Memories started with a small ripple. Why do childhood memories disappear? "Flowers for Algernon"
My first memory is my brother's birthday: November 14, 1991. I remember my father driving my grandparents and me to the hospital in Highland Park in Illinois. We went there to see the newborn brother.
I remember how they brought me to the ward where my mother was lying, and how I went up to look into the cradle. But best of all I remember what program was then on TV. Those were the last two minutes of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. I even remember what the episode was.
In sentimental moments of my life, I feel that I remembered the birth of my brother, because it was the first event that deserves to be remembered. There may be some truth to this: Early memory research shows that memories often begin with significant events, and the birth of a brother is a classic example.
But it's not just the importance of the moment: most people's first memories are around the age of 3.5 years. At the time of the birth of my brother, I was just that much.
When I talk about the first memory, of course, I mean the first conscious memory.
Carol Peterson, Professor of Psychology at Memorial University Newfoundland, has shown that young children can remember events from 20 months of age, but these memories are mostly erased by 4-7 years of age.
“We used to think that the reason we don’t have early memories is because kids don’t have a memory system, or they just forget everything very quickly, but that turned out to be not true,” says Peterson. “Children have good memories, but whether memories last depends on several factors.”
The two most significant, as Peterson explains, are the reinforcement of memories with emotions and their coherence. That is, whether the stories that pop up in our memory are endowed with meaning. Of course, we can remember not only events, but it is events that most often become the basis for our first memories.
Indeed, when I asked developmental psychologist Stephen Resnick about the causes of childhood "amnesia," he disagreed with the term I used. In his opinion, this is an outdated view of things.
Resnick, who works at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, recalled that shortly after birth, babies begin to remember faces and respond to familiar people. This is the result of the so-called recognition memory. The ability to understand words and learn to speak depends on working memory, which is formed by about six months. More complex forms of memory develop by the third year of life: for example, semantic memory, which allows memorizing abstract concepts.
“When people say that babies don’t remember anything, they mean event memory,” Resnick explains. While our ability to remember events that happened to us depends on a more complex "mental infrastructure" than other types of memory.
Context is very important here. To remember an event, a child needs a whole set of concepts. So, in order to remember my brother's birthday, I had to know what "hospital", "brother", "cradle" and even "Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends" are.
Moreover, in order for this memory not to be forgotten, it had to be preserved in my memory in the same language code that I use now as an adult. That is, I could have had earlier memories, but formed in rudimentary, pre-verbal ways. However, as language was acquired, the brain developed and these early memories became inaccessible. And so it is with each of us.
What do we lose when our first memories are erased? For example, I lost an entire country.
My family emigrated to America from England in June 1991, but I have no memory of Chester, my birthplace. I grew up learning about England from TV programs, as well as the cooking habits, accent and language of my parents. I knew England as a culture, but not as a place or home...
Once, in order to verify the authenticity of my first memory, I called my father to ask about the details. I was afraid that I had invented the arrival of my grandparents, but it turned out that they really flew in to see their newborn grandson.
My father said that my brother was born in the early evening, not at night, but given that it was winter and it was getting dark early, I could mistake evening for night. He also confirmed that there was a crib and a TV in the room, but he doubted one important detail - that Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends was on TV.
True, in this case, we can say that this detail naturally ran into the memory of a three-year-old child and fell out of the memories of the father of the newborn. It would be very strange to add such a fact years later. False memories do exist, but their construction begins much later in life.
In the studies that Peterson conducted, young children were told about alleged events in their lives, but almost everyone separated reality from fiction. The reason older children and adults begin patching holes in their memories with fictional details, Peterson explains, is because memory is constructed by our brains, not just a series of memories. Memory helps us to know the world, but for this we need whole, not fragmentary memories.
I have a memory of an event that chronologically precedes the birth of my brother. I vaguely see myself sitting between my parents on a plane flying to America. But this is not a first-person memory, unlike my memory of visiting the hospital.
Rather, it is a “mental snapshot” from the outside, made, or rather constructed, by my brain. But it is interesting that my brain missed an important detail: in my memory, my mother is not pregnant, although at that time the belly should have been noticeable.
It is noteworthy that not only the stories that our brain constructs change our memories, but vice versa. In 2012 I flew to England to see the city where I was born. Having spent less than a day in Chester, I felt that the city was surprisingly familiar to me. The feeling was subtle, but unmistakable. I was home!
Was it because Chester held an important place in my adult consciousness as a city of birth, or were these feelings provoked by real pre-verbal memories?
According to Reznik, probably the latter, since the identifying memory is the most stable. In my case, the "memories" of the city of birth that I formed in infancy may well have persisted all these years, albeit vaguely.
