When the war with Germany began, I worked as the head of the science and technology department of the Moscow Municipal House of Pioneers. I learned about the outbreak of the war from a radio broadcast of the speech by V. М. Molotov [14]. ‘Hitlerite Germany has unilaterally broken the agreement with the Soviet Union, and without a declaration of war has started military aggression on a broad front line from the southern to the northern part of our boundary line.’
I hurried to work and when the entire collective had gathered we had a meeting. I warned the director that I was prepared to apply as a volunteer to the army. After the meeting we dismissed all the kids, and on the next working day, which was Tuesday, I came to work with a filled in enlistment form and handed it over to the secretary of the party organization. She said, ‘I did not expect that you would be the first.’ I was not subject to the draft. I still hold a passport from that period, which states, ‘Not subject to the draft, has not undergone any military training,’ right under my surname. It was because I was born with a very serious disease, I had heart problems.
I learned that all 27 men, who worked in our department, had filled out similar forms, and we were enlisted in a squad of the National Guard. On July 2 I received a message saying that I should go to school no. 313 [15], close to our House of Pioneers. I came with an ordinary sack, because I did not have any military kit-bag. Just a sack, with things packed by my wife. We were lodged in that school, desks were removed and beds installed, and some guys were sleeping on the floor.
Our military training began. We were endlessly marching in the schoolyard, engaged in square-bashing. We spent the nights there, too, using our sacks as pillows. On July 9 we were raised by an alarm, when we were already asleep, given our military uniforms and ordered to fall in. We went out, we were counted, because some people had earlier received a compensatory holiday to visit relatives. Almost all 27 men were there. A truck drove into the yard, we got in, not knowing where we were going. On the outskirts of Moscow we got off and went to a bathhouse, washed ourselves, changed our clothes into military uniforms, returned to school and put all our civilian clothes and shoes into kit-bags.
The next day our column was bombed. We went by truck to Bryansk. On the way we passed through Kulikovo Field. I remember that the Germans had just bombed the road ahead of us. Then we rode another 150-180 kilometers by bus. We stopped close to the front and walked in a column further on. On the road we were given rifles and 5 cartridges each and were told that it was ‘for the time being.’ This ‘for the time being’ lasted for quite a long while. We had already reached the front line, and we still had only 5 cartridges per person. And there was a strict routine: a daily check-up of the state of the ammunition. And every morning everyone had to show his 5 cartridges and the rifle, and the first sergeant went around and inspected.
I remember well that it was the village of Mitino, 7 kilometers from the town of Gzhatsk [subsequently named after the first cosmonaut Gagarin], where we first met the Germans. We entered Mitino late at night. When we approached, the Germans opened fire. I did not see or hear if anyone was wounded or cried out. The day before, we were sent a commander for the platoon, a young boy, in a clean and completely new uniform; he didn’t even have a revolver, not even those 5 cartridges or a rifle. So he broke a branch from a tree as a weapon. This first skirmish I remember very well. We spent two hours there. I remember a haystack burning. Afterwards we retreated for several days. We retreated trying to hold out. The Germans approached, firing in a disorderly manner.
We fell back to the Moscow region. We entered Volokolamsk, a big regional center in the west of this region, under bombardment. At that moment a bread truck came into town. We approached it: ‘Give us some bread.’ ‘No.’ One of our soldiers jumped into the truck without asking, grabbed a loaf of bread, and was hit by a bottle. He literally howled and threw away the loaf. They had bread, but they wouldn’t give us any, they were to deliver it to their own unit.
So we drew off to Moscow, until the well-known order was issued: ‘Not a single step back. Moscow is behind us.’
I found two of my friends at the station of Golitsyno, a railroad station to the west of Moscow. The forces were retreating to the east to Moscow. One of them was Farid Yarullin, the Tatar composer, known throughout the Soviet Union as the author of the ballet ‘Shurale.’ [Editor’s note: Born in 1914, Yarullin was killed in action in 1943.]
During one of the numerous shelling, which we suffered, I was hit by several bullets, luckily my jacket was unbuttoned, and the bullets went through it, not hitting my three hand grenades. The thing is that while we were retreating, if I found rifle cartridges or grenades, I picked them up. I had 24 cartridges in my pockets. I thought that there was no point in surrendering, that if I was captured by the Germans, they would immediately recognize a Jew, and would inevitably shoot me, so I would rather fight back. And I filled two pockets with ammunition.
