Here we present three stories that convey a fraction of the suffering and sacrifice that the Soviet people had to go through during the Great Patriotic War.
No on is forgotten!
Nothing is forgotten!
Published first at our telegram channel “Beorn And The shieldmaiden”.
How I stopped collecting stamps
— A passage from the book by Mihail Ancharov “The Improbability Theory. Golden Rain”
Inmate orchestra at Yankovsky KZ, who were forced to play during hanging of other inmates.
And now I’ll tell you how I stopped collecting stamps. It happened after our troops reached Lvov. The machine gunners were told to find out where the Yankovsky camp was located. It was here somewhere, but no one knew where. Then a man with a dancing face who knew of it was found. For some reason, it is impossible to tell of this in detail, one can only tell the details. One can tell about a narrow-gauge railway outside the city, along which a train approached every two hours, and in just one day they brought fourteen thousand people. One can tell how we all walked through a soft field covered with gray sand, machine gunners and the commission, and ahead there were some birch groves, not even groves, but groups of birch trees planted in a checkerboard pattern. And a man with a dancing face suddenly ran across the gray sand to these groves and grabbed the trunk of a birch tree and began to shake it. We wanted to, but we couldn’t get him away from the birch tree, he just mumbled and swayed the trunk, and then the birch tree collapsed, turning out the roots, and we saw a bunker filled with naked people, dead and without hair.
One can tell how we walked up a soft hillock strewn with gray sand, and there was a sweet smell, and we noticed that it was not sand, but some large particles. And it turned out to be burnt and ground human bones. After all, there are fourteen thousand people every day. It smelled like burnt human fat. But the man with the dancing face was alive because he was turning a special machine with sieves that sifted through the ground bones, and in the sieves there were small gold bars melted from dental crowns that were not noticed during the search, and gold was collected — on average three kilograms per day, that is, ninety kilograms of gold per month, that is, a ton of gold per year, and if all this were still working now, imagine how much gold could be mined this way.
Otherwise, one can also tell about the warehouse, where plump paper bags with “camp number so-and-so” stamps were stacked on the shelves, and when my friend poked the blunt barrel of the machine gun into a neat bag, two braids fell out – black and gold. They were prepared for mattresses on submarines. One can also tell what kind of expressions there were on the faces the machine gunners had and what kind of expressions were on commissions’, generals’, scientists’, and employees’ faces. One can tell how the beard of Metropolitan of Krutitsky and Galitsky got wet. And it got wet from crying. The others did not cry and looked at each other with dry eyes.
There were also four mountains — a mountain of men’s shoes, a mountain of women’s shoes, a mountain of children’s shoes, and a mountain of envelopes, photographs, and passports in all European languages. I tore off a German stamp with a swastika from one envelope, because even the great philatelist did not have one, since he did not know “German with a swastika”, but only knew “German about Lorelei with golden braids”. I wrapped the stamp in paper because it issued a sweet smell. And when I came to Moscow to attend an infantry school a month later and presented this stamp to my brother (he was a schoolboy and inherited my album), I had to tear out a sheet from the album: despite the fact that I changed the wrapper three times while I was carrying this stamp, a greasy stain formed in the album, which gave off a smell.
In memory of Vasily Bugrov
Siege of Leningrad, 872 days of hell. A day like an endless nightmare. Nights filled with hunger and the sounds of air raid sirens – the sound that eats into your ears forever and make your blood run cold in your veins.
Wrapped in a sheepskin coat, the girl Masha ran into the house, shaking a skinny red cat in front of her.
– Moooom! Vaska caught a rat!
– Oh, what a fine fellow, our breadwinner! Give her here, let’s cook.
There really was a strangled rat dangling from Vasily’s teeth. Natalya, without any disgust, freed the cat from this burden and turned the prey over in her dry hands, disfigured by hard work.
– Good, fat. The goulash will be excellent. Oh, Vaska, we would be lost without you! – she turned to the cat and stroked his bony back, – my golden one, my golden one!
Vasily jumped on the bench. His yellow-green eyes matched the most ordinary wild, reddish colour. Once he had a muzzle and looked important, but that was a long time ago, before the blockade. Now everyone who lives in this house resembles walking dead. All who are left are his mother, the girl and the cat.
Masha woke up in a sweat, shouting: “Mom, run, there’s an alarm!”, but Mom answered her: “Daughter, you were dreaming, go back to sleep.” But the sound was so clear, so loud, that Masha listened for a long time and hugged the cat tighter.
Will this hell ever end? Year after year, day after day… Hunger. Fear. And bombs. Here it is, a childhood without colours, life in the blackest tones.
If it weren’t for Vaska, Masha and her mother would have been starving long ago. Every morning he went hunting and brought back mice or even, like yesterday, a well-fed rat. Mice were turned into soup, rats into goulash.
Vaska never ate his prey on the sly – he sat and waited for his portion. The best portion. Natalya always gave him the best piece, because he was the breadwinner, the provider, because he was their main hero.
