He made friends with an Uzbek boy who once came to us with his grandmother. She looked at the boys, wagged her head, and said something to mama. Mama didn’t understand, but then the foreman stopped by, who knew Russian. He translated for us: “She’s talking with her God, with Allah. And complaining to him that war is the business of men, of warriors. Why should children suffer? How did Allah allow that these two boys became light as the sparrows they shoot with a sling?” The grandmother poured a handful of dry golden apricots on the table—hard and sweet as sugar! They could be sucked, nibbled in small bites, and then the stone could be cracked and the crunchy kernel eaten.
Her grandson looked at these apricots, and his eyes were also hungry. They were burning! Mama became confused, but the grandmother patted her hand and hugged her grandson. “He always has a bowl of katek, because he lives at home with his grandmother,” the foreman translated. Katek is sour goat’s milk. All the while we were in evacuation, my brother and I thought it was the tastiest thing in the world.
The grandmother and the boy left, and the three of us went on sitting at the table. No one ventured to be the first to reach out and take a dry golden apricot…
“I WAS EMBARRASSED TO BE WEARING GIRLS’ SHOES…”
Marlen Robeichikov
ELEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW SECTION HEAD IN A TOWN COUNCIL.
I saw the war from a tree…
The grown-ups forbade us to do it, but we climbed the trees anyway and watched the dogfights from tall firs. We wept when our planes burned, but there was no fear, as if we were watching a movie. On the second or third day there was a general roll call, and the director announced that our Pioneer camp was being evacuated. We already knew that Minsk was being bombarded and burning, and that we wouldn’t be taken home, but somewhere farther away from the war.
I want to tell you how we prepared for the road…We were told to take suitcases and put in only the most necessary things: T-shirts, shirts, socks, handkerchiefs. We packed them, and each of us put his Pioneer neckerchief on top. In our childish imagination we pictured meeting the Germans, who would open our suitcases and there would be our Pioneer neckerchief. This would be our revenge for everything…
Our train was speedier than the war. It got ahead of it…When we stopped at stations, people there didn’t know about the war, hadn’t seen it. And we children told the adults about the war: how Minsk was burning, how our camp was bombed, how our planes burned. But the farther we moved away from home, the more we expected our parents to come and take us, and we didn’t suspect that many of us no longer had any parents. This thought couldn’t even occur to us. We talked about the war, but we were still children of peace.
From the train we were transferred to a steamboat, The Paris Commune, and taken down the Volga. By then we had been traveling for two weeks, and we had not undressed even once. On the steamboat I took off my sneakers for the first time. They allowed us to. I had rubber-soled lace-up sneakers. When I took them off, they really stank! I tried to wash them and then threw them out. I came to Khvalynsk barefoot.
So many of us had arrived that two Belorussian orphanages were created, one for schoolchildren, the other for preschoolers. How do I know about it? Because those who had to be separated from a brother or a sister cried very much, especially the younger ones, who were afraid to lose the older ones. When we were left without our parents in the Pioneer camp, it was interesting, like a game, but now we all became frightened. We had been raised at home, were used to having parents, parental care. My mother always woke me up in the morning and kissed me goodnight. Near us was an orphanage for “real” orphans. We were very different from them. They were used to living without parents, but we had to get used to it.
I remember the food in 1943: a spoonful of scalded milk and a piece of bread a day, boiled beets, in summer a soup made from watermelon rinds. We saw a film, March–April. There was a story in it about our scouts cooking kasha from birch bark. Our girls also learned to cook birch-bark soup.
In the fall we stocked up on firewood ourselves. Each one had a norm—three cubic feet. The forest was in the hills. We had to fell the trees, trim them, then cut them into three-foot lengths and stack them up. The norm was supposed to be for an adult, but we also had girls working with us. We boys had a bigger share of the work. At home we never had to use a saw, because we were all city boys, but here we had to saw very thick logs. Split them.
We were hungry day and night, while working and while sleeping. We were always hungry, especially in winter. We used to run over from the orphanage to an army unit, and often were lucky to get a ladle of soup there. But there were many of us, they couldn’t feed us all. If you came first, you got something; if you were late, you got nothing. I had a friend, Mishka Cherkasov. We were sitting once and he said, “I’d go fifteen miles now if I knew I’d get a bowl of kasha.” It was minus twenty outside, but he got dressed and ran to the army unit. He asked the soldiers for something to eat. They said they had a little soup—go, boy, fetch your tin. He went out and saw children from the other orphanage coming, so if he ran to get a tin, there’d be nothing left.
He went back and said to the soldiers, “Pour it here!” And he took his hat off and held it out to them instead of a tin. He looked so resolute that the soldier just poured a whole ladle for him. With a heroic air, Misha went past the orphans who were left with nothing and came running back to his orphanage. His ears were frostbitten, but he brought us the soup, which was no longer soup, but a hatful of ice. We turned this ice out onto a plate, and while the girls rubbed Misha’s ears, we ate it as it was, without waiting for it to thaw. There was so much joy on his face over bringing it for everybody that he didn’t even start eating first!
