Our village, the village of Likhovo, Novo-Vodolashsk district, Kharkov region, seems to exist since the times of the Polish landowners, because there can be heard many Polish family names. The surname of German (Herman), for example, and the part of the village, where the Germans lived, was therefore called Germanivka. Many had the surname of Onatskiy (my mother's maiden name was Onatskaya), and the area of the village was hence called Onatskivka. In spite of the place-name of "Likhovo" ("fatal", "evil"; translator's note), the village was situated at a glen in plain nature. There were a couple of small wooded areas around, about 2-3 hectares each: oaks, maple-trees, the wild funduk-hazelnut, fruit trees (wild apple- and pear-trees), blackthorns and dog-roses. In the forest there were mushrooms and wild strawberries. But their were also gardens. Later they became the property of the kolkhoz, and we rushed there to pinch apples. The little woodlands and gardens, which had been privately owned in former times, became the property of the collective farm, too (I was yet a child at that time and do not remember, how this procedure definitely looked like). The kolkhoz fell trees according to its needs and by the course of time the whole area was com-pletely cleared. Now there are plowed fields. All landed property, as well as residential and fram buildings were assigned to the collective farm. The farmstead of the dispossessed - a single house with three big rooms, next to it a horse stable and a barn. In former times the landlord was sometimes called Prokhov, then Prokhorov - and what did they call the wood-lands then? - Prokhovsk woodlands. And in the same way they did with the farms: Prokhirovsk, Prodaydushivsk, Gubarivsk.
When the Germans occupied the territory (during the war), one day a relative of some dispos-sessed farm owner appeared on one of the farm steads - maybe his son. But there was nothing interesting to be seen anymore: in the yard plows and harrows were standing about, the house itself gave a dilapidated and neglected impression, with flaked off paint; barn and granary looked rummaged through and the horse stable had been pulled down. And thus the man went off, the more since the front was moving.
A newspaper article bearing the headling "Operation - hunger" fell into my hands. I read it and, unvoluntarily, tears started flowing freely out of my eyes. I do remember this year 1933, although - what is a 6 or 7-year-old child able to remeber? On thing is clearly engraved in my mind: I would have so much liked to eat, but nothing edible could be found in the house, sot a single gram.
There were 6 children in our family: Anna, the eldest (born in 1912), was already married, but for some reason or other often hapened to stay with us; then Liza (born in 1914), Vera (born in 1919), Milya (born in 1921), Tolya (born in 1922) and I, Olga (born in 1927). Our mother, Alexandra Nikitovna Tsvirkun, was an illiterate person and a countrywoman. Father, Nikifor Yevgenyevich Tsirkun, had defended his fatherland in the past - he wore two crosses on his breast (medals awarded for bravery) and had been a warrent officer in the tsarist army. And it was just this very title that later caused the whole family so much trouble: father himself was compelled to hide away, elsewise they would have shot him, for persistently certain people from the district administration came along, interested to learn where he was or where he had gone. My sister Vera who lived in the city of Kharkov wrote about this in one of her letters; I clearly remember that: "In 1914, during the war against the Germans, father also went to war ... a really terrible war - today a soldier is fighting for the Reds and a week later for the Whites ... When the war was over, he came home and lived there together with his family. His parents built him a house, both his and his wife's parents helped with it. Father's parents lived in porr circumstances, but mother's parents were rich people. During the summer they used to do farm work, and in winter they sewed boots for other people. He was a good shoemaker; everybody in Likhovo came to see him and asked him for a pair of shoes. Well, I do not exactly remember, how old you were (2 or 3 years) at the time, when father left us. He knew that all those who had fought on the front in 1914 were now arrested and sent to prison. So, one night in 1930 he left the house; Mum accompanied him to Novoselovka station; there were no people from Likhovo and nobody knew him. They had just started to dispossess the people; we were taken away our cow and all the cereals stored in the granary. I remember all this. They are shouting at Mum: "Your husband was a warrant officer, he fought on both sides - for the Reds and the Grmans". As I mentioned before - it was a very bad war. Somehow father came home one night in order to learn, how his family was doing; he stayed overnight and left again the next night. Mum went with him to the station again to be sure that they would not arrest him. Then he left for Kirghizia. He did not write any letters to us; only once a year he wrote to Uncle Gritska's address and twice sent parcels to him, which were meant for us, but the uncle did not give them to us".
