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

Here’s how they fed us: they gave us a bowl of mash and a piece of bread a day. I didn’t like mash and I gave my portion to a girl, and she gave me her piece of bread. We became friends because of it. Nobody paid any attention until one house mistress noticed our exchange. They put me on my knees in the corner. I spent a long time kneeling by myself. In a big empty room…To this day whenever I hear the word mash I immediately want to weep. When I grew up I couldn’t understand why this word provoked such revulsion in me. I forgot about the orphanage…

I was already sixteen, no, probably seventeen…I met my house mistress from the orphanage. There was a woman sitting on a bus…I looked at her and felt drawn to her as if by a magnet, drawn so much that I missed my stop. I didn’t know the woman, I didn’t remember her, but I was drawn to her. I finally couldn’t stand it, burst into tears, and got angry with myself: what’s the matter with me? I looked at her as at a painting I had seen once, but had forgotten, and wanted to look at again. And there was something dear, maybe like mama…closer than mama, but who she was I didn’t know. And this anger, these tears just gushed out of me! I turned away, went to the exit, stood there, and cried.

The woman saw it all, came up to me and said, “Don’t cry, Anechka.”

I cried still more from those words of hers. “But I don’t know you.”

“Look better!”

“I swear I don’t know you.” And I howled.

She led me off the bus.

“Look closely at me, you’ll remember everything. I’m Stepanida Ivanovna…”

I stood my ground.

“I don’t know you. I’ve never met you.”

“Do you remember the orphanage?”

“What orphanage? You must be taking me for someone else.”

“No, remember the orphanage…I was your house mistress.”

“My papa was killed, but I have mama. What orphanage?”

I had forgotten about the orphanage, because I was already living with mama. At home. This woman gently stroked my head, but all the same my tears poured down. Then she said, “Here’s my phone number…Call me if you want to learn about yourself. I remember you well. You were our littlest girl…”

She went away, and I couldn’t move from the spot. I should, of course, have run after her, asked all sorts of questions. I didn’t run and catch up with her.

Why didn’t I? I was a wild thing, simply a wild thing. For me people were something alien, dangerous, I didn’t know how to speak with anybody. I sat for hours talking to myself. Was afraid of everything.

Mama found me only in 1946…I was eight years old. She had been taken to Germany together with my sister, where they somehow survived. When they came back, mama searched in all the orphanages in Belarus. She lost all hope of finding me. Yet I was right there…in Minsk. But evidently the little note mama had given me got lost, and I was registered under another last name. Mama looked at all the girls called Anya in the Minsk orphanages. She decided that I was her daughter by my eyes, and because I was tall. For a week she kept coming and looking at me: was I her Anechka or not? My first name had stayed with me. When I saw mama, some incomprehensible feelings came over me, I began to cry for no reason. No, those were not memories of something familiar, it was something else…People around me said, “Mama. Your mama.” And some new world opened for me—mama! A mysterious door was thrown open…I knew nothing about people called “mama” and “papa.” I was frightened, while others rejoiced. Everybody smiled at me.

Mama invited our prewar neighbor to come with her: “Find my Anechka here.”

The neighbor immediately pointed at me.

“Here’s your Anka! Don’t hesitate, take her. Your eyes, your face…”

In the evening the house mistress came up to me: “Tomorrow you’ll be picked up, you’ll leave.”

I was terrified.

In the morning they washed me, dressed me, everybody was nice to me. Our gruff old nanny smiled at me. I realized that this was my last day with them, that they were taking leave of me. Suddenly I didn’t even feel like going anywhere. They changed me into everything mama brought—mama’s shoes, mama’s dress—and that way I was already separated from my orphanage friends…I stood among them like a stranger. And they gazed at me as if they were seeing me for the first time.