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

They brought me to a farmstead and sat me on a long bench. There were four children in the family I came to. And they took me as well. I want everybody to know the name of the woman who saved me: Olympia Pozharitskaya, from the village of Genevichi, in the Volozhinsk district. As long as I lived in this family, fear lived in it. They could have been shot at any moment…the whole family…including the four children. For harboring a Jewish child from the ghetto. I was their death…What great hearts they had to have! Superhumanly human hearts…Whenever the Germans appeared, they would send me off somewhere at once. The forest was nearby, the forest saved us. That woman pitied me very much, she had the same pity for her own children and for me. When she gave something, she gave it to us all; when she kissed, she kissed us all. And she petted us all in the same way. I called her “mamusya.” Somewhere I had a mama, and here I had mamusya…

When tanks came to the farmstead, I was herding cows. I saw the tanks and hid. I couldn’t believe they were our tanks, but when I made out the red stars on them, I came out to the road. An officer jumped off the first tank, picked me up and raised me very, very high. Then the owner of the farm came running. She was so happy, so beautiful, she wanted so much to share something good, to tell that she, too, had done something for this victory. And she told how they had saved me. A Jewish girl…This officer pressed me to him, and I was so thin, I vanished under his arms. And he embraced that woman, he embraced her with such a look as if she had saved his own daughter. He said that all his family had been killed, and that when the war was over, he would come back and take me to Moscow. But I wouldn’t agree for anything, although I didn’t know whether my mama was alive or not.

Other people came running, they also embraced me. And they all admitted that they knew who had been hidden at the farmstead.

Then mama came to get me. She came into the yard and knelt down before that woman and her children…

“THEY CARRIED ME TO THE UNIT IN THEIR ARMS…I WAS ALL ONE BRUISE FROM HEAD TO FOOT…”

Volodia Ampilogov TEN YEARS OLD. NOW A LOCKSMITH.

I’m ten years old, exactly ten years old…And it’s war. That bastardly war!

I was playing hide-and-seek in the yard with the boys. A big truck drove into the yard, German soldiers leaped out of it, began to catch us and throw us into the back under the canvas. They brought us to the railway station. The truck backed up to the freight car, and they threw us in like sacks. Onto the straw.

The car was so full that at first we could only stand. There were no adults, only children and adolescents. For two days and two nights we were driven with the doors shut, we didn’t see anything, and only heard the wheels knocking against the rails. During the day some light came through the cracks, but during the night we were so frightened we all cried: we were being taken somewhere far away, and our parents didn’t know where we were. On the third day the door opened, and a soldier threw in several loaves of bread. Those who were close managed to snatch some, and swallowed the bread instantly. I was at the far end from the door and didn’t see the bread, I only thought I smelled bread for a moment when I heard the shout: “Bread!” Just the smell of it.

I don’t remember how many days we were on the road…But we couldn’t breathe anymore, because there was no toilet in this car. So for number one and number two…The train was bombarded…the roof was blown off our car. I wasn’t alone, I was with my buddy Grishka; he was ten like me, and before the war we had been in the same class. From the first moments of the bombing, we held on to each other, so as not to get lost. When the roof was blown off, we decided to climb out of the car through the top and escape. Escape! It was clear by then that we were being taken to the west. To Germany.

It was dark in the forest, and we kept turning to look—our train was burning, it was all a big bonfire. High flames. We walked all night. By morning we came upon some village, but there was no village. Instead of the houses…it was the first time I saw it: only black stoves stood there. There was low fog…We walked as if in a cemetery…among black monuments…We looked for something to eat, but the stoves stood empty and cold…We walked on and on…Grisha suddenly fell down and died; his heart stopped. I sat over him all night waiting for morning. In the morning I dug a hole in the sand with my hands and buried Grisha. I wanted to remember the spot, but how could I remember it if everything around was unfamiliar?

I walk along feeling dizzy from hunger. Suddenly I hear, “Stop! Where are you going, boy?” I asked, “Who are you?” “We’re Russians,” they say, “partisans.” From them I learned that I was in the Vitebsk region, and so I wound up in the Alexeevsky partisan brigade…