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

I don’t remember how long we stayed in the forest…We stopped hearing explosions. Silence fell. The women sighed with relief: “Our boys fought them off.” But then…in the midst of that silence…suddenly we heard the roar of flying airplanes…We ran out to the road. The planes were flying toward the border: “Hur-ray!” But there was something “not ours” about those planes: the wings were not ours, and the sound wasn’t ours. They were German bombers, they flew wing to wing, slowly and heavily. It seemed like they left no empty space in the sky. We started counting, but lost track. Later, in the wartime news reports, I saw those planes, but my impression wasn’t the same. The filming was done at airplane level. But when you look at them from below, through the thick of the trees, and what’s more, with the eyes of an adolescent—it’s a scary sight. Afterward I often dreamed about those planes. But the dream went further—the whole of that iron sky slowly fell down on me and crushed me, crushed me, crushed me. I would wake up in a cold sweat, shaking all over. Horrible!

Somebody said that the bridge had been bombed. We got frightened: what about papa? Papa wouldn’t be able to swim across, he couldn’t swim.

I can’t say exactly now…But I remember that papa came running to us: “You’ll be evacuated by truck.” He gave mama the thick photograph album and a warm, quilted blanket: “Muffle up the children, or they’ll catch cold.” That was all we took with us. In such a hurry. No documents, no passports, not a kopeck of money. We also had a pot of meatballs my mother had prepared for the weekend, and my brother’s little shoes. And my sister—a miracle!—grabbed at the last moment a package, which contained mama’s crepe de chine dress and her shoes. Somehow. By chance. Maybe she and papa wanted to visit some friends for the weekend? Nobody could remember anymore. Peaceful life instantly disappeared, fell into the background.

That’s how we evacuated…

We quickly reached the station, but sat there for a long time. Everything trembled and rattled. The lights went out. We lit a fire with paper, newspapers. Somebody found a lantern. Its light cast huge shadows of people sitting—on the walls, on the ceiling. They stood still, then moved. And then my imagination ran away with me: Germans in a fortress, our soldiers taken prisoner. I decided to try and see if I could endure torture or not. I put my fingers between two boxes and crushed them. I howled in pain. Mama got frightened. “What’s the matter, dear?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to endure the torture during the interrogation.”

“What do you mean, little fool, what interrogation? Our soldiers won’t let the Germans through.”

She caressed my head and kissed me.

The train rode under bombs all the time. Whenever they began bombing, mama lay on top of us: “If they kill us, we’ll die together. Or else just me…” The first dead person I saw was a little boy. He was lying there looking up, and I tried to waken him. To waken him…I couldn’t understand that he wasn’t alive. I had a piece of sugar, I offered him that piece of sugar, hoping he would get up. But he didn’t…

They were bombing, and my sister whispered to me, “When they stop bombing, I’ll obey mama, I’ll always obey mama.” And indeed, after the war, Toma was very obedient. Mama remembered that before the war, she used to call her a scamp. And our little Tolik…Before the war he could already walk well and talk well. And now he stopped talking, he clutched his head all the time.

I saw my sister’s hair turn white. She had very long black hair, and it turned white. In one night…

The train started. Where is Tamara? She’s not in the car. We look. Tamara is running behind the car with a bouquet of cornflowers. There was a big field, the wheat was taller than us, and there were cornflowers. Her face…To this day her face is before my eyes. Her black eyes wide open, she runs, silent. She doesn’t even shout “mama.” She runs, silent.

Mama went mad…She rushed to jump out of the moving train…I was holding Tolik, and we both shouted. Then a soldier appeared…He pushed mama away from the door, jumped out, caught hold of Tomka, and threw her into the car with all his might. In the morning, we saw she was white. For several days we didn’t tell her, we hid our mirror, but then she accidentally looked into someone else’s and burst into tears: “Mama, am I already a grandmother?”

Mama comforted her. “We’ll cut your hair, and it will grow back dark.”

After this incident mama said, “That’s it. Don’t leave the car. If they kill us, they kill us. If we stay alive, then it’s our destiny!”

When they shouted “Airplanes! Everybody off the train!” she stuffed us under the mattresses, and to those who tried to get her off the train, she said, “The children ran, but I can’t go.”

I have to say that mama often used that mysterious word destiny. I kept asking her, “What is destiny? Is it God?”