My first memory is my brother's birthday: November 14, 1991. I remember my father driving my grandparents and me to the hospital in Highland Park, Illinois. We were going there to see our newborn brother.
I remember how they brought me into the room where my mother was lying, and how I went up to look into the cradle. But what I remember best is what program was on TV at that time. These were the last two minutes of the cartoon Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. I even remember what episode it was.
In the sentimental moments of my life, I feel that I remember my brother's birth because it was the first event that deserves to be remembered. There may be some truth to this: research into early memory demonstrates that memories often begin with significant events, and the birth of a brother is a classic example.
But it's not just the importance of the moment: most people's first memories are around 3.5 years old. At the time of my brother’s birth, I was just that age.
When I talk about the first memory, of course, I mean the first conscious memory.
Carol Peterson, a professor of psychology at Memorial University Newfoundland, has shown that young children can remember events from the age of 20 months, but these memories fade in most cases by the age of 4-7 years.
“We used to think that the reason we don't have early memories is because children don't have a memory system or they just forget things very quickly, but that turns out to be untrue,” Peterson says. – In children good memory, but whether the memories are preserved depends on several factors.”
The two most significant, Peterson explains, are the reinforcement of memories by emotions and their coherence. That is, are the stories that emerge in our memory meaningful? Of course, we can remember not only events, but it is events that most often become the basis for our first memories.
In fact, when I asked developmental psychologist Steven Resnick about the causes of childhood “amnesia,” he disagreed with the term I used. In his opinion, this is an outdated way of looking at things.
Resnick, who works at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, recalled that soon after birth, babies begin to remember faces and respond to familiar people. This is the result of the so-called recognition memory. The ability to understand words and learn to speak depends on random access memory, which is formed by approximately six months. More complex forms of memory develop by the third year of life: for example, semantic memory, which allows you to remember abstract concepts.
"When people say babies don't remember things, they're talking about event memory," Resnick explains. While our ability to remember events that happened to us depends on a more complex “mental infrastructure” than other types of memory.
Context is very important here. To remember an event, a child needs a whole set of concepts. So, in order to remember my brother’s birthday, I had to know what “hospital”, “brother”, “cradle” and even “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends” were.
Moreover, in order for this memory not to be forgotten, it had to be stored in my memory in the same language code that I use now, as an adult. That is, I could have earlier memories, but formed in rudimentary, pre-speech ways. However, as the brain developed, these early memories became inaccessible. And so it is with each of us.
What do we lose when our first memories are erased? For example, I lost an entire country.
My family emigrated to America from England in June 1991, but I have no memories of Chester, the city of my birth. I grew up learning about England from television programs, as well as my parents' cooking habits, accent and language. I knew England as a culture, but not as a place or homeland...
One day, to verify the authenticity of my first memory, I called my father to ask about the details. I was afraid that I had imagined the grandparents' visit, but it turned out that they actually flew in to see their newborn grandson.
My father said that my brother was born in the early evening, not at night, but considering that it was winter and it got dark early, I could have mistaken the evening for night. He also confirmed that there was a bassinet and a television in the room, but he doubted one important detail - that the TV was showing Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends.
True, in this case we can say that this detail naturally etched itself in the memory of a three-year-old child and fell out of the memories of the newborn’s father. It would be very strange to add such a fact years later. False memories do exist, but their construction begins much later in life.
In Peterson's studies, young children were told about supposed events in their lives, but almost all separated reality from fiction. The reason older children and adults begin to patch holes in their memories with made-up details, Peterson explains, is because memories are constructed by our brains and are not simply represented as a string of memories. Memory helps us understand the world, but this requires complete, not fragmentary memories.
I have a memory of an event that chronologically precedes my brother's birth. I vaguely see myself sitting between my parents on a plane flying to America. But this is not a first-person memory, like my memory of visiting the hospital.
Rather, it is a “mental snapshot” from the outside, taken, or better yet, constructed, by my brain. But I wonder what my brain missed important detail: in my memory, my mother is not pregnant, although at that time the belly should have already been noticeable.
It is noteworthy that not only the stories that our brain constructs change our memories, but also vice versa. In 2012, I flew to England to see the city where I was born. Having spent in Chester less than a day, I felt that the city was surprisingly familiar to me. This feeling was elusive, but unmistakable. I was at home!
Was this because Chester occupied an important place in my adult consciousness as a city of birth, or were these feelings triggered by actual pre-speech memories?
According to Reznik, it is probably the latter, since recognition memory is the most stable. In my case, the “memories” of my birth city that I formed as an infant may well have persisted all these years, albeit vaguely.
When people in Chester asked me what a single American was doing in a small English town, I would say, “Actually, that’s where I’m from.”
For the first time in my life, I felt that nothing inside resisted these words. Now I don’t remember if I joked after: “What, it’s not noticeable from my accent?” But over time, I think this detail may become part of my memory. After all, the story looks more interesting this way.
