Pointing the gun at the sick child, the German officer shouted: “Kill!”
“Somehow, not far away, the guys found a German artillery shell, lit a fire in the road ditch, threw a shell into it and scattered in different directions, one boy climbed a tree. We expect an explosion. Having noticed the fire, our steward came up, abruptly threw off the projectile with his boot, took off a wide officer belt - and let's run after us. ” All this is still remembered by the children of war. They also remember the faces of German soldiers, who, with cries and “yako” and “milk”, rushed around the yards of the villagers, catching chickens, dragging screaming pigs by their feet, buckets of eggs, flour crates and other food.
Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 against the Nazi aggressors in those days shook the entire population of the multinational country of the Soviets. The huge Red Army of ordinary soldiers, commanders and generals fought with the enemy on the fronts. Old men, women and teenagers for days did not stop the work of machine tools in factories and factories, creating weapon and ammunition, uniforms and food for the Army, they grew bread in the fields for the front.
The youngsters, realizing the misfortune, steadfastly experienced the hardships of war: hunger and cold, widespread devastation, tried to help adults, absorbed the smallest episodes of military life into consciousness. And now, on the slope of their years, it is meaningful to clearly convey to the new generations all the truth that they have seen, experienced, and experienced. More and more convinced: the German fascists brought people death, grief and suffering. In Yura Petrov and Misha Dobrotvorsky, fathers — teachers of the seven-year school of the Tselinsky grain farm — went to the front in the first days of the war, leaving their wives and sisters in their arms, three in arms, fewer than children.
Cousins, Jura and Misha, seven years old, were older. These families and hundreds of thousands of the same - having many children, were especially hard to survive in the land occupied by the Nazis. Fortunately, they did not manage for long ...
Then the quick release (in half a year) of the Tselinsky district from the German fascists by our army saved those children from starvation. And soon another joyful help came: the government of the country made a decision: "In the liberated territories, immediately create special orphanages for children of large families."
In five months, by July 1943, such an orphanage was formed at the central estate of the Tselinsky grain farm, in the building of the former state farm office. Beds, mattresses, bed linen began to come here; a summer kitchen was built in the courtyard, the enrollment of children for living began, a staff of serving workers and educators was staffed.
The first residents of the orphanage were Yura Petrov with his younger brother Tolya and Misha Dobrotvorsky. Maria (Mara), Tonya came from the Kryuchkov family of eight children, a bit later, Lelya and Lida. Graduated from school 10 Kapitolina Kryuchkova was hired as a teacher, and the oldest, Nadezhda, went to war with her father, Fyodor Sazontovich.
Replenishment to the orphanage came from Celina, the nearby villages of Lopanka, Lezhanka (Middle Yegorlyk), Stepnoye and other southern districts of the region. From 1 September 1943, pupils of school age went to the local 7-summer school of the grain farm. By the end of 1944, there were already quite a few children in the orphanage.
By the beginning of 1945, life in the orphanage was fully established.
Yury Alexandrovich Petrov, a resident of Rostov-on-Don, a retired colonel, told about how children lived in the first year in an orphanage, and even later, what they saw around what they experienced: “... It was difficult to go to war with food, but where it was possible to take it, the German fascists looted everything in the region. I remember how, after the arrival of the Germans, in the second branch of the state farm, where we temporarily lived with our loved ones, fleeing from hunger, there appeared two trucks full of German soldiers. They yelled and yelled “yayko”, “milk” to the villagers, yachting, pulling chickens, dragging screaming pigs by their feet, buckets of eggs, flour bunks and other food. Having robbed the village, screaming armada of enemy soldiers, smoking with trucks, disappeared behind the ascent from the gully. Since there was nothing to eat, our common family returned home to the central estate of the state farm, to their two apartments, the seventh six-apartment building, No. XXUMX and No. XXUMX ...
“Life in the orphanage at the very beginning was also not easy,” recalls Yuri Petrov, “there was no nutrition. But all one - rejoiced in what they fed. There was absolutely nothing to eat at home. Repairs continued inside the building: the floors and walls were painted. We slept on the beds in the yard, and the director of the orphanage, Mikhail Mikhailovich Snitko, was right there, next to him - in the equestrian locker in the hay, which he put in place of the mattress. And in the winter, first especially, it was difficult - it was cold. Semicircular, protruding brick ovens to the ceiling, upholstered in iron, were made of coal, but it was not.