When people in Chester asked me what a single American was doing in a small English town, I replied: “Actually, I come from here.”
For the first time in my life, I felt that nothing inside resisted these words. Now I don’t remember if I was joking after: “What, is it not noticeable in my accent?” But over time, I think this detail may become part of my memory. It makes the story more interesting that way.
A unique document came into my possession. These memories of his childhood and youth were written by Nikolay Kryvorog - a man who was born and raised in Kyiv, survived the war, the occupation. Despite his venerable age, having mastered the work on a computer, he himself (!) printed this text - I just have to make some corrections before presenting it to the attention of my readers. The text is quite large and I divided it into several parts, calling this cycle "Memoirs of a Kievan"...One of the first bombs fell into our yard. A fragment of this bomb jammed our front door. Everyone was alarmed and we could not get out of our apartment. But then, the neighbors, together with the janitor, opened our door with an ax and we went out into the yard. Everyone shouted that the war had begun. The people who were on the street, and these were people with bandages on their sleeves and with bags for gas masks over their shoulders, took us across the road to house number 12, where there was a bomb shelter. I don't remember what happened next, and I don't know how it all ended at that time.
In the following days, when there were no bombings, people walked through the destroyed houses and collected wooden things to heat the stoves. My grandmother told me to find something wooden for our furnace too. And I found a small wooden window frame and brought it home. Grandmother was not very pleased with my find, but still left it at home.
When the Germans entered the city, we stayed in our house with the whole family. My father was not taken to the war at that time. he had a "white ticket" as an invalid since childhood. He had some pathology with the spine. At that time, almost all the people who lived in our house stayed in the city. My father in those days worked as a stoker in a bathhouse in Pechersk. I remember an incident when I went to work with my father. The road was, or rather the path from Bessarabka to Pechersk to the modern street. Moscow along the "dog path", we called this road simply "dog". When I reached the bathhouse, I saw a column of our prisoners of war walking along a parallel street, accompanied by German escorts. And suddenly a woman ran up to one of the prisoners and grabbed his hand. She was in tears and the escort pulled him out of the column and the woman and this guy left. Here's a strange case I had to see.
I do not know how the rest of the inhabitants of our house were arranged, but I remember that the Assyrians worked as shoemakers and shoe shiners at the station and on street corners. Next to our house was a beautiful five-story house, it has survived to this day.
In those days, civilian Germans, the so-called Volksdeutsch, lived in it. There was a case when a boy about six or seven years old came out of this house with a knapsack behind his back. We looked at each other for some time and I could not understand why this boy had a knapsack behind his back. But then, many years later, I realized that it was a German schoolboy.
Apparently there were schools in Kyiv for German children who came to Kyiv with their parents. In those days, my father often took me to football with him. The entrance was free. We watched the matches between the Germans and the Magyars (Hungarians). Most of the matches were won by the Magyars.
I remember a case when a player of the German team took the ball headlong, the ball burst and remained on his head. All the stands laughed for a long time. In the stands were officers from both sides, German and Magyar. Once there was a case when the fans, the officers of both, quarreled and a strong fight broke out. Everyone jumped up and began to run towards Zhilyanskaya Street. I don’t know how it all ended, but I remember such an episode.
Usually, at the end of the match between the Germans and the Magyars, the spectators went out onto the field and were divided into two equal teams and played among themselves. My father also sometimes participated in these competitions. Sometimes I went to the stadium myself, I was already six years old at that time, and I saw the training of our football players who came from the street. Prozorovskaya, now Esplanadnaya. I stood behind the gate which is on the Bessarabian side and I remember the tall curly-haired goalkeeper. Over the years, I found out that it was the goalkeeper of the Kiev "Dynamo" Trusevich. The death match that our team played with the Germans, I did not see and did not even know about it.
Once I saw a German officer running after some guy along Malo-Vasilkovskaya street from Bessarabka to the street. Saksagansky, and some oncoming cyclist put his foot on this guy and they grabbed him. Why they took him, I don't know. Another case was not far from our house, a civilian was running away and a German was running after him and shooting. But this man tried to run in a zigzag so that the bullet would not hit him. But I didn't see how this episode ended.
I remember a case when in the morning I climbed onto one of our sheds, which stood around the entire perimeter of our yard, and saw how in another yard, which was visible from this shed, a man in a T-shirt walked in a circle and waved his arms and made movements incomprehensible to me to everyone body. I couldn't figure out why he was walking in circles and waving his arms. Over time, when I was already quite an adult, I realized that this man was just doing morning exercises. Of course, he was a German but in civilian clothes.
