Фрагменты дневников поэта-фронтовика В. Н. Гельфанда

Jews. Pitiful and unhappy, proud and cunning, wise and petty, kind and stingy, timid... and...

In the streets and in the park, in the bread shop, in the queue for kerosene—everywhere one hears whispering. A terrible whisper, cheerful yet hateful. People are talking about Jews. For now they still speak timidly, looking around.

Jews are thieves. One Jewish woman stole a fur coat from a shop. Jews have money. One woman turned out to have fifty thousand, yet she complained about her fate and said she had nothing to wear. One Jew has even more money, but says he is starving. Jews do not like to work. Jews do not want to serve in the Red Army. Jews live without registration. Jews have climbed onto our heads. In short, Jews are the cause of every misfortune. I have had to hear all this more than once—my appearance and speech do not reveal that I am a Jew.

I love the Russian language. I perhaps love it more than the Jewish language; I am barely acquainted with the latter. I do not want to sort people by nationality. A good person of any nation or race is always dear and pleasant to me, and a bad one is hateful. But I notice that here in the North Caucasus antisemitism is a mass phenomenon. To some extent Jews themselves are also to blame, having for the most part earned the hatred of many local residents.

For example, one Jewish woman in a queue said: “How good it is that you are being beaten now.” She was beaten, and afterward they wanted to take her to the police, but she managed to slip away.

People like that really do not get beaten enough. Such Jewish people are even greater antisemites than any Russian antisemite. She is stupid and long-tongued too. But all the same, with few exceptions I do not like these Cossacks. Ukrainians are less antisemitic. Russians farther west—in Moscow and Leningrad—still less so. I do not understand how one can be as cruel, heartless and fearless as the North Caucasian Cossack.

The senior political instructor read us Comrade Stalin’s latest order. It is an excellent order, a correct order, though it would have been better had it been issued a few days earlier, before our troops withdrew from the Kharkov front. But nothing can be done about that. It is nevertheless very encouraging that in a period of general ferment and discontent such a splendid order appeared, capable of dispelling the fear, confusion and uncertainty in our ranks and among the masses, which had gradually increased as a result of the Red Army’s temporary but serious setbacks. Stalin is right that there is much to learn from the Germans, even though they are our enemies and do not have our lofty goal of defending the Motherland.

Comrade Stalin’s Order No. 227 states directly and openly that we lack discipline and have minimal organization—and that this is the cause of our failures. Every word of the order corresponds to the thoughts I had while escaping from encirclement.

We have plenty of strength and enough weapons to smash the invaders. Comrade Stalin says the same thing: “Our factories are working at full speed, producing more and more weapons for the front.” I myself saw masses of the newest and most modern armaments moving in an uninterrupted stream toward the front. Were we not equipped with mortars made in 1942? Why did we throw them away, why did we abandon them while retreating? Who is to blame for all this, and how can we prevent a repetition? How can one forget the exhausting and shameful retreat of our armies? Oh, if only Comrade Stalin knew about all this! He would certainly take measures. It seems to me that he is either not informed or is wrongly informed by the commanders of the retreating armies. What joy I felt now when I heard the order of our leader, Stalin. He seems to know everything; it is as though he were here beside us at the front. His thoughts are like mine. How gratifying it is to realize this.

We have understood a great deal. We must no longer even think of retreating, although many continue to think that our country is enormous, its human resources inexhaustible and countless, and therefore we can keep retreating. But only people to whom our already sufficiently violated Motherland is not dear think that way. Not one step back! We have nowhere left to retreat. We have already lost too much by leaving the Donbass and Ukraine to the Germans, abandoning more than seventy million inhabitants.

Now, after temporary failures at the fronts, many doubt that the Germans can finally be defeated and destroyed. One can answer only this: the enemy is not as strong as he seems. He can and must be stopped. He must be driven from our land. For that we need discipline and organization.

15 August 1942 (approximately)

Lieutenant Golikov recommended one of his soldiers for the Komsomol, while two soldiers from the third platoon could not obtain recommendations because Zinovkin kept delaying them...

