Yura Ryabinkin's diary Yura Ryabinkin, who lived in Leningrad with his mother and sister, struggled not only with the blockade circumstances that befell everyone, he also fought with himself, with his conscience, forced to share crumbs of bread with those closest to him, and honestly

Yura Utekhin's diary Yury Utekhin handed us the notebook himself, which fits even in a child's palm. At first it seemed that we had before us the notes of an orphaned boy: most of the notebook is a description of what was given for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the nursery

Diary of Sasha Morozov Nothing is known about the author of the diary. Mommy! It's 4 o'clock now, I'm going to the dining room. I didn’t have time to clean anything in my room, because when I looked at the clock, it was about four. During the shelling I was in the corridor. I kiss you tightly. Shurik31/8 41

Vasya Baranov's diary Vasya Baranov, an ostarbeiter from the village of Merenovka in the Starodubsky district of the then Oryol, and now the Bryansk region, began to write his diary - a pile of rope-laced and turned-over forms of freight train schedules - two days after

Diary of Lisa Veide “My father, Georgy Ivanovich Veide, came from an old Swedish family. Apparently, his ancestors served in the Russian troops since the time of Peter the Great. According to family legend, our ancestor Veide was a Rear Admiral at the beginning of the 18th century and taught

Borya Andreev's diary Boris Alexandrovich Andreev kept his youthful notes, made with a stub of an indelible pencil in the coal mines of Germany, where he was stolen from the Pskov village, where he spent his holidays, in a special locker under a "secret lock",

Diary of Anya Aratskaya This diary was kept under bullets, almost on the front line... Stalingrad. During the war, the Aratsky family (father - a carpenter, mother - a housewife), in which there were 9 children, lived on a street sprinkled with fire near the river, at the address: 3rd Embankment, house 45, - not far from

Diary of Zoya Khabarova Zoya began to keep her diary two years before the occupation of Crimea by the Nazis, when she was only 12: “I have always been secretive, even in the family I felt lonely, I lacked parental affection, the diary became my friend ... " Father worked in

Diary of Volodya Borisenko His relatives knew about the diary that 13-year-old Volodya Borisenko kept in the occupied Crimea. But even Vladimir Fedorovich himself did not remember where the notebook was located: either she remained in Feodosia, or completely disappeared ... And only after the death of her father in

Diary of Zhenya Vorobyova Zhenya studied at school number 8 in the city of Pushkin near Leningrad - and this is all the information about her. The never-before-published diary, or rather, its typewritten copy, was found by AiF journalists in the Russian State Archives

The diary of Alla Rzhevskaya These pages came to us from the Bryansk archive, where, in addition to the diary itself, handed over in 2013 by the author's niece, there was also such a dry reference: “Alla Mikhailovna Rzhevskaya, a descendant of the writer Diesperov, was born on January 23, 1928. Worked

Diary of Vladik Berdnikov An album in which fragmentary entries, sometimes undated, are replaced by drawings or pasted and hand-colored pictures cut out from the sheets of a tear-off calendar; there are couplets and slogans: “For the Motherland! For Stalin!" So

Diary of Sasha Vedin At the beginning of the war, when his father went to the front, Sasha was 11 years old. His notes originate only in the last war year, when his father was already considered missing: yearning for him, the son furtively sniffed, pulling out from under the mattress, his father's Epoch cigarettes ...

Completely different in texture, children's diaries are dressed up with the neighborhood of "big" - and "small": "I crammed algebra. Our surrendered Orel. These are real epics, "War and Peace" - in a student's notebook. It's amazing how a child's eyes hold on to peaceful "little things", how one feels the beat of "normal" life even in the occupation and blockade: a girl writes about her first lipstick, a boy about his first attraction. Children - for the most part! - write about books: Jules Verne and Gorky, school curriculum and family reading, libraries and home relics.... They write about friendship. And of course - about love. The first, cautious, timid, not fully trusted even in an intimate diary...

In general, they, our heroes, have everything for the first time. For the first time a diary, for the first time - a war, they do not have the experience of older generations, there is no inoculation of life, they have everything - on a living thread, really, and it seems to us that their testimonies are the most honest in terms of the inner world and reflection in themselves big world.

The diaries collected by us are different not only in content, they are different in their “execution”. We have at our disposal sheets of a loose-leaf calendar, and notebooks, and general notebooks in calico covers, and school ones in a box, and albums the size of a palm ... We have long and short diaries. Detailed and not so detailed. Stored in the storerooms of archives, museum funds, there are family heirlooms in the hands of the readers of the newspaper.

One of the readers, having heard our call to provide children's diaries, sat down and over the weekend wrote down his youthful memories, carefully bringing them to the editorial office on Monday. And we thought: after all, it may be that no one for all these years has asked him: “Grandfather, how was it there?”

The action of belonging - that's what the work that "Aif" took on. Not just to show the war through the eyes of a child, through the prism of a child's perception of the world - an innocent, touching, naive and matured so early, but to stretch a thread from every heart that is beating now to a heart that survived the main catastrophe of the 20th century, to a person, even if he died - but did not surrender , who survived, a small person, maybe the same age, but who saw the most terrible pages of history, which seemed to have been recently, or maybe already a long time ago ... This thread will tie. And maybe keep it. To keep the world from breaking. This one seems to be fragile.

The editors of the weekly "Arguments and Facts"

Children experience war differently than adults. And they write down this war and everything connected with it, all its horrors and upheavals, they are different. Probably because children are reckless. Children are naive, but at the same time they are honest, first of all, to themselves.

The diaries of military children are evidence of amazing powers of observation and merciless frankness, often impossible for an adult. Children noticed the phenomena of everyday life, the signs of war more accurately than adults, they responded better to all the changes that were taking place. Their diaries are closer to the ground. And therefore their testimonies, their proofs are sometimes much more important for historians than the diaries of adults.

One of the scariest chapters in this book is the very first one. The most terrible thing for children in besieged Leningrad, as far as I could see then, was the bombing and shelling, dark streets and courtyards where there was no lighting at night. Explosions of bombs and shells - it was a visible, visual death, to which they could not get used.

But they perceived human death, which surrounded them on the streets and in houses, more calmly than adults, and did not feel such fear and hopelessness before it, perhaps simply because they did not understand it, did not relate it to themselves.

But the children had their own fears. And worst of all, as it turned out, for them was hunger. It was much more difficult for them than for adults to endure it, they still did not know how to force themselves, to persuade, and from that they suffered more. That is why so many lines and pages in their diaries are devoted to thoughts about food, the pangs of hunger - and the subsequent pangs of conscience ...

What were these diaries for them, those who wrote them? Almost every diary reads: "my best friend", "my only adviser"... They don't write in a diary - they talk to a diary. There is no creature on Earth closer than this notebook in a calico cover, a drawing notebook, an album the size of a palm... And this closeness, this need - often it arises on the very first day of the war, when many of the diaries published in this book were started.

Contact with the children's world of those war years is a deeply personal matter for me.

While working on the Blockade Book, Ales Adamovich and I realized that the most authentic feelings, the behavior of blockade survivors are expressed precisely in children's diaries. Finding these diaries was not easy. But we still found a few amazingly detailed ones. And it turned out that, as a rule, a person kept a diary, not even hoping to survive. But at the same time, he understood the exclusivity of the Leningrad blockade and wanted to capture his testimony about it.

In an era of reassessment of the most important human values, when Nazi torchlight processions are once again marching across Europe, evidence such as the diaries of war children is extremely important. They bring us back to ourselves, to the land on which we were born... And if today the testimonies of adults do not understand someone, then perhaps the words of children will. And today's children will hear more the voices of their peers, and not adults who broadcast from high stands. After all, it's one thing when a teacher at the blackboard tells you about the war, and quite another when your school friend does it. Albeit with a difference of 70 years.

Of course, we are all afraid, afraid, we do not want a new war. Reading the diaries of children who survived the past war, you understand this horror even more. And involuntarily you think: could we really live without war for only seven decades? Only seven decades of peace! After all, this is so little.

Daniil GRANIN, writer, participant of the Great Patriotic War, honorary citizen of St. Petersburg

We lived on Petrogradskaya Storona, in what used to be the most beautiful and richest city in the world, the former capital of the Russian Empire.

It was unbearable for a long time. But it seems like yesterday. And sometimes it seems to me that even today - everything is so clear before my eyes ... The howl of a siren. The ticking of a metronome, which came from the loudspeakers. It was a warning about the shelling of the city or its bombing. And then the metronome was always replaced by bravura, cheerful music, which acted on our souls like a requiem. Hunger. At first, despite the huge weakness, the head was very clear... Then at times you start to lose consciousness, the perception of reality is disturbed...

Unique footage - a scan of the front-line diary of a participant in the 2nd World War. The most interesting records reflecting the true feeling of the upcoming victory and the hardships suffered. It contains everything that our country had to endure during the terrible war years. Read on!

Ahead are enemy barricades, mines, water to the right and left. They attacked three times, suffered 50 percent of the losses of personnel and all officers. I was the liaison officer and took command when I brought the third order to advance.
A grenade launcher hits, you dig a fox hole with a knife. You cover the top of the trench cell with boards. You hear a shot, and by the time the grenade falls, you are trying to get into the hole as much as possible. The grenade breaks the boards if it doesn't hit the gap between the boards. In the fox hole, when a grenade launcher hits, they monitor from the rear, and if you need to attack or shoot, they call. To the enemy - 100 meters. Even at night, the highway is shot through so that it is dangerous to go for food and ammunition. You can't spread the blades.

On the eighth day, by phone from the chief of staff received an order to advance. All the soldiers sat in separate cells along the road. In order to jump out and run through the cells to convey the order, he showed a shovel twice, and then a burst from a machine gun. The third time he jumped out himself. When he ran, machine-gun bursts rained through the ground under his feet, and even between his legs. He managed to run two cells, shouting: “At the signal of the rocket, forward to the barricade!” I jumped into the third cell on someone's head. Then in the same way - to the fifth cell. Sergeant Major Chufarov did not let me out of there. The nervous tension of playing with death was so exhausting that I agreed. Very tired. He rested, and an hour later he returned to his trench. The phone didn't work. The cable was broken by a bullet.

