With the wives of officers stories. “Behind the walls of the military town there was another life…”: life stories of the wives of Soviet officers. “Limousines with German officers drove up to the building and took away young women, the inhabitants of this house”
On Defender of the Fatherland Day, it is customary to congratulate all men without exception and age discounts. The male? Congratulations! So he deserved it. But only a few of them know what service is. An experienced wife of an officer tells about how the military live and serve.
To become the wife of a general, you need to marry a lieutenant and wander around the garrisons with him. But a rare bird will fly to the middle of the Dnieper, which means that with a successful combination of circumstances, you will meet old age with your husband-colonel. Or you won’t if you run away earlier, unable to withstand all the hardships and hardships of military life.
C - Stability
She just doesn't exist. You will never know how long you will live in one place and where you will then be sent. Most likely further away. The more remote the place of its location, the higher the chance that you will go there.
Every time you need to start all over again and be prepared for the fact that the water is in the column, and the amenities are on the street.
T - Patience
We need to find its inexhaustible source. And draw liters from there - one glass on an empty stomach for prevention, and in advanced cases, increase the dosage until the symptoms disappear.
About - Communication
With anyone, but not with her husband. Sometimes he leaves in the morning, as usual, for service and returns not even at night (this, by the way, is excellent and consider yourself lucky!), But two weeks later, simply because the Motherland said: “We must!”. The voice of the wife is deliberative, but by no means decisive.
D - children
At first it’s hard with them, grandparents are far away, there is often no one to help, you can only rely on yourself. But children grow up and become like cats! That is, they walk on their own. In a closed area where everyone knows each other, nothing bad will ever happen.
F - pity
Forget! First, you will learn not to spare yourself, otherwise you will not survive, because the whole life is on you, and there is no time for your husband - he has a service. Then stop feeling sorry for others. And if you see that someone is not conscientiously fulfilling their duties, just do not remain silent. And it is right!
AB-SA-RA-KA
bloody land:
The stories of the officer's wife
Colonel Henry Carrington
DEDICATION
This story is dedicated to Lieutenant General Sherman, whose proposal was accepted in the spring of 1866 at Fort Kearny, and whose energetic policy of solving the Indian problems and quickly completing the Union Pacific to the "Sea", crushed the last hope of an armed insurrection.
Margaret Irvine Carrington.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
Absaraka, indeed, became a bloody land. The tragedy, in which the army lost twelve officers and two hundred and forty-seven brave soldiers in 1876, was but the continuation of a series of skirmishes which brought about peace after the catastrophe of 1866. Now you can learn more about a country that was so dependent on the military to expand settlements and solve Indian problems.
In January 1876, General Custer told the author, "It will take another massacre of Phil Kearny for Congress to give generous support to the army." Six months later, his story, like Fetterman, has become monumental thanks to a similar catastrophe. With extensive experience on the frontier—Fetterman was a rookie—and with a belief in the ability of white soldiers to overcome overwhelming numbers of Indians, fearless, brave, and peerless horsemen, Custer believed that an army should fight hostile savages under any circumstances and at every opportunity.
Short story developments in this country is of great value to all who are interested in our relations with the Indians of the Northwest.
The map attached here was considered sufficiently detailed by Generals Custer and Brisbin. General Humphreys, chief of US engineers, pointed out additional forts and agencies on it.
The first appearance of the military in this country is accurately represented in the text. There has never been a more insane impulse of the Americans than that which forced the army into the country of the Powder and Bighorn Rivers in 1866, doing the will of irresponsible emigrants, regardless of the legal rights of the local tribes. There has never been a wilder takeover for gold than taking over the Black Hills in the face of solemn treaties.
Time brings to the surface the fruits of an unreasonable policy - the agreement of 1866 in Laramie - a simple deception, as far as it concerned all the tribes. These fruits are ripe. The fallen can attest to this. I am ready to state that at the time of the massacre, if this line had been severed, it would have required four times as many forces in the future to reopen it; since then, more than a thousand soldiers have faced a problem that was then solved by less than a hundred. The battle for the Bighorn Country was presented in one statement: “Having had a partial success, the Indian, now desperate and bitter, looked upon the reckless white man as a sacrifice, and the United States had to send an army to deal with the Indians of the northwest. It is better to incur the costs immediately than to delay and provoke a war for many years. It needs to be understood here and now.”