I do not know why we suddenly began talking about mistakes—whether I had or had not made a mistake by recommending soldiers I had not personally checked, or whether he could make a mistake in the situation in question. But our argument went so far that, beside myself and trying in every possible way to defend my opinion, I said: “Everyone makes mistakes. Stalin also made a mistake when he said that the capture of Kerch marked the beginning of the liberation of Crimea, and then it turned out that the Germans occupied Crimea...” I stopped at once when I realized what I had said and to whom.

Even now it seems like a dream, as though I had not said it, because those are not my thoughts. A person with such thoughts would not have spoken them aloud, especially in the presence of a Communist. Could I really have allowed myself such thoughtlessness? Could I for even a minute have doubted the brilliant foresight of my leader, whom I adore so memorably, devotedly and ardently?!

I fell silent, astonished by my own words. The lieutenant and soldier who happened to be there noticed nothing special. On Zinovkin’s face, however, I first saw a pleased little smile and then a brief expression of thoughtfulness.

It all happened instantly, in a single moment. The lieutenant and soldier did not even have time to notice our pause, but Zinovkin... he did not become a sergeant major for nothing, and perhaps he will soon become a lieutenant—not so much through military knowledge and skill as through his ability to trample a man he has knocked down. He noticed everything, thought it over, and understood what enormous advantage my slip, this phrase accidentally thrown out by me, could bring him.

“Stalin made a mistake?” he asked. “Do you understand what you are saying?! And you say this in the presence of soldiers?!”

“Where are the soldiers?” I asked.

“And who is this—isn’t he a soldier?” He pointed to [illegible].

I replied that only one soldier was present and that I had said the phrase thoughtlessly, meaning something quite different, and that I myself could not explain what had prompted me to say it. But Zinovkin was not satisfied.

“Ask any soldier whether Stalin can make a mistake. You—tell us,” he turned to the soldier, “was what he said correct?”

“No!” the man answered.

“There, you see, and no more [illegible].”

A strange thing: during all my time at the front I have not seen a single dead person, although I have been under enemy fire more than once.

We spent the night at Dvoinaya station. The local inhabitants are Cossacks. People from Stalingrad whom the Germans had driven from there to these places said the people here were bad, that they would not even let you stay overnight in their homes.

...

The landlady told us about the Germans. Five Germans had lived here, as in the previous villages I passed through. Old men and old women were given bread free of charge. Young people were forced to work. The inhabitants were not killed, although the Germans took whatever they wanted. Romanians sometimes looted. Gypsies, who are numerous here, especially stole from them. They were quartered with the landlady once. They came and broke the lock because it was cold, but touched nothing inside the hut. They lit the stove with the chopped firewood already there and went to sleep. The owners returned and found them asleep.

For every German killed, local residents, guilty and innocent alike, were immediately killed. So no one here even thought about partisans. Near Dvoinaya station a group of people, acting together in retaliation for abuses, wounded a German in the leg with a revolver. The fascists burned the entire settlement where this happened to the ground and drove the homeless residents to Germany. At least they warned the residents to leave first; otherwise everyone would have died. All the Jews were taken away. Even one-year-old babies were shot.

...

I went from hut to hut. Nobody wanted to sell me milk or eggs. Only one woman agreed to sell milk. I offered her about fifty grams of soap. She was baking bread, so I offered footcloths in exchange for a loaf. She also gave me a little flat cake with the milk. She too told me about the Germans. She is the wife of a Communist. She had been summoned for interrogation and dragged from one commandant’s office to another, mostly by Russians. There were many Ukrainian and Cossack regiments here.

General Krasnov also passed through. The Germans thought that with his help they could restore the old Cossack kulak order here, but it did not work.

...

Here too all Jews were exterminated without exception. Communists were registered and only the most responsible ones were shot; they did not have time to deal with the rest. They also shot one Pioneer leader and two Komsomol members. The wives of Communists worked without rest for the occupiers and received only 200 grams of bread. Yet, according to this woman, local residents sympathized with the Germans. When they occupied the area, people began turning Jews and Communists—and simply one another—over to the enemy. The village elder left with the Hitlerites, afraid of revenge. For a long time the local woman told me about the Germans and the atrocities they had committed on our land.

...