The stoves were heated with branches that they themselves brought from the near forest belt. From such a firebox, heat was soon blown out, and the cold returned. Then the guys came up with it: they put it side by side, close by, in two beds, put mattresses on them, laid four of them, covered themselves with biké blankets, and on top also with their coats. Nothing! Overwhelmed. And most importantly - not discouraged. This was helped by our teachers, the director. Mikhail Mikhailovich came to us to work from Rostov with a guitar and almost every evening in a large hall sat on a chair among the gathered students, sang interesting songs for a long time, more - military. Apparently, the words of one of his entire life, apparently, of his own composition: “My city is with the Don, burnt down by my enemies, my beloved Rostov-on-Don ...”
Kapitolina Fyodorovna, - the teacher, every night before bed, she read us the most interesting books available, told fairy tales, arranged memory games, for example: "Who will call the first five names of girls, then boys," and more difficult to name five names, colors and t .d., starting with the letter "a", "n", etc.
A talented teacher, in the future a teacher of literature, Kapitolina Fyodorovna taught Tselina schoolchildren for many years, later she supervised the regional art workshop, painted pictures.
Life in the special children's home improved rapidly, the pupils studied at the school, their own - from the school, amateur art activities. The boys and girls read poems, sang songs, danced. Especially popular at that time was the performance of sports pyramids ...
“All students of the orphanage from 10 years and older,” continues Yuri Alexandrovich, “were pioneers. After the war, on holidays, on weekends, the pioneers in red ties lined up to the sound of the pioneer horn, a drum, and marched through the railway to the village of Tselina with songs. In a cozy recreation park, at the main flower bed, the pioneers performed with their own concert, and always with the pyramids, in sports form.
On such days, many villagers came to the park with their families, rested, and treated children to ice cream, soda, sweets, and cookies. The men were refreshed with a mug of cold draft beer, watched the performances of the pioneers.
Children's memory, each person has the strongest, most durable. Therefore, it is not surprising that Yuri Alexandrovich Petrov then, in his 8-10 years of the war years, remembers so many large and small events of that time that are becoming known only today.
So, the continuation of the story of Yuri Alexandrovich Petrov in the memories of the past:
- I remember the new director of the orphanage, who came from the war - Denis Nikolaevich Kotlyarov. Together with the pupils, he planted an apple orchard (now a continuation of Makarenko Street) south-east of the orphanage, the first kind educators: Raisa Petrovna Ovcharenko, Rimma Stepanovna, Vasily Fedorovich Klimko - head teacher of the orphanage, manager Shubtsova.
Somehow, not far away, the guys found a German artillery shell, lit a fire in the road ditch, threw a shell into it and scattered in different directions, one boy climbed a tree. We expect an explosion. Having noticed the fire, our supply manager approached, abruptly threw the projectile with his boot, took off a wide officer belt - and let's chase after us. In the evening, in actual fact, as if nothing had happened, a shout: “I!” Noted their presence at bedtime ...
I remember another episode. This happened in the spring of 1942, when there were no fascists in Tselina. During the lesson at school, we heard a strong explosion almost near the school. Thought - bomb! We jumped out into the street, saw not far away, to the east, in a waste land destroyed, burning plane. Closely it was not possible to run up, the pilots of the Tselinsky airfield, who lived then in the building of the current children's home, blocked the road beyond the 100. A light aircraft wing caught a tall wind turbine with a long length weather vane, which hung now twisted. The dead pilot was then buried at Tselinsky cemetery. ”
This case is confirmed by a former student of that school, Leonid G. Mironenko.
“German bombers flying to the east in the summer of 1942, were often bombarded with Tselina,” continues Yuri Petrov. “That time I went with my mother to Tselina on the 1 line, there, in front of the train station, my aunt and daughter lived in one of two barracks. Suddenly they heard the roaring rumble of an airplane and, in a moment, two blasts of enemy bombs. We saw in front of huge clouds of earth, dust, smoke - and everything was quiet. We ran to my aunt. Really! .. At that place we saw two huge pits merged together. One hut was completely demolished, the other had a roof torn off, holes were gaping instead of windows. Aunt was not at home, and her adult daughter was bleeding from the head and face ... She was still deaf for a long time ...
A little later, six bombs were dropped at once in the long building of the state farm repair shops. Deep craters from them for a long time were not bombarded. Three bombs destroyed houses, injured people on the south-eastern outskirts of Celina. Mom told me this already ...
