LiveJournal materials about Vladimir Gelfand

Alexei Sergeev, “A Unique Diary of Stalin’s Soldier”
Anti-Solonin, “Fick-fick”
Alexei Sergeev, “How Combat Logs Were Kept During the War”
vspvsp, “I Only Go Out with Decent Russians!”
trilirium, “More About the ‘One Hundred Thousand Raped German Women’”
Vladimir Azart, “August 20, 1944”
Vladimir Azart, “September 13, 1944”
Vladimir Azart, “October 28, 1944”
Vladimir Azart, “August 27, 1944”
Vladimir Azart, “August 22, 1944”

historian30h — July 19, 2019

A Unique Diary of Stalin’s Soldier

Gelfand V. Diary 1941–1946. Moscow: Political Encyclopedia / Knizhniki, 2016.

Vladimir Gelfand was born on March 1, 1923, into an urban Jewish family. Before the war he completed eight school grades and the third year of a workers’ faculty. He was drafted into the army on May 6, 1942.

The published diary begins in April 1941 and ends in the autumn of 1946, when the author leaves Germany for home. The entries are very extensive and candid, with many sketches of everyday life.

Gelfand was a very vulnerable person, an intellectual in the bad sense of the word. Although he apparently was not a coward in battle, he did not know how to stand up for himself among his fellow servicemen, did not know how to build relationships, and made no friends. He could not keep his mouth shut. He was rather sly and prolonged various absences from the front as much as possible, which constantly left him balancing on the edge of accusations of desertion. These circumstances left their dark imprint on the entries: in the thick volume one almost never encounters positive characters, except for a few Jews with whom Gelfand had only brief contact.

In light of all this, the diary is extremely difficult to read, and I would not even recommend it to non-specialists. I will briefly formulate for you myself the significance of this unique historical source.

1. Gelfand kept his diary at the front quite openly. His fellow soldiers and his numerous commanders knew about it, and the author served in many different military units. Thus this source shows that the widespread view that keeping diaries was prohibited in the Red Army is mistaken.

2. The diary clearly shows that Stalin’s soldiers were not people endowed with some special human or heroic qualities. I repeat: there are no positive heroes in the diary. Theft and violence, cowardice and vanity, the desire to curry favor with superiors and take things out on the weak — these qualities were just as characteristic of the generation of victors as of any other. The diary once again confirmed my opinion that the war was won not by unique people, but by a unique Stalinist system in which ordinary people proved capable of mass heroism.

I am convinced that today we should not so much describe feats in the manner of “with one blow the hero slew seven,” as analyze the Stalinist system that left Hitler’s Europe no chance at all. For all the candor and negativity in the pages of Gelfand’s diary, there is not the slightest doubt about our inevitable victory over fascism.

3. I once had a methodological dispute with well-known “tank experts,” who apparently, almost without exception, either cannot or do not want to analyze the historical sources they obtain from archives. They have a particular reverence for all kinds of combat logs. They quote them and sincerely believe that things happened exactly as written.

Gelfand was assigned to fill in such a log, and in passing he describes — mockingly, from the point of view of the tank experts — how he did it. He did it retrospectively, after the fighting was over and the unit was resting. Ahem: the combat log was regarded by both its commander and Gelfand himself as an empty formality, so Gelfand filled it with his own inventions wherever exact information no longer existed and could not exist. Gelfand wrote his combat log the same way most history books are written today.

4. From the standpoint of source criticism, the author’s descriptions of combat operations are also interesting. Although the entries were made while events were still fresh and by an officer who had taken part in the battle, it is nevertheless obvious that an ordinary direct participant in combat has no idea what is happening around him: he simply lacks the information.

Perhaps later I will quote some passages.

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glavsnab — October 10, 2022

“Fick-fick”

That, according to Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand — who kept a diary during the war — was what Germans called sex.