My grandfather passed away this winter at the age of 81. He left behind memoirs, which he wrote since the late 80s. I’m reprinting it slowly, this living history. I don’t know what to do with all this yet, but I will publish something here.
When the war began, my grandfather was 15 years old. Then he studied at a military school, and at the end of the war and then, already in Peaceful time, served in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-NKVD.
Reprinted with minor editing from the manuscript - there may be factual inaccuracies in the names. I didn't check it, I left it as is.
I, Krasnoyartsev Petr Vasilyevich, was born on September 26, 1925, according to the new style, in the village of Izobilnoye, Sol-Iletsk district, Orenburg region.
My mother, Kudrina Maria Vasilievna, born in 1905, died 8-10 hours after giving birth. My father, Krasnoyartsev Vasily Petrovich, born in 1904, in October 1925 was drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, into the 44th Cavalry Regiment of the 2nd Cavalry Division named after. Morozov in Orenburg. I was raised by my grandmothers: Daria Stepanovna Krasnoyartseva and Anisya Alekseevna Kudrina. Until I was one year old, I lived first with one grandmother, then with another, and they fed me cow's milk from a glass horn.
When I was three years old, my father was demobilized from the Red Army. During this period, in the village of Izobilnoye there was a process of dispossession, and after that - the deportation of kulaks to remote areas countries; collectivization began.
My father worked as chairman of the collective farm named after. Tsviling spent more than two years, after which he was again drafted into the same Red Army regiment.
My father married Matryona Ivanovna Donetskova, born in 1908. and went with her to Orenburg, and I stayed with my grandmother in Izobilny.
I spent my childhood from 3 to 7 years old with my mother’s brother, Uncle Pyotr Vasilyevich Kudrin. He taught me to swim, fish, cut talis for weaving and traps, and properly water the garden. I really loved collecting potatoes - Uncle Petya gave me and my friend 10 kopecks for a collected bucket.
In 1932, Uncle Petya brought me to Orenburg to visit my father, we lived on Pushkinskaya Street, and I even went to school for a year kindergarten. Then we moved to live near the Green Bazaar, opposite us there was a hippodrome, and I really loved watching the races.
In 1930, my brother Nikolai was born, but 2 years later he died. In December 1934, my sister Rosa was born.
In 1933 I went to school No. 6 named after. L. Tolstoy. I still remember the first teacher, Maria Davydovna, old and pretty, she spent a lot of effort to attract me to success in my studies. When I went to school, I only knew the letter "O". He really didn’t like reading and dictations, but he really liked mathematics and geography.
In 1936, our 2nd cavalry division was transferred to the city of Pukhovichi, Minsk region.
We moved there with the whole family. In 1939, my brother Gennady was born there.
In September 1939, during the liberation of western Belarus from the Polish occupiers, the division was redeployed to the city of Bialystok, and the regiment in which my father served was located in the town of Suprasl, 10-12 km from Bialystok. Of course, my father’s family also moved there, but my father took me, a 6th grade student, to Minsk, from where I went alone through Moscow to Izobilnoye to finish 6th grade there.
I arrived well. I spent half a day in Moscow, went on a two-hour excursion along the metro, and rode the “wonderful little staircase.” I especially remember the Okhotny Ryad and Mayakovskaya stations back then. In the evening I took a train to Sol-Iletsk, where I was greeted by 30-degree frosts, and from there I rode on horseback to Izobilnoye.
In 1940 I graduated from the 6th grade, and in August my father came to pick me up to take me to Suprasl. There, in 1941, I graduated from 7th grade, and there the Great Patriotic War found us...
My brother Vladimir was born in Suprasly. In the spring of 1941, my father was transferred to a new duty station in Zambrovo, not far from the town of Longzha. My father held the rank of captain, he commanded the 13th tank border detachment. Having received an apartment, on June 21, 1941, he came to pick us up in Suprasl to take us to Zambrovo. Soldiers from the neighboring unit, where my father had previously served, loaded our belongings and furniture into the car. In the evening we had dinner with the unit commander, Colonel Sobakin - I remember he had only one son, Eric, a fifth-grader. We had dinner, said goodbye to them and went to rest so that we could go to Zambrovo early tomorrow morning.
At 4.30 am on June 22, 1941, we were awakened by soldiers. My father told my mother that we had to go quickly, the Germans were bombing Bialystok, then he gave me 10 rubles and told me to buy bread. The store was in our barracks, I knocked on Aunt Dora, the saleswoman, she led me through her apartment to the store, and I bought two loaves from her white bread and twenty French buns. When I brought all this home, my father and mother slightly scolded me - why did I buy so much bread, but then this bread saved us from hunger during the evacuation.