And of course, I can’t help but describe the terrible incident that my parents told me about. My father's grandfather's brother, i.e. after my father's father, there was a Jewish wife, her name was Dvoira, in Russian Vera. They had two children, Lenya and Vova, my cousins. And when the decree was issued that all Jews should gather in a certain place, my uncle's wife wanted to take the children with her. Grandmother, the mother of my father, categorically did not allow her to take the children with her. It came to scandals, but my grandmother still insisted on her own. She said, if you want to go yourself, but I won’t give you children. This is how my two cousins were saved, and their mother died in Babi Yar.
All this was told to me by my parents long after the end of the war. We lived in the German occupation for two years. I remember what kind of bread we ate then, it was in the shape of a brick and the top crust was shiny. It was covered with some kind of shiny husk. Its taste was rather sour. I don’t know how it got to our table, but I remember its taste well.
During the offensive of our troops on Kyiv and the retreat of the Germans from Kyiv, many people left the city. Our family went to Makarov along the Zhytomyr road. Our property was loaded onto two wheelbarrows. The larger car was for my father, and the smaller one for my mother. When leaving the city through Yevbaz, I saw cars in which people were being loaded. Apparently these people were sent to Germany. My parents somehow drove around these cars and we safely drove to the Zhytomyr highway.
I don’t remember any special adventures along the way and I don’t even know how long it took us to get to our destination. But the only thing I remember well is when my younger brother Kostya, sitting on his father's wheelbarrow, sang the song "Oh, you are Galya, Galya is young." And the distance was more than fifty kilometers.
When we arrived at the village with the name Makovishche of the Makarovsky district, we were settled in a village school. My grandmother's sister, whose name was Paraska, lived in this village. Quite often I had to visit this grandmother's sister. I remember how several times I had to carry milk from my grandmother's sister to the village council. My grandmother lived in the same village, but on the other side of our housing. And then one evening, we heard the screams of my grandmother, she, with the exclamation of Shura, Shura, the name of her son, my father, ran up to the window of our room and fell. When they carried her into the room and laid her right on the floor against the wall, she could not speak and was hoarse. After a while she died. Apparently she had a stroke. The next day she was buried in the village cemetery.
I remember a case when a German convoy was leaving the village, our plane, probably a fighter, flew in and fired at this convoy with a machine gun. The Germans began to quickly hide in the bushes and lie down on the ground. I saw all this from a hillock on which there was a school in which we lived. When the Germans retreated, some time passed and our advanced units entered the village. At this time we were all at home.
At the school, in the room adjacent to ours, there were Soviet military men, and a man came there who had been a warden under the Germans. We heard a sound like someone banging a fist on the table. Turns out it was a gunshot. This elder was shot by the military. When I left the house, I saw how a man, probably an acquaintance or relative, was dragging him from school already dead.
When it was time to return to Kyiv, my parents again loaded two wheelbarrows with our belongings and we went home in the same way. There were no special adventures along the way, but when we drove up to ours, he was no longer there, he burned down. Why it burned down we do not know. The father had to look for some kind of housing. In those days, many houses in Kyiv were not inhabited by residents. My father found a vacant apartment on the third floor of a four-story building at the corner of Saksagansky and Malo-Vasilkovskaya streets No. 13/42. It was a room in a communal apartment of 18 square meters. Fortunately for us, no one claimed this room. Apparently the tenants who lived in this room before the war did not return from the evacuation. All this was at the end of 1943. Winter came quite cold and often there was no water in the house. My father took some kind of sled and we went to the stadium and took water from some well. Many people came there to get water.
In the summer of 1944, an incident occurred that I will remember for the rest of my life. In our entrance, on the first floor, a military captain lived with his family, who came from the war, although the war had not yet ended. His apartment was robbed, some things were taken away, and the gun that was in his room remained in place. At that time, my father was at the market, he bought cucumbers there. When he came home, he was suspected of theft, immediately arrested and taken to the authorities. For a long time they tortured him, demanded a confession of theft. Despite the fact that he did not confess to theft, since he was not guilty, he was sentenced to a whole year. From prison, he immediately went to the front. When my father returned from the war, thank God, alive and unharmed, he found out that this captain had been robbed by tenants from the same communal apartment from the first floor. In May 1944, my younger brother Tolya was born, and our family already consisted of five people.
In September of the same year, I went to the 1st grade. My school, number 131, was opposite our house. Although almost a year has passed since the day Kyiv was liberated, the war has not yet ended. I remember a case when our teacher told us to bring empty bottles, and they explained to us that this is necessary for the front.
This is where my childhood memories end.
Illustration by V. Anikin
Very briefly
A mentally retarded person undergoes an operation to increase intelligence. He becomes a genius, but the effect of the operation is short-lived: the hero loses his mind and ends up in an orphanage.