The tastiest food for us was oil cake. We distinguished it by varieties according to taste, and one variety was called “halva.” We conducted “Operation Cake.” Several of us got onto a moving truck and threw down chunks of cake, and the others picked them up. We came back to the orphanage covered with bruises, but we had eaten. And of course there were the summer and autumn markets! That was a good time for us. We’d try a bit of everything: a piece of apple from one market woman, a piece of tomato from another. To steal something at a market wasn’t regarded as shameful, on the contrary—it was heroism! We didn’t care what we pilfered, so long as it was something to eat. What it was didn’t matter.
There was a boy studying in our class who was the son of the director of an oil factory. We were children, we sat in class and played “naval battle.” And he sat behind us eating bread with vegetable oil. The smell filled the whole classroom.
We exchanged whispers, shook our fists at him, meaning just wait till the class is over…
We look—our teacher isn’t there, she’s lying on the floor. She was hungry and also smelled this oil. And fainted. Our girls took her home; she lived with her mother. In the evening we decided that beginning that day each of us would set aside a small piece of bread to give to our teacher. She would never have taken it from us, so we secretly gave it to her mother and asked her not to tell it was from us.
We had our orchard and our kitchen garden. In the orchard we had apple trees, and in the kitchen garden—cabbages, carrots, beets. We guarded them, several of us taking turns on duty. In changing watch, we counted everything: each head of cabbage, each carrot. During the night I thought, “Ah, if only one more carrot would grow overnight! It wouldn’t be on the list and could be eaten.” If it had been put on the list, God forbid it should disappear. For shame!
We sat at the kitchen garden with food all around us, and held ourselves back. We were terribly hungry. Once I was on duty with an older boy. An idea came to his head.
“Look, there’s a cow grazing…”
“Well, what of it?”
“Fool! Don’t you know there’s a decree that if a private cow grazes on government land, it’s either ta
ken away or the owner gets fined?”
“But it’s grazing in a meadow.”
“It’s not tied to it.”
And he explains his plan to me: we take the cow, bring it to our orchard, and tie it up there. Then we go looking for the owner. And so we did. We brought the cow to our orphanage orchard and tied it up. My partner ran to the village, found the woman who owned the cow: thus and so, your cow is in the government-owned orchard, and you know the decree…
I don’t think…Now I doubt that the woman believed us and was frightened. She actually felt sorry for us, seeing we were hungry. We made this arrangement: we look after her cow, and she gives us several potatoes for it.
One of our girls fell ill and needed a blood transfusion. There wasn’t a single child in the whole orphanage who could give blood. Do you understand?
Our dream? To get to the front. Several boys, the most reckless ones, got together and decided to escape. As luck would have it, an army choirmaster came to the orphanage, Captain Gordeev. He chose four musical boys, including me. That was how I wound up at the front.
The whole orphanage came to see us off. I had nothing to wear, and one girl gave me her sailor suit, and another had two pairs of shoes and gave one to me.
Thus equipped I went to the front. Most of all I was embarrassed to be wearing girls’ shoes…
“I SCREAMED AND SCREAMED…I COULDN’T STOP…”
Liuda Andreeva
FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW AN AUDITOR.
The war left me with the impression of a bonfire…Burning and burning. Endlessly…
We little children would get together, and you know what we talked about? That before the war we had liked sweet rolls and tea with sugar, and that we would never have them again.
Our mamas often wept, they wept every day…So we tried to cry less than in peacetime. We fussed less.
I knew that my mama was young and beautiful. Other children’s mamas were older, but at the age of five I understood that it was bad for us that mama was young and beautiful. It was dangerous. I figured it out at the age of five…I even understood that it was good that I was little. How could a child understand that? Nobody explained anything to me…
After so many years…I’m afraid to remember it…to touch it…
A German truck stopped by our house, not on purpose, but something broke down in it. The soldiers came into the house, sent me and grandma into another room, and made mama help them. They boiled water, cooked supper. They spoke so loudly that it seemed to me they weren’t talking together and laughing, but yelling at my mama.
It was evening, already dark. Nighttime. Suddenly mama runs into the room, grabs me, and runs outside. We had no garden, the courtyard was empty, we ran around and didn’t know where to hide. We got under the truck. They came out and looked for us with a flashlight. Mama lay on top of me, and I heard her teeth chatter. She turned cold, cold all over.
In the morning, when the Germans left, we went into the house…Grandma lay on the bed…tied to it with ropes…Naked! Grandma…My grandma! Horrified…Frightened, I began to scream. Mama pushed me outside. I screamed and screamed…I couldn’t stop…
For a long time I was afraid of trucks. As soon as I heard the sound of a truck, I began to tremble. The war ended, we were already going to school…I would see a tram coming, and I couldn’t help myself, my teeth chattered. From trembling. In our class there were three of us who had lived under the occupation. One boy was afraid of the noise of planes. In spring it was warm, the teacher would open the windows…The noise of a plane…or of a truck driving…This boy’s eyes and mine would grow big, the pupils would get dilated, we’d panic. And the children who had been evacuated and came back laughed at us.