In the winter of 1932/1933 we were supported by father's brother Vladimir. he was 30 years old, unmarried, and somewhat a poor cripple; he went through the towns, begged for alms and brought home a few pieces of bread or dried crusts. Evidently, disaster lay in wait for him: he left and disappeared and we found ourselves at the edge of a yawning abyss, as there was absolutely nothing to eat, and we had all entirely wasted away. by means of a grater we grinded the core of a corn stalk. Having shelled the ears of corn we used to heat the oven with these stalks. But they had alsotaken all the corn away from us, so that now only one single stalk was left. Well, we grinded and cooked it. But it was like sawdust: you may cook it as much as you like - it always remains like sawdust. We cooked and ate it, of course. And afterwards we were seriously constipated. The stomach refused to digest such a food. Our brother almost died; his belly was terribly distended, the child writhed with pain. Mum went to see the director of our school (he was very well disposed to our family), told him about our misery, and his wife (also a teacher) gave her half a liter of milk and a piece of bread and butter. The little boy was rescued; he was the only boy in our family; we, the others, were 5 sistsers.
Spring approached and we began to dig up the soil of the kitchen garden. And while digging I found a potato from the past year - at a close look it was not a potato anymore, but a thin pulp of darkened starch in a "peel". Whoever made such a discovery in those times would immediately put it in one's mouth. Stinging nettles and various kinds of herbs now began to grow out of the earth. Around the village there were a few little forest areas yet (they were only cleared in the 1960s), where the wild funduk hazel bush could be found. In spring it is in blossom and produces aments - just like poplars. These aments were picked, dried, crushed, pulverized, cooked together with other herbs - and then we ate it. We did not think of anything else but food; at least we wanted to eat a little piece of bread, even if it was all tiny. And then mother decided to try her luck, to go to Kharkov with her children and beg for a piece of bread. It is hard to figure out, how this idea came to her mind, since she had never been to a town before. I still remember that Vera, Milya and Tolya went with her; sister Anna and I stayed at home. She put a turnip into our hands which we were asked to eat right away raw. But Anna decided that something should go with it, that something else should be added to this meal. She picked a few herbs and cooked a soup, and then we ate it and there was a buzzing in our ears and we felt pain. This was not funny at all. But we were full of hope: in the evening Mum will return home with the other children and bring us some food.
However, Mum befell anothermisfortune: she had believed that a town is quite similar to a little village, but when she came out of the station building, she immediately lost Vera and Tolya in the crowd (she was holding Milya by the hand). The poor woman forgot all about her plans and, seized with panic, ran to and fro asking all people whether or not they had seen a little girl and a boy. She hurried through some street and - good Heavens! - there, on this very street, her children were running up to her. She seized them by the scruff of the neck and - immediately back to the station and straight home; without a single piece of bread. Quite a few people villagers carries their children downtown to abandon or deliver them to an orphanage. Mum said: I am not going to take them anywhere and I will not put them to an orphan's home, either.
We somehow managed to survive, although we permanently suffered want. Mum was a kolkhoz farm worker and Liza, my sister, was also working on the kolkhoz farm, where they used to count the work days (the units of work on collective farms; translator's note). At home there were four school-age children. We had two rooms at home. The first one was occupied with our family, we lived there packed like sardines. The other one was leased out, either to the district plenipotentiary or to the chairman of the village Soviet and his family. This was obviously meant a s some kind of punishment to us; what else could they have thought of to insult us and hamper our lives to such an extent. Buit I would like to tell about something else. At the time when the plenipotentiary lived in the second room, his family received regular food rations from the kolkhoz farm and Mum would cook the meals for them. Of course, a couple of crumbs from the gentleman's table were always left over for us, the children.
