The war is to blame

Lydia, a friend of mine, was not even forty years old when walking she had to lean on a stick.  She was struck by rheumatic disease of the joints of the legs.  By the age of fifty, her legs had completely lost the ability to move and were very sore.  In her youth Lydia had a very bright appearance. Tall, stately, with rather large regular facial features, with wavy thick hair lying freely on her shoulders she was a real Belarusian beauty. A rare man walked past her without looking back. Lydia and her husband Dmitry had a son who tragically died being   a small child. By the time I visited her in Simferopol (Crimea) Dmitry had died, and Lydia lived alone.   Struggling to move around the room on crutches and complaining of pain in her legs, Lydia said, "It's all the fault of the war, the damn war", and she told me the story of her life during the war.  She was a little girl at that time but remembered the fascist occupation all her life and now while telling it Lidia could barely hold her tears back.  The picture of the terrible calamity for the inhabitants of the occupied regions in the Soviet Union unwrapped  in front of me.  Impressed by what I heard, I decided to record her confession.         "The war began on June 22, 1941 and in the morning of June 23 the Germans burst into the city of Old Roads (the western part of Belorussia).  On motorcycles, the Nazis were chasing through the streets, and everywhere you could see their helmets and hear the German speech "Gyr, gyr ..."   No one had time to evacuate; the fascists caught the city government institutions with all the documents.  The residents of the city, stunned by the speed with which life suddenly became completely alien, incomprehensible, terrible, plunged into the atmosphere of fear and expectation that all that horror of war would soon come to the end and the former, understandable life would get back on track, but with each passing hour in the city one terrible news was replaced by another, and it became increasingly difficult for people to believe that the old life would ever return. 
From the beginning, the fascists established a "new order" according to which it was forbidden to leave home after 8 p.m.  The electric power supply was made irregular; people had to be sitting in the dark.  The meaning of the words - Schwarz Jude - became clear to everyone.   Jews were grabbed in the streets or in their houses and herded into one block.  Each Jew was given a yellow six-pointed star, which had to be sewn to the clothes.  The fascists fenced off the block.   Every day,  frightened and hungry, with knots in their hands,  Jewish old people, women and children lined up in rows and went "to work" under fascist escort with dogs, but these people never returned to the city.  Soon almost all the Jews were exterminated. The last time we saw them being chased down the road outside the city.  Everyone had a knot or a box in their hands. That's it... There were many cases when Russian and Belarusian women managed to save a Jewish child, passing him off as their own.  But the Germans soon realized it and  stopped believing the women.
My younger sister, Maria, was a black-haired girl with big brown eyes.  Her hair curled and the curls came out of tightly braided braids.  She looked a lot like a Jewess.  When the fascists broke into our house, they immediately grabbed Maria and dragged her to the street, while humming: - Schwarz Jude, Schwarz Jude ...   Mother rushed after them.   "Sir, pan," she, cried - This is my daughter!  She's not Jewish!"    But the Germans did not listen to her and continued to drag the stubborn Maria.   The frightened girl screamed so loudly that she could be heard by all the neighbors.    Mother ran to the commandant's office, and there a fascist threatened her for hiding a Jewish child.    Mother cried and repeated over and over again that Maria was her own daughter. She barely begged permission to bring other children for comparison.     All three daughters Nina, Lydia, Kate came running to the commandant’s office. The fascists unceremoniously began to compare the girls, forced them to turn in profile, shamelessly touched the curls of Nina, the oldest of us, while smiling oily.       Mother did not stop begging to give her daughter back.  Our neighbor Alexandra helped.  She ran breathless to the commandant's office and interceded for Maria.  She told the Germans: "This Belarusian woman is telling the truth.    The girl is her daughter."   And Maria was set free.
Every day the city was bombed, the school and other buildings lay in ruins.  On the Market Square the Nazis made a fence out of stakes and barbed wire.  Thousands of Soviet prisoners filled this space.   Women's hearts were breaking with pity while looking at those hungry, ragged, wounded soldiers and officers.
 Thus the three year fascist occupation began – the three years of a nightmare that could not be openly talked about after the war.  Surviving during bombing was the hardest.   As soon as the sounds of an air-raid were heard the people fled into the forest; and when the bombing ended, slowly, overcoming fear and fatigue   they were going back.   Women with small children and old people were struggling to save their life.  Men were few left; those who were able to hold weapons in their hands joined the guerrilla (partisan) detachments.      Out of hunger, cold and constant fear of being killed, the people weakened so much that the strength to run into the forest during the raids was gone.   In the yards they built wooden post wells and hid in them.
 Each family was given for a day a loaf of bread made of ground acorns and barley.  That bread plus the hidden potatoes in the cellar helped to survive.  Our mother and other women managed to cut out a little of these scarce products and give it over to the prisoners in the Market Square.  They did it by the help of the fore – men appointed by fascists   from among the prisoners.    Those fore-men were  sometimes sent on errand to town.    The townspeople arranged with them about the time and place to bring food for the prisoners. Sometimes the mother sent us, the children, to bring bread, carrot tea and herbs.
