Tag #156049 - Interview #94776 (Grigoriy Stelmakh)

My father reached Berlin. After the victory he got in a car accident and stayed in hospital Sharita in Berlin for almost a year. Then my father resigned from the army, but was assigned to the Soviet Military Administration of the town. In 1947 he came to take us to Berlin. We were taken to a wonderful apartment of 8 rooms. I don’t know what position my father had, but we had a nice life. We had a housemaid and food supplies. We had many clothes. We went to and from school by car. The school had a nice pioneer camp on the Baltic Sea. We had our hair cut short and had forelocks and Germans recognized us immediately. They were patient about our fooling around. They didn’t complain and were afraid of our administration. We were up to mischief and became insolent. We could, for example, squeeze somebody’s finger with a door, when we didn’t like the person who was a ‘fascist’ in our opinion. Once we went to an amusement park and when we came to swing attractions where there was a line, people stepped aside seeing us. Once we did something that still makes me feel ashamed. My friend Vitia Kukin and I refused to go home from school by car. We wanted a motor cycle. They sent a motor cycle for us. I remember that this motor cycle broke and the motorcyclist dropped by a garage. While waiting for him we threw stones on car doors: there were doors drying in the yard. There were at least twenty of them and we competed who broke more window glass. German workers were watching us, but nobody interfered. In the evening my father came home as black as thunder. He had a discussion with me. Of course, I was trying to blame my friend and he was trying to make me guilty. My father didn’t speak to me for a long time. My father told us every evening coming to the children’s room: ‘remember that whoever asks you, you must say that it is better in the Soviet Union’. I was 9 years old and I kept thinking: ‘How come? There are so many toys and beautiful things here. There are cakes and sausages here and there it is devastation and hunger. How come better?’ But I did tell everybody that it was better at our home.