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

*3 Suvorov Schools, founded in the Soviet Union in 1943 and still operating, are boarding schools for boys fourteen to eighteen years old, with an emphasis on military training. They give preference to boys from military families, particularly war orphans. The name comes from Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800), the last generalissimo of the Russian army, who was reputed never to have lost a battle.

“THEY WERE DRAWN BY THE HUMAN SCENT…”

Nadia Savitskaya TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

We were waiting for my brother to come home from the army. He wrote in a letter that he would come in June…

We thought my brother would return and we’d build him a house. Father had already transported some beams by horses, and in the evenings we all sat on these beams, and I remember mama telling father that they would put up a big house. They’d have many grandchildren.

The war began, and my brother didn’t come home from the army. We were five sisters and one brother, and he was the oldest. All through the war mama wept, and all through the war we waited for our brother. I remember that: we waited for him every day.

Whenever we heard that our prisoners of war were being driven somewhere, we’d quickly go there. Mama would bake a dozen potatoes, tie them up in a bundle, and we would go. Once we had nothing to bring, and there was ripe rye in the field. We broke off some ears, rubbed them to get the grains out. And we ran into a German patrol that guarded the field. They poured our grains out and indicated to us that we should line up to be shot. We began to howl, and our mama kissed their boots. They were on horseback, high up, and she clutched at their feet, kissed them, and begged, “Dear sirs! Have pity…Dear sirs, these are my children. You see, all girls.” They didn’t shoot us and rode off.

As soon as they rode off, I began to laugh. I laughed and laughed, ten minutes went by and I still laughed. Twenty minutes…I fell down laughing. Mama scolded me—it didn’t help; mama begged me—it didn’t help. I laughed all the while we walked. I came home and laughed. I buried my face in the pillows and couldn’t calm down—I laughed. And I laughed like that the whole day. They thought that I…Well, you know…They were all frightened…They were afraid I’d lost my mind. Turned lunatic.

It has stayed with me to this day: whenever I’m frightened, I start laughing loudly. Very loudly.

In 1945…We were liberated, and then we received a letter that my brother had been killed. Mama wept and wept, and went blind. We lived outside the village in German bunkers, because our village had all burned down, our old cottage had burned down and the beams for the new house. Nothing of ours was left. We found some army helmets in the forest and cooked in them. German helmets were big as cauldrons. We found food in the forest. It was scary going for berries and mushrooms. There were lots of German shepherds left; they attacked people and killed little children. They were used to human flesh and human blood. To its fresh scent…When we went to the forest, we gathered in a big group. Some twenty of us…Our mothers taught us that we should shout as we walked in the forest, so that the dogs would get scared. While you were picking a basket of berries, you’d shout so much that you’d lose your voice. Get hoarse. Your throat would be all swollen. The dogs were big as wolves.

They were drawn by the human scent…

“WHY DID THEY SHOOT HER IN THE FACE? MY MAMA WAS SO BEAUTIFUL…”

Volodia Korshuk SEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A PROFESSOR, A DOCTOR IN HISTORY.

We lived in Brest. Right on the border…

In the evening all three of us were at the movies: mama, papa, and I. It rarely happened that we went anywhere together, because my father was always busy. He was the director of the regional department of education, and was always on business trips.

The last evening without war…The last night…

When mama roused me in the morning, everything around rumbled, banged, boomed. It was very early. I remember that outside the windows it was still dark. My parents bustled about, packing suitcases; for some reason they couldn’t find anything.

We had our own house, a big garden. My father went somewhere. Mama and I looked out the window: there were some military people in the garden speaking broken Russian and dressed in our uniforms. Mama said they were saboteurs. I couldn’t quite figure out how it was possible that in our garden, where a samovar was still standing on a little table from the evening before, there were suddenly saboteurs! And where were our frontier guards?

We left the city on foot. Before my eyes a stone house ahead of us fell to pieces and a telephone flew out of a window. In the middle of the street stood a bed; on it lay a dead little girl under a blanket. As if the bed had been taken out and put there: everything was intact, only the blanket was slightly singed. Just outside the city were rye fields. Planes fired at us with machine guns, and everybody moved, not along the road, but over those fields.