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

“IF ONLY ONE SON COULD BE LEFT…”

Sasha Kavrus TEN YEARS OLD. NOW DOCTOR OF PHILOLOGY.

I was at school…

We went outside and began to play as usual. Just then fascist planes came flying and dropped bombs on our village. We had already heard stories about the battles in Spain, about the fate of Spanish children. Now the bombs were dropping on us. Old women fell to the ground and prayed…So…I’ve remembered all my life the voice of Levitan^* announcing the beginning of the war. Stalin’s speech I don’t remember. People stood for whole days by the kolkhoz loudspeaker waiting for something, and I stood next to my father.

The first to burst into our village of Brusy, in the Myadelsky district, was a punitive squad. They opened fire, shot all the cats and dogs, and then began interrogations, trying to find out where the activists lived. Before the war the village council was in our cottage, but no one pointed to my father. So…they didn’t betray him…During the night I had a dream. I had been shot, I lie there and think, but for some reason I don’t die…

I remember an episode of the Germans chasing chickens. They’d catch one, hold it up, and whirl it around until only the head was left in their hand. They laughed. But it seemed to me that our chickens cried out…like people…in human voices…So did the cats and the dogs when they were being shot…I had never seen any sort of death before. Neither human nor any other sort. Once I saw dead nestlings in the forest, that was all. I hadn’t seen any more death…

Our village was set on fire in 1943…That day we were digging potatoes. Our neighbor Vassily—he had been in WWI and knew a little German—said, “I’ll go and ask the Germans not to burn the village. There are children here.” He went and got burned up himself. They burned the school. All the books. They burned our vegetable patches. Our gardens.

Where were we to go? Father took us to the partisans in the Kozinsky forests. On the way we met people from another village, which had also been burned. They said the Germans were very close by. We got into some sort of a hole: me, my brother Volodya, mama with our little sister, and father. Father took a grenade, and we decided that if the Germans noticed us, he’d pull the pin. We already said goodbye to each other. My brother and I made nooses to hang ourselves and put them around our necks. Mama kissed us all. I heard her say to father, “If only one son could be left…” Then father said, “Let them run for it. They’re young, maybe they’ll save themselves.” But I felt so sorry for mama that I didn’t go. So…I didn’t go…

We heard dogs barking, we heard foreign words of command, we heard shooting. Our forest was all windfall, fir trees uprooted, you couldn’t see anything ten paces away. It was all close, then we heard the voices from farther and farther off. When it became quiet, mama couldn’t get up, her legs were paralyzed. Papa carried her on his back.

Several days later we met some partisans who knew father. By then we could barely walk, we were so hungry. Our feet hurt. We were walking and one partisan asked me, “What would you like to find under a pine tree: candy? cookies? a piece of bread?” “A handful of bullets,” I replied. The partisans remembered it long after. I hated the Germans so much for everything…And for mama…

We walked past a burned-down village…The rye hadn’t been harvested, there were potatoes growing. Apples lying on the ground. Pears…But no people. Cats and dogs running around. Solitary. So…No people. Not a single human being. Hungry cats…

I remember after the war we had one primer in the village, and the first book I found and read was a collection of arithmetic problems.

I read it like poetry. Yes, so…

* Yuri Levitan (1914–1983), the principal Soviet radio announcer during WWII and after, was known as “the voice of the war.”