And finally—Victory…
If life for them used to be divided into peace and war, now it was into war and Victory.
Again two different worlds, two different lives. After learning to hate, they now had to learn to love again. To recall forgotten feelings. Forgotten words.
The person shaped by war had to be shaped by something that was not war.
OF THE LAST DAYS OF THE WAR, WHEN KILLING WAS REPUGNANT
Sofya Adamovna Kuntsevich
MEDICAL ASSISTANT
We were happy…
We crossed the border—the Motherland was free. Our land…I didn’t recognize the soldiers, they were changed people. Everybody smiled. They put on clean shirts. They found flowers somewhere. I had never known such happy people. I had never seen it. I thought that when we entered Germany, I would have no pity for them, they would be shown no mercy. We had so much hatred stored up in our breasts! And hurt! Why should I feel sorry for his child? Why should I feel sorry for his mother? Why shouldn’t I destroy his house? He didn’t feel sorry…He killed…Burned…But I? I…I…I…Why? Why-y-y? I wanted to see their wives, their mothers, who had given birth to such sons. How would they look us in the eye? I wanted to look them in the eye…
I wondered: What will become of me? Of our soldiers? We all remember…How are we going to stand it? How much strength does it take to stand it? We came to some village; children were running around, hungry, miserable. Afraid of us…They hid…I, who swore I hated them all…I gathered from our soldiers all they had left of their rations, any piece of sugar, and gave it to the German children. Of course, I didn’t forget…I remembered everything…But I couldn’t calmly look into their hungry children’s eyes. Early in the morning, German children stood in line near our kitchens, we gave them firsts and seconds.
Every child had a bag for bread slung over one shoulder, a can for soup at their belts, and something for seconds—kasha, peas. We fed them, treated them. We even caressed them…The first time I caressed one…I got scared…Me…Me! Caressing a German child…
My mouth went dry from agitation. But soon I got used to it. And they did too…
Nina Petrovna Sakova
LIEUTENANT, PARAMEDIC
I got to Germany…All the way from Moscow…
I was a senior paramedic in a tank regiment. We had T-34 tanks; they burned up quickly. Very scary. Before the war I had never even heard a gunshot. Once, when we were driving to the front, they were bombing some place very far away, and it felt to me as if all the ground was shaking. I was seventeen, I had just graduated from nursing school. And so it turned out, I just came and went straight into battle.
I got out of the tank…Fire…The sky was burning…The earth was burning…The metal was burning…Here were corpses, and there someone shouted, “Save me…Help me”…Such horror gripped me! I don’t know how I didn’t run away. How did I not flee the battlefield? It’s so scary, there are no words, only feelings. Before I couldn’t stand it, but now I can watch war movies, though I still cry.
I got to Germany…
The first thing I saw on German soil was a handmade sign, right by the road: “Here she is—accursed Germany!”
We entered a village…The shutters were all closed. They had dropped everything and fled on bicycles. Goebbels had persuaded them that the Russians would come and would hack, stab, slaughter. We opened the doors of the houses; there was no one, or they all lay killed or poisoned. Children lay there. Shot, poisoned…What did we feel? Joy, that we had defeated them, and that now they were suffering the way we did. A feeling of vengeance. But we felt sorry for the children…
We found an old woman.
I say to her, “We won.”
She starts to cry: “I have two sons who died in Russia.”
“And who is to blame? So many of us died!”
She answers, “Hitler…”
“Hitler didn’t decide by himself. It’s your children, husbands…”
Then she fell silent.
I got to Germany…
I wanted to tell my mother…But my mother died of starvation during the war. They had no bread, no salt, they had nothing. And my brother was lying in the hospital badly wounded. Only my sister waited for me at home. She wrote that when our troops entered Orel, she grabbed all the soldier girls by the overcoat. She thought I would surely be there. I had to come back…
Anastasia Vasilyevna Voropaeva
CORPORAL, SEARCHLIGHT OPERATOR
The roads of Victory…
You can’t imagine the roads of Victory! Freed prisoners went with carts, bundles, national flags. Russians, Poles, French, Czechs…They all intermingled, each going his own way. They all embraced us. Kissed us.