Soon Proletarskaya station appeared.

I began asking the landlady about the Germans. She told her story willingly. It had been cold. Many Germans were quartered with her. They arrived in groups and alone, ordered the owners out of their beds, and lay down in them themselves. They behaved in the house as they pleased and showed no embarrassment in front of women. They were wary and suspicious of men. There were also decent people among them: they gave sweets to children, were polite, behaved like guests rather than conquerors, did not deceive themselves about their prospects and did not deceive others.

For a time before the retreat, several Germans stayed in this woman’s home. They often asked her: “Russian comes, mother, gives you machine gun, and you go bang-bang at German?” She answered that she was afraid of rifles and machine guns and would never take one into her hands. The answer always satisfied them, and they nodded approvingly.

“Are you waiting for the Russians?” a German asked her one day.

“How can I not wait, when my husband is fighting with them?” she replied.

One German smiled, but the faces of the others turned gray.

“No, no,” she hurried to calm them, “my husband has long been dead.”

The German who had smiled while the others grew angry was very kind and sympathized with the woman. When his comrades were absent, he often told her that the Red Army was close and the Russians would soon return. That was exactly what happened. On the eve of their withdrawal they advised the landlady to go a kilometer away; then they set up a machine gun against one wall and fired from the hut at our advancing troops. This happened at night. By morning the Reds had entered the stanitsa. During their retreat the Germans shot many inhabitants of Salsk. Here they shot only Jews and a few Communists, the most senior ones.

...

I shall never become like those Ukrainians who betrayed the Motherland, went over to the enemy and now serve him. They clean their boots, lick their asses, while the Germans beat them across their treacherous dog faces.

The Germans, however, shoot many prisoners, especially during retreat. Wounded prisoners are finished off.

I remember one Ukrainian who asserted, to the general approval of many people, that all Ukrainians were cowards and traitors and that the majority of them had gone over to the enemy. I began proving that a majority means more than half, while there are forty million Ukrainians; even if half had gone over to the Germans, that would mean twenty million—was that really the case?

On the road we passed semi-Ukrainian, semi-Russian hamlets and villages. Their residents told us about the Germans—how they lived, looted, ruled and killed, but at the same time... cried, cursed Hitler, ate dry moldy bread, two hundred grams each, and when taken by surprise fled in panic, leaving their spoons and unfinished porridge behind as they retreated.

I read the October order and Comrade Stalin’s report. I love it madly when Comrade Stalin speaks. All events in the course of the war become so clear and logically grounded...

Yatselenko Paraska Antonovna, the landlady... She preserved Soviet books and a portrait of Stalin. She buried the books in the ground, while the portrait remained hanging on the wall even under the Germans, only behind a portrait of Taras Shevchenko.

Nadya was out on the steppe. Cossacks came to her home for her and, not finding her there, rode into the steppe. They placed her ten paces away, but then postponed what they intended to do and said: “Wait here, we will find one more female partisan,” and galloped farther into the steppe. People present advised Nadya to run. She did. Crouching and hiding in the steppe vegetation, she made her way to a village, changed into an old woman’s clothes, and left the district.

The Cossacks who had come for her were left with nothing. They never found her again.

Since yesterday an uninterrupted stream of captured Germans has been moving past us along the highway. Column after column. Four abreast. Even now their dark mass, figures moving evenly, is gray in the distance. A regiment. No, more—a division, and there is no end to this procession of hateful Fritzes who have gone completely bankrupt.

They walk exhausted, pitiful and frightened—that is bearable, but... Russians! It is hard not to shout: our own people—traitors!

“Is anyone here from Yaroslavl?” asked one senior sergeant among the spectators.

“I am from Yaroslavl,” one of the captured traitors volunteered.

“Come here,” the senior sergeant called.

When the man stepped out of the ranks, the sergeant said, “Well, hello, fellow countryman!” and struck him in the face with all his strength. Blood spurted, and the traitor hurried to hide in the middle of the column. Then the soldiers began abusing the entire rear of the column in turn. Somehow they also found a fat, broad-faced Kalmyk, dragged him out and began beating him. He rolled like a ball under the blows of many fists and feet, and his shirt quickly turned red with blood. It is astonishing that he got away on his feet. When he forced his way back into the ranks and hid behind a German prisoner, the German in turn pushed the scoundrel away and pointed us toward another Kalmyk.