Before dawn, taking advantage of the darkness, they approached the barricade and dug in, making a big noise. The fog cleared. Near the house, legs stuck out of the trench. The Germans killed their sergeant.
I go out onto the road with a white undershirt on a stick and go up to the barricade for negotiations, offering the Germans to surrender.
The Germans ran out from behind the barricade towards me with rifles in their hands. I dive behind the debris into the water and prepare to fight to the end.
“Rus, don’t shoot, we’re going into captivity!” the Germans shouted.

On April 18, it was ordered by telephone to meet the tanks and bring them to firing positions. During the war, I got so used to the ground that I refused the offer of the tankers to get into the tank, and ran ahead of them under fire, pointing out firing positions, the German attack was repulsed. (I knew the area well - the area of ​​\u200b\u200bdefense of my platoon).

In 2015, the Arguments and Facts weekly published a unique collection "Children's Book of War. Diaries 1941-1945", which contains the diaries of children who ended up in ghettos and concentration camps, besieged Leningrad, in the occupation and on the front line. On the eve of Victory Day, we have selected for you several children's diaries from this book. Just read them.

BLOCK HELL. DIARY OF MARUSI EREMINA

A notebook of 48 sheets, without a cover - this is how the diary of 14-year-old blockade survivor Marusya Eremina, a student at the Leningrad Civil Engineering College, was handed over to Valentin Verkhovtsev, a resident of Arkhangelsk, in the middle of the last century. He kept it to this day and, having responded to the call from AIF, handed over the notebook to the editor. Verkhovtsev, who had worked all his life in the construction of roads, took up a pen himself in retirement, used the diary of a girl he did not know in one of his books ... “For me, what I read in this notebook turned out to be a shock: everything I knew about blockade until that time, faded before the lines of Marusya.

“Will I see the house, will I return to my native village?” - for Marusya Eremina, in besieged Leningrad, there is its own image of paradise - the village of Sosnovka, from where she came to the Northern capital to study: a refuge where thoughts rush, an object of longing. Thanks to Tamara Knutova, Verkhovtsev's classmate, who gave him the diary, we know the answer to this question. Tamara found a notebook in Marusya's room, which she rented in the Knutovs' apartment. Marusya herself said that in January 1942, a month after the end of the recordings, her technical school was evacuated to Tomsk, but she did not go there, but returned home, to her beloved Sosnovka. She graduated from the Pedagogical Institute, worked as a teacher at the school. Where is Marusya Eremina now, does not know either Knutov or Verkhovtsev, let alone we ...

Leningrad, October 20, 1941 Saturday. Lying on a bunk in bed at 6 o'clock in the morning, we heard a desperate tearing cry. It was Aunt Shura Frolova crying in hysterics, she lives across the room from us, they pulled out all the ration cards from her in the morning, and she has 3 or 4 children, a grandmother, a husband and herself. One chest, and now everything is left and without everything, it has not been redeemed for 2 decades. They were already all swollen and now they don’t know what they will do. Cards are everything. Although you can’t get anything on them, because there is nothing in the stores. But still, at least 125 g of bread, and even then every day. You sleep badly at night, every now and then you wake up and wait for the morning, at least to buy bread, but to have a bite to eat soon. Tanya D. went for bread today, and Tanya and I warmed up cabbage soup on a primus stove, and Tanya D. coffee, and ate coffee in the morning, I ate so much salt with these 125 g of bread that in that me under the tap I puffed up cold water, although I know which is the worst thing right now. The technical school is not heated now, my hands do not feel, but I sit and scribble in my diary. (...)

October 25, 1941 They went to bed late, listened to the latest news, and fell asleep only after the international had been broadcast. In the evening, Yu. P. Tosya came to Tanya's friend Tosya. Tosya brought sugar, I lit the stove in the kitchen, boiled tea, and we drank until late. In the morning, Tanya got up early at 5 o’clock and went with her neighbor to the queue for pork, meat for this decade is 250 grams, with some strength she got 500 g of pork and went to work. I got up at 7 o'clock, listened to the latest news and went to the technical school. I came at 8.40 and went up to the 2nd floor, we have hydraulics classes in the 7th auditorium, the girls are sitting and waiting for the teacher Beldyug. I went up to them and greeted them, my heart pounded, I did not know why; suddenly Ida Podosenova says to me: "Dance." (This is the word we say when we receive a letter.) I answered in confusion: “Me? Letter? From father? (Everyone knows the handwriting of my dear dad.) Ida said: “Yes, from your father, get it,” and handed me a letter, I took the letter as a precious golden thing and did not immediately begin to open it. Then I went to the geodesy office and read the long-awaited lines. They call me to go home, I was delighted, but something hurt my heart. They invite you when it is impossible to leave here by any means, because Leningrad is now surrounded so that it is even doomed to a terrible famine. And therefore I do not hope to see my relatives, because if you save yourself from the bombing, you will probably die of hunger. Classes ended at 15 o'clock, Valya Kashina and I went to the street. Decembrists to Vera Fedorova, they did not find her at home and returned back. At tram stop 15, Valya and I said goodbye, and I hurried to the Boulevard of Trade Unions to Tanya; no sooner had I moved away from Theater Square than there was a deafening whistle and shortly after the whistle a shell burst, the shell fell on the square opposite the Leningrad Conservatory. Soon a second shell fell, people hid in the front doors, I somehow ran to Tanya, opened the door and sat down to read Turgenev's "Smoke", the windows were shaking from the burst of shells. Soon Tanya came, I started to kindle the primus stove, heat the boiling water. Tanya went to the store and bought some bread. On October 25 we ate with coconut oil, drank tea, argued for a long time about the present state of our city, and after listening to the latest news at 9.30, we fell into a restless, nervous sleep.

October 26th. Sunday, there are no classes at the technical school, but today I am on duty full-time in the fire brigade. I wrote a letter home today, sent it by registered mail. I didn’t teach lessons, I kept knitting, darning, guessing on the cards for the girls, everyone dreamed of how to go home and eat well, eat their fill of bread. We talked about the past, about good food, argued about politics, grieved about our situation, from which, apparently, we can not get out. They gave us soup with carrots and potatoes today, and it was very salty.

People died by the thousands, most of them had no one to bury, so their bodies were sent to mass graves. Most Leningraders are buried at the Piskaryovskoye cemetery (about 500,000 people), but almost all city cemeteries have blockade burials (here - Volkovo cemetery, 1942). Some of the dead were burned in the crematorium ovens.

Newsreel TASS

October 27, 1941 I'm in a lousy mood, I was very upset about the house, it's a shame that I was forever separated from my relatives. The German is trying with all his might to capture our city, now he is not advancing, he sat down at the gates of Leningrad, dug in and neither back nor forward, he wants to take something by starvation. The air raids stopped a little, there were no alarms for 5 days. I slept restlessly today, I kept thinking about the house, because Tamara Yakovleva told me last night that when she was on duty, she heard the conversation of passing military men that they would soon be evacuate old women and children. I was furious with joy, but it was only until morning. I woke up early and heard that Mr. Stalin had been handed over, everyone was handing over, everyone was surrounding Leningrad, and soon they would take him. And I was left to swing here, like a blade of grass in a field, there is no one to bow my head to, thanks at least Tanya is here, everything is more fun with her. She sometimes talks me so much that I begin to believe that someday I will be at home, see my relatives and even “get bored”. No, this is only a consolation on her part, the German will not wait until we get out of here, but will occupy and begin his robberies, ruin, torture of innocent peoples, as is already the case in the occupied regions of the Leningrad region. A lot of snow fell today, at least the frosts would start sooner, maybe it would at least have a little effect on the German, at least some way would be opened to get home from here. At home and dying is nicer, but this has now remained a dream forever.

Now the lesson of theoretical mechanics, Grigory Ivanovich called me to solve a problem, but my thoughts do not think about problems at all, I almost cried at the blackboard, remembering that I would not see my house again. Very often I remember Nyura Sharychenkova, she probably remembers me there, I want to see her and talk cordially. Most of all I want to eat pancakes, but homemade bread.

November 3, 1941 Every night I see a grandmother in a dream, she probably thinks about me there. All night long, a continuous artillery cannonade is heard. The city is the front, at the moment we do not think about life, at every step there is death. Shells are flying, killing people on the go. There were 2 alarms today. I'm thinking of going to R.U. Tanya advises me to go to R.U., but the girls say that it's very scary there near the factories. The situation is terrible, holidays are approaching, but we, Leningraders, will not have to celebrate them. Adolf Hitler - this bastard, it seems, will treat us to the holiday properly with his "peculiar gifts." Tanya's cards were not changed. Today we had a test for building materials, I was given a 3-. Theoretical mechanics went well, they didn’t ask about electrical engineering, we managed to eat at the buffet, a plate of borscht, 25 gr. macaroni, bought bread for tomorrow. In the evening we drank tea with sweets with Tanya, now we can’t replace bread with anything - neither chocolate nor gold, they bake very bad bread, but we eat it like something ... (?), trying not to spill a single crumb of this “dung lump”. Oh, if I could get to the village now, and eat plenty of bread with stew, with pumpkin, beets, potatoes, of which now there are only memories and dreams, probably never coming true. I want, I want to live these years at home, but no, apparently, I will have to die under the ruins of Leningrad without seeing my relatives. Death is visible at every step, every minute. Dear God, will the end be soon? The end, probably, will be when the end comes to us all. It’s a pity, after all, that now I will never see my relatives and my village.

November 12, 1941 God! There was a real famine, the people began to swell. Death! Starvation is what awaits us, Leningraders, in these coming days. Today they don’t give bread for tomorrow, they will probably reduce the norm, but for today everything was taken from everyone yesterday. So, today all the workers and almost everyone without a piece of bread, on the unfortunate last coupons of cereals, will take a bowl of vegetable soup and eat it without bread, and then go to work almost around the clock, but work with this hot water. And tomorrow, probably, they will give 100 grams per day. Eh! Life, life, don’t our people there now have a presentiment that I’m dying of starvation here, tormented by loneliness, which, apparently, I can’t survive.

Water, as well as food and warmth, was a luxury for the besieged city. After it, people weakened by hunger went to the water manholes or to the Neva.

