Remembering WWII, 1941

[kowalskil]

This essay is written as a homework assignment at the Memoir Writing Workshop for Senior Citizens (Tenafly, New Jersey). I am the author of a FREE on-line book, entitled:

“Diary of a Former Communist: Thoughts, Feelings, Reality,” at

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/intro.html

It is an autobiography illustrating my evolution from one extreme to another--from a devoted Stalinist to an active anti-communist. This testimony is based on a diary I kept between 1946 and 2004 (in the USSR, Poland, France and the USA). The assignment consists of describing a single fragment of my life in a short self-standing essay. I decided to focus on the the first year of the World War II.

Remembering the First Year of the War

In 1941, my mother and I were living in Dedenievo, a small settlement (30 miles north of Moscow) on the bank of the famous Moscow-Volga canal. The major railroad connecting Moscow with Leningrad, and a highway, passed through that settlement. The place was surrounded by numerous collective farm villages; I still remember their names, such as Medviedki, Tselkovo, Shukolovo, etc. The settlement had a school, a sanatorium (where my mother worked as a nurse), a hospital, two stores, a nursing home, a library, and a post office. It also had a large, partially ruined church. The tower of that church, dominating the area, could be seen from miles away. The northern wall of the church was destroyed and a person passing by could see a huge icon of Christ, painted on the inner wall. I was always fascinated by the fact that his eyes followed me as I was passing by.

I was ten years old when the war started, on June 22. That morning, in a store, I heard that our country was invaded by Germans. I immediately ran to the sanatorium, about half a mile away, to tell people what I heard. They turned the speakers on while Molotov was still speaking. An official order was distributed next day. Every tunable radio receiver--and we had one--had to be brought to the post office. The local authorities said that parts were needed by the army. Was this the main reason? Probably not; they wanted to protect us from German propaganda. From that day on we had to rely on speakers connected to the central station by wires.

Eleven days later I heard Stalin’s first WWII speech. “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Men of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends! . . .” After telling us that Hitler’s finest divisions had already “met their doom on the field of the battle,” he reported that the enemy continued to push forward. I was very surprised to discover that our dear leader had a very strong Georgian accent. Posters “all for the front, all for victory,” and “motherhood calls you” were to be seen everywhere. But each day we heard depressing radio announcements, such as “today, as planned, our units units left Minsk,” or Kiev, etc. People had no idea what was really happening. The Soviet Union was totally unprepared for the war and losses were enormous, as we now know. The school was still functioning but about one half of our time was devoted to military matters. We learned how to deal with small incendiary bombs, how to use rifles (without live ammunition), and how to throw disarmed grenades.

One day a trainload of miserable looking and poorly dressed people was brought to Dedenievo. They were said to be a labor-front division. All of them were Uzbeks, non-Russian speaking. Each morning, escorted by armed soldiers, they were led to dig trenches and build fortifications. At night they slept on the floors of a tall building, next to the one in which we had a little room. Only much later did I realize that this division was a mobile gulag camp unit.

Herds of cows, sheep and horses, taken from surrounding collective farms, were led along the highway in the direction of Moscow. The policy was not to leave anything for Germans. During that time my mother and a neighbor bought a pig from a peasant in a near-by village. It was killed with a long knife and then divided into two parts, one for us and another for the neighbor. I will never forget the fear I experienced watching the killing and hearing the powerful squeals of the dying animal.

Several weeks later I experienced similar fear under very different circumstances. A Red Army soldier approached me and asked about the best way to get to the other side of the canal. He was probably wounded; his bandaged arm was in a rope sling. I knew the canal was already frozen and that it could be crossed nearly anywhere. But I also knew that it was forbidden to give any information to strangers--anyone could be a German spy, we were told. So instead of answering, I said, “I know who to ask; come with me.” And we walked toward a building guarded by two armed soldiers. I said that this man asked me a question that you might be able to answer. Then I left them and started going toward our home. A minute later I heard the familiar sound of a gun click. I turned my head back and saw that the guard’s rifle was aimed at the wounded soldier.

