Vladimir Gelfand, the memoirist and author of the published diaries of a Red Army officer, was born on March 1, 1923. He was born in the village of Novoarkhangelsk, Kirovohrad Region, into a poor Jewish family. Seeking better living conditions, the Gelfand family moved to Yessentuki, where relatives of his father, Natan Solomonovich Gelfand, already lived. In 1933 the family settled in Dnipropetrovsk.

The beginning of the Great Patriotic War found Vladimir Gelfand in Yessentuki, to which he had been evacuated in August 1941. In April 1942 he volunteered at the military enlistment office, and on May 6 he was enlisted in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. After completing training at an artillery school, he was awarded the rank of sergeant. He ended the war in Berlin with the rank of lieutenant.

Throughout his service — at the front, in hospital, and at the junior-officer school — Vladimir Gelfand kept a detailed diary. He did not stop writing even during battles, marches, engineering work, and preparations for offensives. Whatever little free time he had was also devoted to his diary.

The diary is unique in several respects. First, in its chronological span and the sheer volume of entries: from the final months of 1941 to his return from Germany in the autumn of 1946, where Gelfand served with the occupation forces. Second, its author was a mortar soldier and was stationed directly near the front line, only one step behind the infantry. And third — perhaps most importantly — the diary is distinguished by unprecedented candor and sincerity: it records both personal humiliations and the author’s own morally questionable actions.

The diary entries convey the mood within the Soviet forces during the final stage of the Second World War and in the postwar period. Gelfand recorded destruction, looting, deaths, and acts of betrayal that he witnessed. The diary also mentions violence and the rape of German women. The author appears both as a sensitive observer and as a participant in events, making no attempt to embellish reality or conceal acts of revenge and plunder. These entries constitute a unique chronicle of the first months of the Soviet occupation of Germany.

Vladimir Gelfand’s book Deutschland-Tagebuch 1945–1946 became the first, and to date the only, German-language publication presenting the diary of a Red Army officer. It was also published in Swedish and Russian.

At the end of 2019, personal belongings of Vladimir Gelfand and members of his family were donated to the Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine.” The museum library has the Russian-language book V. Gelfand, Diary 1941–1946. A link to the edition is available in the institution’s electronic catalog.

To reserve the book in the library, users must register on the website and create a library record.

Gelfand, V. Diary 1941–1946. Compiled by O. V. Budnitsky. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2015, 751 pages. (History of the Second World War.)

The diary of Sergeant, later Lieutenant, Vladimir Gelfand is unique in its chronology, geography, volume, and frankness. The entries cover the period from May 1941 to October 1946, when Gelfand returned home from Germany. He tried to write every day, under any conditions and circumstances. Gelfand took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, helped liberate Ukraine and Poland, and ended the war in Germany. The diary contains information about everyday wartime life and about conditions in the rear and at the front. Of particular interest are the entries from his service in Germany in 1945–1946: his impressions of German culture, everyday life, customs and habits, and his relationships with German women. The German section of the diary was published in German and Swedish translation, but this is the first publication of the diary without abridgments or omissions. It includes notes and scholarly commentary as well as an index of names. The volume also contains photographs, most of them taken by the diarist himself during his service in Germany. Scholarly edition.