Photo chronicle TASS

the 13th of November. On the night of November 12-13, there was a heavy bombing, one bomb hit the post office directly, a lot of destruction occurred in the fire, in the morning a fence was made near the post office and no one was allowed in. A bomb fell into a nursery on Dekabrist Yakubovich Street, the whole house collapsed, it’s creepy to look at. During alarms, we did not get up and are alive only by chance. In the morning we woke up at 7.45, listened to the latest news, on the radio yesterday they broadcast an article that Leningrad was surrounded by an iron blockade, that the German wanted to take Leningrad by storm, which he did not succeed. Now he wants to starve Leningrad to death, which is why we now have to endure not only merciless bombing, artillery shelling, but also starvation, the moment comes when there is no escape from it. We all walk like hungry wolves, all day long we eat only a bowl of soup and 150 grams of bread. The workers receive 300 grams of bread, and the service. 150 grams. We feel terrible weakness, severe dizziness, we sit at the lesson like stupid, get confused in all the little things, and besides, besides hunger, we tragically and nervously endure the sudden shelling of heavy artillery. Death at every turn. God! It will probably never end. I keep dreaming about my future life in the countryside, you spend all night at home in the village with your parents, eat potatoes, stew, but you wake up - your stomach is empty and your chest aches from hunger. The head does not work well, if we survive this war, we will still remain either crippled or stupid, crazy fools. Not! You probably won’t have to survive, they’ll probably surrender the city, but you can’t expect life from a German. Goodbye, dear side, dear village, goodbye, dear parents, grandmother, sister, friends of my happy childhood, goodbye everyone, I will probably die of hunger or fall under bombing or shelling.

November 22, 1941 Saturday. Exactly 5 months of war with the German invaders. Leningrad on the verge of death. Hitler's plan is about to come true: the capture of Leningrad by starvation. The norm in the army has been reduced, from 600 g the Red Army men began to receive 300 g per day, and from 300 g you won’t get very far. Ouch! I can’t think how I don’t want to fall into the hands of a German, because to him not for life, but for death. Soon our fate must be decided. I don’t expect anything good, now I am completely in despair that the roads will someday be opened: from the newspapers and from the stories of the wounded lying in hospitals, we know all the impossibly feasible difficulties in the battles for the road. It is unlikely that our fighters will be able to break through the blockade ring, apparently, they will starve us out. Labor productivity is already declining at all enterprises, and victory for the road is not yet in sight. I don’t think about the house anymore, it’s useless anyway, I just upset myself. Yes! For all my whims, I am adequately punished by God. (...)

November 28, 1941 Friday. L. S. T. Classes today for girls are only 2 years old, I got up in the morning, went to the post office, bought bread, Tatyanka went to work, I ate coffee, took out my jam and ate everything. (...) Cleaned up the room. At Tanya's I found my letters, which I wrote home and to my mother, but they have already been printed out and read to her. Oh, how I felt sorry for the control, why does she need to control me, am I a spy for her. At 10.30 I went to the tech, changed the book in the library, took Goncharov's "Cliff" part 1, they say it's a good thing, I'll read it. The classes were over, I didn’t do one task in the control mathematics, the anxiety started again, trouble, and until 5 pm, for 2.5 weeks now, it has been flying and bombing at the same time. Bombs flew nearby, but we sat at the lecture and scribbled notes.

December 22, 1941 Monday. Yesterday was a day off. Tanya and I bought 600 grams of Accra coffee sweets, all for my and her cards for the 3rd decade. This is just happiness, otherwise the store where I am attached does not give anything. Sometimes it’s jam, and then there’s a line for it, and it’s not profitable, and I bought it all 3 decades in the store where Tanya is attached. You can’t get into the dining room, our buffet is off, Tanya and I ate 125 g of bread with soup in the morning, I also bought 125 g for lunch, and in the evening I ate 6 sweets with Tanya and drank a glass of coffee.

DIARY OF MASHA ROLNIKAITE

She did not write this terrible diary - at the age of 14 she learned it by heart. In the closet of the ghetto, on the planks of the concentration camp, side by side with death. “What will happen to you will happen to these notes,” said Masha's mother. And Masha repeated, word by word. Death passed her by. But she took her mother and younger brother and sister with her, burned down - presumably, even the place of their death is unknown to her! - in the ovens of Auschwitz. She also took away many more heroes of her notes, which she had to hide from the Nazis in the most reliable place - her own memory.

After being released from the Stutthof concentration camp, Masha, with her teeth knocked out by overseers, her hair torn out, having gone through the checks of the already Soviet authorities, returned to Vilnius, found her father, by that time married to another, and wrote down everything that she had confirmed from letter to letter, in three thick notebooks and put them in a drawer.

But a little time passed, after the Jews were driven into cages in cities fenced with high fences, and then into gas chambers, when “it began again: a new wave of anti-Semitism, the murder of Mikhoels, the collapse of the Anti-Fascist Committee, the “doctors' case” ... As if there were no 6 million tortured people!” - Masha herself, Maria Grigoryevna, said in an interview with AiF. And she took out three notebooks. “What will happen to you, will happen to these notes ...” They were printed under the title “I must tell.” Translated into 18 (!) languages ​​of the world. And it seems that they did not draw conclusions ... “After all, no matter how much water has flowed under the bridge since the times I am talking about, people did not begin to love each other more. Take the attitude towards guest workers, take the fraternal peoples of Russians and Ukrainians! Everywhere, now flashing, now subsiding, enmity is raging. And for me it's a sore point that people continue to hate each other. I don't know where this bile comes from. But I have to tell!”

She lives in St. Petersburg, where she moved after graduating from the Literary Institute to her husband, an engineer, she already lives alone. She works: she writes by hand, then she types texts on an old computer for a long time ... The writer Rolnikayte always writes on one topic - even when she moves away from documentaries, all her fiction, all her characters - from there, from the dungeons. “I was once told: “Well, why do you keep writing about sad things, Maria Grigoryevna? Write about love! I got a lump in my throat." Because it's all about love. Unfulfilled, trampled, shot, killed. Full of hope - that someday people will be different.

Autumn 1943

(...) An endless stream flows from the ghetto. The annoying rain never stops. We are already quite wet. Flowing from the hair, from the nose, from the sleeves. Mom tells the children to raise their feet higher so that they do not get wet. Next to us, another mother sets up a tent for her children: she stuck several branches into the ground and covered her coat. How strange at such a time to be afraid of a cold ...

Mom is crying. I beg you, at least for the sake of the children, to calm down. But she can't. Just look at us and cry even harder.

And people keep coming and going... In the ghetto we thought that there were fewer of us. It's getting dark soon. The ravine was already crowded. Some sit still, others for some reason walk, roam, stepping over people and knots. Obviously, they lost theirs.

But after all, even those who had been shot earlier did not want to either ...

It got dark. It is still raining. The guards illuminate us with rockets from time to time. They keep us from running away. And how to escape, if there are so many of them?

Ruvik shudders in his sleep. He dozed off, leaning against my shoulder. His warm breath tickles my neck. Last dream. And I can do nothing so that this warm, breathing body would not lie tomorrow in a cramped and slippery hole with blood. Others will fall on him. Maybe it will even be me...

The rocket was fired again. She woke up Ruvik. Eyes wide, he looked around fearfully. He sighed deeply, not childishly at all.

Rachel does not sleep. She has already completely tortured her mother with questions: will they drive her to Ponary? And how - on foot or driven by cars? Maybe they'll take you to the camp after all? Where would mother like to go better - to Šiauliai or to Estonia? And when they shoot, does it hurt? Mom says something through tears. Rayechka strokes her, calms her down and, after thinking, again asks about something. (...)

The guards tell us to get up and go upstairs to the yard. Things were wet, caked with mud. But they are not needed. I still took the suitcase, and left the bundle sticking out in the mud. The yard is crowded. We barely make it to the opposite gate. The closer to them, the more crush. Isn't it released? More and more come from the ravine. Can you stop such a mass? We've already been crushed. (...)

Turns out the gate is closed. Pass only through the gate. We are approaching too. Released one at a time. Mom is worried that we won't get lost and tells me to go first. Ruvik will follow me, Raechka will follow him, and my mother will be the last. So she will see all of us.

I'm leaving. The soldier grabs me and pushes me aside. There are no cars to be seen. I turn to tell my mother, but she is not there. Across the street is a line of soldiers. Behind her - another, and then a large crowd. And mom is there. I run up to the soldier and ask him to let me in there. I explain that there was a misunderstanding, I was separated from my mother. There she stands. My mother is there, I want to be with her. I say, I ask, but the soldier does not even listen to me. He looks at the women coming out of the gate and from time to time pushes one or the other in our direction. The rest drives there, to the crowd.

Still afraid to understand the truth, I shout with all my might: “Then you come to me! Come here, mom!" But she shakes her head and cries out in a strangely hoarse voice: “Live, my child! Even if you live alone! Avenge the children!” She bends down to them, says something, and lifts them heavily, one at a time, so that I can see them. Ruvik looks so strange... He waves his hand...

They were pushed away. I don't see them anymore. I climb a stone against the wall and look around, but my mother is nowhere to be found. Where is mom? It ripples in the eyes. Obviously stress. Ringing in the ears, buzzing ... Where does the river come from on the street? It's not a river, it's blood. There is a lot of it, it foams. And Ruvik waves his hand and asks me. But I just can't reach out my hand to him... For some reason, I'm swaying. Probably the island I'm standing on is sinking... I'm drowning...

Why am I lying? Where has the river gone?

There is no river. I'm lying on the sidewalk. Several women leaned over me. One holds my head, the other counts the pulse. Where is mom? I have to see my mom! But the women are not allowed to get up: I had a faint. And it has never happened before. (...)

Camp! Barracks. They are long, wooden, one-story. The windows are dimly lit. People are running around. All for some reason in striped pajamas. Something strange is happening at one barracks: such striped ones are jumping from the windows. They jump out and run back to the barracks, reappear at the windows and jump again. And the Nazis beat them, rush them. People fall, but, lifted by new blows, they rush to jump again. What's this? Crazy, over which the Nazis so vilely mock?

We were ordered to put all our belongings in one heap on the platform in front of the barracks. They will not let you into the barracks with things.

