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

“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!…