Caterina’s Reviews > Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II > Status Update

It's frightening to live alone in the house...When I come out from [the cellar] tanks are moving down the street..Suddenly I see a red star on the turret. Ours! I run to our house..If our tanks have come, Mama has also come! Some women with rifles are standing by the porch..One of them looks somewhat familiar. She reminds me of somebody. She comes closer to me&embraces me. The other women begin to cry. I shout, Mama!

I'll tell about the war, how war smells. ...the months of May and June in 1941 were cold. Usually lilacs blossom sometime in May, but that year they blossomed in mid-June. The beginning of the war for me is always associated with the smell of lilacs, and of bird-cherry. For me, these trees always smell of war.

I missed the time of childhood, it fell out of my life. I'm a man without a childhood. Instead of a childhood, I have the war.