Then I heard the wailing of the women coming from the parlor where Papa’s coffin was placed. It was a custom that the Russians and the Ukrainians practiced before burying the dead. It was as gruesome a sound as anyone could ever hear. I could no longer stand the sound that they were making and stuck my fingers in both my ears. I ran out of my room, passing the parlor, and into the yard. The cold air felt good to me, and I took a handful of snow and rubbed it all over my face until it burned and hurt.
Someone had found a horse and buggy; it was there by the gate waiting for Papa’s coffin to be loaded onto it. Grandmother took my hand, and we walked to the next house (our neighbors’). She asked the lady if I could stay with her until it was all over. The lady was only too happy to make me welcome and took me into her house. There were two little girls (four and seven years old), and they stood there wide-eyed, looking me over. I really did not feel comfortable there, but it was a temporary escape for me, and I was happy to stay. Outside, the temperature was something like 25 degrees below zero—it was one of the coldest winters that we had had for a very long time. Mama later told me that the men had a terrible time digging Papa’s grave through the solidly frozen earth. It took five men several hours to dig it.
29: Life without Papa
Mama and I stayed in the house (just the two of us), and we slept in the kitchen on the double bed where Papa had spent those bad times before he died. The rest of the house was big, and the rooms had high ceilings and big windows so it was impossible to keep such a big place warm enough to survive. The stove in the kitchen was joined through the wall to the chimney of the fireplace in the living room. The fireplace had a damper that we could close off and, therefore, keep the heat from the kitchen stove inside the kitchen. The kitchen was the perfect size to keep us comfortably warm, as long as we could keep a fire going in the stove.
Grandmother decided to return to the Great House even though it had been heavily damaged in the bombing. She did not want to leave her home empty, for fear that it would be burglarized or that the German soldiers would take it over. Mama and I were trying to make a life for ourselves, and we felt that it was safer in the village than it would be in Konstantinowka, where there was a lot of heavy fighting going on between the Russians and the Germans. The sounds of the cannons and the artillery could be heard, especially at night.
We were hoping to hold out until spring would arrive, but the cold winter was still to last at least three to four months. Occasionally we would make trips to the village to look for some food (mostly potatoes and carrots). We had made quite a few friends in the village. Mama had brought her sewing machine and some material (sheets, blankets, or any kind of material that would make clothing) from Grandmother’s house. Mama would spend much time sewing (making) clothes, and from time to time, we took some things to the village where the people were happy to trade the clothing for whatever food they could give us. Sometimes, we would spend all day long at the village, going from house to house bartering the clothes for food. We had to spend the night there on a few occasions, and some people would offer us a place to stay overnight. On most occasions, we would sleep in the stables, where there was a lot of straw to keep us warm.
It seemed that the people in the village tried to help us any way they could. A lot of the older people knew the Ljaschov family ever since the time when Grandfather owned the village. Some of the older men talked very favorably of our “old” family. Many of the village people had evacuated by train when the Russian troops pulled out. Those that stayed were bombed occasionally—and we never knew if the planes were Russian or German.
We were hoping that by the end of December, the very cold weather would let up some and give us a break. In the meantime, we gathered wood outside by tearing down fences and breaking off branches of small trees. It was a daily chore to go around and pick up any wood that we could find to take home to make more fire. It seemed that we had nothing left on the outside to provide us with wood. So out of desperation, we started to burn chairs or whatever furniture we could do without. In the meantime, the temperatures outside were dropping to 42 and 54 degrees below zero, and we were quite desperate. The windows and the walls inside the house were covered with thick layers of ice (one and a half to two inches thick). We began to stay dressed with our coats, boots, and caps. We would sleep on the springs and put the mattress on top of us, then cover up with all the blankets, rugs, or anything else that would protect us from these terrible freezing temperatures.
By the time January arrived, the Germans began to fill any space that was available to live in. They would simply walk into the house and tell us that they needed a place to stay. When they arrived, most of them were sick, hungry, and half-frozen. They moved into the rest of our place, and they took all the beds and spaces until the house was full. We could no longer cook anything (mostly potatoes and carrots) without them coming into the kitchen and taking everything away—as soon as they smelled food, they would come and confiscate it.
* * *
JANUARY, 1942 • The Germans had overrun Belorussia (Belarus) and most of the Ukraine—Nonna’s homeland. They had surrounded Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and had begun to converge on Moscow.
* * *
Soon Mama and I had only my small bedroom to ourselves—leaving the rest of the house to the German soldiers. They were coming in half-frozen and starved, and they were eating all our food supplies—which were already scarce. Soon they started to burn our furniture so they could sit by the fireplace and keep warm. Some of the soldiers were brought in on stretchers, and as soon as they could warm up, their ears and noses would drop off because they were frostbitten (actually frozen off). I watched one of the soldiers as he took his boots off by the fireplace: he had also taken off the skin of his feet all the way to the bone.