One bullet entered my leg. I was thinking to myself, ‘What shall I do, I am bleeding, there are a lot of blood vessels here.’ As I had puttees on my feet, they bothered me a lot. And Yarullin was nearby, and I told him, ‘Take this just in case.’ I gave him one grenade. I went on, walking was difficult, I clamped the wound and felt blood. But I could still walk. I went in the opposite direction and turned to that section of the woods, which we had recently left. I went out to the edge of the forest, and, without meeting anybody, reached our unit and got into the medical and sanitary battalion.
The wound healed, but I developed boils on both legs, first on the lower legs, but then higher and higher until my entire legs were covered with abscesses all over. Probably, the reason was that I had to sleep on bare ground for many nights; in fact we only had light jackets, and there weren’t even overcoats. The doctor came, and I asked, ‘What shall I do?’ ‘And what can one do? In such cases it is necessary to eat garlic, and to apply special ointment, and I have no ointments with me.’ So the female doctor replied, which she accompanied with helpless shrugs. When I came to the hospital for bandaging, they asked, ‘What happened to you?’ and I said, ‘It is what you earn at the front nowadays.’ It would have helped if they had anointed the skin with something, but there were no liniments available in the hospital. That is why I was kept in the hospital for a long time.
This was at the beginning of 1942. When I was sent to the group of recovering patients, I was appointed commander of a unit of hospital attendants. And we, though it was hard, carried the wounded, took them from the trains that came from the front, helped them to get into buses and streetcars. Streetcars worked round the clock. It was in Moscow; I was assigned there. We went at nights, mainly to the Kazan passenger depot, sometimes to the Leningrad terminal. We were shelled several times.
By that time I was already a sergeant. We were put on trains and we went to the front. It was the spring of 1942, the snow had already started to melt. My legs had almost healed, but the scabs remained. So I found myself in the 22nd shooting division, then the 82nd Red Banner Division. It fought in the central front, and I spent most of the war in this area, the Smolensk region. We liberated the Smolensk region. In September we liberated Smolensk. I remember very clearly how we passed through Smolensk at night. Explosions everywhere. The Germans mined many buildings in Smolensk and while we were going through Smolensk, we heard endless explosions.
We moved farther and farther to the west. We reached Belarus. Our division was concentrated in the so-called Red Pine Forest. Its southern part was our last outpost to advance to Belarus. It was already the end of September. Our regiment advanced even earlier, approaching the spot where Yarullin was later wounded. The relief was as follows: a narrow strip of land extended 17-20 kilometers, the Dnieper River flowing west from the left, and some huge marshes on the right.
Once a commander called me, and ordered me to take documents to the opposite side of the Dnieper River, and I went at night on a ferry, accompanied by our signalman. This ferry consisted of 4-5 logs up against each other. You sat on top squatting, or with your legs down in the water so that the Germans, whose planes flew around and regularly bombed, could not see us. We crossed the river, I received a folder with papers for the chief of staff and we needed to go back. The signalman, who was with me, remained on the other side. And I had to get back alone. He had canvas mittens, and I had none.
I should have asked the commander to send somebody else with me, but I didn’t. I went there and had to ferry over by myself. In the middle of the river I had a lot of trouble throwing the braid through the connected ropes. And the ropes were not only tied together, but for strength they were wrapped round in several places with a telephone cable, and the loose ends stuck out everywhere. I could not do the job at all, my legs almost froze in the water. I vaguely remember how I reached the bank.
When I was on the bank, I could hardly make out what the guards were asking me about. I had no right to give the documents to anyone except for the chief of staff. I asked, ‘Where is Major this and that?’ ‘He is here in the blindage [ dugout] you can see him.’ They showed me to the blindage, and suddenly everyone shouted, ‘Air, air!’ I was on my way to this blindage where the chief of reconnaissance and the chief of staff were sitting. Everyone hails me, ‘Down! Down!’ It was an open spot. I came back.
