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

My greatest impression at home was the radio. There were no radio sets yet, but a black dish hung in the corner, and the sound came from there. I looked at it every moment. I ate and looked at it, went to bed and looked at it. How could people be there, how did they all get inside? Nobody could explain it to me, because I was unsociable. In the orphanage I had been friends with Tomochka. I liked her because she was cheerful, smiled often, and nobody liked me, because I never smiled. I began to smile when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. At school I used to hide my smile. I didn’t want people to see me smile, I was embarrassed. I didn’t know how to communicate, even with the girls: they would talk about all sorts of things during recess, and I couldn’t say anything. I sat and was silent.

Mama took me from the orphanage, and a couple of days later we went to a market together. There I saw a policeman and had hysterics. I shouted, “Mama, Germans!”—and started to run.

Mama rushed after me, people surrounded me, and I was shaking all over: “Germans!”

After that I refused to go out for two days. Mama tried to explain to me that it was a policeman, who protects us and keeps order in the street, but I refused to be persuaded. No way…The Germans who came to our orphanage wore black army coats…True, when they took blood from us, they led us to a separate room and wore white smocks, but I didn’t remember the white smocks. I remembered their black uniforms…

At home I couldn’t get used to my sister. She should have been someone close, but I was seeing her for the first time in my life, and for some reason she was my sister. Mama was at work all day long. We woke up in the morning and she was already gone. There were two pots of kasha in the oven, we had to serve ourselves. I waited for mama all day long—as something extraordinary, as some sort of happiness. But she came home late, when we were already asleep.

I found a doll somewhere, not really a doll, only a doll’s head. I loved it. It was my joy. I carried it around from morning till night. It was my only toy. I dreamed of having a ball. I would come out to the yard, all the children had balls, they carried them in special nets, that’s how they were sold. I would ask, and they would let me hold it for a while.

I bought myself a ball when I was eighteen and got my first salary at the clock factory. My dream came true: I brought the ball and hung it up in its net. I was ashamed to go outside with it, because I was grown up, so I sat at home and looked at it.

Many years later I decided to go to Stepanida Ivanovna. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, but my husband insisted: “Let’s go together. How is it you don’t want to find out anything about yourself?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. I’m afraid.”

I dialed her home number and heard the response: “Stepanida Ivanovna Dediulia has died…”

I can’t forgive myself…

“YOU SHOULD GO TO THE FRONT, BUT YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH MY MAMA…”

Yania Chernina TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A TEACHER.

An ordinary day…That day began as usual…

But while I was riding on the tram, people were already saying, “How awful! How awful!” and I couldn’t understand what had happened. I came running home and saw my mama. She was kneading dough, and tears poured from her eyes. I asked, “What’s happened?” The first thing she said was, “War! Minsk has been bombed…” And we had just come back to Rostov from Minsk, after visiting my aunt.

On the first of September we still went to school, but on the tenth the school was closed. The evacuation of Rostov began. Mama said that we must prepare to leave, but I protested: “What evacuation can there be?” I went to the regional Komsomol Committee and asked to join ahead of time. They refused, because the age for joining Komsomol was fourteen and I was only twelve. I thought that if I became a Komsomol member, I would be able to take part in everything right away, would become an adult at once. Would be able to go to the front.

Mama and I got on the train. We had only one suitcase, and there were two dolls in it, a big one and a little one. I remember mama didn’t even resist when I put them in. I’ll tell later how these dolls saved us…