German

A Red Army Soldier in Berlin

From the diary of a victorious soldier — radio feature by Doris Nentwig

Presenter — 16 February 1945:

There is a Frankfurt on the Oder and another on the Main. And there are lice. It is unbelievable how many there have been since I came to Germany. I never had so many in Poland, Bessarabia or even Russia. Now there are so many that they populate my body like piglets on a German farm. Small ones and large ones — truly fine specimens. Individually and in groups. They are still eating me. It is completely unbearable. They are harder on me than the fighting …

Behind the almost grotesque entry lies the hard reality of front-line conditions. Lice were a curse for soldiers, especially during winter campaigns and in overcrowded quarters. Gelfand’s irony only emphasises the hopelessness of the situation. While battles rage and the Red Army pushes toward Berlin, a soldier’s private war may consist of insects, dirt, cold, sleeplessness and constant physical discomfort. Such everyday details make the diary immediate and alive: not a propaganda communiqué, but one person’s experience of war.

Presenter: The diary belonged to Vladimir Gelfand, a twenty-one-year-old Red Army lieutenant from Dnepropetrovsk who wanted to become a writer. Three months later he would enter Berlin. From his school years onward, Gelfand, who came from a Jewish family, had written poems, produced wall newspapers and organised literary evenings. During the war, and later as an occupation officer in Berlin from 1945 until autumn 1946, he continued to keep a diary. After his death, his son Vitaly recognised the historical and personal value of the notebooks.

Vitaly Gelfand: After my father died he left many papers, including the diaries, and I read them. That was in 1984. I decided to publish them. I took a typewriter and began copying the notes, one page a day, with one finger. Later I moved to Germany, bought a computer and typed everything. That work in Germany took about five years.

Presenter: With extraordinary persistence Gelfand wrote down whatever interested, troubled or angered him. After the war the twenty-two-year-old Soviet staff officer and aspiring writer found himself in and around Berlin. Curious and hungry for life, he wanted to discover the city and the country against which he had fought with conviction and fury. He regularly left his unit without permission and ignored the ban on contact with Germans. He learned to ride a bicycle, took up photography and studied German. For hours he wandered through ruined, hungry Berlin with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

Diary: Wedding. A terrible house of skeletons. The streets are still not cleared of rubble everywhere. Is it really possible that they will be cleared so quickly? Completely destroyed houses are being pulled down and levelled. There is an even uglier picture: isolated houses rise in the middle of an enormous emptiness like uninvited guests. Desolate, but deserved.

One night, on my way back from Berlin to Velten, a German sitting opposite me in the train asked quite sharply and seriously whether Germany would ever become great and strong again. I shall refrain from drawing a conclusion, because the question itself is so cynical that any answer or comment is pointless.

Presenter: Gelfand is shocked by what he sees as a German failure to recognise the consequences of the country’s own actions. Yet the young lieutenant, eager for pleasure after the horrors of war, also wants simply to live as well as possible. As a privileged officer he can obtain goods and comfort unavailable to most of the defeated population.

Diary: When I arrived at Alexanderplatz it was already dark. The black market, as the Germans call it, was still in full swing. The air was filled with the shrill whistles of German policemen, the shouts of people running away, and the noise of passing English and American cars. The Germans desperately tried to sell their goods, but there were few buyers and prices were falling. I stayed even after the underground had stopped running and the autumn sky was full of stars. I bought an electric shaver for 250 marks. Two pairs of women’s shoes were going cheaply — one for 100 marks and one for 200. I shall send them to Mother. I also managed to buy another set of clothes cheaply.

Presenter: As a Soviet officer Gelfand had access to food and to valuable goods that could be exchanged or sold. The diary records with pleasure the acquisition of hats, suits, a trench coat, gloves, sunglasses, a camera and even a top hat. He also sent parcels to his mother, who called him “Vova.” She lived in devastated Dnepropetrovsk in difficult circumstances, separated from his father. Letters helped relieve his homesickness, although not all of them reached their destination.

Mother: My dear Vovochka, yesterday when I came home I found your photograph and the two enlarged pictures of me. Thank you, my heart. How attentive and caring you are. I am very proud of you and hold you up as an example to everyone. In everything one feels how much you want to give me pleasure and how you care for me. But you still write too little about yourself. I am interested in your whole life. Tell me, my dear, do you at least have any prospect of leave, perhaps for the October holidays? I hope you do not mind that in my last letters I placed various orders with you: the radio receiver, electricity meter, watch and umbrella. Today I am also asking you for elastic, one kind for an electrical switch and a narrower kind for leggings. I embrace and kiss you tightly, my darling. Stay healthy and strong. Your Mama.

