Inside the Rzhev Meatginder

The 75th anniversary of the Great Victory, this tragic and, at the same time, heroic page in the history of our country and all the peoples who lived then in the vast expanses of a still single, multinational state, is approaching. On my desk is the 46th issue of Evening Moscow dated November 20, 2014, where the scheme of hostilities on the “Rzhevskaya Arc” was published.

It was there, in the very center of this arc, that our family found itself in 1941 – 1945.

Chapter 1. The year is 1941. I’m 7 years old.Fire

I met the beginning of the war in the Moscow region, in the urban-type settlement of Novopetrovskoe, where I lived with my father and mother.

I was in my eighth year. We lived renting a small room in a private house. We found ourselves in Novopetrovskoe because in 1934, during a thunderstorm, my maternal grandmother’s house was struck by lightning, the house burned to the ground.

Only my great-grandfather’s elderly father was in the house, he was 104 years old. All the village adults worked in the fields; it was August – the height of the harvesting work. When they saw and realized in the field that he was on fire, his grandmother’s son rode into the village on horseback, but all he managed to do was pull out his grandfather, resting and not understanding what was happening.

Everything was burned, including the property of our family, because after the wedding, my father and mother lived with their grandmother, my mother’s mother, in this village with the offensive name of Tupitsino. They were still building their house, in another, neighboring village, where his father was born and all his relatives lived, with the name Egor’evskoe. It turned out that from the clothes we had only what we were wearing that day.

His father asked the chairman of the collective farm to let him go so that he could earn money for clothes. In collective farms, money was not paid, earnings were accrued in working days. By the decision of the board of the collective farm, my father was released, but not immediately and with the condition that he would return after some time back. He worked in a collective farm as a livestock breeder. Why he ended up in Novopetrovskoe, and not in Moscow, where he worked from the age of eight for a merchant from this village, “a boy on the run”, I do not know. A year later, his mother left for him, and we: my sister, me and my younger brother stayed with my paternal grandmother. But the following year, my mother, having been in the village and leaving again to live with my father, took me with her. Why me, and not my brother or sister, I don’t know.

That’s how I ended up in this village. All the money earned, except for housing and food expenses, mom tried to spend on the purchase of everything related to clothes. I bought a manual sewing machine, searched and, if possible, bought different fabrics. We were small and growing up quickly, so it was not practical to buy ready-made clothes. My father’s job involved traveling around the neighborhood, so he bought a bike for himself. By June 1941, we had accumulated a large suitcase of all sorts of fabrics.

My father left on conscription on the 4th day of the war – June 26. Saying goodbye to us, he told my mother that the war would be hard and long, so he advised her to go home to the village. There, as I wrote above, we had our own house. A Roma woman with her children temporarily lived in it, she left the camp in 1936 and got a job on a collective farm, her father allowed her to live until she built her house. In the same village lived all our paternal relatives – four of his brothers, their mother – Maria Ivanovna 63 years old, her parents – father Ivan Severyanovich 96 years old and mother Natalia Egorovna 92 years old, with them lived their daughter, grandmother’s sister – Elena Ivanovna 57 years – disabled since childhood.

“In the village,” he said, “on the ground, it will be easier to feed children and the elderly.” And we went to the village of Tverskaya, then Kalinin region, Pogorelsky district – not far from Rzhev, taking with us all the property that we had managed to accumulate.

It was a very beautiful village called Egor’evskoe, located along the banks of two streams: Derzha and Sukromlya, which flowed into the Derzha.

My mother took my sister from my grandmother 9 years old and my younger brother 5 years old, they lived with her, as I said, while my father and mother and I tried to settle in the suburbs, and we settled in our house. The gypsy was not touched, it seemed to be safer together, she and her mother were the same age, especially since she had nowhere to move or leave.

In August, the harvesting of bread began and all the adult, able-bodied population, all women, worked in the fields from morning to late evening. Of the men in the village, there were only old men, but they were also engaged in various repair work, even my paternal great-grandfather, at the age of 96, was engaged in the repair of equipment, harnesses, wagons – everything that fails from hard work.

Chapter 2. The year is 1941. The rolls of war

And from afar, the sound of war could already be heard. Soon the retreating units of the Red Army began to pass through the village, first in groups with commanders, with weapons. Then in groups, and alone with weapons and without weapons. They said we were coming out of the encirclement – the Smolensk cauldron.

At the end of August, the retreating Red Army soldiers cautiously entered the village – they were afraid that there might already be fascists in the village, and then, they asked what we knew about their presence. The village did not know much about the situation in the district, but if possible, they tried to help with everything they could: clothes and food, if they asked for it. They explained how to go through the forests, bypassing large settlements and roads.

