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

“WE ATE…THE PARK…”

Anya Grubina TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW AN ARTIST.

I lose my voice when I tell about this…My voice dies…

We arrived in Minsk after the war. But I’m a Leningrad girl. I survived the siege there. The siege of Leningrad…When the whole city, my dear and beautiful city, was starving to death. Our papa died…Mama saved her children. Before the war, she had been a “firebrand.” My little brother Slavik was born in 1941. How old was he when the siege began? Six months, just about six months…She saved this little one, too…All three of us…But we lost our papa. In Leningrad, everybody lost their papa, the papas died sooner, but the mamas stayed alive. I guess they couldn’t die. Otherwise who would have been there for us?

When the ring of the siege was broken through, we were taken out on the “road of life” to the Urals, to the city of Karpinsk. The children were saved first. Our entire school was evacuated. On the road, everybody talked constantly about food, about food and parents. In Karpinsk we immediately rushed to the park; we didn’t stroll in the park, we ate it. We especially liked larch, its fluffy needles—they’re so delicious! We ate the young shoots from small pine trees, we nibbled grass. From the time of the siege, I knew about every kind of edible grass; in the city people ate all that was green. In the parks and the botanical garden, the leaves were already gone in the spring. But in the park of Karpinsk there was a lot of wood sorrel, also called hare cabbage. This was in 1942. In the Urals, too, there was hunger, but not as terrible as in Leningrad.

In the orphanage I was in, which housed only Leningrad children, they weren’t able to feed us. For a long time they couldn’t feed us enough. We sat in the classroom chewing paper. They fed us sparingly…I sat at the table, it was breakfast. And I saw a cat. A live cat…I jumped up from the table: “A cat! A cat!” All the children saw it and started chasing it: “A cat! A cat!” The house mistresses were all local, they looked at us like we were crazy. In Leningrad there were no living cats left…A living cat—that was a dream. A whole month’s worth of food…We told them, but they wouldn’t believe us. I remember many caresses. Hugs. Nobody raised their voice until our hair grew back after the journey. Before leaving, we were all given a close crop, boys and girls alike, but some lost their hair from starvation. We didn’t play, didn’t run. We sat and looked. And we ate everything…

I don’t remember who in the orphanage told us about the German prisoners…When I first saw a German…I already knew he was a prisoner, they worked outside the city, in the coal mines. To this day I still don’t understand why they came rushing to our orphanage, precisely the Leningrad one.

When I saw him…that German…He didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask. We had just finished our lunch, and I obviously still smelled of food. He stood next to me and sniffed the air, his jaw involuntarily moving, as if he was chewing something, and he tried to prevent it with his hands. To stop it. But it went on moving. I couldn’t look at a hungry person at all. Absolutely not! We all had this sickness…I ran and called the girls. Somebody had a leftover piece of bread, and we gave it to him.

He kept thanking us.

“Danke schön…Danke schön…”

The next day he came to us with his comrade. And so it went…They walked in their heavy wooden clogs. Thump-thump…When I heard that thump, I ran outside…

We already knew when they would come, we even waited for them. We ran outside with anything we happened to have. When I was on duty in the kitchen, I kept my entire daily piece of bread for them, and in the evening I scraped the pans. All the girls kept something for them; I don’t remember if the boys did. Our boys were constantly hungry, they never had enough to eat. The house mistresses scolded us, because the girls also fainted from hunger, but we still secretly kept food for those prisoners.

In 1943 they no longer came to us, in 1943 things were easier. There wasn’t as much hunger in the Urals. We had real bread in the orphanage, they gave us plenty of kasha. But to this day, I still can’t look at a hungry man. The way he stares…He never stares straight, always somewhere to the side…Recently they showed refugees on television…Somewhere, again, there is war. Shooting. Hungry people standing in lines with empty bowls. With empty eyes. I remember those eyes…I ran to the other room, I was in hysterics…

In the first year of our evacuation, we paid no attention to nature, everything about nature evoked a single desire—to taste it: is it edible? Only after a year did I notice how beautiful nature was in the Urals. The wild fir trees, tall grass, whole forests of bird cherry. Such sunsets! I began to draw. I had no paint, so I drew with a pencil. I drew postcards. We sent them to our parents in Leningrad. Most of all I loved to draw bird cherry trees. Karpinsk smelled of bird cherry.

For many years now, I’ve been obsessed with the desire to go there. I have a great wish to see whether our orphanage is still standing…It was a wooden building—has it survived in the new life? What has become of the city park? I’d like to go there in the spring, when everything is in bloom. Now I can’t imagine eating handfuls of bird cherries, but we did eat them. We even ate them when they were still green. Bitter.

After the siege…I know that a man can eat anything. People even ate dirt…At the market, we could buy dirt from the destroyed and burned-down Badayev warehouses; dirt with sunflower oil spilled on it was particularly valued, or dirt soaked in burned jam. Those two were expensive. Our mama could only afford the cheapest dirt, which barrels of herring had stood on. That dirt only smelled of salt, but didn’t contain any salt. Only the smell of herring.

To find joy in flowers…New grass…Simply find joy in them…It took me some time to learn…

Decades after the war…