Returning from the March 1943 evacuation, I saw an unexploded 250-kilogram bomb on the street. She crashed a meter and a half into the ground at the intersection of Frunze streets and the 4 line (near the building of the military registration and enlistment office). For a long time afterwards, this hole in the ground, almost half a meter in diameter, surrounded by barbed wire, was driven around by horse-drawn carriages until the Rostov sappers removed it.
- And it was already under the Germans, - continues Yu.A. Petrov. - We went with cousin Misha to Tselina, and on the railway tracks in front of the station we see two colliding locomotives. One small, apparently shunting, his name was “Sheep”, rolled over on its side, the other - a large, powerful - “CO” (Sergo Ordzhonikidze) with freight cars at the back — slid off the rails. The Germans fiddled around the small locomotive, other people cut it by welding to get it out of the way. Next to him stood a thin blond young German officer - commanded. Funny so with glasses. Upon seeing him, Misha laughed and immediately began to loudly recite lines from the poems of the children's poet S. Marshak: “What is before us, Two shafts behind the ears ...
He learned this poem before school with his father, a teacher of Russian language and literature.
For a lifetime, the fate of the Yudin family was bumped into the memory. A German fascist officer shot his father and daughter with a pistol in front of his wife and son. The wife, not having gone through the horror, lost her mind. Then I went to the village, in our state farm, in courtyards. Someone feed, somewhere night out, in tattered clothes.
Then my mother took her home, washed her, dressed her, left us to live. After some time, she was taken to Novocherkassk, to a special hospital. Her son did not live long, he died too.
But what Misha and I saw in the early morning hours of January 23, 1943, as soon as we heard from our relatives: “There are no Germans in Tselina already”. We went there, to the elevator, where from the night came machine-gun fire, explosions. Immediately drew attention to the German anti-aircraft gun. She stood before, near our barracks, and today her front part of the trunk was deployed like a tulip. People said: "The fascists, leaving Tselina, laid a mine in the barrel of the gun and fired."
We then played on it for a long time, twisted, twisted. And there, ahead, in the wasteland, they saw four or five dark mounds in the snow. Those were our dead soldiers.
Behind the railway crossing, several of the same mounds were visible, then they did not calculate how many. Right next to us on the profiled road Rostov-Salsk were two of ours tank, attached to the front by a thick chain of the second. Tankers, about five, quietly quietly talking quietly, how best to move on ...
The kids have grown up. And do not forget the experience. The children’s homes Yuri Petrov and brother Misha Dobrotvorsky, whose fathers died in the first year of the war, graduated from Tselin secondary school. Everyone chose his own way in life, work, created a family. Yuri Alexandrovich became a colonel of engineering troops, retired, lives in Rostov. Once, in the Don State Public Library, he found the book “Virgin Land”, looked - the author SK. Deaf, exclaimed: "So this is my 40-s physical education teacher!" Called. Then he came with his family (wife, daughter, son-in-law). For almost a whole day they could not tear themselves away from each other - “teacher” and “seventh grader”, they were happy to meet, they recalled, - more and more Yura. He brought photographs of those years. Today, Yuri Alexandrovich Petrov is going to come back to visit, to visit the museum, visit his orphanage, and see his native Tselina.
The truth in the memory of the same guys and girls about the war years is stored by many who now live in many parts of our country.
A five year old Russian kid snatched an enemy rifle
The second story started with a phone call. The male voice on the other end of the line obviously belonged to an elderly man, but there were some childishly mischievous notes in it: “Tell me, can I be considered a participant in the war?”. I ask another question: “What year are you of birth?” And I heard in response: “Thirty-seventh. But my neighbor and I in Romanian 43 had a rifle stolen. So, the participant? I do not know how to respond. What is it - a joke? We met.
Gennady Ivanovich Gusev lives in the farm Stepnoye. Neat house, landscaped courtyard. Home Owners. Wife - Raisa Aleksandrovna - is busy in the kitchen, and Gennady Ivanovich is caught up watching old photos.
He begins to tell, and there is not a trace of his gaiety. The voice trembles, tears in the eyes. Children's memory is selective, but the fact that she captured, keeps all her life, not erasing a single paint. “We lived in Andropov. And it was January 5 1943. I remember going out for a walk on the street. The day was frosty, a lot of snow. Our house on the edge of the farm stood, and the path to the street passed through the neighbor's yard.
