Then we were assigned to the second Ukrainian Front near Bucharest [Romania]. Then we relocated to the vicinity of Budapest [Hungary] to the third Ukrainian Front. Then we were near Pecs [South- Western Hungary, near to the then Yugoslav border], when Germans struck a blow there. At the end of the war I was on the border of Austria and [former] Yugoslavia in the direction of Zagreb [today Croatia].
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Displaying 14341 - 14370 of 50826 results
Pyotr Bograd
In the morning of 6th July, I went to check on the guards about 800 meters from the front line near some abandoned buildings in a coppice. I was accompanied by a young private. We found no guards there. I started moving around hoping to find my subordinates, when the Germans discovered me.
They yelled in Russian and German: 'Russ', surrender!' I pretended I didn't understand Russian or German and crawled back to my company positions. They started shooting and I ordered my accompanying private to shoot back. I raised my right hand with a gun, when a bullet hit me. I took my gun with my left hand and started shooting back. We managed to get to the coppice where we were encircled. I thought 'that's it, it's my last day.'
Our political officer [27] hearing the shooting sent a rifle squad to help us. I was rescued from being captured.
They yelled in Russian and German: 'Russ', surrender!' I pretended I didn't understand Russian or German and crawled back to my company positions. They started shooting and I ordered my accompanying private to shoot back. I raised my right hand with a gun, when a bullet hit me. I took my gun with my left hand and started shooting back. We managed to get to the coppice where we were encircled. I thought 'that's it, it's my last day.'
Our political officer [27] hearing the shooting sent a rifle squad to help us. I was rescued from being captured.
It was an early morning, transparent and filled with colorful frost sparkles. The enemy was waking up on the opposite side. We had a good vision of a locomotive dragging few carriages to the front line of the enemy.
It stopped and soldiers with buckets and pots came closer to it. This was the first time that we saw how a locomotive delivered food to combat positions. Rodimov did some thinking and then pronounced, 'Let's disturb them and shoot at them from closed weapon emplacements.' This was an interesting suggestion.
On another morning, I was on my observation post with my stereo telescope. The Finns were as punctual as the Germans. The locomotive approached and I gave an order to start volley shooting of 250 bullets in each cartridge belt. A few soldiers fell on the snow and the others crawled away. We did it again in the morning and afternoon.
It stopped and soldiers with buckets and pots came closer to it. This was the first time that we saw how a locomotive delivered food to combat positions. Rodimov did some thinking and then pronounced, 'Let's disturb them and shoot at them from closed weapon emplacements.' This was an interesting suggestion.
On another morning, I was on my observation post with my stereo telescope. The Finns were as punctual as the Germans. The locomotive approached and I gave an order to start volley shooting of 250 bullets in each cartridge belt. A few soldiers fell on the snow and the others crawled away. We did it again in the morning and afternoon.
After a short artillery preparation the battalions moved forward. In less than an hour our left flank battalion broke into the town, but had to suspend its advance. The right flank battalion was lying down on the road. We decided to move the observation post closer to the front line. I remember asking Danilov, 'Have you got something prepared?' He replied smiling coolly, 'Hey, we shall think of something!'
We moved on crawling and running across ditches and high dry grass. It would have been astonishing, if the enemy hadn't discovered us. Having covered about 500 meters, Danilov and I happened to come to an open field under the machine gun firing. We took our digging spades hoping to make some sort of cells to shoot back.
There were about ten of us in the group. We had no place to hide. We couldn't move back either since the battalions might misinterpret their commanding officers' maneuver and follow their example. Even a small trench needed time to make. The enemy wasn't going to wait till we dug trenches. Its artillery shells were exploding closer and closer.
Danilov was about three meters from where I was in hiding. He raised his head, gave me his calm and charming smile, stood up abruptly and yelled, 'Go a few meters ahead where our communication guys have dug a hide-out!' This was a decision of a real regiment commander. At that moment a shell exploded beside us. It was destined for us. My conscience grew dark and I was thrown onto Danilov.