In Włodawa and elsewhere Polish soldiers and officers are the first to greet us. Their greetings clearly reveal a humiliated dignity and obsequiousness toward us. All Poland is flooded with Polish troops. They are everywhere, in towns and villages, and everywhere they greet us first, even those junior to them in rank. I did not greet them first. A feeling of legitimate pride in my Army and my people, and contempt for these rooster-like mannequins—decorated soldiers and officers, young ladies and even very old women, men of every degree and rank—prevailed. I despise these fools, whose malicious conduct was in many respects one of the causes of the war. And now the Poles, armed to the teeth, stroll around in the rear and do not fight. Only a very small portion of them is at the front. Here they conscript only the young, from eighteen to thirty-five.

This part of Poland, where there are many Russians and Ukrainians, still receives us fairly well, with some exceptions. Farther on, however, there are beasts and Russian-haters. Jews too are disliked here and are openly called “kikes”—that is the accepted usage here. Poor people, especially Russians and Ukrainians, are more or less tolerant and even sympathize with them, but the Poles speak of Jews through clenched teeth.

I was told about Polish women who supposedly lured our soldiers and officers into their embraces and, when matters reached the bed, cut off their genitals with razors, strangled them with their hands, and scratched out their eyes. Mad, savage, ugly females!

...

Our soldiers go around asking for milk and moonshine, stealing horses and livestock, and in general the movement of the army is accompanied by the tears and lamentations of the inhabitants. The Germans did worse, but people here are dissatisfied with our Slavs in this respect too. And this is deep in the rear, under Polish authority and in an entirely foreign country—a country where people do not forgive and do harm.

The partisans too are spoken of with dislike. People say the partisans robbed the population and raped young women.

...Being very hungry, I went into one hut and asked to buy something to eat. The landlady said our money was not accepted in Poland, but took my last six rubles and poured me soup—plain water—and even refused me bread, excusing herself by saying she had given it to soldiers.

There are villages nearby. At the same time she poured herself quite thick soup, put mashed potatoes on her plate, and took out fresh bread. I abandoned the soup and left the house without saying goodbye. There is Polish hospitality for you!

There are many forests in Poland. They are dense and green, but belong not to the state but to private individuals. The land too is all fenced off and divided into holdings. I met both large and small landowners. I saw poor but young and attractive girls and boys working themselves to exhaustion for some ugly but rich old landowner; old people and children, men and women bent their backs...

...

Polish villages and towns are very beautiful from a distance. Churches rise majestically above every other building. The houses have magnificent architecture. Inside, however, the enormous discrepancy with their external appearance immediately strikes the eye.

As for churches: everyone here believes. Our unbelieving soldiers and commanders are immediately and unconditionally called Communists. This too characterizes the poverty of thought of the average Pole.

My hosts revealed their reactionary views to me in full. For example, they said that the Germans were better for them than we are, claiming that the Germans had not imposed such taxes, had not taken so much grain for the army, and had even paid with sugar and fats when they took anything.

“Stalin gave a little grain to the inhabitants of Warsaw, but he had previously taken even more grain from the population! We do not consider the Red Army to be liberating us—it brings another oppression, even heavier than the German one. Our people do not recognize the new government; they are traitors. Poles laugh at Stalin’s Lublin appointees and will not allow them to remain in power. You came to us with weapons because you are stronger. If we could, we would not have let you in, but the Poles now in power betrayed the interests of our Poland. We are accustomed to speaking freely; we even had special journals that criticized the government”—they showed me one—“but nevertheless we loved our previous government and still respect it now.” A portrait of Sikorski still hanging on their wall was a vivid illustration. “Why did your country close its border to us? We could travel easily and freely to other countries, but not to yours. You shut yourselves off from the whole world so that it would not know about the horrors taking place in your country! And at the same time you shouted to the entire world about your achievements and successes. And are you not ashamed that such a large country failed to hold out against the Germans?”

