Birthday Presents In Times Of War

October 11, 1944

In the fading summer of 1943 news reached Lisa’s family in Frunze, the capital of Kirghistan, in Central Asia. After two years and four bloody battles the city of Kharkov was finally liberated from the Nazis.

Their city was now free and they could return home, but was there anything left of their house or even the city after the utter devastation it endured? Rumors among refugees claimed that the city was leveled to the ground. Was it true? Should they even go back to Kharkov, back home to the unknown?

Two long years had passed since Lisa, along with her mother Leeba and younger sister Sofia, narrowly escaped the German invasion of Kharkov. For Lisa’s mother, Leeba, it was deja vu – another war with Germany, another refuge. Leeba was about the same age as Lisa, when she had run from Lithuania at the beginning of the Great War of 1914.

They escaped Kharkov on what might have been the very last train for evacuees – Train to nowhere.

Their lucky train had survived, although damaged, despite the bombing and machine-gun airstrikes by the Luftwaffe, the Nazi air force, which constantly loomed overhead.

At the end of their nearly month-long journey, Lisa’s family ultimately arrived at the small mountain village in Western Tien-Shan, Kyrgyzstan on October 11, 1941.

It was Lisa’s birthday, and she had turned twenty that day. All her family members survived – what else could you want as a birthday present in wartime?

October 1941 was unusually and bitterly cold, especially at night. The villagers shared their blankets with the evacuees, who used them instead of coats. Lisa started working right away. Hard work on the onion fields and long journey back and forth in the cargo bay of an old truck. There was hardly enough space for the tools, let alone all the people, each with sacks too heavy to handle. Deadly cold held sway over the night, while sweltering heat scorched the light of day – but at least they had a ration of food, a room warm enough to sleep in and no fear of being bombed by the Luftwaffe at night.

Soon they received the military certificate from Lisa’s father, Aaron, and they were able to buy overcoats to wear instead of the blankets.

That mountain village in the picturesque Western Tien-Shan, was far away from civilization.

There was no school, no library, nor a clubhouse. The only books available were a few remaining 6th-grade textbooks that Sofia had in her backpack. Electric power kept blacking out for days at a time and that meant not only absence of light, but no radio as well.

The postman visited once a week, so letters and newspapers ended up being the real treasure. The whole village gathered in front of the office, eagerly waiting in silence for the postman’s horse-drawn wagon. Anticipation and worry were in the air – everybody had relatives or friends at the front and more often than not, instead of their letters they received notifications of their death or even worse – ‘missing in action’.

The absence of school was a major concern – Sonia was only 13. They definitely had to find another place, but the move wasn’t allowed unless you had a job first. Lisa tried neighboring towns, but unsuccessfully – there were a lot of evacuees everywhere, and not nearly enough jobs to go around.

As a last resort, Lisa decided to try her luck in Frunze, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The city would change the name to Bishkek, but in this story, we will use its wartime name. One winter afternoon Lisa joined the postman’s horse-wagon to the railroad station and arrived in Frunze a couple of days later.

The first months of war totally changed that city. The Soviets moved the whole manufacturing industry from the Western part of the country to Siberia and Central Asia, saving it from capture by the German Army. Thousands of people were deported, evacuated, or migrated there. For agricultural Kyrgyzstan, it was like overnight industrialization and, for its capital, an enormous boost in both the status and responsibilities.

Lisa walked from one office to another, looking for any opportunity, but nobody was interested to hire a young woman without experience or solid recommendations.

“I need a miracle!” cried Lisa aloud, walking in the main street of the city, reading the names of the offices above their doors, and not paying much attention to the people on the street until she accidentally bumped into a short and stubby man in front of her. “Sorry”, she said, briefly glancing at him. And then she knew that it was the miracle she is waiting for.

“Solomon Ocipovich”, she said quietly and burst in tears. “Lisa! What a surprise!”, exclaimed that man. Solomon was the father of Lisa’s closest friend, Dina, who was her classmate from the 1st grade in school.

“He was not just Dina’s father”, wrote Lisa, “He and Rebecca Pavlovna, his wife, were like my second family. My parents thought of them as cousins, and I, as a teenager, had my happiest days at their house.”

Solomon grabbed Lisa and, in a few minutes, she was at their home. It was a long and happy night. There was so much to tell Dina, Solomon, and Rebecca about their escape from Kharkov on the last train, news about Lisa’s father serving in the Army, about Sofia and Leeba, and to exchange other news about the people they knew.

Solomon worked in one of the government offices that were evacuated there at the beginning of the war. Solomon did not see any problems concerning Lisa’s employment. “I’ll pass your application to my office tomorrow morning. We need qualified people like you, but nobody wants to risk hiring the wrong one during the wartime. It takes a long time for approval, you know,” he said. “But when you come back in a couple of weeks, everything should be in order, I hope.”

Before Lisa left for the village, the always practical Solomon made a suggestion, “Here’s the deal. You will need some money right away to rent a room and to set your life here – with the thousands of evacuees Frunze became quite expensive. You said you are working on a farm. Buy a few sacks of onions there. Here, in the city, you can sell them for five times the price!”