The story is told in the first person and is made up of reports written by the protagonist.
32-year-old mentally retarded Charlie Gordon lives in New York and works as a janitor in a private bakery where his uncle got him. He barely remembers his parents and younger sister. Charlie goes to a special school where teacher Alice Kinnian teaches him to read and write.
One day, Miss Kinnian brings him to Professor Nemours and Dr. Strauss. They're running an intelligence-enhancing experiment and they need a volunteer. Miss Kinnian proposes the candidacy of Charlie, the brightest student in her group. Since childhood, Charlie has dreamed of becoming smart and willingly agrees, although the experiment is associated with a risky operation. Psychiatrist and neurosurgeon Strauss tells him to write down his thoughts and feelings in the form of reports. There are many errors in Charlie's first reports.
Charlie begins to take standard psychological tests, but fails. Charlie is afraid that he will not suit the professor. Gordon meets the mouse Algernon, who has already undergone surgery. The test subjects race through the maze, and Algernon is faster each time.
On March 7th, Charlie is having surgery. For a while, nothing happens. He continues to work at the bakery and no longer believes that he will become smart. The bakery workers mock Charlie, but he does not understand anything, and laughs along with those whom he considers friends. He does not tell anyone about the operation, and every day he goes to the laboratory to do tests. On March 29, Charlie completes the maze faster than Algernon for the first time. Miss Kinnian begins to work with him individually.
On April 1, the bakery workers decide to play a trick on Charlie and force him to turn on the mixer. Suddenly, Charlie succeeds, and the owner promotes him. Gradually, Charlie begins to understand that for "friends" he is just a clown, over whom you can joke with impunity and evil.
I have reached a new level of development. But anger and suspicion were the first feelings I had for the world around me.
He recalls the most offensive cases, hardens and ceases to trust people. Dr. Strauss conducts psychotherapy sessions with Charlie. Although Gordon's intelligence is increasing, he knows very little about himself and is still emotionally a child.
Charlie's past, previously hidden from him, begins to clear up.
I'm like a man who slept half his life and is now trying to find out who he was while he slept.
By the end of April, Charlie has changed so much that the bakery workers begin to treat him with suspicion and hostility. Charlie reminisces about his mother. She did not want to admit that her son was born mentally retarded, beat the boy, forced him to study at a regular school. Charlie's father tried unsuccessfully to protect his son.
Charlie is in love with his former teacher Alice Kinnian. She is not at all as old as Charlie thought before the operation. Alice is younger than him, and he begins an inept courtship. The thought of having a relationship with a woman terrifies Charlie. This is due to the mother, who was afraid that her mentally retarded son would harm her younger sister. She put it into the boy's head that women were not to be touched. Charlie has changed, but the prohibition that has settled in the subconscious is still in effect.
Charlie notices that the head chef of the bakery is stealing from the owner. Charlie warns him, threatening to tell the owner, the theft stops, but the relationship deteriorates completely. This is the first major decision Charlie made on his own. He is learning to trust himself. Alice pushes Charlie to make a decision. He confesses his love to her, but she understands that the time for such a relationship has not yet come.
The owner of the bakery was a friend of the uncle, promised to take care of Charlie and kept his promise. However, now Charlie has changed strangely, the workers are afraid of him and threaten to quit if Charlie stays. The owner asks him to leave. Charlie tries to talk to former friends, but they hate the fool, who suddenly became smarter than all of them.
Reason drove a wedge between me and everyone I knew and loved, kicked me out of the house. Never before have I felt so alone.
Charlie hasn't been working for two weeks. He tries to escape from loneliness in the arms of Alice, but nothing comes of them. Gordon seems to see himself and Alice from the side, through the eyes of the former Charlie, who is horrified and does not allow them to finally get closer. Gordon recalls how his sister hated and was ashamed of him.
Charlie is getting smarter. Soon, people around him cease to understand him. Because of this, he quarrels with Alice - she feels like a complete fool next to him. Charlie distances himself from everyone he knew and immerses himself in his studies.
On June 10, Prof. Nemur and Dr. Strauss are flying to a medical symposium in Chicago. The main "exhibits" at this major event will be Charlie and mouse Algernon. On the plane, Charlie remembers how his mother tried in vain to cure him, to make him smarter. She spent almost all the family savings, which her father, a hairdressing equipment salesman, wanted to open his own hairdresser. The mother left Charlie alone, giving birth again and proving that she was capable of having healthy children. Charlie dreamed of turning into a normal person so that his mother would finally love him.
Every day I learn something new about myself, and the memories that started as small ripples wash over me in a ten-point storm.