“But,” I objected, “now even our enemies admit that we proved stronger than Germany in this war. Our Allies have great respect for our strategy and tactics and even keep our military advisers specially attached to their armies. The USSR saved the world from German bandits!”

“Nothing of the kind! You allowed Poland and other countries to be occupied, and you yourselves could not hold out; only Allied aid ensured your successes. Poland managed to hold out for an entire month. Through its heroic struggle it gave you the opportunity to prepare for war. The Germans attacked Poland only because of you; otherwise they would not have touched it. But Poland is too small to hold back soldiers as strong as the Germans, and it yielded to their pressure.”

“But Yugoslavia,” I objected again, “is even smaller and has almost no weapons at all, yet it managed to organize internal resistance that later grew into a nationwide struggle against the enemy. You say that everyone here does as he pleases. Everyone criticizes, everyone buys and sells weapons and food to whomever he wants, even the enemy. There is no cohesion in Poland: one person pulls one way, another another. Look how our country organized resistance to the Germans. When danger threatened it, the people rose as one solid wall to defend their borders and won! France too is a strong country, advanced in Europe, yet there was no unity there, there were traitors, and the Germans captured it. Poland could have resisted better than it did. The Soviet Union would have helped if Poland had wanted that.”

“It did want it. Its borders were open.”

“No, remember what England and France negotiated with us before we concluded peace with Germany...”

The conversation moved to another subject: Jews. I deliberately did not say that I was a Jew because I wanted to know their opinion on the question.

The host showed me a German magazine in Polish. It contained photographs of the leaders of three states: the USSR, the United States and Great Britain.

“These people plunged the world into war,” the host’s wife explained after her husband had left for work. “Jews are in the governments of all these countries,” and she began pointing out who was supposedly Jewish. “The government of Rola-Żymierski and *** also consists of Jews. These people with hanging cheekbones and red noses want to rule our country. But that will never happen! Once in Poland they wanted to put a big Jewish millionaire in power, but the people protested and he was not appointed. In our country everything depends on the people!”

On Wanda Wasilewska:

“She is a children’s writer. She wrote little stories for children, and Stalin made her great. But Poles laugh at her. She is a traitor, and a child writes better than she does.”

On Bór:

“He wanted to liberate Poland himself. We Poles do not want to be indebted to you and pay with our land for ‘liberation.’ After the war you will take Poland, but England and America will rule over you. You are fools: to the Allies you are only cannon fodder. In any case your system will become whatever they want it to be. They have weapons and men, but they preserve their own strength. They put your heads forward, just as they put Polish heads forward before and do now.”

She spoke of Ukrainians with hatred: “They are all traitors and ought to be hanged!” But I spoke firmly against such a judgment and tried to prove that no entire people can be blamed for crimes committed by individual degenerates.

“How many Ukrainian traitors have you seen here?”

“Thousands!”

“You see, and there are forty-six million Ukrainians...”

Poland resembles a malicious, capricious child over whom very adult and very serious people fuss and for whose sake they waste a great deal of time. I have seen Poland, and as far as I could I have studied its morals, daily life and customs. Great attention is paid here to outward gloss.

People ride bicycles. They rarely walk. Bicycles are a necessity. All the roads are paved, the houses are very beautiful, and there are many large ones. If one traveled through Poland as a tourist-observer, one could receive a very misleading impression. In fact, to the experienced observer who has learned the other side of Polish life and organization, a picture opens that is not attractive at all: people in sandals and bast shoes in winter; silk rags—elegant, true, but rags—in which they are dressed; borscht made of nothing but beetroot and water; plows held together with wire and fields cultivated by hand... An almost childish industry. Small brickworks and little factories with fat, well-fed landlord-owners and impoverished hired laborers and peasants who barely have enough food to live. Huge private shops inaccessible to the bulk of the Polish population because of the prices. Large gray wooden crosses standing so inhospitably at the entrances and exits of villages. Wooden houses even in towns. Wooden Poland!

My hosts and their children told me Polish jokes, the most numerous and biting of which were about Jews. They even sang several Polish songs ridiculing “kikes.” I felt awkward listening, and my eyes were ashamed to look at these “representatives of the intelligentsia,” delighted in their effort and in their children’s effort to slander another nation and to cultivate racial hatred and national chauvinism in them.