I met some young Russian girls. I started talking to them, and they told me…One of them was pregnant. The prettiest one. She had been raped by the boss they worked for. He had forced her to live with him. She went along crying and beating her own stomach: “I won’t bring a Fritz home! I won’t!” They tried to reason with her…But she hanged herself…Along with her little Fritz…
It was back then that you should have listened to us—listened and recorded it. It’s a pity that no one thought of hearing us out then; everyone just repeated the word “Victory,” and the rest seemed unimportant.
One day a friend and I were riding bikes. A German woman was walking along; I believe she had three children—two in a baby carriage, one by her side, holding on to her skirt. She was so exhausted. And so, you see, she walks up to us, goes on her knees and bows. Like this…To the ground…We didn’t understand what she said. And she puts her hand to her heart, and points at her children. We more or less understood, she was crying, bowing, and thanking us that her children had stayed alive…
She was somebody’s wife. Her husband probably fought on the eastern front…In Russia…
A. Ratkina
JUNIOR SERGEANT, TELEPHONE OPERATOR
One of our officers fell in love with a German girl…
Our superiors heard about it…He was demoted and sent to the rear. If he had raped her…That…Of course, it happened…Not many write about it, but that’s the law of war. The men spent so many years without women, and of course, there was hatred. When we entered a town or a village, for the first three days there was looting and…Well, in secret, naturally…You understand…After three days you could wind up in court. But in the heat of the moment…For three days they drank and…And here—love. The officer himself admitted it before the special section—love. Of course, that was treason…To fall in love with a German—the daughter or wife of the enemy? That’s…And…Well, in short, they took away the photographs, her address. Of course…
I remember…Of course, I remember a German woman who had been raped. She was lying naked, with a grenade stuck between her legs…Now I feel ashamed, but then I didn’t. Feelings change, of course. In the first days we had one feeling, and afterward another…After several months…Five German girls came to our battalion…To our commander. They were weeping…The gynecologist examined them: they had wounds. Jagged wounds. Their underwear was all bloody…They had been raped all night long. The soldiers stood in line…
Don’t record this…Switch off the tape recorder…It’s true! It’s all true!…We formed up our battalion…We told those German girls: go and look, and if you recognize someone, we’ll shoot him on the spot. We won’t consider his rank. We’re ashamed! But they sat there and wept. They didn’t want to…They didn’t want more blood. So they said…Then each one got a loaf of bread. Of course, all of this is war…Of course…
You think it was easy to forgive? To see intact…white…houses with tiled roofs. With roses…I myself wanted to hurt them…Of course…I wanted to see their tears…It was impossible to become good all at once. Fair and kind. As good as you are now. To pity them. That would take me dozens of years…
Aglaia Borisovna Nesteruk
SERGEANT, LIAISON
Our native land was liberated…Dying became totally unbearable, burials became totally unbearable. People died for a foreign land, were buried in a foreign land. They explained to us that the enemy had to be finished off. The enemy was still dangerous…We all understood…But it was such a pity to die…Nobody wanted to…
I remembered many signs along the road. They looked like crosses: “Here she is—accursed Germany!” Everybody remembered that sign…
And everybody was waiting for that moment…Now we’ll understand…Now we’ll see…Where do they come from? What is their land like, their houses? Could it be that they are ordinary people? That they lived ordinary lives? At the front, I couldn’t imagine ever being able to read Heine’s poems again. My beloved Goethe. I could never again listen to Wagner…Before the war, I grew up in a family of musicians, I loved German music—Bach, Beethoven. The great Bach! I crossed all of this out of my world. Then we saw, they showed us the crematoriums…Auschwitz…Heaps of women’s clothing, children’s shoes…Gray ash…They spread it on the fields, under the cabbage. Under the lettuce…I couldn’t listen to German music anymore…A lot of time passed before I went back to Bach. Began to play Mozart.