When I came to my senses, I saw that his leg was smashed above his knee and bones and flesh were burnt into some horrible mix. His face had turned as white as a cast mask from the shock and loss of blood. There wasn't a scratch on me. The German artillery firing never stopped. The regiment political officer and I dragged Danilov to the hide-out of our communication guys and applied a tourniquet.
We moved on crawling and running across ditches and high dry grass. It would have been astonishing, if the enemy hadn't discovered us. Having covered about 500 meters, Danilov and I happened to come to an open field under the machine gun firing. We took our digging spades hoping to make some sort of cells to shoot back.
There were about ten of us in the group. We had no place to hide. We couldn't move back either since the battalions might misinterpret their commanding officers' maneuver and follow their example. Even a small trench needed time to make. The enemy wasn't going to wait till we dug trenches. Its artillery shells were exploding closer and closer.
Danilov was about three meters from where I was in hiding. He raised his head, gave me his calm and charming smile, stood up abruptly and yelled, 'Go a few meters ahead where our communication guys have dug a hide-out!' This was a decision of a real regiment commander. At that moment a shell exploded beside us. It was destined for us. My conscience grew dark and I was thrown onto Danilov.
When I came to my senses, I saw that his leg was smashed above his knee and bones and flesh were burnt into some horrible mix. His face had turned as white as a cast mask from the shock and loss of blood. There wasn't a scratch on me. The German artillery firing never stopped. The regiment political officer and I dragged Danilov to the hide-out of our communication guys and applied a tourniquet.
In Romania I met with the Jews who had lived during the German rule. I also met with Jews in Hungary. They requested me to provide trucks to transport the Jews from concentration camps. I met with former prisoners of concentration camps. My division commander stayed in a Jewish house in Pecs. His subordinate brought me his message to go and talk to those people. I spoke Yiddish to them and they told me about the hardships they had gone through.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
On 8th May we were preparing for relocation, but our corps commander ordered everyone to switch on their radios. The regiments were on their way, when the radio announced that the war was over. The corps commander ordered the regiments to stop and prepare for a parade.
This was the first time in my life that I witnessed the rear guys providing full dress uniforms to the division within six hours. We had the Victory parade on the border of [former] Yugoslavia and Austria. Later we relocated to the vicinity of Baden [near Vienna].
This was the first time in my life that I witnessed the rear guys providing full dress uniforms to the division within six hours. We had the Victory parade on the border of [former] Yugoslavia and Austria. Later we relocated to the vicinity of Baden [near Vienna].
,
1945
See text in interview
The chairman of the admission commission happened to know my uncle from their former joint party activities, but he didn't know that my uncle had been declared an enemy of the people later. He instantly admitted me to the academy named after Frunze [29] [MV Frunze Military Academy].
Post-war
I went to study in Moscow.
Post-war
I went to study in Moscow.
There were seven Jews in the academy. Frankly speaking, we didn't face any prejudiced attitude. There was postwar fraternity. However, later I faced anti-Semitism.
I graduated from the academy in 1948. I wanted to continue my studies in the Military Diplomatic Academy, but I failed to enter it, and I understood that this happened due to my Jewish identity. The Academy graduates became military attaches, reconnaissance officers and embassy employees.
I was also affected by my Jewish identity, when the struggle against cosmopolitism [Campaign against 'cosmopolitans'] [31] began, when my Jewish friends were sent away from Moscow, to military units in remote areas and were demoted.
Due to my Jewish identity I wasn't promoted from my rank of lieutenant colonel for eleven years. Only in 1955, when I was commander of a mechanized regiment I was promoted to the rank of colonel. I was promoted to my current rank of general major after a long delay. It was extremely hard for a Jew to be promoted to the rank of general in our country.
In the late 1940s the life of my family grew harder. My parents stayed in the village in Saratov region. My father lost his job. My parents couldn't go back to Dobroye. Our neighbors wrote that our house was ruined. I went to visit the chief of the militia of Moscow. He received me well and I told him about my brother who perished near Stalingrad, that I was at the front, studied in the Military Academy, and that I was lieutenant colonel. I told him that my parents' relatives were shot by Germans and that my parents' house was ruined.