I remember one time when mother prepared a buckwheat soup. The leftovers were destined for me. Oh, how delicious it was! Later, when I was a house-wife myself, I tried to cook such a soup myself. A nourishing bouillon with grease drops, but no matter what I added or by which means I subtilized its taste - it did not turn out to be the soup mother had made then. And I won't forget that meal as long as I live.
Thus, we did not succeed to build our own house; we just acquired a couple of chicken. Much later, in 1938 or 1939, Mum purchased a kid, and then we raised them, until there were three of them. At school they persistenly reporached us for our father. There were disagreements with the Komsomol: the elder ones did not accept someone like that to be a member of the Communist Young People's League. They teased and insulted him with the word "prapor" ("Tsarist warrant officer"; translator's note). It also meant a very insulting and disgusting word to me, although "prapor", if translated back from the Ukrainian language, means nothing else but "flag" or "banner". But then I did not yet know about it.
Having finished the 7-class-school, the two elder sisters, Vera and Milya, started to study at the School for Doctors' Assistants and Midwives (in the district town) and Tolya later studied at the Polytechnical Institute in Kharkov, from where he was directly drafted into the army. Liza left the kolkhoz farm and first took a job with the rope-yard in Kharkov and later in a bakery. Apart from the moral insults misery weighed heavily upon their minds - there was not the slightest hope. As I was the youngest child, I constantly went around in the tattered footwear of my elder sisters, and it did not only happen once that Mum was therefore summoned to school. But I learned very quickly, which earned me the reputation of being an overambitious "pusher". When my brother was drafted into the army, he leaved me his cap with the earflaps and an old-fashioned, homespun winter coat.
To come straight to the point I tell you that father "ended up" on the river Volga, near Syzran, where he worked as an agronomist. He had another family them, although he and his second wife had no children. Since then we have never seen him again. He died in 1971.
Before the war I finished the 6th grade. Sister Milya and brother Tolya got to the field forces and fought at the front till the very end of the war. Milya got up to Czechoslovakia and now lives in Lvov. And our little boy became a soldier of the armoured division, got to what is today called Kaliningrad and perished in February 1945 at the age of 23. It was a time of terrible grief, and now the family met another fate. And what a good soul he had been! I do remember the days when he was still studying at the technical school in Kharkov and came home to the village on free days. We were both very good friends. He always tried to bring something along for me or at least to tell me interesting things, particularly abour the contents of the movies he had watched not long ago. Once he started to talk about ice-cream, how delicious it was and what it actually looked like. And he said: "I will bring you some, but it is a 50 km trip by train, after all, and then another 5 km on foot from the station to the village.
You must come to the train", he said, "elsewise I can't make it. By the time I arrive at home it will have all melted away". And so I rushed to the train station, he jumped out of the train and handed the ice-cream over to me, but all that had remained was a milky, thin pulp wrapped in paper. But this is not what I am talking about. What I want to stress out is the fact that he did not forget about me, that he always remembered to bring me something. Whenever I am thinking of my brother, I break into tears. Later, when my children (I have two sons) were already over twenty years old, they both studied at institutes; once I went into their room - they were asleep, my two students. I looked at them and thought: "Goodness, the boys of the next generation looking so very similar to my dear little brother. Such boys and urchins have decided about the fate of our homeland.
A bright festive occasion is drawing near - Victory Day. The 9th of May - a holy day: our grandchildren will come to visit us in order to congratulate theier grandfather (my husband, a war veteran), and Little Kirill, who is a firstgrader, will ask me over and over again to tell him about the war. I experienced the occupation for over two years, after all, and was then 13-15 years old.