Finally, we were on their land…The first thing that struck us was the good roads. The big farmhouses…Flowerpots, pretty curtains in the windows, even in the barns. White tablecloths in the houses. Expensive tableware. Porcelain. There I saw a washing machine for the first time…We couldn’t understand why they had to fight if they lived so well. Our people huddled in dugouts, while they had white tablecloths. Coffee in small cups…I had only seen them in the museum. Those small cups…I forgot to tell you about one shocking thing, we were all shocked…We were attacking, and took the first German trenches…We jumped in, and there was still warm coffee in thermos bottles. The smell of coffee…Biscuits. White sheets. Clean towels. Toilet paper…We didn’t have any of that. What sheets? We slept on straw, on sticks. Other times we went for two or three days without warm food. And our soldiers shot at those thermos bottles…At that coffee…
In German houses I saw coffee sets shattered by bullets. Flowerpots. Pillows…Baby carriages…But still we couldn’t do to them what they had done to us. Force them to suffer the way we suffered.
It was hard for us to understand where their hatred came from. Ours was understandable. But theirs?
We got permission to send packages home. Soap, sugar…Someone sent shoes. Germans have sturdy shoes, watches, leather goods. Everybody looked for watches. I couldn’t, I was disgusted. I didn’t want to take anything from them, though I knew that my mother and my sisters were living with strangers. Our house had been burned down. When I returned home, I told my mother, and she hugged me: “I, too, couldn’t have taken anything from them. They killed our papa.”
Only dozens of years after the war did I take a small volume of Heine in my hands. And the recordings of German composers that I had loved before the war…
Albina Alexandrovna Gantimurova
SERGEANT MAJOR, SCOUT
This was already in Berlin…This incident happened to me: I was walking down the street, and a boy came running toward me with a submachine gun—a Volkssturm.*1 The war was already over. The last days. My hand was on my submachine gun. Ready. He looked at me, blinked, and burst into tears. I couldn’t believe it—I was in tears, too. I felt so sorry for him; there was this kid standing with his stupid submachine gun. And I shoved him toward a wrecked building, under the gateway: “Hide,” I said. He was afraid I was going to shoot him right then—I was wearing a hat, it wasn’t clear if I was a girl or a man. He took my hand. He cried! I patted his head. He was dumbstruck. It was war after all…I was dumbstruck myself! I had hated them for the entire war! Fair or unfair, it’s still disgusting to kill, especially in the last days of the war…
Lilya Mikhailovna Butko
SURGICAL NURSE
I regret…I didn’t fulfill one request…
They brought a wounded German to our hospital. I think he was a pilot. His thigh was crushed, and gangrene had set in. Some kind of pity took hold of me. He lay there and kept silent.
I understood a little German. I asked him, “Do you want to drink?”
“No.”
The other wounded men knew there was a wounded German in the ward. He was lying separately. I went to him, and they got indignant: “So you bring water to the enemy?”
“He’s dying…I have to help him…”
His leg was all blue, nothing could be done. Infection devours a man in no time; the man burns out overnight.
I gave him water, and he looked at me and suddenly said, “Hitler kaputt!”
That was in 1942. We were encircled near Kharkov.
I asked, “Why?”
“Hitler kaputt!”
Then I answered, “That’s what you say and think now, because you’re lying here. But there you were killing…”
He: “I didn’t shoot, I didn’t kill. They made me. But I didn’t shoot…”
“Everybody makes excuses like that when they’re captured.”
And suddenly he asks me, “I really…really…beg of you, Frau…” and he hands me a packet of photographs. He shows me: there is his mother, himself, his brother, sisters…A beautiful picture. He writes down an address on the other side. “You will get there. You will!” This was a German speaking, in 1942, near Kharkov. “So please drop this in the mailbox.”