At about 5 am we left for Zambrovo. We got to Bialystok, they didn’t let us in, and we took a detour to the highway to Lomza. The Germans are advancing on it, and we are driving straight into their clutches, women and children are running towards us, there are also men, everyone is scolding us: “Where are you going?!” On the way, we were shot at 2-3 times from an airplane, on the side of the road we saw a damaged car, there the driver and father filled our car with gasoline, and we drove further to the west.
After some time, we saw a burning village ahead, explosions were heard, and people were running towards us, especially a lot of people of Jewish nationality. Somebody caught up with us war machine, her father stopped her, talked to the major who was sitting in it, then quickly ran up to us, hugged and kissed us, gave my mother money for the journey and told us to go to Bialystok, and from there home, to our homeland in the Orenburg region, the village of Izobilnoye.
He himself quickly got into the major’s car, and they drove to where the village was burning, where people were fleeing, into the very heat.
My father went missing, I think he died almost immediately after we parted.
By the middle of the day, we drove up to the freight station in Bialystok in a car loaded with our things. It was impossible to approach the trains on which people were evacuated. There was terrible panic. There was a rumor that in an hour the Germans would be in Bialystok. Everyone was running, shouting, waiting for evacuation trains.
After some time, a train of freight cars arrived, I heard screaming and swearing, it was impossible to approach the cars to board, there were several thousand people, and these forty cars were just a minuscule amount for all the refugees located on the platform and next to it...
I don’t know and don’t remember how I crawled under the platform; it was a little more than a meter high. I crawled under the train and saw a carriage with a ladder and open door, and there is no one in it. Two or three minutes - and I was already standing by our car, telling my mother and the driver, Uncle Kolya, that I had seen an empty carriage.
I was worried about only one thing - how would mom and brother Vova get under the platform? But everything worked out, and very quickly, in a hurry, the mother took two down pillows, a blanket and two bags of bread and groceries. We quickly crawled under the platform, then under the train, climbed into the carriage and sat down on a table in the corner. Then the door opened, about 30 people, mostly women and children, poured in, under the pressure of the crowd they fell to the floor, at that moment the train started moving. I saw how a man and a woman fell between the platform and the carriage, and the train was picking up speed, the cry for help was drowned out by the roar of the train and the noise in the carriage...
Later we were informed that shortly after our departure Bialystok was in the hands of the Nazis.
We were driving towards the city of Baranovichi. On the way, at night and during the day, we were fired upon several times from Henkel-13 aircraft. When the shelling was underway, the train stopped, many ran out of the train... They were shot at. This happened several times a day.
When we passed Baranovichi, I saw a night battle, I saw how our searchlights targeted a fascist plane, how they fired tracer bullets at this plane - and past... I was very disappointed by what I saw, recently I watched the film “If Tomorrow is War” and could not believe it that our Voroshilov riflemen smeared.
The night was very alarming, our train was often fired upon, glowing missiles were thrown over us, one enemy plane riddled several last cars– I saw in the morning how the bodies of the dead and many wounded were taken out from there. Our carriage was in the middle, we were lucky.
Our train with evacuees was approaching Minsk. There I saw how two of our fighters landed a fascist plane on a field. Everyone who saw it was very happy about it. Minsk was burning, nothing was visible - everything was in smoke, the people sitting in the carriages were frowning, neither the sun nor the sky was visible.
When we approached Smolensk, we were again fired upon from planes, and again people were running into the forest, they were being shot at, and it was not at all clear to me, a 15-year-old boy, how the Germans could bomb Smolensk, be here, near Smolensk, everything was spinning and it was spinning in my head - how, why did we, our country, get into such a whirlpool?
From Smolensk we were sent south of Moscow; Moscow was busy with defensive work and had no time for us. We were taken to Saratov. And only the day before arriving in Saratov they stopped shelling us. It’s good that not a single bomb was dropped on our train, otherwise there would have been great casualties.
Before Saratov, at the stations we were given bread, pasta, tea - it was a big joy For people who did not see bread for two weeks, people suffered from hunger and were sick. There was also not enough water.
Around July 5-6, our train arrived at Altata station, a few kilometers beyond the city of Engels, Saratov region. There, all the people were registered, divided into groups and sent to villages and hamlets to work on collective and state farms. Our family (5 people - mother, me, Rosa, brothers Gennady and Vladimir) bought a ticket to the Tsvilinga station in the Sol-Iletsk district. From there it is 10 km to Izobilny. They gave us food for the road.
My father, when I bought bread early in the morning of June 22, scolded me - they say he bought a lot, in 3 hours we will already be at our new place of residence. And this bread saved us from hunger on the road. Mom divided the bread between us, for the first 2-3 days we had a little more butter. Then there was only granulated sugar left - we ate that too a week later, and then we only ate buns with water, which I got at stops. There was an incident at the Sukhinichi station, which we passed through. The train stopped, we were told that it would stop for three hours. Mom gave me money and I ran to the station to buy something to eat, it was about 3 o’clock in the morning.