Our village of Likhovo was and still is situated aside the motorway leading from Moscow to Simferopol. Nowadays this is an excellently bituminized road, constructed after the war by German prisoners-of-war, with acacias, maple and fruit trees to both sides. The German POWs suffered from starvation, rambled through the beighboring villages and begged for alms. Some people were willing to share with them, but the majority having lost family members at war, chased them away with sticks. Before the war the motorway was not covered with asphalt and, of course, was not so well-groomed then. On this road the German fascist troops moved to the east in 1941. On their way they also passed through our village.
The whole village was in a turmoil. Two weeks before a special brigade had driven all the cattle of the collective farm towards the east, the chairman of the kolkhoz had left. There was anarchy and deep concern. People were talking about the Germans who marched through the country and were supposed to reach the village soon.
One one of these days we heard shorts. Smoke appeared at a distance: 8 kms away a granary burst into flames. Our army gave ground and retreated through our village. Of course, those were not real units, but smallest formations only - every now and then our soldiers ran past in groups of three or four, with light packs and guns in their hands. Nobody ever learned, whether or not these unfortunate guys succeeded to go into hiding, since soon after a dull roaring was heard from the place at the beginning of the road and then motorized fascist troops appeared on the scene. We, young and old alike, hid away from them behind the fences and watched with fright and interst as the motorbikes and armored personnel carriers wounded their way through the village. The soldiers were young, self-complacent guys in black uniforms, who had obviously been selected by reason of their tall build, bold-looking, with their swastika field caps tilted at an angle and girded with various pieces of equipment - machine pistols, binoculars and others.
This unknown force weighed on the people with a terrible severity, and they sighed and said: "Well, that seems to be the end - we will never see our people again". The little children kept all this in mind - each of them in its own way.
The Germans went on and on, incessantly - nobody put up resistence to them. And they had obviously received the order - "go on!" Behind the front line the unit transports moved on and on. They had rather stout, short-legged horses in front of the harnesses, which - for some reason or other - were called Romanians (they probably were from Romania). The string of carts was presumably transporting provisions, cartridges and projectiles. Evidently, Germans were in these treks, too, because once, when they called a halt in our village, Germans made themselves comfortable in our yard, even though not those, who we had seen on the motorbikes during the first days: these were somewhat simple soldiers of a medium build. And another moment is engraved on my mind: the dog that was tied up beside the barn geban to bark, when two or three harnesses drove into the yard. One of the Germans shot at the dog. I stood in front of the house - and weeped bitterly. Another German bashed the one who had fired the shot for what he had done. We understood that he scolded the firer. But my faithful dog Top was dead, anyway.
As soon as the Germans had withdrawn, the sqeaks of piglets and cackling of hens could be heard from every corner. And then the Germans would often come running into the village and shout: "Mistress - milk, eggs, butter!" And they took away everything that caught their eyes.
We were in possession of a rooster and a couple of hens. I protected them all. In summer they usually ran about somewhere in the kitchen garden, where enough greenstuff was growing - but where to put them in winter? The winter months were extremely cold, up to minus 40°C, and the snowdrifts almost reached up to the roof. And we adapted ourselves to the situation. We lined in the middle of the road. I dug a few deep tunnels right into the snowdrifts, and as soon as the Germans appeared in the village (and this is what one could always notice from the barking of the dogs, the cackling of the hens and the sqeaks of the piglets), I would put my rooster and the hens in a sack, hide it in the tunnel and then fill up the entrance with snow. And when the Germans had left, I pulled the sack out from under the snow and emptied it out again. This was my duty, which kept me entirely busy, and each time I emerged as the winner, I triumphed in a childish way.
In our village no German troops were stationed. The executive power was exercised by a police man (after the liberation he was sent to a delinquent battalion, he returned wounded).