I have already written about an almost hundred-year-old “female activist”; recently she attributed to Gelfand the statement that in Berlin in 1945 one hundred thousand rape complaints were submitted in three days. That is one complaint every three seconds, assuming complaints were accepted around the clock! Apparently all that remained was to multiply these “figures” by the number of lieutenants... )))

In fact, there is nothing of the kind in Gelfand’s diary; nor did he serve in the commandant’s office or the “organs.” And during roughly two years in Germany (1944–1946) he himself did not witness any rapes at all. He mentions only two stories about them.

Once, according to some sergeant, the positions were attacked by a supposed “women’s battalion.” The attack was repelled, and the captured German women were divided into married women (who were shot) and girls (who were forced to have sex). The sergeant supposedly spent a long time explaining in Russian to the girl who had fallen to him what “podmakhivat” meant; she apparently understood, and so on — the description is quite detailed. It sounds very much like a soldier’s tall tale, and I have not heard of women’s infantry among the Germans. Incidentally, in the Red Army shooting prisoners could bring a court-martial, as many memoirs attest.

On another occasion, an unfamiliar German woman suddenly complained to Gelfand that she had recently been raped by a group of soldiers. With her mother’s support she therefore offered to live with Gelfand: she was supposedly ready for “fick-fick,” but only with him, and hoped that this would protect her from a repetition of the group assault because Gelfand was an officer. He refused.

Otherwise, according to his diary, young German women calmly walked the streets and went to the beach, readily meeting Russians — sometimes for food and sometimes simply because they wished to. At one lake, Russian servicemen bathed on one side and local Germans on the other. According to Gelfand, he entered Germany a virgin, but there he had many “contacts” with girls, which he describes in detail in his diary; some of his girlfriends were sixteen or seventeen.

His diary is in no sense “evidence of mass rapes,” which does not prevent liberals from interpreting it precisely that way.

historian30h — July 23, 2019

How Combat Logs Were Kept During the War

A fragment from Gelfand’s diary:

“17.05.1945
11:00–14:30 — creatively refract the collected material in my mind; write the entries for May 4–5; supplement what I had written earlier...
16:40–20:10 — in the 3rd rifle regiment I obtain material for the period of the battles for Berlin. I look through the combat log and give instructions on how it should be maintained further...

18.05.1945
11:00–14:30 — study the collected material, make the necessary corrections and additions to what was written earlier.
16:40–20:10 — write the log for the sixth–seventh [note: of May]...

19.05.1945
11:00–14:30 — write the log for the period from the seventh to the ninth [of May].
16:40–20:10 — finish the log...

24.05.1945
I finished the log [note: the division’s combat log]. It caused me a lot of trouble: there was no material at all, the combat reports were dry and not always accurate, so I had to invent a great deal from my memories of earlier battles. The artistic side of the matter also limps because of the absence of living material. Only the form remains, but even that does not satisfy me. Of course, compared with the previous one, my log undoubtedly...” [note: continuation missing]

Gelfand V. Diary 1941–1946. Moscow: Political Encyclopedia / Knizhniki, 2016, pp. 445–446.

vspvsp — July 26, 2020

I Only Go Out with Decent Russians!

“My dear Waldemar!” — that was how a woman named Margot began her love letter on January 31, 1946. She asked Waldemar to come visit her in the Berlin suburb of Hennigsdorf and mentioned his birthday. She then expressed hope for a “meeting soon” and ended: “With warm greetings, kisses, your beloved Margot.”

“Waldemar” was only an affectionate nickname for Margot’s lover. His real name was Vladimir Gelfand; he came from the Soviet Union and served in the Red Army as a lieutenant in occupied eastern Germany.

SS men killed Vladimir’s grandmother, his uncle, two aunts, and two female cousins. Vladimir and his mother managed to flee to the Caucasus. Vladimir, who dreamed of becoming a writer, left school and volunteered for the Red Army.

