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

I brought out the doll that “spoke.” But we didn’t play for long. We quarreled over something, and it turned into a cock fight. Dusya grabbed my doll by the legs and smashed it against the wall. The doll’s head fell off and the speaking button fell from its stomach.

“Dusya, you’re crazy,” all the children began to cry.

“Why is she giving the orders?” Dusya smeared the tears on her cheeks. “Since she has a papa, she can do anything. Dolls, a papa—all just for her.”

Dusya had neither a father nor any dolls…

Our first Christmas tree was set up under the table. Back then we lived at my grandfather’s. It was pretty cramped. So cramped that the only empty space left was under the big table. That’s where we set up the little Christmas tree. I decorated it with red carnations. I remember very well how fresh and clean the tree smelled. Nothing could overcome that smell. Neither the cornmeal mash that my grandmother cooked, nor my grandfather’s shoe polish.

I had a glass ball. My treasure. I couldn’t find a place for it on the tree. I wanted to hang it in such a way that it shone from wherever you looked at it. I placed it up at the very top. When I went to bed, I took it down and hid it. I was afraid it would disappear…

I slept in a washtub. The tub was made of zinc. It had a bluish sheen with frosty veins. No matter how we scrubbed it after doing laundry, the smell of the ashes we used instead of soap, which was a rarity, lingered. I liked it. I liked to press my forehead to the cold edges of the tub, especially when I was sick. I liked to rock it like a cradle. Then its rumbling would betray me, and I would get scolded. We cherished that tub. It was the only thing we had left from our life before the war.

And then suddenly we bought a bed…With shiny beads on the headboard…All this caused me indescribable excitement! I climbed on it and immediately rolled down on the floor. What? Is it possible? I couldn’t believe that anyone could sleep in such a beautiful bed.

Papa saw me on the floor, picked me up, and hugged me tight. And I hugged him…I put my arms around his neck the way mama did.

I remember how happily he laughed…

“I WAITED A LONG TIME FOR MY FATHER…ALL MY LIFE…”

Arseny Gutin BORN IN 1941. NOW AN ELECTRICIAN.

On Victory Day, I turned four…

In the morning I started telling everyone that I was already five years old. Not in my fifth year, but five years old. I wanted to grow up. Papa would come back from the war, and I’d already have grown up.

That day the chairman of the kolkhoz summoned the women: “Victory!” He kissed them all. Each one. I was with mama…I rejoiced. And mama cried.

All the children gathered…Outside the village, we set fire to rubber tires from the German trucks. We shouted “Hurray! Hur-ray! Victory!” We beat on the German helmets that we had gathered earlier in the forest. We beat on them like drums.

We lived in a mud hut…I came running to the mud hut…Mama was crying. I didn’t understand why she was crying and not rejoicing on such a day.

It started to rain. I broke a stick and measured the puddles around our hut.

“What are you doing?” people asked me.

“I’m measuring how deep the puddles are. Because papa may come and fall into them.”

The neighbors cried, and mama cried. I didn’t understand what “missing in action” meant. I waited a long time for my father…All my life…

“AT THAT LIMIT…THAT BRINK…”

Valya Brinskaya TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW AN ENGINEER.

Dolls…The most beautiful…They always remind me of the war…

As long as papa was alive, as long as mama was alive, we didn’t speak of the war. Now that they’re gone, I often think of how nice it is to have old people at home. While they’re alive, we are still children. Even after the war we were still children…

Our papa was a soldier. We lived near Bielostok. For us, the war started from the first hour, the first minutes. In my sleep I heard some sort of rumbling, like thunderclaps, but of an unusual, uninterrupted sort. I woke up and ran to the window—above the barracks in the village of Grayevo, where my sister and I went to school, the sky was burning.

“Papa, is that a thunderstorm?”

“Stay away from the window,” papa replied. “It’s war.”