He wrote the address on one photograph, but he had an envelope full of them. And I carried those photographs around for a long time. I was upset when I lost them during a heavy bombardment. By the time we got to Germany, the envelope was gone…
Nina Vasilyevna Ilinskaya
NURSE
I remember a battle…
In that battle we captured many Germans. Some of them were wounded. We bandaged their wounds; they moaned like our lads did. And it was hot…Scorching hot! We found a teapot and gave them water. In the open. We were under fire. An order: quickly entrench and camouflage yourselves.
We started digging trenches. The Germans stared. We explained to them: so, help us dig, get to work. When they understood what we wanted from them, they looked at us with horror; they took it that once they dug those pits, we would stand them by those pits and shoot them. They expected…You should have seen their horrified looks as they dug…Their faces…
And when they saw that we bandaged them, gave them water, and told them to hide in the trenches they had dug, they couldn’t come to their senses, they were at a loss…One German started crying…He was an older man. He cried and didn’t hide his tears from anyone…
OF A COMPOSITION WITH CHILDISH MISTAKES AND COMIC MOVIES
Vera Iosifovna Khoreva
ARMY SURGEON
The war was ending…
The political commissar called me. “Vera Iosifovna, you will have to work with the German wounded.”
By that time my two brothers had already been killed. “I won’t.”
“But, you understand, it’s necessary.”
“I’m unable. I lost two brothers. I can’t stand them, I’m ready to kill them, not treat them. Try to understand me…”
“It’s an order.”
“If it’s an order, I’ll obey. I’m a soldier.”
I treated those wounded, did everything I had to, but it was hard for me. To touch them, to ease their pain. That’s when I got my first gray hair. Right then. I did everything with them: operated, fed, anesthetized—everything I was supposed to. One thing only I couldn’t do—that was the evening rounds. In the morning you had to bandage the wounded, take their pulse—in short, you proceeded like a doctor—but during the evening rounds you had to talk to the patients, ask how they felt. That I couldn’t do. Bandage, operate—that I could do, but talk with them—no. I warned the commissar straight off: “I won’t do the evening rounds for them…”
Ekaterina Petrovna Shalygina
NURSE
In Germany…In our hospitals we already had many wounded Germans…
I remember my first wounded German. He had gangrene; we amputated his leg…And he lay in my ward…
In the evening, they said to me, “Katya, go check on your German.”
I went. Maybe a hemorrhage, or something. He lay there, awake. He had no temperature, nothing. He just stared and stared, and then pulled out such a tiny pistol: “Here…”
He spoke German. I don’t remember now, but back then I understood as much as I’d kept from my school lessons.
“Here…” he said. “I wanted to kill you, but now you kill me.”
Meaning that we had saved him. He killed us, and we saved him. But I couldn’t tell him the truth, that he was dying…
I left the ward and noticed unexpectedly that I was in tears…
Maria Anatolyevna Flerovskaya
POLITICAL WORKER
I might have had an encounter…I was afraid of that encounter…
When I was in school…I studied in a school with a German orientation…German school children would come to visit us. In Moscow. We went with them to the theater, we sang together. One of those German boys…He sang so well. We became friends. I even fell in love with him…And so, all through the war I thought: what if I meet him and recognize him? Could he also be among them? I’m very emotional, ever since I was a child, I’m very impressionable. Terribly!
One day I was walking in the field, the battle had just ended…We picked up our dead, only Germans were left…It seemed to me he was lying there…A similar-looking young man…On our land…I stood over him for a while…
A. C—va
ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNNER
You want to know the truth? I’m scared of it myself…
One of our soldiers…How can I explain this to you? His whole family had died. He…Nerves…Maybe he was drunk? The closer victory came, the more they drank. There was always wine to be found in the houses and basements. Schnapps. They drank and drank. He grabbed a submachine gun and ran into a German house…He unloaded the entire magazine…Nobody had time to stop him. We ran…But in the house, only corpses were left…Children lay there…They took away his submachine gun and tied him up. He cursed his head off: “Let me shoot myself!”