He signed off my request to issue my parents a residence permit [36] for Moscow. My wife's grandmother, Bertha Elkonina, lived in Moscow at this time. She lived in a shared apartment [see communal apartment] [37] in a 7.8 square meter room.
My parents were granted a residential registration to reside in this room. Then the government's resolution forbidding the cancellation of residential permits of the parents whose children had perished during the Great Patriotic War was published and my parents lived in Moscow.
He signed off my request to issue my parents a residence permit [36] for Moscow. My wife's grandmother, Bertha Elkonina, lived in Moscow at this time. She lived in a shared apartment [see communal apartment] [37] in a 7.8 square meter room.
My parents were granted a residential registration to reside in this room. Then the government's resolution forbidding the cancellation of residential permits of the parents whose children had perished during the Great Patriotic War was published and my parents lived in Moscow.
My father worked as a cheese taster in the Central Governmental refrigeration factory and my mother was a housewife. They had a good life in Moscow. They habitually followed some Jewish traditions, celebrated Sabbath, and occasionally went to the synagogue on holidays keeping it a secret from their neighbors and colleagues. Following the kashrut was out of the question, and besides, they weren't very religious. I didn't live in Moscow at that time and we didn't see each other often.
In 1954 my father died. My mother received a new lodging after the house where she and my father had lived was demolished. She died in 1981. My parents were buried in the Vostriakovskoye town cemetery without any rituals.
Upon graduation from the academy I was appointed to my initial position, even lower. During the war I was deputy chief of the division headquarters, regiment commander, but upon graduation from the academy I was appointed chief of the regiment headquarters. However, when I arrived at the headquarters of the regiment, and they heard that I had an extensive experience of working in the headquarters, they appointed me as the deputy chief of the corps operative headquarters in Saratov.
He grew up and went to school. He studied well. He transferred to the fifth grade after finishing the third grade. He was a clever child. Ruvim went to school in 1931. He didn't go to cheder. In 1938, he finished the seventh grade and entered the Jewish Machine Building Technical School in Odessa. I took him to Odessa and rented a room for him.
In 1942, Ruvim was mobilized to the army. He perished near Stalingrad.
My grandmother insisted that I go to cheder in 1926. I didn't feel like taking any learning responsibilities, but grandma said, 'No, it's going to be the cheder and that's that.' I went to cheder with our neighbor's boys. Our teacher was Iosif Lamdn. I learned to read and write in Yiddish at the cheder. I can still remember reading the letters, alef, beit, gimel and then a candy falling onto my desk.
The rabbi was standing by my desk. He said, 'This is what God has sent you.' I thanked the rabbi and thought how God could have sent me the candy. I looked up but there was no hole or slit in the ceiling. Then I looked at what God was going to send Borka Minkov and noticed that the rabbi dropped a candy onto his desk from his palm. I said, 'Rabbi, but you've dropped this!', and he replied, 'You, mamzer!' and hit me on my hands with his ruler. Mamzer means 'bastard', it's a curse word [Hebrew]. However strange it is I've stopped believing in God since then. Then I went to the seven-year Jewish school where all the subjects were taught in Yiddish.
The rabbi was standing by my desk. He said, 'This is what God has sent you.' I thanked the rabbi and thought how God could have sent me the candy. I looked up but there was no hole or slit in the ceiling. Then I looked at what God was going to send Borka Minkov and noticed that the rabbi dropped a candy onto his desk from his palm. I said, 'Rabbi, but you've dropped this!', and he replied, 'You, mamzer!' and hit me on my hands with his ruler. Mamzer means 'bastard', it's a curse word [Hebrew]. However strange it is I've stopped believing in God since then. Then I went to the seven-year Jewish school where all the subjects were taught in Yiddish.
In the early 1920s, our young people organized the agricultural commune 'Novy byt' ['New way of life', Ukrainian], actually it was a prototype of the kibbutz in Israel, but unfortunately, there was a direction to establish kolkhozes. Two kolkhozes were formed. One was formed on the basis of the agricultural commune, 'Novy byt', and the second one was 'Vperyod' ['Forward', Ukrainian]. In the middle of the 1930s the third kolkhoz was formed.
