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

“A WHITE SHIRT SHINES FAR OFF IN THE DARK…”

Efim Friedland NINE YEARS OLD. NOW DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF A SILICATE FACTORY.

My childhood ended…with the first gunshots. A child still lived inside me, but now alongside someone else…

Before the war, I was afraid to be left alone in the apartment, but then the fear went away. I no longer believed in my mother’s hobgoblins crouching behind the stove, and she stopped mentioning them. We left Khotimsk on a cart. My mother had bought a basket of apples; she set it beside my sister and me and we ate. The bombing started. My sister was holding two nice apples in her hands, and we began fighting over them. She wouldn’t give them up. My mother yelled, “Hide!”—but we were quarreling over the apples. We fought until I asked my sister, “Give me at least one apple, or I’ll die without having tasted them.” She gave me one, the nicest one. Then the bombing stopped. I didn’t eat the lucky apple.

We rode on the cart, and ahead of us went a herd. We knew from our father (before the war, in Khotimsk, he was the director of the stockyard) that they weren’t ordinary cows, but a breeding herd, which had been purchased abroad for big money. I remember that my father was unable to explain how much “big money” it was, until he gave the example that each cow was worth a tractor. A tank. If it’s a tank, that means it’s a lot. We cherished each cow.

Since I grew up in the family of a zootechnician, I liked animals. After the umpteenth bombing, we were left without our cart, and I walked in front of the herd, tied to the bull Vaska. He had a ring in his nose with a rope tied to it, and I tied myself to the end of the rope. For a long time, the cows couldn’t get used to the bombings. They were heavy, not suited for these long marches; their hooves cracked, and they got terribly tired. After the shelling, it was hard to round them up, but if the bull went on the road, they all followed him. And the bull obeyed only me.

During the night, my mother would wash my white shirt somewhere…At dawn First Lieutenant Turchin, who led the convoy, shouted, “Rise and shine!” I would put on the shirt and set off with the bull. I remember that I always wore a white shirt. It shone in the dark, everybody could see me from far off. I slept next to the bull, under his front legs—it was warmer that way. Vaska never got up first; he waited until I got up. He sensed that a child was next to him, and he could cause him harm. I lay with him and never worried.

We reached Tula on foot. Nearly a thousand miles. We walked for three months, walked barefoot by then, everything we had on was in shreds. There were few herdsmen left. The cows had swollen udders, we had no time to milk them. The udder is sore, the cow stands next to you and looks. I had cramps in my hands from milking fifteen or twenty cows a day. I can still see it: a cow lay on the road with a broken hind leg, milk dripping from her bruised udder. She looked at people. Waited. The soldiers stopped—and took up their rifles to shoot her, so she wouldn’t suffer. I asked them to wait…

I went over and let the milk out on the ground. The cow gratefully licked my shoulder. “Well.” I stood up. “Now shoot.” But I ran off so as not to see it…

In Tula we learned that the entire breeding herd we had brought would go to the slaughterhouse—there was nowhere else to put them. The Germans were nearing the city. I put on my white shirt and went to say goodbye to Vaska. The bull breathed heavily in my face…

…May 1945…We were returning home. Our train was approaching Orsha. At that moment I was standing by the window. My mother came over to me. I opened the window. My mother said, “Can you smell our swamps?” I rarely cried, but here I sobbed. During our evacuation, I even dreamed of how we cut the swamp hay, how it was gathered in haystacks, and how it smelled, having dried and cured a bit. Our very own inimitable smell of swamp hay. It seems to me that only we in Belorussia have this pungent smell of swamp hay. It followed me everywhere. I even smelled it in my sleep.

On Victory Day, our neighbor Uncle Kolya ran outside and started firing into the air. The boys surrounded him.

“Uncle Kolya, let me!”

“Uncle Kolya, let me…”

He let everybody. And I fired a shot for the first time…