There is no glory in Indian warfare. If too little has been done, the West complains; if too much is done, the East condemns the massacre of the redskins. The lies of justice are between extremes, and here is represented the quality of that Indian policy which was inaugurated during the official term of President Grant. So little truth, mixed facts, and such a strong desire to be popular by pointing to the scapegoat at the first public condemnation of the war, which lasted for six months, that, even now, public opinion has taken only a few uncertain lessons from that carnage. Indeed, it took another tragedy to try to sort out the relationship between the Americans and the Indian tribes and solve this problem.
Henry Carrington
Journalist and writer Vasily Sarychev has been writing down the memoirs of old-timers for fifteen years, fixing the history of the western region of Belarus through their destinies. His new story, written especially for TUT.BY, is dedicated to Soviet women, who in 1941 were left to fend for themselves by the Soviet authorities. During the occupation, they were forced to survive, including with the help of the Germans.
Vasily Sarychev is working on a series of books "In Search of Lost Time". As the author notes, this is “the history of Europe in the mirror of a Western Belarusian city, which was told by old people who survived six authorities” ( Russian empire, German occupation during World War I, the period when Western Belarus was part of Poland, Soviet power, German occupation during World War II and again Soviet power).
Fundraising for the publication of a new book by Sarychev from the series “In Search of Lost Time” ends on the crowdfunding platform “Beehive”. On the page of this project, you can familiarize yourself with the content, study the list of gifts and participate in the publication of the book. Participants will receive a book as a gift for the New Year holidays.
TUT.BY has already published Vasily about the incredible fate common man, caught in the millstones of big politics, "polite people" from 1939 and about escaping naked from prison. New story dedicated to wives Soviet commanders.
When Western Belarus was annexed to the USSR, they came to our country as winners. But then, when their husbands retreated to the east with the active army, no one needed them. How did they survive under the new government?
I'm on you like in a war. Abandoned
“Let your Stalin feed you!”
Many years ago, in the sixties, there was an incident at the checkpoint of a Brest factory. The enterprise is more female, after the change of workers, an avalanche hurried home, and conflicts occurred in the crush. They did not look at faces: whether it was an editorial or a deputy, they applied it with proletarian frankness.
At the turnstile, as in a bath, everyone is equal, and the wife of the commander from the Brest Fortress, who headed the factory trade union - not yet old, twenty years had not passed since the war, having survived the occupation - was pushing on a common basis. Maybe she hit someone - with her elbow or during distribution - and the young weaver, who heard from her friends such things that they don’t write about in the newspapers, whipped backhand: “German prostitute!” - and she grabbed her breasts and croaked: “If you have small children ...”
So in one phrase - the whole truth about the war, with many shades, from which we were carefully taken away.
In conversations with people who survived the occupation, at first I could not understand when they made the remark “this is already after the war” and began to talk about the Germans. For the inhabitant of Brest, hostilities flashed in one morning, and then another power, three and a half years of deep German rear. Different categories of citizens - locals, Easterners, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, party workers who got out from behind the wire of prisoners, commander's wives, soltyses, policemen - each had their own war. Some survived the misfortune at home, where neighbors, relatives, where the walls help. It was very bad for those whom hard times caught in a foreign land.
They arrived before the war in the "liberated" western edge mistresses - yesterday's girls from the Russian hinterland, who pulled out a lucky ticket (we are talking about the events of 1939, when Western Belarus was annexed to the USSR. - TUT.BY). To marry a lieutenant from a stationed regiment meant to take off in status. And here - " liberation campaign"and in general a different world, where people raise the brim of their hats when they meet and turn to "pan", where in the store without an appointment there are bicycles with wonderfully curved handlebars, and private traders smoke a dozen varieties of sausages, and for a penny you can take at least five cuts on a dress ... And that's all these people look at them with their husband with apprehension - they look right ...
Nina Vasilievna Petruchik - by the way, the cousin of Fyodor Maslievich, whose fate is already in the chapter “Polite People of 1939”, recalled that autumn in the town of Volchin: “The wives of the commanders were in boots, printed cotton dresses with flowers, black velvet jackets and huge white scarves. At the market, they began to buy embroidered nightgowns and, out of ignorance, put them on instead of dresses ... "
Maybe the weather was like this - I'm talking about boots, but they are met by clothes. This is how an eleven-year-old girl saw them: very poor people came. People, chuckling, sold nightgowns, but laughter with laughter, and the newcomers became the masters of life in a year and a half before the war.
