We did everything by ourselves. Without adults. Before the war we didn’t even know how to bury. But now we somehow recalled it.
For two days we kept diving for the machine gun…
“HE GATHERED THEM IN A BASKET…”
Leonid Sivakov
SIX YEARS OLD. NOW A TOOLMAKER.
The sun was already up…
The herdsmen were rounding up the cows. The punitive squad soldiers gave them time to drive the herd beyond the river Greza and started on a round of the cottages. They came with a list, and they shot people according to the list. They read: mother, grandmother, the children so-and-so, of such-and-such age…They checked the list. If anyone was missing, they would start searching. They’d find a child under the bed, under the stove…
Once they had found everybody, they shot them…
Six people gathered in our cottage: grandmother, mama, my older sister, me, and my two younger brothers. Six people…Through the window we saw them going to our neighbors, and we ran to the entryway with my youngest brother and shut the door with a hook. Sat on a trunk, huddling around mama.
The hook was weak, the German tore it off at once. He stepped across the threshold and fired a burst. I had no time to make out whether he was young or old. We all fell down, I ended up behind the trunk…
I came to for the first time when I felt something dripping on me…Drip-drip, like water. I raised my head: it was mama’s blood dripping. Mama lay there dead. I crawled under the bed, everything was covered with blood…I was all soaked with blood…
I heard two men come in. They counted how many people were killed. One says, “There’s one missing. We should make a search.” They started searching, bent down to look under the bed, and there was a sack of grain mama had hidden there, and I lay behind it. They pulled the sack out and went off pleased. They forgot that one person on the list was missing. They left, and I lost consciousness…
The second time I came to was when our cottage began to burn…
I felt terribly hot and also nauseous. I could see I was covered with blood, but I didn’t realize I was wounded, because I didn’t feel any pain. The cottage was filled with smoke…I somehow crawled out to the kitchen garden, then to the neighbor’s orchard. Only then did I feel that I was wounded in the leg and my arm was broken. The pain just hit me. For some time I again lost all memory…
The third time consciousness returned to me was when I heard a woman’s terrible scream…I crawled toward it…
The scream hung in the air. I crawled toward it as if following a thread and wound up by a kolkhoz garage. I didn’t see anyone…The scream came from somewhere under the ground…Then I figured out that someone was screaming in the inspection pit…
I couldn’t stand up, so I crawled and bent down…The pit was full of people…These were all refugees from Smolensk who had been living in our school. Some twenty families. They all lay in the pit, and on top a wounded girl kept trying to get up and then fell back. And screamed. I looked around: where was I to crawl to now? The whole village was burning…And no living people…Only this girl. I fell down to her…I don’t know how long I lay there.
I felt that the girl was dead. I nudged her and called to her—she didn’t respond. I alone was alive, and they were all dead. The sun was warm, there was steam coming from the warm blood. My head spun…
I lay there for a long time, sometimes conscious, sometimes not. We had been shot on Friday, and on Saturday grandfather and mama’s sister came from another village. They found me in the pit, lay me in a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow jolted, I was in pain, but I had no voice. I could only cry…I didn’t talk for a long time. For seven years…I whispered a little, but no one could make out my words. After seven years I began to pronounce one word well, then another…I listened to myself…
At the place where our cottage had been grandfather gathered bones in a basket…The basket wasn’t even full…
So I’ve told you…Is that all? All that’s left of such horror? A few dozen words…
“THEY TOOK THE KITTENS OUT OF THE COTTAGE…”
Tonia Rudakova
FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW DIRECTOR OF A KINDERGARTEN.
The first year of the war…I remember little…
The Germans arrived in the morning; it was still gray outside. They lined everybody up on the meadow and ordered all those who had cropped heads to step forward. These were prisoners of war whom people had taken into their homes. They drove them into the woods and shot them.
Before that we used to run around outside the village. We played near the woods. But now we got scared.
I remember mama baking bread. A lot of bread: it lay on the benches, on the table, on towels on the floor, in the entryway. I was surprised.
“Mama, what do we need so much bread for? Those men have been shot. Who are you going to feed?”
She chased me out of the house. “Go play with the children…”
I was afraid that mama would be killed and followed her all the time.
During the night the partisans took the bread. Never again did I see so much bread. The Germans picked all the cottages clean, and we were starving. I didn’t understand…I asked mama, “Heat the oven and bake bread. Lots and lots.”
That’s all I remember from the first year of the war…
I probably grew older, because I remember more from later on. How our village was burned down…First they shot us, then they burned us. I came back from the other world…
They didn’t shoot people outside, but came into the cottages. We all stood by the window.
“Now they’re going to shoot Aniska…”
“They’ve finished at Aniska’s. They’re going to Aunt Anfisa’s…”
And we stood there, we waited. They were coming to shoot us. Nobody cried, nobody shouted. We stood there. We had a neighbor and her little sons with us. She said, “Let’s go outside. They don’t shoot people outside.”
