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

“DEAR HOUSE, DON’T BURN DEAR HOUSE, DON’T BURN!…”

Nina Rachitskaya SEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

Sometimes it’s very vivid…Everything comes back.

How the Germans arrived on motorcycles…Each had a bucket, and their buckets clanked. We hid…I had two little brothers—four and two years old. We hid under the bed and stayed there the whole day.

I was very surprised that the young fascist officer who moved in with us wore glasses. My idea was that only teachers wore glasses. He and his orderly lived in one half of the house, and we in the other. My youngest brother caught a cold and had a bad cough. He had a high fever, was all burning, and wept during the night. In the morning, the officer came to our half and told mama that if the kinder cries and keeps him from sleeping at night, he’ll go puf-puf, and he pointed to his pistol. At night, as soon as my brother began to cough or cry, mother grabbed him with his blanket, ran outside, and rocked him there till he fell asleep or calmed down. Puf-puf…

They took everything from us, we were starving. They wouldn’t let us into the kitchen, and they cooked only for themselves. My little brothers smelled the food and crawled to the kitchen to this smell. They cooked pea soup every day, and it had a very strong smell. Five minutes later we heard my brother’s cry, a terrible shriek. They splashed boiling water on him in the kitchen because he asked to eat. He was so hungry that he said to mama, “Let’s cook my duckling.” This duckling was his favorite toy, he had never let anyone touch it. He slept with it.

Our children’s conversations…

We sat and debated: if we catch a mouse (there were many of them during the war, both in the house and in the fields), could we eat it? Can we eat chickadees? Magpies? Why doesn’t mama make a soup out of fat beetles?

We wouldn’t let potatoes grow, we felt around in the ground with our hands to see if they were big or still small. And somehow everything grew so slowly: the corn, the sunflowers…

On the last day…Before their retreat the Germans set fire to our house. Mama stood looking at the fire, and there weren’t any tears on her face. The three of us ran around crying, “Dear house, don’t burn! Dear house, don’t burn!” We had no time to take anything out, I only snatched my primer. I saved it through the whole war, I cherished it. I slept with it, it was always under my pillow. I wanted to study very much. When in 1944 I started first grade, my primer was the only one for thirteen pupils. For the whole class.

I remember the first after-war concert at school. How they sang, danced…My palms hurt, I clapped so much. I was happy until some boy came onstage and began to read a poem. He read loudly, the poem was long, but I heard one word—war. I looked around: everybody sat calmly. But I was scared—the war had just ended, and there’s war again? I couldn’t hear this word. I tore from my seat and ran home. I came and found mama cooking something in the kitchen, meaning there wasn’t any war. I went back to school. To the concert. Applauded again.

Our papa didn’t come back from the war. Mama received a notice that he was missing in action. Mama would go to work, and the three of us together wept that papa wasn’t with us. We turned the house over looking for the notice about papa. We thought it wasn’t written that papa had been killed, it said he was missing. We would tear this notice up, and news would come about where our papa was. But we didn’t find the notice. When mama came home from work, she couldn’t understand why the house was in such disorder. She asked me, “What have you been doing here?” My younger brother answered for me: “Looking for papa…”

Before the war I liked it when papa told us fairy tales. He knew many fairy tales and told them well. After the war I no longer wanted to read fairy tales…