The most terrible time for women came when the Nazis began to take teenagers to Germany. According to the documents captured in the City executive committee, the Germans compiled lists of   teenage children "by work".   All these children were threatened with being kidnapped and taken to Germany.      Those who could hide their child, hid them, but the fascists easily discovered it and organized making night roundups for kidnapping the children.   The fascists in black uniforms with skulls on their caps broke at night into the houses where the children from the list lived and forcibly took the teenager away.   Finding out where the child was taken to was impossible.
  Once when the mother handed the potatoes to the prisoners she learned from  a fore-man (he was from Smolensk) that the Germans were going to make night roundups.  In the family, only Nina, the elder sister, was suitable for the age to be on the list   “by work”.  The mother decided to hide Nina and give Lydia instead. Lydia was only 11 years old, but she was tall, and could easily be mistaken for a teenager in terms of height.
The Germans, before sending the children to Germany, organized a commission, which was called "Appearance". The commission rejected sick children who were not physically ready enough for rural or factory labor.  Lydia's breasts had barely begun to form and her mother believed that the commission would see that she was still a child and would not be taken to Germany. Mother began to persuade Lydia to go to the fascists for a commission: "Daughter, do not be afraid, the selection commission will sort it out, see that you are tool small, and let you go.    Lydia dreaded to be taken to Germany and cried a lot, but agreed.
  One night the fore-man warned the mother of the next roundup. .By that time Nina had been sitting hidden in the weigh pit of the Meat Processing factory where the mother had worked.  Together with the weigh shop superintendent who also had a teenage daughter  Mother laid hay in the pit under the cargo scales, made sitting there in the dark in the day-time but at nights they climbed to the surface to wash, change clothes and walk a little.  But if it was found out that there was a raid in the city, then in the cold and hunger they had to sit there for more than one day.      During the next roundup Lydia was passed off as Nina and taken to the assembly point - the bazaar warehouse in which kerosene was sold before the war.   It was a one-story clay structure, very cold and smelling strongly of kerosene. They built bunks in it and drove the kids on them.  .  Among the children there was an old woman.  The Germans demanded that she tell them where she had hidden her granddaughter.  The old woman pretended that she did not understand what was wanted from her, and calmly endured everything that the Nazis did to her, but did not give her granddaughter away.    Mother managed to pass an old ragged cotton blanket into the window, but it was so cold at night that Lydia could not keep warm.   She shivered all night from the cold and cried.   She was very scared.
 Several days passed until they began to call the children to the commission.     Finally Lydia heard her last name and first name - Nina.  As her mother taught, she silently stood up and followed the woman who led the children across the street to the commission. The girl who appeared before the Nazis first was much older than Lydia.   She was quickly examined and taken away.  Lydia to a rude shout - Faster, faster! - stripped down to her panties and walked over to the table.   Unable to bring herself not to tremble, she sobbed and covered her naughty mouth with her hand. Thin, just beginning to take shape, Lydia was a contrast to the previous girl, and everyone saw that she was still a child.
  - How old are you?
 - Eleven.
 –Give the birth certificate.
- It's lost.   Lydia spoke as her mother told her. The Commission conferred. And at that moment the voice of the translator- interpreter Alla Sh. was heard:
 - But potatoes she can peel!   
   At these words, Lydia's body trembled more, and she cried loudly.    Fortunately, mother was able to transfer a duplicate of the birth certificate to the commission, and Lydia was rejected.
  When the rejected children were escorted back to the bazaar, a crowd of women rushed to the children. Her mother grabbed Lydia's arm in an attempt to snatch her out of the row. A lanky German escort hit her hard with the butt of a machine gun, and she fell to the ground. Lydia screamed. Above the bazaar was the crying of a child and the cry of desperate women. Mother did not yet know that she had defeated the Nazis: the Germans rejected Lydia and did not drive her to Germany. The eldest daughter Nina and her girlfriend were also saved.
Years passed.  The trials experienced in childhood during the Nazi occupation began to affect Lydia's health.      Rheumatism spread more and more throughout the body, causing terrible pain with any movement.    Lydia gradually turned into a disabled person. She knew that the severe cooling she had received in the kerosene shop in the winter of 1942 was the cause of her illness and disability.   – “The war is to blame.  Damn war!”  Sighing and swallowing tears, Lydia said. 
 Lydia was telling her story and I was thinking about all the mothers.    To think what those women endured!  What fortitude they showed, what ingenuity, how sacrificially they were devoted to their children!     And in the fight against the fascists, they did not yield to the enemy, but came out victorious.
  The town of Old Roads…    Old Roads........    It remembers the occupation.    A low bow to you, Mothers from the Belarusian city of Starye Dorogi  - Old Roads.   
 St. Petersburg, 2021