They came into the front yard: the first one was a soldier, the second an officer. The officer was tall, his boots were tall, his cap was tall. I remember it very well…
They started pushing us toward the house. Our neighbor fell on the grass and kissed the officer’s boots. “We won’t go. We know you’ll shoot us there.”
They shout, “Zurük! Zurük!”—meaning “Go back.” In the house mama was sitting on a bench by the table. And I remember that she took a little mug of milk and began to feed our little brother. It was so quiet that we heard him slurping.
I sat in a corner and put a broom in front of me. There was a long tablecloth on the table. Our neighbor’s son hid under the table. Under the tablecloth. My brother got under the bed. And the neighbor knelt by the door and pleaded for everybody.
“Dear sir, we have little children. Many little children…”
I remember her pleading. For a long time.
The officer went to the table, lifted up the tablecloth, and fired. A cry came from there. He fired again. The neighbor’s son cried out…He fired five times…
He looked at me…No matter how I tried to hide behind the broom, I couldn’t do it. He had such beautiful brown eyes…Just think, I remember that…I was so frightened that I asked, “Are you going to kill me, mister?” He didn’t say anything. Just then the soldier came out from the other room. I mean…he tore down the big curtain dividing the rooms, that’s all. He called the officer and showed him—there were little kittens lying on the bed. There was no cat, just the kittens. They picked them up, smiled, started playing with them. They finished playing, and the officer gave them to the soldier to be taken outside. They took the kittens out of the cottage…
I remember my dead mama’s hair burning…And, next to her, our little brother’s swaddling clothes…My older brother and I crawled over them, me holding on to his pant
leg: first to the backyard, then to the kitchen garden. We hid among the potatoes till evening, then we crawled into the bushes. There I burst into tears…
How did we manage to stay alive? I don’t remember…My brother and I and the four kittens stayed alive. Our grandmother, who lived across the river, came and took us all…
“REMEMBER: 6 PARK STREET, MARIUPOL…”
Sasha Solianin
FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. NOW A FIRST-DEGREE WAR INVALID.
I really didn’t want to die…I especially didn’t want to die at dawn…
We are being led out to be shot. We walk quickly. The Germans are in a hurry somewhere, I understood it from their conversation. Before the war I liked German lessons. I even learned several poems of Heine’s by heart. There are three of us—two first lieutenants, prisoners of war, and me. A boy…I was caught in the forest when I was gathering weapons. Several times I escaped, the third time they got me.
I didn’t want to die…
I hear a whisper: “Run for it! We’ll attack the convoy, and you jump into the bushes.”
“I won’t…”
“Why?”
“I’m staying with you.”
I wanted to die with them. Like a soldier.
“We order you: run for it! Live!”
One, Danila Grigorievich Iordanov, was from Mariupol…the other, Aleksandr Ivanovich Ilyinsky, from Briansk…
“Remember: 6 Park Street, Mariupol…You remember?”
“…Street…Briansk…You remember?”
Shooting began…
I started running…I ran…It throbbed in my head: rat-a-tat-tat…remember…rat-a-tat-tat…remember. And out of fear I forgot. I forgot the name of the street and the house number in Briansk.
“I HEARD HIS HEART STOP…”
Lena Aronova
TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A LAWYER.
Our city suddenly became militarized. Our quiet and green Gomel…
My parents decided to send me to Moscow, where my brother was studying at the military academy. Everybody thought that Moscow would never be taken, that it was an impregnable fortress. I didn’t want to leave, but my parents insisted, because when we were bombed, I couldn’t eat for whole days, they had to force the food on me. I became noticeably thinner. Mama decided that Moscow was calm, that Moscow would be good for me. That I’d get better there. And she and papa would come as soon as the war was over. Very soon.
The train didn’t reach Moscow; we were told to get off in Maloyaroslavets. There was a long-distance telephone at the train station, and I kept calling my brother to find out what to do next. I finally reached him and he said, “Sit and wait, I’ll come to get you.” It was an anxious night; there were a great many people. Suddenly it was announced: in half an hour a train will be leaving for Moscow, get aboard. I collected my luggage, ran to the train, climbed to the upper shelf and fell asleep. When I woke up the train was standing by a small river; women were doing laundry. “Where’s Moscow?” I asked in astonishment. They replied that we were being taken to the east…
I got out of the car and burst into tears from resentment, from despair. And—oh! Dina, my friend, caught sight of me. We left Gomel together, our mamas saw us off together, but in Maloyaroslavets we lost each other. Now there were two of us, and I wasn’t so frightened. At the stops people brought food to the train: sandwiches, canned milk on carts, once they even brought soup.
They dropped us off at the Djarkul station, in the Kustanai region. For the first time Dina and I rode on a wagon. We reassured each other, saying that once we arrived we would immediately write home. I said, “If our houses aren’t destroyed, our parents will get our letters, but if they are—where shall we write to?” My mama was the head doctor of a children’s hospital, and papa was director of a technical school. My papa was a peaceful man, he looked the teacher all over. When he came home from work for the first time with a pistol (they had given out pistols), and he put the holster over his suit jacket, I got scared. I think he was also scared of it. In the evenings he took it off carefully and put it on the table. We lived in a big house, but there were no military in it, and I had never seen weapons before. It seemed to me that the pistol would start shooting by itself, that the war was already living in our home. When papa took off the pistol, the war would be over.