It was named 'Krasny Luch' ['red ray', Ukrainian]. The famine [in Ukraine] [16] in the 1930s affected these kolkhozes very badly, but the kolkhoz management had stored some corn before, which supported the kolkhoz members during this period of time, and there were no starved people in our village.
There was a special agricultural farm established five kilometers from the colony for the children of the kolkhoz members to receive a secondary agricultural education. I had a wonderful childhood and enjoyed doing any work. I worked in the field, in the vineyard, on the threshing floor, harvesting corns and sunflowers.
It was named 'Krasny Luch' ['red ray', Ukrainian]. The famine [in Ukraine] [16] in the 1930s affected these kolkhozes very badly, but the kolkhoz management had stored some corn before, which supported the kolkhoz members during this period of time, and there were no starved people in our village.
There was a special agricultural farm established five kilometers from the colony for the children of the kolkhoz members to receive a secondary agricultural education. I had a wonderful childhood and enjoyed doing any work. I worked in the field, in the vineyard, on the threshing floor, harvesting corns and sunflowers.
In 1936, after completing school, I entered the Poltava Railroad Technical College [Ukraine]. It trained railroad employees, locomotive operators and engineers. Of course, it was difficult for me to study in this technical school after just finishing the seven-year school in the village.
I had to fill up the gaps in my education, but I still had excellent marks. I lived a merry and careless student's life and took part in public activities. I joined the Komsomol [17], and became a member of the Komsomol committee [Komsomol units existed at all educational and industrial enterprises. They were headed by Komsomol committees involved in organizational activities]. I was full of energy when I was young.
I had to fill up the gaps in my education, but I still had excellent marks. I lived a merry and careless student's life and took part in public activities. I joined the Komsomol [17], and became a member of the Komsomol committee [Komsomol units existed at all educational and industrial enterprises. They were headed by Komsomol committees involved in organizational activities]. I was full of energy when I was young.
,
1936
See text in interview
When we returned to the school after a short vacation I was invited to a meeting of the Komsomol committee. When I saw my comrades, I felt uncomfortable at once. My close friends were looking at me with condemnation and even defiance, as if I was a stranger.
The secretary of the Komsomol committee was sitting at the head of the table. He and I studied and took part in public activities together. The Party secretary was sitting beside him, and my co-villager, Grishka Kosoy. I was asked, 'Bograd, where is your uncle?' I replied, 'Which one? I have a few.' I was told, 'Your uncle from Kiev who is rector of Kiev State Agricultural College.'
There was a pause and then there came a question, as if an explosion over my head: 'Do you know that he is an enemy of the people [18]?' I replied from my heart rather than upon consideration, 'This cannot be!' Then it all started.
This was the period of arrests [during the Great Terror] [19], of course, we believed everything that the newspapers published, but this hadn't affected our family before. My schoolfellows continued to torment and interrogate me: 'Aha, this cannot be! He is the same! He's been in prison for three months, but you haven't mentioned it. You are silent and pretend you take an active part in work! You, double-dealer, the son of wealthy parents, you've got into this leadership unit and you are hiding away your criminal soul!'
My uncle Yefim Bograd, who was declared an enemy of the people so suddenly, was a communist since 1917 and made it a long way in the party hierarchy. It was impossible to believe this! In the early 1930s he was a secretary of the Kobeliaki district party committee of Kharkov region, and then he became rector of the Communist College named after Kossior [20] in Kiev. In March 1937, my uncle was elected secretary of the Communist Party committee of the Bolsheviks [21] of the College.
At dawn of the following day he was arrested. After many interrogations and other hardships my uncle was sent to the vicinity of Magadan [Russia] where he perished in 1945.
The secretary of the Komsomol committee was sitting at the head of the table. He and I studied and took part in public activities together. The Party secretary was sitting beside him, and my co-villager, Grishka Kosoy. I was asked, 'Bograd, where is your uncle?' I replied, 'Which one? I have a few.' I was told, 'Your uncle from Kiev who is rector of Kiev State Agricultural College.'
There was a pause and then there came a question, as if an explosion over my head: 'Do you know that he is an enemy of the people [18]?' I replied from my heart rather than upon consideration, 'This cannot be!' Then it all started.
