Last Witnesses : An Oral History of the Children of World War II

Some two days later a group of Red Army soldiers stopped at our farmstead. Dust-covered, sweaty, with caked lips, they greedily drank water from the well. How revived they became…How their faces brightened when four of our planes appeared in the sky. We made out distinct red stars on them. “Ours! Ours!”—we shouted along with the soldiers. But suddenly small black planes popped up from somewhere. They circled around ours, and something was rattling and booming. The strange noise reached the ground…as if someone was tearing oilcloth or linen fabric…So loud. I didn’t know yet that this was machine-gun fire heard from a distance or from high up. Our planes were falling and after them followed red streaks of fire and smoke. Ba-bang! The soldiers stood and wept, unashamed of their tears. For the first time I saw…for the first time…Red Army soldiers weeping…They never wept in the war films I used to go to watch in our settlement.

After another few days…Mama’s sister, Aunt Katia, came running from the village of Kabaki. Black, ghastly-looking. She told us that the Germans had come to their village, rounded up all the activists, led them outside the village, and shot them all with machine guns. Among those shot was mama’s brother, the deputy of the village council. An old Communist.

To this day I remember Aunt Katia’s words: “They smashed his head, and I gathered his brains with my hands. They were very white.”

She lived with us for two days. And told about it all the time…Her hair turned white in those two days. And when my mother sat with Aunt Katia, embracing her and weeping, I stroked her hair. I was afraid.

I was afraid that mama also would turn white…

“I WANT TO LIVE! I WANT TO LIVE!…”

Vasia Kharevsky FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW AN ARCHITECT.

These pictures, these lights. My riches. The treasure of what I lived through…

No one believes me, even mama didn’t believe me. After the war, when we began to remember, she kept wondering, “You couldn’t recall that yourself, you were little. Somebody told you…”

No, I myself remember…

Bombs are exploding, and I’m clutching at my older brother: “I want to live! I want to live!” I was afraid to die, though what could I have known about death? What?

I myself…

Mama gave me and my brother the last two potatoes, and just looked at us. We knew that those potatoes were the last ones. I wanted to leave her…a small piece…And I couldn’t. My brother also couldn’t…We were ashamed. Terribly ashamed.

No, I myself…

I saw our first soldier…I think he was a tankist, I can’t say exactly…I ran to him: “Papa!” He lifted me to the sky: “Sonny!”

I remember everything…

I remember the adults saying, “He’s little. He doesn’t understand.” I was surprised: “They’re strange, these adults, why have they decided that I don’t understand anything? I understand everything.” It even seemed to me that I understood more than the adults, because I didn’t cry and they did.

The war is my history book. My solitude…I missed the time of childhood, it fell out of my life. I’m a man without a childhood. Instead of a childhood, I have the war.

The only other shock like that in my life came from love. When I fell in love…Knew love…

“THROUGH A BUTTONHOLE…”

Inna Levkevich TEN YEARS OLD. NOW A CONSTRUCTION ENGINEER.

In the first days…From early morning…

Bombs were exploding over us…On the ground lay telephone poles and wires. Frightened people ran out of their houses. They ran out to the street, constantly warning each other, “Watch out—there’s a wire! Watch out—there’s a wire!” so that no one would get snared and fall. As if that was the most terrible thing.

In the morning of June 26 mama still handed out the salaries, because she worked as an accountant at a factory, but by evening we were already refugees. As we were leaving Minsk, we saw our school burn. Flames raged in every window. So bright…So…so intense, right up to the sky…We wept that our school was burning. There were four of us, three went on foot, and the fourth “rode” in mama’s arms. Mama was nervous, because she took the key, but forgot to lock the apartment. She tried to stop the cars, cried and begged, “Take our children, and we’ll go and defend the city.” She refused to believe that the Germans were already in the city. That the city had surrendered.

Everything that was happening before our eyes and with us was frightening and incomprehensible. Especially death…Pots and pans lay about around the killed people. Everything was burning…It seemed as if we were running over burning coals…I always made friends with boys, and was myself a tomboy. I was interested to see how the bombs came flying, how they whined, how they fell. When mama shouted, “Lie down on the ground!” I peeked through a buttonhole…What was there in the sky? And how were people running…Something was hanging from a tree…When I realized that this something was a man, I was stunned. I closed my eyes…