Mama and I decided to join the chorus at the Russian Orthodox church, and we went to practices for Sunday’s singing at the church. I don’t know where all the people came from for the Sunday services, but every Sunday, the church was packed. The services were typical of the Russian Orthodox Church, with all the candles, icons, etc., and I was looking forward to going there. Mama and I both sang very well, especially Mama, who sang in the first-soprano section. I sang mezzo-soprano.
I would get hungry, because the services were very long, and when the priest served the Lord’s Supper, the little piece of bread was very welcome. It was just a small square of leavened bread, but it tasted so good, and the small taste of juice tasted good, also. Grandmother was extremely happy to be able to go to church again—she never missed a Sunday to be there. The evenings were long, and when the sunset would come, we prepared something to eat and once again retired to our beds before dark.
There were times when I was all to myself—engrossed in my deep thoughts—and I kept a diary that I would hide in the old stable, under the carriage. There I would write about what it was like before the war, rather than what was happening now. I was hoping that if I kept writing about it, the old times would come back, and I could forget what was going on all around me.
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A COLD MORNING • This particular memory, taken from the diary entry of December 1941/January 1942, appears in present-tense translation. It was written before Anna and Nonna moved back to the Great House with Grandmother.
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It is a very cold morning—forty-two degrees below zero. As I look out the window I can see just a few hungry sparrows perched on the fence. The snow is about three feet deep. There is no wood anywhere to be gathered to build a fire to make our quarters warm in the big old house where we are living.
Papa was buried a few weeks ago, and Mama and I are trying to make our lives as bearable as possible. We know nothing about the future for both of us. Of course, at my young age, I am not worried so much about the future, and I mostly miss my dearest brother, Anatoly, and Papa. I lie in the bed by the window, and as I look out the window, there is a large, round moon looking right at me. It makes my heart just stand still. I lie this way—staring at the moon—and wonder why all of the things that are happening are happening. It does not seem right to be there without Papa and my brother and the rest of my family. Every once in a while, I can hear dogs barking or wolves howling near the long wooded stretch on the horizon. These kinds of sounds will stay with me for a lifetime. Sometimes the full moon gives off enough light to read and write by, and since there is no electricity or oil lamps, the light of the moon comes in handy. I can write in my diary, and I can think of a lot of things to put on paper. I eventually drift off to a gentle sleep.
At the crack of dawn, Mama and I plan for a new day and, of course, there is always hope that something will develop to change our way of living. Mama has cut up a few light blankets and made some children’s clothes—coats, dresses, jackets, etc. Mama sits at the sewing machine and sews anything that comes to her mind.
This is a new day at sunrise—and what a beautiful sunrise it is—rising against a glittery frost. Mama and I are going to the village to trade the clothes she has made for food or things that we need. As we leave our house and I blow into the air, I see a diamondlike spray before my eyes, and the icicles cover my eyebrows and eyelashes. When we reach the village, we go to each door showing people our goods. Of course, we are paid with food such as bread, carrots, potatoes, meat, milk, etc. The villagers let Mama and me go into the stables and gather eggs or milk a cow for some milk. They seem so glad to see us with our goods, and they come from all over the village and offer us some food. The morning seems to have passed very fast, and as the afternoon approaches, the temperatures drop so cold that it is impossible to make the journey back home. Some of the villagers offer to let Mama and me spend the night by their huge fireplaces. They put blankets on the floor to make pallets for us to sleep on, and then we roast sunflower seeds over the open fire to snack on before we bed down for the night. It is so cozy lying here in front of the fireplace, and Mama and I soon drift off to a peaceful sleep.
The next morning, Mama and I make the journey back to our home. Mama is looking for more material from anything that we can do without, and she starts sewing again. There is not much to do after dark, and the darkness falls on us early—3:30 or 4:00 p.m., since the days are so short. The neighbors share light, and we have some old shoestrings and fish oil that we put into the lamp to make a little light. We sit around the small light and tell stories and wonder what is going to happen to us when the Germans move in. Little did we know the horrors and terrors that they would bring with them.
This is probably the coldest winter that we have ever had in this part of the Ukraine. Water is hard to find since everything is frozen solid, so Mama and I gather icicles and snow to melt over the fire to get water. The water that we drink has to be boiled for at least forty-five minutes. The Russians have moved out of our village, and they have destroyed much of what they left behind. The grain mills have been dynamited because the Russians destroyed anything that would be of use to the Germans—especially food.
The batters are about forty miles away from us, and the Germans are moving slowly due to the severe winter weather. Mama and I can hear the guns, cannons, and bombs and can see the light flashes from the battle in the distance. The horses are freezing to death and dropping on the roads. They are being cut up by the Germans (or whoever can get to them) and used as meat to survive. Mama and I stay away from all of this. We will not eat horse meat no matter how hard food is to find. I am still missing my horse, Sultan, which Grandmother gave to me for my eighth birthday. But out of the six horses that Grandmother had kept in her stables, there is only one horse left. The rest of them have been taken away by the Soviet government and have been shipped to the collective farms.
