I was 5 years old when the war began. I remember that my father and I were planning to go for a walk on the slopes of the Dnepr River that Sunday, but in the morning he told me that it was cancelled. I burst into tears, because I was so unhappy about it. My mother cried, too, and I thought that she was disappointed by not going to the park. Only later did I understand that she was crying because of the war.
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fira shwartz
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We only have a death certificate stating that he died at the front near Leningrad in 1942 at the age of 41.
He came from a poor family with many children.
His parents were religious and observed all Jewish traditions.
My grandfather studied at cheder and at 10 he became an apprentice to a glasscutter.
He worked as a glasscutter in Gornostaypol for his whole life. He owned a small shop where he received and carried out orders.
My grandfather was married twice. He had two sons from his first marriage: Samuel, born in 1892 and Yankel, born in 1897. My grandfather's first wife died shortly after Yankel was born. About a year after his wife's death my grandfather remarried. His second wife, Esther, was ten years younger than my grandfather.
Vladimir Tarskiy
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Once, when we were deployed near the Lithuanian-German border, Captain Chemeris called for me. He always had unusual ideas. This time he ordered me to go to the rear of the Germans and hide in a haystack unnoticed by the Germans. When the Germans started on their tank attack, we were to set all haystacks on fire and return to our unit. In this way the tanks were to be seen in the light of burning haystacks and we could shoot at them easily. My soldier and I looked at each other. We had no idea how we could manage this. Where would we go in the background of burning haystacks? However, this was an order and we went on. We discovered a spot in the lowland where there were no Germans and where we could crawl into their rear. We crawled to haystacks and stayed there overnight, but there was no attack that night. We stayed in those haystacks for another day till we could manage to go back to our positions in the dark. The commanding officer praised us.
Then fierce efforts to liquidate the Eastern-Prussian grouping were taken. Our brigade joined a tank army. We broke through the front line with the tanks. A tank is a noticeable target and we were to neutralize the weapon emplacement to enable the tanks to attack. For these actions and the storming attacks on two towns our army received appreciation of Stalin twice. There were fierce battles in this direction. We witnessed how General Cherniakhovskiy, Commander of the 3rd Belarusian Front, was lethally wounded in a small town cleared from the Germans who retreated into a small forest on a hill in the north. Thus the town was in their full view. Our attack was delayed. Cherniakhovskiy was a very energetic man, the youngest Commander of the Front. A column of vehicles with the Commander of the Front drove to the headquarters. The staff rushed outside, the Germans saw it and shot Cherniakhovskiy.
Marshal Vasilevskiy replaced him. He was chief of general staff before. We, soldiers, sensed the difference. Perhaps, German troops were exhausted from previous battles or Vasilevskiy was more skilled than the previous commander, but German troops began to fall apart. They were encircled and eliminated without significant losses or hysterical battles. The front promptly advanced to the Baltic Sea. The Eastern-Prussian grouping of Germans was cut into two parts.
I need to mention an episode that hasn’t been recorded in military history. Konigsberg [today Kaliningrad, Russia] was encircled twice. The first time, and we participated in it, was a breakthrough to Zalmanskiy peninsula. We advanced to the sea west of Konigsberg cutting it from Pilau where the Germans had several tank units. They attacked, captured many prisoners and came back to Konigsberg. I need to mention here that while our aviation bombed military facilities and utilities, the Americans and British raged on cluster bombings of the towns that were to belong to us after the war. They destroyed Dresden this way and bombed Konigsberg. We were in a town near Koningsberg before Germans repositioned themselves in Konigsberg. The allies didn’t drop bombs on this town and all German elite took shelter in it.
When we came into this town, there were civilians in it. We had never met any before. Peaceful citizens usually left the towns before we entered there, but here we broke into a living German organism. I didn’t care about women then. Besides, nobody raped my wife or killed my children, but there were older soldiers who had information that their wives had been raped by the Germans or their wives and children had been killed. They began to take revenge on German women. I don’t think there were more than 20 percent of the German women left who weren’t raped in this town. The soldiers destroyed and ruined everything. I saw them throwing down a grand piano listening to its clinking. It didn’t occur to them that it would be all ours in the end. They burned everything. They sensed the victory. If they had saved every house on our territory because it was ours, there, on the German land, they wreaked vengeance on Germans. ‘Let’s set this house on fire and I will get warm nearby.’
I remember our troops seizing a railway station where there were trains with valuables that Germans had taken to this station. There were a few railcars with Swiss watches. Our soldiers took five to ten watches each. I didn’t need a watch, so I took a box full of Zeiss binoculars and stereo tubes with periscope features. These were valuable trophies for my intelligence activities. While we were in this town, we didn’t know what was happening in the rear, and at this time Germans troops broke back to Konigsberg. We were ordered to move in the assigned direction, when we bumped into a commandant’s platoon. ‘Who are you?’. We began to explain that we were from the frontline observation point and that we had got the order to return to our unit. They took us to the commandant office to clarify the circumstances and put us into a cellar with cupboards full of delicious food. There was silver tableware on the table in the middle of the cellar. This had probably been a hotel or a café before.
We took to drinking and eating, when we heard some noise and cracking sounds upstairs. The door opened and our commanding officer and the commandant came in. He pretended to speak in a threatening voice ‘What are you doing here? Eating? The battery is fighting and you are fooling around here? Rush to the battery location!’ We were sorry to leave the spot, but moved to the position of the battery. By the way, we left there on time since the Germans went on their attack: their two groupings that we had split before united and they occupied Konigsberg and the town where we had stayed before.
There were many battles and attacks before we broke through to the sea and proceeded to Konigsberg and fought it back in April. For the attack on Konigsberg I was awarded the Order of the Red Star [22]. Then there was the Zalmanskiy peninsula and fortress Pilau. This was a historical fortress. There were huge marine cannons there. During our attack on Konigsberg we had an inconvenient position to support our infantry. We couldn’t see the positions of the enemy. Our commander ordered me to move onto the territory of the enemy and shoot air rockets in the direction of the positions that were to be destroyed. There was an artillery preparation and Germans were hiding away. I went on this task with my radio operator.
After fulfilling the task we hardly managed to escape from there. Later this radio operator perished. I usually went on my intelligence tasks with a radio operator. Three of my radio operators perished during the war. One was hit by a mine and smashed to pieces, there were no remains left to bury; another operator perished in the tank brigade near Pilau. This battle was called ‘Landing troops on armor’. I was sitting on the tank beside my radio operator to send messages about our whereabouts, when a shell exploded near us. He was killed and I just fell off and wasn’t even wounded. He was a skilled carpenter. When a soldier had been killed before, this man made him a coffin and a grave pillar with a star. He said back then, ‘Here we bury him while there will be nobody to make a decent burial for me’, and indeed it happened so. I put him aside, we threw stones over him, marked the spot on the map and moved on to Konigsberg.
I didn’t have any fear during the attack. I was young and had no children. Besides, I had been in the war for some time. I used to feel fear in Belarus and in Smolensk region during bombings and air raids, when we were defenseless. There were bombs falling on you and the soil hitting you from all around. It wasn’t just fear, it was the feeling of hopelessness, when you look for a hiding, but there is none. An attack is different. When I had been wounded in my hands I felt like running forward and tearing everything apart with my teeth, though I couldn’t even hold weapons. Any of us felt the same. We attacked shouting ‘Hurrah! There! Go forward!’, or advanced in silence. When we came closer when we could see Germans we began to shout to scare them and it worked: they left their trenches retreating – it was scaring when a brutal crowd moved on them. I joined the Party at the front. My father was a dedicated communist. I became a traitor of the motherland for struggling for communist ideas. I was absorbed in them. I joined the Party for ideal considerations.
They write in books that the infantry received vodka before attacks. We didn’t. In winter we got our daily rates regardless of attacks. We always had almost a canister of vodka in our intelligence platoon. Our sergeants were smart. They submitted requests for a ration for 50 people before a battle and after the battle there were about 20 survivors and there were always sufficient quantities of vodka available, but I don’t remember any drinking excesses. Well, we could drink 200 grams instead of the standard 100. There was the tradition to drop awards in the mess tin to ‘wash it out’.
The war in Eastern Prussia was over in April. We moved to the seashore. We stayed in a nice resort town: gorgeous houses, furnished and vacant. There were still battles near Berlin, but we liquidated all Germans in Eastern Prussia. I was under arrest on Victory Day [23]. We felt like the war was over for us, even though there were battles near Berlin or Vienna – this was far from where we were. It lasted about two days, when we were told that we were to attend mandatory political classes. In the morning my commanding officer gave me the schedule. We had been on battlefields, when now we had to attend a class with the title ‘Sleep and security’. My platoon and I went to a forest, took off our boots and leg wrappings and relaxed on the grass. However, we were intelligence troopers and we watched around to be on the alert.
On the 2nd day of training an inspector arrived from the general staff office. I noticed somebody approaching us, looked at my watch - it was the time for a three-minute break according to the schedule. I approached the inspector to explain that we were having a class and then there was a break. ‘Why don’t you order ‘Attention?’ I explained that this order wasn’t supposed to be given during a break and there was loud snoring around. Formally they couldn’t forward any charges, but they still gave me three days of house arrest. This happened on 8th to 9th May 1945. This was a punishment for officers. There were no guards, but I wasn’t supposed to leave the house.
