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

First separate houses burned, then the whole city. We like looking at a fire, at a bonfire, but it’s frightening when a house burns, and here fire came from all sides, the sky and the streets were filled with smoke. In some places it was very bright…From the fire…I remember three open windows in a wooden house, with magnificent Christmas cactuses on the windowsill. There were no people in this house anymore, only the blossoming cactuses…The feeling was that they weren’t red flowers, but flames. Burning flowers.

We fled…

In villages on the way people fed us with bread and milk—that was all they had. We had no money. I left the house with nothing but a kerchief, and mama for some reason ran out in a winter coat and high-heeled shoes. We were fed for free, no one made a peep about money. Refugees came pouring in crowds.

Then someone in front sent word that the road ahead had been cut by German motorcyclists. We ran back past the same villages, past the same women with jugs of milk. We came to our street…Several days ago it was still green, there were flowers, and now everything was burned down. Nothing was left even of the centennial lindens. Everything was burned down to the yellow sand. The black earth on which everything grew disappeared somewhere; there was only yellow sand. Nothing but sand. As if you were standing by a freshly dug grave…

Factory furnaces were left. They were white, baked by the strong flame. Nothing else was recognizable…The whole street had burned. Grandmothers and grandfathers and many small children had burned. Because they didn’t run away with the others, they thought they wouldn’t be touched. The fire didn’t spare anybody. We walked and if you saw a black corpse, it meant a burned old man. If you saw something small and pink from a distance—it meant a child. They lay pink on the cinders…

Mama took off her kerchief and covered my eyes with it…So we reached our house, the place where our house had stood several days ago. The house wasn’t there. We were met by our miraculously spared cat. She pressed herself to me—that was all. No one could speak…even the cat didn’t meow. She was silent for several days. Everybody became mute.

I saw the first fascists, not even saw but heard—they all had iron-shod boots, they stomped loudly. Stomped over our pavement. I had the feeling that it even hurt the earth when they walked.

But how the lilacs bloomed that year…How the bird cherry bloomed…

*1 An artificial lake built on the Svisloch River in the Minsk district of Belorussia. “Komsomol” was the acronym of the Communist Youth League, founded by Lenin in 1918.

*2 Subbotniks, from the Russian word for Saturday (subbota), were Saturdays devoted to volunteer work for the community.

“I STILL WANT MY MAMA…”

Zina Kosiak EIGHT YEARS OLD. NOW A HAIRDRESSER.

First grade…

I finished first grade in May of ’41, and my parents took me for the summer to the Pioneer camp of Gorodishche, near Minsk. I came there, went for a swim once, and two days later the war began. We were put on a train and taken somewhere. German planes flew over, and we shouted “Hurray!” We didn’t understand that they could be enemy planes. Until they began to bomb us…Then all colors disappeared. All shades. For the first time the word death appeared; everybody began to repeat this incomprehensible word. And mama and papa weren’t there.

When we were leaving the camp, we each had something poured into a pillowcase—some of us grain, some of us sugar. Even the smallest children weren’t passed over, everybody got something. They wanted us to take as much food as possible for the road, and this food was used very sparingly. But on the train we saw wounded soldiers. They moaned, they were in pain. We wanted to give everything to these soldiers. We called it “feeding the papas.” We called all military men papas.

We were told that Minsk had burned down, burned down completely, that the Germans were already there, but that we were going to the rear. Where there was no war.

We rode for over a month. They’d direct us to some town, we’d come there, but they couldn’t keep us there, because the Germans were already close. And so we arrived in Mordovia.