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

“I STILL WANT MY MAMA…”

Zina Kosiak EIGHT YEARS OLD. NOW A HAIRDRESSER.

First grade…

I finished first grade in May of ’41, and my parents took me for the summer to the Pioneer camp of Gorodishche, near Minsk. I came there, went for a swim once, and two days later the war began. We were put on a train and taken somewhere. German planes flew over, and we shouted “Hurray!” We didn’t understand that they could be enemy planes. Until they began to bomb us…Then all colors disappeared. All shades. For the first time the word death appeared; everybody began to repeat this incomprehensible word. And mama and papa weren’t there.

When we were leaving the camp, we each had something poured into a pillowcase—some of us grain, some of us sugar. Even the smallest children weren’t passed over, everybody got something. They wanted us to take as much food as possible for the road, and this food was used very sparingly. But on the train we saw wounded soldiers. They moaned, they were in pain. We wanted to give everything to these soldiers. We called it “feeding the papas.” We called all military men papas.

We were told that Minsk had burned down, burned down completely, that the Germans were already there, but that we were going to the rear. Where there was no war.

We rode for over a month. They’d direct us to some town, we’d come there, but they couldn’t keep us there, because the Germans were already close. And so we arrived in Mordovia.

The place was very beautiful, there were churches standing around. The houses were low, and the churches high. There was nothing to sleep on, we slept on straw. Winter came, and we had one pair of shoes for the four of us. Then we began to starve. Not only the orphanage was starving, but also the people around us, because we gave everything to the front. There were 250 children living in our orphanage, and once we were called to dinner and there was nothing to eat at all. The teachers and the director sat in the dining room, looked at us, and their eyes were full of tears. We had a horse, Maika…She was very old and gentle, and we used her to carry water. The next day this Maika was killed. We were given water with a small piece of Maika in it…But they concealed it from us for a long time. We wouldn’t have been able to eat her…Not for anything! She was the only horse in our orphanage. We also had two hungry cats. Skeletons! Good, we thought later, it’s lucky they were so skinny, we didn’t have to eat them. There was nothing there to eat.

We went around with swollen stomachs. I, for instance, could eat a bucket of soup, because there was nothing in this soup. I’d eat as much as they gave me. We were saved by nature, we were like ruminant animals. In spring not a single tree for several miles around the orphanage would sprout…We ate all the buds, we even peeled off the young bark. We ate grass, we ate everything. They gave us pea jackets; we made pockets in them and carried grass around and chewed it. Summer saved us, but in winter it was very hard. Small children—there were some forty of us—were placed separately. During the night there was howling. We called mama and papa. Our house parents and teachers tried not to say the word mama before us. They told us fairy tales and found books without this word in them. If anyone suddenly said “mama,” howling began. Inconsolable howling.

I repeated first grade in school. It happened like this: I had graduated from first grade with a certificate of honor, but when we came to the orphanage they asked us who had been reexamined, I said I had, because I decided that reexamination meant the certificate of honor.

In the third grade I ran away from the orphanage. I went looking for mama. Grandpa Bolshakov found me in the forest, hungry and exhausted. He learned that I was from an orphanage and took me into his family. He and grandma lived together. I grew stronger and began to help them with the chores: gathered grass, weeded potatoes—did everything. We ate bread, but there was little bread in it. It was very bitter. The flour was mixed with everything that could be ground: goosefoot, filbert blossoms, potatoes. To this day I cannot look calmly at healthy grass, and I eat a lot of bread. I can’t have enough of it…After dozens of years…

Anyhow, I remember a lot. There’s much more that I remember…

I remember a mad little girl who would get into someone’s kitchen garden, find a hole, and start waiting for a mouse. The girl was hungry. I remember her face, even the sundress she wore. Once I came up to her and she…told me…about the mouse…We sat together and looked out for that mouse…

All through the war I waited so that, when the war ended, grandpa and I could harness a horse and go in search of mama. Evacuated people stopped at our house, and I asked them all whether they had met my mama. There were many evacuated people, so many that in every house there stood a cauldron of warm nettles. In case people came, there should be something warm for them to eat. We had nothing else to give them. But there was a cauldron of nettles in every house…I remember it well. I gathered those nettles.

The war ended…I waited for a day, for two days. No one came to get me. Mama didn’t come for me, and papa, I knew, was in the army. I waited for two weeks like that, and couldn’t wait any longer. I got under a seat on a train and rode…Where? I didn’t know. I thought (this was still my child’s mind) that all trains went to Minsk. And in Minsk mama was waiting! Then papa would come…A hero! With orders, with medals.

They had perished somewhere under the bombs. The neighbors told me later—they had both gone looking for me. They had rushed to the train station.

I’m already fifty-one years old. I have children of my own. But I still want my mama.