I was taken to a nice house, my guys brought wine and food there. I was eating, when I heard shooting. There were even heavy cannons shooting and air rockets. My commander came running in. ‘Why are you sitting here? It’s the victory; that supersedes everything!’ I had a box full of German air rockets on my vehicle. I opened it to shoot color rockets. Basically, we celebrated the victory. A few days later we were ordered to relocate to Konigsberg for a parade of the garrison. Marshal Vasilevskiy received it. I was a leading singer in the regiment. We sang naughty songs: ‘when a gypsy man threw a gypsy woman onto a bench’. Our commanders and we liked these songs a lot. Then we were taken to Mongolia by train.
I didn’t know much about what the Germans did to Jews during the war. We knew that they exterminated prisoners, as a rule, and that there were death camps. In the army I had ‘Russian’ indicated in my documents since if God forbid I would have got in captivity, everybody knew it was sure death, but we didn’t know any details about the camps, crematoria, six million of killed old people and children. [Being a Jew meant being surely destined to death in case they were captured, and for a Russian there was still hope to survive.] Nationality didn’t matter in the army. Personal values mattered. There was a mixture of nationalities in our units. Everybody was aware I was a Jew wherever I served, but there was no segregation in this regard. It was only after the war that anti-Jewish attitude on a large scale appeared. There were many Jews at the front. All boys in our family who came of the recruitment age were at the front. My two cousin brothers perished: one near Stalingrad and the other one near Moscow.
I had several wounds, seven of them severe, during the war. I was wounded in my shoulder three times, one splinter wounded me in the abdominal cavity, I still have 20 splinters in my head, talocrural and in the shoulder, but in general, I was lucky and young, and the wounds healed fast. They healed and I still run around today or pretend to be running around.
I have orders and medals. I have 22 governmental awards in total. There were awards for combat actions. I received an Order of the Great Patriotic War, 2nd class after we repelled a tank attack in Eastern Prussia. [Editor’s note: established 20th May 1942. These orders were awarded to officers and men of the Soviet army, navy, and to partisans for personal courage and bravery as well as to those who contributed to the success of an operation. The 2nd class award was issued over 1,028,000 times.] I also have an Order of the Red Star [22] for Konigsberg and two medals for combat service. [Editor’s note: established 17th October 1938. This medal was awarded for a person’s contribution to the success of a combat mission and for the enhancement of the combat readiness of the military units. The silver medal with the inscription ‘For distinguished service in battle’ over a saber crossed with a rifle. The medal was awarded over 5,000,000 times.] And I have a Mongolian order for the defeat of Japanese troops.
The trip from Konigsberg across the victorious country to Japan took us a whole month. How we were met! There were flowers thrown at us, people were meeting their liberators at stations and in towns. They were happy that we had won and that this horrific war was over and brought flowers to meet the trains from the front, in which the military were returning home. We passed villages where there was nothing left and they were throwing us carrots. Tears filled our eyes: people didn’t have anything, but shared the last things they had with us. In Darasun [about 4,500 km east of Moscow] we got off and walked across Buriatia and Mongolia to Choybalsan [about 5,000 km east of Moscow]. We encamped in Mongolia. There was general staff of the Zabaikalskiy front. We were told lies during our trip. We were told that we were taken for reformation, and that we needed to take everything we could from Prussia since at the place we were heading to we were to dig earth huts. We loaded wood, a grand piano and even vehicles; everything we could. We didn’t know where we were going.
Before our departure a high official from the political department started his fable about correspondence with relatives. I wrote my mother every day from the front and the field mail operated well, but this queer man told us to not drop our letters in mail boxes at stations, but hand them to field mail reps.
Our commanding officer didn’t want us to write about our destination. My mother all of a sudden received my letter from Konigsberg saying that I was alive and healthy and would come home soon, while she hadn’t received a letter from me in three months. No letters that we took to the field mail office had been sent. Later censors thoroughly checked my letters from Choybalsan crossing out any mention of my whereabouts. However, knowing the Russian characters, I mentioned the name of the town five to six times in a letter. They crossed it out at the beginning and at the end of the letter, but missed the middle part. Our commanding officers got married during the trip. We had a grand piano with us and there were girls joining us on our way. We sang and danced. When we approached the border with Mongolia, we were told that only the military, but not their girlfriends would be allowed across the border. When we arrived in Mongolia, it turned out that Mongolians paid one horse for a binocular.
They could see a rider at quite a distance through the binocular. We didn’t need a horse, so we traded a binocular for money and bought alcohol. We were in Choybalsan for about a month. Troops for the attack on Japan were gathered there. We were in the reserve of the Zabaykalskiy Front and were waiting for the declaration of war. There was one army protecting our borders located in Mongolia throughout the war. When we arrived this army moved to the border, and we became a front line reserve. I admired the fortifications that the army made with a few stories, the passages in the sand, shelters, and everything was skillfully camouflaged.
The war with Japan [23] lasted three months. On 10th August Japan capitulated. On 3rd September I received a medal for the victory over Japan. We struggled against Japan on the territory of China. We actually had no combat actions. There was major Japanese resistance in the direction of Vladivistok where they held strong, but what could they do here with the open steppe and a tank army attacking? We had all cannons and heavy artillery with us in Eastern Mongolia. Of course, we had losses. There’s even a monument to those who perished in the Far East - there were about 15 of them. This happened at the time, when the 11th army alone lost over 10,000 during the attack on Konigsberg. The Japanese were very scared of getting captured by Mongolians. They were so wild. They didn’t give food to prisoners. And they threw a loop around their neck, riding their horses and the prisoners were running behind.
Our troops didn’t torture prisoners. There were Japanese officers supervising Japanese captives, and our troops even left their cold weapons with them. There were only our guards watching that our soldiers didn’t rob the Japanese captives. The Japanese had watches that became trophies. I knew that Americans had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, but this was somewhere far away from me. We actually didn’t read newspapers and had no idea about how deadly dangerous nuclear weapons were. There were no such celebrations like there had been after the victory over Germany. There was triumph that it was so easy to destroy a big empire. There was no immediate demobilization, but I got lucky. There was an order issued saying that military who had three or more wounds were subject to immediate demobilization, and I had seven.
Then fierce efforts to liquidate the Eastern-Prussian grouping were taken. Our brigade joined a tank army. We broke through the front line with the tanks. A tank is a noticeable target and we were to neutralize the weapon emplacement to enable the tanks to attack. For these actions and the storming attacks on two towns our army received appreciation of Stalin twice. There were fierce battles in this direction. We witnessed how General Cherniakhovskiy, Commander of the 3rd Belarusian Front, was lethally wounded in a small town cleared from the Germans who retreated into a small forest on a hill in the north. Thus the town was in their full view. Our attack was delayed. Cherniakhovskiy was a very energetic man, the youngest Commander of the Front. A column of vehicles with the Commander of the Front drove to the headquarters. The staff rushed outside, the Germans saw it and shot Cherniakhovskiy.
Marshal Vasilevskiy replaced him. He was chief of general staff before. We, soldiers, sensed the difference. Perhaps, German troops were exhausted from previous battles or Vasilevskiy was more skilled than the previous commander, but German troops began to fall apart. They were encircled and eliminated without significant losses or hysterical battles. The front promptly advanced to the Baltic Sea. The Eastern-Prussian grouping of Germans was cut into two parts.
I need to mention an episode that hasn’t been recorded in military history. Konigsberg [today Kaliningrad, Russia] was encircled twice. The first time, and we participated in it, was a breakthrough to Zalmanskiy peninsula. We advanced to the sea west of Konigsberg cutting it from Pilau where the Germans had several tank units. They attacked, captured many prisoners and came back to Konigsberg. I need to mention here that while our aviation bombed military facilities and utilities, the Americans and British raged on cluster bombings of the towns that were to belong to us after the war. They destroyed Dresden this way and bombed Konigsberg. We were in a town near Koningsberg before Germans repositioned themselves in Konigsberg. The allies didn’t drop bombs on this town and all German elite took shelter in it.
When we came into this town, there were civilians in it. We had never met any before. Peaceful citizens usually left the towns before we entered there, but here we broke into a living German organism. I didn’t care about women then. Besides, nobody raped my wife or killed my children, but there were older soldiers who had information that their wives had been raped by the Germans or their wives and children had been killed. They began to take revenge on German women. I don’t think there were more than 20 percent of the German women left who weren’t raped in this town. The soldiers destroyed and ruined everything. I saw them throwing down a grand piano listening to its clinking. It didn’t occur to them that it would be all ours in the end. They burned everything. They sensed the victory. If they had saved every house on our territory because it was ours, there, on the German land, they wreaked vengeance on Germans. ‘Let’s set this house on fire and I will get warm nearby.’
I remember our troops seizing a railway station where there were trains with valuables that Germans had taken to this station. There were a few railcars with Swiss watches. Our soldiers took five to ten watches each. I didn’t need a watch, so I took a box full of Zeiss binoculars and stereo tubes with periscope features. These were valuable trophies for my intelligence activities. While we were in this town, we didn’t know what was happening in the rear, and at this time Germans troops broke back to Konigsberg. We were ordered to move in the assigned direction, when we bumped into a commandant’s platoon. ‘Who are you?’. We began to explain that we were from the frontline observation point and that we had got the order to return to our unit. They took us to the commandant office to clarify the circumstances and put us into a cellar with cupboards full of delicious food. There was silver tableware on the table in the middle of the cellar. This had probably been a hotel or a café before.