He was arrested and tried—and shot. I felt sorry for him. Everybody felt sorry for him. He had fought the entire war. As far as Berlin…
Are you allowed to write about this? Before, you weren’t…
Xenia Klimentyevna Belko
LABOR-FRONT FIGHTER
The war waited for me…
Just as I turned eighteen…They brought me a written notice: present yourself to the district committee, bring three days’ worth of food, a set of underwear, a mug, a spoon. It was called mobilization for the labor front.
They brought us to the town of Novotroitsk, in the Orenburg region. We started working in a factory. It was so freezing cold that my coat would freeze in our room; you took it and it was heavy as a log. We worked for four years without a vacation, without holidays.
We waited and waited for the war to end. Full stop. At three o’clock in the morning, there was noise in the dormitory; the director of the factory came, along with the other superiors. “Victory!” I didn’t have the strength to get up from my bunk. They sat me up, but I fell back. For the whole day they couldn’t get me up. I was paralyzed from joy, from strong emotions. I only stood up the next day…I went outside, I wanted to hug and kiss each and every one…
Elena Pavlovna Shalova
KOMSOMOL LEADER OF AN INFANTRY BATTALION
What a beautiful word—victory…
I wrote my name on the Reichstag…I wrote with charcoal, with what was at hand: “You were defeated by a Russian girl from Saratov.” Everybody left something on the wall, some words. Confessions and curses…
Victory! My girlfriends asked me, “What do you want to be?” And we were so hungry during the war…Unbearably…We wanted to eat our fill at least once. I had a dream—when I got my first postwar salary, I would buy a big box of cookies. What do I want to be after the war? A cook, of course. I still work in the public food industry.
A second question: “When will you get married?” As soon as possible…I dreamed of kissing. I wanted terribly to kiss…I also wanted to sing. To sing! There…
Tamara Ustinovna Vorobeykova
UNDERGROUND FIGHTER
I learned how to shoot, throw grenades…Lay mines. Give first aid…
But in four years…During the war I forgot all the rules of grammar. The entire school program. I could disassemble a submachine gun with my eyes closed, but I wrote my application essay to the institute with childish mistakes and barely any commas. I was saved by my military decorations; I was accepted at the institute. I began to study. I read books and didn’t understand them, read poems and didn’t understand them. I’d forgotten those words…
At night I had nightmares: SS officers, dogs barking, cries of agony. When dying, men often whisper something, and that is even more frightening than their cries. Everything came back to me…A man was being led out to execution…In his eyes there was fear. You could see that he didn’t believe it, until the last moment he didn’t believe it. And curiosity, there was curiosity as well. He stood facing the submachine gun, and at the last moment he covered himself with his hands. He covered his face…In the mornings, my head was swollen from the shouting…
During the war I never thought about anything, but after it I began to think.
Going over it all…It all came back again and again…I couldn’t sleep…The doctors forbade me to study. But the girls—my roommates in the dormitory—told me to forget about the doctors, and took me under their patronage. Every night they took turns dragging me to the movies to watch a comedy. “You have to learn to laugh. To laugh a lot.” Whether I wanted or not, they dragged me. There weren’t many comedies, and I watched each one a hundred times, a hundred times at a minimum. At first when I laughed it was like crying…
But the nightmares went away. I was able to study…
OF THE MOTHERLAND, STALIN, AND RED CLOTH
Tamara Ivanovna Kuraeva
NURSE
It was spring…
Young boys died, they died in the spring…In March, in April…
I remember that in spring, at the time when the gardens were in bloom and everyone was waiting for victory, burying people was harder than ever. Even if others have already said it, write it down again. I remember it so well…
For two and a half years I was at the front. My hands bandaged and washed thousands of wounds…Bandages and more bandages…Once, as I went to change my headscarf, I leaned against the window frame and dozed off. I came to myself feeling refreshed. I ran into the doctor, and he started scolding me. I didn’t understand anything…He went off, after giving me two extra assignments, and my workmate explained to me what it was about: I had been absent for over an hour. It turned out I had fallen asleep.
