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In 1942 the military recruitment office sent me to the school of communications operators. I studied there six weeks and then was sent to the front. We went to the front in a wooden railcar without seats. I remember that Jews were the subject of discussions on the train. One could believe that we were going to struggle against Jews rather than Germans. They were saying that Jews liked trading but not fighting at the front. They spoke rough Russian curse language. I kept silent. It was impossible to enter in a dispute with a hundred of armed anti-Semites. They took no notice of me. It probably didn’t even occur to them that there might be a Jew on this train [these soldiers sincerely believed that Jews stayed in the rear rather than going to the war. By the way, this point of view was one of the reasons that caused an outburst of the postwar outburst of anti-Semitism in the USSR. Many people were of this same opinion; they didn’t know the real situation. Very few people knew about the Holocaust before 1990s. This was thoroughly concealed by the authoritie] or they would have torn me apart. There was all hatred in their words. I was communications operator on the front. I took part in the battle near Rzhev. I was crawling on the battlefield connecting the torn wires. I didn’t have any sleep in days. In 1943 I was slightly wounded on my arm and had to go to hospital. I had a surgery, but in a day I was feeling quite normal sitting in my ward. In few days the hospital food storage supervisor addressed me offering a job at the hospital canteen. I was to keep records of food products. I accepted this job. We went to the canteen and he went into the office of manager of this canteen. I heard ‘Ah, you damned anti-Semite!” It turned out that the manager didn’t want to employ a Jew. But the food storage supervisor insisted that I was accepted. I worked in that hospital until the end of the war. We were following the front line across the whole country. The food storage supervisor became a very good friend of mine. We wrote letters to each other after the war. He fell ill and died in the late 1940s. I still have very warm memories of him and I’m grateful for he had done. People treated me nicely in the hospital. They respected that I didn’t take advantage of my position. I never stole anything. People trusted me. Once a general started a case in court, but he wasn’t a success. He addressed me and we developed appropriate legal documents. He won the case and sent me his thanks. I corresponded with my mother and sisters from Alma-Ata all this time. I knew their situation and sent them parcels with food.
Period
Interview
Abram Karmazin