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

“You’ll help the German people to defeat Bolshevism.”

“I want to go to mama.”

“You’ll live in a house under a tile roof and eat chocolate candy.”

“To mama…”

O-o-oh! If people had known their fate, they wouldn’t have survived till morning.

They loaded us and the train left. We rode for a long time, but I don’t know how long. In my car everybody was from the Vitebsk region. From different villages. They were all young and some, like me, were children. They asked me, “How did you get caught?”

“At a dance.”

I kept fainting from hunger and fear. I lie there. I close my eyes. And then for the first time…there…I saw an angel…The angel was small, and his wings were small. Like a bird’s. I see that he wants to save me. “How can he save me,” I thought, “if he’s so small?” That was the first time I saw him…

Thirst…We all suffered from thirst, we wanted to drink all the time. Everything inside was so dry that my tongue came out and I couldn’t push it back in. During the day we rode with our tongues hanging out. With open mouths. During the night it was a little easier.

I’ll remember it all my life…I’ll never forget it…

We had buckets in the corner, where we did our number one during the ride. And one girl…She crawled to these buckets, put her arms around one of them, bent over it and began to drink. She drank in big gulps…Then she began to vomit…She would vomit and again crawl to the bucket…Again she would vomit…

O-o-oh! If people had known their fate beforehand…

I remember the town of Magdeburg…Our heads were shaved there and our bodies smeared with some white solution. As a prophylactic. My body burned from this solution, from this liquid, as if it was on fire. The skin peeled off. God spare us! I didn’t want to live…I no longer felt sorry for anybody: neither for myself, nor for mama and papa. You raise your eyes—they’re standing around. With their dogs. German shepherds have frightening eyes. Dogs never look you straight in the eye, they always look away, but these did. They looked us straight in the eye. I didn’t want to live…I was there with a girl I had known, and she had been taken with her mama, I don’t know how. Maybe her mama jumped into the truck with her…I don’t know…

I’ll remember it all my life…I’ll never forget it…

This girl stood there and cried, because when they rounded us up for the prophylactic, she lost her mama. Her mama was young…a beautiful mama…We were always in the dark during the ride, no one opened the doors for us, they were freight cars, without windows. So during the ride she didn’t see her mama. For a whole month. She stood there crying and some old woman, her head also shaven, reached out to her, wanted to caress her. She ran away from that woman until she called out: “Daughter dear…” Only by the voice did she realize she was her mama.

O-o-oh! If…If we had known…

We were hungry all the time. I don’t remember where I was, where they took me. The names of the places…from hunger we lived as if asleep…

I remember carrying some boxes in a cartridge and gunpowder factory. Everything there smelled of matches. The smell of smoke…There was no smoke, but it smelled of smoke…

I remember milking cows at some German farmer’s. Splitting wood…Twelve hours a day…

We were fed potato peels, turnips, and were given tea with saccharine. My workmate, a Ukrainian girl, took my tea from me. She was older…stronger…She said, “I’ve got to survive…My mama’s alone at home.”

In the fields she sang beautiful Ukrainian songs. Very beautiful.

I…in one evening…I can’t tell everything in one evening. I won’t have time. My heart won’t stand it.

Where was it? I don’t remember…But this was already in the camp…I evidently wound up in Buchenwald…

We unloaded the trucks of dead people there and stacked them up in layers: a layer of dead people, a layer of tarred railway ties. One layer, another layer…and so from morning to night we prepared bonfires. Bonfires of…well, obviously…of corpses…There were some living people among the dead, and they wanted to tell us something. A few words. But we weren’t allowed to stay next to them…

O-o-oh! Human life…I don’t know if it’s easy for a tree to live, or for all the living creatures that man has tamed. Cattle, birds…But about human beings I know everything…

I wanted to die, I wasn’t sorry for anybody anymore…I was getting ready—was at the point of looking for a knife. My angel came flying to me…It was more than once…I don’t remember what his words of comfort were, but they were tender words. He reasoned with me for a long time…When I told other people about my angel, they thought I had lost my mind. I had no one around me that I knew, there were only strangers. No one wanted to get acquainted with anyone else, because tomorrow one or the other would die. Why get acquainted? But at some point I came to love a little girl…Mashenka…She was blond and gentle. She and I were friends for a month. In a camp a month is a whole lifetime, an eternity. She came to me first.

“Have you got a pencil?”

“No.”