Gelfand carefully described lice on his own body: “Magnificent specimens; perhaps they will eat me entirely.” He recorded soldiers getting drunk, refusing to carry out orders, looting, obtaining promotions by improper means, quarrelling, and fighting. Historian Scherstjanoi regards the diary as an authentic source: “Never before have we been able to penetrate so deeply into the thoughts of a Red Army soldier in occupied eastern Germany.”

“Sinned” for the first time

In the final days of the war in April 1945, Gelfand mentions meeting a young Berlin woman who had been raped the previous night by several Red Army soldiers. According to scholarly estimates, Soviet soldiers sexually assaulted about one hundred thousand women in Berlin alone: thousands became pregnant, thousands died from the consequences of rape, and many were psychologically traumatized for life and stigmatized by relatives and acquaintances. Gelfand wrote that the young Berliner offered him sex in exchange for protection. But he decided to fulfil his “soldier’s duty” — he did not explain what that meant.

On June 24, Gelfand recorded in his diary that for the first time in his life he had “sinned.” He supposedly asked a red-haired “Fräulein” whether she wanted to come to his apartment. She asked, “What will we do?” — “Read books.” — “But that’s boring.” After that, the unnamed girl went to bed with him.

A few weeks later Gelfand began seeing a woman named Marianne, but the relationship did not go beyond kisses and embraces. “I wanted more, but decided not to pressure her,” he wrote. Her mother blessed the relationship because he gave the family butter, sausage, and cigarettes. In addition to charm and good looks, his food ration and pay were probably also attractive.

In letters to his parents, Gelfand wrote quite openly about his love affairs. “As for girls and love, I can assure you: I am no longer that schoolboy Vova who fell in love, trembled, and lost his head,” he wrote to his mother. His father expressed displeasure that his son associated with non-Jewish women.

Until the end of September 1945, Gelfand’s military unit was stationed around Berlin, supervising deliveries made as reparations. During this time he grew his hair, took many photographs, and learned to ride a bicycle. He had affairs with Hilda, Kriemhild, Nora, and Margot of Hennigsdorf — the woman who called him Waldemar. In the meantime, he even contracted a venereal disease.

Historian Scherstjanoi reaches the following conclusion: “German women sought contact with Soviet servicemen, and not only for material reasons or in search of protection.” A vivid example is Helga, who fell in love with Gelfand and invited him to a date in a letter: “Do not think that I am a bad girl. I only go out with decent Russians and hope that you are one of them.”

Sources: Der Spiegel, “Ich gehe nur mit anständigen Russen”; InoSMI, “I Only Go Out with Decent Russians”.

trilirium — July 25, 2020

More About the “One Hundred Thousand Raped German Women”

Der Spiegel (Germany): “I Only Go Out with Decent Russians.”

After the end of the war, Red Army soldier Vladimir Gelfand, who was Jewish, lived for a year and a half in eastern Germany. He rode a bicycle around Brandenburg, photographed devastated Berlin and... received love letters from German women.

So what did he owe such attention from these Frauen?

In the final days of the war in April 1945, Gelfand mentions meeting a young Berlin woman who had been raped the previous night by several Red Army soldiers. According to scholarly estimates, Soviet soldiers sexually assaulted about one hundred thousand women in Berlin alone: thousands became pregnant, thousands died from the consequences, many were psychologically traumatized for life and stigmatized by relatives and acquaintances. Gelfand wrote that this young Berliner offered him sex in exchange for protection. But he decided to fulfil his “soldier’s duty” — he did not explain what that meant.

Basically, just as I had always suspected: the myth of the “one hundred thousand raped German women” is explained with exhaustive completeness in a single paragraph. I simply do not understand why they would have had to be “raped” when they themselves — almost by force, even — were trying to drag a Red Army soldier they liked into bed. And, speaking quite frankly, it is easy to judge these women from a comfortable sofa. Imagine yourself in their place: their country and city are in ruins, the future is, to put it mildly, uncertain, and gangs of thieves, looters, and rapists — for the most part, I suspect, their own compatriots — are roaming what remains of Berlin. Without an armed man constantly nearby, it is physically difficult even to stay alive. Acquiring such a man at any price becomes almost the only realistic survival strategy. Besides, in Berlin, reduced nearly to rubble, ordinary people often had literally nothing to eat, whereas soldiers at least always had rations.