Near the crossing someone had started to dig a trench, but then there was nobody there, only a spade. I started to dig a hole, when a raid began. I am standing near this pit and see an airplane making a circle and starting to dive. While it’s diving, I am looking at it, and it turns directly to where I am. And suddenly I see a black pinpoint falling from it, and I realize it is a bomb, and it flies at me. I jumped in the pit.
This was my second wound, and there were more contusions later. We failed to break through the German defense then, they held onto that spot for a few more months. We burst through in another direction only the following year, the Germans had been compelled to retreat, threatened by encirclement.
Our division was awarded the order of Kutuzov, it is normally an order given to military leaders, military units are rarely granted this award. We tore off of the enemy defenses and went to the rear for reinforcements, and fresh forces entered in our stead. Then we broke through in another location. We liberated the Belovezhskaya Puscha [also known as Bialowieza Forest, a national park in Belarus and Poland, a UNESCO World Heritage Site]. I walked through it two times, a very good place, and I saw live bisons. There is a museum in Belovezhskaya Puscha, which I visited. The Germans did not touch it.
I went to Nicholas II’s small hunting lodge, I was even in his apartments, I passed through all the rooms of this two-storied building. On the second floor were the apartments of the tsar and his court, and the servants lived downstairs. When I was on the second floor, one of the attendants told me, ‘These are Nicholas’s private rooms, and this is his lavatory.’ Upon which I said, ‘I will take advantage of this lavatory.’ And I used that imperial lavatory.
Let me also tell you about my correspondence with the writer Ilya Ehrenburg [16]. For some time at the front I was in charge of informing soldiers of political issues. Many of my brothers-in-arms liked bright journalistic articles, including those by Erenburg. They frequently asked me to re-read them, so once I decided to write to the well-known author. Imagine my surprise when on June 7, 1943 the field post-office brought me an answer from the writer and his book ‘Exasperation’ with a dedicative inscription. Needless to say, the letter and the book became very popular among our scouts.
We fought both at the Baltic front, and at the First Belarus front. We were endlessly transferred from place to place, without a chance for a rest. After a week or two for reinforcements, we were again ordered to tear at the enemy defense. At the end of the war we entered Berlin. We finished the war on the Elba, where we met American troops. I finished the war as a sergeant. In 1944, at the front, I joined the Communist Party. I was demobilized in November 1945.
I hurried to work and when the entire collective had gathered we had a meeting. I warned the director that I was prepared to apply as a volunteer to the army. After the meeting we dismissed all the kids, and on the next working day, which was Tuesday, I came to work with a filled in enlistment form and handed it over to the secretary of the party organization. She said, ‘I did not expect that you would be the first.’ I was not subject to the draft. I still hold a passport from that period, which states, ‘Not subject to the draft, has not undergone any military training,’ right under my surname. It was because I was born with a very serious disease, I had heart problems.
I learned that all 27 men, who worked in our department, had filled out similar forms, and we were enlisted in a squad of the National Guard. On July 2 I received a message saying that I should go to school no. 313 [15], close to our House of Pioneers. I came with an ordinary sack, because I did not have any military kit-bag. Just a sack, with things packed by my wife. We were lodged in that school, desks were removed and beds installed, and some guys were sleeping on the floor.
Our military training began. We were endlessly marching in the schoolyard, engaged in square-bashing. We spent the nights there, too, using our sacks as pillows. On July 9 we were raised by an alarm, when we were already asleep, given our military uniforms and ordered to fall in. We went out, we were counted, because some people had earlier received a compensatory holiday to visit relatives. Almost all 27 men were there. A truck drove into the yard, we got in, not knowing where we were going. On the outskirts of Moscow we got off and went to a bathhouse, washed ourselves, changed our clothes into military uniforms, returned to school and put all our civilian clothes and shoes into kit-bags.
The next day our column was bombed. We went by truck to Bryansk. On the way we passed through Kulikovo Field. I remember that the Germans had just bombed the road ahead of us. Then we rode another 150-180 kilometers by bus. We stopped close to the front and walked in a column further on. On the road we were given rifles and 5 cartridges each and were told that it was ‘for the time being.’ This ‘for the time being’ lasted for quite a long while. We had already reached the front line, and we still had only 5 cartridges per person. And there was a strict routine: a daily check-up of the state of the ammunition. And every morning everyone had to show his 5 cartridges and the rifle, and the first sergeant went around and inspected.