At the symposium, Charlie reveals such vast knowledge and high intelligence that professors and academics pale in comparison. This does not prevent Professor Nemour from calling him "his creation" equating Charlie with the mouse Algernon. The professor is sure that before the operation, Charlie was an "empty shell" and did not exist as a person. Many consider Charlie to be arrogant and intolerant, but he simply cannot find his place in life. At the report on the operation to increase intelligence, Gordon feels like a guinea pig. In protest, he releases Algernon from the cage, then finds him first and flies home.
In New York, Gordon sees a newspaper with a photo of his mother and sister. He remembers how his mother forced his father to take him to an orphanage. After the birth of a healthy daughter, a mentally retarded son aroused in her only disgust.
Charlie rents a four-room furnished apartment near the library. In one of the rooms, he arranges a three-dimensional maze for Algernon. Charlie does not even tell Alice Kinnigan about his whereabouts. Soon he meets a neighbor - a free artist. To get rid of loneliness and make sure of his ability to be with a woman, Charlie enters into a relationship with a neighbor. The former Charlie does not interfere with the relationship, since this woman is indifferent to him, he only watches what is happening from the side.
Charlie finds a father who divorced his wife and opened a hair salon in a poor neighborhood. He does not recognize his son, but he does not dare to open up. Gordon discovers that after drinking heavily, he turns into a mentally handicapped Charlie. Alcohol releases his subconscious, which has not yet caught up with his rapidly growing IQ.
Nothing in us disappears without a trace. The operation covered Charlie with a thin layer of culture and education, but he remained. He watches and waits.
Now Charlie tries not to get drunk. He walks for a long time, goes to a cafe. One day he sees the waiter, a mentally retarded guy, drop a tray with plates, and the visitors begin to make fun of him.
It is amazing how people of high moral principles... never allowing themselves to take advantage of a person born without arms, legs or eyes,... easily and thoughtlessly make fun of a person born without a mind.
This encourages Gordon to continue his scientific work in order to benefit such people. Having made a decision, he meets with Alice. He explains that he loves her, but between them stands a little boy, Charlie, who is afraid of women because his mother beat him.
Charlie starts working in the lab. He has no time for a mistress, and she leaves him. Algernon begins incomprehensible bouts of aggression. At times he can't get past his labyrinth. Charlie takes the mouse to the lab. He asks Professor Nemour what they were going to do with him if they failed. It turned out that Charlie was destined for a place in the state social school and hospital "Warren". Gordon visits this establishment to know what awaits him.
Algernon gets worse, he refuses to eat. Charlie, on the other hand, reaches the peak of mental activity.
It is as if all the knowledge I have acquired in recent months has combined and lifted me to the pinnacle of light and understanding.
August 26 Gordon finds an error in Professor Nemour's calculations. Charlie realizes that he will soon begin a mental regression, the same as Algernon's. September 15 Algernon dies. Charlie buries him in the backyard. September 22 Gordon visits his mother and sister. He discovers that his mother has senile insanity. Her sister has a hard time with her, she is glad that Charlie found them. The sister had no idea that her mother got rid of Charlie for her. Gordon promises to help them as long as he can.
Gordon's IQ is rapidly declining, he becomes forgetful. Books, once loved, are now incomprehensible to him. Alice comes to Gordon. This time, the old Charlie does not interfere with their love. She stays for a few weeks looking after Charlie. Soon he drives Alice away - she reminds him of abilities that cannot be returned. More and more errors appear in the reports that Charlie still writes. In the end, they become the same as before the operation.
November 20 Charlie returns to the bakery. The workers who used to bully him now take care and protect him. However, Charlie still remembers that he was smart. He doesn't want to be pitied and goes to the Warren. He writes a farewell letter to Miss Kinnian asking for flowers to be placed on Algernon's grave.
Grandma was 8 years old when the war started, they were terribly hungry, the main thing was to feed the soldiers, and only then everyone else, and once she heard the women talking that the soldiers give food if they are given, but she did not understand what they need to give , came to the dining room, stands roaring, an officer came out, asking why the girl was crying, she recounted what she had heard, and he neighed and brought her a whole can of porridge. This is how granny fed four brothers and sisters.
My grandfather was a captain in a motorized rifle regiment. It was 1942, the Germans took Leningrad into a blockade. Hunger, disease and death. The only way to deliver provisions to Leningrad is the "road of life" - the frozen Lake Ladoga. Late at night, a column of trucks with flour and medicines, led by my grandfather, headed down the road of life. Of the 35 cars, only 3 reached Leningrad, the rest went under the ice, like the grandfather's wagon. He dragged the saved bag of flour to the city on foot for 6 km, but did not reach it - he froze because of wet clothes at -30.