“It is a fairy tale,” Leeba repeated it again and again when Lisa’s returned. “Such wonders never happen in real life”.

As advised by Solomon, using most of their money they bought a few large sacks of onions. At the railroad station, they were not allowed in the passenger’s car with the sacks and were directed to place them on an open platform without any rugs to cover them. Unfortunately for the onions – and for Lisa – the winter of 1941 was cold, and most of their onions were rotten by the time they arrived in the city. Lisa was lucky to return the cost. “I’m sure anyone would have succeeded but me!” she always joked, telling that story. “That was the first and only commercial project in my life.”

In a few weeks, Sofia was attending school again, and Lisa started in the position she was promised, but instead of the legal department – Lisa had two years of Law School before the war – she was placed in the financial. Lisa explained, “Just because my college transcript listed courses like Financial Law or Business Law I was considered qualified for the job, but there was a lot of help needed from my co-workers.”

Ration coupons were not even close enough to live upon, and not even Leeba’s skills could stretch it for a month. That is why additional food ration from Lisa’s job was so important. Throughout her life, Lisa remembered her monthly food ration: 8 lb dried fruit, 8 lb nuts, one round of pressed sunflower nuts (“Thank God, you will never know what that is”, said Lisa), and the most expensive part – one bottle of vodka! Leeba exchanged vodka and sunflowers at the market for meat, butter, and milk, but still, there wasn’t enough. “If you wanna eat – then go to sleep”, was one famous Leeba’s saying.

Her job was good, but what Lisa really wanted was to continue her judicial education, as her friend Dina did with a medical school. Lisa’s college was evacuated to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, another Republic in Central Asia and there was no Law School in Frunze.

Leeba and Solomon tried to convince Lisa to get a Degree in Business. “I’m not a business person,” Lisa reminded them of the onion story. “I will never be able to do that right.”

She found a paralegal position in the local prosecution office, and was happy to have that “practical education”.

Lisa joked, “If I learned anything during my long business trips around Kyrgyzstan, accompanying investigators, was how to properly eat beshbarmak, the most common meal around there”, remembered Lisa. Beshbarmak is a finely chopped boiled meat mixed with noodles. It means “five fingers” because nomads used to eat this dish with only their hands. “I did it as well”, Lisa said. “Most of the time I was the only female at the table – local women never ate with men in public. But because I was with my bosses, locals were afraid to disrespect me.”

In her letters to Lyonya she wrote, anyway, how she missed her Law School, that she wasn’t sure that she would ever be able to get her degree, that she would be too old to go to school when the war ended, and that all her friends who weren’t in the Army continued their education.

She was surprised, even shocked, to receive a letter from Lyonya’s brother Isaak in October of 1942.

The letter started with “Good day to you, unknown Lisa”.

Lyonya’s family had evacuated to Tashkent, the same city where Lisa’s college was. Isaak invited Lisa to Tashkent, to live with Lyonya’s parents, David and Rizal, and his brothers, Isaak and Ioncvhik. This would allow her to return to Law School. At the end of the letter, Isaak asked Lisa to bring her pillow, blanket, and linen with her, because they did not have any spare ones.

“It was a very warm, cordial and inviting letter from people I had yet to meet. I don’t know what Lyonya could have written to convince his family to make such a decision. “The invitation was absolutely unexpected,” said Lisa. “At this time Lyonya was my dear friend, but one of a few. I would never ask him for something like that. I wrote back, expressing my deep appreciation and gratitude, but explained that I could not leave my mother and sister.”

It was October 1942. Lisa was twenty one and to receive such a letter at those terrible times – what could be a better birthday present?

Life moved on. Days at work, nights with new friends, letters from the old ones, tears for the fallen in battles and joy for those who survived.

Leeba started working too – in the theaters’ outreach box office. Her job was to “engage and distribute!” The compensation was a small percentage of tickets’ sales, which meant going to the offices, schools, factories – everywhere – to sell as many tickets as possible (or impossible). But as a former actress, Leeba loved theater from any angle and was happy to be once again next to the magical aura of performances.

Another perk of her job was having free passes to the theaters for Lisa and Sofia. Lisa remembered that the productions were amazing and the actors and singers sublime – mostly evacuees from the central theaters.

As we see from Lisa’s memoir, over time her family, as well as the many other evacuees, adjusted to a new life in a new city, got accustomed to the surrounding culture and adapted to the new, local diet. It did not mean that they felt at home there.

That is why the news that their beloved Kharkov was finally liberated in August 1943 resonated not only with their patriotic feelings but on other, deeply personal strings of their life – nostalgia for their happy life before the war.

Despite all the concerns about the condition of their home city, Lisa’s family was one of the first to apply for a permit to return. They understood that the rumors of devastation were probably true, but it was their home, after all, or whatever remained of it.

