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

And then my mother located me and came to the orphanage. It was completely unexpected. What joy! I run to mama…I open the door…There stands a soldier, in boots, trousers, a cap, and an army shirt. Who is it? And it turns out to be my mama. Pure joy! Mama, and what’s more, a soldier!

I don’t remember her leaving. I cried a lot, that’s obviously why I don’t remember.

Again I wait and wait for mama. Three years I waited. This time mama came in a dress. In shoes. The joy of being taken back kept me from seeing anything. There was just mama—and this joy! I looked at mama, but I didn’t notice she was missing an eye. Mama—it was such a miracle…Nothing could happen to her…Mama! But mama came back from the front very sick. She was a different mama now. She seldom smiled, she didn’t sing, didn’t joke like she used to. She cried a lot.

We went back to Minsk and lived a very hard life. We didn’t find our house, which I had loved so much. The movie theater was gone…and our streets…Instead of it all—stones and more stones…

Mama was always sad. She didn’t joke and spoke very little. She was mostly silent. At night, I cried: where is my cheerful mama? But in the morning I smiled, so that mama wouldn’t guess about my tears…

“HE WON’T LET ME FLY AWAY…”

Vasya Saulchenko EIGHT YEARS OLD. NOW A SOCIOLOGIST.

After the war, the same dream tormented me for a long time…

A dream about the first German I killed. I killed him myself, I didn’t just see him dead. Either I’m flying, and he prevents me. I’m going up…flying…flying…He overtakes me, and we fall together. We fall down into some pit. Or I want to rise, to stand up…and he won’t let me…Because of him I can’t fly away…

One and the same dream…It haunted me for decades…

By the time I killed that German, I had already seen a lot…I had seen my grandfather being shot in the street, and my grandmother near the well…Before my eyes, I saw them beat my mother on the head with a rifle butt…Her hair turned red…But when I shot at that German, I had no time to think of it. He was wounded…I wanted to take away his submachine gun, I had been told to take away his submachine gun. I was ten years old, the partisans had already taken me on missions. I ran up to the German and saw a gun dancing before my eyes. The German had seized it with both hands and was aiming it at my face. But he didn’t manage to shoot first. I did…

I wasn’t frightened that I had killed him…And I didn’t think about him during the war. There were many dead all around, we lived among the dead. We even got used to it. Only once did I get frightened. We walked into a village that had just been burned down. It had been burned in the morning, and we arrived in the evening. I saw a burned woman…She lay, all black, but her hands were white, a living woman’s hands. That’s when I first felt frightened. I could barely keep from screaming.

No, I wasn’t a child. I don’t remember myself as a child. Although…I wasn’t afraid of the dead, but I was afraid of walking through a graveyard at night. The dead on the ground didn’t frighten me, but those under the ground did. A child’s fear…It stayed with me. Though…though I don’t think children are afraid of anything…

Belarus was liberated…Dead Germans lay everywhere. We picked up our own people and buried them in mass graves, but those lay there for a long time, especially in winter. Children ran to the field to look at the dead…And right there, not far away, they went on playing games of war or “Cops and Robbers.”

I was surprised when, many years later, that dream about the dead German appeared…I didn’t expect it…

And that dream haunted me for decades…

My son is already a grown-up man. When he was little, I was tormented by the very thought of trying to tell him…to tell him about the war…He kept asking me, but I avoided the conversation. I liked reading him stories, I wanted him to have a childhood. He grew up, but I still don’t want to talk about the war with him. Maybe someday I’ll tell him about my dream. Maybe…I’m not sure…

It would destroy his world. A world without war…People who haven’t seen a man kill another man are completely different people…

“EVERYBODY WANTED TO KISS THE WORD VICTORY…”

Anya Korzun TWO YEARS OLD. NOW A ZOOTECHNICIAN.

I remember how the war ended…May 9, 1945…

Women came running to the kindergarten.

“Children, it’s Victory! Victory-y-y-y!”

Everybody laughed and cried. Cried and laughed.

They all began kissing us. Women we didn’t know…Kissing us and crying…Kissing…We turned on the loudspeaker. Everybody listened. But we were little, we didn’t understand the words, we understood that joy came from up there, from the black dish of the loudspeaker. The grown-ups picked some of us up…the others climbed by themselves…they climbed on each other like a ladder, only the third or fourth one reached the black dish and kissed it. Then they traded places…Everybody wanted to kiss the word Victory…