The father of a grandmother's friend died in the war, when that one was not even a year old. When the soldiers began to return from the war, she put on the most beautiful dress every day and went to the station to meet trains. The girl said she was going to look for her dad. She ran among the crowd, approached the soldiers, asked: "Will you be my dad?" One man took her by the hand, said: "well, lead" and she brought him home and with her mother and brothers they lived a long and happy life.
My great-grandmother was 12 years old when the blockade of Leningrad began, where she lived. She studied at a music school and played the piano. She fiercely defended her instrument and did not allow it to be dismantled for firewood. When the shelling began, and they didn’t have time to leave for the bomb shelter, she sat down and played, loudly, for the whole house. People listened to her music and were not distracted by the shots. My grandmother, mother and I play the piano. When I was too lazy to play, I remembered my great-grandmother and sat down at the instrument.
My grandfather was a border guard, in the summer of 1941 he served somewhere on the border with present-day Moldova, respectively, he began to fight from the very first days. He never spoke much about the war, because the border troops were in the department of the NKVD - it was impossible to tell anything. But we did hear one story. During the forced breakthrough of the Nazis to Baku, grandfather's platoon was thrown into the rear of the Germans. The guys pretty quickly got surrounded in the mountains. They had to get out within 2 weeks, only a few survived, including the grandfather. The soldiers came out to our front exhausted and distraught with hunger. The orderly ran to the village and got a sack of potatoes and a few loaves of bread there. The potatoes were boiled and the hungry soldiers greedily pounced on the food. The grandfather, who survived the famine of 1933 as a child, tried to stop his colleagues as best he could. He himself ate a crust of bread and a few potato peels. An hour and a half later, all my grandfather's colleagues who went through the hell of encirclement, including the platoon commander and the ill-fated orderly, died in terrible agony from intestinal volvulus. Only my grandfather survived. He went through the whole war, was twice wounded and died in 87 from a cerebral hemorrhage - he bent down to fold the cot on which he slept in the hospital, because he wanted to run away and look at his newborn granddaughter, those at me.
During the war, my grandmother was very small, she lived with her older brother and mother, her father left before the girl was born. There was a terrible famine, and great-grandmother was too weak, she had already been lying on the stove for many days and was slowly dying. She was saved by her sister, who had previously lived far away. She soaked some bread in a drop of milk and gave it to her grandmother to chew. Slowly, slowly, my sister came out. So my grandparents were not left orphans. And grandfather, a smart fellow, began to hunt gophers in order to somehow feed his family. He took a couple of buckets of water, went to the steppe, and poured water into gopher holes until a frightened animal jumped out of there. Grandfather grabbed him and killed him instantly so that he would not run away. He dragged home what he could find, and they were fried, and grandmother says that it was a real feast, and the brother's booty helped them to hold out. Grandfather is no longer alive, but grandmother lives and every summer expects numerous grandchildren to visit. She cooks excellently, a lot, generously, and she herself takes a piece of bread with a tomato and eats after everyone else. So I got used to eating little, simply and irregularly. And he feeds his family to the bone. Thanks her. She went through something that makes her heart freeze, and raised a big glorious family.
My great-grandfather was drafted in 1942. He went through the war, was wounded, returned as a Hero of the Soviet Union. On his way home after the end of the war, he stood at the train station where a train full of children of all ages had arrived. There were also those who met - the parents. Only now there were only a few parents, and many times more children. Almost all of them were orphans. They got off the train and, not finding their mom and dad, started crying. My great-grandfather cried with them. For the first and only time in the entire war.
My great-grandfather went to the front in one of the first departures from our city. My great-grandmother was pregnant with her second child - my grandmother. In one of the letters, he indicated that he was going in a ring through our city (by that time my grandmother was born). A neighbor, who at that time was 14 years old, found out about this, she took a 3-month-old grandmother and took it to my great-grandfather, he cried with happiness at the moment when he held her in his arms. It was 1941. He never saw her again. He died on May 6, 1945 in Berlin and was buried there.
My grandfather, a 10-year-old boy, was vacationing in a children's camp in June 1941. The shift was until July 1, on June 22 they were not told anything, they were not sent home, and so the children were given another 9 days of peaceful childhood. All radios were removed from the camp, no news. This, after all, is also courage, as if nothing had happened, to continue detachment affairs with children. I can imagine how the counselors cried at night and whispered news to each other.
My great-grandfather went through two wars. In the First World War he was an ordinary soldier, after the war he went to receive a military education. Learned. During the Great Patriotic War, he participated in two significant and large-scale battles. At the end of the war, he commanded a division. There were injuries, but he returned back to the front line. Many awards and thanks. The worst thing is that he was killed not by the enemies of the country and the people, but by simple hooligans who wanted to steal his awards.