When I found a canteen there, I bought pasta and ten cutlets, all of which I had in a large dish. How my heart rejoiced that now I would feed everyone with cutlets! Alas. When I approached the tracks, our train was not there; it left for another station - Sukhinichi-2, a distance of 7-8 km. I and other stragglers were told that he would stand there for 3-4 hours. Everyone rushed to run along the rails.
Barefoot, in a coat but without a hat, with a dish containing cutlets and pasta, I ran along the rails to Sukhinichi-2. A lot of people stayed behind, mostly women, old people and children. Dawn has begun. We did not reach a couple of hundred meters to the railway bridge over a small river - we were stopped by guards. “Stop! Back!" - they shouted, but the crowd pressed on. Then they fired two warning shots, everyone stopped and then turned towards a simple wooden bridge, along which they wanted to go around the railway. When we reached the bridge, we saw piles; on some of them lay a long log, stapled to the piles. We started the transition, the first ones walked carefully so as not to shake the log, about 20 people walked through normally, then some began to fall into the river. Many, including me with pasta and cutlets, moved while sitting. Some got across by swimming.
When I found my carriage, my mother cried a lot, called me the savior of our family, gave my sister and brother cutlets... They last days felt that they were full. Joy and happiness were on my mother’s face, tears flowed from her eyes. An hour later we drove further, east.
There was also a funny episode: on the way home in Uralsk, I met a girl, Taya, with whom I went to school in the city of Pukhovichi... She also evacuated with her family.
At the Tsvilinga station, where we finally arrived, my mother’s sister and brother lived, we stayed with them. In the morning I walked to Izobilnoye. Grandma hugged me and cried, not believing that we returned from Belarus safe and sound...
Grandmother was 8 years old when the war began, they were terribly hungry, the main thing was to feed the soldiers, and only then everyone else, and then one day she heard the women talking that the soldiers give food if you give it to them, but she didn’t understand what to give them. , came to the dining room, stood there roaring, an officer came out and asked why the girl was crying, she recounted what she heard, and he neighed and brought her a whole can of porridge. This is how grandma fed her four brothers and sisters.
My grandfather was a captain motorized rifle regiment. It was 1942, the Germans besieged Leningrad. Hunger, disease and death. The only way to deliver supplies to Leningrad is the “road of life” - frozen Lake Ladoga. Late at night, a column of trucks with flour and medicine, led by my grandfather, headed along the road of life. Of the 35 cars, only 3 made it to Leningrad, the rest went under the ice, like my grandfather’s truck. He carried the saved sack of flour on foot for 6 km to the city, but did not make it - he was frozen because of his wet clothes at -30.
My grandmother’s friend’s father died in the war when she was not even a year old. When the soldiers began to return from the war, every day she put on her most Nice dress and went to the station to meet the trains. The girl said that she was going to look for her dad. She ran among the crowd, approached the soldiers, and asked: “Will you be my dad?” One man took her hand, said: “well, lead the way,” and she brought him home and with her mother and brothers they lived a long and happy life.
My great-grandmother was 12 years old when the siege of Leningrad began, where she lived. She studied at a music school and played the piano. She fiercely defended her instrument and did not allow it to be dismantled for firewood. When the shelling began, and there was no time to go to the bomb shelter, she would sit down and play, loudly, for the whole house to hear. People listened to her music and were not distracted by gunfire. My grandmother, mother and I play the piano. When I was too lazy to play, I remembered my great-grandmother and sat down at the instrument.
My grandfather was a border guard; in the summer of 1941 he served somewhere on the border with what is now Moldova, and accordingly, he began to fight from the very first days. He never really talked about the war, because the border troops were part of the NKVD department - it was impossible to tell anything. But we did hear one story. During the forced breakthrough of the Nazis to Baku, my grandfather’s platoon was thrown to the rear of the Germans. The guys quickly found themselves surrounded in the mountains. They had to get out within 2 weeks, only a few survived, including the grandfather. The soldiers came to our front exhausted and mad with hunger. The orderly ran to the village and got there a bag of potatoes and several loaves of bread. The potatoes were boiled and the hungry soldiers greedily attacked the food. My grandfather, who survived the famine of 1933 as a child, tried to stop his colleagues as best he could. He himself ate a crust of bread and some potato peelings. An hour and a half later, all of my grandfather’s colleagues who had gone through the hell of encirclement, including the platoon commander and the unfortunate orderly, died in terrible agony from volvulus. Only the grandfather survived. He went through the entire war, was wounded twice and died in 87 from a cerebral hemorrhage - he bent down to fold the cot on which he slept in the hospital, because he wanted to run away and look at his newborn granddaughter, and then at me.
