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

We were swimming in the river…And we saw something black rising from the bottom. Just at that moment! We thought it was a sunken log, but this something was being pushed by the current to the bank, and we made out arms, a head…We saw that it was a man. I think no one got scared. No one cried out. We remembered the adults saying that our machine-gun operator had been killed at that spot and fell into the water with his “coffee grinder.”

Just a few months of war…And we already didn’t have any fear at the sight of death. We pulled the man out of the water and buried him. Someone fetched a shovel, and we dug a hole. Put him in and covered him with soil. Stood around silently. One girl even made the sign of the cross. Her grandmother used to help in the church, and the girl knew some prayers.

We did everything by ourselves. Without adults. Before the war we didn’t even know how to bury. But now we somehow recalled it.

For two days we kept diving for the machine gun…

“HE GATHERED THEM IN A BASKET…”

Leonid Sivakov SIX YEARS OLD. NOW A TOOLMAKER.

The sun was already up…

The herdsmen were rounding up the cows. The punitive squad soldiers gave them time to drive the herd beyond the river Greza and started on a round of the cottages. They came with a list, and they shot people according to the list. They read: mother, grandmother, the children so-and-so, of such-and-such age…They checked the list. If anyone was missing, they would start searching. They’d find a child under the bed, under the stove…

Once they had found everybody, they shot them…

Six people gathered in our cottage: grandmother, mama, my older sister, me, and my two younger brothers. Six people…Through the window we saw them going to our neighbors, and we ran to the entryway with my youngest brother and shut the door with a hook. Sat on a trunk, huddling around mama.

The hook was weak, the German tore it off at once. He stepped across the threshold and fired a burst. I had no time to make out whether he was young or old. We all fell down, I ended up behind the trunk…

I came to for the first time when I felt something dripping on me…Drip-drip, like water. I raised my head: it was mama’s blood dripping. Mama lay there dead. I crawled under the bed, everything was covered with blood…I was all soaked with blood…

I heard two men come in. They counted how many people were killed. One says, “There’s one missing. We should make a search.” They started searching, bent down to look under the bed, and there was a sack of grain mama had hidden there, and I lay behind it. They pulled the sack out and went off pleased. They forgot that one person on the list was missing. They left, and I lost consciousness…

The second time I came to was when our cottage began to burn…

I felt terribly hot and also nauseous. I could see I was covered with blood, but I didn’t realize I was wounded, because I didn’t feel any pain. The cottage was filled with smoke…I somehow crawled out to the kitchen garden, then to the neighbor’s orchard. Only then did I feel that I was wounded in the leg and my arm was broken. The pain just hit me. For some time I again lost all memory…

The third time consciousness returned to me was when I heard a woman’s terrible scream…I crawled toward it…

The scream hung in the air. I crawled toward it as if following a thread and wound up by a kolkhoz garage. I didn’t see anyone…The scream came from somewhere under the ground…Then I figured out that someone was screaming in the inspection pit…

I couldn’t stand up, so I crawled and bent down…The pit was full of people…These were all refugees from Smolensk who had been living in our school. Some twenty families. They all lay in the pit, and on top a wounded girl kept trying to get up and then fell back. And screamed. I looked around: where was I to crawl to now? The whole village was burning…And no living people…Only this girl. I fell down to her…I don’t know how long I lay there.

I felt that the girl was dead. I nudged her and called to her—she didn’t respond. I alone was alive, and they were all dead. The sun was warm, there was steam coming from the warm blood. My head spun…

I lay there for a long time, sometimes conscious, sometimes not. We had been shot on Friday, and on Saturday grandfather and mama’s sister came from another village. They found me in the pit, lay me in a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow jolted, I was in pain, but I had no voice. I could only cry…I didn’t talk for a long time. For seven years…I whispered a little, but no one could make out my words. After seven years I began to pronounce one word well, then another…I listened to myself…

At the place where our cottage had been grandfather gathered bones in a basket…The basket wasn’t even full…

So I’ve told you…Is that all? All that’s left of such horror? A few dozen words…

“THEY TOOK THE KITTENS OUT OF THE COTTAGE…”

Tonia Rudakova FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW DIRECTOR OF A KINDERGARTEN.

The first year of the war…I remember little…