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

“I HEARD HIS HEART STOP…”

Lena Aronova TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A LAWYER.

Our city suddenly became militarized. Our quiet and green Gomel…

My parents decided to send me to Moscow, where my brother was studying at the military academy. Everybody thought that Moscow would never be taken, that it was an impregnable fortress. I didn’t want to leave, but my parents insisted, because when we were bombed, I couldn’t eat for whole days, they had to force the food on me. I became noticeably thinner. Mama decided that Moscow was calm, that Moscow would be good for me. That I’d get better there. And she and papa would come as soon as the war was over. Very soon.

The train didn’t reach Moscow; we were told to get off in Maloyaroslavets. There was a long-distance telephone at the train station, and I kept calling my brother to find out what to do next. I finally reached him and he said, “Sit and wait, I’ll come to get you.” It was an anxious night; there were a great many people. Suddenly it was announced: in half an hour a train will be leaving for Moscow, get aboard. I collected my luggage, ran to the train, climbed to the upper shelf and fell asleep. When I woke up the train was standing by a small river; women were doing laundry. “Where’s Moscow?” I asked in astonishment. They replied that we were being taken to the east…

I got out of the car and burst into tears from resentment, from despair. And—oh! Dina, my friend, caught sight of me. We left Gomel together, our mamas saw us off together, but in Maloyaroslavets we lost each other. Now there were two of us, and I wasn’t so frightened. At the stops people brought food to the train: sandwiches, canned milk on carts, once they even brought soup.

They dropped us off at the Djarkul station, in the Kustanai region. For the first time Dina and I rode on a wagon. We reassured each other, saying that once we arrived we would immediately write home. I said, “If our houses aren’t destroyed, our parents will get our letters, but if they are—where shall we write to?” My mama was the head doctor of a children’s hospital, and papa was director of a technical school. My papa was a peaceful man, he looked the teacher all over. When he came home from work for the first time with a pistol (they had given out pistols), and he put the holster over his suit jacket, I got scared. I think he was also scared of it. In the evenings he took it off carefully and put it on the table. We lived in a big house, but there were no military in it, and I had never seen weapons before. It seemed to me that the pistol would start shooting by itself, that the war was already living in our home. When papa took off the pistol, the war would be over.

Dina and I were city girls, we didn’t know how to do anything. The day after our arrival, we were sent to work in the fields. We spent the whole day bent over. I got dizzy and fell down. Dina stood over me and wept, but she didn’t know how to help me. We were ashamed: the local girls fulfilled the norm; we would reach the middle of the field, and they’d already be far ahead. The most terrible thing was when I was sent to milk the cow. They handed me a milk pail, but I had never milked a cow and was afraid to go near it.

Once someone came from the station and brought newspapers. We read in them that Gomel had been taken, and Dina and I wept a lot. If Gomel was taken, it meant that our parents were dead, and we had to go to the orphanage. I didn’t want even to hear about an orphanage, I intended to go looking for my brother. But Dina’s parents came to get us. They found us by some miracle. Her father worked as a head doctor in the town of Saraktash, the Chkalov region. There was a small house on the grounds of the hospital, and we lived in it. We slept on wooden bunks, on mattresses stuffed with straw. I suffered very much because of my long braids, which reached below my knees. I couldn’t cut them off without mama’s permission. I still hoped that mama was somehow alive and would find me. Mama loved my braids and would scold me if I cut them off.

Once…at dawn…Such things happen only in fairy tales, and also in war. There was a knocking on the window…I got up: my mama was standing there. I fainted…Soon mama cut off my braids and rubbed my head with kerosene to get rid of the lice.

Mama already knew that papa’s school had been evacuated to Novosibirsk, and we went to join him. There I began going to school. In the morning we studied, and after lunch we went to help in the hospital. There were many wounded who had been sent from the front to the rear. We were taken as paramedics. I was sent to the surgery section, the most difficult one. They gave us old sheets. We tore them to make bandages, rolled them up, put them in containers, and took them to be sterilized. We also laundered old bandages, but lots of bandages came from the front in such condition that we carried them out in baskets and buried them in the backyard. They were all soaked with blood, with pus…

I grew up in a doctor’s family and dreamed before the war of becoming a doctor. If it was surgery, let it be surgery. Other girls were afraid, but I didn’t care, as long as I could help, could feel I was needed. The lessons ended, and we ran quickly to the hospital, so as to come in time, not to be late. I remember fainting several times. When they unbandage the wound, it all gets stuck, the men scream…Several times I became nauseous from the smell of the bandages. They smelled very strongly, not with medications but…with something…unfamiliar, suffocating…Death…I already knew the smell of death. You come to the ward—the wounded man is still alive, but there’s already this smell…Many girls left, they couldn’t stand it. They sewed mittens for the front; those who knew how—knitted. But I couldn’t leave the hospital—how could I if everybody knew that my mama was a doctor?

But I cried very much when the wounded men died. When they were dying they called out, “Doctor! Doctor! Quick!” A doctor comes running, but he can’t save him. The wounded in the surgical section were serious ones. I remember one lieutenant…He asked me for a hot-water bottle. I gave it to him, he seized my hand…I couldn’t take it away…He pressed it to himself. He held on to me, held on with all his strength. I heard his heart stop. It beat, beat, and then stopped…

I learned so much during the war…More than during my whole life…