I hastily pull my notes out of my suitcase and put them in my bosom. But I don’t have time to pick up everything: the guard drives me away.

We are lined up by a German woman dressed in an SS uniform. Is it also an SS woman? Probably, yes, because she yells and beats us ... Having counted, she gives the command to run to the barracks and starts beating again so that we hurry up. There's a crush at the door. Each hurries to slink into the barracks to avoid the whip. Another SS stands at the door and checks whether we have given everything. Noticing at least a tiny bundle or even a handbag in his hands, he drives back to put this too. At the same time, of course, it also beats.

The barrack is completely empty - ceiling, walls and floor. There are senniks on the floor, and a broom in the corner. All. The matron yells for us to lie down. Whoever does not have time to lower himself at the same moment is laid down by a broom. Hits on the head, shoulders, arms - anywhere. When we are all already lying down, she orders us not to move. At the slightest movement, sentries standing outside the windows will shoot. You can't leave the barracks. Talking is also prohibited.

Putting the broom in place, the evil SS woman leaves. Women call her Elsa. Maybe they heard that someone called her that, or maybe they called it themselves.

So I'm in a concentration camp. Prison clothes, jumping through the window and some even more terrible punishments. Elsa with a broom, hunger. How scary it is! And I'm alone... If my mother were here... Where is she now? Maybe right now, at this moment, he is standing in the forest by the pit? And the same wind that howls here under the windows, breaks the branches in the forest and frightens the children! Scary! Unbearably scary!.. (...)

Mom... Raechka, Ruvik. Until quite recently we were together. Ruvik wanted to take his books. "When you're free, you'll read..."

Whistle! Long, lingering. I look - the evil Elsa is again at the door. She yells "Arrell" "Check!" And we do not understand what she wants, and we sit. Elsa grabs her broom again. We run from the barracks.

The yard is dark and cold. People are also running from other barracks. They line up. Beating, swearing, Elsa lines us up. Another SS man helps her. Suddenly he stretches out in front of the approaching officer. He reports how many of us there are and accompanies an officer who counts us himself. After counting, the officer goes to other barracks. (...)

We were herded back into the barracks and again ordered to sit on the senniks, not to talk or move. We are sitting. Suddenly I felt in my pocket my father's photograph (how did it get here?). I looked at my dad, and it became so sad that I burst into tears. He is gone, my mother is also gone, and here I have to suffer alone in this terrible camp. I'll never get used to it. And I can't live.

A woman sitting next to me asked why I was crying. I showed her the photo. And she just sighed: "Tears won't help..."

The SS rose again at the door. Ordered to build. They announced that we are obliged to give all the money, watches, rings - in a word, everything else we have. For an attempt to hide, bury or even throw away - the death penalty! An officer with a box in his hands walks between the rows. The collection, of course, is very pathetic. (...)

Elsa is at the door again. She was very amused that we were still standing. Having mocked, she ordered to be built in twos. I counted ten and took away. Those standing closer to the door reported that the women had been taken to a barrack located at the other end of the square.

Soon Elsa returned, counted ten more and took them away again. But the first ones didn’t come out ... Is there really a crematorium there? So, we were brought here specifically to be destroyed without a trace. Several of the women standing closer to the doors ran to the back of the line. Will it help?

I am in my seventh decade. The front rows are melting, there are fewer of them. Soon it will be my turn...

They are already leading... Elsa opens the door of the terrible barracks. No smell. Maybe this gas is odorless? Dark canopy. A lot of clothes are scattered along the walls. Nearby are the guards. We are also told to undress. Hold the clothes in your hands and approach these guards two by two.

Hands are shaking, it's hard to undress. What to do with notes? I put it under my armpits and press it to me. I'm coming. The SS is checking my clothes. She takes the woolen dress that her mother told her to wear for summer. Please leave a warm dress, and take a summer one. But I get a slap in the face and shut up. Now the SS is checking my sleeves and pockets to see if I've hidden anything. Finds dad's photo. I hold out my hand for the warden to return it to me, but she tears the photograph into small pieces and throws it on the floor. On one piece, hair turns white, on the other, an eye looks. I turn away...

We are ordered to quickly put on the clothes left for us and exit through the back door. It turns out that there are all previously taken away. And those in the barracks are still tormented, thinking that they are being led to a crematorium. (...)

Finally let in the barracks. To our great joy and surprise, there is a cauldron of soup and a stack of bowls. They are ordered to line up in a row. On the go, you need to take a bowl into which Elsa will pour soup. It must be quickly sipped, and the bowl put in place. In the same, even unrinsed, soup is poured next. There are no spoons at all. (...) I also waited for my turn. Alas, the soup is surprisingly thin. Just blackish hot water, in which six grains swim majestically and do not want to get into their mouths. But still very tasty. The main thing is hot. It's just a pity that the food is so ruthlessly decreasing. There is nothing left. And you want to eat so much, even more than before this soup.

I carry the bowl. I look - the Nazi is beckoning with his finger. Really me? Yes, it seems to me. I timidly approach and wait for what he will say. And he hits me on the cheek, on the other, again on the same one. Hits with fists. Strives for the head. I try to cover myself with a bowl, but he snatches it from my hands and throws it into a corner. And again beats, beats. Unable to stay on my feet, I fall. I want to get up, but I can't - he kicks with his feet. No matter how I turn away - all before my eyes is the shine of his boots. Got in my mouth!.. I can hardly catch my breath. The lips immediately stiffened, the tongue became large and heavy. And the Nazi beats, kicks, but now, it seems, it does not hurt so much. Only blood is dripping on the floor. Probably my...

Finally the Nazis left. The women lifted me up and helped me get to the sennik. They advise throwing your head back to stop bleeding from your nose. They are so kind, caring, that you want to cry. One sighs: what did he do to me, an innocent child! Another curses him, and some tries to guess why he beat me so much ... Maybe, carrying the bowl in place, I came too close to the queue, and he thought that I wanted to get soup again?

Why are they talking so loudly? After all, it hurts me, everything hurts unbearably! At least turn off the light! Is the eyebrow cut? She hurts too. And he knocked out his front teeth ... (...)

This time the journey was short. We entered a large yard. It is surrounded by a high stone wall, above it are several rows of barbed wire and a lamp. There are no barracks. There is only one big house. At the end of the yard is a shed with lamps dangling from the corners. There are very pleasant smells coming from there. Is this the kitchen and they will give us soup? We are lined up by a German in civilian clothes. Dark paramilitary suit and cap, very similar to the cap. He counted us and ordered us not to move, and he left. Fearfully looking around, several men approached us. We learned from them that the camp was called Strasdenhof and was located on the outskirts of Riga Jugle. The camp is new. So far, there are only one hundred and sixty men from the Riga ghetto. There are no women yet, we are the first. We will live in this big house. This is a former factory. The male block is on the first floor, ours will be on the fourth. Where we have to work - they do not know. They themselves work in construction. The work is very hard, especially since they work hungry. The German who counted us, Hans, is the head of the camp. He is also a prisoner, he has been sitting in different camps for eight years. For what - is unknown. He has an assistant - little Hans. The camp commandant is an SS man, Unterscharführer, a terrible sadist. (...)

I was told to carry stones. Men pave the road between the barracks under construction. Other women bring stones from the ravine in trolleys, and we have to bring them to the masons. The escorts and guards never take their eyes off us for a minute. The trolleys must be full, they must be pushed at a run and only four; we must also run to carry the stones; men are required to quickly pack them. Everything must be done quickly and well, otherwise we will be shot.

The stones are terribly heavy. It is not allowed to carry one stone together. You can't ride either. Talking during work is prohibited. According to your needs, you can take time off only once a day, moreover, you have to wait until several people gather. The escort does not lead one at a time. (...)

I bled my fingers. They turned blue, swollen, scary to look at.

Finally the whistle blew for dinner. We were quickly lined up and taken to the camp. Those who stood first immediately received the soup, and we had to wait until they drink it and empty the bowls. We hurried them: we were afraid that we would not have time.

And so it happened. I only drank a few sips, and the escorts were already driving to line up. They knocked the bowl out of my hands, the soup spilled out, and I, even more hungry, had to get in line.

I'm carrying stones again. Now they seem even heavier. And the rain is more annoying. One stone slipped out of his hands - right on his leg.

I can hardly wait for the evening. Returning to the camp, we received a piece of bread and muddy water - "coffee". I swallowed it all right there, in the yard - I did not have the patience to wait until I went up to the fourth floor.

I had already gotten used to carrying stones, so now they were ordered to crush them. Of course, I can't. I'll hit with a hammer - but the stone is intact. I hit harder - but only a fragment bounces off, and that one - right in the face. It's already bloodied, it hurts, I'm afraid of hurting my eyes. And the guard shouts, hurries. One man offered to teach me, but the guard did not allow me: I have to learn it myself. I close my eyes, cry from pain and resentment and knock... (...)

1940 Just a year later, in the Vilnius ghetto, 14-year-old Masha will begin to keep a diary and learn it by heart.

Masha and dad are standing on the right. Separated, they met after the war - fragments of a close-knit family. They could not bury their mother and little brother and sister - they were burned in Auschwitz.
Photo from the archive of M. Rolnikaite

It's already November. (...) They brought a car of wooden shoes. As they were being unloaded, I dared to approach Hans. He ordered to show the shoes. Then he ordered the head of the clothing chamber to give me a pair of shoes, and pick up the shoes. It was a pity to part - the last thing from home, but what can you do if they are so torn.

In the clothing room they didn't even ask what size I needed. They grabbed the first pair that came across from the pile and threw it to me. These shoes are very large, but it is pointless to ask others - they will knock for "impudence". I'll stick papers in there so that my foot doesn't slip, and I'll wear it. This "wealth" - heavy pieces of wood covered with oilcloth - is also recorded that, they say, "Hftling 5007" received one pair of wooden shoes. "Prisoner 5007" is me. Surnames and names do not exist here, there is only a number. I've gotten used to it and respond. At the factory, I mark the woven material with it. (I already work on my own.) A blue spot appears on every fifty meters of yarn. At this point, the woven material must be cut, write your number on both ends and hand it in. When I hand over, I, like everyone else, mentally wish that the Nazis would use this material for bandages.