Thinking that he was going to be killed I ran home, jumped on the bed, and covered my head with a large pillow. The fear experienced during the killing of the pig was the same as the fear I felt during this episode. The man was not killed, the guard told me later. They took him away because he was a deserter. Several days later, looking for wood in an abandoned shed, I discovered bodies of two Soviet soldiers. Were they also deserters? Perhaps they were hiding in this place and froze to death while sleeping. This kind of death, I was told later, is painless.

Two weeks later, Germans were only several miles away from our settlement. One evening, probably at the end of October, the railroad bridge over the canal was blown up by Soviet sappers. Then the Red Army retreated from Dedenievo and we were between two armies, for about a week. The settlement was heavily bombed by German airplanes. The building next to the school was destroyed by a large bomb, leaving a crater about 50 feet wide and 30 feet deep. That bomb was probably designed for the church tower, suspected to be an observation point.

Most of the nursing home residents died from cold after windows were shattered by numerous explosions. My mother carried some patients to the nearby hospital, on her back. Then she worked in that hospital, just across the street from the shelter where I was hiding, the basement of the church. About 100 people sat there, on tons of carrots and potatoes; the place had been used to store vegetables delivered to the government from surrounding collective farms. It is here that I heard, for the first time, about special German military units killing Jews and communists. I dreamed of joining partisans.

At a quiet time between bombings my mother came to the church basement and said I would be better off in the hospital with her. As we prepared to leave, bombs started falling again. One hit the wooden hospital building, burying about one hundred people. We heard calls for help but nothing could be done. Then the fire started; those who survived the bomb were burned alive. The first Soviet WWII victory, pushing Germans away from Moscow, took place where we lived. A week later I walked to Jachroma, the nearest settlement from which Germans were pushed away. Here I saw two abandoned German tanks. I climbed on one of them, opened the hatch, and went inside--not a wise thing to do. Only later did I learn there might have been a mine in that tank.

The constant roar of cannons became weaker and weaker. That was the beginning of a very difficult two or three years for us, due to the limited food supply. Like most people, we started growing our own potatoes, anywhere we could. We lived in a barrack, each family in a single room. Half of our space was used to store those potatoes, which we rationed to last until the next summer. In springtime we depended on small eggs from birds' nests, and on fresh nettle. A little later in the season we ate crows, schav, and berries. Fortunately, I was able to help by bringing home mushrooms and fish. We were hungry most of the time. Winters were very cold. My ability to gather wood, sometimes stealing rejects from a local sawmill, was essential.

Meat from the pig we bought in the fall was an important part of our diet. By spring, only a large bone remained, hanging on the wall of our room. My mother decided to preserve it for as long as possible. It was eventually used to make a very tasty soup. I was so excited to see fat circles floating on the surface of this aromatic liquid. A year later I was even more excited by the aroma escaping from an open can of American SPAM. The label on that can was “swinaja tushonka.” The taste of my first American meat was the most memorable sensation in my entire life.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia and Google)
Professor Emeritus, Montclair State University, New Jersey, USA
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[PinkAmy]

Thanks for sharing this Ludwik. I don't have the time to read it now, but I bookmarked the site and will come back to it. Your story is fascinating.

[Alex1332]

Professor,

I am moved by your story. I too was a victim of the great communist movement of the 20th century. We are refugees of the great "Revolucion!" of Fidel Castro, who took power under the promise of democracy only to deceive millions of Cubans and turn his island into a prison camp. Ever the master of propaganda and political stratagem, he has survived 51 years in power and successfully advanced his country from a commercially vibrant community into a third world country. My parents straddled the two regimes, before Castro, under Fulgencio Batista, and then under Castro, and they supported Castro's rise to power with dreams of a democratic regime. The slogan was "Against Batista, Anyone!"

They lived to regret it and paid dearly for it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there never has been an authentic communist regime, only philosophers existed as genuine communists. For the regimes, or potentates, communism was a mere tool, vehicle if you will, to achieve and retain power. Case in point: is there anyone who believes that China is a communist country?

But I digress.

I read the chapter you posted about the first year of the "Great Patriotic War." If you posted it as a teaser to get us interested in the rest of your book, at least with me, you succeeded. You have an engaging story telling style that is easy to read and packed with suspense. Every sentence had me looking forward to the next. I am very interested in reading about your evolution from communist to anti-communist. A superb subject matter that will remain relevant throughout the ages.

Professor, you are a valuable resource for AW, and I hope you hang around for a long time.