Presenter: A central problem for the sensitive Gelfand is the constant coarseness and violence of army life. He volunteered for the Great Patriotic War to defend his country, yet he detests barbarity, senseless killing and rape. The brutal and threatening behaviour of some superiors and the malice he encounters among comrades make him angry and sad. As a soft-hearted individualist, and also as a Jew, he has reasons to keep his distance and avoid unnecessary conflicts.

Diary: I cannot stand the pointless racket made by Captain Shchikin and especially Karpenko. Yesterday, for example, Rybkin smashed a bust of Schiller and would certainly have destroyed Goethe if I had not torn it from that fool’s hands, wrapped it in rags and hidden it. Geniuses cannot be equated with barbarians. To destroy such memorials is a great sin and disgrace for a civilised person. Karpenko is an idiot in the truest sense. As on every day, he seems to get drunk to the point of unconsciousness and, when drunk, shoots whatever weapon happens to come into his hands. He throws at us whatever he can grab. I get the worst of it.

Presenter: Gelfand is twenty-two. Love and women occupy him greatly. He is still inexperienced, sensitive and brought up to respect women; he is not coarse or brutal, but he is hesitant, choosy and sceptical, constantly searching — and usually in vain — for love and security.

Diary: I have not yet found a girl who suits me in every respect. The girls here are either tender or cool, or passionate but capricious. Others are unattractive because they have no figure. Russian girls, however, are proud and very sensitive to every nuance of conversation.

23 November 1945: I returned. She was in the same position in which I had left her. Whispering and afraid that someone might interrupt us, we ate a little. I undressed by the light of my torch. She asked me not to switch on the light. She spoke about the extermination of the Jews, explained racial theory to me, and talked of white, red and blue blood. It irritated me. Everything in me rebelled against the ignorance of this and other German girls. I did not hesitate to tell her so. I tried to convince her that the blood of all people is equally red and warm, wherever they live, and that fairy tales about supposedly noble Aryan blood are nothing but the fantasies and obscurantism of clumsy fascist theorists such as Rosenberg. But she could not understand it. I decided to prove the opposite. I undressed to my underwear and lay down. She lay beside me, fully dressed and with her shoes on, and nothing in the world could make her follow my example.

Letter to his father: Hello, my dear Papa. Your long-awaited letter and the photographs have arrived — many thanks. I have just returned from a journey on duty. I am often away and cannot always read letters immediately, let alone answer them. The question you raise is painful because of the injustice behind it. You speak of insults, quarrels and suffering that we have to endure through no fault of our own — because we are Jews. I agree with you. How much humiliation, mockery and insolence I had to bear during the war simply because my name is Gelfand, because I was born into a Jewish family and because I myself am a Jew. It hurts. The war was therefore ten times harder and life more difficult.

Presenter: Gelfand suffers not only from antisemitism in the army but also from ridicule of his literary ambitions. Even the unusual fact that he is able to keep a wartime diary does not protect him from rough comrades. When he writes a poem about the end of the war, another lieutenant seizes the manuscript without permission, reads it aloud, mocks it and advises Gelfand to give up writing and do something more useful.

Diary: I began to doubt myself and was in a very depressed mood, all the more because he said it in front of an audience. Several officers stood by the windows and laughed enthusiastically. Some almost choked with pleasure and agreed with the speaker. He pulled faces and told jokes about bad poets.

Presenter: A poem called “The Nail,” written by Vladimir at seventeen, shows his sensitivity to violence. He cannot bring himself to hammer a small, beautiful nail into a board because he imagines causing it pain. Even a nail, in his poem, has a soul.

Vitaly Gelfand reads his father’s poem:
I take the nail slowly in my hand,
Its little head is wonderfully fine.
I need to drive it into the board,
But I can hardly raise my hand.
It is so small and slender;
Strike it, and it will bend in a bow.
How can I beat such a little thing?
Even a nail has a soul.

Mother: Greetings, my dear one, my joy. Four days ago I received your holiday gift and your photograph. I cannot tell you how happy it made me. How well you look, how interesting and handsome. Your beauty comes not only from your appearance but from your soul, my dear son.

