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

“AS IF SHE HAD SAVED HIS OWN DAUGHTER…”

Genia Zavoiner SEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A RADIO TECHNICIAN.

What have I preserved most in my memory? From those days…

How they took my father away…He was in a quilted jacket, and I don’t remember his face, it has vanished completely from my memory. I remember his hands…They bound them with ropes. Papa’s hands…But no matter how I try, I can’t remember the faces of those who came for him either. There were several of them…

Mama didn’t cry. She stood at the window all day.

Father was taken away, and we were moved to the ghetto and began to live behind barbed wire. Our house stood by the road, and every day sticks came flying into our courtyard. I saw a fascist by our gate. When a group of people was being led out to be shot, he beat those people with sticks. The sticks would break, and he’d throw them over his shoulder. Into our courtyard. I wanted to have a better look at him, not just his back, and once I did see him: he was small, with a bald spot. He grunted and puffed. My child’s imagination was struck because he was so ordinary…

We found our grandmother killed in her apartment…We buried her ourselves…Our cheerful and wise grandmother, who loved German music. German literature.

Mama went to exchange things for food, and a pogrom began in the ghetto. Usually we hid in the cellar, but this time we went up to the attic. It was totally broken down on one side and that saved us. The Germans came into the house and poked the ceiling with their bayonets. They didn’t climb to the attic, because it was all broken down. But they threw grenades into the cellar.

The pogrom lasted for three days, and we sat for three days in the attic. Mama wasn’t with us. We thought only about her. When the pogrom was over, we stood at the gate waiting to see if she was alive or not. Suddenly our former neighbor came around the corner; he passed by without stopping, but we heard: “Your mama is alive.” When mama came back, the three of us stood and looked at her. No one cried, we had no tears, but some sense of peace came over us. We didn’t even feel hungry.

Mama and I stood by the barbed wire, and there was a beautiful woman passing by. She stopped next to us on the other side and said to mama, “I’m so sorry for you.” Mama replied, “If you’re sorry, take my daughter to live with you.” “All right”—and the woman began to think. The rest they said to each other in whispers.

The next day mama brought me to the gate of the ghetto.

“Genechka, take your doll carriage and go to Aunt Marussia” (our neighbor).

I remember what I was wearing then: a blue top and a sweater with white pompoms. My best fancy clothes.

Mama pushed me out the gate of the ghetto, and I pressed myself to her. She pushed me, and her face was flooded with tears. I remember how I went…I remember the gate, the sentry booth…

I went with my doll carriage where mama told me to go. They put a warm jacket on me there and sat me in a wagon. I wept all the way and kept saying, “Wherever you are, mama, I’m there, too. Wherever you are…”

They brought me to a farmstead and sat me on a long bench. There were four children in the family I came to. And they took me as well. I want everybody to know the name of the woman who saved me: Olympia Pozharitskaya, from the village of Genevichi, in the Volozhinsk district. As long as I lived in this family, fear lived in it. They could have been shot at any moment…the whole family…including the four children. For harboring a Jewish child from the ghetto. I was their death…What great hearts they had to have! Superhumanly human hearts…Whenever the Germans appeared, they would send me off somewhere at once. The forest was nearby, the forest saved us. That woman pitied me very much, she had the same pity for her own children and for me. When she gave something, she gave it to us all; when she kissed, she kissed us all. And she petted us all in the same way. I called her “mamusya.” Somewhere I had a mama, and here I had mamusya…

When tanks came to the farmstead, I was herding cows. I saw the tanks and hid. I couldn’t believe they were our tanks, but when I made out the red stars on them, I came out to the road. An officer jumped off the first tank, picked me up and raised me very, very high. Then the owner of the farm came running. She was so happy, so beautiful, she wanted so much to share something good, to tell that she, too, had done something for this victory. And she told how they had saved me. A Jewish girl…This officer pressed me to him, and I was so thin, I vanished under his arms. And he embraced that woman, he embraced her with such a look as if she had saved his own daughter. He said that all his family had been killed, and that when the war was over, he would come back and take me to Moscow. But I wouldn’t agree for anything, although I didn’t know whether my mama was alive or not.

Other people came running, they also embraced me. And they all admitted that they knew who had been hidden at the farmstead.

Then mama came to get me. She came into the yard and knelt down before that woman and her children…