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“BATTERS” • Probably Nonna meant battle here, or perhaps batteries. The transcript is unclear.
SULTAN • Nonna wrote about this particular horse: “I remember one of my grandmother’s horses—it was a beautiful horse and so gentle. His name was Sultan, and he ate sugar cubes out of my hand. Grandmother wanted me to have him. But I just could not ride him. No matter how much Petrovich would try to get me on that horse, for some reason (unknown to me), I just could not do it. So I just called him my Sultan and visited him twice a day with some sugar cubes. I really loved Sultan, and I loved to brush his so shiny hair. And he stood so still while I brushed him. His eyes were so big, and his teeth were so white, and I think he was the best-looking horse in the stable.”
* * *
All private farms have been made into collective farms, where the owners are forced to work there for the government. The cows suffer the same fate as the horses, and the one milk cow that Grandmother has left is taken away by the Russians before they pull out. We have to hide any warm clothing or food that we have left.
* * *
All my friends were gone except one or two girls that lived a few streets away (they were schoolmates). I stayed with Mama and Grandmother for fear that if I left the house and walked a few blocks away, something could happen to either one of us and we would not be able to find each other. Also the Russian planes flew over often and were shooting at people who were walking on the streets. Everyone was staying close to their homes. Many times I would sit on the steps and imagine that I was having a bad dream and that I would wake up and all would be just the way it used to be. I was a girl of many dreams, and I thought that I was reaching the age when I wanted to live my dreams out, but I had to comfort myself that there was a rainbow ahead—just like Papa had told me about.
There were plenty of German soldiers everywhere, and we could hear them singing and playing accordions. They were staying in buildings that had been converted into barracks. However, we tried not to mix with them but rather stayed in our homes with the doors locked.
We never knew what they would decide to do even though we never knew of any of them to bother us or to hurt us. The only time they would come close to us was when they were looking for food. Sometimes we would see them singing and marching down the streets, and we would go inside the house and watch them through the windows. Eventually some brave young girls would go down the street in an attempt to talk to them, but their commanders would chase the girls away. Occasionally you would see a German soldier talking to a woman, but the military police would see them and chase the girls away, and they would pick up any soldiers that tried to make friends with the Russian or Ukrainian girls. No one trusted anyone—the Germans did not trust us, and we did not trust them, so we isolated ourselves pretty well the whole time.
Eventually the Germans set up some organized offices and took full charge of policing. They opened some theaters where they were showing some movies, and even opened some grocery stores. They distributed some “quick money” (mostly in German marks), and since they needed some help, they were hiring our people. Some small communication was established with us, and the Germans began to act like they had already won the war—until they reached Stalingrad. There they met the strong push from the Russians, and all the “hell” of war broke loose, with the Russians pushing back with such force that it put the Germans on the run. They kept retreating, losing all their armies, and it was the bloodiest war all over again.
It was only a matter of time before they were moving out, and there were no newspapers or other communications to tell us how close the retreating Germans were to us. We already knew that when the Russian troops came back, they would treat all of us as traitors because we had stayed behind and did not retreat with the Russians.
Mama and I had to find a way to leave and go west even if it meant traveling to Europe, so when the Germans offered us transportation to Germany, we had no choice but to take them up on the offer. The Germans needed some laborers in Germany’s factories.
We heard later that those who stayed behind and did not leave Konstantinowka were thrown on trains and sent to Siberia or were killed. There really was no escape for us—one way or the other. Because Papa had always (for years) wanted to leave Communist Russia, we thought that we would go west. We did not see what was waiting for us in Hitler’s Germany. We simply had to trust that we were making the right decision—and hope for survival.
Grandmother would sit by the fireplace with her hands folded in her lap (this was her favorite position) and say that she would keep the rest of the house intact until her family returned. She never stopped hoping, although Mama and I somehow knew that waiting for anyone to return was utterly hopeless.
* * *
STALINGRAD • Contrary to Nonna’s account, it took months for the tide to turn in Russia’s favor at the Battle of Stalingrad—Anna and Nonna had departed long before that. They might well have felt that “volunteering” to work in Germany was their only choice, but not because of retreating German soldiers or returning Russian ones. We can only speculate about her reasons for recalling the facts in this way; perhaps she attempted to rationalize what in retrospect must have seemed a horrible decision.
* * *
The Agony Continues
31: August 1942
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Editors’ Note: On August 7, 1942, Anna and Nonna said good-bye to Feodosija and boarded a train headed for a carton factory in Kassel, Germany. Packed into cattle cars with other women on their way to work in Germany, they traveled on the train for several days past Kiev, in the Ukraine, and on into Poland, Yevgeny’s homeland. It was at one of the stops in Poland that the young Jewish woman tried to save her baby by tossing her into Anna’s arms. Nonna’s account resumes here, just after baby Sarah was discovered by the Germans and killed by one of the SS guards.