But life calculates for random happiness. It was these women, perceived with hostility, with children in their arms, with the outbreak of war, who were left alone in an alien world. From a privileged caste, they suddenly turned into pariahs, thrown out of the queues with the words: “Let your Stalin feed you!”
It was not so with everyone, but it was, and it is not for us now to judge the ways of survival that young women chose. The easiest thing was to find a guardian who would warm and feed the children, and protect them somewhere.
“Limousines with German officers drove up to the building and took away young women, the inhabitants of this house”
Photo is illustrative Vasily Prokopuk, a boy from the time of the occupation, who was snooping around the city with his friends, recalled that on the former Moskovskaya (we are talking about one of the Brest streets. - TUT.BY) one could see young women with soldiers walking in the direction of the fortress. The narrator is convinced that it was not local girls who “spasted” under the arm, for whom it is more difficult to accept such courtship: there were parents, neighbors, in whose eyes the church grew, finally. Maybe polkas are more relaxed? - “What are you, the Poles have ambition! my respondents answered. “There was a case, a panenka was seen flirting with an occupier - the priest screwed this into his sermon ...”
"The war is walking around Russia, and we are so young ..." - three and a half years is a long time in a short Indian century. But this was not the main motive - the children, their eternally hungry eyes. The troublesome boys did not delve into the subtleties, sneered contemptuously about women from former homes officers: "Found yourself ..."
“In the center of the courtyard,” writes the author, “there was a rather exotic wing in which lived a German major, our present chief, along with a beautiful young woman and her little child. We soon learned that this was the ex-wife of a Soviet officer, left to the mercy of fate on the tragic days of June 1941 for the Red Army. In the corner of the barracks yard stood a three-story brick building inhabited by abandoned families. Soviet officers. In the evenings, limousines drove up to the building with German officers and they took away young women, the inhabitants of this house.
The situation allowed options. For example, weren't the commander's wives forcibly taken away? According to Ivan Petrovich, “it was a small barracks, converted into a residential building, with several apartments per floor. Young women lived here, mostly with small children. It is possible that even before the war it was the house of the command staff, where the families found the war: I did not see guards or any signs of forced detention.
More than once or twice, I witnessed how the Germans drove up here in the evening: our camp was across the parade ground from this house. Sometimes they dropped in on the commandant, other times straight. It was not a trip to a brothel - they were going to the ladies. They knew about the visit, smiled like good friends. Usually the Germans came in the evening, went upstairs, or the women themselves went out dressed up, and the cavaliers took them away, one might assume, to a theater or a restaurant. I didn’t have to catch the return, with whom the children were, I can’t know. But everyone in the camp knew that these were the wives of the commanders. They understood that for women it was a means of survival.”
Here's how it turned out. AT last days before the war, commanders and party workers who wanted to take their families out of the city were accused of alarmism and expelled from the party - and now women have been left for the use of Wehrmacht officers.
The son's name was Albert, the Germans came - he became Adolf
Photo is illustrative It would be wrong to say that the women left behind were looking for such support, it was just one of the ways to survive. Unpopular, stepping over the line, beyond which - gossip and piercing glances.
Women who came to Western Belarus from the east often lived in twos, threes, it was easier to survive. They went to distant (they didn’t give them to the neighbors) villages, but you can’t live on alms alone, they settled down to wash wagons, barracks, and soldiers’ dormitories. Once a German gave a large postcard to the wife of a political worker from the artillery regiment, and she hung it on the wall to decorate the room. Many years have passed since the war, and the baboons remembered the picture - they vigilantly looked at each other during the war.
Battalion commander's wife rifle regiment, who stood in the fortress before the war, at the beginning of the occupation, she copied her little son from Albert to Adolf, she came up with such a move, and after liberation she again made Albert. Other widows moved away from her, turned away, but for the mother this was not the main thing.
Someone will be closer to her truth, someone to the heroic Vera Khoruzhey, who insisted on going to the occupied Vitebsk at the head of an underground group, leaving a baby and a little daughter in Moscow.