During the war, my grandmother was very young, she lived with her older brother and mother, her father left before the girl was born. There was a terrible famine, and the great-grandmother became too weak; she lay on the stove for many days and was slowly dying. She was saved by her sister, who had previously lived far away. She soaked some bread in a drop of milk and gave it to her grandmother to chew. Little by little my sister came out. So my grandparents were not left orphans. And grandfather, a smart guy, began to hunt gophers in order to somehow feed his family. He took a couple of buckets of water, went to the steppe, and poured water into the gopher holes until the frightened animal jumped out. The grandfather grabbed him and killed him instantly so that he would not run away. He carried home as many as he found, and they were fried, and the grandmother says that it was a real feast, and his brother’s spoils helped them survive. Grandfather is no longer alive, but grandmother lives and waits for her many grandchildren to visit every summer. She cooks perfectly, a lot, generously, and she herself takes a piece of bread with a tomato and eats it after everyone else. So I got used to eating little by little, simply and irregularly. And he feeds his family to the fullest. Thanks her. She experienced something that makes the heart freeze, and raised a large, glorious family.
My great-grandfather was drafted in 1942. He went through the war, was wounded, and returned as a Hero. Soviet Union. On his way home after the end of the war, he stood at the station where a train full of children arrived different ages. There were also greeters - parents. Only there were only a few parents, and many times more children. Almost all of them were orphans. They got off the train and, not finding their mom and dad, started crying. My great-grandfather cried with them. The first and only time during the entire war.
My great-grandfather went to the front in one of the first departures from our city. My great-grandmother was pregnant with her second child - my grandmother. In one of his letters, he indicated that he was walking in a circle through our city (by that time my grandmother was born). A neighbor, who was 14 years old at that time, found out about this, she took the 3-month-old grandmother and took her to show my great-grandfather, he cried with happiness at the moment when he held her in his arms. It was 1941. He never saw her again. He died on May 6, 1945 in Berlin and was buried there.
My grandfather, a 10-year-old boy, was vacationing in a children's camp in June 1941. The shift was until July 1, on June 22 they were not told anything, they were not sent home, and so the children were given another 9 days of peaceful childhood. All radios were removed from the camp, no news. This is also courage, as if nothing had happened, to continue the detachment’s activities with the children. I can imagine how the counselors cried at night and whispered news to each other.
My great-grandfather went through two wars. During the First World War he was an ordinary soldier, after the war he went to receive military education. I learned. During the Great Patriotic War, he participated in two significant and large-scale battles. At the end of the war he commanded a division. There were injuries, but he returned back to the front line. Many awards and thanks. The worst thing is that he was killed not by enemies of the country and people, but by simple hooligans who wanted to steal his awards.
Today my husband and I finished watching The Young Guard. I sit on the balcony, look at the stars, listen to the nightingales. How many young boys and girls never lived to see victory. We never saw life. My husband and daughter are sleeping in the room. What a blessing it is to know that your loved ones are at home! Today is May 9, 2016. Main holiday peoples former USSR. We are living free people thanks to those who lived during the war. Who was at the front and in the rear. God forbid we never find out what it was like for our grandfathers.
My grandfather lived in a village, so he had a dog. When the war began, his father was sent to the front, and his mother, two sisters and he were left alone. Due to severe hunger, they wanted to kill the dog and eat it. Grandfather, when he was little, untied the dog from the kennel and let him run, for which he received it from his mother (my great-grandmother). In the evening of the same day, the dog brought them a dead cat, and then began to drag the bones and bury them, and the grandfather dug them up and carried them home (they cooked soup on these bones). We lived like this until we were 43, thanks to the dog, and then she simply didn’t return home.
The most memorable story from my grandmother was about her work in a military hospital. When their Nazis died, they couldn’t get them and the girls out of the rooms from the second floor to the corpse truck... they simply threw the corpses out of the window. Subsequently, they were court-martialed for this.
A neighbor, a WWII veteran, spent the entire war in the infantry until Berlin. One morning we were smoking near the entrance and started talking. He was struck by the phrase - in the movies they show about the war - soldiers are running - they shout hurray at the top of their lungs... - this is fantasy. We, he says, always went on the attack in silence, because it was scary as fuck.
During the war, my great-grandmother worked in a shoe workshop, she was caught in a blockade, and in order to somehow feed her family she stole laces, at that time they were made from pig skin, she brought them home, cut them into small pieces equally, and fried them, so and survived.
Grandmother was born in 1940, and the war left her an orphan. A great-grandmother drowned in a well while collecting rose hips for her daughter. Great-grandfather went through the entire war and reached Berlin. He died when he was blown up by an abandoned mine while returning home. All that was left of him was his memory and the Order of the Red Star. My grandmother kept it for over thirty years until it was stolen (she knew who, but couldn’t prove it). I still can’t understand how people raised their hand. I know these people; I studied in the same class with their great-granddaughter and were friends. How interesting life has turned out.
When he was little, he often sat on his grandfather's lap. He had a scar on his wrist, which I touched and examined. These were teeth marks. Years later, my father told the story of the scar. My grandfather, a veteran, went into reconnaissance, Smolensk region they encountered the sss. After close combat, only one of the enemies remained alive. He was huge and swearing. SS-man, in a rage, bit his grandfather's wrist to the meat, but was broken and captured. Grandfather and the company were presented with another award.