Presenter: In a photograph Gelfand, slightly turned in profile, looks directly into the camera. In a trench coat, dark suit, tie and hat with an upturned brim, he appears extremely elegant. He has large dark, somewhat melancholy eyes, a narrow nose and a well-shaped mouth — a handsome young man who seems sensitive and gentle but also self-confident.

Mother: And Vovochka, when you come, you will bring some more tablecloths and something sweet, won’t you? I embrace and kiss you. Your Mama.

Diary, 2 July 1946: Outside it is grey and damp. It is raining. I am in a bad mood, with a feeling of hopelessness. The dark shape of an uncertain future hangs over me. For four or five days I have had a slight headache. Where has it come from? Doctor Solomonik at the hospital tries to cheer him: “Why are you so upset about this misfortune? A man who has never had gonorrhoea is not a real man. It is not so terrible! Look at yourself: you have collapsed, you walk around gloomy, you have even stopped shaving — you look like an old drunk. Gonorrhoea is a soldier’s disease. And you are a man and an officer!”

Presenter: Gelfand now serves in the army’s transport department, organising supplies and helping supervise the removal of dismantled equipment from the Soviet zone to the USSR. He hopes for leave and a return home, but the hope is repeatedly disappointed. Homesickness, illness and loneliness weigh on him. The diaries contain few references to close friends. His main links with the outside world are brief relationships with women and letters to his parents.

Diary — letter to his mother: My dear Mama, I want to devote this evening to you. It is already midnight. Everyone is asleep; only a pair of restless mice scratch across the floor, waiting for me to sleep so they can move freely. I am only afraid they may damage the papers scattered across the floor and chairs. German villages are boring to look at — they all resemble one another. The houses are ugly and dark outside but comfortably furnished within, though almost identical in construction. The villages are built of stone, there are many churches, but I rarely saw priests. The roads are paved; there is electricity everywhere, railways and stations. In Berlin I visited old sights — monuments, buildings and museums. During the fighting I left chalk inscriptions on many of them. Time and rain have washed almost all of them away, but my inscription on the Victory Column remains because I carved it into the granite with a knife. Now it is time to say goodbye. I gently hold your hand. It is time to sleep. Your Vova.

Diary: Today there was free vodka. I am dying of boredom. Everyone received another bottle. For a long time I did not want to drink, but then I could no longer bear the melancholy, loneliness and inactivity. We played the guitar, but it did not drive the sadness from my heart. It is getting dark. The days are too exhausting and bring nothing new. Nothing good.

Presenter: Gelfand increasingly suffers from headaches. He does not yet know that they are related to a wartime concussion sustained in a nearby explosion.

Diary: It began after I smoked a cigarette, as though there were a thousand stones in my head and my thoughts had disappeared. I am not drunk. I feel dull and miserable. When will they give me medicine? What is this mysterious, inexplicable illness that reduces me to the level of the most average and mediocre of all people? I must overcome weakness and despair and speak with you, my diary.

Presenter: In September 1946 Vladimir Gelfand is finally demobilised from the Red Army and allowed to return home. He is delighted. He buys food and vodka for roughly a thousand marks and celebrates with his comrades.

Diary: I still have a few miserable coins. I have a typewriter, a very elegant one. Mama will be happy, and it will be useful to her. I can also type my own work on it. I now have seven suitcases, an eighth very small one, two coats, a bicycle and a radio.

Presenter: Back in Dnepropetrovsk, Gelfand worked as a teacher. Antisemitism restricted his career and he eventually had to be content with a modest post in vocational education. He continued to write articles, prose and poetry, but censorship and ideological restrictions under Stalin and later Soviet leaders left little room for the kind of writing he wanted to publish. His wartime and occupation diaries did not appear during his lifetime.

Vitaly Gelfand: In those years — under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev — Vladimir Gelfand understood that his books would not pass censorship. When he tried to publish individual diary passages in newspapers and journals, they were heavily edited, altered or shortened. The truthful details of his notebooks did not fit the official heroic narrative of the war. His son argues that even decades later the diaries remained politically uncomfortable in Russia.

Presenter: Vladimir Gelfand died in 1983 at the age of sixty. The programme links his death to the long-term consequences of wartime injury and later heart weakness. Recognition of the diary, and of the unusual testimony preserved in it, came only after his death.