Raisa Kogan watched as the group of men marched down the perpetually busy corridor of the Birobidzhan General Hospital. Patients and staff alike scrambled out of their way, the path clearing in front of them like the waters of the Red Sea parting before Moses.
The lead man was in his sixties and wore a military uniform. The shoulder straps identified him as a podpolkovnik, a lieutenant colonel. He squinted at the unfamiliar Yiddish characters that adorned the walls next to the signs in Russian as he sought his destination. The three men that followed him wore civilian clothes, but their demeanor, their buzz cuts, the very attitude they projected, marked them as surely as any uniform.
Groups like theirs were a common sight. They’d barge into homes, offices, and schools at all hours of day