The city of Kharkov several times passed through many hands, but the front line on our side was more or less light, the ground under our feet did not burn; from some direction a dull din could be heard, an incessant rumbling, detonations - and we noticed sources of fire. And look at that! Out of five bombs released one fell right into the house of my eldest sister. There were four children in the house at that time: three of her own and one from the neighborhood, about 6 years old, the eldest of all. First the shock wave tore down the roof. The children later remembered: "We were playing inside the house, glanced upwards and - suddenly there only was plain sky ..." . And then they were flung out of the room by the explosion wave; only two walls that formed a corner were left, and the little one and a half year-old girl was flung away into this corner and trapped under the ruins. The others were flung away into the yard. The neighbour's child remained a cripple for the rest of its life. The boy caught a serious cold (this happened in April) and died from a festering pleurisy in 1944. The two younger ones retained scars and a head trauma.
The motorway that passed by our village had to be cleabed perpetually: in summer all kinds of technical equipment transported on this road damaged the pavement to the very ground, and in the wintertime there were hige snowdrifts. The Germans gathered everything in the village they found suitable for the cleaning of roads and devided the people into brigades; there were no technical devices at all - merely spades, rakes, crowbars and one's bare hands. They were worked for nothing. My sister Vera worked in one of the brigades. At he beginning the work was supervised by the Germans, later by Czechs or Poles.
Once, while the Germans were guarding the scene, a tragic incident happened.
My cousin Dusya was working in one of the brigades. She was born in 1924 or 1925. Before the war she had finished the 7-class-school and then studied at some technical school; however, she did not pass the final examination - the war broke out. They lived at the edge of the village: her mother (my mother's sister), Dusya and her younger brothers and sisters. Their father was at the front. Evidently, Dusya had learned German at school and also later at the technical school. And then, while they were cleaning the road, Dusya dared to reply something to the German in his mother tongue. The German obviously had some special intentions with her, asked where she lived and said that he would come over in the evening, that he was in need of a woman, who would cook the meals in the kitchen. And these Germans had made themselves comfortable diagonally opposite our house; they had chased away the previous occupants. Dusya understood from the conversation that they intended mischief upon her. She went home in the evening, put a photography into her breast pocket and told her relatives that they would now see her for the last time in their lives.
The whole family sat together at home, chewing sunflower seeds. Suddenly a knock at the door - two Germans had arrived. They said: "Ah, you are eating Russian chocolate (they were speaking of the sunflower seeds)!" And then they addressed Dusya: "Get dressed - let's go!" Putting up resistence would have been of no use at all. The aunt wanted to go with them - they prohibited her from doing so. They took her to the house they had occupied. Nobody knows what occurred there, but in any case she succeeded in escaping. But where to hide? The only path was blocked with huge snowdrifts - from the road one could only turn off to the direction of the houses. She came running into our yard. We had already finished our daily work and had gone to bed - it was about 10 or 11 o'clock, a petroleum lamp was still burning. Vera and I slept on the floor, upon straw, Mama - on the bench by the stove, and on the bed, widthwise, the elder sister with her wounded children. Well, we had just gone to bed, when we heard a knock at the door. Sister Anna opened it. Dusya was standing there and close behind her a German; that is she had not even succeeded in hiding away from them. They came in. It was dark - how much light can a single kerosine lamp offer, after all? They talked to each other in an utterly upset manner. Then the German asked: "Is there a woman in here of about 20 years of age, who can work in a kitchen? We told him that this was not the case, although on the floor, beside me, there was Vera: she was, in fact, 22 years old. Fortunately, it was dark; they did not notice her, and Dusya did not disclose anything. She said nothing, even though she was aware that Vera was laying there on the floor. They left the house and talked for along time standing on the embankment, which surrounded the house. As I already mentioned, they were somewhat upset. he obviously had called for her and she had opposed him. Then there was a deep silence. And on the next morning a horrible news spread in the village: Dusya has been murdered.