My great-grandfather has been gray-haired since he was 19 years old. As soon as the war began, he was immediately drafted without being allowed to finish his studies. He said that they were going at the Germans, but it didn’t work out as they wanted, the Germans were ahead. Everyone was shot, and grandfather decided to hide under the trolley. Sent German Shepherd, sniff everything, grandfather thought that everyone would see and kill. But no, the dog simply sniffed it and licked it while running away. That's why we have 3 shepherd dogs at home)
My grandmother was 13 years old when she was wounded in the back by shrapnel during a bombing. There were no doctors in the village - everyone was on the battlefield. When the Germans entered the village, their military doctor, having learned about a girl who could no longer walk or sit, secretly made his way into her grandmother’s house at night, made bandages, and picked out worms from the wound (it was hot, there were a lot of flies). To distract the girl, the guy asked: “Zoinka, sing Katusha.” And she cried and sang. The war passed, my grandmother survived, but all her life she remembered the guy thanks to whom she remained alive.
My grandmother told me that during the war, my great-great-grandmother worked at a factory; at that time they made sure that no one stole and were very harshly punished for it. And in order to somehow feed their children, women put on two pairs of tights and stuffed grain between them. Or, for example, one distracts the guards while the children are taken to the workshop where the butter is churned, they catch small pieces and feed them. All three of my great-great-grandmother's children survived that period, and her son no longer eats butter.
My great-grandmother was 16 when they came German troops to Belarus. They were examined by doctors to be sent to the camps to work. Then the girls smeared themselves with grass, which caused a rash similar to smallpox. When the doctor examined the great-grandmother, he realized that she was healthy, but he told the soldiers that she was sick, and the Germans were terribly afraid of such people. As a result, this German doctor saved many people. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be in the world.
Great-grandfather never shared stories about the war with his family. He went through it from beginning to end, was shell-shocked, but never talked about those terrible times. Now he is 90 and more and more often he remembers that terrible life. He doesn’t remember the names of his relatives, but he remembers where and how Leningrad was shelled. And he still has old habits. There is always all the food in the house huge quantities, what if there is hunger? The doors are locked with several locks - for peace of mind. And there are 3 blankets in the bed, although the house is warm. Watches films about war with an indifferent look..
My great-grandfather fought near Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). And during one of the shootouts, shrapnel hit him in the eyes, causing him to instantly go blind. As soon as the shots stopped being heard, I began to look for the voice of the sergeant major whose leg had been blown off. The grandfather found the foreman and took him in his arms. So they went. The blind grandfather followed the commands of the one-legged foreman. Both survived. My grandfather even saw me after the operations.
When the war began, my grandfather was 17 years old, and according to the law of war, he had to arrive at the military registration and enlistment office on the day of his majority to be sent to active army. But it turned out that when he received the summons, he and his mother moved, and he did not receive the summons. He came to the military registration and enlistment office the next day, for a day of delay he was sent to a penal battalion, and their squad was sent to Leningrad, it was cannon fodder, those whom you don’t mind sending into battle first without weapons. As an 18-year-old boy, he found himself in hell, but he went through the entire war, was never wounded, the only thing his relatives did not know was whether he was alive or not, there was no right of correspondence. He reached Berlin and returned home a year after the war, since he still served in active service. His birth mother Having met him on the street, she didn’t recognize him 5.5 years later, and fainted when he called her mom. And he cried like a boy, saying “Mom, it’s me Vanya, your Vanya”
At the age of 16, my great-grandfather, in May 1941, having added 2 years to himself to get a job, got a job in Ukraine in the city of Krivoy Rog at a mine. In June, when the war began, he was mobilized into the army. Their company was immediately surrounded and captured. They were forced to dig a ditch, where they were shot and covered with earth. The great-grandfather woke up, realized that he was alive, crawled upstairs, shouting “Is anyone alive?” Two responded. Three got out, crawled to some village, where a woman found them and hid them in her cellar. During the day they hid, and at night they worked in her field, harvesting corn. But one neighbor saw them and handed them over to the Germans. They came for them and took them captive. This is how my great-grandfather ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp. After some time, due to the fact that his great-grandfather was a young, healthy peasant guy, from this camp he was transported to a concentration camp in West Germany, where he worked in the fields of the local rich, and then as a civilian. In 1945, during a bombing, he was locked in one house, where he sat the whole day until the American allies entered the city. When he came out, he saw that all the buildings in the area were destroyed, only the house where he was was left intact. The Americans offered all the prisoners to go to America, some agreed, and the great-grandfather and the rest decided to return to their homeland. They returned on foot to the USSR for 3 months, passing through all of Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. In the USSR, their military had already taken them prisoner and wanted to shoot them as traitors to the Motherland, but then the war with Japan began and they were sent there to fight. So my great-grandfather fought in Japanese war and returned home after graduating in 1949. I can say with confidence that my great-grandfather was born wearing a shirt. He escaped death three times and went through two wars.
