For a long time I was afraid to get married. Afraid to have children. What if there’s war suddenly, and I leave for the front? What about the children? Now I like to read books about life after death. What’s there? Who will I meet? I want to meet mama, and I’m afraid of it. When I was young I wasn’t afraid, but now I’m old…
Yadviga Mikhailovna Savitskaya
UNDERGROUND FIGHTER
My first impression…I saw a German…As if I’d been hit, my whole body hurt, every cell—how is it they’re here? Hatred—it was stronger than fear for our near ones, our loved ones, and fear of our own death. Of course, we thought of our families, but we had no choice. The enemy had come with evil to our land…With fire and sword…
For instance, when it became known that they were going to arrest me, I left for the forest. To the partisans. I left, leaving at home my seventy-five-year-old mother, and alone at that. We agreed she would pretend to be blind, deaf, and they wouldn’t harm her. Obviously, that was how I comforted myself.
The day after I left, fascists burst into my house. Mama pretended she was blind and couldn’t hear, as we had agreed. They beat her badly, trying to extort from her where her daughter was. My mother was ill for a long time…
Alexandra Ivanovna Khramova
SECRETARY OF THE UNDERGROUND REGIONAL PARTY COMMITTEE OF ANTOPOL
I’ll stay this way till the end…The way we used to be then. Yes, naïve; yes, romantic. Till my hair turns gray…But—that’s me!
My friend Katya Simakova was a partisan liaison. She had two girls. Both girls were small—well, how old were they? Six or seven years old. She took those girls by the hands, went through the town and memorized what equipment stood where. A sentry would yell at her, and she would open her mouth, pretending to be simpleminded. She did it for several years…The mother sacrificed her daughters…
There was another woman, Zajarskaya. She had a daughter, Valeria; the girl was seven years old. We had to blow up the mess hall. We decided to plant a mine in the stove, but it had to be carried there. And the mother said her daughter would bring the mine. She put the mine in a basket and covered it with a couple of children’s outfits, a stuffed toy, two dozen eggs, and some butter. And so the little girl brought the mine to the mess hall. People say that maternal instinct is stronger than anything. No, ideas are stronger! And faith is stronger! I think…I’m even certain that if it weren’t for such a mama and such a girl, and they hadn’t carried that mine, we wouldn’t have been victorious. Yes, life—is a good thing. Excellent! But there are things that are dearer…
Paulina Kasperovich
PARTISAN
We had the Chimuk brothers in our detachment…They ran into an ambush in their village, took refuge in some barn, there was shooting, the barn was set on fire. They went on shooting till they ran out of cartridges…Then they came out, burned…They were driven around the villages in a cart to see who would recognize them as their own. So that people would give themselves away…
The entire village stood there. Their father and mother stood there, nobody made a sound. What a heart the mother must have had not to cry out. Not to call. She knew that if she began to weep, the whole village would be burned down. She wouldn’t be killed alone. Everybody would be killed. For one German killed they used to burn an entire village. She knew…There exist awards for everything, but no award, not even the highest Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union is enough for that mother…For her silence…
Valentina Mikhailovna Ilkevich
PARTISAN LIAISON
I came to the partisans together with my mama…She did laundry for everyone and cooked. If she had to, she also stood watch. One day I left on a mission, and my mother was told I had been hanged. When I returned a few days later and my mother saw me, she became paralyzed; for several hours she couldn’t speak. All of that had to be lived through…
We picked up a woman on the road. She was unconscious. She couldn’t walk, she crawled and thought she was already dead. She felt blood streaming over her, but decided that she felt it in the other world, not in this one. When we shook her, and she regained some consciousness, we heard…She told us how they had been shot; she had been led out to be shot, she and her five children. As they were being led to the barn, the children were killed. They shot them and had fun doing it…Only one remained, a nursing baby boy. A fascist pointed at him: “Toss him up, I’m going to shoot him.” The mother threw the child so as to kill him herself…Her own child…So the German wouldn’t have time to shoot…She said she didn’t want to live, that she couldn’t live in this world after that, only in the other one…She didn’t want to…
I didn’t want to kill, I wasn’t born to kill. I wanted to be a teacher. But I saw how they burned a village…I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t weep loudly: we were on a scouting mission and came close to that village. I could only bite my hands; I still have the scars; I bit them till they bled. Till the raw flesh showed. I remember how the people screamed…The cows screamed…The chickens screamed…It seemed to me they were all screaming with human voices. All of them alive. Burning and screaming…
This isn’t me speaking, it’s my grief speaking…
Valentina Pavlovna Kozhemyakina
PARTISAN
We knew…Everybody knew we had to win…
Later on people thought my father had stayed on an assignment from the Party. Nobody left him with any assignment. We ourselves decided to fight. I don’t remember any panic in our family. There was great sorrow, yes. But no panic. We all believed that victory would be ours. On the first day the Germans entered our village, my father played “The Internationale” on his violin. He wanted to do something like that. Some sort of protest…
Two months went by, or three…Or…
There was a Jewish boy…A German leashed him to his bicycle, and the boy ran after him like a dog: “Schnell! Schnell!” He rode and laughed. A young German…Soon he grew tired of it, got off the bicycle, and gestured to the boy to kneel in front of him…On all fours…And creep like a dog…Leap…“Hundik! Hundik!” He threw a stick: fetch it! The boy stood up, ran, and brought the stick in his hands. The German got angry…Started beating him. Yelling at him. He showed him: leap on all fours and fetch it in your teeth. The boy fetched it in his teeth…
The German played with this boy for two hours. Then he leashed him to his bicycle again and they went back. The boy ran like a dog…Toward the ghetto…
And you ask why we began to fight? Why we learned to shoot…
Alexandra Nikiforovna Zakharova
PARTISAN COMMISSAR OF THE 225TH REGIMENT OF GOMEL PROVINCE
How could I forget…Wounded soldiers ate salt by the spoonful…A name is called, a soldier steps out of the ranks and collapses with his rifle from weakness. From hunger.