For those of you not exposed to WW II history, what the professor is referring to in this chapter is "Operation Barbarosa," the largest land invasion in the history of the world. Three million men crossed into the USSR on June 22, 1941, and by the time the war was over, 20 million humans had lost their lives within the borders of the USSR.

[Brandt]

Professor,

My minor was history and I have always been fascinated with two time periods in particular, one of them being WWII. I am 54, just old enough to have absorbed some veterans' accounts of first hand experiences (including my uncle). Hearing the German invasion of Russia as told from the aunthentic point of view of a young Russian was absolutely riveting to me. Thank you so much for sharing and I am so glad that I found this. God bless. You are indeed an AW treasure, but more than that, a treasure to the world. Your style is forthcoming, honest, and heart warming, as I would guess you are yourself.

[Rhonda2]

wow Ludwig, I too was moved by your story. This is priceless stuff these days when kids never heard of WWII. You have a sacred duty on behalf of your contemporaries to get this story out as far as possible. The first person narrative is very powerful with this kind of story, So thank you for sharing.

[Lavinia]

This is absolutely fascinating! What an amazing and literary account of your experiences. I applaud you for getting it written down. It is so very important that those who were there, share with the generations who weren't.

My father is a WWII veteran - a very different experience. But the message is the same. Everyone has a story worth telling. Thank you for telling yours, my friend!

[Mac H.]

This is fascinating.

I love the little details like this:

Every tunable radio receiver--and we had one--had to be brought to the post office. The local authorities said that parts were needed by the army. Was this the main reason? Probably not; they wanted to protect us from German propaganda.

I'm researching this era (although different country) for a project and it always fascinates me when I see a point that is so obvious yet nobody else had mentioned it.

Thanks for the read.

Mac

[Mark Thompson]

I'm currently researching WW2 for a pending project (set in the present and a future that sadly hasn't learnt from the past) and am hugely impressed and intrigued by your post.
Your work is important. In my reading, I've encountered very little social history of the period, which is vital to colour the grey overview that always dominates. I very much hope you complete and find a home for your memoirs. They matter. And, of course, they're very well written (but I suspect you know that). And I comment not just as a casual reader but as an Oxford (Balliol) MA in history. Mark

[Andrea_James]

This is amazing. I research and teach on the Holocaust. Many members of my dad's family, as ethnic Germans in Ukraine, died in Russian Revolution-related atrocities (hence having moved to North America post-haste in the 1920s). I've never heard a story from a perspective quite like this one, though. Please publish.

[hvysmker]

I was a little late, missing WWII by ten years when I joined the US Army in ‘55. There were still a lot of soldiers around from that war. I listened to many stories of the conflict but never from your perspective.

We were, at that time, still using WWII equipment and training methods. Nothing had changed much from WWII to the Korean Conflict and up to our war in Vietnam. At least not much on the ground, though aircraft had changed quite a bit. Armies didn’t change much during times of peace.

Later, I had a friend that escaped during the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Like you, he said he lived in a basement for months, subsisting on bagged potatoes and carrots while listening to gunfire and tanks outside his hiding place.

Charlie

[Sunburn]

I really enjoyed the read. Thank you for posting it.

[Old Hoodoo]

Great story.
Multiply this story by 100 million and you probably won't still get the expanse of the suffering of the survivors of the Great Patriotic War the Russian front in WWII, not to mention those many, many millions that did not survive who went through horrendous anxiety and/or suffering before they died. I don't think anyone can imagine the scope of the pain and hardship....a country literally overrun and fought over savagely for nearly four years...and you didn't have to have been at the immediate area of fighting either. One may brag about the greatest generation in the United States like we really won the war all by ourselves when the Soviets military and civilians had to fight them on their own ground year after year in a meat grinder of combat, severe shortages for everyone, a huge portion of the population under one of the most nefarious regimes in history, the Nazi's, and in bitter winters that were hard enough to deal with in peacetime. And this was in a country where your own government was about as cruel and pitiless as the enemy. I don't know how you cannot be overwhelmingly impressed by the perseverance of the people of this region of the world. The Soviets had the Nazi's irretrievably on the run by the fall of 1943...nine months before D-Day, just at the beginning of our great bomber offensive.