I remember well that it was the village of Mitino, 7 kilometers from the town of Gzhatsk [subsequently named after the first cosmonaut Gagarin], where we first met the Germans. We entered Mitino late at night. When we approached, the Germans opened fire. I did not see or hear if anyone was wounded or cried out. The day before, we were sent a commander for the platoon, a young boy, in a clean and completely new uniform; he didn’t even have a revolver, not even those 5 cartridges or a rifle. So he broke a branch from a tree as a weapon. This first skirmish I remember very well. We spent two hours there. I remember a haystack burning. Afterwards we retreated for several days. We retreated trying to hold out. The Germans approached, firing in a disorderly manner.
We fell back to the Moscow region. We entered Volokolamsk, a big regional center in the west of this region, under bombardment. At that moment a bread truck came into town. We approached it: ‘Give us some bread.’ ‘No.’ One of our soldiers jumped into the truck without asking, grabbed a loaf of bread, and was hit by a bottle. He literally howled and threw away the loaf. They had bread, but they wouldn’t give us any, they were to deliver it to their own unit.
So we drew off to Moscow, until the well-known order was issued: ‘Not a single step back. Moscow is behind us.’
I found two of my friends at the station of Golitsyno, a railroad station to the west of Moscow. The forces were retreating to the east to Moscow. One of them was Farid Yarullin, the Tatar composer, known throughout the Soviet Union as the author of the ballet ‘Shurale.’ [Editor’s note: Born in 1914, Yarullin was killed in action in 1943.]
During one of the numerous shelling, which we suffered, I was hit by several bullets, luckily my jacket was unbuttoned, and the bullets went through it, not hitting my three hand grenades. The thing is that while we were retreating, if I found rifle cartridges or grenades, I picked them up. I had 24 cartridges in my pockets. I thought that there was no point in surrendering, that if I was captured by the Germans, they would immediately recognize a Jew, and would inevitably shoot me, so I would rather fight back. And I filled two pockets with ammunition.
One bullet entered my leg. I was thinking to myself, ‘What shall I do, I am bleeding, there are a lot of blood vessels here.’ As I had puttees on my feet, they bothered me a lot. And Yarullin was nearby, and I told him, ‘Take this just in case.’ I gave him one grenade. I went on, walking was difficult, I clamped the wound and felt blood. But I could still walk. I went in the opposite direction and turned to that section of the woods, which we had recently left. I went out to the edge of the forest, and, without meeting anybody, reached our unit and got into the medical and sanitary battalion.
The wound healed, but I developed boils on both legs, first on the lower legs, but then higher and higher until my entire legs were covered with abscesses all over. Probably, the reason was that I had to sleep on bare ground for many nights; in fact we only had light jackets, and there weren’t even overcoats. The doctor came, and I asked, ‘What shall I do?’ ‘And what can one do? In such cases it is necessary to eat garlic, and to apply special ointment, and I have no ointments with me.’ So the female doctor replied, which she accompanied with helpless shrugs. When I came to the hospital for bandaging, they asked, ‘What happened to you?’ and I said, ‘It is what you earn at the front nowadays.’ It would have helped if they had anointed the skin with something, but there were no liniments available in the hospital. That is why I was kept in the hospital for a long time.
This was at the beginning of 1942. When I was sent to the group of recovering patients, I was appointed commander of a unit of hospital attendants. And we, though it was hard, carried the wounded, took them from the trains that came from the front, helped them to get into buses and streetcars. Streetcars worked round the clock. It was in Moscow; I was assigned there. We went at nights, mainly to the Kazan passenger depot, sometimes to the Leningrad terminal. We were shelled several times.
By that time I was already a sergeant. We were put on trains and we went to the front. It was the spring of 1942, the snow had already started to melt. My legs had almost healed, but the scabs remained. So I found myself in the 22nd shooting division, then the 82nd Red Banner Division. It fought in the central front, and I spent most of the war in this area, the Smolensk region. We liberated the Smolensk region. In September we liberated Smolensk. I remember very clearly how we passed through Smolensk at night. Explosions everywhere. The Germans mined many buildings in Smolensk and while we were going through Smolensk, we heard endless explosions.