At first, having only learned to work independently, I tried very hard and almost every day I passed fifty meters. Now I have been taught to sabotage - unscrew some screw a little or cut a belt, and the machine deteriorates. I call the master, he digs, repairs, and then enters on the card how many hours the machine has been standing.

Every day someone “spoils” the machine, and everything is different. (...)

I spoke with a woman from Riga who knew an aunt and an uncle who lived in Riga before the war. Unfortunately, both are already in the ground. The uncle was shot in the first days, and the aunt with two children was in the Riga ghetto. I was very hungry, because I could not go to work: there was nowhere to leave the children. So both boys were taken away to be shot.

Yesterday's horror is scary to remember, and I can't forget. In the evening, when the construction workers were returning from work, they were thoroughly searched at the entrance: the guard said that he had seen a passer-by thrust bread into someone. It was found in two men - each with a chunk. During the evening check this was reported to the Unterscharführer.

And now the test is over. Instead of a command to disperse, the Unterscharführer orders both "criminals" to come forward, stand in front of the formation and undress. They linger - snow, cold. But lashes force you to submit. We are not allowed to turn away. We must look to learn a lesson for the future.

Two buckets of warm water are brought from the kitchen and poured over their heads. The poor fellows are trembling, chattering their teeth, rubbing their underwear, from which steam comes, but in vain - the soldiers carry two more buckets of warm water. They are again poured on the heads of the unfortunate. They start jumping, and the soldiers and the Unterscharführer are only laughing.

The execution is repeated every twenty minutes. Both are barely on their feet. They no longer look like people - the elder's bald head is covered with a thin crust of ice, and the younger's hair, which he tears and ruffles while suffering, sticks out like frozen icicles. The underwear is completely frozen, and the legs are deadly white. The guards roll with laughter. Enjoy this Christmas "entertainment". Everyone advises how to pour water. "Pants!" one shouts. "Perch head!" - yells another.

The tortured try to turn away, to jump away, but they are caught, like hunted animals, and returned to their place. And if at least a little water spills by, instead of poured "in vain" a few drops, they bring a whole bucket. The unfortunate only raise their legs so as not to freeze to the snow.

I can't stand it! I'll go crazy! What are they doing!

Finally, the Nazis got tired of it. They were told to disperse. Hans was ordered not to release these two from work tomorrow, even if the temperature is forty degrees.

The older one died today. He fell near the trolley and did not get up again. The second worked, although he could barely stand on his feet, he was delirious from the heat. When the guards did not see him, the comrades tried to help him somehow hold out until the end of the work. Otherwise, he cannot avoid being shot. (...)

The SS came up with a new punishment.

Maybe it's not even a punishment, but just a mockery, "entertainment." Spring is coming, and keeping us in the cold is no longer so interesting.

After checking, Hans ordered to rebuild so that there was a meter gap between the rows. Then he ordered to squat down and jump. At first we did not understand what he wanted from us, but Hans yelled so hard that, without even understanding him, we began to jump. I don't stay on my feet. I can hardly breathe. And Hans rushes between the rows, quilting with a whip and shouting that we should not pretend. Only you can’t squat, you have to jump, jump like frogs.

My heart is pounding, I'm choking! At least take a breather for a moment. Prick side! It hurts everywhere, I can't take it anymore! And Hans doesn't take his eyes off him.

One girl fainted. Soon the same thing will happen to me. Hans does not allow to approach the fainting woman. Everyone must jump. Another one fell. She asks for help, shows that she cannot speak. Someone shouted in horror: “She is numb!”

Finally Hans got tired too. Let go. He did not allow those lying unconscious to be lifted - "they feign, they themselves will rise." And if in fact they are fainting, it means that they are weak and cannot work, you need to write down their numbers. The women seize the unfortunate and drag them away from Hans. We ourselves are not able to straighten up, almost on all fours, we are dragging our girlfriends who have not yet regained consciousness. But only up the stairs. We can't climb the stairs. We sit on the stone floor and gasp for air. Some try to crawl, but, after climbing a few steps with difficulty, they remain seated. I'm still out of breath, I can't start breathing normally. I ask one woman to help me lean on the railing - maybe, holding on, I will rise a little. But what is it? Barely squeezing out the word. The more I try, the harder it is to say anything. (...)

Suddenly Hans appeared in the doorway. He examined us, turned around and, as if nothing had happened, asked why it was so quiet here. After all, today is Sunday, a holiday - you have to sing. We are silent. “Song! he yelled angrily. - Or you will jump! One started in a trembling voice, the other squeaked. They were timidly supported by several more hoarse voices. I'm trying too. The mouth opens, and salty tears flow into it... (...)

Run away again! This time from a silk factory, and no longer three, but nine people - seven men and two girls.

There is panic in the camp. The same head chef should come again. The Unterscharführer runs like crazy. He yells at Hans that he does not know how to line up "these pigs." We are threatened that everyone will be shot to death. The guards are scared that tomorrow he will send them to the front. Little Hansik is scolded for the fact that there is a lot of dirt here. When he sees the chief's car driving in, he falls silent. Runs towards, stretches out and zealously shouts: "Heil Hitler!" But the boss only throws his hand forward angrily.

This time, without even counting, he selects the hostages: he runs along the line and pokes with a whip. Approaching us... Going. Looks at me... Raises his hand... The whip slid past his face. Pushed Masha. She took three steps forward... They would take her away!... They would shoot her!...

The chief approached the men. He ordered the workers at the silk factory to line up in one row. He counts two, orders the third to come forward, counts two, the third - forward. And so the whole series ...

The chosen ones were lined up in front of us. Masha is also among them. The boss makes a speech. Like, we are to blame. He warned us: here everyone is responsible for one. We shouldn't have run at all. After all, we are provided with work, a roof and food. We just need to work hard and we could live. And for trying to escape - the death penalty. Not only to those who get caught anyway, but to us. Black cars drove into the yard... (...)

Dead silence greeted us in the camp. Previously, we lined up along the entire building for inspection, but today we were only enough to reach the door ...

After checking, they were given the job again. Men carried water, and we washed floors, stairs, even the roof - washed away blood stains.

It turns out that when the doomed were driven to the cars, the men tried to escape. Some climbed over the fence, others rushed into the blocks, boiler room, toilets. The guards, firing, ran after them. In the blocks and on the stairs, they were killed right on the spot. Two hung dead on the fence. Found in the boiler room, they wanted to throw him alive into the fire along with

The stokers who hid him. But most of all I had to mess with one Rigan who hid in a pipe. There was no way they could get him out. They fired explosive bullets, crushed the head. The body was then dragged up the stairs. They were thrown into the car along with the living. On the stairs, in a puddle of congealed blood, was a lump of his brain. We wrapped it in paper and buried it in the yard against the wall. Instead of a tombstone, they put white pebbles ...

Late in the evening we were let into the block. Unusually empty. We talk in an undertone, as if there is a dead person here. We all go to bed together, in one corner. (...)

An order was received to evacuate the camp immediately. (...)

There are officers at the gate. They count us and let us inside. At the entrance, the sentry monotonously warns that it is forbidden to approach the fence - it is under current.

We enter the first cell. The gate is closed behind us. Open the next, in another same cell. Close again. They pass to the third cell. And so on and on, deeper and deeper into the camp. When we pass the barracks, the prisoners start talking to us, asking where we are from. Although the guards beat us for talking, we do not hold back and answer. From the barracks they turn to us in Russian, in Polish, in Jewish. Near one barrack there are terribly thin women, obviously ill. They don't ask about anything, only advise to beware of some Max. (...)

We were taken to the very last - the nineteenth and twentieth barracks. There were already several SS men and one civilian, but with the number of a prisoner. After shouting for us to line up for inspection, this civilian immediately began to beat and kick us. For what? After all, we are equal, but he did not order anything else.

I stretched out and froze. But this civilian flew up, and without even having time to figure out who he was aiming at, I doubled over in terrible pain. And the SS stood aside and cackled.

This monster beat everyone - from one end of the line to the other, combed his hair, straightened his shirt that had come out and began to count. But then one officer noticed that it was already time for dinner, and they left, leaving us standing.

At the other end of the line are several dozen women. They talk about local life, and their every word is whispered from mouth to mouth. They are from Poland. In these blocks for only a week, they used to be in others. It's worse here, because the head of these blocks is Max, the one who was beating me now. This is the devil in human form. He's already beaten a few to death. He himself is also a prisoner, in his eleventh year for the murder of his wife and children. The SS men love him for his unheard-of cruelty.

So that's what a real concentration camp means! It turns out that it was still relatively tolerable in Strasdenhof... (...)

SS men dressed in black came, ordered them to line up and walk past them one by one, showing their legs. Those who had a lot of abscesses on their legs were immediately driven away, and those who had relatively few abscesses were also checked for arm muscles.

I was among the stronger ones. We were lined up, counted. The two extremes were driven back so that an even number remained - three hundred. The guard opened the gate and led us to the next section. We breathed a sigh of relief: we would at least be away from the terrible Max. Now we are fenced off from the rest of our own with wire. They, the poor, stand by the fence and look at us with envy: we will go to work, and they will stay here.

Someone started a rumor that we would be sent to the village, to the peasants. The officers talked about it among themselves. Worse, obviously, will not. The rumor seems to have been confirmed.

The guard came. I took ten women and asked if they knew how to milk cows. Everyone, of course, hastened to assure that they can. And if they ask me? .. I'll tell the truth - they won't take me. I'll lie that I can - it will soon become clear, and I will be returned to the camp. What to do? I ask others what they have to say. But women only laugh at my doubts.

The guard took out thirty-six women, including me. Each was given a torn soldier's blanket. Some people were waiting at the gate. They started choosing us. They examine, feel the muscles, ask if they are lazy. (...) No one pays attention to me, everyone passes by. They probably won't take it and will have to return to this hell. Maybe ask yourself? Others do it. I say: "Ich bin stark" - "I am strong." But no one hears. “Ich bin stark,” I repeat louder. Was, was? - asks some old man. I quickly begin to explain that I want to work, that I am not lazy. "Ja gut!" - he answers and passes ... But, obviously, having changed his mind, he returns. He takes me to the side, where the three women he has selected are already standing.

