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

“YOU ASKED ME TO FINISH YOU OFF…”

Vasya Baikachev TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A TEACHER OF MANUAL EDUCATION.

I’ve often remembered it…Those were the last days of my childhood…

During the winter vacation our whole school took part in a military game. Before that we studied drilling, made wooden rifles, sewed camouflage coats, clothes for medical orderlies. Our chiefs from the military unit came flying to us in biplanes. We were completely thrilled.

In June German planes were already flying over us dropping scouts. They were young fellows in gray checkered jackets and caps. Together with some adults we caught several of them and handed them over to the village council. We were proud of having taken part in a military operation, it reminded us of our winter game. But soon others appeared. They did not wear checkered jackets and caps, but green uniforms with the sleeves rolled up, boots with wide tops and iron-shod heels. They had calfskin packs on their backs, long gas-mask canisters at their sides, and held submachine guns at the ready. Well-fed, hefty. They sang and shouted, “Zwei Monat—Moskva kaput.” My father explained, “Zwei Monat” means two months. Only two months? Only? This war was not at all like the one we had played at just recently and which I had liked.

In the first few days the Germans didn’t stop in our village of Malevichi, they drove on to the Zhlobin station. My father worked there. But he no longer went to the station, he waited for our troops to come any day and drive the Germans back to the border. We believed father and also waited for our soldiers. We expected them any day. And they…our soldiers…lay all around: on the roads, in the forest, in the ditches, in the fields…in the kitchen gardens…in the peat pits…They lay dead. They lay with their rifles. With their grenades. It was warm, and they grew bigger from the warmth, and there seemed to be more and more of them every day. A whole army. No one buried them…

Father hitched up the horse and we went to the field. We began to collect the dead men. We dug holes…Put them in rows of ten to twelve men…My school bag was filling with papers. I remember from the addresses that they were natives of the city of Ulyanovsk, in the Kuibyshev region.

Several days later I found my father and my best friend, fourteen-year-old Vasya Shevtsov, killed outside the village. My grandfather and I came to that spot…Bombing began…We buried Vasya, but had no time to bury father. After the bombing we found nothing left of him. Not a trace. We put a cross at the cemetery—that’s all. Just a cross. We buried father’s best Sunday suit under it…

A week later we could no longer collect the soldiers…We couldn’t lift them…There was water sloshing under the army shirts…We collected their rifles. Their army cards.

Grandfather was killed in the bombing…

How were we to go on living? Without father? Without grandfather? Mama wept and wept. What to do with the weapons we gathered and buried in a safe place? Who to give them to? There was nobody to ask. Mama wept.

In winter I got in touch with some underground fighters. They were happy to have my gift. They sent the weapons to the partisans…

Time passed, I don’t remember how much…Maybe four months. I remember that that day I gathered last year’s frozen potatoes in a field. I came home wet, hungry, but I brought a full bucket. I had just taken my wet bast shoes off, when there was knocking on the door of the cellar we lived in. Somebody asked, “Is Baikachev here?” When I appeared in the cellar door, I was ordered to come out. I hurriedly put on a budenovka instead of a winter hat, for which I got a whipping at once.

By the cellar stood three horses, with Germans and polizei^* mounted on them. One of the polizei dismounted, put a strap around my neck, and tied me to the saddle. Mother began to beg: “Let me feed him.” She went back to the cellar to get a flatbread of defrosted potatoes, and they whipped up the horses and set off at a trot. They dragged me like that for three miles to the village of Vesely.

At the first interrogation the fascist officer asked simple questions: last name, first name, date of birth…Who are your father and mother? The interpreter was a young polizei. At the end of the interrogation he said, “Now you’ll go and clean the torture room. Take a good look at the bench there…” They gave me a bucket of water, a broom, a rag, and took me there…

There I saw a terrible picture: in the middle of the room stood a wide bench with three leather straps nailed to it. Three straps to tie a man by the neck, the waist, and the legs. In the corner stood thick birch rods and a bucket of water. The water was red. On the floor were pools of blood…of urine…of excrement…

I kept bringing more and more water. The rag I used was red anyway.

In the morning the officer summoned me.

“Where are the weapons? Who are you connected with in the underground? What were your assignments?” The questions poured out one after the other.

I denied everything, saying that I knew nothing, that I was young and gathered frozen potatoes in the field, not weapons.

“Take him to the cellar,” the officer ordered the soldier.

They took me down into a cellar with cold water. Before that they showed me a partisan who had just been taken out of there. He couldn’t stand the torture and drowned…Now he lay in the street…

The water came up to my neck…I felt my heart beat and the blood in my veins pulsate and heat the water around my body. My fear was to lose consciousness. To inhale the water. To drown.

The next interrogation: the barrel of a pistol was shoved against my ear, fired—a dry floorboard cracked. They shot at the floor! The blow of a stick at my neck vertebra, I fall down…Someone big and heavy stands over me. He smells of sausage and cheap vodka. I feel nauseous, but I have nothing to throw up. I hear: “Now you’re going to lick up what you did on the floor…With your tongue, understand…Understand, you red whelp?!”

Back in the cell I didn’t sleep, but lost consciousness from pain. Now it seemed to me that I was at a school lineup and my teacher Liubov Ivanovna Lashkevich was saying, “In the fall you’ll enter the fifth grade, and now, children, goodbye. You’ll all grow up over the summer. Vasya Baikachev is now the smallest, and he’ll become the biggest.” Liubov Ivanovna smiled…

And then my father and I are walking in the fields, looking for our dead soldiers. Father is somewhere ahead of me, and I find a man under a pine tree…Not a man, but what’s left of him. He has no arms, no legs…He’s still alive and he begs, “Finish me off, sonny…”

The old man who lies next to me in the cell wakes me up.

“Don’t shout, sonny.”

“What did I shout?”

“You asked me to finish you off…”

Decades have passed, and I’m still wondering: am I alive?!

* Russians who served as police under the German occupation were given the German name of polizei, which in Russian became both singular and plural.