I remember very well one of the last groups, there were 7 people in it. Among them, the sergeant stood out, he was armed not with an ordinary rifle, but with some other, the barrel of the rifle ended in a thickening, similar to a basket. As I found out later, it was a semi-automatic ten-shot Simonov rifle. And I remembered this because by this time it had already become known: the Nazis had taken Volokolamsk. Fighters from this group decided to go to the front without weapons, dressed in civilian clothes. They changed into the old clothes of my father and his brothers. The weapons were buried in a sheepfold, in dry manure. The sergeant was not Russian, it seems, as I understand it now, Turkmen or Tajik, but he spoke Russian well. He refused to change clothes and did not leave the rifle, said: “I will go as it is, lucky – I will get there, I will not be lucky – I will take the fight.”

It may seem like I’m making up the details, since I haven’t had eight yet. But I remember everything verbatim, even the fact that his comrades persuaded him to leave their documents here in the village, and even more so – the party card, but he refused. I already knew about the party card then, my uncle, my mother’s brother, had a party card, he was a participant in the war with the Finns, there he joined the party and was proud of it.

Whether they got to theirs or not, I don’t know, but everything happened before my eyes. I myself was a participant, because I took out of the pantry, at the direction of my mother, these clothes, in which they changed. A neighbor threatened my mother: “The Germans will come, I will tell you that you are helping the Communists, they will hang you!” Why she did not love our family, I do not know, maybe because we let into the house the same Gypsy family that left the camp, the Roma in the villages were not very fond of.

Chapter 3. The year is 1941. September. Fascists

For the first time the fascists appeared in our village on September 7. I remember this day well, it was a Sunday, and my sister and I were at home, not at school. I went to the first grade on the first of September and my sister to the second grade. We studied for only one week. There were no adults in the village, as I said, there was a harvesting of bread. The day was warm and sunny, and almost all the kids were outside, we played something with balls. It was about noon when we saw something strange approaching us from the village of Tupitsino and dragging a huge tail of dust with it.

The Germans arrived in a car that had tracks instead of rear wheels. There were 4 people in the car. In the village, in general, we never saw any cars other than tractors, so we looked with surprise at this “miracle – yudo”!

An officer got out of the car and on a broken Russian, poking his finger into some paper, as I found out later, in the map, pointing his hand in the direction of the river, asked: “Is this Derzha? Where is Sukromlya?”

We guessed that he was asking about our rivers and replied, “Sukromlya at the other end of the village.” He wrote something down and got in the car. She turned around and moved, but then in the next yard, for some reason, a pig squealed, the car stopped, two came out of it – this officer and a soldier. They went to the house and started knocking on the doors, but no one answered because the adults were in the field and there were two small children at home. The eldest was probably five years old, and maybe even less, I don’t remember exactly. Without waiting for an answer to the knock, the officer said something to the soldier, he went to the car, brought and put what he brought under the door. The officer said something to us and waved his hand to get us off, we walked away. An officer and a soldier walked around the corner of the house. Almost immediately there was an explosion, the door was torn down, the soldier entered the courtyard, a shot rang out.

The soldier came out of the yard, dragging the dead pig by the leg. The officer took some papers out of his pocket, put them on the rubble of the house, crushed them with a small pebble, said: “Payment.” These were, as it turned out later, occupation stamps. The pig was loaded into the car, got on their own and drove away. I described in such detail the first meeting with the occupiers because the second visit to our village by the Germans directly affected me.

Chapter 4. The year is 1941. Military reserve

On Monday, my sister and I went to school, classes were not canceled, no one knew that new owners would appear, although they appeared, but left, no orders were received from the school.

The school was located in a nearby village, in the same Tupitsino (stupidsino), 3.5 km from Egor’evskoe. All our relatives on my mother’s side lived there. At the end of the week, if I’m not mistaken, on Thursday, a German officer appeared in class. He spoke well in Russian and explained to the old teacher Elizaveta Kapitonovna (my mother also studied with her) that now she needed to conduct lessons in a new way. He will try to monitor the correct training of students. Students should know: The Soviets and Stalin are bad. Germany and Hitler are good. This was central to his rather long conversation with the teacher.

When the German left, the teacher said: “I don’t know how and what can happen later, but I think you don’t need to come to school anymore.” That’s how our school year ended.

About three days after class cancellations, my sister and I decided to throw ourselves a party. I think it was a Sunday, again there were no adults in the village, as I said, they cleaned the bread. And we: me, my sister and brother were at home and drinking tea. A samovar was boiling on the table, and under the table was a small bag of sugar. I took it out of the cache, it was our military reserve.

When one of the neighboring children shouted on the street: “Germans!”, I, remembering what happened on the first appearance of them in our village, climbed under the table to hide this bag back in the cache. I hurried, pushed the table and knocked over the boiling samovar on myself. The burn was terrible, probably half of my skin came off, and I was in bed for a long time. Naturally, there was no hospital in the village, my mother treated me – she lubricated the burns with the protein of raw eggs – so told my great-grandmother on my father,” she was considered a medicine woman in the village. All the villagers were treated by her.

The nearest medical facility was 12 kilometers away. I recovered slowly. While in our village the fascists were only raids – chickens were still walking through the streets and all other peasant animals were still intact.