The escort comes up, writes down our numbers and leads after the owner. We follow the same path we came here. The cottages are just as comfortable to rest under the rays of the sun. We sit down in the narrow-gauge trailer. The escort does not take his eyes off us. His bayonet gleams menacingly near my face.

Our host is a short, bow-legged, bald old man; the eyes are barely cut slits, and the voice is hoarse and angry. He is obviously unhappy with us. He complains to the escort that there will be no benefit from such carrion. He already had four like us, they were from Hungary, but they soon became weak, and they had to be taken straight to the crematorium. Well, we got it! And I, fool, even asked for it myself.

The train stopped and we got off. It turns out that the owner left his gig behind the station. The escort tied our hands and also tied us to each other. He himself sat down next to the owner, and we moved. The rested horse trotted. We had to run, otherwise the ropes would cut into the body. We were suffocating, barely breathing, but were afraid to show it: the owner would say that we were weak and immediately send us back to the crematorium. (...)

Finally, we turned onto a narrow path, drove past a pond and found ourselves in a large yard. The house flaunts majestically, the garden grows green; at some distance there is a barn, a barn, stables. It looks like a strong economy. The owner once again checked our rooms and signed that he received us from the escort. Untying his hands, he read a sermon: we are obliged to work well and conscientiously, not to sabotage and not to try to escape. For sabotage, he will send us straight to the crematorium, and if we try to escape, he will shoot us on the spot. So frightened, he led us to the closet intended for us. It is at the very end of the barn, half-dark, because the light comes through a tiny, fly-filled window. Behind the wall, pigs are grunting ... There are no sennikov and pillows, only hay is thrown in the corner. This will be our bed. It's pointless to ask for senniks - it won't give anyway. I dared to say that we are very hungry: today we have not eaten anything yet. The owner grimaced and ordered to follow him. In the passage he ordered to take off his shoes: you can only enter the kitchen with bare feet. We are not allowed to enter the rooms at all. I have to pass this on to my friends. (...)

If it weren't for Raya, a Rigan, we could at least at this moment forget ourselves, not torment our hearts. But she doesn't stop for a minute. For the third time in these few days, she keeps talking with new details about how she lost her child. She was still in the Riga ghetto with her husband and child. Upon learning that the children would be taken away, they decided to commit suicide. The husband gave an injection to the child, then to her and to himself ... Unfortunately, they woke up. There was no child. They didn't even hear when they took him away. Now she is tormented by the fear that the child, perhaps, woke up before them and cried in fright, woke them up, but they did not hear ... Maybe the executioners beat him, twisted his arms. After all, he probably escaped from them ... The husband almost lost his mind. He could not understand why the poison did not work... (...)

We are returned to the camp. (...)

We were taken to the bathhouse, told to undress and let us into a large dressing room. Having entered there, we were stunned: right on the stone floor, terribly emaciated and dried-up women were sitting and even lying, almost skeletons with eyes crazy with fear. Seeing the guards behind our backs, the women began to frightenedly babble that they were healthy, that they could work and asked them to take pity on them. They stretched out their hands to us so that we would help them get up, then the guards themselves would be convinced that they could still work ...

I took a step to help the woman sitting nearby, but the matron threw me back. Powerfully minting words, she orders not to raise a panic - everyone will be washed and returned to the camp. When they get better, they can return to work. Everyone should wash without exception: dirty people will not be allowed into the camp.

She orders us to undress these women and take them to the next room, under the shower. The terrible smell makes me sick. I want to take off a woman's dress, but she can't get up: her legs won't hold. I try to lift, but she cries out in pain so much that I freeze. What to do? I look at others. It turns out that they suffer no less than me. The guards give us scissors: if you can’t take off your clothes, you have to cut them.

Scissors change hands. I get it too. I cut the dress. Under it is such thinness that it is even scary to touch. Only dry, wrinkled skin covers the bones. A woman does not allow to take off her shoes at all - it will hurt. I promise to cut the top, but she won't let me touch it. He has not taken off his shoes for two weeks now, because his frostbitten, festering feet have stuck to the material.

What to do? Others have already undressed several, and I still can't handle one. The matron apparently noticed this. She ran up, hit me on the head and grabbed the unfortunate woman by the legs. She screamed heartbreakingly. I look, in the hand of the overseer there are shoes with pieces of rotting meat stuck to the material. I felt sick. The matron screamed, but I did not understand her well. (...)

When the matron turned away, I asked one woman where she was from. From Czechoslovakia. Doctor. They brought us to the Stutthof, and then, like us, they took us to work. They dug trenches. They worked standing waist-deep in water. Fell on the ground. When the frostbitten hands and feet began to fester, they returned to the camp. (...)

Epidemic! It will embrace everyone, regardless of age or appearance. Typhus does not make out ... Besides, of course, they will not treat us. Maybe even deliberately infected so that we would become extinct. Do not get sick from this terrible soup? Maybe it's not so hot because of the pepper?

How to save yourself? How can we find the strength not to eat this soup, our only food? How to learn to eat absolutely nothing, not even suck this dirty snow? I seem to be getting sick. The head is heavy and hums. During the checks, they support me under my arms so that I don’t fall. Is it typhoid?!

I was sick... Women say that in my delirium I sang some songs and terribly scolded the Nazis. They didn't even suspect that I knew so many swear words. It’s good that the voice is weak, and the Nazis don’t come here anymore - they are afraid of getting infected. For such words they would have been shot on the spot.

And I'm embarrassed that I cursed. I explain that no one in our family has ever ... Dad is a lawyer. Women smile at my explanations...

They say that I got out. Has been ill. And I think they are wrong. It must have been something else, not yet typhus. Typhoid is a terrible disease! I would not have recovered so easily without medicine, because those who are stronger than me die. But women explain that typhus just crushes strong organisms that have never been sick and therefore not used to fighting the disease. If only my mother knew how the torment of scarlet fever, jaundice and pleurisy of my childhood saved her! ..

I crawl on all fours into the yard to wash myself with snow. I can’t get up - green circles blur before my eyes.

This is a real death camp. The Nazis no longer keep order. There are no checks: they are afraid to enter. There are not given. We even get the so-called soup every two or three days. Sometimes they bring two frozen potatoes instead. We haven't seen bread for a long time. And I'm terribly hungry: I'm starting to recover. They take lice. No longer shy, we push. But, unfortunately, they are not getting smaller.

The beautiful Ruth has died. The legs began to fester, then the hands. And then she died... Lately she didn't get up anymore. But even in Strasdenhof she was so beautiful! Always cheerful, not giving in to a bad mood. How she believed that we would wait for freedom and that she would meet her husband! Now she, terribly swollen, will be thrust into the crematorium oven. All. Youth, beauty, love of life will turn into ashes...

Some say it's New Year's Eve. I heard how one sentry congratulated the warden on New Year.

This means that it is already 1945... This year the war will surely end. After all, the Nazis are already finishing off. But... No wonder they say that a mortally wounded animal is doubly terrible. Will we be his dying victims? Can't be! Why think that retreating will surely destroy us? Or maybe they won't? And then we'll be free! Maybe a mother with children in some camp? They will be released too. And dad will be back. (...)

Raya, with whom we worked together at the landowner, says that she heard from the soup peddler that there was a fire in the crematorium at night. The gas chamber burned out. It is believed that someone set it on fire. It still won't save us.

Horror! I slept buried in a corpse. I didn't feel it at night. It was very cold, and I buried myself in the back of a neighbor. She slipped her hands under her armpits. She seemed to stir, holding them. And in the morning it turned out that she was dead ...

The matron came. She ordered everyone who had already been ill to line up. Thinking that they would be sent to work, the sick also tried to get up. But she immediately noticed the deception. There are very few of us. The warden selected eight (including me) and announced that we would be a "funeral team." Until now, there has been a big mess, the dead lay in the barracks for several days. Now we are obliged to immediately undress the dead, pull out the gold teeth, take out the four of us and put them at the door of the barracks. In the mornings and evenings, a camp funeral team will pass by and take away the corpses. (...)

We approach one woman who died this morning. I take her cold leg, but I can’t lift it, although the body of the deceased is completely dried up; the other three are already lifting, but I'm not able to. The warden slaps me and puts scissors and pliers in my hands: I will have to undress and pull out gold teeth. But if I dare to appropriate at least one, I will go with my patients to the forefathers. (...)

As if mocking me, the dead woman flashes her golden teeth. What to do? I can't take them out! Glancing back to see if the warden sees, I quickly clamp my pliers over my mouth. She won't check. But the warden did notice. She hits me so hard that I fall on the corpse. I jump up. And she was just waiting for this - she begins to beat with some very heavy stick. And everything goes to the head. It seems that the head will crack in half, but the warden does not stop. There's blood on the floor...

She beat her for a long time until she herself suffocated. (...)

We've been in Strelentina for a whole week now. This is a former estate. (...) We are kept locked in stables. (...)

It thundered terribly. One after another, muffled explosions were heard. The escort's dog sitting next to us became alert. And the Nazis who were seen at the barn began to fuss. Some look to the sky, others argue among themselves. (...) What is it? The guards are rolling up barrels to the barn! Set fire! We will burn alive!

We are allowed into the barn. There are many women there, not only from our camp. Right there, right on the ground, in a mixture of bran, hay and manure, the dying and the dead lie. They don't care anymore... To say or not? I won't say anything. Let them not know, they will be calmer. No, I'll tell you. At least one. I whisper this terrible news to the neighbor on the left. But she didn't seem to understand me. Or did not hear - explosions rumble all around. I speak another. With a cry, she rushes to the crack, looks. (...) Horror seizes many others. Everyone starts knocking, rushing about. But no one sees anything. There are no guards.

Buzzing... Approaching! Aircraft? My shoulders are being shaken. Who? Again this Hungarian. He asks if I understand Polish. What is he screaming? He shouts that the Red Army is already in the village, and the Nazis have fled. (...) Why such noise? Why is everyone crying? Where are they running? After all, they will trample me! Help me up, don't leave me alone!

Nobody pays attention to me. Clutching their heads, stretching their hands forward, the women run, shouting something. They stumble over the dead, fall, but immediately get up and run from the shed. And I can't get up.