We took to drinking and eating, when we heard some noise and cracking sounds upstairs. The door opened and our commanding officer and the commandant came in. He pretended to speak in a threatening voice ‘What are you doing here? Eating? The battery is fighting and you are fooling around here? Rush to the battery location!’ We were sorry to leave the spot, but moved to the position of the battery. By the way, we left there on time since the Germans went on their attack: their two groupings that we had split before united and they occupied Konigsberg and the town where we had stayed before.
There were many battles and attacks before we broke through to the sea and proceeded to Konigsberg and fought it back in April. For the attack on Konigsberg I was awarded the Order of the Red Star [22]. Then there was the Zalmanskiy peninsula and fortress Pilau. This was a historical fortress. There were huge marine cannons there. During our attack on Konigsberg we had an inconvenient position to support our infantry. We couldn’t see the positions of the enemy. Our commander ordered me to move onto the territory of the enemy and shoot air rockets in the direction of the positions that were to be destroyed. There was an artillery preparation and Germans were hiding away. I went on this task with my radio operator.
After fulfilling the task we hardly managed to escape from there. Later this radio operator perished. I usually went on my intelligence tasks with a radio operator. Three of my radio operators perished during the war. One was hit by a mine and smashed to pieces, there were no remains left to bury; another operator perished in the tank brigade near Pilau. This battle was called ‘Landing troops on armor’. I was sitting on the tank beside my radio operator to send messages about our whereabouts, when a shell exploded near us. He was killed and I just fell off and wasn’t even wounded. He was a skilled carpenter. When a soldier had been killed before, this man made him a coffin and a grave pillar with a star. He said back then, ‘Here we bury him while there will be nobody to make a decent burial for me’, and indeed it happened so. I put him aside, we threw stones over him, marked the spot on the map and moved on to Konigsberg.
I didn’t have any fear during the attack. I was young and had no children. Besides, I had been in the war for some time. I used to feel fear in Belarus and in Smolensk region during bombings and air raids, when we were defenseless. There were bombs falling on you and the soil hitting you from all around. It wasn’t just fear, it was the feeling of hopelessness, when you look for a hiding, but there is none. An attack is different. When I had been wounded in my hands I felt like running forward and tearing everything apart with my teeth, though I couldn’t even hold weapons. Any of us felt the same. We attacked shouting ‘Hurrah! There! Go forward!’, or advanced in silence. When we came closer when we could see Germans we began to shout to scare them and it worked: they left their trenches retreating – it was scaring when a brutal crowd moved on them. I joined the Party at the front. My father was a dedicated communist. I became a traitor of the motherland for struggling for communist ideas. I was absorbed in them. I joined the Party for ideal considerations.
They write in books that the infantry received vodka before attacks. We didn’t. In winter we got our daily rates regardless of attacks. We always had almost a canister of vodka in our intelligence platoon. Our sergeants were smart. They submitted requests for a ration for 50 people before a battle and after the battle there were about 20 survivors and there were always sufficient quantities of vodka available, but I don’t remember any drinking excesses. Well, we could drink 200 grams instead of the standard 100. There was the tradition to drop awards in the mess tin to ‘wash it out’.
The war in Eastern Prussia was over in April. We moved to the seashore. We stayed in a nice resort town: gorgeous houses, furnished and vacant. There were still battles near Berlin, but we liquidated all Germans in Eastern Prussia. I was under arrest on Victory Day [23]. We felt like the war was over for us, even though there were battles near Berlin or Vienna – this was far from where we were. It lasted about two days, when we were told that we were to attend mandatory political classes. In the morning my commanding officer gave me the schedule. We had been on battlefields, when now we had to attend a class with the title ‘Sleep and security’. My platoon and I went to a forest, took off our boots and leg wrappings and relaxed on the grass. However, we were intelligence troopers and we watched around to be on the alert.
On the 2nd day of training an inspector arrived from the general staff office. I noticed somebody approaching us, looked at my watch - it was the time for a three-minute break according to the schedule. I approached the inspector to explain that we were having a class and then there was a break. ‘Why don’t you order ‘Attention?’ I explained that this order wasn’t supposed to be given during a break and there was loud snoring around. Formally they couldn’t forward any charges, but they still gave me three days of house arrest. This happened on 8th to 9th May 1945. This was a punishment for officers. There were no guards, but I wasn’t supposed to leave the house.
I was taken to a nice house, my guys brought wine and food there. I was eating, when I heard shooting. There were even heavy cannons shooting and air rockets. My commander came running in. ‘Why are you sitting here? It’s the victory; that supersedes everything!’ I had a box full of German air rockets on my vehicle. I opened it to shoot color rockets. Basically, we celebrated the victory. A few days later we were ordered to relocate to Konigsberg for a parade of the garrison. Marshal Vasilevskiy received it. I was a leading singer in the regiment. We sang naughty songs: ‘when a gypsy man threw a gypsy woman onto a bench’. Our commanders and we liked these songs a lot. Then we were taken to Mongolia by train.
I didn’t know much about what the Germans did to Jews during the war. We knew that they exterminated prisoners, as a rule, and that there were death camps. In the army I had ‘Russian’ indicated in my documents since if God forbid I would have got in captivity, everybody knew it was sure death, but we didn’t know any details about the camps, crematoria, six million of killed old people and children. [Being a Jew meant being surely destined to death in case they were captured, and for a Russian there was still hope to survive.] Nationality didn’t matter in the army. Personal values mattered. There was a mixture of nationalities in our units. Everybody was aware I was a Jew wherever I served, but there was no segregation in this regard. It was only after the war that anti-Jewish attitude on a large scale appeared. There were many Jews at the front. All boys in our family who came of the recruitment age were at the front. My two cousin brothers perished: one near Stalingrad and the other one near Moscow.
I had several wounds, seven of them severe, during the war. I was wounded in my shoulder three times, one splinter wounded me in the abdominal cavity, I still have 20 splinters in my head, talocrural and in the shoulder, but in general, I was lucky and young, and the wounds healed fast. They healed and I still run around today or pretend to be running around.
I have orders and medals. I have 22 governmental awards in total. There were awards for combat actions. I received an Order of the Great Patriotic War, 2nd class after we repelled a tank attack in Eastern Prussia. [Editor’s note: established 20th May 1942. These orders were awarded to officers and men of the Soviet army, navy, and to partisans for personal courage and bravery as well as to those who contributed to the success of an operation. The 2nd class award was issued over 1,028,000 times.] I also have an Order of the Red Star [22] for Konigsberg and two medals for combat service. [Editor’s note: established 17th October 1938. This medal was awarded for a person’s contribution to the success of a combat mission and for the enhancement of the combat readiness of the military units. The silver medal with the inscription ‘For distinguished service in battle’ over a saber crossed with a rifle. The medal was awarded over 5,000,000 times.] And I have a Mongolian order for the defeat of Japanese troops.
The trip from Konigsberg across the victorious country to Japan took us a whole month. How we were met! There were flowers thrown at us, people were meeting their liberators at stations and in towns. They were happy that we had won and that this horrific war was over and brought flowers to meet the trains from the front, in which the military were returning home. We passed villages where there was nothing left and they were throwing us carrots. Tears filled our eyes: people didn’t have anything, but shared the last things they had with us. In Darasun [about 4,500 km east of Moscow] we got off and walked across Buriatia and Mongolia to Choybalsan [about 5,000 km east of Moscow]. We encamped in Mongolia. There was general staff of the Zabaikalskiy front. We were told lies during our trip. We were told that we were taken for reformation, and that we needed to take everything we could from Prussia since at the place we were heading to we were to dig earth huts. We loaded wood, a grand piano and even vehicles; everything we could. We didn’t know where we were going.
Before our departure a high official from the political department started his fable about correspondence with relatives. I wrote my mother every day from the front and the field mail operated well, but this queer man told us to not drop our letters in mail boxes at stations, but hand them to field mail reps.
Our commanding officer didn’t want us to write about our destination. My mother all of a sudden received my letter from Konigsberg saying that I was alive and healthy and would come home soon, while she hadn’t received a letter from me in three months. No letters that we took to the field mail office had been sent. Later censors thoroughly checked my letters from Choybalsan crossing out any mention of my whereabouts. However, knowing the Russian characters, I mentioned the name of the town five to six times in a letter. They crossed it out at the beginning and at the end of the letter, but missed the middle part. Our commanding officers got married during the trip. We had a grand piano with us and there were girls joining us on our way. We sang and danced. When we approached the border with Mongolia, we were told that only the military, but not their girlfriends would be allowed across the border. When we arrived in Mongolia, it turned out that Mongolians paid one horse for a binocular.
They could see a rider at quite a distance through the binocular. We didn’t need a horse, so we traded a binocular for money and bought alcohol. We were in Choybalsan for about a month. Troops for the attack on Japan were gathered there. We were in the reserve of the Zabaykalskiy Front and were waiting for the declaration of war. There was one army protecting our borders located in Mongolia throughout the war. When we arrived this army moved to the border, and we became a front line reserve. I admired the fortifications that the army made with a few stories, the passages in the sand, shelters, and everything was skillfully camouflaged.
The war with Japan [23] lasted three months. On 10th August Japan capitulated. On 3rd September I received a medal for the victory over Japan. We struggled against Japan on the territory of China. We actually had no combat actions. There was major Japanese resistance in the direction of Vladivistok where they held strong, but what could they do here with the open steppe and a tank army attacking? We had all cannons and heavy artillery with us in Eastern Mongolia. Of course, we had losses. There’s even a monument to those who perished in the Far East - there were about 15 of them. This happened at the time, when the 11th army alone lost over 10,000 during the attack on Konigsberg. The Japanese were very scared of getting captured by Mongolians. They were so wild. They didn’t give food to prisoners. And they threw a loop around their neck, riding their horses and the prisoners were running behind.
