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

“HE WAS AFRAID TO LOOK BACK…”

Zhenya Belkevich SIX YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

June 1941…

I remember it. I was very little, but I remember everything…

The last thing I remember from the peaceful life was a fairy tale that mama read us at bedtime. My favorite one—about the Golden Fish. I also always asked something from the Golden Fish: “Golden Fish…Dear Golden Fish…” My sister asked, too. She asked differently: “By order of the pike, by my like…” We wanted to go to our grandmother for the summer and have papa come with us. He was so much fun.

In the morning I woke up from fear. From some unfamiliar sounds…

Mama and papa thought we were asleep, but I lay next to my sister pretending to sleep. I saw papa kiss mama for a long time, kiss her face and hands, and I kept wondering: he’s never kissed her like that before. They went outside, they were holding hands, I ran to the window—mama hung on my father’s neck and wouldn’t let him go. He tore free of her and ran, she caught up with him and again held him and shouted something. Then I also shouted: “Papa! Papa!”

My little sister and brother Vasya woke up, my sister saw me crying, and she, too, shouted: “Papa!” We all ran out to the porch: “Papa!” Father saw us and, I remember it like today, covered his head with his hands and walked off, even ran. He was afraid to look back.

The sun was shining in my face. So warm…And even now I can’t believe that my father left that morning for the war. I was very little, but I think I realized that I was seeing him for the last time. That I would never meet him again. I was very…very little…

It became connected like that in my memory, that war is when there’s no papa…

Then I remember: the black sky and the black plane. Our mama lies by the road with her arms spread. We ask her to get up, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t rise. The soldiers wrapped mama in a tarpaulin and buried her in the sand, right there. We shouted and begged: “Don’t put our mama in the ground. She’ll wake up and we’ll go on.” Some big beetles crawled over the sand…I couldn’t imagine how mama was going to live with them under the ground. How would we find her afterward, how would we meet her? Who would write to our papa?

One of the soldiers asked me: “What’s your name, little girl?” But I forgot. “And what’s your last name, little girl? What’s your mother’s name?” I didn’t remember…We sat by mama’s little mound till night, till we were picked up and put on a cart. The cart was full of children. Some old man drove us, he gathered up everybody on the road. We came to a strange village and strangers took us all to different cottages.

I didn’t speak for a long time. I only looked.

Then I remember—summer. Bright summer. A strange woman strokes my head. I begin to cry. I begin to speak…To tell about mama and papa. How papa ran away from us and didn’t even look back…How mama lay…How the beetles crawled over the sand…

The woman strokes my head. In those moments I realized: she looks like my mama…