Caterina’s Reviews > Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II > Status Update
Caterina
is 45% done
She lay for two days & couldn't walk, and on the third they took her away on a stretcher. There was only one way out of the camp: thru the chimney. Straight to heaven. . At night, she & I talked. "Does an angel come to you?" I wanted to tell her about my angel. "No. Mama comes to me. She always wears a white blouse. I remember this blouse she had, with cornflowers embroidered on it."
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— Sep 06, 2026 01:36PM
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Caterina’s Previous Updates
Caterina
is 51% done
Our house burned down. The garden burned down. There were baked apples hanging on the apple tree. We gathered them and ate them.
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-- Varema Presnikova Kaminska, 6 years old. Now, a worker. (Spelling of name unclear; this is an audiobook.)
— 7 hours, 7 min ago
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-- Varema Presnikova Kaminska, 6 years old. Now, a worker. (Spelling of name unclear; this is an audiobook.)
Caterina
is 45% done
There was only one way out of the camp: through the chimney. Straight to heaven.
— Sep 06, 2026 01:25PM
Caterina
is 31% done
I don't understand what strangers are, because my brother and I grew up among strangers. Strangers saved us! And what kind of strangers are they? All people are one's own. I live with that feeling, though I'm often disappointed. Peacetime life is different.
— Sep 02, 2026 09:59AM
Caterina
is 16% done
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!
— Aug 29, 2026 04:24PM
Caterina
is 11% done
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.
— Aug 29, 2026 09:18AM
Caterina
is 11% done
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.
— Jan 18, 2026 12:29PM
Caterina
is starting
It became connected like that in my memory: that war is when there is no papa.
— Dec 15, 2025 07:19AM
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I read that so sadly, until I came to the last line. My partner's father was one of the liberators of Buchenwald. Maybe he met her.
Petra is in Cymru Land of Our Fathers, mine anyway wrote: "I read that so sadly, until I came to the last line. My partner's father was one of the liberators of Buchenwald. Maybe he met her."Oh wow! That literally gives me chills. I hope he did meet her. Thank you, Petra.
In the fall -- I survived till the fall, by what miracle, I don't know -- in the morning we were driven to work in the field. We harvested carrots, cut cabbages. I liked this work. It had been long since I went to the fields or saw anything green. In the camp, you didn't see the sky. You didn't see the ground, because of the smoke. The chimney was tall and black. Smoke came out of it day and night. I saw a yellow flower in the field. I had already forgotten how flowers grow. I caressed this flower. The other women also caressed it. We knew that ashes from our crematorium were brought here. And we all had our dead, a sister or a mother. I had Mashinka. If I had known I would survive, I would have asked her mama's address. But I didn't think I would. How did I survive, after dying a hundred times? It was my angel who saved me. He persuaded me. He appears even now. He likes nights when the moon shines brightly through the window. Aren't you afraid to be with me? To listen to me?
-- from the interview with Zoya Mazharva (sp?) who was 12 years old at the time she was taken by the Nazis to Buchenwald camp.