Dina and I were city girls, we didn’t know how to do anything. The day after our arrival, we were sent to work in the fields. We spent the whole day bent over. I got dizzy and fell down. Dina stood over me and wept, but she didn’t know how to help me. We were ashamed: the local girls fulfilled the norm; we would reach the middle of the field, and they’d already be far ahead. The most terrible thing was when I was sent to milk the cow. They handed me a milk pail, but I had never milked a cow and was afraid to go near it.
Once someone came from the station and brought newspapers. We read in them that Gomel had been taken, and Dina and I wept a lot. If Gomel was taken, it meant that our parents were dead, and we had to go to the orphanage. I didn’t want even to hear about an orphanage, I intended to go looking for my brother. But Dina’s parents came to get us. They found us by some miracle. Her father worked as a head doctor in the town of Saraktash, the Chkalov region. There was a small house on the grounds of the hospital, and we lived in it. We slept on wooden bunks, on mattresses stuffed with straw. I suffered very much because of my long braids, which reached below my knees. I couldn’t cut them off without mama’s permission. I still hoped that mama was somehow alive and would find me. Mama loved my braids and would scold me if I cut them off.
Once…at dawn…Such things happen only in fairy tales, and also in war. There was a knocking on the window…I got up: my mama was standing there. I fainted…Soon mama cut off my braids and rubbed my head with kerosene to get rid of the lice.
Mama already knew that papa’s school had been evacuated to Novosibirsk, and we went to join him. There I began going to school. In the morning we studied, and after lunch we went to help in the hospital. There were many wounded who had been sent from the front to the rear. We were taken as paramedics. I was sent to the surgery section, the most difficult one. They gave us old sheets. We tore them to make bandages, rolled them up, put them in containers, and took them to be sterilized. We also laundered old bandages, but lots of bandages came from the front in such condition that we carried them out in baskets and buried them in the backyard. They were all soaked with blood, with pus…
I grew up in a doctor’s family and dreamed before the war of becoming a doctor. If it was surgery, let it be surgery. Other girls were afraid, but I didn’t care, as long as I could help, could feel I was needed. The lessons ended, and we ran quickly to the hospital, so as to come in time, not to be late. I remember fainting several times. When they unbandage the wound, it all gets stuck, the men scream…Several times I became nauseous from the smell of the bandages. They smelled very strongly, not with medications but…with something…unfamiliar, suffocating…Death…I already knew the smell of death. You come to the ward—the wounded man is still alive, but there’s already this smell…Many girls left, they couldn’t stand it. They sewed mittens for the front; those who knew how—knitted. But I couldn’t leave the hospital—how could I if everybody knew that my mama was a doctor?
But I cried very much when the wounded men died. When they were dying they called out, “Doctor! Doctor! Quick!” A doctor comes running, but he can’t save him. The wounded in the surgical section were serious ones. I remember one lieutenant…He asked me for a hot-water bottle. I gave it to him, he seized my hand…I couldn’t take it away…He pressed it to himself. He held on to me, held on with all his strength. I heard his heart stop. It beat, beat, and then stopped…
I learned so much during the war…More than during my whole life…
“I RAN AWAY TO THE FRONT FOLLOWING MY SISTER, FIRST SERGEANT VERA REDKINA
…”
Nikolai Redkin
ELEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A MECHANIC.
The house became quiet…Our family grew smaller.
My older brothers were called up to the army at once. My sister Vera kept going to the recruiting office and in March 1942 also left for the front. Only my younger sister and I stayed at home.
In the evacuation we were taken by our relations in the Orel region. I worked in the kolkhoz. There weren’t any men left; all the men’s tasks lay on the shoulders of those like me. Adolescents. We replaced the men—boys from nine to fourteen. I went to plow for the first time. The women stood next to their horses and urged them on. I stood there waiting for someone to come and teach me, and they went down one furrow and turned to the second one. I was alone. All right, so I drove by myself, off the furrow or along it. In the morning I was in the field, and at night tending the horses with the boys in the pasture. One day like that, two…On the third day I plowed and plowed and collapsed.
In 1944 my sister Vera came to us for one day on her way from the hospital after being wounded. In the morning she was taken to the train station in a wagon, and I ran after her on foot. At the station a soldier refused to let me on the train: “Who are you with, boy?”
I wasn’t at a loss: “I’m with First Sergeant Vera Redkina.”
That’s how I made it to the war…
“IN THE DIRECTION OF THE SUNRISE…”
Valya Kozhanovskaya
TEN YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.
A child’s memory…Only fear or something good stays in a child’s memory…
Last Witnesses Page 17