Life is multifaceted, and those who survived the occupation remembered different things. And a romantic-minded person who left the terrible building of the SD was clearly not after torture, and the German’s love for a Jewish girl, whom he hid to the last and went to a penal company for her, and a city plantation worker who hastily appeased a Wehrmacht soldier nearby in the park, until she shot by a client who caught a bad disease. In each case, it was different: where is the food, where is the physiology, and somewhere - a feeling, love.
Outside of service, the Germans became gallant wealthy males. Bright in her youth, the beauty N. said: at least don’t go beyond the threshold - they stuck like ticks.
Statistics will not answer how many red-haired babies were born during the war and after the expulsion of the Germans from the temporarily occupied territory, as well as with the Slavic appearance in Germany at the beginning of the 46th ... This is a delicate topic to take deeply, and we went somewhere then to the side...
Maybe in vain in general about commander's wives - there were enough restless women of all statuses and categories, and they all behaved differently. Someone tried to hide their beauty, while someone, on the contrary, turned it to good. The wife of the commander of the reconnaissance battalion Anastasia Kudinova, older, shared shelter with young partners who also lost their husbands in the fortress. All three with children - such a kindergarten-day nursery. As soon as the Germans appeared, she smeared her friends with soot and kept her away from the window. I was not afraid for myself, my friends joked, our old maid ... They pulled their mother's strap and survived without the enemy's shoulder, then they joined the fight.
They were not alone, many remained faithful, waiting for their husbands throughout the war and later. However, the opposition - arrived, local - is not entirely true. Everywhere there are cultured and not very cultured people, with principles and creeping, pure and vicious. And there are depths in any person where it is better not to look, the nature of all sorts of things mixed up, and what will manifest itself with greater force depends largely on the circumstances. It so happened that since June 22, 1941, the most destitute, stunned by these circumstances, were the “easterners”.
Another would not be missed - the reason. How did it happen that you had to flee to Smolensk and further, leaving weapons, warehouses, the entire army of personnel, and in the border areas - also wives to the delight of Wehrmacht officers?
Then there was a noble rage, the science of hatred in a journalistic performance and a real one, which increased tenfold strength in battle. This hatred helped to carry out combat missions, but in a surprising way it was not shifted to the direct culprits of many sufferings.
From this pre-war photo, the deputy commander of the 84th Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Yakovlevich Gribakin (born 1895), his wife Nadezhda Matveevna (born 1898), and their daughters Natalia and Irina are looking at us from this pre-war photograph.
They met the war in Brest. Here is the story of Nadezhda Gribakina about the beginning of the war.
The first time I read it, I couldn't help crying.
And even now, re-reading, I can not.
The war started, we were sleeping. The husband got up very quickly and began to dress. He only said:
Well, the war is waiting.
Artillery shelling and bombing began. We lived in the fortress itself. The husband dressed and left, went to his unit. Then he couldn't get through. He returned to us and told us to go to the city now.
After 10-12 minutes, a fragment hit the house. My mother and I were hurt. In one underwear they ran out into the street. Fragments and bullets were flying everywhere. We met some commander who ordered us to hide in the house. We hid in some ruins, a small house. They were there for three hours. The bombardment continued, and artillery shells flew. When we fled, a wounded man was crawling into this house. We ran past him. When they stayed in this house, the eldest daughter says:
"Mom, I'm going to bandage him."
I didn't let her in, but they both broke loose and ran. He had a broken leg. There was nothing to bind. Daughter says:
- Gain strength and crawl to the medical unit.
“Comrades, help, there is a wounded man here.
Rifles were immediately pointed at us. They were already Germans. We were so frightened, because we betrayed ourselves and did not expect that in some two or three hours the Germans would be here.
After a while, a rifle appears in the window, and a German looks out cautiously. When he saw that there were women, children, there was one old man, he did not pay attention to us. One of the women addressed him in German to let him go home to get dressed. He says:
- Sit here. Soon everything will calm down, then go home. He asked us where the road to the highway was. We showed him.
After a while we hear Russian voices. The commander enters and asks if the Germans were here. We say we were. He does not believe, asks in which direction they went. We said. There were four of them, one of them was wounded. Natasha, the eldest daughter, bandaged him. He's asking:
- What do you think we should do? Protect?
I say:
- What will 30 people do, you need to get where ours are.
Another says:
And we will destroy them. We will start shooting, the Germans will hit us.
