The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (16 page)

23: Germany Attacks Russia

Late Summer, 1941

The last few months were full of confusion for me. I no longer liked my school and tried to find some way to skip school and stay home whenever I could manage. My grades started dropping from all A’s to B’s, and even some C’s. Soon, Mama and Papa became very concerned and decided to move me to a Ukrainian school that was near our house, only a couple of blocks away from where we lived. However, being among strangers, with all the teaching being done in the Ukrainian language, had become a new problem for me. I took off more and more often, and spent a lot of time at my music school, dancing and practicing my piano lessons (with music—there was nothing else to hear). I also drew a lot, and spent many hours in my room reading Papa’s German, Polish, and Lithuanian books. The news of the war came almost as a relief for me. There was so much sorrow and problems for everyone.

Everybody was talking about the war. The Germans are heading toward us. Whatever will become of all of us? It was a great relief for me just to not worry about school, for the time being anyway, because the schools were closed most of the time, especially after the German planes started to bomb our town regularly. Somehow I sensed that I would never have to go to that kind of school again. But all of that unknown ahead was scary in spite of whatever I was thinking.

SURPRISE ATTACK •
On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union—thus breaking their ten-year nonaggression pact after only two years.

I played the piano and read constantly just to forget what was going on all around. The next few weeks were times of much confusion and fear. The German planes started bombing our town regularly, and the Russian military was moving out, taking all the civilians who wanted to be evacuated with them. The trains were loaded with people every day. The people were confused, and did not know what to do—to leave their homes and belongings and board the trains or to remain behind and face the inevitable. People with small children were the first ones to board the trains. The Russian soldiers were roaming through the streets encouraging everyone to leave. They were telling stories of much horror about what the Germans were bringing as they occupied the territories.

Papa had already decided that we would stay behind, hoping to get a chance to cross over to the other side of the border. It was our only chance to get out of Russia and move to Poland or farther west. It was a longtime dream, and now was our chance to have it come to reality. We would wait for the Germans and try to explain, hoping that they would allow Papa and us to travel to Romania or Poland—anywhere out of Russia.

Papa had planned it all for so long, he did not anticipate any problems: As soon as the first wave of troops moved out, we would deal with the German authorities, who would help us get out of the country. Papa spoke German fluently, and he counted on making them understand our plight and to help us out.

However, the Russians had other plans for the people, and that was to evacuate everybody and then bomb and dynamite everything that was left. They took all the people that wanted to be evacuated, but they also took many civilians against their will and loaded them on the last departing trains. Many of them were young children who were forced to leave their parents behind. The Russian troops were scavenging throughout the town, gathering up people to put on the trains. Petrovich, my grandmother’s hired hand, was one of those. Grandmother had sent him down to get some coal that the Russians had dumped along the railroad tracks. People were picking it up and taking it to their homes when Russian soldiers rushed them and forced them to board the trains. Petrovich had left that morning, and when Grandmother missed him, she went looking for him. All she found was his cart still loaded with coal. We never saw him again.

As the Russians moved out, they burned or dynamited everything in sight. They wanted to make sure that when the Germans arrived, there would be no food or anything else left for them to find. Those of us who were left behind were of little or no concern to them, since they had labeled us as traitors anyway.

Most of those who had managed to stay behind did so by hiding in their cellars or wherever they could find some hiding place. It was getting cold outside, and the cellars were cold and damp. Many people became sick with colds. Without medical help and little medicine, many of them died of pneumonia. We stayed in our cellar for days, getting out only at night.

The fields were mined and traps were set up just about everywhere. Now and then you could hear an explosion and then screams of someone who met his or her fate by stepping on one of those traps. The artillery could still be heard far away, especially at night, and it sounded like rolling thunder. We all knew that the fighting was going on not too far away. Occasionally, Russian planes flew over and would drop a bomb or two. There was nothing left to bomb, but they seemed to enjoy scaring those that were left behind. They would open fire on the people on the streets while they were flying over. And they flew so low that you could almost see the pilots. There was no doubt that the planes were Russian.

“THE PLANES WERE RUSSIAN” •
German Luftwaffe bombings of civilian transports have been documented, yet Nonna was certain these bombers were Russian.

We were spending more time in the cellar than in the house itself. The frequent bombings and the searches by the Russian soldiers were keeping us hidden in the cellar for much of the time. Aunt Tonja and her two girls, Zina and Luci, and Aunt Xenja and her husband, Vladimir, decided to board a train that would take them farther into Russian-occupied territory. Aunt Tonja’s husband, Alexey, was already two hundred kilometers away working as a chemist in one of the factories, and they were hoping to get there and be near him. Aunt Xenja and Uncle Vladimir wanted to go along to protect Aunt Tonja and her young children. They planned to travel as far as Taganrog, where they would pick up Aunt Olga, who was there alone with her five children after Uncle Vanya died in a plane crash into the Azov Sea (he was flying a plane as a test pilot). Uncle Leonid was already out of town for several weeks—we did not even know where he was at that time. Uncle Zhenya and his wife, with their two very young children, were thousands of miles away in Irkutsk, where he was stationed in the air force.

Now there were only Mama, Papa, Grandmother, and myself left, since Papa had decided that we would stay behind. Grandma would never leave the Great House and would always be home in case any of her family decided to return.