Waiting for lunch. With every day my landlady reveals more pettiness and stinginess toward me. Today, when I began washing with her soap, she came over and warned me that the soap cost five hundred zlotys and therefore “I don’t want you washing with my soap.” There was another similar case with blankets. At first, when I moved to sleep in a cold room, she gave me three blankets, but the next day she took one away and yesterday deprived me of another. So tonight I froze thoroughly.

Showing the greatest patience, I nevertheless do not abandon my intention to make these teacher-gentlefolk understand what unpleasant and inhospitable people they are and how unlike in their behavior the citizens of my socialist Motherland.

This morning a young lady with a pretty little face came to the apartment where I am staying. I offered her a chair and almost forced her to sit down. She resisted my advances, and then suddenly and unexpectedly said: “Sir looks like a little kike.”

“How am I to understand that?” I asked in amazement.

“You look like a Jew,” the girl explained.

“And perhaps I am a Jew,” I answered, and the young lady suddenly became repulsive to me.

How Jews are hated here! It is frightening to think what vulgarity of views and dullness of outlook Polish reaction has developed in people, how deeply this rotten idea about people of other nations and nationalities has soaked into the Polish spirit, steeped in a bitter pill.

...Captain Rysev also resorts to other tricks. Today, for example, when Comrade Stalin’s commendations were being handed out and I said, “I would like to eat a little potato now,” Rysev seized on the phrase, distorted it, and told Kanonenko: “Gelfand says he would rather eat potatoes than receive commendations from Stalin.” A few hours later I heard the invention from Senior Lieutenant Stavrov. Thus a slander can turn into a major unpleasantness—they might interpret it as hostile propaganda.

Ideologically and morally I have no path in common with German women. Some are pretty, even beautiful, but they cannot truly touch me or stir my feelings with love and thought. They do not refuse caresses—or, in general, anything else.

Velten station.

Contrary to my original intention, I got up late. I wanted to enjoy enough of pretty Margot’s caresses—kisses and embraces alone were not enough. I expected more, but did not dare demand or insist. The girl’s mother remained pleased with me. Of course! On the altar of the relatives’ trust and goodwill I had laid sweets and butter, sausage, expensive German cigarettes. Even half of those provisions would be enough to give one full grounds and the right to do whatever one wished with the daughter before her mother’s eyes, and she would say nothing against it.

Yesterday I watched a concert by German performers in the local drama theater. Vulgarity is the general quality characterizing the entire style of contemporary theatrical art. Particularly characteristic in this connection was a number staged by one of the producers, “A Woman Washes Herself,” in which the performer not only depicted all parts of the female body but, to the audience’s indescribable delight, allowed himself to trace in the air the curves of breasts being washed and to run a towel several times between his legs, reproducing the way a woman, drying herself, dries her sexual organ. A little earlier on stage a “dog” walked calmly and with dignity up to a bouquet of flowers presented to it, turned sideways and raised a leg. “She” stood like that for about ten minutes while the audience raged, squealing with pleasure and delight.

Another characteristic trait of the German spectator is a love of every kind of cheap effect and unprincipled easy laughter. Therefore an actor’s grimacing and clowning reaches the public more readily than a serious and thoughtful performance.

Political instruction.

Once again I reread Comrade Stalin’s speech on the eve of the elections of candidates for deputies of the Supreme Soviet and once again I am astonished by the clarity of mind and simplicity with which Stalin’s thought is expressed. There has never been a statement by Comrade Stalin in which the wisdom, truth and persuasiveness of the facts and figures presented to the listeners did not emerge clearly.

Then again and again, changing roles and assignments, these two trains alternate in spending time below and above ground.

The Germans are stingy, and however commonplace that may be, I still find it strange and difficult to get used to their miserliness. A German will never drop one pfennig—less than a kopeck in Russian money—without picking it up. He will never give away the smallest and most trivial object unless there is a double advantage to himself. He will never give a beggar more than ten pfennigs and will never leave a counter without settling the bill exactly to the last groschen.

The captain is an amusing old German... He speaks of the Poles with contempt...