I passed through this courtyard, just went out of the gate - I looked, the boy ran from the farm and shouted to me: “Stop! Stay where you are! ”I look, but he is not just running — he is pulling a rifle behind him, and from behind, in 70-80, the Romanians are chasing him. Yurka runs up to me, grabs the hand and pulls into the yard. And from the courtyard, we ran back gardens where the broken German car was. We have long climbed it all and knew where and what. So, it was possible to get into it from below through the hole, which was intended for sending natural necessities while driving, so that the car would not stop when someone “needs” to “touch”.
Yuri gets me through this hole in the car, hands me a rifle. Then he climbs himself and gestures to me: cutting his mouth so as not to sniff with his nose! We sit, frozen with fear. A Romanian he came running, spun around the car and left.
When he was out of sight, Yuri helped me out of the car, gave me a rifle, then got out myself, took it, and we went home ...
So we stole the rifle, and it no longer fired during the war, ”as if Gennady Ivanovich sums up what has been said and falls silent, plunging into his childhood memories.
And I think: after all, the boys have saved someone from injury or death. Saved someone's life, and maybe not one. Why are not participants in the war?
Gennady Ivanovich again began to recall: “Romanians were creatures, worse than gypsies. Cattle all cut out - and pigs and chickens. Milked the cow - give them all the milk. My grandmother cooked well, and these reptiles found out and housed an officer to us. My grandmother was cooking at home, and products from the city of Salsk were brought here.
I remember this case. They brought some jam, they opened the first jar, but I could not resist even once with my finger. They saw it and shouted: “Mom, take it, take it!” It's not because they felt sorry for the hungry child, they just disdained to eat after me.
And the second can was opened, put on the stove and forgotten. Jam boiled and ran along the walls of the jar. It turned out two strips: one - wide, and the other - narrow-narrow. The grandfather looked at the jam strips and said to Fede - his nephew: “You see, a wide strip is Hitler walking towards Moscow, but we drove along our narrow ones”.
It was after the Battle of Stalingrad, when the Germans retreated. This I remember well. And I also remember when this Romanian, who was lodging with us, began to understand and speak a little Russian, he showed us pictures of his family, the house in which they lived. And he said: “Is it really impossible for our rulers to peacefully agree? Why are so many people killed? "
And these words bumped into my childhood memory, so hard that I remember them all my life ... "
The war is over. The boy went to school. But in 13 years I had to quit my studies - I had to help my mother, I started working. At first I went as an assistant to the carpenters, and after a couple of months they took him on a horse to work. Then he worked as a mechanic, and in 57-m learned the driver and 11 years twisted the steering wheel. There was also a tractor driver. Work experience - 42, Gennady Ivanovich - a veteran of labor, was awarded the medal "Drummer of Socialist Labor."
His wife, Raisa Alexandrovna, is also from childhood. After the 6 class, she went to the dairy farm as a milkmaid. Then she worked for many years in the garden, and completed her working life as a cleaner. The couple of Gusevs had two sons - Sergey and Vladimir. Both after school received a higher education at the Moscow Engineering Institute, created a family. Now Gusev has three grandchildren and a great-grandson. Gennady Ivanovich and Raisa Aleksandrovna live in a house that they built with their own hands back in 59. Here they raised their sons, here they spent their whole life. The hard life of rural workers. After all, in addition to working on the collective farm, it was necessary to manage the subsidiary farm - well, a full yard of living creatures, and a garden. “Everyone had time, but now the granny has a social worker, but for now I’m holding on,” says Gennady Ivanovich. It holds, although a lot of trials have fallen to his share and to the share of his peers, a war has passed in their childhood.
"We ate bread only in 1956 year"
The Germans came to the village: "... burned half the villages, took the bird, the cow, all the supplies." “Our house was not burned, it was not burned, because we were seven people - six children,” said Vasilisa Afanasyevna Emelyanova, who did not like to remember the war until the end of her life, saying that “the Lord God punished us.” In memory of Vasilisa, a very small war, war is famine: “People literally swelled from hunger, most of all I was afraid that my mother would die, she was in such terrible condition that she could not get out of the oven, and my brother and I went meadow for three kilometers. From there we go, and he, poor man, drags a whole bag of sorrel and onions, but I cannot go, I stand, but he urges and scares me: “There are mermaids, and who just aren’t”. And I get so tired, the forces will leave me, and I’m not afraid of anything anymore. We also ate linden leaves, sorrel, wild onions, and everything, but we had no bread, in the fifty-sixth year we only ate bread. ”
They ate potato peelings, poisoned them: in the spring they had to plant a garden, cut off the potato skin with sprouts, and all that remained was the shkori cooked and ate. Once a neighbor from the farm brought ground grain with sand, boiled porridge from it, and porridge on teeth creaked. But then for the first time in a long time, children felt full. It was one of the nicest days of the war.
