Memoirs of Stalingrad Witnesses

These men and women were witnesses of the battle of Stalingrad. This man witnesses first-hand the chaos and destruction of the war Nickolay Tyukineyev: The houses of the local residents, villages everything was devastated and ruined by bombs. Sometimes we would crawl or dig through the ruins and see a small boy. We would pull him out and he would be crying because he had lost his mother and had to stay and sleep right there, in the ruins. We would feed those children and sometimes even find a uniform to dress them and look, you've got a soldier! One of those boys was killed. Our driver took that boy everywhere with him on his truck. One day the truck came under fire and both, the driver and our Vanya were killed. But another of such boys stayed alive, for example. And up to this day, we meet at our veterans' meetings. The enemy was arrogant in the way they pressed and pushed forward. Sometimes, the Germans threw leaflets from the air, trying to persuade us to surrender. One leaflet said: Stalins son has surrendered. We are treating him well. Now under a new regulation and we are treating all prisoners of war well. A pack of those leaflets fell down from a plane right behind me. Had it landed on me, I would have already been dead. A huge pile of leaflets as big as a bag landed and fell apart. The company commander came up to me and ordered me to collect all the leaflets in a ground sheet, take them away and burn them. I still remember how I burnt them. Just one thing dont read them! my commander said. But how could I not read them if they were on the ground, right in front of me and I could see the text even without taking them into my hands. So I read everything that was written there, but was left unaffected.

On August 23, 1942, when the bombardment started, my mothers motherin-law hid us in the basement of her bathhouse. There were very few bomb shelters in Stalingrad. We sat in the dark. At night they took us to the river station. There were many people there but none of them had evacuation certificates. The steamer arrived. My mother tied me to her chest with a towel. She was holding some personal belongings in her hands. The river station boss came up to her. Everybody was begging him for permission to

get onboard. He felt sorry for my mother and ordered, Take this girl with the baby onboard. He must have thought that she was a little sister carrying her baby brother.

Vladimir Beregovoy: When we went up the stairs, they gave way either under the burden because the crowd was so huge or because the Germans had started dropping bombs and the river was rolling and my mother fell into the water together with the other women. She was pulled out. They put her onboard the ship. My mother was sure that the other women around her had drowned. In the middle of the water-way something went wrong with the steamboat it was either damaged or it broke down. So, they had to change over to another steamer right in the middle of the river. Only the upper deck was free. The rest of the space was filled with wounded soldiers.

My mother used to tell me, You didnt even cry with hunger, you were swollen. An officer gave her a lump of sugar. She dissolved that sugar in the water and fed me with that mixture. It was very cold at night. She said, You began coughing. It was a long journey. The thing is that the steamer had to stop during the day, and my mother cannot say how long it took them to reach Kazan. As they were approaching Kazan, the other women onboard told my mother, Where are you taking your baby, hes already dead.

When we arrived in Kazan, we were all taken to a sanitary station. In fact, it was a usual bathhouse. When my mother came out after having a bath she saw that all her things were gone. Everything was gone, nothing was left. She said, I was sitting inside the bathhouse absolutely naked. I couldnt walk out. I was naked and my baby was naked. I sat there until the bathhouse closed. Some women gave me some rags. I put them on and went out. But I had no place to go. A girl felt sorry for me and took me to her home. But when her mother returned home from a night shift, she said, Whom have you brought with you? Cant you see that she is a thief. But my mother begged, Please, let me stay at your place only until morning. In

the morning I will be gone. The next morning she went away. As far as I can remember she went to a railway station to a room for mothers and children. She got a ticket for Gorky only two days later. She still didnt have any clothes. In Gorky, they put her on a different train which took her to my grandmothers place where I spent the first 17 years of my life. My mother recalled, When I got off the train, it was five oclock in the morning. It was rather cold. My grandmother unwrapped me and said, Most likely, hes going to die. But my grandmother had a cow and that helped me survive.

My mother thought she was enormously lucky. Lucky that the river stations head noticed her and put her onboard the ship. Lucky that she had tied me to her chest with a towel. Lucky that she was pulled out of water. Lucky that she was put on another ship. She was lucky

My life is a success only because I was lucky and remained alive.

My optimism was shattered when my airplane landed in Pitobnik on the 28th of December, 1942. I saw wounded German soldiers at deaths door ,who wanted to return by plane to the German territory, into German care. But it did not work, because it was very cold and airplanes were not operational anymore. It took five attempts to even start the engine of my plane. And at one point, the Russian bombers came in between the supply aircrafts that were headed to the landing strip and dropped bombs on that strip. One of our planes had already landed but suddenly one wheel got stuck in a hole from a bomb and broke off. The pilot took off again and headed back to the airport he had come from... But you cant really land when your plane has just one wheel and the other one's broken and cant be pulled in. A belly landing could go well though, and thats what we did in the end. Luckily, we survived. But the airplane was broken. So, yes, thats when I started to have doubts.