One of them sits in a corner. I will remember this picture for a long time. He sits, thoughtful, tears in his eyes and looks, looks. I thought he had a letter. I look - a party card in my hands. His friend says:
- Must be destroyed.
They pulled the sink away from the washbasin and stuffed the party card deep into it. The second tore the ticket and also put it down into the sink. The third, apparently, was non-partisan. The fourth looked at the ticket for a very long time, turned away, smiled and even kissed this ticket and also tore it up.
Then the commander shouted to leave, lay around in the bushes.
The Germans reappeared. I tell them:
- You hide.
They ask fearfully:
- Where? - very confused.
I say:
“Let’s open the doors, and you stand between them.”
The Germans entered. They took out rifles, stuck them out the windows, then they themselves went in and told us:
- Get out.
We went out and carried out the wounded. Ask:
- Who else is there?
We say there is no one. And those in the corner. I don't know what happened to those four people. Fragments fly, bullets fly. We got lost. They are screaming at us. They took me across the road. Forced to carry a wounded officer. The rest of the women were placed in single file to cover them. The woman who spoke German says:
“We are afraid, they are shooting there.
They answer:
“Your guys won’t shoot at you.
They carried this officer. They carried this officer. Then we were led past our house. This woman asks to let me get dressed, opens my coat and shows that I am naked. He shakes his head, says no. Led to our house with opposite side, set. I ran out in a shirt. Natasha grabbed my coat and carried it after me. I wrapped myself in a blanket. When we were placed against the wall, I feel how this blanket pulls me down. I can't stand. I get down on my knees. I look ahead, and rifles have already been pointed at us, a platoon of soldiers is running. Then I realized that we were set to be shot. I quickly got up, I think that they will not kill me, and I will see how my girls are shot. There was no fear. Suddenly, some officer runs down the mountain, says something to the soldiers, and they lower their rifles. Then I already found out that they were shooting until 12 o'clock, and then there was an order not to shoot. We were taken away without any three minutes 12.
We were taken somewhere else. 600 women gathered. They brought them to a big house, put them on the ground, and ordered them to lie down. The firing is incredible, everything flies into the air. The house in front of us is on fire.
So we lay until evening. There were many wounded among us. Natasha worked like a real doctor, doing dressings. She performed an operation on one of her sisters with a simple knife, took out a bullet.
By evening, the shooting had calmed down a bit. I say:
- Let's go to the house.
By evening, our guards took the men who can walk, forced them to carry guns and took them somewhere. Only seriously wounded men remained with us. By evening I say:
- Let's go into the house, there we will be calm even [if only] from the fragments that fly and injure people before our eyes.
Some say that the house may collapse. I say:
- As you wish, I'll go.
With me was another woman with a baby and a Polish woman who spoke German. Her husband served as a janitor in the fortress.
Little by little it got quiet. They began to run from house to house, looking for someone to dress, someone to eat. I say:
- Take everything that is white for dressing.
They brought towels and sheets. Immediately began to make dressings.
Everyone is afraid to go to the second floor. Everyone is thirsty. They got water, gave a sip only to the wounded and children. At night, the bombing began again. I stood leaning against the wall of a huge three-story house, and felt the walls literally shaking.
We stayed in this house for three days. Children are hungry, crying, screaming. On the fourth day it became quieter, but we hear voices all the time. Women scream, start arguing, quarreling over seats: I sat here, you sat here. I had to talk to them a lot, even hoarse. I say:
- Hush, hush, death is above us, and you are arguing over some place.
Then the women became bolder, saw a well across the road, began to run there, carry water, give to the wounded, to children, and to others in a small sip. On the fourth day, a German appears and says in Russian:
- Get out.
We leave. Lead. We passed the fortress. We were led somewhere very far. They led us to a huge ditch and told us to hide there. My mother is old, they dragged her in her arms. We can hardly go. It began to calm down a little in general, and there was no such bombing. They raised their heads up, the machine gun was pointed there. Some were with things, things were thrown. Already completely said goodbye to life. Then some officer and two soldiers come down, lead the men separately, us separately. There were a lot of men, soldiers. They were already taken somewhere far away. We don't hear them. Then they tell us to go upstairs. We had a sister with us, wounded in the stomach. At first she stuck. She had a suitcase. She ran out with him, could not find her part and stayed with us. We never knew her. She says to Natasha:
- I beg you. Take my suitcase. Maybe they'll take me to the infirmary, I'll look for you. You're naked, take what you have there, leave me a pair of underwear.