This was the period of arrests [during the Great Terror] [19], of course, we believed everything that the newspapers published, but this hadn't affected our family before. My schoolfellows continued to torment and interrogate me: 'Aha, this cannot be! He is the same! He's been in prison for three months, but you haven't mentioned it. You are silent and pretend you take an active part in work! You, double-dealer, the son of wealthy parents, you've got into this leadership unit and you are hiding away your criminal soul!'
My uncle Yefim Bograd, who was declared an enemy of the people so suddenly, was a communist since 1917 and made it a long way in the party hierarchy. It was impossible to believe this! In the early 1930s he was a secretary of the Kobeliaki district party committee of Kharkov region, and then he became rector of the Communist College named after Kossior [20] in Kiev. In March 1937, my uncle was elected secretary of the Communist Party committee of the Bolsheviks [21] of the College.
At dawn of the following day he was arrested. After many interrogations and other hardships my uncle was sent to the vicinity of Magadan [Russia] where he perished in 1945.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Other Komsomol members continued condemning me, 'Everything that you've done at this school has been your special tactic. You've acted under your uncle's command, and he is an enemy of the people. He's instructed you and taught you to do sabotage on the railroad'. They also reminded me about the time when I received those so-called 'instructions.'
In 1936, I visited my uncle in Kiev, when I was on my way to school after having practical training on sites. I believed Grishka Kosoy was my friend since childhood, but he reported that my uncle was an enemy of the people. He submitted a reporting note to the Komsomol committee. It was his report that 'started' the machine. I was expelled from the Komsomol, and that evening I was actually dragged to the meeting of the Poltava town Komsomol committee where they knew me well. It was a sensation of the town committee meeting: Bograd - a double dealer; an activist and a henchman of an enemy of the people!
They made me tell my life story, a detailed resume. I told them that my father was a servant before the revolution working for a cattle dealer. They replied, 'No, you are the son of a cattle dealer! That's why you have this ideology!' Anything I said was interpreted vice versa. I was spellbound. A storm of accusations hit me repeating the popular current newspaper headlines! The verdict was unanimous: 'approve expulsion from the Komsomol.'
On the following day, I resigned from the Komsomol committee and left for the practical training at the Poltava track maintenance service. On the outside nothing seemed to have changed. No, something had changed: my former friends avoided me and there was an empty space around me.
In 1936, I visited my uncle in Kiev, when I was on my way to school after having practical training on sites. I believed Grishka Kosoy was my friend since childhood, but he reported that my uncle was an enemy of the people. He submitted a reporting note to the Komsomol committee. It was his report that 'started' the machine. I was expelled from the Komsomol, and that evening I was actually dragged to the meeting of the Poltava town Komsomol committee where they knew me well. It was a sensation of the town committee meeting: Bograd - a double dealer; an activist and a henchman of an enemy of the people!
They made me tell my life story, a detailed resume. I told them that my father was a servant before the revolution working for a cattle dealer. They replied, 'No, you are the son of a cattle dealer! That's why you have this ideology!' Anything I said was interpreted vice versa. I was spellbound. A storm of accusations hit me repeating the popular current newspaper headlines! The verdict was unanimous: 'approve expulsion from the Komsomol.'
On the following day, I resigned from the Komsomol committee and left for the practical training at the Poltava track maintenance service. On the outside nothing seemed to have changed. No, something had changed: my former friends avoided me and there was an empty space around me.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Besides, when I was resigning, the Komsomol committee discovered a shortage of 50 rubles, which happened quite 'on time.' The secretary of the Komsomol committee was guilty, but the incident gave grounds for my conviction. Fortunately, the investigation process found no guilt in my conduct. I expected an arrest every instant.
On 1st September I went to school at seven o'clock in the morning, when I saw the notice issued by the director of the school on the information board: 'Expel student Bograd from school for his relations with an enemy of the people'. I stood still. I thought, 'What am I to do? Where do I go? What's awaiting me in the future? No, that's all. My life is over!' I was standing there.
