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

On the last day…Before their retreat the Germans set fire to our house. Mama stood looking at the fire, and there weren’t any tears on her face. The three of us ran around crying, “Dear house, don’t burn! Dear house, don’t burn!” We had no time to take anything out, I only snatched my primer. I saved it through the whole war, I cherished it. I slept with it, it was always under my pillow. I wanted to study very much. When in 1944 I started first grade, my primer was the only one for thirteen pupils. For the whole class.

I remember the first after-war concert at school. How they sang, danced…My palms hurt, I clapped so much. I was happy until some boy came onstage and began to read a poem. He read loudly, the poem was long, but I heard one word—war. I looked around: everybody sat calmly. But I was scared—the war had just ended, and there’s war again? I couldn’t hear this word. I tore from my seat and ran home. I came and found mama cooking something in the kitchen, meaning there wasn’t any war. I went back to school. To the concert. Applauded again.

Our papa didn’t come back from the war. Mama received a notice that he was missing in action. Mama would go to work, and the three of us together wept that papa wasn’t with us. We turned the house over looking for the notice about papa. We thought it wasn’t written that papa had been killed, it said he was missing. We would tear this notice up, and news would come about where our papa was. But we didn’t find the notice. When mama came home from work, she couldn’t understand why the house was in such disorder. She asked me, “What have you been doing here?” My younger brother answered for me: “Looking for papa…”

Before the war I liked it when papa told us fairy tales. He knew many fairy tales and told them well. After the war I no longer wanted to read fairy tales…

“SHE CAME IN A WHITE SMOCK, LIKE MAMA…”

Sasha Suetin FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW A LOCKSMITH.

I remember only mama…

First picture…

Mama always wore a white smock…Father was an officer, mama worked in a hospital. My older brother told me that afterward. All I remember is mama’s white smock. Not even her face, only the white smock…And also the white cap, which always stood on a little table. Precisely stood, not lay, because it was stiffly starched.

Second picture…

Mama didn’t come home…I was used to papa often not coming home, but mama always came home. My brother and I stayed alone in the apartment for several days without going anywhere: what if mama suddenly shows up? Some strange people knock, dress us, and take us somewhere.

I cry, “Mama! Where’s my mama?”

“Don’t cry, mama will find us,” my brother, who is three years older, comforts me.

We wind up in some sort of long house or barn, on a bunk. We’re hungry all the time, and I suck on my shirt buttons, they’re like the fruit drops father used to bring from his business trips. I’m waiting for mama.

Third picture…

Some man shoves me and my brother into the corner of the bunk, covers us with a blanket, throws some rags over us. I begin to cry, he strokes my head. I calm down.

This happens every day. Once I get tired of sitting under the blanket for so long. I begin to cry, first softly, then loudly. Someone pulls the rags, then the blanket off me and my brother. I open my eyes—next to us stands a woman in a white smock.

“Mama!” I crawl to her.

She also caresses me. First my head…then my arm…Then she takes something out of a metal box. But I pay no attention to that, I only see the white smock and white hat.

Suddenly!—a sharp pain in my arm. There’s a needle under my skin. Before I finish shouting, I faint. I come to my senses. The man who had been hiding us sits over me. Next to me lies my brother.

“Don’t be frightened,” says the man. “He’s not dead, he’s asleep.”

“That wasn’t mama?”

“No…”

“She came in a white smock, like mama…” I repeat again and again.

“I’ve made a toy for you.” The man hands me a rag ball.

I take the toy and stop crying.

I don’t remember anything after that: who saved us in the German concentration camp and how? They took blood from the children for the wounded German soldiers. All the children died. How did my brother and I wind up in an orphanage? And how, at the end of the war, did we receive notice that our parents were dead? Something happened to my memory. I don’t remember the faces, I don’t remember the words…

The war was over. I went to first grade. Other children would read a poem two or three times and memorize it. And I would read it ten times and not memorize it. But for some reason the teachers didn’t give me bad grades. The others got bad grades, but I didn’t.

That’s my story…

“AUNTIE, TAKE ME ON YOUR KNEES…”

Marina Karyanova FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW WORKS IN CINEMA.

I don’t like to remember…I don’t. In a word—I don’t like it…