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

…In the orphanage of Gomel, where I was transported by plane with several other partisan children as soon as the town was liberated, someone handed me money sent by my father, a big red paper note. I went with the boys to the market and spent all the money on candy. It was a lot of candy, enough for everybody. The teacher asked, “What did you do with the money your father sent you?” I confessed that I bought candy. “That’s all?” she asked, surprised.

Minsk was liberated…A man came and said he would take me to my father. It was hard to get on the train. The man got in and people handed me to him through the window.

I met with my father and asked him again that he and I should never part, because it is bad to be alone. I remember he met me not alone, but with a new mama. She pressed my head to herself, and I missed my mother’s caress so much and so enjoyed her touch that I fell asleep in the car at once. On her shoulder.

I was ten when I went to first grade. I was big, and I knew how to read, and after six months they transferred me to second grade. I knew how to read, but not how to write. I was called to the blackboard and had to write a word with the letter Ю in it. I stood there terrified, thinking that I didn’t know how to write the letter Ю. But I knew how to shoot. I was a good shot.

One day I didn’t find my father’s pistol in the closet. I turned everything in it upside down—the pistol wasn’t there.

“How come? What are you going to do now?” I asked my father when he came home from work.

“I’ll teach children,” he said.

I was puzzled…I thought the only work was war…

“YOU ASKED ME TO FINISH YOU OFF…”

Vasya Baikachev TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A TEACHER OF MANUAL EDUCATION.

I’ve often remembered it…Those were the last days of my childhood…

During the winter vacation our whole school took part in a military game. Before that we studied drilling, made wooden rifles, sewed camouflage coats, clothes for medical orderlies. Our chiefs from the military unit came flying to us in biplanes. We were completely thrilled.

In June German planes were already flying over us dropping scouts. They were young fellows in gray checkered jackets and caps. Together with some adults we caught several of them and handed them over to the village council. We were proud of having taken part in a military operation, it reminded us of our winter game. But soon others appeared. They did not wear checkered jackets and caps, but green uniforms with the sleeves rolled up, boots with wide tops and iron-shod heels. They had calfskin packs on their backs, long gas-mask canisters at their sides, and held submachine guns at the ready. Well-fed, hefty. They sang and shouted, “Zwei Monat—Moskva kaput.” My father explained, “Zwei Monat” means two months. Only two months? Only? This war was not at all like the one we had played at just recently and which I had liked.

In the first few days the Germans didn’t stop in our village of Malevichi, they drove on to the Zhlobin station. My father worked there. But he no longer went to the station, he waited for our troops to come any day and drive the Germans back to the border. We believed father and also waited for our soldiers. We expected them any day. And they…our soldiers…lay all around: on the roads, in the forest, in the ditches, in the fields…in the kitchen gardens…in the peat pits…They lay dead. They lay with their rifles. With their grenades. It was warm, and they grew bigger from the warmth, and there seemed to be more and more of them every day. A whole army. No one buried them…

Father hitched up the horse and we went to the field. We began to collect the dead men. We dug holes…Put them in rows of ten to twelve men…My school bag was filling with papers. I remember from the addresses that they were natives of the city of Ulyanovsk, in the Kuibyshev region.

Several days later I found my father and my best friend, fourteen-year-old Vasya Shevtsov, killed outside the village. My grandfather and I came to that spot…Bombing began…We buried Vasya, but had no time to bury father. After the bombing we found nothing left of him. Not a trace. We put a cross at the cemetery—that’s all. Just a cross. We buried father’s best Sunday suit under it…

A week later we could no longer collect the soldiers…We couldn’t lift them…There was water sloshing under the army shirts…We collected their rifles. Their army cards.

Grandfather was killed in the bombing…

How were we to go on living? Without father? Without grandfather? Mama wept and wept. What to do with the weapons we gathered and buried in a safe place? Who to give them to? There was nobody to ask. Mama wept.

In winter I got in touch with some underground fighters. They were happy to have my gift. They sent the weapons to the partisans…