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

I fell in love with my mama, I now obeyed her unconditionally. And it remained so for my whole life.

*1 The All-Union Pioneer Organization, for Soviet children from ten to fifteen years old, was founded in 1922. It was similar to Scout organizations in the West.

*2 Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), an Old Bolshevik and close collaborator with Stalin, served in several high offices of the Soviet Union. From 1939 to 1949 he was Minister of Foreign Affairs. On August 23, 1939, he signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of nonaggression between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which was broken by Germany in June 1941.

“GRANDMA PRAYED…SHE ASKED THAT MY SOUL COME BACK…”

Natasha Golik FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW A PROOFREADER.

I learned to pray…I often remember how during the war I learned to pray…

They said: it’s war. I—understandably—being five years old, didn’t picture anything specific. Anything frightening. But I fell asleep from fear, precisely from fear. I slept for two days. For two days I lay like a doll. Everybody thought I was dead. Mama cried, and grandma prayed. She prayed for two days and two nights.

I opened my eyes, and the first thing I remember was light. Very bright light, extraordinarily bright. So bright it was painful. I heard someone’s voice, I recognized it: it was my grandma’s voice. Grandma stands before an icon and prays. “Grandma…Grandma…” I called her. She didn’t turn. She didn’t believe it was me calling her…I was already awake…I opened my eyes…

“Grandma,” I asked later, “what did you pray for when I was dying?”

“I asked that your soul come back.”

A year later our grandma died. I already knew what to pray for. I prayed and asked that her soul come back.

But it didn’t come back.

“THEY LAY PINK ON THE CINDERS…”

Katya Korotaeva THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. NOW AN ENGINEER IN HYDROTECHNOLOGY.

I’ll tell about the smell…How war smells…

Before the war I finished sixth grade. At school the rule was that beginning from the fourth grade there were final exams. And so we passed the last exam. It was June, and the months of May and June in 1941 were cold. Usually lilacs blossom some time in May, but that year they blossomed in mid-June. The beginning of the war for me is always associated with the smell of lilacs. And of bird cherry. For me these trees always smell of war…

We lived in Minsk, and I was born in Minsk. My father was a military choirmaster. I used to go to the military parades with him. Besides me, there were two older brothers in the family. Of course, everybody loved me and pampered me as the youngest, and also as the little sister.

Ahead was summer, vacations. This was a great joy. I did sports, went to the swimming pool in the House of the Red Army. The children in my class envied me very much. And I was proud that I could swim well. On Sunday, June 22, there was to be a celebration marking the opening of the Komsomol Lake.^*1 They spent a long time digging it, building it, even our school went to the subbotniks.^*2 I planned to be one of the first to go and swim in it. For sure!

In the morning we had a custom of going to buy fresh rolls. This was considered my duty. On the way I met a friend, she told me that war had begun. There were many gardens on our street, houses drowned in flowers. I thought, “What kind of war? What’s she inventing?”

At home my father was setting up the samovar…I had no time to say anything before neighbors came running, and they all had one word on their lips: War! War! The next morning at seven o’clock my older brother received a notice from the recruiting office. In the afternoon he ran over to his work, got paid off. He came home with this money and said to mama, “I’m leaving for the front, I don’t need anything. Take this money. Buy Katya a new coat.” I had just finished sixth grade and was supposed to start secondary school, and I dreamed that they’d have a dark-blue woolen coat with a gray Astrakhan collar made for me. He knew about it.

To this day I remember that, on leaving for the front, my brother gave money for my coat. Yet we lived modestly, there were enough holes in the family budget. But mama would have bought me the coat, since my brother asked. She just didn’t have time.

The bombing of Minsk began. Mama and I moved to our neighbors’ stone cellar. I had a favorite cat, she was very wild and never went anywhere beyond our yard, but when the bombing started, and I ran from the yard to our neighbors, the cat followed me. I tried to chase her away: “Go home!” But she followed me. She, too, was afraid to stay alone. The German bombs made some ringing, howling noise. I had a musical ear, it affected me strongly…Those sounds…I was so scared that my palms were wet. The neighbors’ four-year-old boy sat with us in the cellar. He didn’t cry, his eyes just grew bigger.