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Everyone in our train car was in a state of shock. We were expecting the SS men to come back and investigate as to how the baby had been found inside our railcar. However, the SS men were preoccupied with other activity, huddled around the army trucks and talking to each other. Then our train started to move again, and it eased the tension somewhat. Once again, we all realized that we were prisoners of the Germans and were subject to the same kind of treatment they had given to little Sarah and her mother.
It was late in the afternoon, and the train picked up speed as we continued to cross Poland and head toward Germany. There was nothing but silence as night began to come. I suppose that we all were still in a state of shock. I know that Mama was—she was holding on to me very tightly. Eventually, I went to sleep out of pure exhaustion, and I slept most of the night. When I woke up the next morning, our train was still moving at a fast rate of speed, and the women on our car were very quiet and seemed to be in deep thought. It was as if none of them wanted to be the first one to say anything.
The train stopped again, and the SS men let us get off the train. Mama was thinking of finding a way to escape. She took me by the hand and walked away from the other people. I know that she was thinking about running away. But one of the SS men spotted us and shouted for us to come back. Mama found this little puddle of water and made out like she was washing her feet and my feet. Then we went back to the train because they were watching us very closely. We were loaded back on the train and continued to travel westward. We knew we were in Poland, but we had no idea as to what our location was—there was no way of knowing where we were.
I was thinking about little Sarah, and I was confused, angry, and sad about what the Germans had done. Also, I was trying to figure out what the Jews had done to be treated this way. There was no reason that I could think of, but I was to find out later about the atrocities and deaths that Hitler had planned for the Jews. Our train had slowed its speed somewhat, and the women had begun to talk about what we had witnessed and were a part of—yet everyone seemed to be in their own little world of thoughts and sadness. Our train had slowed its speed even more, and though we could not see anything, we felt that they were planning another stop. Little did we know that we were in for another shock that was as bad or even worse than what we had been through with little Sarah. It was beyond our comprehension that anything could be worse—but we were wrong.
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“I WAS CONFUSED” • Here Nonna seems to have been grappling with anti-Semitism for perhaps the first time—another indication that she might somehow, amidst her own suffering, have been oblivious to the crisis.
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Our train was approaching Lodz, Poland, and the train slowed.We continued to move at a slow pace until we came to a place where the Germans were “staging” railcars and sending the cars in different directions. The area was located out in a desolate spot where there were nothing but fields. As we approached, I could see some buildings that were situated near a large fenced-in area, with the fences being nine to twelve feet high. There was a double fence running through the center of this large fenced area. One side of the compound was where the Jews were being held, and on the other side the people from the East (Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and others) were held for staging.
Our train had separated from a railcar loaded with Jews, and we were just sitting there, still hooked up to the locomotive engine. It was late in the afternoon, and the weather was cold and rainy. The Germans were very active—stirring around the area as if they were in a hurry to complete their mission. They had a lot of SS dogs alongside of them. There was a railroad track running into the fenced area where the Jews were held, and an adjacent track running into the area where the people from the East were being staged.
Our car sat there; we could hear the activity outside, and we knew that there were a lot of soldiers and SS men scurrying about. The dogs were barking, very excited with all the activity that was taking place. The Germans slid our railcar door open about eighteen inches or so and fed us a piece of bread, and they gave us some water in some kind of old rusty metal cups. The bread was dark in color, and it was just a chunk, as if the dough had been sp
ooned onto a pan and baked. It certainly did not look good. As the Germans were feeding us, my attention was drawn to a railcar loaded with Jews. Their railcars did not have doors, but had iron bars across the door opening.
My attention was caught by a small boy who was standing inside the car, with his mother holding him by his thin little shoulders. He had his frail little arm sticking out through the bars and was making a begging motion with his little hand. As I looked at him, he was not much more than a skeleton, and his head seemed to be larger than normal. His eyes were deep set in his head and appeared to be very large. My attention was drawn to this little boy, and while I knew that there were a lot of things happening, I stared at this young boy and his skinny little hand begging.
I decided that I was going to give my bread to this young boy, but I needed to get out of our railcar and sneak over to where I could hand it to him through the bars of his car door.
I slid through the opening in our door and down to the ground. The Germans were very busy, and if they saw me, they didn’t say anything. I ran over to the Jewish railcar and handed the chunk of bread to this young boy, who was murmuring something that was barely above a whisper. I knew that I had to hurry back and get into our car, but just as I turned around, the Germans were rushing toward the Jewish car along with their dogs, and they were shouting, “Raus, raus!”
The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister Page 14
