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In our military unit we lived in barracks, 4 tenants in a cabin, with a shower and toilet facility on a floor for 30 tenants, but there was always hot water and there was heating. My other 3 tenants were Russian officers. I got along well with them. Before 1942 we received more or less sufficient food, but then it got worse. In spring 1942 we only got some kind of soup with just one spoon of cereal with goosefoot or dandelion herbs. Cadets got swollen from hunger. In spring 1942 we even failed to form a unit to send it to the front since our cadets couldn’t move from hunger and exhaustion. Medical commission selected the most exhausted cadets and sent them to a camp where they got better food. I wanted to be included in that group, but I probably didn’t look that bad. In late 1942 I was assigned to be chief of radio station in an aerodrome in the rear of the 4th Ukrainian Front. Our unit was based near Kherson and Nikolaev in the south of Ukraine. We were following our troops advancing to the west. We lodged in barracks or dugout huts in the woods. We got along well and supported each other. We got sufficient food especially that every day our fellow comrades perished and we shared their food. Every day we received 100 grams of alcohol and we drank them in commemoration of those that perished. Our fellow comrades perished during their combat flights or during frequent air raids. In late 1943 some female radio operators arrived at our unit. I must say we cared about them. I cannot remember that they got hurt. Even if such things happened the girls’ fellow comrades taught abusers how to behave.
I joined Komsomol[15] in the army and prepared my application to the Party for submittal. However, they didn’t admit my application since I was an ‘untrustworthy element’ from the point of view of my commandment. It was a standard attitude to residents of the areas that were recently annexed to the USSR. Several times my fellow comrades submitted requests for my promotion, but again they refused for this same reason.
My fellow comrades were of different nationalities. We got along very well. Nobody cared about nationality issues. People were valued for their human merits. There were demonstrations of open anti-Semitism, however. There was a Jewish pilot in our military unit. He was a brave warrior awarded with medals and orders. Once an officer from another train abused him at a railway station. He called him ‘zhyd’ and said that he had bought medals and orders. They began fighting. Our guys came to his defense and another party also fought on the offender’s side. Chief of the station had to give a signal for the trains to move before time to stop this fight. I had a friend, commander of a radio operator platoon. He was Loginov, a Russian officer. We shared one earth house for almost a year when he said once that the only merit of Hitler was extermination of Jews. Then I told him that I was a Jew. He was stunned and said ‘I can’t believe it. But you are a decent man!’ I don’t think he changed his attitude towards Jews after our conversation, but he agreed that they [Jews] had done no harm to him. He didn’t even meet many of them in his provincial town. How did he come to saying so? I don’t have the slightest idea. It was a hard moment for me. We were friends no longer, but I had to deal with Loginov in service.
I joined Komsomol[15] in the army and prepared my application to the Party for submittal. However, they didn’t admit my application since I was an ‘untrustworthy element’ from the point of view of my commandment. It was a standard attitude to residents of the areas that were recently annexed to the USSR. Several times my fellow comrades submitted requests for my promotion, but again they refused for this same reason.
My fellow comrades were of different nationalities. We got along very well. Nobody cared about nationality issues. People were valued for their human merits. There were demonstrations of open anti-Semitism, however. There was a Jewish pilot in our military unit. He was a brave warrior awarded with medals and orders. Once an officer from another train abused him at a railway station. He called him ‘zhyd’ and said that he had bought medals and orders. They began fighting. Our guys came to his defense and another party also fought on the offender’s side. Chief of the station had to give a signal for the trains to move before time to stop this fight. I had a friend, commander of a radio operator platoon. He was Loginov, a Russian officer. We shared one earth house for almost a year when he said once that the only merit of Hitler was extermination of Jews. Then I told him that I was a Jew. He was stunned and said ‘I can’t believe it. But you are a decent man!’ I don’t think he changed his attitude towards Jews after our conversation, but he agreed that they [Jews] had done no harm to him. He didn’t even meet many of them in his provincial town. How did he come to saying so? I don’t have the slightest idea. It was a hard moment for me. We were friends no longer, but I had to deal with Loginov in service.
Period
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Israel Gliazer