The Red Army soldiers run into the barn. They rush to us, looking for the living, helping to get up. Hats off to those who no longer need their help. "Help, sister?"

They lift me up, put me down, but I can't move, my legs are trembling. Two Red Army soldiers intertwine their hands, make a "high chair" and, having seated me, they carry me.

Ambulances rush from the village to the barn, Red Army soldiers run. One offers to help me carry it, another hands me bread, the third gives me his gloves. And I feel so good from their kindness that tears flow by themselves. The fighters comfort, reassure, and one pulls out a handkerchief and, like a small child, wipes away tears.

Don't cry, sister, we won't let you hurt anymore!

And on the cap is a red star. How long have I not seen her!

FACE TO THE ENEMY. DIARY OF VOLODY BORISENKO

His relatives knew about the diary that 13-year-old Volodya Borisenko kept in the occupied Crimea. But even Vladimir Fedorovich himself did not remember where the notebook was located: either he remained in Feodosia, or completely disappeared ... And only after the death of his father in 1986, his daughter Marina, sorting through the papers, found these notes and an autobiography, which briefly lists the events described in his diary: “Until December 1943, I existed, hiding from raids and hijacking in Germany, but in December, under the threat of execution, I had to register with the labor exchange, from where on December 4 I was sent to work at a power plant as a laborer . In March 1944, all the working power plants were taken away by trucks to Sevastopol, for further shipment to Germany. In the suburbs of Sevastopol, Inkerman, during the raid of our attack aircraft, I, as well as three of my comrades, managed to escape into the forest ... "

After the liberation of Crimea, Volodya returned home to school. After the war, he entered the Leningrad Institute of Physical Education. “He conquered a good half of the world's pools and became part of the sports elite of the USSR. Not a single Olympics was complete without him, first as a participant, and then as a coach and judge of the international category, ”Marina told us.

"Who taught you to swim?" - Volodya was amazed when he first arrived in Leningrad. "Sea..." he replied. The sea, whose salty air he breathed from childhood, the sea from which he extracted mussels throughout the war to feed his family, the sea in which a ship with people sank before his eyes ... Volodya Borisenko's diary begins from this scene.

January 1942(...) In November 1941, the Germans broke into Feodosia. We didn’t have the opportunity to evacuate, firstly because of my father’s illness, and secondly, my brother Anatoly was only 4 years old, and my sister Dina was not yet a year old. In addition, ships leaving the port were immediately drowned by German aircraft. 2 months after the entry of the Germans, on January 1, 1942, our fleet landed troops in Feodosia, which lasted 3 weeks, until January 21, 1942, when the Germans again entered the city. (...)

Well, so today I decided to start my diary. I really regret not starting it sooner. Although all the same, I could not write down all the horrors that passed before my eyes, and besides, they are unforgettable. Yes, even today, as soon as my father and I went outside the gate, we immediately saw a huge column of smoke and fire, it was a three-story house on fire, which is located opposite Soyuztrans. The whole city is represented by the skeletons of buildings, sinkholes and ruins.

All the best places in the city are broken and mangled. Station, "Astoria", hydrotechnical school, school 1, school 6, a huge tobacco factory, city garden, swimming pool, bazaar, many bakeries, the whole Italian and the whole port burned out. In addition, hundreds of small houses were also destroyed. All water pipes were broken, the city drank water from cellars, funnels, manholes, lime pits. Can't describe everything.

My father and I went to the lime pit for water. Everywhere on the streets the Germans walked, scattered cartridges, grenades, fragments from bombs, from shells, whole unexploded shells. People were walking around the broken store collecting boards. On the square where the lime pit was located, 3 new two-story houses were built, one of them was already broken. Not far away, an ammunition depot set up in a former orphanage was burning down. A dead man was lying near the excavated bomb shelters. The area was littered with unexploded shells and small bombs. After getting some water, we returned home.

Belosevich came for his father and said that the Germans ordered to fix the bakery one day and bake bread the next day. I went there too. My father is a glazier, and a tinsmith, and a baker, and a roofer, and a tinker, and knows many other trades. When we arrived at the bakery, there were already 5 workers who brought various things for the bakery equipment. They cleaned the troughs for the dough, scrubbed the floors. One small bakery room was littered with a fallen wall. They nailed the doors on her. I chopped wood and lit the stove. My father installed glass. I went to the ruined yard to collect firewood and found some interesting books there. Collecting firewood, I climbed over the heaped stones, suddenly one stone slipped from under my foot and I felt that I was falling through. I let go of the firewood and barely managed to keep my arms outstretched. A little more and I would have been littered with a pile of stones. (...)

January 28, 1942 This morning I began to read the book "Historical Bulletin" found in the ruins. There I really liked the story "The Shlisselburg Tragedy" and "The Bright Key".

Then I went to the bakery, the dough was already ready. I chopped wood for the stove, on which stood a cauldron of water. Belosevich fired up the nozzle. When the stove was well heated, they began to plant bread. Removed loose plaster. The cleaning lady came and washed the windows and troughs. We put yeast and sourdough for tomorrow. Then they began to take out the bread. When the bread was taken out, each took a loaf for himself and everyone began to disperse. I also took a loaf and went home.

Papa stayed behind to give bread to the commandant's office.

Arriving home, I chopped wood for the pipe that heated the room in which the officer and orderly lived. They forced them to heat the pipe every day.

After chopping wood and having lunch, he went out into the yard. Borya was there, who, during the battle in the city, spent the night on the mountain near John, from where the whole city and the sea were visible. Now Boris filled up the windows that fell out in his apartment with plywood, transferred back the things that he and his father had previously transferred to John. He had 8 pigeons, but the Germans ate them.

Now we kind of rested. Only occasionally a plane will fly by somewhere, a few shots will be heard, and that's it.

And then from December 29 to January 21, the city was constantly bombed by German aircraft. At this time, many horrors passed before my eyes. Not far from the bazaar, several bombs hit one courtyard and 30 people remained under the ruins, only a few were dug up, the rest died. But the most indelible impression I have left is the death of the ship. I decided to describe it in this diary.

Boris and I, taking advantage of some lull, went up the mountain to John. A gentle breeze blew. There were small waves on the sea. A ship appeared on the horizon. Several Soviet planes were flying in the air. I pointed out to Boris the approaching ship. The ship approached the pier, but having made a semicircle, it departed for three kilometers, as it did three times, it took about half an hour, as we looked after it. The planes circled in the air. I thought that if he turns a fourth time, something must happen. The ship turned for the fourth time. And so, when the Soviet planes flew a little to the side, points of German planes appeared far beyond Lysa Gora. There were 7 fighters and 5 bombers. The fighters quickly pushed our planes aside and disappeared into the clouds. The bombers continued on their way. Our planes were far away. Anti-aircraft guns created a fiery barrier. But the German planes rushed down in a corkscrew and dived under the bursts of shells. Having leveled off and dropped much lower, the German planes began to dive into the ship. The ship was moving at full speed to the port in order to take refuge in it. We understood that the ship would die. The planes quickly approached the ship, lined up and began to drop bombs in turn. Here he threw the first plane, but the ship quickly stalled the cars and all five bombs raised a huge column of water in front of the ship. He threw the second, but the ship immediately rushed from its place, all the bombs exploded behind it. The third one dropped below all and threw his five into the ship. But the ship turned sharply into the open sea. But the fourth and fifth aircraft were thrown together at once. The ship turned towards the port and braked. Five bombs exploded in front of the ship, spraying it with ice, but five others hit the very center of the ship. The ship, as if nothing had happened, continued to move forward, nothing showed that bombs had hit it. All five German planes, thinking that they did not hit, descended by 50 meters and began firing machine guns at the outskirts. Soon they disappeared behind the mountain.

The ship was moving quickly towards the port for about three minutes, suddenly it stopped at once, heavy smoke poured out of its middle, it was clear how the boat flew off the side, how people jump into the icy water and how everyone immediately swims to the boat, clinging to its sides. The ship quickly went into the water. A few lights flashed on the captain's bridge and then a few more flashed on the stern of the ship, people committed suicide. Two minutes passed and the ship disappeared under the water. A boat left the port to save people, followed by a second one. They approached the place of the death of the ship, lowered the boats and began to pick up people. Five bombers appeared on the horizon again. The boats quickly raised the boats and left for the port. The bombers approached closer and turned back, the ship was no longer there, two masts sticking out of the water, that was all that reminded of the ship. (...)

Pigeons fried for lunch, air raids, sunken ships, German soldiers - this was his childhood.
Photo from the archive of M. Borisenko

February 1, 1942 In the morning the cannons rumbled again, they rattled all the night before and almost all day. Chiryaks popped out under my knee and I could hardly walk. However, I went out into the yard and began to help pump water out of the basement. Suddenly, several distant shots rang out, they were shooting at the planes. Two planes were flying over the edge of the sea. Shells exploded around them. It was impossible to determine who was shooting. Soon the planes disappeared on the horizon. Boris and I went for firewood. Having collected a decent amount of firewood on the ruins, we returned home. I chopped wood and took it home. There I read a few stories from the old Rabotnitsa magazines that my father had brought from the wrecked house to light the stoves. Then mom cooked dinner and dad came.

Explosions were heard during the day, they were blowing up the port, they were afraid of landing. Various false rumors were circulating in the city. It was said that the English fleet had entered the Black Sea and that an English submarine was approaching the city. (...)

February 3, 1942 In the morning, the chiryaks began to hurt much more quietly. After breakfast, I began to read the book "My Land", written by Ivan Krash. I really liked her. Dad had a day off today. He met Alikin's mother, who said that they would come to us. Alik is my friend, but I haven't seen him for two months. They came at 2 o'clock. I showed Alik the diary and various books. He told me to come to him tomorrow. They left at four o'clock. We had lunch. Then I finished reading the book, my mother changed the compress and we went to bed. Yes, even today an officer left us in our yard, but in another room. Another officer came to us, apparently kind.

February 4, 1942 In the morning, when we were sitting at breakfast, an officer walked by, he said "Good morning" and gave Dina a pack of sweets. So he is kind. Today I started reading Chernyshevsky's book "What to do"... At 10 o'clock I went to Alik's. I spent the whole day with him. In the evening I again read "What to do". Then my mother changed the compress again, and I fell asleep. (...)