The people helped us. If they hadn’t helped us, the partisan movement couldn’t have existed. The people fought together with us. At times with tears, but still they gave: “Dear children, let’s grieve together. Wait for victory.”
They’d bring out the last tiny potatoes; they’d give us bread. Prepare sacks to take to the forest. One would say: “I’ll give this much,” another “This much.” “How about you, Ivan?” “And you, Maria?” “I’ll give, like everybody else, but I have children…”
What are we without our people? An entire army in the forest, but without them we would have died. They sowed, plowed, took care of us and of the children, clothed us all through the war. They plowed at night, when there was no shooting. I remember how we came to a village where an old man was being buried. He had been killed at night. Sowing wheat. He gripped the grain so hard we couldn’t straighten his fingers. He was put in the ground with the grain…
We had weapons, we could defend ourselves. But they? For giving a loaf of bread to a partisan, they were shot. I stayed overnight and left, but if anyone gave away that I had spent the night in this cottage, they would all be shot. There was a woman there alone, without her husban
d, but with her three little children. She never drove us away when we came, but lit the stove and cleaned our clothes…She gave us all she had left, “Eat, lads.” And the potatoes in spring are as tiny as peas. We’re eating, and the children are sitting on the stove crying. Those were their last peas…
Vera Grigoryevna Sedova
UNDERGROUND FIGHTER
My first mission…They brought me leaflets. I sewed them into my pillow. Mama was making the bed and felt them. She ripped open the pillow and saw the leaflets. She began to cry. “You’ll destroy yourself and me.” But later she helped me.
The partisan liaisons came to us often. They’d unhitch the horses and come in. Do you think the neighbors didn’t see? They saw and guessed. I said it was from my brother, from the country. But everybody knew very well that I had no brother in the country. I’m grateful to them; I should bow down to my entire street. One single word would have been enough for us all to die, my entire family. All they needed was to point a finger at us. But no one…Not a single person…During the war I came to love the people so much that I’ll never be able to stop loving them…
After the liberation, I’d walk down the street and look around: I couldn’t help being afraid, I couldn’t calmly walk the streets. I counted the cars as I went, counted the trains at the station…It took me a while to get rid of that habit…
Vera Safronovna Davydova
PARTISAN
I’m already crying…The tears are pouring down…
We entered a house, there was nothing in it, just two bare, planed benches and a table. There wasn’t even a mug, I think, to drink water. The people had nothing left but an icon in the corner, and an embroidered cloth draped over it.
An old man and an old woman were sitting there. One of our partisans took off his boots, his footwraps were so torn that he couldn’t use them anymore. And the rain, and the dirt, and the torn boots. And this old woman goes to the icon, takes the embroidered cloth, and gives it to him: “Take it, child, or how can you go on?” There was nothing else in this cottage…
Vera Mitrofanovna Tolkacheva
PARTISAN LIAISON
In the early days…I picked up two wounded men outside the village…One was wounded in the head, and the other soldier had shrapnel in his leg. I pulled out the shrapnel myself, and poured kerosene in the wound. I didn’t find anything else…I knew by then that kerosene was a disinfectant…
I took care of them and got them back on their feet. First one went off into the woods, then the other. The latter, as he was leaving, suddenly fell at my feet. He wanted to kiss my feet.
“Dear sister! You saved my life.”
There were no names, nothing. Just sister and brother.
In the evening, the women gathered in my house. “They say the Germans have taken Moscow.”
“Never!”