And later, of course, once postwar life had settled down a little, many women were ashamed. Those who directly faced consequences such as a venereal disease or even pregnancy simply had to explain somehow how they had ended up in that situation. Naturally, it was easier to say “I was raped!” than to admit openly how things had actually happened. Further on in these diaries, we see many confirmations that, according to the author, this was indeed so:

After Germany’s capitulation on May 8, Gelfand enjoyed peaceful life: “Today I slept until eleven in the morning. A free day, music, volleyball, football.” The young man, now twenty-two, apparently learned a few words of German, because from then on he often wrote about conversations with German women: “They think I look like an Italian and note that I have black hair.” A little later he wrote about his first kisses.

But it did not stop with kissing. On June 24 Gelfand recorded in his diary that he had “sinned” for the first time in his life. He supposedly asked a red-haired “Fräulein” whether she wanted to come to his apartment. She asked, “And what will we do?” — “Read books.” — “But that is boring.” After that the unnamed girl went to bed with him.

So who deprived whom of virginity here?

A few weeks later Gelfand began seeing a woman named Marianne, but their relationship went no further than kisses and embraces. “I wanted more, but decided not to pressure her,” he wrote. Her mother blessed the relationship because he gave the family butter, sausage, and cigarettes. In addition to charm and good looks, his food ration and pay were probably attractive as well.

And does anyone still doubt that there were mothers quite prepared to put their daughter into a foreign soldier’s bed — or get into it themselves — in order to receive “butter, sausage, and cigarettes”? Not to mention money?

vazart — August 20, 2024

August 20, 1944 — from the diaries

Vladimir Gelfand, age 21, lieutenant in a rifle unit, Poland

20.08.1944

It turns out that the infantry themselves crawled under our own artillery fire by beginning the attack too early, while the sappers failed to clear the enemy minefield and left. Petrusyan told me that he himself cleared a large section near the enemy trenches. The first line of communication trenches proved false — dug only half a spade deep. The second was considerably farther away, and the two were separated by a network of barbed-wire obstacles and a minefield. Some of the men were blown up by mines, some by artillery fire. The enemy did not shoot, and if the infantry, artillery, and sappers had acted in a coordinated and correct way, the operation could have been completed successfully.

My tongue is my enemy! I have done something enormously stupid. I read the diary to Pugach in the presence of the soldiers — especially in Tarnavsky’s presence. He is an exceptionally vile, treacherous, and insolent man. Now I shall have to fear him and seek his favor, but I know I shall never do that; and at his first reprimand or punishment he will try to destroy me by denouncing the inadmissible entries in my diary. This could lead to my diaries being taken away — confiscated — and even more. That is why I want to begin a new diary.

That is how one can suffer innocently because of some scoundrel. Who knows what they might attribute to me because of this diary, perhaps even forgetting my life, my honest service in the Red Army, and my selfless devotion to Stalin and the government, to the Soviet people. After all, I am a Jew and never forget it, although I do not know the Jewish language at all, while Russian has become the closest and dearest language in the world to me. Of course I shall study other languages too, especially the principal Western European ones, but Russian will nevertheless remain my native language forever. Soviet power, and above all Stalin and the Party, erased the boundary between nationalities and peoples, and therefore I owe them my whole life and all my effort — not to mention everything else for which I love and am unreservedly devoted to the USSR and the VKP(b).

I am duty officer for the company. Night. Dark, deep. The boys are serving well. The enemy shall not pass! The thunder of guns, the roar of aircraft, rifle and machine-gun fire — the impression of meat being chopped with a cleaver: Chak! Chak-chak! Chak-chak-chak!

Somewhere on other bridgeheads and sectors of the front the fighting is stronger than here.