In all probability she had tried to escape another time, had run yet a little further up the road and rushed to one of the houses. The people who lived there let her in. She said that she was terribly cold, and so she was offered to climb the bench by the stove. A couple of little children were already lying there, and she scrambled to them. However, the Germans, trxing hard to find her, finally caught her. They knocked at our door and asked, whether or not someone had come in. And thus they knocked at several other doors, until they came to the house, where the girl had found refuge. They forced her to get down from the bench, get dressed immediately, and then they went away with her. What happened in actual fact nobody knows, of course. However, opposite the house occupied by the Germans there was a fenced front yard, and there the murder victim was found. A bullet was lodged in the back of her head, and before shooting her, they had evidently plunged a knife into her chest, for the photography she had hidden in the breast pocket was damaged by a cut. The snow had melted away around the corpse; they probably had tormented her for a while. Her mother and aunt came to the spot with a sledge, liftet der up and carried her away for the burial.
And just during the time when my elder sister and her two injured children came to live with us, the conquerors again hurried to the east, to be more precise - as quickly as they could. Judging from what we observed it were the first front lines: and a group of soldiers also came through our village. We lived in one out of two rooms; the other one was uninhabitated at that time, for in our steppe region there was no material to heat the stove with. And then such a Fritz of an imposing build dared to make himslef comfortable in this cold room, the windows of which were showing to the road. He forced us to open the shutters, knocked out the frames, put down his machine gun on the window-sill, took his leather coat and hung it on a hook beside the door. Yet while he was coming in he noticed me (I was 13 years old then) and having comfortably sat down he called: "Paninka, paninka ("Little woman, little woman!" - translator's note) !" I entered the room. He was sitting at the table and asked me to pull some paper out of his coat pocket and give it to him. He spoke German, and I understood the word "Papier", which means "paper" in the German and Ukrainian languages. This is what I had understood; I drew the paper out of the pocket and handed it over to him. Then he said, with a dictionary in his hands and the tip of his index finger pointing at me, then at him: "I, you - sleep!" I blushed with shame, expecting something humiliating and disgraceful. I did not spend much time to think, quickly turned round and left the room. He shouted: "Little woman, come here!" My sister said: "Go! Elsewise he will kill you!" But I replied: "Go yourself!"
He insistently continued to call for me. I entered the room again and - in this very moment I was rescued: another German came rushing in an gasped out something in a haste. As it turned out later, their unit had decided to take the offensive. The Fritz took his "knight's armor" and ran out of the house.
From the accounts of the old people I still remember the following event. The Germans used to take revenge for their dead comrades in a very cruel manner. Once the fascists found a killed German in one of the villages situated 20 or 25 kms away from ours. A punitive attachment arrived and burned down the whole village - and all the inhabitants were extermi-nated.
During the occupation famine in the town was worse than in the village, where the people cultivated vegetables, where fruits were growing in the gardens. In order to survive the town's people set out for the neighboring villages, prepared to give away their personal belongings in exchange for food. We called them "barterers".
Since the road passed by our village, many "barterers" showed up there. Particularly in winter the situation became extremely difficult for them. There was so much snow everywhere and the temperatures went down to minus 40°C. Some disposed of little sledges, others carried everything themselves. Some were on their way back to town, others had just left it. The distance on the road from our village to the town was about 60 kms, but the people often walked on. We, the framers, were in urgent need of matches, soap, twist, sewing needles, pins, buttons, etc. No matter how little an object one chose, one also had to pay for it, of course. And this was when mother decided to cook a sauce from dried fruit (apples, pears, plums). Instead of sugar she would add a sugar beet. She wrapped the hot jars in rags (I helped her with it), so that they would not cool off, put them on the sledge and transported them over to the route for the "barterers". We offered them the sauce, a couple of fruits and a piece of sugar beet and they gave us whatever they could in return.
The mobilization announced by the Germans for young people to go to Germany, that is to the territories occupied by them, also hit our village. I do remember that our neighbour's wife had two daughters, Polya and Maria. Both were in Germany. In 1945, when our troups had smashed the German fascists and liberated the POWs, Polya ran over to Maria to tell her that they had gained the vistory - soon they would go home! As I learned, Maria, full of joy, died from a heart failure. She was buried there, far away from home.