My co-students were passing by without even looking at me. That was it! The evil fate had captured its victim. But no, it turned out there were real men in this atmosphere of overall fear. All of a sudden I heard a familiar hoarse voice whispering, 'Go to the personnel training department in Kharkov immediately. You'll take decisions there'.
On 1st September I went to school at seven o'clock in the morning, when I saw the notice issued by the director of the school on the information board: 'Expel student Bograd from school for his relations with an enemy of the people'. I stood still. I thought, 'What am I to do? Where do I go? What's awaiting me in the future? No, that's all. My life is over!' I was standing there.
My co-students were passing by without even looking at me. That was it! The evil fate had captured its victim. But no, it turned out there were real men in this atmosphere of overall fear. All of a sudden I heard a familiar hoarse voice whispering, 'Go to the personnel training department in Kharkov immediately. You'll take decisions there'.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I was homeless and jobless for the next two days; I didn't sleep or eat. In the afternoon, I tried to make an appointment with the director of the school or managers of the Poltava railroad, but I failed. The railway station was closed at night and it was cold in the park. I lied down on a bench and then had to run around to get warm, when all of a sudden I bumped into the janitor of our school, an old railroad man and a communist.
He offered to rescue me and took me to his home, and gave me food. I slept at his home and went to Kharkov in the morning. When I arrived, I went to the Railroad department. I didn't get an appointment at the personnel department, but they told me to write a report and take it the next day.
My father's older sister, Dina Kogan, worked at the radio plant in Kharkov. I stayed with her. She wasn't affected by the tragedy of her brother Yefim. I told her my story and she helped me write a letter to the chief of the personnel training department. The chief was very polite to me. We had a face-to-face discussion, and though my uncle's name wasn't mentioned, I understood that he knew him well and didn't believe he was guilty. At the end of our meeting he told me to go back to my parents and wait there. He said, 'You cannot stay in Kharkov or Poltava.' In the evening, Aunt Dina said he was arrested on that very same day. He happened to have known my uncle from the party activities.
At about four o'clock in the morning, we woke up from the sound of someone knocking on the front door. Somebody opened the door, then it was quiet, knocking on the door of our neighbor, quiet again. Aunt Dina went to the kitchen. She returned and said that there was a search at her neighbor's house and so I had to get dressed quickly and get out of the building. I managed to escape unnoticed.
He offered to rescue me and took me to his home, and gave me food. I slept at his home and went to Kharkov in the morning. When I arrived, I went to the Railroad department. I didn't get an appointment at the personnel department, but they told me to write a report and take it the next day.
My father's older sister, Dina Kogan, worked at the radio plant in Kharkov. I stayed with her. She wasn't affected by the tragedy of her brother Yefim. I told her my story and she helped me write a letter to the chief of the personnel training department. The chief was very polite to me. We had a face-to-face discussion, and though my uncle's name wasn't mentioned, I understood that he knew him well and didn't believe he was guilty. At the end of our meeting he told me to go back to my parents and wait there. He said, 'You cannot stay in Kharkov or Poltava.' In the evening, Aunt Dina said he was arrested on that very same day. He happened to have known my uncle from the party activities.
At about four o'clock in the morning, we woke up from the sound of someone knocking on the front door. Somebody opened the door, then it was quiet, knocking on the door of our neighbor, quiet again. Aunt Dina went to the kitchen. She returned and said that there was a search at her neighbor's house and so I had to get dressed quickly and get out of the building. I managed to escape unnoticed.
My father was a foreman at the buttery and I went to work there as an accounting clerk. It was a dull and boring job.
All of a sudden the director of the plant offered me the position of a secretary and cashier at the plant.
All of a sudden the director of the plant offered me the position of a secretary and cashier at the plant.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Then January 1938 came. Stalin's words, 'A son is not responsible for his father', echoed all over the country. [Editor's note: the strategy, which one might call 'two steps forward, one step back,' allowed Stalin to put the blame for the 'excesses' on low-ranking officials and to portray himself as a savior after the completion of large-scale systematic deportations of entire families.] It meant that a father could be bad or good, but the ideal of a son was Pavlik Morozov [22]; and family relations were taken up by the priority ties 'an individual- a state.' However, I focused on the formula and in late January I wrote Stalin a letter with the description of what had happened to me.