The most dreadful thing for a little girl was the ordinariness of death: “... first a German soldier, and then ... a sister. I remember how we walked from the village to Novgorod Seversky, I was five years old then, 15 had a distance of kilometers, stayed in the city, and when we returned to the village and saw a dead German, I couldn’t see the head, and my stomach was already swollen, and mommy my, me, the neighbor and the next boy, we buried him. Small children should not dig a grave to someone, but they had to! And after the war, human skulls were found, they were always buried. I had a sister - my own sister Sasha ... They went to milk the cow with her mother, and the German shell fell, and wounded her badly with a fragment in the face, her teeth povibivat. Our doctor was able to cure her, but my sister fell ill with tuberculosis, she lived very little and died. ”
Survived as they could. “We have a sweatshirt one for all was torn and sandals. We took turns to take to the street in winter, and if we need to see our neighbors, we run barefoot in the snow that was waist-high, warm ourselves and run back the same way. Well, there was nothing to wear, nothing! We lived very poorly, and it was necessary to feed a lot of mouths. Mom changed every rag for food. ”
And of course, the children remembered the fights. “Yes, we were sitting in a dugout, the garden was long, the hut remained here, and we lived at the end of the garden, there we had a dugout - in the ground. There we sat, two families. They bombed us, bombed us very badly, but we never entered the house, we had a mill, grain was stored there, and this mill was mostly bombed. And we were all shaking in our garden, the ground was shaking, swaying. The fights were terrible, we even went to our village in 1990, and the land was not overgrown - deep ditches and funnels. And we found the remains of shells and mines. ” Vasilisa Street was lucky: “... not a single neighbor died around us, we lived on the outskirts of the forest, there were few people, and if you left there were meadows, a river, and there were few people, and there, deep into the village, there were many people and in the village itself many perished. ”
Vasilisa's father Afanasy Emelyanovich did not return from the war, but his elder brothers Ivan and Klim returned. However, “war is a terrible thing, it makes itself felt after it ends. In 1947, Klim worked in a forest, cut down trees and hit a German mine. ”
Vasilisa grew up, in 1956, she moved to the Rostov region, to her uncle. There she married Pavel Kuzmin, who was born in the pre-war 1938 year in the village of Kalinovka, Prokhorovsky District, Kursk Region. As a little boy, he met the war, survived the occupation, witnessed the events near Prokhorovka in 1943. “The earth was buzzing with explosions, the air was filled with soot, the sun could not be seen through the black smoke, only the roar of airplanes and tanks was heard. Then it seemed that it would never end, ”he recalls. His mother, Nadezhda Yegorovna, spent several days in the basement, fearing to leave there. Pavel himself clearly remembered not even this, but the story that happened to him in the occupation:
“... this moment froze in the memory so vividly as if it was several years ago. The Germans came to the village, occupied houses, settled there, like at home. An elderly colonel and a very young officer were assigned to us to wait. They lived in rooms, and we huddled in the kitchen. One day my sister Zina got sick. She cried all day and continued to cry at night. ”
The young mother did not know how to calm the hungry and sick daughter, and only beggingly asked her not to scream.
In the end, the officer - the one that is younger - jumped out of the room, holding a weapon in his hands.
“His face twisted in anger, and, pointing the gun at the sick crying child, he shouted loudly:“ Kill! ”.
But it was at that moment that the second lodger entered the house and said something in German to his subordinate. He immediately retired. And he took a photo from his breast pocket and showed it to the woman. An elderly German said: “Ich habe vier kinder” (I have four children), looked at the frightened boy, stroked his head. By his order, a doctor came, brought a stew, condensed milk. The girl survived.
The war was different. There was hatred for the invaders, bitterness from loss, but at the same time, no matter how difficult it was, there was a place for humanity. That is what allowed our people to save themselves in that terrible war.
Pavel himself, in spite of everything, carried a conscious sense of understanding of the actions of an elderly German who entered the house on time. But this was one of the few cases. Older Germans were not when thousands of children were burned alive, shot and tortured in concentration camps.
And even the children of war, and all the children, remembered the celebration of Victory Day.
“It was a great holiday, all the villagers exulted, they danced even in the streets, joy was everywhere, accordion was heard laughter and sounds, but there were many people with tears of great sorrow in their eyes - widows who lost their husbands, mothers who lost children who died at the hands of the fascists, ”says Pavel Kuzmich.
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