* * *
GERMAN SOLDIERS’ SUFFERING • Hitler’s soldiers suffered from the extreme cold climate of Soviet winters. They had not been equipped to withstand the freezing temperatures. Many German soldiers died in the winter of 1941 from cold exposure and frostbite.
Nonna reports on the troops at her house of refuge: “We end up with at least fifty-four German soldiers in our house, and they remain for a long time before the army trucks come and take them to a newly established German hospital.”
* * *
Many nights, I lay in my bed awake, and I could hear Mama softly crying in her bed. She did not think I was awake and could hear her. Some nights, I would lay there and wish that my brother, Anatoly, would be there with us. I would imagine that by some miracle, he would just appear at our door. Even though I knew that it would never happen, I pretended that it could happen one day. Sometimes, I would feel angry because he was someplace else and knew nothing about what was happening with us. But then the thought of him being there—and the Germans killing him—would terrify me. He, too, could be killed or beaten to death like they had done to Papa and so many others. There were many very young boys along with men who were either tortured or beaten to death in these times.
Then I would be glad that he was someplace away, and I would feel ashamed of myself for even wanting him to be with us. (What thoughts could go through the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl who was faced with the horrors that were all around us and from which there was no escape!) The only thing I was comforted with is what I had learned in my early childhood and what Papa had taught me: “Never give up hope, and look for the rainbows and happiness!”
Our next-door neighbor (who lived across the hall with her two little girls) and Mama decided that it would be better for us to move in with them into her kitchen and let the Germans have our place. There were five of us—Mama and me and the lady and her two small girls—and we felt a little more secure and a little warmer. Since there was no electricity or even candles to provide any light after dark, we would all settle down in a huddle around the table in the kitchen and tell stories or fairy tales for her children. Her girls were four and six years old, and we tried to make the
m feel safe.
We could hear the German soldiers across the hall singing and talking loudly. The lady we moved in with had saved some old, dry bread in small bags, and Mama and I would make trips to the nearby village to get some potatoes and carrots. So all of us shared what we had carefully—sparingly, eating just enough to keep us alive.
One day Mama and the lady (her name escapes me, but if my memory is correct, she called herself Marina, or Maria) decided to leave me and her two girls, with me in charge. They took a sack to go around the area and look for some wood for the fire in the stove, to give us some heat. Mama told me they would hurry and would be back home as soon as possible.
* * *
NEIGHBORS • Nonna’s description of the housing arrangements is unclear. The village house appears to be laid out somewhat like a small apartment complex. Or, perhaps the woman lived across the street, rather than across the hall, whereas with the German soldiers in the house they could certainly hear them “across the hall.”
* * *
Perhaps two or three hours passed since they had left. I was becoming worried when a few more hours passed and they were still gone. The little girls started to cry for their mother, and I tried every possible way to entertain both of them by telling stories and fairy tales. The sun went down, and it was getting colder outside. The fire in the stove began to die down, and the kitchen was getting colder.
I told the girls that our mothers would probably come home soon and that we should jump up and down, sing, or do whatever, to try to stay warm. So we started jumping up and down on the bed while holding hands and going around in circles. We kept reciting the Lord’s Prayer—“Our Father which art in Heaven”—over and over again. I thought that we needed to pray, or sing, or do anything to pass the waiting time. Being still a child myself (fourteen years old), I wanted to cry badly, but I held on. I started to think that something really bad had happened to Mama and her friend. I began to think that I might be left with these little girls, and all kind of negative thoughts were going through my head. I tried to figure out how we would go through the oncoming night. Early in the morning I could take the girls to my grandmother’s house—she surely would know what to do.
Finally, as I was having my worst thoughts, Mama and her friend stumbled against the door, and when I opened the door, what I saw scared me terribly. Mama and her friend stood there looking like two frozen mummies—they looked like they had been immersed in a pool of water that had frozen on them from head to toe. They were stiffened by solid ice, and they were shivering so hard that you could hear their teeth knocking.
There was a pot of water sitting on the stove, and it was still warm, so I dipped big towels into the warm water and wrapped Mama’s and the lady’s heads with the warm towels. Mama was moaning and grabbing her forehead and was saying that her head was very painful and she thought her nose and ears were frozen off. But they were not, and I assured Mama that everything was all OK. I took their frozen clothes off, wrapping Mama and Marina in dry blankets, sheets, and towels—just whatever I could find to make them warm. Mama cried with terrible pain in her back, and the lady, hugging her little girls, dropped off to sleep and did not wake up until daylight.
I wanted to know what happened to them, but I thought I would wait until Mama felt like talking. We broke a couple of chairs and made some more fire in the stove. I went outside to fill the big pot with snow so we could put it on the stove and make some more warm water.
