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

If everybody was asked, “What is childhood?” they would each say something of their own. For me childhood is mama and papa and candies. All my childhood I wanted mama and papa and candies. During the war I not only didn’t taste any candies—I didn’t even see any. I ate my first candy a few years after the war…About three years after…I was already a big girl. Ten years old.

I could never understand how anybody could not want chocolate candy. How? It’s impossible.

I never found my mama and papa. I don’t even know my real last name. They picked me up in Moscow at the Severny train station.

“What’s your name?” they asked me in the orphanage.

“Marinochka.”

“And your last name?”

“I don’t remember my last name…”

They wrote down Marina Severnaya.

I wanted to eat all the time. But still more I wanted someone to hug me, to caress me. There was little tenderness then, there was war all around, everybody was in grief. I go down the street…Ahead of me a woman walks with her children. She’d take one in her arms, carry him, put him down, take another. They sat on a bench, and she took the youngest on her knees. I kept standing there. Kept looking. I went up to her: “Auntie, take me on your knees.” She was surprised.

I asked her again, “Auntie, please…”

“…AND BEGAN TO ROCK HER LIKE A DOLL”

Dima Sufrankov FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW A MECHANICAL ENGINEER.

Till then I had only been afraid of mice. But all at once there were so many fears! A thousand fears…

My child’s conscience wasn’t so much struck by the word war as frightened by the word airplanes. “Airplanes!”—and our mother grabs us all off the stove. We were afraid to get off the stove, afraid to leave the cottage, so while she takes one off, the other climbs back. There were five of us. And also our beloved cat.

The planes strafed us…

Mama tied the younger ones to her with towels, and we older ones ran by ourselves. When you’re little…you live in a different world, you don’t see what’s high up, you live close to the ground. There the planes are still more frightening, the bombs are still more frightening. I remember being envious of the bugs: they were so small that they always could hide somewhere, crawl into the ground…I imagined that when I died I’d become some animal, run away to the forest.

The planes strafed us…

My cousin, she was ten years old, carried our little three-year-old brother. She ran, ran, and her strength failed her, she fell down. They lay in the snow all night, and he froze to death, but she survived. We dug a hole to bury him, but she wouldn’t let us: “Mishenka, don’t die! Why are you dying?”

We escaped from the Germans and lived in a swamp…on little islands…We built kurens and lived in them. A kuren is a little hut: bare logs and a hole in the top. For smoke. Underneath is the ground. Water. We lived in them winter and summer. Slept on pine branches. Once mama and I went back from the forest to the village to take something from our cottage. The Germans were there. Whoever they found, they herded into the school. They made us kneel and aimed machine guns at us. We children were the same height as the machine guns. We heard shooting in the forest. The Germans shouted, “Partisans! Partisans!” and ran to their trucks. They left quickly. We went back to the forest.

After the war I was afraid of metal. A piece of shrapnel lies there, and I’m afraid it will explode again. Our neighbors’ girl—she was three years and two months old…I remember it…Her mama kept saying over her coffin, “Three years and two months…Three years and two months…” She had found a “pineapple.” And started rocking it like a doll. Wrapped it in some rags and rocked it…The grenade was small, like a toy, but very heavy. Her mother came running, but it was too late…

For two years after the war children were buried in our village of Old Golovchitsy in the Petrikovsky district. Military metal lay about everywhere. Exploded black tanks, armored troop carriers. Pieces of mines, bombs…We had no toys…Later on it was all collected and sent to factories somewhere. Mama explained that this metal would be used to make tractors. Machinery, sewing machines. Whenever I saw a new tractor, I didn’t go near it, I expected it to explode. And to turn black like a tank…

I knew what metal it was made of…

“THEY HAD ALREADY BOUGHT ME A PRIMER…”

Lilia Melnikova SEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A TEACHER.

I was supposed to start first grade…

They had already bought me a primer and a school bag. I was the oldest. My sister Raya was five years old, and our Tomochka—three. We lived in Rossony, our father worked as the director of a tree farm, but a year before the war he died. We lived with mama.

The day the war reached us, all three of us were in the kindergarten, the littlest one too. And so all the children were picked up, but we were left, nobody came for us. We were frightened. Mama was the last to come running. She worked at the tree farm, they had to burn or bury some papers. And that had detained her.