In our cell there was a small window with a grille on it; somebody had to lift you up to look out of it—not even at a piece of sky, but at a piece of roof. But we were all so weak, we couldn’t lift each other up. But we had Anya, a paratrooper. She was captured when they were being dropped from a plane in the rear, and her group was ambushed. And now, all bloodied up, battered, she suddenly asked, “Push me up, I’ll look out at freedom. I want to be there!”
I want to—that’s all. We lifted her together, and she shouted, “Girls, there’s a little flower…” Then each of us started asking, “And me…And me…” And we found the strength somewhere to help each other. It was a dandelion. How it got to the roof and managed to stay there, I have no idea. And we all made a wish over this flower. I now think everyone’s wish was: “Please get me out of this hell alive.”
I used to love the spring so much…I loved it when the cherry trees were in bloom and near the lilac bushes there was the fragrance of lilac…Don’t be surprised by my style, I used to write poetry. But now I don’t like the spring. The war stands between us, between me and nature. When the cherry trees were in bloom, I saw fascists in my native Zhitomir…
I stayed alive by a miracle. I was saved by people who were grateful to my father. My father was a doctor. At the time that was a big thing. They pushed me out of the column, in the dark, as we were led out to be shot. I remembered nothing on account of the pain; I walked as if in sleep…I went where I was led…Then driven…They brought me home. I was all wounds. I immediately developed eczema from the stress. I couldn’t even hear a human voice. I heard it and felt pain. Mama and papa talked in a whisper. I kept screaming, and fell silent only in hot water. I didn’t allow my mother to leave me even for a second. She asked, “My dear, I have to go to the oven. To the garden…” But I clung to her. The moment I let go of her hand, it all descended on me again. Everything that had happened to me. To distract me, they brought me flowers. My favorite bluebells…Chestnut leaves…The smells distracted me…My mother kept the dress I wore when I was with the Gestapo. When she was dying, it was under her pillow. Until her last hour…
The first time I got up was when I saw our soldiers. Suddenly I, who had been lying in bed for over a year, leaped up and ran outside: “My dear ones! My darlings…You’re back…” The soldiers carried me into the house. In my enthusiasm, on the second and third day, I ran to the recruitment office: “Give me a job!” They told my father, and he came for me: “My baby, how did you get here? Who helped you?” I held out for a few days…Then the pain came back…The suffering…I screamed for days. People passed by our cottage and begged, “Lord, either take her soul, or help her, so that she stops suffering.”
The curative mud of Tskaltubo saved me. The will to live saved me. To live, live—nothing else. I went on living. I lived, like everybody else…Lived…For fourteen years I worked in a library. Those were happy years. The happiest. Now my life has become a continuous struggle with illnesses. Old age, whatever you say, is a nasty thing. Also the solitude. I remained completely alone. Papa and mama are long gone. These long sleepless nights…So many years have gone by, but my most frightening dream—I wake up in cold sweat. I don’t remember Anya’s last name…I don’t remember whether she was from the Bryansk or the Smolensk region. I remember how she didn’t want to die! She would put her plump white hands behind her head, look out the window through the grille, and shout, “I want to live!”
I never found her parents…I don’t know who I should tell this story to…
Klara Vasilyevna Goncharova
ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNNER
After the war we learned about Auschwitz, Dachau…How to give birth after that? But I was already pregnant…
I was sent to a village to take subscriptions for a loan. The government needed money to rebuild plants and factories.
I arrived, there was no village, everybody was underground…Living in dugouts…A woman came out in some kind of terrible-looking clothing. I went into the dugout; three children were sitting there, all hungry. She was grinding something in a mortar for them, some kind of grass.
She asked me, “You came to take subscriptions for a loan?”
I said, “Yes.”
She: “I have no money, but I have a chicken. Yesterday the neighbor wanted it. I’ll go and ask her. If she buys it, I’ll give you the money.”
Even as I tell you this, I get a lump in my throat. Such people there were! Such people! Her husband was killed at the front. She was left with her three children, nothing else, just that chicken, and she was selling it to give me money. We were collecting cash then. She was ready to give away everything, just to have peace, for her children to stay alive. I remember her face. And all her children…
How did they grow up? I’d like to know…I’d like to find them and meet them…
I don’t see the end of this road. The evil seems infinite to me. I can no longer treat it only as history. Who will answer me: what am I dealing with—time or human beings? Times change, but human beings? I think about the dull repetitiveness of life.
They’ve spoken as soldiers. As women. Many of them were mothers…
* * *
OF BATHING BABIES AND OF A MAMA WHO LOOKS LIKE A PAPA
* * *
Lyubov Igorevna Rudkovskaya
PARTISAN
I run…Several of us are running. Running away…We’re being chased. Shot at. And there’s my mother already under fire. But she sees us running…And I hear her voice, she’s shouting. People told me later how she was shouting. She shouted, “It’s good that you put on a white dress…My dear daughter…There’ll be no one to dress you…” She was convinced I’d be killed, and she was glad that I would lie all in white…Before this happened we were preparing to visit the neighboring village. For Easter…To see our relatives…
It was so quiet…They stopped firing. There was only my mother shouting…Maybe they were firing? I didn’t hear…
My entire family was killed during the war. The war is over, and I have no one to wait for…
Raissa Grigoryevna Khosenevich
PARTISAN
They began to bomb Minsk.
