to the base of the skull.
“How dare he!”
Fueled by mania, Richter dug deeper. His nails split. The soil grew foul. At last, his fingers
struck something hollow. He lifted it free—a scalp held together by thin remnants of skin, dark
hair still clinging to it.
Hair like his daughter Ilsa’s.
He recoiled, then collapsed into sobs—sounds that echoed like those he had once ignored.
When he composed himself enough to return the remains to the earth, a hiss rose from the hole:
“Yemachhh-shemooo.”
Hans scrambled back as silent figures emerged through the fog—sunken-eyed, star-badged,
advancing. He tried to run, but hands erupted through the ground, clawing at him. He tore free,
staggering up the slope, only to find more waiting at the rim of the pit—judges of the dead.
He pushed through them, fleeing into the woods. But the trees held more bodies—more faces—
more of the forgotten dead. They closed around him.
Hans Richter vanished into the dark.
he Next Morning
Irma and the children, joined by a constable, searched the valley. They found Hans tangled in the
thorny briars near the woods. His face was frozen in a silent scream.
In his hand was the tattered remnant of a Star of David.
THE END
* Yemach shemo — A Jewish curse wishing a wicked person be wiped off the face of the world;
or, “May his name be obliterated.”
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