We moved farther and farther to the west. We reached Belarus. Our division was concentrated in the so-called Red Pine Forest. Its southern part was our last outpost to advance to Belarus. It was already the end of September. Our regiment advanced even earlier, approaching the spot where Yarullin was later wounded. The relief was as follows: a narrow strip of land extended 17-20 kilometers, the Dnieper River flowing west from the left, and some huge marshes on the right.
Once a commander called me, and ordered me to take documents to the opposite side of the Dnieper River, and I went at night on a ferry, accompanied by our signalman. This ferry consisted of 4-5 logs up against each other. You sat on top squatting, or with your legs down in the water so that the Germans, whose planes flew around and regularly bombed, could not see us. We crossed the river, I received a folder with papers for the chief of staff and we needed to go back. The signalman, who was with me, remained on the other side. And I had to get back alone. He had canvas mittens, and I had none.
I should have asked the commander to send somebody else with me, but I didn’t. I went there and had to ferry over by myself. In the middle of the river I had a lot of trouble throwing the braid through the connected ropes. And the ropes were not only tied together, but for strength they were wrapped round in several places with a telephone cable, and the loose ends stuck out everywhere. I could not do the job at all, my legs almost froze in the water. I vaguely remember how I reached the bank.
When I was on the bank, I could hardly make out what the guards were asking me about. I had no right to give the documents to anyone except for the chief of staff. I asked, ‘Where is Major this and that?’ ‘He is here in the blindage [ dugout] you can see him.’ They showed me to the blindage, and suddenly everyone shouted, ‘Air, air!’ I was on my way to this blindage where the chief of reconnaissance and the chief of staff were sitting. Everyone hails me, ‘Down! Down!’ It was an open spot. I came back.
Near the crossing someone had started to dig a trench, but then there was nobody there, only a spade. I started to dig a hole, when a raid began. I am standing near this pit and see an airplane making a circle and starting to dive. While it’s diving, I am looking at it, and it turns directly to where I am. And suddenly I see a black pinpoint falling from it, and I realize it is a bomb, and it flies at me. I jumped in the pit.
This was my second wound, and there were more contusions later. We failed to break through the German defense then, they held onto that spot for a few more months. We burst through in another direction only the following year, the Germans had been compelled to retreat, threatened by encirclement.
Our division was awarded the order of Kutuzov, it is normally an order given to military leaders, military units are rarely granted this award. We tore off of the enemy defenses and went to the rear for reinforcements, and fresh forces entered in our stead. Then we broke through in another location. We liberated the Belovezhskaya Puscha [also known as Bialowieza Forest, a national park in Belarus and Poland, a UNESCO World Heritage Site]. I walked through it two times, a very good place, and I saw live bisons. There is a museum in Belovezhskaya Puscha, which I visited. The Germans did not touch it.
I went to Nicholas II’s small hunting lodge, I was even in his apartments, I passed through all the rooms of this two-storied building. On the second floor were the apartments of the tsar and his court, and the servants lived downstairs. When I was on the second floor, one of the attendants told me, ‘These are Nicholas’s private rooms, and this is his lavatory.’ Upon which I said, ‘I will take advantage of this lavatory.’ And I used that imperial lavatory.
Let me also tell you about my correspondence with the writer Ilya Ehrenburg [16]. For some time at the front I was in charge of informing soldiers of political issues. Many of my brothers-in-arms liked bright journalistic articles, including those by Erenburg. They frequently asked me to re-read them, so once I decided to write to the well-known author. Imagine my surprise when on June 7, 1943 the field post-office brought me an answer from the writer and his book ‘Exasperation’ with a dedicative inscription. Needless to say, the letter and the book became very popular among our scouts.
We fought both at the Baltic front, and at the First Belarus front. We were endlessly transferred from place to place, without a chance for a rest. After a week or two for reinforcements, we were again ordered to tear at the enemy defense. At the end of the war we entered Berlin. We finished the war on the Elba, where we met American troops. I finished the war as a sergeant. In 1944, at the front, I joined the Communist Party. I was demobilized in November 1945.
,
During WW2
See text in interview