Time passed, but there was no response and I was losing hope to ever get any, when all of a sudden I received a letter from Stalin's reception! 'The Poltava regional party committee is authorized to review your case.' In early August, I was invited to a sitting of the bureau of the regional party committee. On the evening after the meeting, I was already at the hostel of the technical school that had recently ousted me and got my Komsomol membership card returned to me. One year of my student's life was lost, and my co-students had already graduated, but I felt like having my wings back. I was consoled by having a letter from the reception of Stalin!
Time passed, but there was no response and I was losing hope to ever get any, when all of a sudden I received a letter from Stalin's reception! 'The Poltava regional party committee is authorized to review your case.' In early August, I was invited to a sitting of the bureau of the regional party committee. On the evening after the meeting, I was already at the hostel of the technical school that had recently ousted me and got my Komsomol membership card returned to me. One year of my student's life was lost, and my co-students had already graduated, but I felt like having my wings back. I was consoled by having a letter from the reception of Stalin!
,
1938
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However, on 1st September, the director of the school refused to give me permission to attend classes or talk to me. And again I got salutary advice, a school teacher advised me to address the People's Commissar of Transportation Lines called Kaganovich [23] directly. I sent him a telegram where I informed him on the cancellation of the false conviction in cooperation with the 'enemy of the people,' resumption of my Komsomol membership and non-responsiveness of the director of the school. My family was terribly worried for a few days.
We didn't know what was going to happen and what we were to do, until I got a telegram from Poltava, 'Arrive urgently. Your school admission has been restored.' So it seemed everything was going to be fine. The Soviet society continued to be filled with suspicions and prejudices. Some students watched me openly and never missed a chance to humiliate me and remind me of what had happened before. Nobody showed any sign of sympathy, but I managed to graduate from my school successfully.
We didn't know what was going to happen and what we were to do, until I got a telegram from Poltava, 'Arrive urgently. Your school admission has been restored.' So it seemed everything was going to be fine. The Soviet society continued to be filled with suspicions and prejudices. Some students watched me openly and never missed a chance to humiliate me and remind me of what had happened before. Nobody showed any sign of sympathy, but I managed to graduate from my school successfully.
In August 1939, after graduating from the Poltava Railroad Technical School, I worked as a foreman of a mobile excavator column on the construction of the Magnitogorsk-Karaganda [1,400-2,400 km east of Moscow] railroad. I requested employment on railroad construction sites involving the use of new equipment i.e. excavators, trailer graders, dump trucks, tracklayers, etc.
One month later I went to serve in the army. Since October 1939 I served in a railroad unit in the Far East near Murmansk [about 2,000 km from Moscow]. Later, I relocated to an infantry school of the Ural Military Regiment. At the age of 20 I was a cadet and a company first sergeant.
My grandparents tried to leave the colony on a wagon later, but the Germans captured them and they were forced to move back.
Fascist troops invaded the village without a single shot in late August 1941. On 2nd September they shot old people, children and ill people, 257 in total. My grandparents, Aunt Haya, Sura, Iosif's wife, Uncle Velvl, and my 15-year-old cousin sister Basia, all perished. They were killed in the German cemetery near a ravine.
My grandmother couldn't walk and was taken there on a wagon. Basia managed to escape and hide in a haystack, but the German soldiers found and killed her. What makes me particularly angry is that the shooting was done by local German residents. I only got to know that my dear ones had perished after the war, though I knew that the Germans were killing Jews during the war.
Fascist troops invaded the village without a single shot in late August 1941. On 2nd September they shot old people, children and ill people, 257 in total. My grandparents, Aunt Haya, Sura, Iosif's wife, Uncle Velvl, and my 15-year-old cousin sister Basia, all perished. They were killed in the German cemetery near a ravine.
My grandmother couldn't walk and was taken there on a wagon. Basia managed to escape and hide in a haystack, but the German soldiers found and killed her. What makes me particularly angry is that the shooting was done by local German residents. I only got to know that my dear ones had perished after the war, though I knew that the Germans were killing Jews during the war.