24: Preparations for the Invasion

With the Russian troops departed and the Germans not yet there, we were all in some kind of “limbo”; everyone was wondering what was coming next. Soon we were receiving some very troublesome news from both sides. The news from the Russian side was devastating to all of us who had relatives on the last departing trains. It seemed that some of the last trains were blown up by the Russians themselves—killing all the people on them. Some of the last trains were loaded with prisoners from the Russian jails, but among those were many other civilians who were picked up by the Russian soldiers along the way. The Russians had to move fast, and they decided to blow up the trains rather than abandon them. The prisoners were of no concern to them, and the civilians had become victims of circumstance.

Since most of our relatives were on the last trains, we were hoping and praying that they were not among those who were killed. However, there was no way to know for sure, and we were absolutely devastated.

But there was news from the other side, which had become occupied by the Germans, and that news was disturbing as well. It seemed that the Germans were attacked over and over again by the Russian partisans who were scattered all around the wooded areas, and many German soldiers were killed by them. This created a lot of mistrust among the Germans—that they were not safe from any of the Russians, even those who were left behind. They started to kill anyone who looked suspicious, especially the young men and boys, but they also killed some women and old men. All of this meant one thing for us—that we had better stay hidden in our hiding places until at least the first German troops went through. The news was brought to us by some of those who had managed to escape and return to town. Needless to say, this news traveled fast throughout the town.

“NEWS FROM THE OTHER SIDE” •
It is not clear what “sides” Nonna had in mind, though certainly she referred to German-occupied country.

Papa had already started to dig a tunnel from the basement of Grandmother’s house to the outside cellar. His plans were to put up a fake wall from the cellar and from the basement, thereby giving him a safe place to hide. Papa was concerned about Grandmother, Mama, and me, and was trying to think of some way to protect us from the things that were yet to come. He came up with the idea that we should leave and go to the next village, where we would be safer.

STAYING BEHIND •
Feodosija refused to leave the Great House. She worried that there might be looters and that German soldiers might burn down the house. She also wanted to stay at the house in case any of her children came home. At that point, Feodosija had little idea where most of her children were—and if they were alive or dead.

Since it was more dangerous on the streets for Russian men than for women, Yevgeny planned to hide in an underground tunnel and send the other three into the next village to find food and shelter.

There was plenty of food in the next village that we could offer the German soldiers, to possibly establish some sort of communication between our people and the Germans. However, Grandmother did not want to leave her home for fear that it would be ransacked or burned. She decided to stay and prepare meals for Papa while he was hiding out in the tunnel.

So, in spite of Mama’s protests and tears, the decision was made for Mama to take me and go to the next village, which was at least eleven miles away. Papa promised to come for us in a short time—just long enough for the first front to go through.

“It will all work out for the best,” he would say.

Grandmother was going to stay in her house, not hide in the tunnel. She said, “The worst German soldier would not want to hurt an old woman like myself.”

Mama and I packed some clothes and a few other things we thought we might need in the next few days and loaded them onto a
telega
(cart), preparing for our trip. According to Papa, it would be safer for us to walk to the village in the late afternoon, or at least by dark, because he was worried about the Russian planes and what they might do if they saw us walking through the fields. It never even occurred to Papa about all those mines in the fields, but I am sure that after we left, he thought about them, too, and worried plenty. Mama thought of a way to make it through the fields by taking a sack full of large stones along with us. The idea was to roll some stones ahead of us and then follow the path where the stones had rolled. Mama would walk ahead of me, and I would follow. We were both amused by Mama’s ingenuity.

In the meantime at home, Papa and Grandmother were putting the finishing touches to the tunnel. The cellar outside was built deep underground with steps leading all the way down. It was built many years ago with the purpose of storing food such as potatoes, apples, lots of barrels with pickles, sauerkraut, etc. The cellar outside the house was much cooler than the basement of the house, and Grandmother also used the outside cellar to store her homemade wine. The shelves were loaded with aged wines of all kinds. Papa had built the tunnel between the cellar and basement and, therefore, had plenty of room to hide in this tunnel.

Now they would wait, and when the first Germans came, Papa would go into his hiding place. It should be only for a day or two. The worst that was expected from the German troops was that they would search the empty houses for food—they would not take any chances if there were people in the houses.

HOME INVASION •
The German soldiers came through Russia unprepared for a long battle. They, too, faced starvation, and they ransacked houses searching for something to eat. They killed anyone who got in their way. Papa had been too optimistic when he thought he might reason with the young German soldiers, even though he spoke the German language.

Mama and I were making our journey through the fields, and Mama’s idea of rolling the stones ahead of us was working out very well. However, it was getting dark outside, and it was hard to see where the stones were rolling. It was also very time consuming, and it began to look like we would be walking all night long. We were both very tired and hungry but did not dare to stop and rest. We tried to stay in the middle of the fields and not get too close to the wooded area for fear that there were partisans in the woods who could make us join them. We told riddles and sang songs quietly as we were walking, which made us both feel better and kept us from getting too sleepy. It must have been close to midnight when we finally reached the village. We stopped at the first farmhouse and asked the people if we could spend the night there.