With these same women, after the war, we organized a kolkhoz, and I was appointed the chairwoman. There were also four old men and five boys, from ten to thirteen years old. Those were my plowmen. We had twenty horses. They all had scabies and needed treatment. That was all I had for farming. There were no wheels or yokes. The women turned the soil with shovels and did the harrowing with cows and bulls. The bullocks would lie down and refuse to get up—unless you all but tore their tails off. The boys harrowed by day, and in the evening, when they opened their little bundles, they all had the same food—potato prasnaki. You don’t know what it is. Sorrel seeds, turnsole…You don’t know it? There is such an herb. We picked clover. We ground it all in a mortar. And we cooked these prasnaki. A sort of bread…Bitter—very bitter…
In the fall came instructions: cut down 580 cubic meters of timber. Who with? I took my twelve-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl with me. So did the other women. We delivered the timber…
—
Iosif Georgievich Yasukevich and his daughter Maria, partisan liaisons of the Petrakov Unit of the Rokossovsky Brigade during the war, tell the following story:
Iosif Georgievich
I gave away everything for the victory…My dearest things. My sons fought at the front. My two nephews were executed for communicating with the partisans. The fascists burned my sister, their mother. In their own house…People said that until the smoke covered her, she stood upright like a candle, holding an icon. After the war, whenever the sun goes down, I think something’s burning…
Maria
I was young, thirteen years old. I knew my father helped the partisans. I understood. People would show up at night. They would leave something, take something. Often my father would take me along, put me onto the cart: “Sit and don’t move from here.” Once we got to the right place, he would pull out guns or leaflets.
Later he began sending me to the station. He taught me what I should remember. I would quietly sneak into the bushes and hide there until night, counting how many trains passed by. I memorized what they transported, you could see it: guns, tanks, or soldiers. Two or three times a day the Germans would shoot into the bushes.
But weren’t you scared?
I was small, I always slipped through, and nobody would notice me. But that day…I remember it very well. My father tried twice to leave the farmstead where we lived. The partisans were waiting for him in the woods. Twice he went off and twice he was sent back by the patrols. It was getting dark. He called me: “Marika…” And my mother shouted, “I won’t let our child go.” She pulled me away from my father…
Still I ran through the woods, as he told me to. I knew all the paths by heart, but to tell the truth, I was afraid of the dark. I found the partisans, they were waiting, and I reported everything my father had told me. On my way back, it was already growing light. How was I to get around the German patrols? I circled through the forest, fell into the lake; my father’s jacket and boots, everything sank. I got out of the hole in the ice…Ran barefoot over the snow…I fell ill and took to my bed and never got up. My legs were paralyzed. There were no doctors or medications. Mama treated me with herb infusions. Applied clay…
After the war they took me to doctors. But it was already too late. I remained bedridden…I can sit up a little, then I lie and look out the window…Remembering the war…
Iosif Georgievich
I carry her in my arms…For forty years. Like a little child…My wife died two years ago. “I forgive you everything,” she said to me. “The sins of youth…Everything…” But not Marika. I saw it in her eyes…I’m afraid to die, because Marika will be left alone. Who will carry her? Who will cross her before going to bed? Who will ask God…
* * *
OF MOMMIES AND DADDIES
* * *
The village of Ratyntsy, Volozhinsky district, Minsk region. An hour’s drive from the capital. An ordinary Belorussian village—wooden houses, flowers in the front gardens, chicken and geese in the streets. Children in sandboxes. Old women on the benches. I came to see one of them, but the whole street gathered. They started talking. Loudly, all at the same time.
Each about herself, but all about the same thing. How they plowed, sowed, baked bread for the partisans, took care of the children, went to diviners and Gypsies to interpret their dreams, and asked God to protect them. Waited for their husbands to come back from the war.
I wrote down the first three names: Elena Adamovna Velichko, Yustina Lukyanovna Grigorovich, Maria Fyodorovna Mazuro. After that I could no longer make them out because of the weeping…
—
—Ah, my darling daughter! My golden one! I don’t like Victory Day. I weep! Ah, how I weep! Whenever I think, it all comes back. Happiness is beyond the mountains, but grief is just over your shoulder…
The Germans burned us down, picked us clean. We were left on a bare rock. We came back from the woods, there was nothing. Only the cats were still there. What did we eat? In the summer I went and gathered berries, mushrooms. The house was full of children.
When the war was over, we went to the kolkhoz. I reaped, and mowed, and threshed. We pulle
d the plow in place of horses. There were no horses; the Germans killed them. They shot all the dogs. My mother used to say: when I die, I don’t know about my soul, but my hands will get some rest. My little girl was ten; she reaped with me. The brigadier came to see how such a little thing fulfilled the norm before evening. We reaped and reaped; the sun went down behind the forest, but we wanted it to stay higher. One day wasn’t enough. We did two norms. We weren’t paid anything; they just put down marks that counted as workdays. We spent the whole summer in the field and in the fall didn’t get even a sack of flour. We raised the children on nothing but potatoes…
—
—So the war was over. I was alone. I was the cow, and the bull, and the woman, and the muzhik. Aie, aie, aie…
—
—War was woe…Only children in my cottage. Not a bench, not a trunk. Total nakedness. We ate acorns, in spring it was grass…When my girl went to school, I bought her her first pair of shoes. She slept in them, she didn’t want to take them off. That’s how we lived! Life is over, but there’s nothing to remember. Only the war…
The Unwomanly Face of War Page 28