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

In the evening there were fireworks. The sky lit up. Mama opened the window and burst into tears.

“Little daughter, remember this all your life…”

When my father came home from the front, I was scared of him. He would give me candy and ask, “Say ‘papa’…”

I would take the candy, hide with it under the table, and say, “Mister…”

I had no papa during the war. I grew up with mama and grandma. With my aunt. I couldn’t imagine what a papa would do in our home.

He’d come with a rifle…

“WEARING A SHIRT MADE FROM MY FATHER’S ARMY SHIRT…”

Nikolai Berezka BORN IN 1945. NOW A TAXI DRIVER.

I was born in 1945, but I remember the war. I know the war.

Mother would lock me up in another room…or send me outside with the other boys…But I still heard how my father screamed. He screamed for a long time. I clung to the crack between the doors: my father held his ailing leg with both hands, rocking it. Or he rolled about, pounding the floor with his fists: “The war! The cursed war!”

When the pain passed, my father took me in his arms. I touched his leg. “It’s the war that hurts you?…”

“The war! Curse it!” answered my father.

And then this…The neighbors had two little boys…I was friends with them…They were blown up by a mine outside the village. That was probably already in 1949…

Their mother, Auntie Anya, threw herself into their grave. They pulled her out…She screamed…people don’t scream like that…

I went to school wearing a shirt made from my father’s army shirt. I was so happy! All the boys whose fathers had come back from the war had shirts sewn from their fathers’ army shirts.

After the war, my father died from the war. From his wounds.

I don’t have to make anything up. I’ve seen the war. I dream about the war. I cry in my sleep that they will come tomorrow and take my papa away. The house smells of new military cloth…

The war! Curse it!…

“I DECORATED IT WITH RED CARNATIONS…”

Mariam Yuzefovskaya BORN IN 1941. NOW AN ENGINEER.

I was born in the war. And I grew up during the war.

And so…We’re waiting for papa to come back from the war…

What did mama not do with me: she shaved my head, rubbed me with kerosene, applied ointments. I hated myself desperately. Felt ashamed. I wouldn’t even go out in the yard. Lice and blisters in the first year after the war…There was no escaping them…

And then the telegram: father is demobilized. We went to meet him at the train station. Mama dressed me up. She tied a red bow to the top of my head. What it was tied to isn’t clear. And she kept yanking my arm: “Don’t scratch yourself. Don’t scratch yourself.” But the itching was unbearable! The cursed bow was about to fall off. And there was this buzzing in my head: “What if my father doesn’t like me? He hasn’t seen me even once.”

But what actually happened was even worse. My father saw me and rushed to me first. But right then…for a moment, for just a moment—but I felt it at once, with my skin, with my whole little body—it was as if he backed away…For a single moment…And it was so hurtful. So unbearably bitter. And when he took me in his arms, I pushed him away with all my might. The smell of kerosene suddenly hit my nose. It had been following me everywhere for a year, I had stopped noticing it. I got used to it. But now I smelled it. Maybe it was because my father had such a nice and unusual smell. He was so handsome compared to me and my exhausted mama. And it stung me to my very soul. I tore off the bow, threw it on the ground, and stepped on it with my foot.

“What are you doing?” my father asked in surprise.

“It’s your character,” laughed mama, who understood everything. She held my father with both hands, and they walked home like that.

At night I called mama and asked her to take me to bed with her. I had always slept with mama…All through the war…But mama didn’t answer, as if she was asleep. I had no one to tell how hurt I was.

Before falling asleep, I firmly decided to run away to an orphanage…

In the morning, my father gave me two dolls. I didn’t have real dolls till I was five. Only homemade rag dolls. My grandmother’s. The dolls that my father brought had eyes that closed and opened, their arms and legs could move, one of them squeaked a word like mama. It seemed magical to me. I treasured them. I was even afraid to take them outside. But I showed them in the window. We lived on the ground floor, all the children in the yard gathered to see my dolls.

I was weak and sickly. I was always unlucky. Either I bruised my forehead, or I cut myself on a nail. Or I would simply fall in a faint. And the children were reluctant to include me in their games. I tried to gain their trust however I could; I invented all sorts of ways. It reached a point where I started fawning on Dusya, the caretaker’s daughter. Dusya was strong, cheerful, everybody liked to play with her.

She asked me to bring out my doll, and I couldn’t resist. However, not at once. I still refused for a little while.

“I won’t play with you,” Dusya threatened me.

That worked on me at once.