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

“I WANT TO LIVE! I WANT TO LIVE!…”

Vasia Kharevsky FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW AN ARCHITECT.

These pictures, these lights. My riches. The treasure of what I lived through…

No one believes me, even mama didn’t believe me. After the war, when we began to remember, she kept wondering, “You couldn’t recall that yourself, you were little. Somebody told you…”

No, I myself remember…

Bombs are exploding, and I’m clutching at my older brother: “I want to live! I want to live!” I was afraid to die, though what could I have known about death? What?

I myself…

Mama gave me and my brother the last two potatoes, and just looked at us. We knew that those potatoes were the last ones. I wanted to leave her…a small piece…And I couldn’t. My brother also couldn’t…We were ashamed. Terribly ashamed.

No, I myself…

I saw our first soldier…I think he was a tankist, I can’t say exactly…I ran to him: “Papa!” He lifted me to the sky: “Sonny!”

I remember everything…

I remember the adults saying, “He’s little. He doesn’t understand.” I was surprised: “They’re strange, these adults, why have they decided that I don’t understand anything? I understand everything.” It even seemed to me that I understood more than the adults, because I didn’t cry and they did.

The war is my history book. My solitude…I missed the time of childhood, it fell out of my life. I’m a man without a childhood. Instead of a childhood, I have the war.

The only other shock like that in my life came from love. When I fell in love…Knew love…