Nowadays I’m in poor health, my nerves are weak. When someone asks me, “What decorations did you receive?” I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t have any decorations; there was no time to give me decorations. Maybe there was no time because many of us fought in the war and we each did what we could…We each did our best…How could everyone receive decorations? But we all received the greatest decoration of all—the ninth of May. Victory Day!
I remember an unusual death…At the time, no one could figure it out. We were busy with other things…But I remember…One of our captains died on the first day we set foot on German soil. We knew that his entire family had died during the occupation. He was a brave man, he was so looking forward to…He was afraid to die before that. Not to live till the day when he would see their land, their misery, their sorrow. See them cry, see them suffer…See broken stones in place of their homes…He died just like that, not wounded, nothing. He got there, looked—and died.
Even now, when I remember it, I wonder: why did he die?
Maria Yakovlevna Yezhova
LIEUTENANT OF THE GUARDS, COMMANDER OF A MEDICAL PLATOON
I asked to go to the front straight from the train…At once…A unit was leaving—I joined it. At the time, I figured that from the front, I would come home sooner, if only by a day, than from the rear. I left my mother at home. Even now, our girls remember: “She wouldn’t stay at the medical platoon.” And it’s true, I would come to the medical platoon, wash up, grab some clean clothes—and go back to my trench. At the front line. I didn’t think about myself. You crawl, you run…Only the smell of blood…I couldn’t get used to the smell of blood…
After the war, I became a midwife in a maternity ward—but I didn’t stay there for long. Not for long…For a short while…I’m allergic to the smell of blood; my body simply wouldn’t accept it…I had seen so much blood during the war that I couldn’t stand it anymore. My body wouldn’t accept it anymore. I left Maternity and went to Emergency Aid. I got nettle rash, I was suffocating.
I sewed a blouse from a piece of red cloth, and by the next day some sort of red spots had spread all over my hands. Blisters. No red cloth, no red flowers—roses or carnations, my body wouldn’t accept it. Nothing red, nothing that had the color of blood…Even now I have nothing red in my house. You won’t find anything. Human blood is very bright, I have never seen such a bright color, not in nature, not in any painting. Pomegranate juice is somewhat similar, but not entirely. Ripe pomegranate…
Elena Borisovna Zvyagintseva
PRIVATE, ARMORER
Oh, oh, oh…Ah, ah, ah…Everybody oh’d and ah’d at how colorful I was. Jewelry all over. Even during the war I was like that. Not warlike. I wore all kinds of baubles…It’s a good thing our commander was, as we’d say now, a democrat. Not from the barracks, but from the university. Just imagine, an assistant professor. With good manners. At that time…A rare bird…A rare bird had flown to us…
I love wearing rings, even cheap ones, so long as there are lots of them, on both hands. I like good perfume. Fashionable. All kinds of trinkets. Various and many. In our family they always laughed, “What should we give to our crazy Lenka for her birthday? A ring, of course.” After the war, my brother made me my first ring out of a tin can. And a pendant out of a piece of green bottle glass that he polished. And another one of light brown glass.
I hang everything shiny on myself, like a magpie. Nobody believes that I was in the war. I myself can’t believe it anymore. At this very moment, as we sit and talk, I don’t believe it. But in that box lies the Order of the Red Star…The most elegant medal…Isn’t it pretty? They gave it to me on purpose. Ha, ha, ha…To be serious…For history, right? This thing of yours is recording…So, it’s for history…I’ll say this: if you’re not a woman, you can’t survive war. I never envied men. Not in my childhood, not in my youth. Not during the war. I was always glad to be a woman. People say that weapons—submachine guns, pistols—are beautiful, that they conceal many human thoughts, passions, but I never found them beautiful. I’ve seen the admiration of men looking at a fine pistol; I find it incomprehensible. I’m a woman.
