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

“I’LL OPEN THE WINDOW AT NIGHT…AND GIVE THE PAGES TO THE WIND…”

Zoya Mazharova TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A POSTAL WORKER.

I saw an angel…

He appeared…Came to me in a dream when we were transported to Germany. In a boxcar. Nothing could be seen there, not a spot of sky. But he came…

You’re not afraid of me? Of my words? I hear voices, then I see an angel…Once I start talking about it, not everybody wants to listen for very long. People rarely invite me to visit. To a festive table. Not even the neighbors. I keep talking, talking…Maybe I’ve grown old? I can’t stop…

I’ll begin from the beginning…The first year of the war I lived with papa and mama. I reaped and plowed, mowed and threshed. We gave it all to the Germans: grain, potatoes, peas. They came in the fall on horseback to collect—what’s it called? I’ve forgotten the word—quitrent. Our polizei also came with them. We all knew them, they were from the next village. That’s how we lived. We were used to it, one might say. Hitler was already near Moscow, we were told. Near Stalingrad.

During the night the partisans used to come…They told us otherwise: Stalin won’t give up Moscow for anything. And he won’t give up Stalingrad.

And we plowed and reaped. On Sundays and holidays in the evenings we had dances. We danced in the street. We had an accordion.

I remember it happened on Palm Sunday…We broke off pussy willow branches,^* went to church. Gathered in the street. Waiting for the accordionist. Then a whole lot of Germans arrived. In big covered trucks, with German shepherds. They surrounded us and ordered us to get into the trucks. They pushed us with their rifle butts. Some of us wept, some shouted…Before our parents came running, we were already in the trucks. Under the tarpaulins. There was a railway station nearby. They brought us there. Empty boxcars were already standing there waiting. A polizei pulled me into a boxcar. I tried to break loose. He wound my braid around his hand.

“Don’t shout, fool. The Führer is delivering you from Stalin.”

“What do we care about that foreign place?” They had already agitated us before then about going to Germany. Promised us a beautiful life.

“You’ll help the German people to defeat Bolshevism.”

“I want to go to mama.”

“You’ll live in a house under a tile roof and eat chocolate candy.”

“To mama…”

O-o-oh! If people had known their fate, they wouldn’t have survived till morning.

They loaded us and the train left. We rode for a long time, but I don’t know how long. In my car everybody was from the Vitebsk region. From different villages. They were all young and some, like me, were children. They asked me, “How did you get caught?”

“At a dance.”

I kept fainting from hunger and fear. I lie there. I close my eyes. And then for the first time…there…I saw an angel…The angel was small, and his wings were small. Like a bird’s. I see that he wants to save me. “How can he save me,” I thought, “if he’s so small?” That was the first time I saw him…

Thirst…We all suffered from thirst, we wanted to drink all the time. Everything inside was so dry that my tongue came out and I couldn’t push it back in. During the day we rode with our tongues hanging out. With open mouths. During the night it was a little easier.

I’ll remember it all my life…I’ll never forget it…

We had buckets in the corner, where we did our number one during the ride. And one girl…She crawled to these buckets, put her arms around one of them, bent over it and began to drink. She drank in big gulps…Then she began to vomit…She would vomit and again crawl to the bucket…Again she would vomit…

O-o-oh! If people had known their fate beforehand…

I remember the town of Magdeburg…Our heads were shaved there and our bodies smeared with some white solution. As a prophylactic. My body burned from this solution, from this liquid, as if it was on fire. The skin peeled off. God spare us! I didn’t want to live…I no longer felt sorry for anybody: neither for myself, nor for mama and papa. You raise your eyes—they’re standing around. With their dogs. German shepherds have frightening eyes. Dogs never look you straight in the eye, they always look away, but these did. They looked us straight in the eye. I didn’t want to live…I was there with a girl I had known, and she had been taken with her mama, I don’t know how. Maybe her mama jumped into the truck with her…I don’t know…

I’ll remember it all my life…I’ll never forget it…

This girl stood there and cried, because when they rounded us up for the prophylactic, she lost her mama. Her mama was young…a beautiful mama…We were always in the dark during the ride, no one opened the doors for us, they were freight cars, without windows. So during the ride she didn’t see her mama. For a whole month. She stood there crying and some old woman, her head also shaven, reached out to her, wanted to caress her. She ran away from that woman until she called out: “Daughter dear…” Only by the voice did she realize she was her mama.

