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

“HE WIPED HIS TEARS WITH HIS SLEEVE…”

Oleg Boldyrev EIGHT YEARS OLD. NOW AN ARTISAN.

A good question…What’s better—to remember or to forget? Maybe it’s better to keep quiet? For many years I tried to forget…

We spent a month getting to Tashkent. A month! It was way in the rear. My father was sent there as an expert. Factories and mills were being relocated there. The whole country was moving to the rear. Deep inside. A good thing our country is big.

There I learned that my older brother had been killed at Stalingrad. He had been eager to get to the front, but I hadn’t even been taken to work at the factory yet, because I was young. “You’ve still got half a year before you turn ten.” My mother shook her head. “Forget these childish thoughts.” Father also frowned: “A factory isn’t a kindergarten, you have to work twelve hours a day. And what work!”

The factory made mines, shells, bombs. Adolescents were accepted to do polishing…The unfinished molded metal parts were polished by hand…The method was simple—a stream of sand heated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit was directed through a hose under high pressure. The sand bounced off the metal, burned your lungs, hit your face, your eyes. It was rare that anyone could stand it longer than a week. It called for strong character.

But in 1943…I turned ten and father took me with him anyhow. To his workshop number three. To the section where fuses for bombs were welded.

Three of us worked together: me, Oleg, and Vaniushka, who were only two years older than me. We assembled the fuse, and Yakov Mironovich Sapozhnikov (his last name is stamped in my memory), an expert at his work, welded it. After that you had to get on a box in order to reach the vise, clamp the sleeve of the fuse, and calibrate the inner thread with a tap. We quickly got the knack of it…The rest was simpler still: you insert a plug and put it in a box. Once the box was full, we brought it to where it would be loaded. It was a bit heavy, up to a hundred pounds, but two of us could manage it. We didn’t distract Yakov Mironovich: his was the finest work. The most responsible—the welding!

The most unpleasant thing was the fire of the electric welding. You tried not to look at the blue sparks, yet in twelve hours you got enough of those flashes. Your eyes feel as if they’re filled with sand. You rub them, but it doesn’t help. Whether from that or from the monotonous humming of the electric generator that supplied the current for the welding, or simply from fatigue, we sometimes wanted terribly to sleep. Especially during the night. To sleep! To sleep!

Whenever Yakov Mironovich saw the least possibility for us to have a break, he ordered, “Off you go to the electrode room!”

He didn’t need to tell us twice: there was no cozier or warmer corner in the whole factory than where the electrodes were dried by hot air. We climbed onto a warm wooden shelf and instantly fell asleep. A quarter of an hour later Yakov Mironovich would come to wake us up.

Once I woke up before he began to rouse us. I saw Yakov Mironovich looking at us. Drawing out the minutes. And wiping his tears with his sleeve.