Why did I stay single? I had wooers. Wooers enough…But here I am single. I have fun by myself. All my friends are young. I love youth. I’m afraid of growing old more than of the war. You came too late…I think about old age now, not about the war…
So that thing of yours is recording? For history?
Rita Mikhailovna Okunevskaya
PRIVATE, SAPPER-MINER
I’m home…At home everybody is alive…Mama saved everybody: grandpa and grandma, my little sister and my brother. And I came back…
A year later our papa came back. Papa returned with great decorations; I brought back a decoration and two medals. But in our family we agree on this: the greatest hero was mama. She saved everybody. She saved our family, saved our home. She fought the most terrible war. Papa never wore his decorations and ribbons; he considered it shameful to show off in front of mama. Embarrassing. Mama doesn’t have any awards…
Never in my life did I love anyone as I did my mama…
Bella Isaakovna Epstein
SERGEANT, SNIPER
I came back different…For a long time I had an abnormal relation with death. Strange, I would say…
They were inaugurating the first streetcar in Minsk, and I rode on that streetcar. Suddenly the streetcar stopped, everybody shouted, women cried, “A man’s been killed! A man’s been killed!” And I sat alone in the car. I couldn’t understand why everybody was crying. I didn’t feel it was terrible. I had seen so many people killed at the front…I didn’t react. I got used to living among them. The dead were always nearby…We smoked near them, we ate. We talked. They were not somewhere out there, not in the ground, like in peacetime, but always right here. With us.
And then that feeling returned, again I felt frightened when I saw a dead man. In a coffin. After several years, that feeling returned. I became normal…Like the others…
Natalia Alexandrovna Kupriyanova
SURGICAL NURSE
This happened before the war…
I was at the theater. During the intermission, when the lights went on, I saw…Everyone saw him…There was a burst of applause. Thunder! Stalin was sitting in the government loge. My father had been arrested, my elder brother had disappeared in the camps, but despite that I felt so ecstatic that tears poured from my eyes. I was swooning with happiness! The whole room…The whole room stood up! We stood and applauded for ten minutes.
I came to the war like that. To fight. But during the war I heard quiet conversations…At night, the wounded smoked in the corridors. Some slept, some didn’t sleep. They talked about Tukhachevsky, about Yakir…*2 Thousands had disappeared! Millions of people! Where? The Ukrainians told…How they had been driven into the kolkhozes. Forced to obey…How Stalin had organized famine; they themselves called it the “Death-by-Hunger.” Golodomor. Mothers went mad and ate their own children…And the soil was so rich there that if you planted a twig, a willow would grow. German prisoners would put some in parcels and send it home. That soil was so rich. Meters deep of black earth. Of fertile soil. The conversations were quiet…In low voices…Those conversations never occurred in groups. Only if there were two people. A third was too many, the third one would have denounced…
I’ll tell a joke…I’m telling it so as not to cry. It goes like this…It’s nighttime. In the barracks. Prisoners are lying and talking. They ask each other, “Why were you locked up?” One says—for telling the truth. A second—because of my father…And a third answers, “For being lazy.” What?! They’re all surprised. He tells them, “We were sitting at a party in the evening, telling jokes. We got home late. My wife asked me, ‘Should we go and denounce them now, or tomorrow?’ ‘Let’s go tomorrow. I want to sleep.’ But in the morning they came to take us…”
It’s funny. But I don’t feel like laughing. We should weep. Weep.
After the war…Everyone waited for their relatives to come back from the war, but we waited for them to come back from the camps. From Siberia…Of course! We were victorious, we had proved our loyalty, our love. Now they would believe us.
My brother came back in 1947, but we never found my father…Recently I visited my war friends from the front in Ukraine. They live in a big village near Odessa. Two obelisks stand in the center of the village: half the village died of starvation, and all the men died in the war. But how can we count them in all of Russia? People are still alive, go and ask them. We need hundreds like you, my girl, to tell our story. To describe all our sufferings. Our countless tears. My dear girl…