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

“I WANTED TO BE MAMA’S ONLY CHILD…SO SHE COULD PAMPER ME…”

Maria Puzan SEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

Forgive me, but when I remember this…I can’t…I…I can’t look another person in the eyes…

They drove the kolkhoz cows out of the barn and pushed people inside. Our mama, too. I sat in the bushes with my little brother, he was two years old, he didn’t cry. And the dog sat there with us.

In the morning we came home, the house was there, but mama wasn’t. There was nobody. We were alone. I went to fetch water. I had to stoke the oven, my little brother was asking to eat. Our neighbors were hanging from the well pole. I turned to the other end of the village, there was an artesian well there, with the best water. The tastiest. There were people hanging there, too. I came home with empty buckets. My little brother cried, because he was hungry. “Give me some bread. Give me a crust.” One time I bit him so he wouldn’t cry.

We lived like that for a few days. Alone in the village. People lay or hung dead. We weren’t afraid of the dead, they were all people we knew. Later we met a woman we didn’t know. We started crying, “Let us live with you. We’re afraid alone.” She sat us on her sledge and drove us to her village. She had two boys and the two of us. We lived like that until our soldiers came.

…At the orphanage, they gave me an orange dress with pockets. I loved it so much that I told everyone, “If I die, bury me in this dress.” Mama died, papa died, and I would die soon. For a long time I waited to die. I always cried when I heard the word mama. Once they scolded me for some reason and stood me in a corner. I ran away from the orphanage. I ran away several times to go and look for mama.

I didn’t remember my birthday…They told me: Choose your favorite day, any one you want. Well, any one you like. And I liked the May holidays. “But,” I thought, “nobody will believe me if I say I was born on the first of May, or on the second, but if I say the third of May, it will seem like the truth.” Every three months they gathered the children who had had birthdays; they set a festive table with candy and tea, and gave them presents: girls got fabric for their dresses, boys got shirts. Once an unknown old man came to the orphanage and brought a lot of boiled eggs, gave them out to everybody, and was so happy to do something nice for us. It was right on my birthday…

I was already a big girl, but I was bored without toys. When we went to bed and everybody fell asleep, I pulled feathers from my pillow and examined them. It was my favorite game. If I was sick, I lay and dreamed of mama. I wanted to be mama’s only child…so she could pamper me.

I was a long time growing up…Everybody in the orphanage had trouble growing up. I think it’s probably from pining. We didn’t grow up because we heard so few tender words. We couldn’t grow up without mamas…