Echo of the war

“We will always remember them!” says almost every monument in memory of the fallen of World War II. It was the second year the Soviet Union, including Belarus, the country where I was born and grew up, was fighting Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front. The Germans, well equipped, trained, and armored with advanced weaponry of that time, were fast advancing into the hearts of many of the cities and villages of my country. The soviet army, which had not been prepared to fight such a massive war, was retreating further east, leaving behind their countrymen, families, children and Motherland. My grandmother was just twenty-one when the heavy burden of the war laid on her fragile shoulders.

The people of the small village of Urovichi in central Belarus, including my family, were involved in the frontage of the war at that time. My grandmother was born and grew up there. Almost all the men were sent to the war as partisans, but their wives and children remained behind. My grandmother, Maria, was among the people who stayed in the village together with her mother and two small children aged two years and six months. My grandfather left for the war when it just started, and the family rarely heard from him. My grandma told me a lot about that hard and terrible time. She had to do so much hard work that would normally be performed by men, such as chop the wood, bring water from the local wells, mow the grass to feed the hungry animals and any house repairs that needed to be performed. However, even despite the hard time, she tried to do something to help soviet soldiers. The grandma often baked bread for partisan troops stationed in the nearby woods. She also frequently washed the clothes for the soldiers.

My grandma had remembered whole her life some of the most terrible parts that had happened with our family at that time. Despite the hard efforts of local partisan Soviet forces, the Nazi German army was coming closer day by day. That was the early spring of 1942 when the soldiers of the German front came to the village. Some of the people in the village left for the woods to hide from the enemy. People heard a lot about the burned down villages and mass killings. However, there were many who were not able to leave and had to care for children, sick and the elderly. My grandmother stayed in the village with her family. In the meantime, the German soldiers gathered all the remaining people in the village and forced them into the old farm on the outskirts of the village and created a make-shift concentration camp. Poor, hungry people were kept in the camp for two weeks without food or any warm clothes. The German soldiers fed them just once. There was only the remains of a deceased horse with musty smell, which was barely cooked. It was barely enough for the people not to die.

My grandma, like all people in the camp, was weakened and grew faint under a weight of fear, cold and emaciation, but only a tiny glimmer of hope stayed in her heart. As the German Nazi continued to advance further East, a small group of soldiers was left behind to hold the concentration camp and maintain the German positions. It helped the soviet soldiers build the plan to free their countrymen. Shortly after the German forces moved on, the partisans burst into the village by night and freed the imprisoned villagers. After my family came back home, my great grandmother and the two kids were very sick. The younger child who was just six months had a high temperature for two weeks and died in grandmother’s hands after several days. My great-grandmother was sick for several months. During the time she was in the camp she had slept on the raw earth in just a thin shirt. She ended up dying of inflammation a half of year later. Despite the hardship of the stay in the concentration camp, people needed to survive this time, reunite with each other and continue to fight the war, while waiting for their loved ones who continued to serve the country on the front of the bloodiest war in human history.

The war took away millions of human lives and brought a lot of misery sufferings, deaths and tears. My grandmother lived many years after the war, but every time when she would talk about the war, I saw mental anguish and sadness in her eyes. Not many people who came back from the war are still alive, but we will always keep in memory heroic deed fallen of people for the Motherland and her children.