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

“MY DEAR DOG, FORGIVE ME…MY DEAR DOG, FORGIVE ME…”

Galina Firsova TEN YEARS OLD. NOW RETIRED.

I had a dream—to catch a sparrow and eat it…

Sometimes, but rarely, birds appeared in the city. Even in spring, everybody looked at them and thought of only one thing, the same thing I thought of. The same thing…Nobody had strength enough to stop thinking about food. From hunger, I constantly felt cold inside, a terrible inner cold. Even on sunny days. No matter how many clothes I put on, I was cold, I couldn’t get warm.

We really wanted to live…

I’m telling you about Leningrad, where we lived then. About the siege of Leningrad. They starved us to death, for a long time. Nine hundred days of siege…Nine hundred…When one day could seem like an eternity. You can’t imagine how long a day can seem to a hungry man. Or an hour, a minute…The long wait for lunch. Then for dinner. The daily ration during the siege went down to 125 grams of bread. That was for those who didn’t work. A dependent’s ration. The bread was oozing water…It was divided into three pieces—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We drank only boiled water. Plain boiled water.

In the dark…From six in the morning, in the winter (I mostly remember the winter), I stood in line at the bakery. We stood for hours. Long hours. When my turn came, it was dark outside again. A candle burns, and the counterman cuts those pieces. People stand and watch him. His every move…with burning, mad eyes…And all this in silence.

There were no trams. No water, no heating, no electricity. But the worst thing was the hunger. I saw a man chewing his buttons. Small buttons and big ones. People went crazy from hunger…

There was a moment when I stopped hearing. Then we ate the cat…I’ll tell you how we ate it. Then I went blind…They brought us a dog. That saved me.

I can’t remember…I’ve forgotten when the idea that we could eat our cat or our dog became normal. Ordinary. It became part of our life. I didn’t keep track of that moment…After the pigeons and swallows, cats and dogs suddenly started disappearing in the city. We didn’t have any, we didn’t take one in, because mama believed it was a great responsibility to have a dog, especially a big one, in the house. But my mama’s friend couldn’t eat her own cat, so she brought it to us. And we ate it. I started hearing again…I had lost my hearing unexpectedly. In the morning I could still hear, but in the evening, mama said something and I didn’t respond.

Time passed…And we started dying again…Mama’s friend brought us her dog. And we ate it, too. If it weren’t for that dog, we wouldn’t have survived. We certainly wouldn’t have survived. It’s obvious. We had started to swell from hunger. My sister didn’t want to get up in the morning…The dog was big and gentle. For two days, mama couldn’t…How could she make up her mind? On the third day, she tied the dog to the radiator in the kitchen and sent us outside…

I remember those meatballs…I remember…

We really wanted to live…

Often we gathered and sat around papa’s photograph. Papa was at the front. We rarely received letters from him. “My dear girls…” he wrote to us. We answered, but we tried not to upset him.

Mama kept several pieces of sugar. A small paper bag. It was our golden reserve. One day…I couldn’t resist, I knew where the sugar was, I climbed up and took a piece. Several days later, another one…Then…Some time went by—and again…Soon there was nothing left in mama’s little bag. An empty bag…

Mama fell ill…She needed glucose. Sugar…She couldn’t stand up anymore…At the family council, we decided to fetch the precious little bag. Our treasure! Well, we had saved it for such a day! Mama would most certainly recover. My older sister went searching, but there was no sugar. We ransacked the entire house. I searched along with everyone.

But in the evening I confessed…

My sister beat me. Bit me. Scratched me. And I begged her, “Kill me! Kill me! How can I go on living?!” I wanted to die.

I’ve told you about a few days. But there were nine hundred.

Nine hundred days like that…

Before my eyes a girl stole a bread roll from a woman in the market. A little girl…

She was caught and knocked to the ground. They started beating her…Beat her terribly. Beat her to death. But she hurried to eat, to swallow the roll. To swallow it before they killed her.

Nine hundred days like that…

Our grandfather became so weak that one time he fell down in the street. He had already said goodbye to life. A worker passed by, workers had better ration cards, slightly, but better…Anyhow…So this worker stopped and poured sunflower oil in my grandfather’s mouth—his ration. Grandfather walked back home, told us, and wept: “I don’t even know his name!”

Nine hundred…

People moved slowly around the city, like shadows. Like in sleep…In deep sleep…I mean, you see it, but you think you’re dreaming. Those slow…those floating movements…It’s like the person isn’t walking on the ground, but on water…

People’s voices changed from hunger. Or disappeared completely. It was impossible to identify people by their voices—a man or a woman? Or by their clothes. Everybody was wrapped in some kind of rags. Our breakfast…our breakfast was a piece of wallpaper, old wallpaper, but it still had paste on it. Flour paste. So there was this wallpaper…and boiled water…

Nine hundred days…

I walk home from the bakery…I’ve got my daily ration. Those crumbs, those miserable grams…And a dog runs toward me. He comes up to me and sniffs—he smells the bread.

I understood that this was our chance. This dog…Our salvation! I’ll bring the dog home…

I gave him a piece of bread, and he followed after me. Near the house I nipped off another piece. He licked my hand. We went through the entryway. But he went up the stairs reluctantly, he stopped on every floor. I gave him all our bread…Piece by piece…So we went up to the fourth floor, and our apartment was on the fifth. There he stopped and wouldn’t go any farther. He looked at me…as if he sensed something. Understood. I hugged him: “My dear dog, forgive me…My dear dog, forgive me…” I asked him, I begged him. And he went.

We really wanted to live…

We heard…They said on the radio, “The siege is broken! The siege is broken!” We were the happiest of people. There could be no greater happiness. We had survived! The siege was broken…

Our soldiers walked down our street. I ran up to them…But I wasn’t strong enough to embrace them.

There are many monuments in Leningrad, but one that should be there is missing. We forgot about it. It’s a monument to the dogs of the siege.

My dear dog, forgive me…