The next morning, Mama told me what had happened. After they left home and walked around picking up scraps of wood here and there and putting it into their sack, German soldiers grabbed them and threw them into an old shack where there were some people already being held by the soldiers. The Germans were pouring water on them, and the water was freezing. This went on for a couple of hours, until some German officers came and freed them and told them to run home before they were frozen to the point of not being able to move. They were ordered to never be on the streets—ever again—for any reason! This was an act of those spiteful German soldiers thinking that they needed to pull a prank or an act of cruelty. However, I am sure that it probably caused some of the ones caught in that situation to get very sick, or maybe even die from colds or pneumonia. Mama continued to have headaches for a couple of weeks.
Eventually, we ran out of everything, and it was still a long time before spring would begin. Mama and I decided to move back to the Great House (or what was left of it) and stay with Grandmother. By this time, Grandmother had boarded up all the damaged parts of the house and stayed in one room, where she had installed a potbellied stove with a large flue pipe running through a hole in the window to let the smoke out—sort of serving as a chimney. On top of the stove, she could heat water and cook what little food she had. We went back to grinding the wheat kernels and making something resembling flour.
There was no cooking oil to cook with so Grandmother used (very sparingly) cod liver oil in the skillet to make pancakes. They tasted awfully fishy but were something to eat. We walked to the frozen fields and dug some frozen sugar beets (white). We would boil them for six to eight hours until they were edible—they were something else to eat. Grandmother tore half of her fence down to get more wood.
Needless to say, when spring finally did arrive, we got very busy planting anything that we could find to plant, and we felt that once again we had survived the worst!
30: Surviving the German Occupation of Konstantinowka
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Editors’ Note: Nonna recorded many miscellaneous childhood memories. These are a few, as well as two of her poems from that period.
* * *
I can feel my papa’s gentle and loving touch and hear the words of his encouragement, the words of such wisdom. I feel his love and his gentleness.
* * *
I can smell the oil paint coming from the pavilion where Mama was painting.
* * *
I can hear Mama’s singing and playing the piano or violin.
* * *
I can smell fragrances of flowers from my grandmother’s gardens.
* * *
I can feel the breeze coming from the upstairs windows and see the swaying of those lace curtains . . . as a young child.
* * *
I can hear the laughter of my brother, Anatoly, and feel the strong grip of his hand—still a very young boy’s hand.
* * *
FEELINGS
Today I had the sweetest feeling,
The world stood still for just a while.
I prayed to God as I was kneeling
And thanked Him for your sweetest smile.
FRIENDS
A good friend is like a glow in the darkness;
He brightens up your darkest thoughts.
When eyes are filled with tears, he harkens;
When you complain, he tires not.
It was sad to see the Great House in its damaged condition, and Grandmother living there alone. I remembered those beautiful years I had spent there when I was younger. With Petrovich not there, it did not seem like the same place, and of course, the damages from the bombings were pretty heavy. However, Grandmother was still the same warm, loving person that I remembered as a child. The nights in Konstantinowka were scary, since you could hear the German and the Russian artillery exchanging shots. The Germans were on the run, and they were hiding anyplace they could find. They were cold and hungry, many of them were injured, and some of them would die while in hiding.
Along in April and May, it seems that spring brought some quietness and peacefulness. Grandmother decided to make a big garden so we could plant some vegetables, and she planted some flowers next to the house. What she planted came in very handy. We ate from the garden and were careful not to waste anything. We consumed the tops and the bottoms of the vegetables. Of course, we did not have any meat, eggs, or milk, and we lived mostly on green stuff, but we did not suffer from hunger.
Since there was no electricity—not even can
dles or oil to burn the lamps—we would go to bed by dark—in the late afternoon or early evening. Grandmother and Mama would tell stories and reminisce, and we would try not to think about the days ahead since none of us knew what the future would bring for us.
Down at the railroads, there were still some trains moving, but no passengers were coming or going. I would run outside when I heard a train whistle blowing since I still lived with the hope that one day, somehow, Anatoly or someone else from my family would show up. Grandmother was hoping that Petrovich had somehow managed to get away and that he would appear. So, we lived mostly with a lot of hope, since it was giving us something to look forward to. But nothing happened, and we decided to make the best of the situation. People everywhere were like us—just kept going on and making the best of it. It took some more months for everyone to get used to it all. It was like we were in a state of limbo.
People organized a bazaar down on the outskirts of Konstantinowka and started selling or bartering for whatever anyone had. They were exchanging goods of all kinds, since money had no value. Mama and I were making regular trips to the bazaar, just browsing to see if there was some food or anything else that would be of value to us. We were happy to find anything that would help us survive those dreary times.
The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister Page 13