The grandmother said that her father served in the war, saved the commander, carried him on his back through the entire forest, listened to his heartbeat, when he brought him, he saw that the commander’s entire back was like a sieve, but he only heard his own heart.
I have been doing search work for several years. Groups of searchers searched for unmarked graves in forests, swamps, and battlefields. I still can’t forget this feeling of happiness if there were medallions among the remains. In addition to personal data, many soldiers put notes in the medallions. Some were written literally moments before death. I still remember, word for word, a line from one such letter: “Mom, tell Slavka and Mitya to crush the Germans! I can’t live anymore, so let them try for three.”
My great-grandfather spent his entire life telling his grandson stories about how afraid he was during the war. How afraid I was, sitting in a tank together with a younger comrade, to go to 3 German tank and destroy them all. How afraid I was to crawl across the field under plane fire in order to restore contact with the command. How afraid I was to lead a detachment of very young guys in order to blow up a German bunker. He said: "Horror lived in me 5 terrible years. Every moment I feared for my life, for the lives of my children, for the life of my Motherland. Anyone who says he wasn’t afraid will be lying." So, living in constant fear, my great-grandfather went through the entire war. Fearing, he reached Berlin. He received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and, despite what he experienced, remained a wonderful, incredibly kind and sympathetic person.
Great-grandfather was, one might say, the caretaker in his unit. Somehow we were transported in a convoy of cars to a new place and found ourselves surrounded by Germans. There is nowhere to run, only the river. So the grandfather grabbed the porridge pot from the car and, holding on to it, swam to the other shore. No one else from his unit survived.
During the years of war and famine, my great-grandmother briefly went outside to buy bread. And she left her daughter (my grandmother) at home alone. She was at most five years old at the time. So, if the great-grandmother had not returned a few minutes earlier, her child could have been eaten by the neighbors.
P. N. Pertsov. Memories.The life story of a Russian entrepreneur who built a famous house in Moscow. Pyotr Nikolaevich was born into a poor noble family. But he chose to work in a promising field - railways. Memories start from childhood happy years on a small estate in the province, then a gymnasium, the Institute of Railways, work on state-owned railways. A small salary and difficulties in promotion force after a while to move into the commercial sphere. And things went well. Railways are developing, incomes are growing. There are lengthy passages in the book listing all sorts of business relationships. But interestingly, Pertsov did not engage in any corruption or kickbacks in his business; he won competitions due to his low price or good reputation. Although he mentions that there were crooks. Pertsov also experienced the revolution in business relations. This distinguishes him: no matter what problem appears, it must be solved according to the circumstances.
Nina Anosova. The light is still bright.
The book is of interest as a description of childhood at the beginning of the twentieth century. The author grew up in a “middle class” family, where there were good times and big earnings for her stepfather, and there were also times without work, forced to save money. In St. Petersburg, the girl goes to kindergarten, but it is expensive, at a private gymnasium. Elder sister gets into a good institute, which Empress Maria Feodorovna visits. Interesting description summer trips to relatives. A gymnasium in Mariupol, where the family is forced to move in search of work. Revolution and Civil War in the south of Russia. It’s very tragic how connections with relatives and friends are lost. People are running away from the war, wandering, hiding, and nothing is known - what happened to their beloved aunt or best friend. At the end of the book, the author, a fifteen-year-old girl, feels responsible for the fate of the family. We have to give up hope for the best and go abroad. 
Olga Lodyzhenskaya. Contemporaries of the difficult century.
The author was born at the turn of the twentieth century into a poor noble family. My father died early, my mother rented apartments. The inheritance from my grandfather is an old manor in need of renovation. Relatives paid for Olga and her sister to study at a women's institute in Moscow. Perhaps the dreary atmosphere there, the tedious rules, created in the girls, as they say now, a “protest mood.” Both girls and their mother, still a young woman, met the revolution loyally and even began to support the Bolsheviks. In the Moscow region, where they lived, there were no horrors of the revolution. And the Bolsheviks they met were neutral, even fair. The family left the estate voluntarily because they did not want to work agriculture. Soon the girls get jobs in Soviet institutions, and then mom does too. They are interested new life. And they decide to go with the Red Army to help establish Soviet power. The memoirs end in 1927. “Then it only got worse,” writes the author. 
Here's something else that's interesting. I should have held a grudge against Guarino for deceiving me, Rosa and Matt. But I remember him with gratitude. He was always kind to me. A smile, a friendly pat on the back, an encouraging word - everything that I received so rarely. He treated me, even then, as a rational being.
Maybe it smacks of ingratitude, but what really angers me is the treatment of me as a guinea pig. Nemur's constant reminders that he made me who I am, or that one day thousands of idiots will become real people.
