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

“DEAR MAMA AND DEAR PAPA—GOLDEN WORDS…”

Ira Mazur FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW A CONSTRUCTION WORKER.

I should probably tell you about my loneliness. How I learned to be lonely…

One girl, Lenochka, had a red blanket, and I had a brown one. And when the German planes flew over, we lay on the ground and covered ourselves with our blankets. First the red one, then my brown one on top. I told the girls that if the pilot saw brown from above, he would think it’s a stone…

The only memory I have of my mother is how afraid I was to lose her. I knew a girl whose mother had died in a bombing. She cried all the time. My mother took her in her arms and comforted her. Later…we buried my mother in the village, some woman and I…We washed her. She lay there thin as a girl. I wasn’t afraid, I caressed her all the time. Her hair and hands smelled as usual. I didn’t notice where she was wounded. Apparently it was a small bullet wound. For some reason I thought that mama’s bullet wound was small. I once saw small bullets on the road. And I wondered: how can these small bullets kill such a big person? Or even me—I’m a thousand, a million times bigger than them. For some reason, I remember that million, it seemed to me that it was very, very much, so much it was impossible to count. Mama didn’t die immediately. She lay in the grass for a long while and kept opening her eyes: “Ira, I have to tell you…”

“Mama, I don’t want to…” It seemed to me that if she told me what she wanted, she’d die.

When we washed my mother, she lay in a shawl with her big braid. Like a girl…That’s how I see her today. I’m already twice her age; she was twenty-five. I now have a daughter that age, and she even looks like my mother.

What’s left in me from the orphanage? An uncompromising character. I don’t know how to be gentle and careful with words. I’m unable to forgive. My family complains that I’m not very affectionate. Can one grow up affectionate without a mother?

At the orphanage, I wanted to have my own personal cup, that would be mine alone. I’ve always been envious: people have kept some belongings from their childhood, but I don’t have any. Nothing of which I could say: “This is from my childhood.” I wish I could say that, sometimes I even make it up…Other girls grew attached to our house mistresses, but I liked our nannies. They were more like our imaginary mamas. The house mistresses were strict and orderly, but the nannies were always bedraggled and grouchy like at home. They might spank us, but never painfully. Maternally. They washed us, did laundry for us in the bathhouse. We could sit on their laps. They touched our naked bodies—and that only a mama could do, so I understood. They fed us, treated our colds as they knew how, and wiped our tears. When we were in their hands, it wasn’t an orphanage anymore, but started to be a home.

I often hear people say, “My mother” or “My father.” I don’t understand—why mother and father, as if they were strangers? It should only be mama or papa. And if mine were alive, I would call them “dear mama” and “dear papa.”

Those are golden words…