We also remember the final retreat of the fascists. Somewhere in a distance the roaring of guns at the front could be heard in the evening - the glow of a fire. The next morning motor-cyclists appeared in our village, chased all inhabitants out of their houses and told them: "Forward, march - to the west!" Mum decided not to move from the spot. Sister Vera, too, said she would not go anywhere else. And our eldest sister Anna? What was she supposed to do with her three children? All the time I had assisted her to master their education. Then she had been a widow for three years already, and she was only 31 years old. Her husband had got a cold on his kidneys and they had taken out one of them just before the war. And how did that come about? He had received a job in town, but the kolkhoz activists did what they could to force him to work for the collective farm. And once ( I remember this from accounts), when he came back home, they organized a real hunt against him. He jumped out of the house, only dressed in his underwear, and sat down somewhere in a snowdrift, until the activists had disappeared from the street. And this is, how the Germans chased us away - this was the order they had received. Who knows, where they needed people ... And what we were supposed to do? Where to find rescue? We thought: where do we hide, if a fight is going to take place here soon!? Sister Anna got a wheelbarrow ready, loaded it with a couple of personal belongings. She sat two of the children on top and I supported the cart-load from
behind, pushing it forward at the same time. The third child Anna took by the hand, with the other she tried to hold the things on the wheelbarrow. The people streamed out of the village. Those, who owned cows, harrassed them to their carts. Behing the village an endless flood of people. We ran behind our neighbours, who also had a cow with them, and when they noticed us, they allowed us to tie up the wheelbarrow to the carriage. Thus it would be easier for us to move forward. The stream of people consisted of women, children and old people. We went on and on till the evening and made 15 kms. The old people started a discussion: "How about driving into some village? There we will pass by gardens, and when the Germans shoot past the crowd on their motorbikes, we can quickly make a turn and hide in one of these gardens".
And this is what we did. It was dark. Our neighbours directed their cow into the depths of a garden, stopped and kept quiet, until the others had moved out of sight and away from the road. Our hearts almost broke! While this happened we were scared to death.
When the flood of people had finally disappeared, we drove back to the road, which ran perpendicular to the one, on which the Germans had chased us away, and now went in the direction of some big ravines. The place was known to many; in the darkness we moved forward on the off-chance, looking for rescue. We approached the ravine; it was a deep one, but the are around was sloping gently, about 3 kms in length. We looked around a little and - saw that the place was crowded with people. They were sitting together in small groups, were lighting campfires, cooking something - many of them had their children with them, after all. Only much later I analyzed the whole situation: what a conspiration this had been! Good thing that the Germans did not get to the bottom of it, elsewise all hell would have broken losse.
We climbed down the ravine. The grass looked green and fresh. We made the decision to go back to our village early in the morning, however, by taking a roundabout way, on a different road. We, in fact, returned - and found our village in flames. The Germans had set fire on the thatch rooves by torches. The houses at the opposite end of the village had remained unaffected. Obviously, the fascists had not had enough time. After a couple of hours "Katyush" type missiles whistled over our heads and then our troups marched in. We received them with our cast-iron cooking pots, with cooked potatoes and salted cucumbers - this was the best attendances for our soldiers. At that time there was no bread, no sugar, but potatoes and cucumbers were growing by themselves.
Our house had completely burned down. how were we to go on? Until now, we disposed of a barn made of loan bricks (thatch, clay, water), but it did not have a roof yet. We started to finish the construction (only women); the matter dragged on till the autumn. Then we got it ready and had one room and a little extension. And this is where we lived with seven persons altogether: Mama, Anna with her three children, Vera and me - and besides six neighbors.
In 1943, a few days after the liberation, we met brother Tolya. He came from hospital and went directly to the front. He was 21 years old and I found him rather brave and sublime. In general he was a cheerful young man, liked to play the balalaika, composed poems every now and then and had learned quickly at school. I still remember when he was drafted into the army in 1940 and we bade him farewell, we had invited people for lunch. Our neighbours were also present. The conversation seemed to be rather distressing and , in order to improve the atmosphere, he turned towards mother and said to her:
"Mum! When it is getting cold,
I will be buried by snow.
