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

In secret from mama I went to get a job at the factory. I was such a little thing, a real starveling, and they didn’t want to take me. I stood there and cried. Somebody took pity on me. They sent me to the accounting office to fill out work assignments and calculate salaries. I worked on a special machine, which was a prototype of the present-day calculator. Now it works noiselessly, but then it was like a tractor, and it worked with a lamp on. For twelve hours a day my head was like in the hot sun, and toward the end of the day I was deaf from the noise.

Something terrible happened to me: instead of 280 rubles salary, I calculated 80 for a worker who had six children. Nobody noticed my mistake till payday. I heard someone run down the corridor shouting “I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her! How am I going to feed my children?”

“Hide,” they said to me. “It must be you he’s after.”

The door opened, I pressed myself to the machine, there was nowhere to hide. A big man ran in with something heavy in his hands.

“Where is she?”

They pointed at me: “There she is…”

He even leaned against the wall.

“Pah! There’s nobody to kill, my own are like that.” And he turned and walked away.

I just collapsed by the machine and burst into tears…

Mama worked at the technical control section of the same factory. The factory produced missiles for the “katiushas,” in two sizes—thirty-five and seventeen pounds. The body of the missile was checked for its solidity under pressure. The missile was lifted, fixed to a socket, and submitted to the necessary pounds of pressure. If it passed the test, the missile was removed and put in a box. If it didn’t, the thread was stripped, the missile took off with a whine and flew up to the ceiling, and then fell who knows where. There was this whining and the fear when the missiles flew off…Everybody hid under the machinery…

Mama shuddered and shouted during the night. I’d put my arms around her, and she would quiet down.

Nineteen forty-three was coming to an end…Our army was advancing. I realized that I had to study. I went to the director of the factory. He had a high desk in his office, and I couldn’t be seen from behind it. I began a prepared speech: “I want to quit my factory job. I have to study.”

The director became angry: “We don’t allow anyone to quit. It’s wartime.”

“I make mistakes in orders, because I’m uneducated. I miscalculated a man’s salary recently.”

“You’ll learn. I don’t have enough people.”

“But after the war educated people will be needed, not ignoramuses.”

“Ah, you pipsqueak.” The director got up from his desk. “So you know everything!”

At school I went to the sixth grade. During the lessons of literature and history the teachers talked to us, and we sat and knitted socks, mittens, tobacco pouches for the army. We knitted and memorized poetry. Recited Pushkin in chorus.

We were waiting for the war to end. It was such a cherished dream that mama and I were even afraid to talk about it. Mama was at work, and some commissioners passed through asking everybody, “What can you give to the defense fund?” They asked me, too. What did we have? We had nothing except some government bonds that mama had saved. Everybody gave something, how could we not give?! I gave them all the bonds.

I remember that when mama came home from work, she didn’t scold me, she just said, “That was all we had, besides your dolls.”

I parted with my dolls, too…Mama lost our monthly bread coupons, and we were literally perishing. And the saving idea came into my head of trying to trade my two dolls—the big one and the little one—for something. We went to the market with them. An old Uzbeck came up to us: “How much?” We said we had to survive for a month, because we had no coupons. The old Uzbeck gave us a big sack of rice. And we didn’t starve to death. Mama swore, “I’ll buy you two beautiful dolls as soon as we get back home.”

When we got back to Rostov, she couldn’t buy me any dolls, we were needy again. She bought them for me the day I graduated from the institute. Two dolls—a big one and a little one…

* In the Caucasus, an aul is a fortified village, usually built against a cliffside or a steep slope.

“IN THE LAST MOMENTS THEY SHOUTED THEIR NAMES…”

Artur Kuzeev TEN YEARS OLD. NOW A HOTEL ADMINISTRATOR.

Someone was ringing the bell. Pulling and pulling…

Our church had long been closed, I don’t even remember when it was closed. It had always been a kolkhoz warehouse. Grain was kept in it. Hearing the long-dead bell, the village was dumbstruck: “Calamity!” Mama…everybody rushed outside…

That was how the war began…

I close my eyes…I see…

Three Red Army soldiers are being led down the road, their arms tied behind them with barbed wire. They are in their underwear. Two are young, one an older man. They walk with their heads down.

They are shot near the school. On the road.

In the last moments they began to shout their names loudly in hopes that someone would hear and remember them. Inform their relatives.