But when the garrison was stationed in October, the chickens, the “eggs”, and other village animals very quickly ran out. But my mother, in advance, hid a number of testicles in different places and continued my treatment, taking out one, two pieces from the caches. At that time, there was no place for us in the house, the Nazis already lived in the living rooms, and we huddled in the kitchen. A gypsy woman with her children was taken somewhere.

Chapter 5. The year is 1941. Boots

In November, when the cold weather came, orders were posted in the village – to hand over warm clothes and shoes to the German command. Particular attention was paid to boots and fur coats, for hiding them – shooting. Houses were searched. But the inhabitants did not want to give what in such a harsh winter was necessary for themselves or their loved ones, husbands, sons and fathers who went to war, so they hid everything in some hiding places, often risking their lives.

I remember how my mother and I dragged my father’s boots and his two unmarried brothers, from one basement, where the boots were hidden, to another, in which the search had already passed. This allowed the installation of a basement in the house. I had already started walking by this time.

Even earlier, when the Nazis only visited the village, but already searched the houses and took away everything that they thought were valuable, my mother buried a bicycle, a sewing machine and a wooden barrel of salted pork in the garden. My mother sheathed a suitcase with fabrics with burlap and tied it to a children’s sled, it turned out to be a seat, that is, like a natural belonging to a sled. So they stood in the canopy until the very end of the village’s existence.

It also became clear why the German officer was interested in our rivers on his first visit. Women of the surrounding villages, including ours, began to be driven to dig trenches on the western, that is, opposite banks of our rivers. Trenching continued until the onset of frost in November. Therefore, when the Nazis were poured in full near Moscow, they retreated to the fortifications prepared in advance, and our village became the front line.

Chapter 6. The year is 1942. Between fronts. I’m 8 years old

In the early twenties (21 or 22) of January, all those able to hold a shovel in their hands were driven out to clear the roads. There was a lot of snow, raked all the way to the ground. Huge ramparts formed along the road, as we worked from dawn to dusk for several days. When this huge snow trench was finished, equipment, cars, tanks, guns went through it, all this was crossed through Sukromlya to the west bank.

The troops marched for about a day, the infantry went for the equipment, in an organized manner, in tight formations. Along the entire road, on both sides, apparently along its entire length, there were cover posts: a trench in the snow with a machine gun and three soldiers, and so it was in front of our house. Two weeks earlier, nervousness was felt in the behavior of the fascists, all the villagers, even children, understood that something terrible and unpredictable was approaching and they went to bed without undressing in order to be ready for anything at any time.

Around midnight, on January 26, we heard the sound of breaking glass and saw flames of flamethrowers through broken windows. It was soldiers in black uniforms who set fire to houses. The night was very cold. From the conversations of adults, I remember that it was more than 40 degrees below zero. My mother sat my younger brother on the same suitcase, wrapping it in all the warm clothes that could only be found, and tied it to a sled, So he sat on a sled near a burning house.

Our entire family and a few neighbors gathered outside my great-grandfather’s burning house, apparently because he was the only man in this corner of the village. We warmed up by this fire for two hours. During this time, one of the soldiers of that flanking cover from the river, came to warm up at the burning house and, leaving, took off his great-grandfather’s hat and boots.

In the old man, thrown out of the burning house, the great-grandfather found an old hat – budyonovka and cotton pims, like, the way out: both the head and legs are covered. But then suddenly a patrol came, checked the flank posts, saw my grandfather’s budyonovka with a red star and took him somewhere. We thought he wouldn’t be back, but he did. He was released when, apparently, it turned out that he was 96 years old and was squandered by their own soldiers. We were very happy about his return.

And soon after, another soldier from the flank cover came to the burning house where we were staying. He looked around and walked over to me and tried to take the hat off my head. The ribbons of the ears of my hat were tied under my chin. When he realized that he needed to untie the ribbons, he reached under my chin with his hand. Without hesitation, I involuntarily pressed my teeth into his hand and bit it to the blood. He howled in pain and hit me in the right ear with such force that I flew away from him three or four meters away. It’s good that I didn’t go in the direction of the burning house and buried my head in the snowdrift. My mother saw this when he stepped towards me again, she, without hesitation, slapped him with such a slap that he was in the same snowdrift, next to me! He did not expect this, he was frightened, jumped up and ran to where he came from, since he was unarmed. The grandmothers were worried: “He will return with a weapon and not alone, you need to hide,” they said and buried me and my mother in the snow 10—15 meters from the place where it happened.

They were right – he came with a gun and not alone. Everyone who was by the fire was interrogated for a long time, threatened, but they pointed to the road and said that we had left. Later, the grandmothers said that these two felt the snow for a long time with bayonets, fortunately for us, not where we were buried, and then went to the machine gun nest.

Sometime after the incident, a group of soldiers appeared in black uniforms, with the image of a human skull and crossed bones on the sleeves of overcoats. They began to drive people away from burning houses to the road, it was freed from military units, apparently everyone went through, and now they are engaged with us – the inhabitants.