I say:
“Natasha, don’t take it, it’s not known where they are taking us.”
She says:
- I'll take.
They took out this wounded sister, a German officer was standing, speaking Russian. This sister turns to him, asks:
- Sir, what will happen to me? I am badly injured. Will they put me in the hospital or will they leave me here?
He doesn't say anything. She turns a second time and cries. He speaks:
- Drop me.
But Ira and I took her by the arms.
Until the night they led us. They took me to the barn. They beat him with a beat. We had the wounded with us. One tanker was wounded. Burnt face, terrible burns. He moaned so. It was so creepy that I couldn't look at it. Natasha patiently approached him, listened to him. He says he can't understand anything. Finally, she realized that he was thirsty. We had a kettle. They took water. She rolled up a paper straw and gives him a drink. He strokes her gratefully. At night he died.
In the morning they took us out, they say:
Officers' wives, come out.
Everyone is silent, afraid. Then he comes out with a list and reads. I read surnames 20, says:
- Go to this barn, your husbands are there.
He did not read my last name, but I followed him. There are tears. It turns out that they have already been taken prisoner. One says:
- Will we live, they will probably kill us, you take care of the children. There was no way to escape from the fortress.
I see one is sitting on the straw. I go up to him and ask:
— You don't know Captain Gribakin? He says:
- I do not know. Everyone is saying goodbye to their wives, but my wife is not here. Allow me to say goodbye to you.
We kissed him. He warns:
- Tell all women not to say that their husbands are political officers. Then they will die themselves and we will be extradited.
I cried with them, went out and quietly told the women about it.
Then they took us again. The next night we again spent the night in a barn somewhere. Then we were led through the Bug. The bridge was not yet completed. When they left us to settle down in the evening, they said:
- Go get dinner.
Who has children, immediately ran.
— Into what? they ask.
- Go, they will give you dishes there.
We didn't go for some reason, as if I felt it. Women run there, there is such laughter, they laughed so much. First they gave everyone mugs. Some took even more than they needed. And then they start laughing and say:
- Go to Stalin, he will feed you.
The women return with tears, but they did not leave the mugs, and one took 4 mugs and gave them to us.
We were taken to the bridge. The wounded sister is coming with us. Suddenly a cart drives up and takes away the wounded. This sister said goodbye to us. Natasha is dragging her suitcase, Ira is bringing her grandmother, but I can't go. We walk on the sides, and in the middle of the bridge there were men. Suddenly I see someone picks me up and to the men. It turns out that one military man saw that I couldn’t walk and said:
“Come with us, or you will fall.”
Went under escort, however, a little. Passed the bridge. The command is given. The women stopped and the men were led on. Here the women abandoned everything. Natasha left our suitcase. Somehow we got over this bridge. Again such a situation. There were no wounded with us. There were lightly wounded who were silent that they were wounded. It was already the eighth day.
When we were being led past our house, after they wanted to shoot us, a Pole woman, the janitor's wife, picked up a bag of sugar near my apartment. In the morning, at noon and in the evening she bit off half a piece with her teeth and gave it to us. We didn't have anything else.
In the morning, the order is given to leave. We get up. Natasha doesn't get up. I thought she was fast asleep. I touch her, her head falls, she is unconscious. I got scared. I think they won't wait for us. Gathered the last strength, I say to Ira:
- Let's carry her in our arms.
Some German comes up and says:
— What, kaput?
I say flu. Asks:
- Mother?
- Yes talking.
He singles out two Poles, says:
- Bring it.
I didn't let them carry it. I gave them the suitcase.
Again we were brought to Brest through the fortress. It's a terrible picture. A lot of our dead sat crouched. I saw one tanker. He sits crouched, his face completely burned. A terrible picture. Horses are rolling, people. I almost had to walk along them, because they were being driven in formation.
Then we go further, two people in our uniform sit opposite each other and look at each other. Turns out they are already dead.
They took us to the fortress. The smell is terrible, everything around is decomposing. It was the eighth day, the heat. Feet with corns, almost all barefoot.We passed the fortress, the bridge. There were bodies all over the city. When we were led along 17 September Avenue, we were photographed endlessly. I turned away all the time. So they laughed at us. Oh how they laughed. Shout:
Officers' wives! Officers' wives.