At night, the three of them slept: Natalya with her daughter on either side of Vaska, warming them with his body heat.
Vasily felt that there would be a bombing long before it started.
– Masha, look! Vaska is worried, quickly grab your things and let’s run!
Vasily was spinning around near the door and meowing pitifully.
Natalya grabbed the most essential; water, the girl Masha and the cat, and rushed headlong to the bomb shelter. Along the way, she took the utmost care of Vaska – so that, God forbid, he would not be taken and eaten.
The feeling of hunger was permanent, could not be turned off. The most excruciating moment was when the pitiful ration was terrifyingly quickly approaching the end.
Crumbs for the birds. Natalya collected each of them and kept them like pearls. They would come in handy in the spring, when the birds returned to their land. Having scattered them in a suitable place, Natalya hid in ambush with Vaska. Vasily’s jump was always accurate.
There! The bird in his teeth, but he was unable to hold it for long, because, like everyone else, he was very weak and thin. At that moment, Natalya came to his aid. So, from spring until autumn, in addition to rats and mice, birds added variety to their diet.
After the blockade was lifted, when there was more food, and then when the war finally ended, Natalya always gave Vaska the best piece from the table and said: “Eat, eat, Vasenka! You are our breadwinner!”
Vaska the cat passed away in 1949. Natalya quietly buried him in the cemetery and, so that the place would not be trampled, put up a cross with the inscription «Vasily Bugrov».
Because he was not ‘just a cat’, but a real member of the family. Because they would have been long gone if not for this fluffy one with a wild red colour and sideburns on his cheeks.
Later, Natalya herself lay down next to Vasily, and then Mashenka was laid next to them.
So they all lie together, side by side, as in the terrible, endless days of the blockade, and dear Vasenka warms them with his love.
Based on a true story. The cat’s name has not been changed.
The Cats of War: Combating the Rat-plague
Blockaded Leningrad cat with a shot through the ear, 1943. Source: https://t.me/Black_History/10283
🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀
The rats, in the absence of cats, who had been eaten by the starving citizens, felt themselves as masters: they multiplied rapidly and devoured the few supplies that still remained, plundered vegetable gardens, but what was scariest of all was the threat of an epidemic.
Valentina Osipova, the employee of the church of St. Peter. Serafima of Sarov, tells this story:
“The windows in the house were blown out during the bombing, the furniture had been turned to firewood a long time ago. Mom was sleeping on the windowsill, which was as wide as a bench, sheltering from the rain and wind with an umbrella. One day, when someone found out that my mother was pregnant with me, they gave her a herring – she wanted it so much…
At home, my mother put the gift in a secluded corner, hoping to eat it after work. She told: «But when I returned in the evening, I found a tail of herring and greasy spots on the floor — the rats were feasting. It was a tragedy that only those who survived the blockade will understand.»
And there was nowhere to get the cat from. And what was there to feed it?”
Blockade survivor Kira Loginova recalled:
“A lot of rats in long lines, led by their leaders, were moving along the Shlisselburgsky highway (Obukhovskaya Oborona Avenue) straight to the mill, where flour was ground for the whole city.
They shot at the rats, tried to crush them with tanks, but nothing worked: they climbed on and safely rode on the tanks. It was an organised, intelligent and cruel enemy…”
Another blockade survivor told with horror how one night she looked out of the window, and the whole street was crawling with rats. She couldn’t sleep for a long time after that. When the rats crossed the road, even the trams had to stop.
The only way to escape from the invasion of rats were cats.
And in April 1943, after the blockade was broken, the chairman of the Leningrad City Council signed a decree on the need to “discharge four wagons of smoky cats from the Yaroslavl region and deliver them to Leningrad”. Smoky Yaroslavl cats were considered the best rat catchers. The echelon with the “meowing division”, as the Leningraders called these cats, was securely guarded. Eyewitnesses said that there were long queues for cats, like for bread.
In the blockade diary of writer Leonid Panteleev for January 1944, there is a curious entry: “A kitten in Leningrad costs 500 rubles”. For comparison: in the city, a kilogram of bread from the hands cost then 50 rubles; the salary of the watchman was 120 rubles.
Zoya Kornilyeva tells:
“For cats we gave the most dear thing we had — bread. I myself was leaving a little by little of my ration, so that later I could give this bread for the kitten to the woman whos cat had a litter.”
Yaroslavl cats drove the rodents away from food warehouses, but the problem was not completely solved.
So at the end of the war, another feline mobilisation was announced — from Siberia. The “cat call” was successful. 238 cats were collected in Tyumen alone. The first was cat Amur, whose owner wished to “contribute to the fight against the hated enemy”.
In total, 5,000 Omsk, Tyumen and Irkutsk cats were brought, which cleared the city of rodents, saving the remnants of food supplies for people, and the people themselves from the epidemic.
Source: The Cats of War