Our troops didn’t torture prisoners. There were Japanese officers supervising Japanese captives, and our troops even left their cold weapons with them. There were only our guards watching that our soldiers didn’t rob the Japanese captives. The Japanese had watches that became trophies. I knew that Americans had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, but this was somewhere far away from me. We actually didn’t read newspapers and had no idea about how deadly dangerous nuclear weapons were. There were no such celebrations like there had been after the victory over Germany. There was triumph that it was so easy to destroy a big empire. There was no immediate demobilization, but I got lucky. There was an order issued saying that military who had three or more wounds were subject to immediate demobilization, and I had seven.
Once our boat bumped into a mine and I was assigned to the marines. I was 17. We were trained to manage rifles. I was wounded in my first battle and taken to hospital. From there I was sent to the Ordzhonikidze motorcyclist school in the town of Minusinsk [about 3,400 km east of Moscow], but they didn’t admit me after they got to know about my family and sent me back to the frontline. However, the military registry office authorized me to find out, if there were students in this school who wished to go to the front before they finished the course of training. I stayed there for some time looking for the strongest young men. I had meals in the cafeteria of this school. The food was miserable: a big bowl of boiled water with potato peels, bread crumbs and food fat made from kerosene and oil, and mashed potatoes for the 2nd course. The volunteers received their rationed food and we went to the front line.
Our destination point was near Smolensk [about 350 km west of Moscow] and from there I was sent to the Omsk infantry school where I failed for the same reason of my family history. Finally I joined Novosibirsk reserve infantry division 21 training infantry sergeants. I liked it there. I wrote for a newspaper about our commanding officers. I was promoted to the rank of a private first class. I was praised for my performance in this school. They even sent my mother a letter of gratitude for raising a good son. We were accommodated in big earth huts for 200 tenants. There was a forest nearby. We exercised drills and mine firing. I then joined the Komsomol [19], and became a Komsomol battalion organizer. I wrote articles for a district newspaper.
Then we headed to the front as a marching battalion. We stayed longer in Novosibirsk [about 2,800 km east of Moscow]. We were thirsty. I took a bucket to fetch some water, but when I ran back – there was no train. I saw the train some 50 meters away and ran after it. I caught up with the last railcar and jumped into the tambour. It was autumn, cold wind and snow falling. I was freezing. I put down the bucket trying to get myself warmer. When the train stopped, I ran to an open platform, and on the next stop I ran to our railcar. I jumped on the footboard, but I couldn’t lift my arm to knock and knocked with my head instead. The others dragged me inside and gave me half a glass of pure spirit and I felt my ears getting warmer.
For the first time we realized that we were moving to the front at Bologoye station [about 200 km west of Moscow]. There was hell at this station. It must have been bombed severely: there were twisted rails and turned over locomotives. We moved on. At night we got off the train in Toropetz [about 400 km west of Moscow], and marched to infantry division 71 of the Baltic Front. I was assigned to the division intelligence. Later I served in intelligence units of different divisions and fronts throughout the war. I had to catch prisoners for interrogation, identify a junction between the wings of armies, identify the front line and set up communications with partisans.
We were in the northeastern part of Belarus, in the vicinity of Nevel [about 450 km south of St. Petersburg]. There were partisans in the middle of swamps to which Germans couldn’t get access. We delivered directions, and weapons and ammunition to partisans. We sometimes got directions to capture a prisoner for interrogation, but at times it just happened so that we did. Once we were ordered to identify and bring together the flanks of a division, when we captured a prisoner. This German trooper either got lost or had no idea where he was going. When he saw about eight of us he raised his hands shouting ‘Hitler kaput’. This was a common statement when they surrendered.
We went on tasks in our military uniforms, but left all documents and awards. To capture a prisoner for interrogation we went in two groups: one capture group and one cover group. I was big and strong. Once a German trooper stabbed me in my neck with his knife. I stabbed him to death and we didn’t capture a prisoner that time. It took us one, two or even three days to capture a prisoner since we also had to identify access to capture one at night. We had to find one or two German troopers because if there were more of them they would start firing at us and this would mean the end. Germans were very cautious guarding their positions at night. When we bumped into one German he was afraid of starting fire and so were we. He feared that if he started making a noise we would kill him, and we were afraid of attracting attention. When German troopers realized there was a group of us they usually surrendered. I have another scar on my hip: by another German who tried to stab me in my stomach.
Our division advanced to Nevel. The Soviet troops started their advance to break through the blockade of Leningrad [20], and our division was ordered to attack from the north of Nevel to distract Germans and make it impossible for them to provide additional troops to the Leningrad Front. We suffered significant losses, but we had to demonstrate a massive attack and all division staff including accountants and intelligence troopers were distributed to infantry regiments. I was assistant platoon commander. After an artillery preparation we advanced across the Lithuanian border to the town of Pustoska [about 400 south of Leningrad]. I was with a ‘Dehtiaryov infantry’ machine gun. My friend Semyon Narovlianskiy perished in this battle, and I was wounded: both my hands were shot through during an attack.
I left the battle field and was taken to a hospital in Nevel. The doctor decided to amputate my hand. She was a dentist by profession. An old assistant doctor saved my hand. He was telling the doctor to save the 17-year old guy’s hand and wrote to my mother, who rushed to where I was. She wanted them to send me to Moscow. My sister Victoria talked to her co-student who was the daughter of a general, chief of medical service of a hospital in Moscow. My mother obtained a letter of permission to take me to Moscow. A doctor in this hospital performed surgery on my hand. At that time my mother received a letter from my military unit. They informed her that I was awarded a medal, the number of the medal and that the medal and a certificate were sent to the department of awards. My mother was very happy. This was my first award.
After the hospital I was sent back to the front line. I was assigned an intelligence trooper to the operations unit of a Guard Mine Firing Unit. The intelligence troopers were to identify the coordinates of German troops. There were Katyusha units at quite a distance from where we were at the front line. We also served as communication troopers. There were no radios, but wiring units and when the wire got damaged we were to find the breakage. Once I was wounded in my right shoulder trying to fix a communication line. In total I served two weeks in the Guard Mine Firing Unit. I had to stay about a month and a half in a hospital near the front line. I was wounded in January and in late March or early April I was back to the front, in the 17th Guard division.
This was the period of preparation to the ‘Bagration’ operation for the liberation of Belarus. This was the 3rd Belarusian Front. There were big battles near Vitebsk [about 450 km west of Moscow]. At times divisions dispersed several kilometers away from one another, and there were swamps between them, and then intelligence troopers were to find the flanks to take them together. Following this order we got into treble firing of two our divisions and one German. I was severely wounded there. After the hospital I was sent back to the front. This was already the year of 1944. I had to catch up with our troops. I got to Orsha [about 550 km from Moscow], and the front line was in the vicinity of Minsk [about 720 km from Moscow], and there were no trains moving in this direction. There were trains full of the military from hospitals going back to the front in Orsha.
All of a sudden a passenger train stopped at the station. It was heading to Minsk. There were officers and generals in the train and we climbed the roofs of the railcars. The commander of the station couldn’t allow people to be on the roof. He came to the platform with his men armed with machine guns ordering us to clear the roof. Nobody listened to him. Everybody was eager to go to the front, when all of a sudden a general got off the train and shot his gun into the air demanding for the commander to make his appearance: ‘How much longer can we be here? I’m going to command a division. If the train doesn’t move in five minutes I shall shoot you and inform the commandment that I’ve done it on grounds of sabotage’. The commandant waved his hand and the train moved on. We arrived in Minsk sitting on the roof of the train.
The railway station had recently been cleared of Germans, and there were ashes and ruins around. In the commandant office we were told to move on since the Third Belarusian Front was in Lithuania. In my effort to catch up with my troops I walked across Lithuania as far as Eastern Prussia. The military heading to the front line from hospitals had certificates for rationed food or hot meals that they could receive in special provision centers on their way. In Eastern Prussia, where I arrived, was detached fighting anti-tank artillery brigade 47 of the reserve of the chief commandment. Its commanding officer was captain Chemeris, a nice, but weird, person. He tested me, but since I had studied artillery, I knew all kinds of details, including targeting and identification of coordinates. He liked me so much that he appointed me commanding officer of a platoon.
We served side by side with him till the victory over Germany and later in Japan. Our task was to identify the targets and coordinates. Since this was anti-tank artillery with direct targeting our observation point was located beside the front line positions of infantry where we performed our tasks. At first there were inert battles in Eastern Prussia. Our brigade participated in a few breakthroughs. We were making the way for infantry marching ahead. We took the firing positions on tank risk direction locations. When intelligence units advised us that there were tanks accumulated in the rear of German troops we moved in that direction, deployed there waiting. If there was an order to go into action, we did.
Our destination point was near Smolensk [about 350 km west of Moscow] and from there I was sent to the Omsk infantry school where I failed for the same reason of my family history. Finally I joined Novosibirsk reserve infantry division 21 training infantry sergeants. I liked it there. I wrote for a newspaper about our commanding officers. I was promoted to the rank of a private first class. I was praised for my performance in this school. They even sent my mother a letter of gratitude for raising a good son. We were accommodated in big earth huts for 200 tenants. There was a forest nearby. We exercised drills and mine firing. I then joined the Komsomol [19], and became a Komsomol battalion organizer. I wrote articles for a district newspaper.