How can I make him understand that he did not create me? Nemur makes the same mistake as people who make fun of an underdeveloped person, not realizing that he experiences the same feelings as them. He has no idea that long before I met him I was already a person.
I'm learning to hold back my resentment, be more patient, and wait. I'm growing. Every day I learn something new about myself, and memories that start with a small ripple overwhelm me with a ten-force storm.
June 11.
Misunderstandings began as soon as we arrived at the Chalmerm Hotel in Chicago and discovered that our rooms would not be available until tomorrow evening and we would have to spend the night at the nearby Independence Hotel. Nemours was beside himself. He took this as a personal insult and quarreled with everyone - from the bellhop to the manager. He waited in the foyer while each of them in turn went to a higher rank, in the hope that he would decide tricky question.
We stood in the midst of all this confusion - heaps of luggage dumped in disorder, porters with carts flying at breakneck speed, symposium participants who had not seen each other for a whole year and now greeted each other with feeling - and with embarrassment growing every minute, we watched as Nemours yelled at the representatives International Association psychologists.
Finally it became clear that nothing could be done and the hopelessness of our situation dawned on Nemours. It so happened that most of the young participants stopped at Independence. Many of them had heard about Nemours' experiment and knew who I was. Wherever we went, someone would sit on the side and begin to ask my opinion on a variety of things - from a new tax to archaeological finds in Finland. It was a direct challenge, but my knowledge base allowed me to freely discuss almost any problem. However, I soon noticed that with every question addressed to me, Nemours’s face became more and more gloomy. Therefore, when a nice young doctor from Falmouth College asked how I could explain the cause of my mental retardation, I said that no one could answer this question better than Professor Nemours.
Having waited for the moment to show himself, Nemur, for the first time in the entire time of our acquaintance, deigned to put his hand on my shoulder.
It is impossible to say with certainty what causes this type of phenylketonuria - an unusual biochemical or genetic situation, ionizing radiation, natural radioactivity or viral attack on the embryo. The important thing is that the result was a defective gene that produces ... let's call it a “wandering enzyme” that stimulates defective biochemical reactions. The resulting new amino acids compete with normal enzymes, causing brain damage.
The girl frowned. She was not expecting a lecture, but Nemours had already seized the lectern and hastened to develop his thought:
I call this “competitive enzyme inhibition.” For example, imagine that the enzyme produced by the defective gene is a key that can be inserted into the lock of the central nervous system, but which is not turns in him. Consequently, the real key - the required enzyme - can no longer penetrate the lock. Result? Irreversible damage to brain tissue protein.
But if it is irreversible,” one of the psychologists who joined the audience intervened in the conversation, “how was Mr. Gordon’s cure possible?
“Ah,” Nemours cooed, “I said that tissue destruction is irreversible, but not the process itself.” Many scientists have already managed to reverse it by injecting substances that react with defective enzymes, changing, so to speak, the molecular bit of the key. This principle is fundamental in our methodology. But first we remove the damaged areas of the brain and force the transplanted brain tissue to synthesize protein at a high rate...
Just a minute, professor,” I interrupted him in the middle high note. - What can you say about Rahajamati’s work on this topic?
Who? - he asked again incomprehensibly.
Rahajamati. In it he criticizes Tanida's theory - the concept of change chemical structure enzymes that block metabolism.
Nemur frowned:
Where was the article translated?
It hasn't been translated yet. I read it in the Indian Journal of Psychopathology a few days ago.
Nemur looked around at those present and tried to wave me off:
This article should not be given too much of great importance. Our results speak for themselves.
But Tanida himself proposed the theory of blocking the wandering enzyme by recombination, and now claims that ...
Well, well, Charlie. Just because a person was the first to propose a theory does not mean that the last word will forever remain his, especially in its experimental development. I think everyone will agree that the research carried out in the USA and England is far superior to the Indian and Japanese work. We have the best laboratories and best equipment in the world.
But this cannot refute Rahajamati’s assertions that...
Now is not the time to go into this. I am sure that this issue will be discussed in detail here.
Nemur started talking to some old acquaintance and completely disconnected from me. Amazing. I took Strauss aside and bombarded him with questions:
What do you say? You always said that I was too sensitive for him. Why was he so offended?
You made him feel superior, and he can't stand it.
No seriously. Tell me the truth.
Charlie, it's time for you to stop suspecting everyone of wanting to laugh at you. Nemur knows nothing about these articles because he has not read them.
Doesn't he know Hindi and Japanese? Can't be!
Not everyone has such aptitude for languages. how about you.
Then how can he deny Rahajamati's conclusions and brush aside Tanida's doubts about the reliability of control methods? He should know...
“Wait,” Strauss said thoughtfully. - These must be very recent works. They haven't been translated yet.
Are you saying you didn't read them either?
He shrugged:
I'm probably even a worse linguist than he is. True, I am sure that before publishing the final article, Nemours will carefully comb through all the journals.
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