They fired the first salute…People ran outside, and mama and I hid in a ditch. We sat there until the neighbors came: “Come out—this isn’t the war, it’s the Victory celebration.”
How I wanted children’s toys! I wanted a childhood…We would take a piece of brick and pretend it was a doll. Or the smallest of us pretended that he was a doll. Today, if I see pieces of colored glass in the sand, I want to pick them up. They look beautiful to me even now.
I grew up…And someone said, “You’re so beautiful. Like your mama.” I wasn’t glad, I got scared. I’ve never liked to hear those words said to me…
“WE ALL JOINED HANDS…”
Andrei Tolstik
SEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A DOCTOR OF ECONOMICS.
I was a little boy…
I remember my mama…She baked the best bread in the village, she had the most beautiful kitchen garden beds. The biggest dahlias blossomed in our front garden and backyard. She embroidered beautiful shirts for us all—my father, my two older brothers, and me. The collars were embroidered. In red, blue, and green cross-stitch…
I don’t remember who it was who first told me that mama had been shot. Some neighbor woman. I ran home. They said, “She was shot outside the village, not at home.” My father was away with the partisans, my older brothers were with the partisans, my cousin was with the partisans. I went to our neighbor, old Karp.
“Mama’s been killed. We must bring her here.”
We harnessed a cow (we didn’t have a horse) and went. Old Karp left me near the forest: “You stay here. I’m old, I’m not afraid to be killed. But you’re a kid.”
I waited. With all sorts of thoughts in my head. What will I tell father? How am I to tell him that mama was killed? And also a child’s thinking—if I see mama dead, she’ll never be alive again. But if I don’t see her dead, I’ll come home and she’ll be there.
Mama’s chest was shot through with a submachine gun volley. In a row across her blouse…And a black one on her temple…I wanted them to quickly put a white kerchief on her head so as not to see this black hole. It felt as if it still hurt her.
I didn’t get into the cart, I walked beside it…
Every day they buried someone in the village…I remember four partisans being buried. Three men and a girl. We buried partisans often, but it was the first time I saw a woman buried. They dug a separate little grave for her…She lay alone on the grass under an old pear tree…Old women sat by her and stroked her hands…
“Why did they lay her there separately?” I asked.
“She’s a young one…” the women replied.
When I was left alone, without family, without relations, I became frightened. What to do? They took me to the village of Zalesye to Aunt Marfa. She had no children of her own, and her husband was fighting at the front. We would hide in the cellar. She used to press my head to hers: “My dear son…”
Aunt Marfa came down with typhus. After her I came down with it. The old woman Zenka took me in. She had two sons fighting at the front. I would wake up at night, and she was there dozing next to me on the bed: “My dear son…” Everybody fled from the Germans to the forest, but old Zenka stayed with me. Never once did she leave me. “We’ll die together, my dear son.”
After the typhus I couldn’t walk for a long time. If the road was level I could, but if it was slightly uphill my legs gave way. We were already expecting our soldiers. The women went to the forest, gathered some strawberries. There was nothing else to treat them with.
The soldiers came tired. Old Zenka poured some red strawberries into their helmets. They all offered me some. But I sat on the ground and couldn’t get up.
Father came back from the partisans. He knew I had been ill, and he brought me a slice of bread and a piece of lard thick as a finger. The lard and the bread smelled of tobacco. Everything smelled of father.
We heard the word Victory! while gathering sorrel in the meadow. The children all joined hands and ran to the village like that…
“WE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO BURY…BUT NOW WE SOMEHOW RECALLED IT…”
Mikhail Shinkarev
Our neighbors had a deaf daughter…
Everybody shouted “War! War!” but she would come running to my sister with her doll, sing little songs. Other children no longer even laughed. “Good for her,” I thought, “she hasn’t heard anything about the war.”
My friends and I wrapped our red badges and red neckerchiefs in oilcloth and buried them among the bushes near the river. In the sand. Some conspirators! We came to that place every day.
Everybody was afraid of the Germans, even the children and the dogs. Mama used to put eggs out on the bench near the house. Outside. So as not to have them come into the cottage and ask, “Jude?” My sister and I had curly black hair…
We were swimming in the river…And we saw something black rising from the bottom. Just at that moment! We thought it was a sunken log, but this something was being pushed by the current to the bank, and we made out arms, a head…We saw that it was a man. I think no one got scared. No one cried out. We remembered the adults saying that our machine-gun operator had been killed at that spot and fell into the water with his “coffee grinder.”
Just a few months of war…And we already didn’t have any fear at the sight of death. We pulled the man out of the water and buried him. Someone fetched a shovel, and we dug a hole. Put him in and covered him with soil. Stood around silently. One girl even made the sign of the cross. Her grandmother used to help in the church, and the girl knew some prayers.
Last Witnesses Page 16