Wigand Wuester, German Soldier:

There are many memorable moments from the time we started to take the city over. There were lots of trenches around Stalingrad. We felt sorry for the Russian people in the trenches who could do nothing about the tanks that would get to about 50 or 60 meters from the trenches and open fire. But then the Russians launched the Katyushas. That was such a powerful fire spectacle that it made us very nervous. But the damage from them was significantly lower than expected. And we got used to it. If you laid low or hid somewhere, nothing much could happen.

In September and October there were still relatively many civilian families in the city. We lived side by side, just letting each other be. We offered them to get on our trains and go westwards and over the Don River to find safety. And many families took up the offer, but also many remained. There were no problems in our relationship with the civilians. They were not partisans, as many write about them nowadays. They didn't do anything. I dont know what they lived off, whether they had any food or supplies. They didn't get food from us, but they didnt beg either. There were also frequent cases when civilians would come to ask the German doctors for help. The German doctors did treat them and gave out medicine or performed minor operations. Our mutual existence worked well. But it became dramatic when the Russian army surrounded us. Before, if anything was left over in the kitchen, wed give it to kids who were always hanging around. We would always give them the leftovers once the officers were done having their meals. If we had chocolate, we would share it with these kids. Although I felt that the mothers didn't like that their children were around us I guess they were afraid that something bad could happen to them. But we really never had evil intentions towards those children. Anyways, we all somehow learnt to co-exist.

When we were surrounded, we didn't see the civilians any more in fact, we didnt even realize that they were still in the city. In January 1943, those who were hiding crawled out civilians and soldiers would crawl out and just die from hunger. But we couldnt help them anymore as we had nothing ourselves. We were starving. Some died miserably. Starved or froze to death. We couldnt help them and they couldnt help themselves either. There was also a small prisoners camp for the Russian soldiers. They died

miserably, too, as they didnt have enough food. I wouldnt have liked to be in one of those camps either. But it wasnt malice, we didnt want to let them die like that. It's just that there was nothing left, absolutely nothing. We had many helpers among prisoners of war who then decided to fight on our side and help us in everyday life. They were prisoners but they were free to move around, no one guarded them. Half-prisoners, half-deserters. They also had their share food allocated to them, similar to what we had. They actually didn't have any chance to survive as the Soviet leadership considered them traitors and deserters.

After we were taken prisoner, many Germans said that they wanted to be helpers to the Russians without becoming deserters. The Russians though didn't agree to that often. Things changed when the German National Committee was formed in the camp. It consisted of the Germans who chose to wear red arm-bands to officially declare their status of a half-deserter. They got their set of privileges, good food. They were not obliged to spread propaganda, but they were definitely headed that way. Actually that was one of the exceptions. You see, after the Stalingrad battle, those who were taken captive were in much harsher conditions, no indulgences allowed. When we were taken to Russian officers, who were known to be unpleasant, for questioning, they turned out to be much more understanding. We said we will not do anything as prisoners of war. We were neutral, we would not act against the powers holding us captive, but we would also not make any attempt to make friends with them. That worked well. But those who were willing to cooperate got nice jobs in the camp, like in the kitchen and the bakery, and they would get full while we were starving.

When I was still in the bath-house, a delegation consisting of an officer, a trumpet player and a guy with a white flag came over twice to negotiate our capitulation. I was so afraid that in that chaos someone could shoot them and it was a relief to see that they were able to return where they came from. I rejected their offer, because I was told that fighting continues and things are not over. And that delegation, they were reasonable because they knew our condition and what we should have done. That bathhouse was robust and they couldnt destroy the wall with tanks. They came closer and shot into the holes we had made to shoot at them. And anyone who came

close to a hole got a shot in the head and was dead immediately. We had no injured people but plenty of dead ones. When the last delegation left, I noticed my people did not want to fight anymore. Later, when we were surrounded by the Russian troops and we clearly had no chance but to surrender, a lieutenant on a T-34 arrived and we surrendered. It was actually a good experience. In a sense, we got lucky. You see, there were situations when the Russians would just kill a small group of people that they had found. It was easier than taking captives. We indeed got lucky with that officer. We even held a short exchange. He gave me his fur gloves and a sack of dried bread, and I, in turn, gave him my leather gloves because it was obvious that I would do much better with fur-gloves in the prisoners' camp rather than with fancy leather ones... Yes, I later included him in my prayers. But I dont want to say that others crushed us. We were all very exhausted from fighting and we just didnt care much. That's how exhausted we were. You know, we were very disappointed with Paulus especially when he forbade us to acknowledge capitulation and ordered us to fight till the last shot, but he himself went to hold negotiations with the Soviet generals over breakfast... while we were still fighting! It was a very unpleasant situation, because if the German soldiers had known about that, they would have immediately surrendered.