You can imagine what we looked like. Natasha put on a nice silk dress, but what has it become? Of course, we looked terrible, funny and miserable, and they laughed a lot.
They lead us, we don't even know where. It's quiet and there's no one but the Germans. I put my mother in a steam room. They held her by the arms. But here we were carrying Natasha, and mother was left alone to the mercy of fate. I will ask my friends:
“Look where my mother is.
She is already lagging behind, walking last, and there a soldier pushes her with a bayonet. One very good woman Anoshkina saved my mother.
Then we were taken to the Brest prison. They let us out into the yard - and whoever wants where. Then we were lined up in a semicircle. 12 Germans came. One, apparently a senior officer, also appeared, and with him an interpreter, then a doctor. Immediately they said: the Jews should go out separately. Many Jews hid, did not come out, but then they were betrayed. Then the Poles and Russians were ordered to leave. They got out. Then we, the Easterners, were ordered to stand separately. So we were divided into groups. The Jews were immediately taken out of prison. The locals were told: "Go to your homes."
We were left in prison, and the interpreter began to go to one, to another:
- Tell me who is a communist here, a member of the Komsomol.
Nobody, of course, said. Then one of ours stands out. I don't know her last name, I never did. There were a lot of Eastern ones. She whispered something to him. He approaches one. She is a Komsomol member with a child. Asks:
Where is your party card?
When we spent the night, she tore it up and left it. This woman saw, ours, an Easterner, and she probably told him. Ta says:
“I don’t have a ticket,” she turned terribly pale. He didn't really get on with her, though.
- And where is the Komsomol ticket? " She says:
- I'm not a Komsomol member.
- And what ticket did you tear up? She quickly found, says:
- Trade union.
— Is the trade union card also red?
- Yes, red.
He turns to me and asks:
- Do you have a red union card too?
I say:
- It depends on what, they were blue and red.
This woman got lost between us, but then we found her.
We were left in jail. Take whatever room you want. Our group occupied a small room. The floor was wooden in the room, and everyone was climbing towards us. We crowded about 50 people. When we went to bed, everyone fought for a place.
Natasha and I are messing around, we don't know what's wrong with her. We do compresses for her. There was no medicine. Anoshkina, another fighting woman began to climb all over the prison. There were no Germans, only sentries remained at the gate. They find a pharmacy, there are a lot of medicines. They took it all away, found streptocide, Natasha was given it. She later had angina. Why angina, I can not understand. This streptocide, then Anoshkina got chocolate, and with this they saved Natasha. She began to come to her senses.On the fifth day, a commission came to us, lined us up in the yard, each was given a ration in hand. One speaks good Russian, one is a doctor. I say that my daughter is sick, I don’t know what kind of illness, maybe she can be taken to the hospital. Doctor says:
- Hardly.
He spoke Russian well. He speaks:
“I will give you a note and ask you to be admitted to the hospital tomorrow morning. They gave us our biscuits, crackers each, a little bit of cereal and tea. Here they laugh again and say:
- You will receive every day. Stalin sent this to you. It turned out that these stocks remained in the prison.
I went to the sentry with this note. The sentry misses. I'm going to the hospital. Silence in the city. I'm going to the hospital. I hear a thud. The Germans are coming, all in cars, on motorcycles, on bicycles, everyone is beautifully dressed, and there were so many of them that [avenue] on September 17 was all filled with troops. I think: where now ours will win. There were a lot of them, and, most importantly, everything was mechanized.
I enter the hospital. There's not a soul there. I pass one room, the second, the third, there is no one. The beds are standing, no one is there. They gave us rations later, and then we didn't eat anything. I see a piece of bread on the table. It looks like someone bit him. I look at this bread, so I want to grab it. I think: "This is theft." I try not to look at him. I cough, I knock with my feet, no one comes out. I can already smell this bread. I think: "Well, I'll steal it." I grabbed this bread and did not have time to swallow it, my sister comes out. I think, "She saw me take it." She asks:
- What do you want?
I have tears in my eyes. I show her the note. She says:
Under no circumstances will you be released. I will give you some of the medicines, but no one will put you in the hospital. Try to take her to city hospital.