I am going to write many letters. I received five yesterday and the day before yesterday and have not yet answered them. Letters have already reached my new address from Nina K[amenovskaya] and Anya L[ivshits]. I received a letter from B[eba] Koifman. She writes lightly, freshly, but with a cold breeze. She tells me of her wish and goal to move to Dnepropetrovsk, while for now she is going to Molotov to the medical institute.

About Zhenya Maksimovich: “By the way, do you know that she already has a little son?” — and then: “What a brave girl! I praise her for her courage!” I wonder whether Zhenya has a husband. Evidently Berta too is timid, as I am, in the matter under discussion; otherwise she would not have called this fact courage.

Tags: 1944, 20, August 20, 20th century, Vadim Shefner, Vladimir Gelfand, Lydia Chukovskaya, Mikhail Prishvin, August, diaries.

vazart — September 13, 2024

September 13, 1944 — from the diaries

Vladimir Gelfand, age 21, lieutenant in a rifle unit, Ukhta district, Komi Republic

13.09.1944

Vesyoly Kut station. We are loading here. At the station. Right beside the railway stands a seven-year school. The teachers are young, pretty girls. A dream, in a word!

They complained that they had no paper, so I had to share my trophies with them. There are empty classrooms in the school; I am writing now in one of them.

Beside the school is a small hut. I went in when many of our officers were there. We talked. A young seventeen-year-old girl looked at me admiringly. I liked her pretty face too.

Taradze arrived and made a commotion. The girl said he was very frightening and had large, unnatural eyes.

“He would make a good actor. You too would make a good actor,” she said, turning to me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” she said modestly, lowering her eyelashes, “on the stage it suits people to be handsome, strong, with large eyes.”

The compliment was clearly meant for me.

Mazhenov was writing something at the table. I took off his cap and tried it on. I looked in the mirror.

“Any kind of headwear suits you,” the girl said, “even a woman’s kerchief.”

I thanked her for the second compliment she had bestowed on me. Mazhenov was by no means flattered by her attitude toward me. He hastened to change the subject:

“It is time for you to get married; you are already grown up,” he told her. “You are seventeen. How do you stand it?”

“What?” the girl asked.

“How do you stand it? You need to... it is time to... satisfy your natural needs.”

She understood, blushed, and left the room. I said to him, “I have seen fools, but I have never seen one like this!”

Indeed, the vulgarity of this idiot knew no bounds.

Meanwhile the girl told her mother everything, and her mother asked us to leave on the pretext that she herself had to go to work. Everyone went out; only Mazhenov continued sitting there, while Pugach, having shot out of the apartment like an arrow, went on swearing aloud for a long time: “Have you ever seen such a fool!” and so on.

Semyonov is a terrible scoundrel and an ignoramus. When, on the battalion commander’s orders, I entered the railway car where the horses were being loaded and tried to supervise their loading, he shouted several times in front of the soldiers: “Get out, get out!” What a nonentity!

His sergeant major also permits himself liberties. Today, for example, he entered the same house I mentioned above and, without saying anything, began rummaging about the room: “Where can I put a sick man?” The landlady was present, and so were three officers — myself, Pugach, and Mazhenov — yet without permission or even asking he allowed himself to take charge in someone else’s house. I asked him to leave the apartment, but he began arguing and saying, “Don’t order me around!”

What a hero! “Tsyt, keep quiet.” Even the householders remarked that “however many servicemen have been at the station, there has never before been a case of a sergeant major speaking to officers like that, or of soldiers in the deep rear taking charge in other people’s homes.”

Taradze continued his antics. I entered an empty classroom; he came in too.

“Which group are you enrolling in?” I asked jokingly.

He also began joking, shouting loudly. Again joking, I said:

“Call your parents. You are violating discipline.”

He went out and returned with three young teachers:

“Here are my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother.”

We laughed. Meanwhile he whispered into one of their ears, “He wants to start a love affair with you.”