February 7, 1942 Planes have been flying this morning. At 10 o'clock, dad brought a dead, but still fresh pigeon. Mom plucked it and decided to make soup. Then I went to the bakery. There I stayed the rest of the day. Then my dad and I went home. At home, dad took one bread and went to one uncle to exchange it for meat. Then he brought meat and we sat down to dinner. It was already evening. (...)

February 10, 1942 In the morning it was overcast, the whole city was shrouded in fog. The yard was so muddy that it was impossible to get through.

Today, the Germans, who had previously stopped here, left our yard, and new ones came. The Germans took all their belongings and many strangers to the carts. Horses and wagons made even more mud. I did not leave the yard and read books most of the day.

May 2, 1944 At 9 AM. If you write down everything that happened to me from April 8 to today, then there will not be enough paper. I will write shorter. April 9th ​​was Sunday and we walked around the city without knowing anything. On the 10th, the chief did not send us to work and did not let us go home. The 11th was the same. Russian attack aircraft bombed heavily, and besides, robbery began. No one could understand why this happened, but it was clear that the Germans were reeling in their fishing rods.

On the morning of the 12th, no more than 10 people remained in the hostel, and the rest, despite the locked doors and gates, managed to escape home. We were put in cars and taken out of town. A few more people managed to escape there, but I was not lucky. A column gathered, fifteen cars and we were taken to Sevastopol. It was still calm in Stary Krym, only a lot of troops, cars and carts were moving. A traffic jam was created here, and taking advantage of the moment, the driver Valentin ran away, ruining the car.

Prior to that, we were transported in two trucks, each with a German with a machine gun, and the boss, also with a machine gun, was driving behind him in a passenger car. Now we all rode in the same truck, and with us were two Germans, and behind us, as before, a passenger car.

Beyond Stary Krym the partisans fired at the road, but we passed safely. We drove through Karasubazar, Simferopol and Bakhchisaray without stopping, and by evening we were already 20 km from Sevastopol. Here our column of 15 cars has grown to a column of several thousand cars.

Thousands of cars were in front of us, as well as thousands behind us, and the column went in two rows of cars and a row of Romanian carts.

All the cars stood one next to the other, and moved no more than half a kilometer per hour, with long stops. It was also the day of the 13th. At about 12 there was a raid by stormtroopers and Deshkevich and Vozovenko fled. At one o'clock Dyatlov ran away, but I was not lucky. Finally, at three o'clock, when we were 9 km from Sevastopol, a traffic jam formed, as the front car had deteriorated. We were forced to throw her off the road. Having pushed it out of the way, we did not get into the cars, despite the fact that the column started moving, but on the contrary, under the carts, horses and hiding behind the cars, we moved back, away from our cars. There were four of us, but then it is not known for what reason Fedotov lagged behind us. Having reached the mountains, we turned into the mountains, where we saw partisans and in the village of Kolontai we waited for our regular troops. (...)

1 June 1944 At 2pm. Now I am in school. Today I passed the first tests in Russian writing, they wrote a presentation. I hope that I can pass all the tests. Things are going well for me personally, because I am not connected with anyone, nothing, especially with girls. Vova Lomakin, who worked at the radio center today, should be sent to the army, since he is 1926, the same with Vova, with whom I worked at the telephone exchange. Vova Chubarov was taken into the army back in April, fought near Sevastopol, distinguished himself. Alik arrived on May 3rd and went to school, but he recently dropped out of school and went to a tobacco factory as an apprentice mechanic. Guvin wraps up in the Komsomol. I am also thinking of joining the Komsomol.

All 1927 3 times a week are engaged in the military registration and enlistment office, as well as on Sundays. The day before yesterday I swam in the sea. Several times I, Kolya Levchenko, Metsov and others had to carry out the tasks of the city committee. In the class, I was elected a flight commander.

December 11, 1944 At 7 p.m. Now I am a pre-conscript and yesterday I spent the whole day at the military enlistment office. On the 2nd I was accepted into the ranks of the Komsomol. I hardly go to school. Over the previous week, I went once to Stary Krym for tobacco, and the other to the forest for firewood for 60 kilometers.

Now I have almost not a single free minute: I work all week, and on Sunday I go to the military enlistment office from half past seven to half past seven with a break of one hour.

January 22, 1945 All this week I went to school and took physics there. At the factory, he moved from mechanics to minders. Yesterday I did not go to the draft board, because before that I had been on duty for 24 hours near the engine. Yesterday at three o'clock my father came.

Today is Lenin's day and everyone is resting. Our troops took Warsaw, Lodz and Krakow. The Koenigsberg direction appeared.

March 3, 1945 I didn't go to school all this week. Wrote a letter to Lena and Yakovenko. Father came from Stary Krym, where he was hungry and asked for help, but there was nothing to help.

I'm working tonight.

3 May 1945 We celebrated yesterday and the day before yesterday. I was with Kolya all the time, they taught physics. I passed my anatomy with a 4. Kolya taught me to dance. He turned my head with the Baku School and now I dream of getting there. Yesterday at 11 o'clock 5 min. in the evening they reported the capture of Berlin. Our troops joined with the allies. Roosevelt died on April 12. Today it was reported that Goebels and Hitler shot themselves. In Italy, the Germans capitulate. In general, the war in Europe is coming to an end. Father is sitting.

An American diesel engine came to the factory and is already under repair, the bearings have melted. In the military registration and enlistment office, classes are over. From April 8 to April 28 he was on a raid. On the 29th it was evening at the factory.

13 May 1945 Finally we won and the war ended. On the 9th, the last capital the Germans still had fell: Prague. On the 9th there was a parade, in the morning we went for flowers, I found out about the end of the war at about 7 in the morning. Now the disarmament of the remnants of the German troops is underway. I am again working in a sleeve on a lifting machine and casually learning how to adjust. On the 6th I was at the military registration and enlistment office, they passed the norms for the TRP: a grenade, jumping, running a kilometer.

May 1941 Vladivostok. It's warm, the sun is shining brightly, and Lenya and I are already swimming. There are many people on the beach. Foreigners from the German embassy, ​​the children are asked to get sea urchins, stars, dived.

June 1941, 22nd. The boys swim on the shore. There are no Germans with girls. Let's go home. The German flags have been removed. We learned that the Nazis unexpectedly attacked our country. (...)

July, 21st. The summons came, the father was taken away. My mother and I did not know where my father had gone. Today a man came and said that his father was serving near the Japanese border, not far from Vladivostok. (...)

September, 14th. We are going to Ussuriysk. All in military uniform. Load tanks, guns. Lots of military. We drove for a very long time. The ride took me to the place where the dugouts stood. We were able to see my father.

July, 1942 I heard that children whose fathers died at the front are taken on steamships to work and study maritime affairs.

August, 1942 Refused. They say it's small.

September, 1942 I went to the port, loaded the ship, fed, but did not take it to the sea. Hungry. We went with the boys through the yards near the port. There, under a tarpaulin, lay mountains of food for the front. I got a couple of cans of stew. I was in the personnel department. We were sent to the port on a ship to clean the tanks. They suffocated from the smell, fumes, mustiness. Fed.

June, 1943 In personnel, they agreed to work on the ships of the Far Eastern and Arctic Shipping Companies. With a piece of paper in hand, he ran to the ship. “Where such little ones are sent, just a child,” said the boatswain. But they took it and fed it right away.

1942-1943 years. Got a sailing book! I can go abroad.

May 1 - July 12. They worked, stood on the steering wheel, were on duty, painted, put things in order, prepared the ship for acceptance. The Americans said that Soviet ships were the cleanest.

October November. Violent storms. Coming from USA, Canada. Transition to the Arctic. Unloading the Northern Sea Route. Further to Vladivostok. (...)

November, 23rd. The wind is getting stronger. As long as we hold on. The ship is bursting at the seams. But this weather is good for us. Enemy submarines do not spawn. Torpedoes are not to be feared. (...)

August, 5th, 1945 We walk cautiously past the Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is necessary to catch up with the convoy of Soviet ships and, together with them, pass the La Perouse Strait and further to Vladivostok. (...)

August, 7th, 1945 We are moving towards South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. They landed a reconnaissance group on the Kuril Islands, the boat returned to the ship.

August, 8th, 1945 At night, a warship approached and transferred another reconnaissance group to our steamer. Since we were a merchant ship, we were not touched. Thus, we made several landings of the Red Navy and reconnaissance groups on South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

August, 9th, 1945 I'm at the helm. I do not get to manage. I put a box of shells. Movement on the ship. We go to the northern part of the island. Hokkaido.

August, 10-11 number. Received an order to block the northern coast of about. Hokkaido. Combat Alert! The torpedo goes to the ship. We focused the fire of small-caliber guns on the track of the torpedo and changed its trajectory.

September, 1945 Our flight lasted 27 days off the coast of South Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, near about. Hokkaido, being bombarded from the shore by enemy anti-aircraft guns, then shelling Japanese submarines, then shelling planes dropping torpedoes on ships.

September 3rd, 1945 We received an order to move to Magadan, then to the USA and Canada. (...) In the afternoon we received an order for the entire crew to line up on deck. The Red Navy and Marines were already here. Captain N.F. went up on deck. Buyanov and first mate A.F. Well done. They read out the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief I. Stalin that on September 2, 1945, a pact was signed on the unconditional surrender of the Japanese military. We were congratulated, a festive table was laid in the evening. Everyone rejoiced!

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The author of the diary, V. P. Argirovsky, the son of a priest, was born in 1890 in the village of Ukhtoma, Cherepovets district, Vologda province, graduated from the Novgorod Theological Seminary, then in 1915 from the Imperial St. Petersburg Theological Academy, receiving the degree of candidate of theology of the first category. From 1915 to 1917 - student of the Faculty of History and Philology of Petrograd University. In Soviet times, he taught Russian at a photo-film technical school. His wife Elizaveta Leonidovna (nee Grigorieva), a graduate of Bestuzhev courses, also became a teacher of Russian language and literature.

The diary was kept for many years in the family archive of his daughter Tatyana Vasilievna, the only one from the family who managed to survive during the years of the blockade. Her brother Sergei went missing on the Leningrad front in early 1942. His parents survived him by only a few months.