Today my husband and I finished watching "Young Guard". I sit on the balcony, look at the stars, listen to the nightingales. How many young guys and girls never lived to see victory. Life has never been seen. Husband and daughter are sleeping in the room. What a joy it is to know that your favorite houses! Today is May 9, 2016. The main holiday of the peoples of the former USSR. We live as free people thanks to those who lived during the war years. Who was at the front and in the rear. God forbid, we will not find out what our grandfathers were like.
My grandfather lived in the village, so he had a dog. When the war began, his father was sent to the front, and his mother, two sisters and he were left alone. Because of severe hunger, they wanted to kill the dog and eat it. Grandfather, being small, untied the dog from the kennel and let him run, for which he received from his mother (my great-grandmother). In the evening of the same day, the dog brought them a dead cat, and then he began to drag the bones and bury them, and grandfather dug up and dragged him home (they cooked soup on these bones). So they lived until the 43rd year, thanks to the dog, and then she simply did not return home.
The most memorable story from my grandmother was about her work in a military hospital. When the Nazis were dying, they could not finish them with the girls from the wards from the second floor to the corpse truck ... they simply threw the corpses out of the window. Subsequently, for this they were given to the tribunal.
A neighbor, a veteran of the Second World War, went through the entire war in the infantry to Berlin. Somehow in the morning they were smoking near the entrance, talking. He was struck by the phrase - they show in a movie about the war - soldiers are running - cheers at the top of their lungs ... - this is a fantasy. We, he says, always went on the attack in silence, because it was dumb as fuck.
During the war, my great-grandmother worked in a shoemaker's shop, she fell into a blockade, and in order to somehow feed her family, she stole laces, at that time they were made of pigskin, she brought them home, cut them into small pieces equally, and fried them, so and survived.
Grandmother was born in 1940, and the war left her an orphan. Great-grandmother drowned in a well when she was gathering rose hips for her daughter. Great-grandfather went through the whole war, reached Berlin. Killed by blowing himself up on an abandoned mine while returning home. All that remained of him was his memory and the Order of the Red Star. Grandmother kept it for more than thirty years until it was stolen (she knew who, but could not prove it). I still can't understand how people raised their hands. I know these people, they studied in the same class with their great-granddaughter, they were friends. How interesting life has turned.
As a child, he often sat on his grandfather's lap. He had a scar on his wrist that I touched and examined. They were teeth marks. Years later, my father told the story of the scar. My grandfather, a veteran, went to reconnaissance, in the Smolensk region they encountered the SS-vtsy. After close combat, only one of the enemies remained alive. He was huge and motherly. SS-man in a rage bit his grandfather's wrist to the meat, but was broken and captured. Grandfather and company were presented for another award.
My great-grandfather is gray-haired since he was 19 years old. As soon as the war began, he was immediately called up, not allowing him to finish his studies. He told that they were going to the Germans, but it did not turn out the way they wanted, the Germans were ahead. Everyone was shot, and grandfather decided to hide under the trolley. They sent a German shepherd to sniff everything, grandfather thought that everyone would see it and kill it. But no, the dog just sniffed it and licked it while running away. That's why we have 3 shepherds at home)
My grandmother was 13 years old when she was wounded in the back during a bombing by shrapnel. There were no doctors in the village - everyone was on the battlefield. When the Germans entered the village, their military doctor, having learned about the girl who could no longer walk or sit, secretly made his way to her grandmother’s house at night, made dressings, picked out worms from the wound (it was hot, there were a lot of flies). To distract the girl, the guy asked: "Zoinka, sing Katusha." And she cried and sang. The war passed, my grandmother survived, but all her life she remembered that guy, thanks to whom she remained alive.
Grandmother told me that during the war my great-great-grandmother worked at a factory, at that time they were very strict to ensure that no one stole and was very severely punished for this. And in order to somehow feed their children, women put on two pairs of tights and put grain between them. Or, for example, one distracts the guards while the children are taken to the workshop where butter was churned, they caught small pieces and fed them. The great-great-grandmother had all three children survived that period, and her son no longer eats butter.
My great-grandmother was 16 when German troops came to Belarus. They were examined by doctors in order to be sent to the camps to work. Then the girls were smeared with grass, which caused a rash similar to smallpox. When the doctor examined the great-grandmother, he realized that she was healthy, but he told the soldiers that she was sick, and the Germans were terribly afraid of such people. As a result, this German doctor saved a lot of people. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be in the world.
Great-grandfather never shared stories about the war with his family. He went through it from beginning to end, was shell-shocked, but never talked about those terrible times. Now he is 90 and more and more often he remembers that terrible life. He does not remember the names of his relatives, but he remembers where and how Leningrad was shelled. He also has old habits. There is always all the food in the house in huge quantities, what if there is hunger? Doors are locked with several locks - for peace of mind. And there are 3 blankets in the bed, although the house is warm. Watching films about the war with an indifferent look ..