Then we headed to the front as a marching battalion. We stayed longer in Novosibirsk [about 2,800 km east of Moscow]. We were thirsty. I took a bucket to fetch some water, but when I ran back – there was no train. I saw the train some 50 meters away and ran after it. I caught up with the last railcar and jumped into the tambour. It was autumn, cold wind and snow falling. I was freezing. I put down the bucket trying to get myself warmer. When the train stopped, I ran to an open platform, and on the next stop I ran to our railcar. I jumped on the footboard, but I couldn’t lift my arm to knock and knocked with my head instead. The others dragged me inside and gave me half a glass of pure spirit and I felt my ears getting warmer.
For the first time we realized that we were moving to the front at Bologoye station [about 200 km west of Moscow]. There was hell at this station. It must have been bombed severely: there were twisted rails and turned over locomotives. We moved on. At night we got off the train in Toropetz [about 400 km west of Moscow], and marched to infantry division 71 of the Baltic Front. I was assigned to the division intelligence. Later I served in intelligence units of different divisions and fronts throughout the war. I had to catch prisoners for interrogation, identify a junction between the wings of armies, identify the front line and set up communications with partisans.
We were in the northeastern part of Belarus, in the vicinity of Nevel [about 450 km south of St. Petersburg]. There were partisans in the middle of swamps to which Germans couldn’t get access. We delivered directions, and weapons and ammunition to partisans. We sometimes got directions to capture a prisoner for interrogation, but at times it just happened so that we did. Once we were ordered to identify and bring together the flanks of a division, when we captured a prisoner. This German trooper either got lost or had no idea where he was going. When he saw about eight of us he raised his hands shouting ‘Hitler kaput’. This was a common statement when they surrendered.
We went on tasks in our military uniforms, but left all documents and awards. To capture a prisoner for interrogation we went in two groups: one capture group and one cover group. I was big and strong. Once a German trooper stabbed me in my neck with his knife. I stabbed him to death and we didn’t capture a prisoner that time. It took us one, two or even three days to capture a prisoner since we also had to identify access to capture one at night. We had to find one or two German troopers because if there were more of them they would start firing at us and this would mean the end. Germans were very cautious guarding their positions at night. When we bumped into one German he was afraid of starting fire and so were we. He feared that if he started making a noise we would kill him, and we were afraid of attracting attention. When German troopers realized there was a group of us they usually surrendered. I have another scar on my hip: by another German who tried to stab me in my stomach.
Our division advanced to Nevel. The Soviet troops started their advance to break through the blockade of Leningrad [20], and our division was ordered to attack from the north of Nevel to distract Germans and make it impossible for them to provide additional troops to the Leningrad Front. We suffered significant losses, but we had to demonstrate a massive attack and all division staff including accountants and intelligence troopers were distributed to infantry regiments. I was assistant platoon commander. After an artillery preparation we advanced across the Lithuanian border to the town of Pustoska [about 400 south of Leningrad]. I was with a ‘Dehtiaryov infantry’ machine gun. My friend Semyon Narovlianskiy perished in this battle, and I was wounded: both my hands were shot through during an attack.
I left the battle field and was taken to a hospital in Nevel. The doctor decided to amputate my hand. She was a dentist by profession. An old assistant doctor saved my hand. He was telling the doctor to save the 17-year old guy’s hand and wrote to my mother, who rushed to where I was. She wanted them to send me to Moscow. My sister Victoria talked to her co-student who was the daughter of a general, chief of medical service of a hospital in Moscow. My mother obtained a letter of permission to take me to Moscow. A doctor in this hospital performed surgery on my hand. At that time my mother received a letter from my military unit. They informed her that I was awarded a medal, the number of the medal and that the medal and a certificate were sent to the department of awards. My mother was very happy. This was my first award.
After the hospital I was sent back to the front line. I was assigned an intelligence trooper to the operations unit of a Guard Mine Firing Unit. The intelligence troopers were to identify the coordinates of German troops. There were Katyusha units at quite a distance from where we were at the front line. We also served as communication troopers. There were no radios, but wiring units and when the wire got damaged we were to find the breakage. Once I was wounded in my right shoulder trying to fix a communication line. In total I served two weeks in the Guard Mine Firing Unit. I had to stay about a month and a half in a hospital near the front line. I was wounded in January and in late March or early April I was back to the front, in the 17th Guard division.
This was the period of preparation to the ‘Bagration’ operation for the liberation of Belarus. This was the 3rd Belarusian Front. There were big battles near Vitebsk [about 450 km west of Moscow]. At times divisions dispersed several kilometers away from one another, and there were swamps between them, and then intelligence troopers were to find the flanks to take them together. Following this order we got into treble firing of two our divisions and one German. I was severely wounded there. After the hospital I was sent back to the front. This was already the year of 1944. I had to catch up with our troops. I got to Orsha [about 550 km from Moscow], and the front line was in the vicinity of Minsk [about 720 km from Moscow], and there were no trains moving in this direction. There were trains full of the military from hospitals going back to the front in Orsha.
All of a sudden a passenger train stopped at the station. It was heading to Minsk. There were officers and generals in the train and we climbed the roofs of the railcars. The commander of the station couldn’t allow people to be on the roof. He came to the platform with his men armed with machine guns ordering us to clear the roof. Nobody listened to him. Everybody was eager to go to the front, when all of a sudden a general got off the train and shot his gun into the air demanding for the commander to make his appearance: ‘How much longer can we be here? I’m going to command a division. If the train doesn’t move in five minutes I shall shoot you and inform the commandment that I’ve done it on grounds of sabotage’. The commandant waved his hand and the train moved on. We arrived in Minsk sitting on the roof of the train.
The railway station had recently been cleared of Germans, and there were ashes and ruins around. In the commandant office we were told to move on since the Third Belarusian Front was in Lithuania. In my effort to catch up with my troops I walked across Lithuania as far as Eastern Prussia. The military heading to the front line from hospitals had certificates for rationed food or hot meals that they could receive in special provision centers on their way. In Eastern Prussia, where I arrived, was detached fighting anti-tank artillery brigade 47 of the reserve of the chief commandment. Its commanding officer was captain Chemeris, a nice, but weird, person. He tested me, but since I had studied artillery, I knew all kinds of details, including targeting and identification of coordinates. He liked me so much that he appointed me commanding officer of a platoon.
We served side by side with him till the victory over Germany and later in Japan. Our task was to identify the targets and coordinates. Since this was anti-tank artillery with direct targeting our observation point was located beside the front line positions of infantry where we performed our tasks. At first there were inert battles in Eastern Prussia. Our brigade participated in a few breakthroughs. We were making the way for infantry marching ahead. We took the firing positions on tank risk direction locations. When intelligence units advised us that there were tanks accumulated in the rear of German troops we moved in that direction, deployed there waiting. If there was an order to go into action, we did.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
I didn’t know much about what the Germans did to Jews during the war. We knew that they exterminated prisoners, as a rule, and that there were death camps. In the army I had ‘Russian’ indicated in my documents since if God forbid I would have got in captivity, everybody knew it was sure death, but we didn’t know any details about the camps, crematoria, six million of killed old people and children. [Being a Jew meant being surely destined to death in case they were captured, and for a Russian there was still hope to survive.] Nationality didn’t matter in the army. Personal values mattered. There was a mixture of nationalities in our units. Everybody was aware I was a Jew wherever I served, but there was no segregation in this regard. It was only after the war that anti-Jewish attitude on a large scale appeared. There were many Jews at the front. All boys in our family who came of the recruitment age were at the front. My two cousin brothers perished: one near Stalingrad and the other one near Moscow.
On the 2nd day of training an inspector arrived from the general staff office. I noticed somebody approaching us, looked at my watch - it was the time for a three-minute break according to the schedule. I approached the inspector to explain that we were having a class and then there was a break. ‘Why don’t you order ‘Attention?’ I explained that this order wasn’t supposed to be given during a break and there was loud snoring around. Formally they couldn’t forward any charges, but they still gave me three days of house arrest. This happened on 8th to 9th May 1945. This was a punishment for officers. There were no guards, but I wasn’t supposed to leave the house.
I was taken to a nice house, my guys brought wine and food there. I was eating, when I heard shooting. There were even heavy cannons shooting and air rockets. My commander came running in. ‘Why are you sitting here? It’s the victory; that supersedes everything!’ I had a box full of German air rockets on my vehicle. I opened it to shoot color rockets. Basically, we celebrated the victory. A few days later we were ordered to relocate to Konigsberg for a parade of the garrison. Marshal Vasilevskiy received it. I was a leading singer in the regiment. We sang naughty songs: ‘when a gypsy man threw a gypsy woman onto a bench’. Our commanders and we liked these songs a lot. Then we were taken to Mongolia by train.
