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

“BECAUSE WE’RE GIRLS, AND HE’S A BOY…”

Rimma Pozniakova (Kaminskaya) SIX YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

I was in kindergarten…Playing with dolls…

They call me: “Your papa’s come to take you. It’s war!” I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to play. I cry.

What is this war? How is it that I’m killed? How is it that papa’s killed? There was another unfamiliar word—refugees. Mama hung little bags on our necks with our birth certificates and notes with our address. In case she was killed, strangers would know who we were.

We walked for a very long time. We lost papa. Were frightened. Mama said that papa was taken to the concentration camp, but that we would go to papa. And what was a concentration camp? We gathered food, but what kind of food? Baked apples. Our house burned down, our garden burned down, there were baked apples hanging on the apple trees. We gathered them and ate them.

The concentration camp was in Drozdy, near Komsomol Lake. Now it’s in Minsk, but then it was the countryside. I remember the black barbed wire. People’s faces were also all black, all looking the same. We didn’t recognize father, but he recognized us. He wanted to caress me, but for some reason I was afraid to get near the barbed wire and tugged at mama to go home.

When and how father came home I don’t remember. I know that he worked at a mill, and mama sent us to him to carry lunch—me and my little sister Toma. Tomochka was still a tiny thing. I was bigger, I already wore a little bra—there were these little girls’ bras before the war. Mama gave us a bundle with food and put some leaflets inside my bra. The leaflets were small, a page from a school notebook, written by hand. Mama led us to the gate, wept, and instructed us, “Don’t go near anybody except your father.” Then she stood waiting for us to return, till she saw us come back alive.

I don’t remember being afraid…Mama said we had to go, and we went. Mama said this was the main thing. We were afraid not to obey mama, not to do what she asked us to do. She was our beloved mama. We couldn’t even imagine not obeying her.

When it was cold we all climbed on the stove. We had a big sheepskin coat, and we all got under this coat. To heat the stove we had to go to the train station and steal coal. We had to crawl on our knees so that the watchman didn’t notice. We crawled and helped ourselves along with our elbows. We would bring back a bucket of coal, and we looked like chimneysweeps: knees and elbows and nose and forehead all black.

At night we slept together, nobody wanted to sleep alone. There were four of us: myself, my two sisters, and four-year-old Boris, whom mama adopted. Only later did we find out that Boris was the son of the underground fighter Lelia Revinskaya, mama’s friend. At the time mama told us that there was this little boy who was often left at home by himself, was frightened and had nothing to eat. She wanted us to accept him and come to love him. She realized that it wasn’t easy. Children are capable of not loving. She did a smart thing: she didn’t bring Boris, but sent us to get him. “Go and bring this boy and be friends with him.” We went and brought him.

Boris had many books with pretty pictures. He took them all with him, we helped him carry them. We would sit on the stove, and he would tell us fairy tales. We liked him so much that he became as dear to us as could be, maybe because he knew so many fairy tales. We told everybody in the yard, “Don’t bully him.”

We were all blond, and Boris was dark-haired. His mama had a thick black braid, and when she came to us, she gave me a present of a little mirror. I put it away and decided to look at it in the mornings and then I’d have a braid like hers.

We run around in the yard, and the children shout, “Whose child is Boris?”

“Boris is ours.”

“Why are you all blond and he’s dark-haired?”

“Because we’re girls, and he’s a boy.” That’s what mama told us to answer.

Boris was in fact ours, because his mama had been killed and his papa had been killed, and he could have been thrown into the ghetto. Somehow we already knew that much. Our mama was afraid he’d be recognized and taken. We’d go somewhere and we’d all call our mama “mama,” but Boris called her “aunt.” She kept begging him, “Say ‘mama,’ ” and she’d give him some bread.

He’d take the bread, step back: “Thank you, Aunt.”

And his tears poured down…