WEEKLY ROUNDUP 

I belong to a generation for whom the 1941-45 worldwide hostilities are still an inalienable component of their life stories. Primarily because their parents lived through its horrors. How can I forget my father's attitude (pious is the only adjective I can think of) toward everything associated with World War II, his former comrades-in-arms, his faded wartime photos, government decorations, and even that pea-sized artillery fragment which the field hospital surgeon could not remove and which stayed with him for the rest of his life? And the same was true of May 9, Victory Day. I am afraid the coming generations will never celebrate this anniversary which I still hold close and dear.

My generation has its own memories of the past war. Of course, nothing to do with propagandized heroics, but always filled with mortal fear, hunger, the whole lifestyle we had known ruined, the way people must feel living in a quiet little town suddenly hit by a major earthquake. Watching the late news with endless lines of refugees and flashes of rockets and bombs hitting Yugoslavia at night, I shudder, instinctively remembering my own war. My mother and I were being evacuated, riding on a village cart somewhere in the middle of a long column stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. There were countless other cars and old trucks pulling artillery, and a myriad pedestrians shouldering knapsacks bulging with what things they had had the time to pack when fleeing their homes. And there were the artillery pieces being towed along by horses and infantrymen for want of vehicles. Now and then Nazi planes would appear from nowhere, strafing the road, pouring out lead, and dropping bombs. They would fly so low that I was frightened they would hit me in the head. In fact, some of the crew would lean out of the cockpit and open up with their Schmeisser burp guns. This would happen several times each day. The horror all of us experienced is indescribable; it has be to experienced. And the regular air raids. As bombs are howling down everyone on the ground is sure one of them will land right where the victim is trying to hide.

Let me tell you a short wartime story. I lived through the war, including the Nazi occupation, in a small village in Donetsk oblast. Of course, I vividly remember the Nazi New Order. It was under that order that I could finish school - four grades being considered enough for the Untermenschen. I remember watching the school-opening ceremony (September 1, 1942) with the Nazi-appointed schoolmaster standing in front of the entrance, addressing the final grade students with bitter solemnity: "You can go home, children, your education has been completed." At the time we had no radios or newspapers, not a single source of information about what was happening elsewhere in the world. We did not know about the battle of Stalingrad, but in the summer of 1943, after two endless years under the Nazis, one and all felt that something had changed, drastically. Toward the end of August word flashed through the village that two Soviet soldiers had been spotted at the Kamiana Balka ravine.

The news had a shattering effect. Unbelievable! I decided I had to make sure. Without telling anyone at home I went to the ravine, careful to pick my way back of village homes and kitchen gardens, then through the local graveyard. The day was cloudless and pleasantly warm. There was scarce underbrush on the sides of the ravine, here and there showing glimpses of autumnal gold. The dry grass rustled underfoot. And it was dead quiet. It was some time before I noticed I had been walking behind a line of soldiers armed with submachine guns. The soldiers were lying on the crest of the ravine, waiting for the signal to attack, hiding behind bushes or rocks. Several minutes later they would be ordered to move and the whole village would hear the sounds of combat.

I saw that the soldiers wore Nazi uniforms and I felt that all their guns were aimed at me. Suddenly my feet were made of lead, unable to take another step. I forgot which way to run. It was then one of the soldiers nearest me shouted at me in German, "Verlab von hier aus! Schnell! Get out of here! Run!" This made me regain my senses. I turned and ran, feeling I was a clear easy target for all those guns. And then the shooting began. The noise was deafening. We sat in our cellars listening to it and trembling. That evening a Soviet unit entered the village.

About a hundred German and Soviet officers and men died in that battle by the Kamiana Balka ravine. We buried those wearing Soviet uniforms in the local cemetery, mounting small cardboard obelisks topped by five-pointed stars by way of gravestones. The German bodies were thrown into a pit dug for storing manure before the war. There may have been among them the soldier who had saved my life, caring for a silly little village girl's safety at the most dramatic moment when all senses are supposed to be concentrated on the task at hand: bringing death to one's fellow human beings.

By Klara GUDZYK, The Day