I go back, I think: why did I eat bread, I could give everyone a piece. I come, pick up Natasha and drag her on my back. I come to the city hospital. She was not accepted there either. I'm dragging her back. At this time, a polka, the janitor's wife, was walking, saw us, was delighted, said that she came several times, brought bread, but the sentry did not let us through. She helped me drag Natasha, gave us bread, sugar, a piece of butter, a scallop. We all have a lot of lice in a week.
She brought Natasha again, but she felt better. After her, her mother fell ill, she has dysentery. We dragged her every minute to the restroom. Washed with cold water, caught a cold. Then she got a little better.It's been 3 weeks. We were told that one of the family could go and ask for bread and clothes. I went to the wives of one Captain Shenvadze and Commissar Kryuchkov. They received me very badly, asked me to leave, because they had Germans. Came to the wife of a lieutenant. She helped us a lot, gave us linen, gave us food, gave us some pillowcases, towels. We left her with a big bundle. She says:
- If you are released, come to live with me.
Then we were told: whoever has an apartment can leave. We came to this Nevzorova. Then the room was vacated. The owner of this house, a Polish woman, allowed us to live, and then our independent life began. When we came from prison, everyone became interested in us. Most of the locals lived there. Everyone ran to look at us like we were wild animals. Some brought soap, some to eat, some a towel, some a blanket, some a pillow. They brought us beds. There was a woman there, doctor Geishter, who terribly hated Soviet power but helped us. There was a Jewess there, the head of the pharmacy Ruzya, this one also helped us.
So we started living there. Every day they will not bring us food. Our women went to beg in the villages. Most of our women walked through the villages. Who lived in the city, went to ask in the villages. They helped a lot in the villages, I couldn’t even believe it. The girls were afraid to walk for the first few days, it was scary. I couldn't walk either. I cried for the first few days. My mother will put on a gas mask bag and go to the village, and then the girls go to meet her. They gave bread, cucumbers, and when they started to go far, there was lard, white flour, and eggs. They fed us, literally, until 1943. There were those who both scolded and sent to Stalin, but the majority helped, especially near Kobrin, 50 km. My girls went there. There is nothing on the legs in winter, and we sewed from rags, we will wind up something. Mom used to bring this bag. I am sitting at home. Let's share these pieces of bread. You don't see if they are dirty or not. We had no shame. There were these two mugs that they gave us.
The girls began to go far to the villages, to collect with one woman, but they never asked. This woman holds a child in her arms, she asks, the girls are silent, but they give them too. They went once every two weeks. They brought it so that they came, literally bent over with this burden. For 30 km they no longer carried potatoes, but bread, beans, onions. Milk was given as much as you like, but how to carry it.
Then I see that it is not possible to live like this. Just a friend comes with a bathrobe, how to sew it. We took a pattern from this dressing gown and began to sew. There was no car, we sewed by hand. Then relatives of Irina's friend say: "Come to us to sew," and we went to the 4th Brest - it's far away. So they lived until 1942. In 1941, women entered the workforce. Those who did not work were taken to Germany. True, Ira got a job at a laborer's factory, and Natasha worked in the fortress, peeling potatoes.
The Poles insisted that we be singled out in the same way as the Jews in the ghetto. There was one lawyer Kshenitsky here. He especially insisted on it. He was a big boss. For some reason, the Germans did not agree to this. If someone came and reported that this was the wife of a colonel, this one was a commissar, then she was taken to prison, and then shot. Those who managed to escape, the Germans did not use anything against them. I wasn't called. Only when we had a search [on] the first day, they asked me who the husband was. I was saved by the fact that until 1939 my husband was in reserve, worked for railway. For some reason, his passport was in my bag, and Natasha grabbed this bag. It was obvious that he was a railroad worker. I told everyone: I came here to visit relatives, and Natasha came to practice. Her husband was not here, and as proof she showed her passport.
Archive of IRI RAS. Foundation 2. Section VI. Op. 16. D. 9. L. 1-5 (typewritten text, copy).
* * *
And you know what?
They all remained alive.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Yakovlevich Gribakin, together with his unit, retreated to Kobrin, served in the field administration of the 13th Army, and reached Berlin. Awarded with the Order Patriotic War I and II degrees and the Order of the Red Star.
Nadezhda Matveevna, together with her daughters, lived to see liberation. On December 21, 1944, in Brest, she was interviewed by members of the Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War F.L. Yelovtsan and A.I. Shamshin.