My great-grandfather fought near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). And during one of the skirmishes, he was hit by shrapnel in his eyes, from which he was instantly blind. As the shots ceased to be heard, he began to look for the voice of the foreman, whose leg was torn off. Grandfather found the foreman, took him in his arms. And so they went. The blind grandfather went to the commands of the one-legged foreman. Both survived. Grandfather even saw after operations.
When the war began, my grandfather was 17 years old, and according to the law of war, he had to arrive at the military registration and enlistment office on the day of majority to be sent to the army. But it turned out that when he received the summons, he and his mother moved, and he did not receive the summons. He came to the military registration and enlistment office the next day, for the day of delay he was sent to the penal battalion, and their department was sent to Leningrad, it was cannon fodder, those who are not sorry to be sent into battle first without weapons. As an 18-year-old guy, he ended up in hell, but he went through the whole war, was never wounded, the only relatives did not know if he was alive or not, there was no right to correspond. He reached Berlin, returned home a year after the war, since he still served active duty. His own mother, having met him on the street, did not recognize him after 5.5 years, and fainted when he called her mother. And he cried like a boy, saying "mom, it's me Vanya, your Vanya"
Great-grandfather at the age of 16, in May 1941, having added 2 years to himself, in order to be hired, he got a job in Ukraine in the city of Krivoy Rog at a mine. In June, when the war began, he was drafted into the army. Their company was immediately surrounded and captured. They were forced to dig a ditch, where they were shot and covered with earth. Great-grandfather woke up, realized that he was alive, crawled upstairs, shouting "Is anyone alive?" Two responded. Three of them got out, crawled to some village, where a woman found them, hid them in her cellar. During the day they hid, and at night they worked in her field, harvesting corn. But one neighbor saw them and handed them over to the Germans. They came for them and took them prisoner. So my great-grandfather ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp. After some time, due to the fact that my great-grandfather was a young, healthy peasant guy, from this camp, he was transferred to a concentration camp in West Germany, where he already worked in the fields of the local rich, and then as a civilian. In 1945, during the bombing, he was closed in one house, where he sat all day until the American allies entered the city. When he came out, he saw that all the buildings in the district were destroyed, only the house where he was was left intact. The Americans offered all the prisoners to go to America, some agreed, and the great-grandfather and the rest decided to return to their homeland. They returned on foot to the USSR for 3 months, passing all over Germany, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine. In the USSR, their military had already taken them prisoner and wanted to shoot them as traitors to the Motherland, but then the war with Japan began and they were sent there to fight. So my great-grandfather fought in the Japanese War and returned home after it ended in 1949. I can say with confidence that my great-grandfather was born in a shirt. Three times he escaped death and went through two wars.
Grandmother said that her father served in the war, saved the commander, carried him on his back through the whole forest, listened to his heartbeat, when he brought him, he saw that the commander’s entire back looked like a sieve, and he only heard his heart.
I have been searching for several years. Groups of searchers searched for nameless graves in the forests, swamps, on the battlefields. I still cannot forget this feeling of happiness if there were medallions among the remains. In addition to personal data, many soldiers put notes in medallions. Some were written literally moments before death. Until now, literally, I remember a line from one such letter: "Mom, tell Slavka and Mitya to crush the Germans! I can't live anymore, so let them try for three."
My great-grandfather told his grandson stories all his life about how he was afraid during the war. How afraid, sitting in a tank together with a younger comrade, go to 3 German tanks and destroy them all. As I was afraid, under the shelling of aircraft, crawling over the field in order to restore contact with the command. As he was afraid to lead a detachment of very young guys to blow up a German bunker. He said: "Horror lived in me for 5 terrible years. Every moment I was afraid for my life, for the lives of my children, for the life of my Motherland. Whoever says that he was not afraid will lie." So, living in constant fear, my great-grandfather went through the whole war. Fearing, he reached Berlin. He received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and, despite the experience, remained a wonderful, incredibly kind and sympathetic person.
Great-grandfather was, one might say, the supply manager in his unit. Somehow they were transported by a convoy of cars to a new place and ended up in a German encirclement. There is nowhere to run, only the river. So the grandfather snatched the porridge cauldron out of the car and, holding on to it, swam to the other side. No one else from his unit survived.
During the years of war and famine, my great-grandmother went out for a short time to get bread. And left her daughter (my grandmother) at home alone. She was five years old at the time. So, if the great-grandmother had not returned a few minutes earlier, then her child could have been eaten by the neighbors.