I went to the market: wine — 60 rubles a liter. I approached and heard an argument: soldiers threatened to confiscate the wine because it was being sold at too high a price. The woman begged them to spare her and leave the wine. I asked, “What is going on?” A soldier who called himself a representative of the commandant’s office and had already managed to inspect the seller’s papers suggested: “At least treat the officer to a glass! An officer is entitled to it first!”

The seller poured a six-hundred-gram glass. I refused for a long time, but the soldier insisted. I drank it. At first nothing happened, but later I felt the effect of the drink and behaved very wildly. Only now has it all passed and my head cleared, though the pain continues to make it spin.

Today I sent letters to Mama, O. Sh[tul], Papa, Sofa R[abina], and Anya Kor[otkina].

I brought my “History” only as far as the Dnieper (from Novo-Petrovka). After the second revision, it turned out not badly, in my opinion.

Tags: 13, September 13, 1944, 20th century, Vladimir Gelfand, Georgy Knyazev, Maxim Gorky, Mira Prokofyeva, Mikhail Prishvin, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Eisenstein, diaries, September.

vazart — October 28, 2024

October 28, 1944

Vladimir Gelfand, age 21, lieutenant in a rifle unit, Poland

28.10.1944

Poland resembles an angry, capricious child that must be fussed over and on whom very grown-up, very serious people spend a great deal of time. I have seen Poland and, as far as I could, studied its manners, way of life, and customs. Great importance is attached here to outward polish.

The inhabitants ride bicycles. They rarely walk. Bicycles here are a basic necessity. All the roads are paved; one encounters very beautiful and large houses. If one traveled through Poland as an Intourist observer, such a journey might give a very misleading impression of the country. In reality, to an experienced observer who has also learned the other side of Polish life and social organization, a picture opens up that is far from attractive: people wearing sandals and bast shoes in winter; rags — silk, admittedly, elegant, but still rags — in which they are dressed; borscht made only of beetroot and water; the ploughs they use; methods of working the land by hand; an almost childlike level of industry; tiny brickworks and little factories; fat, well-fed owner-landlords and impoverished workers and peasant laborers who barely have enough food to live; huge privately owned stores whose prices make their goods inaccessible to the majority of the Polish population; large gray wooden crosses that so inhospitably open the view of villages at their entrances and exits; wooden houses even in towns. Wooden Poland!...

Kosów Lacki, Sokołów County. I decided to remain here even though the division had gone far ahead.

This is what happened. In the town of Kosów, Mazhenov and I stopped in front of a shop and became interested in its contents. We had no money, and Mazhenov sighed regretfully. A local resident standing nearby, who had heard our conversation, came over and invited us to his home for tea. Mazhenov again said that he would not refuse vodka but did not want tea.

“Vodka is possible too,” the man said, and led us to the apartment.

There they poured us tea and brought two eggs each. But seeing that we would not mind having a drink after all, they put out a half-liter bottle, then another, onions, scrambled eggs, and the feasting began. I drank little, however — four small glasses, I think about 75 grams each.

At the table it turned out that the people who had invited us were Jews who had escaped from a concentration camp, the so-called Treblinka death camp.*

*Treblinka — Nazi concentration camps established in occupied Poland near the village of Treblinka in the Masovian Voivodeship, about 80 km northeast of Warsaw: Treblinka I (“labor camp”) and Treblinka II (death camp).

Tags: 1919, 1944, 20th century, 28, October 28, Vladimir Gelfand, Mikhail Prishvin, diaries, October.

vazart — August 27, 2024

August 27, 1944 — from the diaries

Vladimir Gelfand, age 21, lieutenant in a rifle unit, Moldavia

Events truly outrun the imagination. Yesterday Romania left the war. Today it is already fighting its former “ally,” Germany, and is even sending a delegation to Moscow with assurances that it will place its territory and transport at our disposal and hand over all prisoners... In short, a complete 180-degree reversal of policy. Bulgaria is expelling the Germans from its territory and suddenly declares its complete neutrality.

