Not for the sake of glory

The folk history of war is collected by crumbs

More than in human powers. Why was an exorbitant price paid for the victory? Honestly, this question will answer, we must hope, already the next generation. The New Times asked what they write, today's schoolchildren know about the war

For 10 years now, the Memorial Society has been holding a competition of school works: “A person in history. Russia is the XX century. " Over the years, almost 60 thousand children took part in it. A good half - from villages, villages, small towns. Children write about the history of their native places, their family, about human destinies. A lot of works about the war - rear, front, occupation. Teenagers interview those latter who still remember the war, by whom it is all caterpillars - both German and Soviet - swept. These are mostly village residents with three to four classes of education: their memories are the non-parade side of the war. The war that all these decades tried to forget about. Another five years - and there will be no one to record, so children in the full sense of the word do a matter of state importance. This is what remained in the memory of the old women and the elderly who lived and survived in those terrible years.

From the work of students of the 10th grade Maxim Stolbovsky and Vasily Khrutskiy, pos. Matveev Kurgan, Rostov Region, 2004 We dug trenches at night, where the old bridge. It was scary, the Germans fired strongly. So we cunning - we’ll dig a knee, sit down, as if a deep trench was dug up, they will let us go.

Maria Yakovlevna Bobkova

They (soldiers) had to steal from the inhabitants. So, at night, without asking, we took our cow, stabed it and brought my mother to cook meat. Mom guessed, asked them about it. They are silent. Mom is silent, with tears in her eyes, cooks food for them.

Antonina Grigoryevna Shelkovnikova

In May 1942, we were taken to Kizeterenka. The Cossacks took us poorly there, did not feed us, said: "Stalin brought you, Stalin and take it away." We had in mind in the cemetery that we were making everything from hunger.

Nadezhda Ivanovna Panchenko

When our sailors beat on the shore, my friend and I were six or seven years old) were driving on the cars of the dead in the cemetery. We find where in the village or behind the dead river, we plunge into a wheelbarrow - first we load your head, then our legs - and we carry it to the cemetery. In one flight they gave a ruble ... They could earn five to seven rubles per day, a quarter of a bun of bread.

Nikolai Ivanovich Bondarenko

Vara Bondarenko secretly came to his grandmother, the priest (1943), darted all of us at her house. There were so many children that it was crowded. The windows were curtained so that no one would recognize an outsider.

Lyubov Korneevna Avdeenko

From the work of students in the 9th grade Alena Manushina and Victoria Pasveraeva, the village of Ples, the Penza region, 2009 You would have seen how I went into battle. With her eyes closed, so as not to run away from fear, and roared when she dragged the wounded man on herself, and even scolded him that she was so heavy.

Antonina Nikitichna Manushina

Shura-Muras twisted the older women, the girls, and we, were even ordered to even meddle with camp workers (in the village during the war). We understood them, almost everything remained without men in families.

A.N. Manushin

From the work of a 10th grade student of Alexandra Ivanova, G. Porkhov, Pskov region, 2009 I did not go to the detachment. Our local partisans were afraid more than the Germans-fascists. The commander of the Rachkov detachment mocked the girls, and everyone knew about it. And then these girls were sent by pregnant women by plane to the Great Earth, and then they did not return to their parents. So even ordinary partisans did not, and the partisan commanders were all allowed.

Evdokia Grigoryevna Egorova

From the guys, everyone received gifts except me. My father died in the war, which was preferred not to remember, Belofinskaya. In my 12 I was quite an adult, but resentment was so strong that, having left the holiday, I cried.

Anatoly Petrovich Ivanov - About the first school tree after the war

From the work of a 9th grade student, Alena Grishkina, the village of Startyla, Mordovia, 2009 They worked instead of horses. All legs were erased. The women used to look around - no one is visible. A handful of ash will be collected from the road and under the hem. Here you have a puffing and your gaskets.

Maria Epifanovna Lyukshina

From the work of a 8th grade student, Alexei Gubanova and a student of the 10th grade of Anastasia Petrova-about the father and son of Petrov, Novocherkassk, 2009 Fragments of the diary

Boris Petrovich Petrov

All the corpses of the Germans are stripped. Boys run with sticks and beat off the frozen genital organs. I give the team immediately gather all the inhabitants. “Now the Germans will knock us out. They will see everything. They will burn you and destroy you. Immediately bury everyone to one. ”

Turned out to be the will of fate surrounded ... The Germans threw leaflets, give up, you will have an apartment, a hut. We walked at night, slept during the day. I will wake up, count, ten people fled. Let's go another day, I will count, fifteen people fled. And so all the time.

He jumps out, well, part rises after him, run, they beat them, rises the second time less. The lieutenant in impotence begins to raise according to the instructions, threatening the execution. And then they take it and shoot him, kill him. They were shot, these shoes-jumpers, as their fines called.

“Well, Borya! What are your iron? " And a reward follows. Of course, unfair. And when who was awarded fairly? But my conscience was clean: where I was injured, where I really deserved a reward, it passed me.

Remembering

Yuri Borisovich Petrov

Why is Russian soldier considered the most daring, resourceful, decisive, etc. worldwide? The answer is quite simple with all the complexity of the question. A well -fed, well -secured, having competent commanders will never fight well. He will be sorry to part with life, he is pampered, etc.

And where did the Germans get such dislike for cats? I don’t know why they did not like cats, maybe this is due to the ideology of Nazism, but they did not like dogs, of different sledges, they shot them.

“Uncle, uncle, there, in the basement, the Germans,” and they remained specially to give up so as not to fight. They come out: "Lenin, communism, company front." And one fool, a machine gunner, was found and with us how to shoot them from the machine gun. More than 30 people.

Once a week, on Fridays, officers' officers were given a free dinner in the officer dining room: soup made of several grains of barley cereals, a spoonful of the same porridge and a glass of muddy sweet water. I also fed there. And one day the waitress comes up and asks: “Are you Petrov? No longer come to dinner! " I thought because of pampering. I began to ask: "I will not be anymore!" - “No, you are all spoiled. You are not supposed to, because Your dad was killed. ” (The funeral was sent erroneously.) “Dad! You have already drank a lot! " - "And what?" - "Yes, die!" He thought and said: “You know, it seems to me that I am alien to live.”