I was taken to a nice house, my guys brought wine and food there. I was eating, when I heard shooting. There were even heavy cannons shooting and air rockets. My commander came running in. ‘Why are you sitting here? It’s the victory; that supersedes everything!’ I had a box full of German air rockets on my vehicle. I opened it to shoot color rockets. Basically, we celebrated the victory. A few days later we were ordered to relocate to Konigsberg for a parade of the garrison. Marshal Vasilevskiy received it. I was a leading singer in the regiment. We sang naughty songs: ‘when a gypsy man threw a gypsy woman onto a bench’. Our commanders and we liked these songs a lot. Then we were taken to Mongolia by train.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
The war in Eastern Prussia was over in April. We moved to the seashore. We stayed in a nice resort town: gorgeous houses, furnished and vacant. There were still battles near Berlin, but we liquidated all Germans in Eastern Prussia. I was under arrest on Victory Day [23]. We felt like the war was over for us, even though there were battles near Berlin or Vienna – this was far from where we were. It lasted about two days, when we were told that we were to attend mandatory political classes. In the morning my commanding officer gave me the schedule. We had been on battlefields, when now we had to attend a class with the title ‘Sleep and security’. My platoon and I went to a forest, took off our boots and leg wrappings and relaxed on the grass. However, we were intelligence troopers and we watched around to be on the alert.
,
1945
See text in interview
I joined the Party at the front. My father was a dedicated communist. I became a traitor of the motherland for struggling for communist ideas. I was absorbed in them. I joined the Party for ideal considerations.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
I need to mention an episode that hasn’t been recorded in military history. Konigsberg [today Kaliningrad, Russia] was encircled twice. The first time, and we participated in it, was a breakthrough to Zalmanskiy peninsula. We advanced to the sea west of Konigsberg cutting it from Pilau where the Germans had several tank units. They attacked, captured many prisoners and came back to Konigsberg. I need to mention here that while our aviation bombed military facilities and utilities, the Americans and British raged on cluster bombings of the towns that were to belong to us after the war. They destroyed Dresden this way and bombed Konigsberg. We were in a town near Koningsberg before Germans repositioned themselves in Konigsberg. The allies didn’t drop bombs on this town and all German elite took shelter in it.
When we came into this town, there were civilians in it. We had never met any before. Peaceful citizens usually left the towns before we entered there, but here we broke into a living German organism. I didn’t care about women then. Besides, nobody raped my wife or killed my children, but there were older soldiers who had information that their wives had been raped by the Germans or their wives and children had been killed. They began to take revenge on German women. I don’t think there were more than 20 percent of the German women left who weren’t raped in this town. The soldiers destroyed and ruined everything. I saw them throwing down a grand piano listening to its clinking. It didn’t occur to them that it would be all ours in the end. They burned everything. They sensed the victory. If they had saved every house on our territory because it was ours, there, on the German land, they wreaked vengeance on Germans. ‘Let’s set this house on fire and I will get warm nearby.’
I remember our troops seizing a railway station where there were trains with valuables that Germans had taken to this station. There were a few railcars with Swiss watches. Our soldiers took five to ten watches each. I didn’t need a watch, so I took a box full of Zeiss binoculars and stereo tubes with periscope features. These were valuable trophies for my intelligence activities. While we were in this town, we didn’t know what was happening in the rear, and at this time Germans troops broke back to Konigsberg. We were ordered to move in the assigned direction, when we bumped into a commandant’s platoon. ‘Who are you?’. We began to explain that we were from the frontline observation point and that we had got the order to return to our unit. They took us to the commandant office to clarify the circumstances and put us into a cellar with cupboards full of delicious food. There was silver tableware on the table in the middle of the cellar. This had probably been a hotel or a café before.
We took to drinking and eating, when we heard some noise and cracking sounds upstairs. The door opened and our commanding officer and the commandant came in. He pretended to speak in a threatening voice ‘What are you doing here? Eating? The battery is fighting and you are fooling around here? Rush to the battery location!’ We were sorry to leave the spot, but moved to the position of the battery. By the way, we left there on time since the Germans went on their attack: their two groupings that we had split before united and they occupied Konigsberg and the town where we had stayed before.
There were many battles and attacks before we broke through to the sea and proceeded to Konigsberg and fought it back in April. For the attack on Konigsberg I was awarded the Order of the Red Star [22]. Then there was the Zalmanskiy peninsula and fortress Pilau. This was a historical fortress. There were huge marine cannons there. During our attack on Konigsberg we had an inconvenient position to support our infantry. We couldn’t see the positions of the enemy. Our commander ordered me to move onto the territory of the enemy and shoot air rockets in the direction of the positions that were to be destroyed. There was an artillery preparation and Germans were hiding away. I went on this task with my radio operator.
After fulfilling the task we hardly managed to escape from there. Later this radio operator perished. I usually went on my intelligence tasks with a radio operator. Three of my radio operators perished during the war. One was hit by a mine and smashed to pieces, there were no remains left to bury; another operator perished in the tank brigade near Pilau. This battle was called ‘Landing troops on armor’. I was sitting on the tank beside my radio operator to send messages about our whereabouts, when a shell exploded near us. He was killed and I just fell off and wasn’t even wounded. He was a skilled carpenter. When a soldier had been killed before, this man made him a coffin and a grave pillar with a star. He said back then, ‘Here we bury him while there will be nobody to make a decent burial for me’, and indeed it happened so. I put him aside, we threw stones over him, marked the spot on the map and moved on to Konigsberg.
I didn’t have any fear during the attack. I was young and had no children. Besides, I had been in the war for some time. I used to feel fear in Belarus and in Smolensk region during bombings and air raids, when we were defenseless. There were bombs falling on you and the soil hitting you from all around. It wasn’t just fear, it was the feeling of hopelessness, when you look for a hiding, but there is none. An attack is different. When I had been wounded in my hands I felt like running forward and tearing everything apart with my teeth, though I couldn’t even hold weapons. Any of us felt the same. We attacked shouting ‘Hurrah! There! Go forward!’, or advanced in silence. When we came closer when we could see Germans we began to shout to scare them and it worked: they left their trenches retreating – it was scaring when a brutal crowd moved on them. I joined the Party at the front.
When we came into this town, there were civilians in it. We had never met any before. Peaceful citizens usually left the towns before we entered there, but here we broke into a living German organism. I didn’t care about women then. Besides, nobody raped my wife or killed my children, but there were older soldiers who had information that their wives had been raped by the Germans or their wives and children had been killed. They began to take revenge on German women. I don’t think there were more than 20 percent of the German women left who weren’t raped in this town. The soldiers destroyed and ruined everything. I saw them throwing down a grand piano listening to its clinking. It didn’t occur to them that it would be all ours in the end. They burned everything. They sensed the victory. If they had saved every house on our territory because it was ours, there, on the German land, they wreaked vengeance on Germans. ‘Let’s set this house on fire and I will get warm nearby.’
I remember our troops seizing a railway station where there were trains with valuables that Germans had taken to this station. There were a few railcars with Swiss watches. Our soldiers took five to ten watches each. I didn’t need a watch, so I took a box full of Zeiss binoculars and stereo tubes with periscope features. These were valuable trophies for my intelligence activities. While we were in this town, we didn’t know what was happening in the rear, and at this time Germans troops broke back to Konigsberg. We were ordered to move in the assigned direction, when we bumped into a commandant’s platoon. ‘Who are you?’. We began to explain that we were from the frontline observation point and that we had got the order to return to our unit. They took us to the commandant office to clarify the circumstances and put us into a cellar with cupboards full of delicious food. There was silver tableware on the table in the middle of the cellar. This had probably been a hotel or a café before.
We took to drinking and eating, when we heard some noise and cracking sounds upstairs. The door opened and our commanding officer and the commandant came in. He pretended to speak in a threatening voice ‘What are you doing here? Eating? The battery is fighting and you are fooling around here? Rush to the battery location!’ We were sorry to leave the spot, but moved to the position of the battery. By the way, we left there on time since the Germans went on their attack: their two groupings that we had split before united and they occupied Konigsberg and the town where we had stayed before.
There were many battles and attacks before we broke through to the sea and proceeded to Konigsberg and fought it back in April. For the attack on Konigsberg I was awarded the Order of the Red Star [22]. Then there was the Zalmanskiy peninsula and fortress Pilau. This was a historical fortress. There were huge marine cannons there. During our attack on Konigsberg we had an inconvenient position to support our infantry. We couldn’t see the positions of the enemy. Our commander ordered me to move onto the territory of the enemy and shoot air rockets in the direction of the positions that were to be destroyed. There was an artillery preparation and Germans were hiding away. I went on this task with my radio operator.
After fulfilling the task we hardly managed to escape from there. Later this radio operator perished. I usually went on my intelligence tasks with a radio operator. Three of my radio operators perished during the war. One was hit by a mine and smashed to pieces, there were no remains left to bury; another operator perished in the tank brigade near Pilau. This battle was called ‘Landing troops on armor’. I was sitting on the tank beside my radio operator to send messages about our whereabouts, when a shell exploded near us. He was killed and I just fell off and wasn’t even wounded. He was a skilled carpenter. When a soldier had been killed before, this man made him a coffin and a grave pillar with a star. He said back then, ‘Here we bury him while there will be nobody to make a decent burial for me’, and indeed it happened so. I put him aside, we threw stones over him, marked the spot on the map and moved on to Konigsberg.
I didn’t have any fear during the attack. I was young and had no children. Besides, I had been in the war for some time. I used to feel fear in Belarus and in Smolensk region during bombings and air raids, when we were defenseless. There were bombs falling on you and the soil hitting you from all around. It wasn’t just fear, it was the feeling of hopelessness, when you look for a hiding, but there is none. An attack is different. When I had been wounded in my hands I felt like running forward and tearing everything apart with my teeth, though I couldn’t even hold weapons. Any of us felt the same. We attacked shouting ‘Hurrah! There! Go forward!’, or advanced in silence. When we came closer when we could see Germans we began to shout to scare them and it worked: they left their trenches retreating – it was scaring when a brutal crowd moved on them. I joined the Party at the front.