Our troops are moving ever farther west, destroying and capturing more and more enemy divisions and regiments. Romanian divisions are surrendering without a fight. In France the largest cities — Lyon, part of Paris, T., Bordeaux, and others — are being cleared by patriots, while the Allies seize and clear whole districts and regions of French territory of the enemy. Almost all France is cut up and crisscrossed by the forces of our allies. In different places on French territory, in different corners of the country, the Germans are powerless to do anything to retain their bridgehead. That is how I would now describe the German position in France.

Half of Italy is in Allied hands, and so is Yugoslavia. The situation there is even more catastrophic for the Germans than in France, although Yugoslavia’s importance is incomparably smaller.

From the east our troops have come right up to Prussia, while in the west the Allies have one more powerful thrust ahead of them, and who knows how far they may manage to advance — perhaps even to Berlin! The course of events is difficult to predict now. But one fact is obvious: Stalin’s words that our blow coincided with the blow against the enemy by the forces of our allies are being fulfilled as well as could be imagined. So too are his predictions characterizing Hitler’s allies as very unreliable material for helping our enemies.

I am going to answer letters now.

Along the road past us move endless strings of Bessarabians: carts piled with belongings, black fanciful clothes, storybook hats, and the bare feet of Bessarabia’s inhabitants — all this recalls old pictures from children’s books or school geography textbooks. Gypsies! Pushkin put it well: “Gypsies in a noisy crowd roam through Bessarabia.” But the last words do not fit now — the Bessarabians are returning home.

But the last words do not fit now — the Bessarabians are returning home.

Since yesterday an uninterrupted stream of captured Germans has been moving along the highway. Column after column. Four abreast. Even now their dark mass of evenly moving figures appears gray in the distance. A regiment. No, more — a division, and there is no end in sight to this procession of utterly bankrupt, hateful Fritzes and [continuation missing].

A column of prisoners has just been led to the highway. They walked exhausted, pitiful, frightened. Fritzes are at least tolerable, but... Russians! It is hard to restrain oneself from shouting: our own people — traitors; this is an outrageous phenomenon!

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

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

“Come here,” the senior sergeant called.

When the man stepped out of line, the sergeant said, “Well, hello, fellow countryman!” and with all his strength punched the scoundrel in the face. Blood spurted, and the traitor hurried to hide in the middle of the column. Then the soldiers began abusing and striking the entire tail of the column one after another. From somewhere they found a thick-faced Kalmyk, pulled him out, and began beating him. He rolled like a ball under many fists and feet, and his shirt quickly became stained with blood. It is amazing that he got away on his feet. When he returned to the formation and hid behind a German prisoner, the German in turn struck the scoundrel and pointed to another Kalmyk.

Tags: 1944, 20th century, 27, August 27, Alexander Lesin, Vera Bunina, Vladimir Gelfand, Vsevolod Vishnevsky, Georgy Slavgorodsky, Ivan Bunin, Mikhail Prishvin, August, diaries.

vazart — August 22, 2024

August 22, 1944 — from the diaries

Vladimir Gelfand, age 21, lieutenant in a rifle unit, Moldavia

22.08.1944

The German is furious: all day he has been throwing shells around our ravine. But into the ravine itself — not one! As though it were a forbidden zone for them. Mortar bombs too fly past, leaving behind only an unpleasant hiss. Evidently they have brought shells up to the damned enemy — or perhaps they are firing off the last of them before retreating? God grant it! They say Bendery has fallen and passed into our hands. Indeed, on the left flank and on the opposite bridgehead, fierce fighting has continued for several days in succession, day and night, with “Katyushas” and aircraft taking part. Only here is it relatively quiet.

The Fritz is definitely playing a retreat. That is good, but also bad: the village will suffer — he is mercilessly pounding it with shells on the other side, in Moldavia, but very close to our firing position.

Tags: 1944, 20th century, 22, August 22, Alexander Vitkovsky, Alexander Lesin, Vladimir Gelfand, Vsevolod Vishnevsky, Mikhail Prishvin, August, diaries.

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