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

Every morning an iron bar clanged, in came a laughing officer and a beautiful woman, who said to us in Russian, “Whoever wants kasha quickly line up by twos. We’ll take you to eat…”

The children stumbled, shoved, everybody wanted kasha.

“We only need twenty-five,” the woman said as she counted. “Don’t quarrel, the rest of you can wait till tomorrow.”

At first I believed her, and ran and shoved along with the little children, but then I became afraid: “Why did those who were led away to eat kasha not come back?” I started sitting right by the steel door at the entrance, and even when there were only a few of us left, the woman still didn’t notice me. She always stood and counted with her back to me. I can’t tell how long it went on. I think…I lost memory then…

I never saw a single bird or even a beetle in the concentration camp. I dreamed of seeing at least a worm. But they didn’t live there…

One day we heard noise, shouts, shooting. The iron bar clanged—and our soldiers burst in shouting, “Dear children!” They took us on their shoulders, in their arms, several children at a time, because we weighed nothing by then. They kissed us, embraced us, and wept. They took us outside…

We saw the black chimney of the crematorium…

They fed us, treated us medically for several weeks. They asked me, “How old are you?”

I replied, “Thirteen…”

“And we thought, maybe eight.”

When we became stronger, they took us in the direction of the sunrise.

Home…

“A WHITE SHIRT SHINES FAR OFF IN THE DARK…”

Efim Friedland NINE YEARS OLD. NOW DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF A SILICATE FACTORY.

My childhood ended…with the first gunshots. A child still lived inside me, but now alongside someone else…

Before the war, I was afraid to be left alone in the apartment, but then the fear went away. I no longer believed in my mother’s hobgoblins crouching behind the stove, and she stopped mentioning them. We left Khotimsk on a cart. My mother had bought a basket of apples; she set it beside my sister and me and we ate. The bombing started. My sister was holding two nice apples in her hands, and we began fighting over them. She wouldn’t give them up. My mother yelled, “Hide!”—but we were quarreling over the apples. We fought until I asked my sister, “Give me at least one apple, or I’ll die without having tasted them.” She gave me one, the nicest one. Then the bombing stopped. I didn’t eat the lucky apple.

We rode on the cart, and ahead of us went a herd. We knew from our father (before the war, in Khotimsk, he was the director of the stockyard) that they weren’t ordinary cows, but a breeding herd, which had been purchased abroad for big money. I remember that my father was unable to explain how much “big money” it was, until he gave the example that each cow was worth a tractor. A tank. If it’s a tank, that means it’s a lot. We cherished each cow.

Since I grew up in the family of a zootechnician, I liked animals. After the umpteenth bombing, we were left without our cart, and I walked in front of the herd, tied to the bull Vaska. He had a ring in his nose with a rope tied to it, and I tied myself to the end of the rope. For a long time, the cows couldn’t get used to the bombings. They were heavy, not suited for these long marches; their hooves cracked, and they got terribly tired. After the shelling, it was hard to round them up, but if the bull went on the road, they all followed him. And the bull obeyed only me.

During the night, my mother would wash my white shirt somewhere…At dawn First Lieutenant Turchin, who led the convoy, shouted, “Rise and shine!” I would put on the shirt and set off with the bull. I remember that I always wore a white shirt. It shone in the dark, everybody could see me from far off. I slept next to the bull, under his front legs—it was warmer that way. Vaska never got up first; he waited until I got up. He sensed that a child was next to him, and he could cause him harm. I lay with him and never worried.

We reached Tula on foot. Nearly a thousand miles. We walked for three months, walked barefoot by then, everything we had on was in shreds. There were few herdsmen left. The cows had swollen udders, we had no time to milk them. The udder is sore, the cow stands next to you and looks. I had cramps in my hands from milking fifteen or twenty cows a day. I can still see it: a cow lay on the road with a broken hind leg, milk dripping from her bruised udder. She looked at people. Waited. The soldiers stopped—and took up their rifles to shoot her, so she wouldn’t suffer. I asked them to wait…

I went over and let the milk out on the ground. The cow gratefully licked my shoulder. “Well.” I stood up. “Now shoot.” But I ran off so as not to see it…

In Tula we learned that the entire breeding herd we had brought would go to the slaughterhouse—there was nowhere else to put them. The Germans were nearing the city. I put on my white shirt and went to say goodbye to Vaska. The bull breathed heavily in my face…