Then fierce efforts to liquidate the Eastern-Prussian grouping were taken. Our brigade joined a tank army. We broke through the front line with the tanks. A tank is a noticeable target and we were to neutralize the weapon emplacement to enable the tanks to attack. For these actions and the storming attacks on two towns our army received appreciation of Stalin twice. There were fierce battles in this direction. We witnessed how General Cherniakhovskiy, Commander of the 3rd Belarusian Front, was lethally wounded in a small town cleared from the Germans who retreated into a small forest on a hill in the north. Thus the town was in their full view. Our attack was delayed. Cherniakhovskiy was a very energetic man, the youngest Commander of the Front. A column of vehicles with the Commander of the Front drove to the headquarters. The staff rushed outside, the Germans saw it and shot Cherniakhovskiy.
Marshal Vasilevskiy replaced him. He was chief of general staff before. We, soldiers, sensed the difference. Perhaps, German troops were exhausted from previous battles or Vasilevskiy was more skilled than the previous commander, but German troops began to fall apart. They were encircled and eliminated without significant losses or hysterical battles. The front promptly advanced to the Baltic Sea. The Eastern-Prussian grouping of Germans was cut into two parts.
Marshal Vasilevskiy replaced him. He was chief of general staff before. We, soldiers, sensed the difference. Perhaps, German troops were exhausted from previous battles or Vasilevskiy was more skilled than the previous commander, but German troops began to fall apart. They were encircled and eliminated without significant losses or hysterical battles. The front promptly advanced to the Baltic Sea. The Eastern-Prussian grouping of Germans was cut into two parts.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Our task was to identify the targets and coordinates. Since this was anti-tank artillery with direct targeting our observation point was located beside the front line positions of infantry where we performed our tasks. At first there were inert battles in Eastern Prussia. Our brigade participated in a few breakthroughs. We were making the way for infantry marching ahead. We took the firing positions on tank risk direction locations. When intelligence units advised us that there were tanks accumulated in the rear of German troops we moved in that direction, deployed there waiting. If there was an order to go into action, we did.
This was the period of preparation to the ‘Bagration’ operation for the liberation of Belarus. This was the 3rd Belarusian Front. There were big battles near Vitebsk [about 450 km west of Moscow]. At times divisions dispersed several kilometers away from one another, and there were swamps between them, and then intelligence troopers were to find the flanks to take them together. Following this order we got into treble firing of two our divisions and one German. I was severely wounded there. After the hospital I was sent back to the front. This was already the year of 1944.
Anna’s mother was a milkmaid there, they were still declared kulaks [28], and thus subject to dispossession. They escaped to Moscow. Anna’s father and mother went to work at the plant of rubber products ‘Kauchuk’.
, Russia
I met my wife, Anna Tarskaya, nee Shamrai, on a hiking tour in 1952, when I worked as a senior instructor for tourists. I had high skills in orientation and azimuth orientation. I was 27 then. I looked well, was a strong and quick young man. I had finished college and was chief of laboratory. I was chief of the whole tourist hiking base and I chose the prettiest girls and the strongest young men for my group. I liked my future wife Anna. She was a small, pretty slim girl, but very quick and business-like. We saw each other for a year until 1953, when I had to leave Moscow for Tajikistan. When I returned I thought Anna had forgotten me, though I remembered her. Anna was Russian, but nationality didn’t matter to me. I called her and we met and began to see each other again. Then we got married in 1957. There was a big joyous wedding to which Anna’s friends and my relatives and friends came, but of course, there were no Jewish or Russian traditions observed.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
The time of receiving mandatory job assignments [25] was coming close. I spent a lot of time with public activities, had all excellent marks, was editor of the faculty newspaper, a veteran of the war, a member of the party and I assisted the dean’s office to eliminate lost hours in our studies. I believed I had all grounds to expect a good job assignment, but I was the last one to be called into the room. The meeting was chaired by the deputy minister of machine tool construction. He was a foundry man. Many years later I did joint work with him, and then he explained: ‘Look, I had directions of the district party committee regarding all job assignments. It didn’t matter what I knew or wanted. Everything was directed’. To cut this long story short: I was told that there were no vacancies in Moscow, though I was aware that the director of the scientific research institute of the foundry machine building [NIILITMASH] had forwarded a request for my assignment to his institute. I was assigned to work in Kolomna [a small town 50 km from Moscow], at the biggest plant of heavy machines. I realized it didn’t make any sense to complain. When I came to the ministry to obtain a letter of assignment, they told me that the plant had refused to employ me. So they sent me to the Klinskiy, about 100 km from Moscow, to a machine repair plant, the last enterprise in the lists of our Ministry. They didn’t know what a wonderful gift they prepared for me.
I went to the plant. Its director was a former foundry man. He appointed me chief of laboratory. This was good for a graduate since the others were just the lowest rate engineers in their scientific research institutes. This happened to be a nice job for all ‘outcasts’ that later developed into the best chief designers. There were literally trains of machines shipped to our plant under the reparation terms [from the beaten countries] and we restored them. I dealt with the best machines in the world. Soon I became supervisor of the foundry shop and then was chief of laboratory and supervisor at the same time. The director of the plant was a drunkard, but he was a great foundry specialist and we got along well. There is a German saying about the foundry men: ‘It’s a bad metal that doesn’t pour and the foundry man who doesn’t drink’.
Once we decided to celebrate my promotion. I went to buy more vodka in the café at the railway station. I bought two bottles. This was fall 1953, when there was amnesty and many criminals were released in Klin. [Editor’s note: After Stalin had died in March 1953 he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev [26] as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The new leadership declared an amnesty for some serving prison sentences for criminal offences, announced price cuts, and relaxed the restrictions on private plots. De-Stalinization also put an end to the role of large-scale forced labor in the economy.] When I was going back, two men caught up with me. One of them took a knife out of his pocket demanding my coat from me. I grabbed a bottle and gave one of them a hard blow in his temple. He fell to the ground and another criminal ran away. The blow was so hard that even the bottle broke. I happened to be attacked by the criminals who had been released from jail. I killed one of them. The militia proved that I was defending myself and the case ended well for me. They found the knife with the criminal’s fingerprints on it at the scene of crime. However, about two weeks later the captain of the militia office notified me that there was a gang of criminals in Klin planning to wreak vengeance and it would be better for me to leave town.
At that period there was an order issued by the government to send industrial engineers to kolkhozes and equipment yards. I wrote a letter to the central party committee informing them that I was ready to go to any distant kolkhoz and they assigned me to an equipment yard in Tajikistan. I worked there for four years. Then the equipment yards were closed. My wound on the hip opened and I was taking medical treatment in Moscow, when the director of NIILITMASH, who had known me since I was a student, offered me a job. I worked there from 1957 to 1996. There were many Jewish employees working in this institute. During the period of the suppression of Jews the NIILITMASH was allowed to employ Jews. This institute gathered such a brilliant team of designers that this industry, which was underdeveloped before, reached an internationally recognized level in the Soviet Union.
When I was employed there was one vacancy for a senior engineer. It was a lower position against my previous positions, but I agreed to take it. I finally got a chance to deal in the science that I had studied in college. Before the end of two years I was promoted to supervisor of a group, then chief of the laboratory, and then I won the competition for the position of chief of department and in this position I worked till I retired. I liked this job: firstly, I returned to Moscow and secondly, I got to work in science after I returned from a Tajik field. Actually, I reached the highest qualifications in my profession.
There were five laboratories in my department, about 50 people in each of them, I wrote manuals and other scientific books. My industry people still remember me and make agreements for writing books with me. There were different laboratories. There were international jobs related to specialization of cooperation of the production of foundry equipment. My department dealt in economics, specialization of cooperation and new equipment. We studied the best international practices and published recommendations about development of new equipment. Our department determined work directions for our institute and industry. I had serious scientific research works at the institute at the beginning of my career. There were several dissertations based on my ideas defended in the institute [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] [27]. Over 250 of my works were published, translated into foreign languages and published abroad. I didn’t want to defend a dissertation. I earned sufficient money: I had my salary of chief of the department and lectured on foundry discipline in two higher educational institutions.
In the late 1980s the new era began when we stepped into capitalism in its wild form. There were all kinds of conflicts with the new management of the institute since I didn’t agree with its financial policies. Our customers paid for the contracts completed by my department, and the managers took this money. I got so sick and tired of it that I quit my job at the institute in 1996 and retired. I have agreements that I execute through the association of foundry experts, and I get paid for this work. These are research works on sales markets in Russia or in the world for the products of the foundry industry and the cost of foundry products. Besides, I write manuals for foundry students.
I went to the plant. Its director was a former foundry man. He appointed me chief of laboratory. This was good for a graduate since the others were just the lowest rate engineers in their scientific research institutes. This happened to be a nice job for all ‘outcasts’ that later developed into the best chief designers. There were literally trains of machines shipped to our plant under the reparation terms [from the beaten countries] and we restored them. I dealt with the best machines in the world. Soon I became supervisor of the foundry shop and then was chief of laboratory and supervisor at the same time. The director of the plant was a drunkard, but he was a great foundry specialist and we got along well. There is a German saying about the foundry men: ‘It’s a bad metal that doesn’t pour and the foundry man who doesn’t drink’.