O-o-oh! If…If we had known…

We were hungry all the time. I don’t remember where I was, where they took me. The names of the places…from hunger we lived as if asleep…

I remember carrying some boxes in a cartridge and gunpowder factory. Everything there smelled of matches. The smell of smoke…There was no smoke, but it smelled of smoke…

I remember milking cows at some German farmer’s. Splitting wood…Twelve hours a day…

We were fed potato peels, turnips, and were given tea with saccharine. My workmate, a Ukrainian girl, took my tea from me. She was older…stronger…She said, “I’ve got to survive…My mama’s alone at home.”

In the fields she sang beautiful Ukrainian songs. Very beautiful.

I…in one evening…I can’t tell everything in one evening. I won’t have time. My heart won’t stand it.

Where was it? I don’t remember…But this was already in the camp…I evidently wound up in Buchenwald…

We unloaded the trucks of dead people there and stacked them up in layers: a layer of dead people, a layer of tarred railway ties. One layer, another layer…and so from morning to night we prepared bonfires. Bonfires of…well, obviously…of corpses…There were some living people among the dead, and they wanted to tell us something. A few words. But we weren’t allowed to stay next to them…

O-o-oh! Human life…I don’t know if it’s easy for a tree to live, or for all the living creatures that man has tamed. Cattle, birds…But about human beings I know everything…

I wanted to die, I wasn’t sorry for anybody anymore…I was getting ready—was at the point of looking for a knife. My angel came flying to me…It was more than once…I don’t remember what his words of comfort were, but they were tender words. He reasoned with me for a long time…When I told other people about my angel, they thought I had lost my mind. I had no one around me that I knew, there were only strangers. No one wanted to get acquainted with anyone else, because tomorrow one or the other would die. Why get acquainted? But at some point I came to love a little girl…Mashenka…She was blond and gentle. She and I were friends for a month. In a camp a month is a whole lifetime, an eternity. She came to me first.

“Have you got a pencil?”

“No.”

“And a piece of paper?”

“No again. What do you need it for?”

“I know I’ll die soon, and I want to write a letter to my mother.”

We weren’t allowed to have any pencils or paper in the camp. But we found some for her. Everybody liked her—so blond and gentle. Such a gentle voice.

“How are you going to send the letter?” I asked.

“I’ll open the window during the night…And give the pages to the wind…”

She was probably eight years old, maybe ten. How can you tell by the bones? There were walking skeletons there, not people…Soon she fell ill, couldn’t get up and go to work. I begged her…On the first day I even dragged her as far as the door. She clung to the door, but couldn’t walk. She lay for two days, and on the third they came and took her away on a stretcher. There was only one way out of the camp—through the chimney…Straight to heaven…

I’ll remember it all my life…I’ll never forget it…

At night she and I talked.

“Does an angel come to you?” I wanted to tell her about my angel.

“No. Mama comes to me. She always wears a white blouse. I remember this blouse she had with cornflowers embroidered on it.”

In the fall…I survived till the fall. By what miracle, I don’t know…In the morning we were driven to work in the field. We harvested carrots, cut cabbages—I liked this work. It had been long since I went to the fields or saw anything green. In the camp you didn’t see the sky, you didn’t see the ground, because of the smoke. The chimney was tall, black. Smoke came out of it day and night…I saw a yellow flower in the field. I’d already forgotten how flowers grow. I caressed this flower…The other women also caressed it. We knew that ashes from our crematorium were brought here, and we all had our dead. A sister, or a mother…I had Mashenka…

If I’d known I would survive, I would have asked her mama’s address. But I didn’t think I would…

How did I survive, after dying a hundred times? I don’t know…It was my angel who saved me. He persuaded me. He appears even now. He likes nights when the moon shines brightly through the window. White light…

Aren’t you afraid to be with me? To listen to me?…

O-o-oh…

* For lack of palm fronds, Russians traditionally carry pussy willow branches in the services of Palm Sunday.