I rushed to the kindergarten to get my son. My daughter was out of town. She had just turned two; she was at the day nursery, and they went out of town. I decided to pick up my son and bring him home, and then run for her. I wanted to gather them all quickly.
I reached the kindergarten, planes were flying over the city, bombing somewhere. I heard my son’s voice over the fence; he was not quite four years old: “Don’t worry, my mother says the Germans will be crushed.”
I looked through the gate. There were many of them there, and he was reassuring the others like that. But when he saw me, he began to tremble and cry. It turned out he was terrified.
I brought him home, asked my mother-in-law to look after him, and went to get my daughter. I ran! I found no one where the nursery was supposed to be. The village women told me the children had been taken somewhere. Where? Who? Probably to the city, they said. There were two teachers with them; they didn’t wait for the car and left on foot. The city was seven miles away…But they were such little children, from one to two years old. My dear, I looked for them for two weeks…In many villages…When I entered a house and they told me it was that very nursery, those kids, I didn’t believe them. They were lying, forgive me, in their own excrement, feverish. As if dead…The director of the nursery was a very young woman; her hair had turned gray. It turned out that they had walked all the way to the city, got lost on the way, several children had died.
I walked among them and didn’t recognize my daughter. The director comforted me, “Don’t despair, look around. She must be here. I remember her.”
I found my Ellochka only thanks to her shoes…Otherwise I would have never recognized her…
Then our house burned down…We were left on the street, in what we had on. German units had already entered the city. We had nowhere to go. I walked
around the streets with my children for several days. I met Tamara Sergeevna Sinitsa; we had been slight acquaintances before the war. She heard me out and said, “Let’s go to my place.”
“My children are sick with whooping cough. How can I go with you?”
She also had little children; they might get infected. That’s how it was then…There were no medications, hospitals no longer worked.
“No, let’s go.”
My dear, how could I ever forget it? They shared potato peelings with us. I sewed pants out of my old skirt for my son, to give him something for his birthday.
But we dreamed of fighting…Inactivity tormented us…What a joy it was when the opportunity came to join the underground workforce, and not sit around with folded arms, waiting. Just in case, I sent off my son, the older boy, to my mother-in-law. She made one condition: “I’ll take my grandson, but you should no longer be seen in the house. We’ll all get killed on account of you.” For three years I didn’t see my son; I was afraid to go near the house. And when the Germans already had an eye on me and picked up my trail, I took my daughter and we both went to the partisans. I carried her for thirty miles…Thirty miles. We walked for two weeks…
She stayed there with me for over a year…I often think: how did we survive that? If you asked me, I couldn’t tell you. My dear, such things are impossible to endure. Even today my teeth chatter at the words “partisan blockade.”
May 1943…I was sent off with a typewriter to the neighboring partisan zone. Borisovskaya. They had our typewriter, with Russian characters, but they needed one with German characters, and we were the only ones to have such a typewriter. This was the typewriter I had carried out of occupied Minsk, following the underground committee’s orders. When I got there, to Lake Palik, after a few days the blockade began. That’s where I ended up…
I didn’t come alone, I came with my daughter. When I went on a mission for a day or two, I left her with other people, but there was nowhere to leave her for longer periods. So of course I took my child with me. And we got caught in the blockade…The Germans encircled the partisan zone…They bombed us from the sky and shot at us from the ground…The men went around carrying rifles, but I carried a rifle, the typewriter, and Ellochka. As we walked, I tripped, she fell over me into a swamp. We went on, she fell again…And so on, for two months! I swore to myself, if I survived, I wouldn’t go near that swamp again, I couldn’t look at it anymore.
“I know why you don’t lie down when they shoot. You want us both to get killed.” That’s what my four-year-old child would say to me. But I didn’t have the strength to lie down; if I did, I’d never get up again.
Other times the partisans felt sorry for me.
“Enough. Let us carry your daughter.”
But I didn’t trust anyone. What if they start shelling, what if she gets killed without me, and I don’t hear it? What if she gets lost…
I met the brigade commander Lopatin.
“What a woman!” He was amazed. “In those circumstances she carried her child, and didn’t let go of the typewriter. Not every man could do that.”
He took Ellochka in his arms, hugged her, kissed her. He emptied out all his pockets, gave her bread crumbs. She downed them with water from the swamp. And following his example, other partisans emptied their pockets and gave her crumbs.
When we got out of the encirclement, I was completely sick. I was covered with boils, my skin was peeling off. And I had a child on my hands…We were waiting for a plane from the mainland. They said that if it came, they would send off the most badly wounded, and they could take my Ellochka. And I remember that moment when I was sending her away. The wounded reached out for her: “Ellochka, to me.” “Come to me. There’s enough room…” They all knew her; in the hospital she sang for them: “Ah, if only I live till my wedding bells.”