Once we decided to celebrate my promotion. I went to buy more vodka in the café at the railway station. I bought two bottles. This was fall 1953, when there was amnesty and many criminals were released in Klin. [Editor’s note: After Stalin had died in March 1953 he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev [26] as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The new leadership declared an amnesty for some serving prison sentences for criminal offences, announced price cuts, and relaxed the restrictions on private plots. De-Stalinization also put an end to the role of large-scale forced labor in the economy.] When I was going back, two men caught up with me. One of them took a knife out of his pocket demanding my coat from me. I grabbed a bottle and gave one of them a hard blow in his temple. He fell to the ground and another criminal ran away. The blow was so hard that even the bottle broke. I happened to be attacked by the criminals who had been released from jail. I killed one of them. The militia proved that I was defending myself and the case ended well for me. They found the knife with the criminal’s fingerprints on it at the scene of crime. However, about two weeks later the captain of the militia office notified me that there was a gang of criminals in Klin planning to wreak vengeance and it would be better for me to leave town.
At that period there was an order issued by the government to send industrial engineers to kolkhozes and equipment yards. I wrote a letter to the central party committee informing them that I was ready to go to any distant kolkhoz and they assigned me to an equipment yard in Tajikistan. I worked there for four years. Then the equipment yards were closed. My wound on the hip opened and I was taking medical treatment in Moscow, when the director of NIILITMASH, who had known me since I was a student, offered me a job. I worked there from 1957 to 1996. There were many Jewish employees working in this institute. During the period of the suppression of Jews the NIILITMASH was allowed to employ Jews. This institute gathered such a brilliant team of designers that this industry, which was underdeveloped before, reached an internationally recognized level in the Soviet Union.
When I was employed there was one vacancy for a senior engineer. It was a lower position against my previous positions, but I agreed to take it. I finally got a chance to deal in the science that I had studied in college. Before the end of two years I was promoted to supervisor of a group, then chief of the laboratory, and then I won the competition for the position of chief of department and in this position I worked till I retired. I liked this job: firstly, I returned to Moscow and secondly, I got to work in science after I returned from a Tajik field. Actually, I reached the highest qualifications in my profession.
There were five laboratories in my department, about 50 people in each of them, I wrote manuals and other scientific books. My industry people still remember me and make agreements for writing books with me. There were different laboratories. There were international jobs related to specialization of cooperation of the production of foundry equipment. My department dealt in economics, specialization of cooperation and new equipment. We studied the best international practices and published recommendations about development of new equipment. Our department determined work directions for our institute and industry. I had serious scientific research works at the institute at the beginning of my career. There were several dissertations based on my ideas defended in the institute [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] [27]. Over 250 of my works were published, translated into foreign languages and published abroad. I didn’t want to defend a dissertation. I earned sufficient money: I had my salary of chief of the department and lectured on foundry discipline in two higher educational institutions.
In the late 1980s the new era began when we stepped into capitalism in its wild form. There were all kinds of conflicts with the new management of the institute since I didn’t agree with its financial policies. Our customers paid for the contracts completed by my department, and the managers took this money. I got so sick and tired of it that I quit my job at the institute in 1996 and retired. I have agreements that I execute through the association of foundry experts, and I get paid for this work. These are research works on sales markets in Russia or in the world for the products of the foundry industry and the cost of foundry products. Besides, I write manuals for foundry students.
My older sister Victoria finished Moscow Polygraphist College and married Vladimir Zaitsev, a nice Russian guy, in 1946. She worked as an editor and a librarian. Her daughter’s name is Yekaterina. Victoria died in 1996. My sister Inga graduated from the Geographical Faculty of Moscow University. She worked as a geographer, married Igor Kontsebovskiy, also a Russian guy, and they live in harmony.
My stepfather Veniamin Lyulkin lived with us for a long time and was the head of the family. He worked in the ministry of bread products where he was deputy chief of department of acceptance and placement of bread.
I decided to go to college, but first I had to obtain a secondary school certificate. I had finished seven years at school. I passed school exams for three years. This was 1947 when specialists for atomic energy studies were in great demand. I entered the Engineering and Physics Faculty of Moscow Applied Physics College. Right upon my admission the period of exclusion of Jews from science began: the campaign against cosmopolitans [24]. I remember Professor Landa, who had organized this college, was fired. Professor Haikin, an outstanding mechanic theoretician quit his job.
I studied well and made reports in our mathematics club. I was a head student of the course. When we were in our third year of studies students began to obtain permits to do sensitive work. I was invited to the special department where they told me that they could not allow me access to secrets due to my name. I had too many sins according to their thinking. My father having been arrested as an enemy of the people and I having being in prison and probably my Jewish identity also played its role. I went to study in the Moscow Machine Instrumental College [STANKIN], the faculty of machines and technology of the foundry production. This was one of the few higher educational institutions where Jews were admitted. There were many Jewish lecturers and students. As a result, there were such good results, that graduates from STANKIN were in great demand. Our students’ life was wonderful. It was easier for me to study there. It took me one or two hours to prepare for exams. I went in for tourism and mountain climbing. In winter I guided groups of skiers to Moscow region. I was head man in the group, editor of the wall newspaper and chairman of the tourism and mountain climbing club. I organized many tours, became master of sports in tourism and traveled to the Far North in the country. I was a reliable leader. There were no accidents in my groups and I was often invited to supervise training in the Caucasus and Altay.
I studied well and made reports in our mathematics club. I was a head student of the course. When we were in our third year of studies students began to obtain permits to do sensitive work. I was invited to the special department where they told me that they could not allow me access to secrets due to my name. I had too many sins according to their thinking. My father having been arrested as an enemy of the people and I having being in prison and probably my Jewish identity also played its role. I went to study in the Moscow Machine Instrumental College [STANKIN], the faculty of machines and technology of the foundry production. This was one of the few higher educational institutions where Jews were admitted. There were many Jewish lecturers and students. As a result, there were such good results, that graduates from STANKIN were in great demand. Our students’ life was wonderful. It was easier for me to study there. It took me one or two hours to prepare for exams. I went in for tourism and mountain climbing. In winter I guided groups of skiers to Moscow region. I was head man in the group, editor of the wall newspaper and chairman of the tourism and mountain climbing club. I organized many tours, became master of sports in tourism and traveled to the Far North in the country. I was a reliable leader. There were no accidents in my groups and I was often invited to supervise training in the Caucasus and Altay.
Right upon my admission the period of exclusion of Jews from science began: the campaign against cosmopolitans [24]. I remember Professor Landa, who had organized this college, was fired. Professor Haikin, an outstanding mechanic theoretician quit his job.
My family was happy that I was back home. We lived in the apartment where my aunts Rosa and Sophia accommodated us. My friends and my sister's friends, the former exiles who had no place to live and our relatives always found shelter in this apartment. There is the friendly atmosphere surrounding anybody who comes into this apartment.
I was rich when I came to Moscow. The money that I brought with me lasted in the family for quite some time. I had shoes and clothes and received cards. [Editor’s note: the card system was introduced to directly regulate food supplies to the population by food and industrial product rates. There were cards for workers, non-manual employees and dependents in the USSR. Food products were distributed per food cards or coupons. There was nothing in stores to buy for money. Food cards were issued at work, in colleges or in social services.] We were paid at the front, but we hardly ever spent this money. Before going to the East we received bags of money: there was guard and field money, in Germany we were paid in occupational marks, and in Mongolia we received tugriks. In Manchuria we received Chang Kay Shi Chinese dollars. In Moscow I exchanged these currencies to rubles.
After I was released I went to the 6th grade of another school. I had smartened up in jail and became the best pupil of this school. I had excellent marks only in the 6th and 7th grades. Then I decided to enter a technical communications school. They admitted me without exams and nobody knew about my past and my parents’ sentences.
In the 1960s I, a veteran of the war and former intelligence sergeant, addressed the KGB [15] with a request for review of my case. The officers there were surprised: ‘What do you mean, citizen! You crossed the Soviet border, didn’t you? You did. This means, you are still a state criminal and you are not subject to rehabilitation [16]’. Many years later, on 18th October 1991, the law of the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic], ‘Rehabilitation of the victims of political repression’, was issued canceling all verdicts of the ‘Special Council of the NKVD’, and the ‘council’ itself was recognized as illegal. On 23rd June 1993 I finally received a certificate of rehabilitation.
There was always the atmosphere of love in this apartment. The sisters Rosa, Sophia and Yeva loved and supported each other, and my mother was grateful to her sisters that they rescued her children. My mother lost apartment and belongings, but at least the children were doing all right. My stepfather became the head of this big family. He loved all of us. When he saw me thin with my head shaved, he demanded my certificate of release and burned it. ‘That’s it! Nobody knows about the jail. Don’t tell anybody and live your life as a free person’.
One day in early June the guard opened the door and said: ‘Tarskiy, get your belongings and come out’. I was taken to a special black car with steel bars commonly called ‘voronok’ [derived from ‘Varon’, raven in Russian, and means bringing trouble]. I was taken to a room where there was an officer whom I had never seen before. He offered me a seat and read the sentence of the special council of the NKVD USSR [extra-judicial punitive body within the NKVD authorized to issue sentences without a trial or attorney. In 1939 it was acknowledged to be illegal and its sentences became ineffective]: ‘The defendant charged under Article 58-10 part 1 and 84 of the CC of the RSFSR Tarskiy V.L. should be set free with the inclusion of the term of punishment into the term of his stay in the bull pen’. They asked me to sign under my obligation not to disclose the circumstances and materials of my case, gave me a ticket to Moscow and took me to the railway station in a car.