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

“THAT GIRL WAS THE FIRST TO COME…”

Nina Yaroshevich NINE YEARS OLD. NOW TEACHER OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

There was a big event in our home…

In the evening a suitor came to propose to my eldest sister. There was a discussion well into the night about when the wedding would take place, where the couple would register their marriage, how many guests to invite. And early in the morning my father was summoned to the recruiting office. The noise spread over the village—war! Mama was at a loss—what were we to do? I thought of just one thing: living through that day. No one had explained to me yet that war was not for a day or two, but maybe for a very long time.

Now it’s summer, a hot day. I’d like to go to the river, but mama prepares us for the road. We also had a brother who was just discharged from the hospital; he had had an operation on his foot, and he came home on crutches. But mama said, “We all must go.” Where? Nobody knew anything. We walked some three miles. My brother hobbled and cried. How could we go with him? We turned back. At home our father was waiting for us. The men who went to the recruiting office in the morning all came back; the Germans had already taken our regional center. The town of Slutsk.

The first shells came flying. I stood and watched them before they hit the ground. Someone taught us that you should open your mouth so as not to be deafened. So we opened our mouths, stopped our ears, and could still hear them coming. Whining. It’s so frightening that the skin on your face and your whole body gets taut. There was a bucket hanging in our yard. When everything became quiet, we took it down: we counted fifty-eight holes. The bucket was white, they thought someone was standing there in a white kerchief, and they shot at it…Just for fun…

The first Germans rode into the village in big trucks adorned with birch branches. The way we did when there was a wedding. We used to break a lot of birch branches…We watched them through the wattle fences. We didn’t have fences then, but wattle fences. Made of vines. We tried to get a look at them…They seemed like ordinary people…I wanted to see what kind of heads they had. For some reason I had this idea that they had inhuman heads…Rumors were already going around that they killed people. Burned them. But they rode about laughing. Pleased, suntanned.

In the morning they did exercises in the schoolyard. Doused themselves with cold water. Rolled up their sleeves, got on their motorcycles—and off they went.

A few days later they dug a big pit outside the village next to the milk factory. Every day at around five or six in the morning shots were heard from there. Whenever they started shooting, even the cocks stopped crowing and hid themselves. One evening my father and I were riding in the cart, and he stopped the horse not far from that pit. “I’ll go and have a look,” he said. His cousin had been shot there. He went, and I followed him.

Suddenly father turned and stood so as to hide the pit from me: “Go back. You mustn’t go farther.” I only saw, when we crossed the brook, that the water in it was red…And crows flew up. There were so many of them that I screamed…Father couldn’t eat anything for several days after that. He would see a crow and run back to the cottage shaking all over…Like in a fever…

In the park in Slutsk two partisan families were hanged. It was freezing cold, and the hanged people were so frozen that, when the wind swung them, they tinkled. Tinkled like frozen trees in the forest…That tinkling…

When we were liberated, father went to the front. He went with the army. He was already gone when my mother made me the first dress I had during the war. Mama made it out of foot-cloths. They were white, and she dyed them with ink. There wasn’t enough ink for one of the sleeves. But I wanted to show the dress to my friends. So I stood sideways in the gate, to show the good sleeve and hide the bad one. I thought I looked so dressed up, so beautiful!

At school there was a girl, Anya, who sat in front of me. Her father and mother had been killed, and she lived with her grandmother. They were refugees from near Smolensk. The school bought her a coat, felt boots, and a pair of shiny galoshes. The teacher brought them and put them on her desk. We all sat silently, because no one had such boots or such a coat. We envied her. One of the boys nudged Anya and said, “Some people are lucky!” She fell on the desk and cried. She sobbed through four lessons.

My father returned from the front, everybody came to look at him. And also at us, because our papa came back to us.

That girl was the first to come…