The pilot asked, “Who are you here with, little girl?”
“With mama. She stayed outside the cabin…”
“Call your mama, so she can fly with you.”
“No, my mama can’t leave. She has to fight the fascists.”
That’s how they were, our children. And I looked at her face and had spasms—will I see her again someday?
Let me tell you how my son and I were reunited…This was already after the liberation. I was walking to the house where my mother-in-law lived. My legs were like cotton wool. The women from the brigade, they were older, warned me, “If you see him, no matter what, don’t reveal to him straightaway that you’re his mother. Do you realize what he’s lived through without you?”
A neighbor girl runs by: “Oh! Lenya’s mother. Lenya’s alive…”
My legs won’t go any further: my son is alive. She told me that my mother-in-law had died of typhus, and a neighbor woman had taken Lenya in.
I walked into their yard. What was I wearing? A German army shirt, a patched-up, black padded jacket, and old boots. The neighbor immediately recognized me, but she said nothing. And my son sits there, barefoot, ragged.
“What’s your name, boy?” I ask.
“Lenya…”
“And who do you live with?”
“I used to live with my grandmother. When she died, I buried her. I came to her every day and asked her to take me into her grave. I was afraid to sleep alone…”
“Where are your mama and papa?”
“My papa’s alive, he’s at the front. But mama was killed by the fascists. So my grandmother said…”
Two partisans were with me; they had come to bury their comrades. They listened to how he was answering, and wept.
I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Why don’t you recognize your mama?”
He rushed to me. “Papa!!” I was wearing men’s clothes and a hat. Then he hugged me and screamed, “Mama!!!”
It was such a scream! Such hysterics…For a month he didn’t let me go anywhere, not even to work. I took him with me. It wasn’t enough for him to see me, to see I was nearby, he had to hold on to me. If we sat down for lunch, he held me with one hand and ate with the other. He only called me “Mamochka.” He still does…Mamochka…Mamulenka…
When we were reunited with my husband, a week wasn’t enough to tell everything. We talked day and night…
Larissa Leontyevna Korotkaya
PARTISAN
War—it’s always funerals…We often had to bury partisans. Either a group fell into an ambush, or they died in battle. I’ll tell you about one funeral…
There was very heavy fighting. In that fighting we lost many people, and I was wounded. And after the battle came the funeral. Usually we gave short speeches over the grave. First came the commanders, then the friends. But here, among the dead, was a local fellow, and his mother had come to the funeral. She began to lament: “My little son! We prepared the house for you! You promised you would bring a young wife home! But you are marrying the earth…”
The unit stood there, silent, no one touched her. Then she lifted her head and saw that not only her son had been killed, but many other young ones were lying there, and she began to cry over those other sons: “My sons, my dear ones! Your mothers don’t see you, they don’t know you’re being put in the ground! And the ground is so cold. The winter cold is cruel. I will weep instead of them, and pity all of you…My dear ones…Darlings…”
She just said, “I will pity all of you” and “my dear ones”—all the men began weeping aloud. No one could help it, no one had strength enough. The unit wept. Then the commander shouted, “Fire the salute!” And the salute silenced everything.
And I was so struck that I think of it even now, the greatness of a mother’s heart. In such great grief, as her son was buried, she had enough heart to mourn for the other sons…Mourn for them like her own…
Maria Vasilyevna Pavlovets
PARTISAN DOCTOR
I went back to my village…
Children are playing outside our house. I look and think: “Which one is mine?” They all look
alike. Shorn as sheep used to be—in rows. I didn’t recognize my daughter and asked which one was Lusya. And I saw one of the kids in a long shirt up and run into the house. It was hard to tell who was a girl and who was a boy because of their clothing. I asked again, “So which one of you is Lusya?”
They pointed their fingers, meaning the one who ran off. And I realized that she was my daughter. After a moment my grandmother, my mother’s mother, brought her out by the hand. She led her to meet me: “Come, come. We’re going to give it to this mother now for leaving us.”
I was wearing men’s military clothes, a forage cap, and was riding a horse, and my daughter, of course, pictured her mother like a grandmother, like the other women. And here a soldier had arrived. For a long time she wouldn’t come to my arms, she was scared. There was no point in feeling hurt—I hadn’t raised her, she had grown up with grandmothers.
I had brought soap as a gift. At the time it was a fancy gift, and when I began washing her, she bit it with her teeth. She wanted to try and eat it. That’s how they lived. I remembered my mother as a young woman, but it was an old woman who greeted me. They told her that her daughter had come back, and she flew out of her garden into the street. She saw me, spread her arms and ran. I recognized her and ran to her. She was a few steps away from me, and she fell down, exhausted. I fell next to her. I kissed my mother. I kissed the ground. I had so much love in my heart, and so much hatred.
The Unwomanly Face of War Page 30