The post-office won't before,
and I will mail a letter to you".
Everybody started laughing, because a postman was living just next-door, who was also sitting with us at our table. The Finnish war, lots of snow and this stanza he had said are engraved on my mind till today.
After my brother had been killed in action, a wartime comrade drove up before our house. He told us that Tolya had been an utterly clever guy with a good head on his shoulders: he had been able to maneuver his tank with much skill and immediately knew, where mines might explode and which places were invulnerable. The soldier told us that everything in the neighborhood of the tank had been in flames, but that Tolya had always been in an advantageous and successful position. No sooner had he changed positions and another tank had appeared on his previous spot instead, that one had in all probability got directly into the field of fire. And this did not only happen once. In February 1945, when there were only two months left to the final victory, mother received a "died in battle" notice, informing her that her son had been killed in action as a hero. In spite of the death certificate mother has been waiting for her son to return home all life long; she outlived him by 25 years.
The true names of my brother and sister, who had fought in the Great Ptriotic war, are not Anatoliy and Milya, but Ananiy and Matrena. In earlier years they had felt ashamed of their outmoded first names. And thus they changed them into Anatoliy and Milya, although their personal documents were, of course, made out in the names of Ananiy and Matrena.
After a two-years' occupation our soldiers dislodged the Germans towards the west. I do not exactly remember when this was, but some time after the war a year of famine set in. Not only was there no food at all, there also was drought and crop failure. The people from our village began to set out for the western Ukraina, in order to exchange personal belongings against edible things. We also became "barterers". However, we did not go on foot, but went by train. Trains were going infrequently, passenger waggons and goods waggons were coupled to each other in a hopeless muddle and stuffed with people, who even hung outside or lay on the rooves. A girl from our village, Marfa, who was about 24-25 years old, travelled on top of one of the waggons, too. On the way she fell asleep and fell down between the waggons. Those, who had travveled with her, went to her mother and told her what had happened. But after a certain time Marfa suddenly reappeared - almost unharmed. She had, in fact, fallen down, but fortunately exactly between the rails; of course, she was injured, but stayed alive. A lucky chance!
Having finished the 7th grade I became a student at the technical school in Kharkov. There were ruins everywhere in the town. Instead of attending the lectures, we often left to clear away all the rubble. We had to lift every single brick with our bare hands. The lessons took place in an undamaged three-storey building. In winter it was very cold - there was no heating material, and we sat there fully dressed; even the in k was frozen. The toilet was in the street. I lived with sister Vera in an apartment on the outskirts of the town.
All the misery we were already suffering from brought up still another - a bad harvest and famine (1945-46). Not a single rain drop had fallen during the summer. When I came to the village to see my Mum, we pulled up water from the well in bucketfuls and poured it on every single potato vine by using a pitcher. The kolkhoz farmers were ounished for every piece of vegetable or ear they had picked up from the ground after the harvest. My cousin Anna came home from work and took a beet. This somehow became known and she received a five years' deprivation of freedom. She was unmarried, lived alone and - as one can say - it was a blessing in disguise, for she got married during her detention and did not return to the village anymore.
I would yet like to give some more information about myself. After the liberation of the Ukrainia from the Germans I attended the 7th class about 5 kms away from where we lived, as the school building in our village had been completely destroyed. Afterwards I took up studies at the technical school in Kharkov and, after the graduation, worked for a bank for the financing of building projects in Chernigov. I additionally studied by a correspondance course and got married to a member of the armed forces. I finished my studies with already two children tied to my apron strings. For more than twenty years I worked as the head of the planing department for the building trade and construction engineering. Now I am a pensioner.
O.N. Lavrichenko
Recorded by K.A. Dzyuba, "Memorial" Society, Krasnoyarsk April-May 1990