Kharkov was the largest city captured by the Germans in the Russian campaign. It was a major transportation hub and industrial center, and its strategic value was so important that human and material cost came a distant second in the mind of the military. The Four battles for Kharkov took an enormous toll. In the last battle alone, estimated casualties of the Soviet Army were about 70,000 killed and 180,000 wounded – and that was only one battle. It is hard to fathom the cruelties of war…

It was understandable that the Soviets wanted to re-populate the city as soon as possible and return permits were available for both residents and non-residents.

Lisa’s family received a return permit in October 1943. It was Lisa’s birthday. She was 22 and they were about to go home – what could be a better birthday present?

To buy their tickets they sold all they had, packed the essentials into small backpacks and left Frunze for Kharkov. The cramped train wagons were filled way past overcapacity, but people felt like they were finally going home and there were no conflicts.

The train crawled along at a snail’s pace, with long stops allowing military trains to pass ahead. At one such night stop, a group of armed bandits with flashlights entered Lisa’s car. “Everyone, be quiet!” they barked at the passengers, “Any noise – You’ll be shot”.

They pointed flashlights directly at the passengers’ faces, looking for someone or to blind everyone. Leeba slept on an upper bed. When she heard the noise, not understanding what was going on, she jumped down and accidentally landed on the shoulder of one of the bandits.

He pushed Leeba aside – “Quiet, I said”. The bandits left almost immediately after that. All the passengers tried to help Leeba with her shock and bruises and the rest of the night was full of jokes that it was Leeba who scared the bandits away and saved the rest. “I waited for everyone to fall asleep and only then burst into tears”, said Lisa. “I was haunted by that moment my entire life”.

When they finally arrived at the Square, outside the Railroad Station in Kharkov, they stood in shock, unable to accept their surroundings. There was no city there, everything lay in ruins. Most buildings were obliterated, simply razed to the ground. Those that somehow remained standing, were horribly scarred – every window had its glass blown out, and pathways through the ruins, were made simply by shifting the debris around. Everything was in a state of utter devastation.

“Why did we come here?” cried Sofia. “How can anybody live here? Really?” “We didn’t have an answer to her,” said Lisa. “We were too afraid that we had made the wrong decision”.

With Leeba hurt in the bandit’s attack, it took them hours to walk to the areas where the streets began to resemble a city again. Closer to their house there was less and less damage – they lived far from the hard-hit central and industrial zones.

“When we saw our gates and our house, it was the first time smiles began to appear on our faces,” remembered Lisa.

You can imagine Leeba’s shock when the landlord told her that she had sold their apartment to other tenants. “I did not hear from you for two years. There is a war, anything could have happened”, she said.

“We always had a good relationship with her, and she would like to have us back, but the new tenants refused to leave, despite the Law that evacuees had absolute housing priority in their houses. We went to court, and it was the first case that I won!” Lisa said.

“But even with the court ruling, there was not much that we, or landlord, or even city marshals could do – officially. It was back and force until the landlord’s son, Tolik, was released from jail and had a ‘very serious’ conversation with the stubborn tenants. They left within hours”, said Lisa.

Although the house looked undamaged from outside, there were holes in the roof, the doors that wouldn’t close, and if they did, could not be opened again, the floor that felt like waves… All their books were gone, together with the furniture and the piano… They moved in anyway and started the impossible – repairing the place by themselves.

Tolik was about Lisa’s age. They grew up together with Lisa and her cousins in the same backyard. When she started thanking him, he said, “Don’t mention it. Listen, we’re like a family and when you become a lawyer, maybe you’ll be able to help me out one day.” Lisa joked that it was, perhaps, the main reason she never became a defense attorney.

But to become any type of attorney, Lisa had to be first reinstated in her Law School. It wasn’t easy, to say the least. The college had just returned from Tashkent and the condition of its buildings was as ravaged as the rest of the buildings in the central part of the city. Re-enrollment was limited, but not restricted – if pressed.

One day, on her way home after another unsuccessful attempt to submit her documents, Lisa came to visit her close friend, Slavka. She complained to her about bureaucrats in the admission office who always came up with another artificial reason to delay enrollment.

Slavka’s brother overheard their conversation and interrupted, “Lisa, please give me your package and come with me.” He was a military doctor, ranked major, who came to Kharkov for a few days. Their mother, who was a well-known leader of young Communists in the 1920s, was seriously ill. His vacation was “for a family emergency”, as it was stated in his leave certificate issued by Army headquarters.

Together they returned to the admissions department, and the major, holding Lisa’s hand and ignoring the protests of the secretary, entered the department director’s office. “My fiance,” he said quietly in the face of the director, almost in a whisper, “is still not yet restored in your college. Army Command considered that situation an emergency and gave me three days to resolve it – here is the order.” And even in the lower voice, “By the way, why the students are on the floor in the classrooms without windows, and you are sitting here, in a leather chair in a warm office?”

Life moved on, again. Days at their schools and the jobs, nights – rebuilding their house. They did almost everything by themselves, and progress was slow. It was still not finished by Lisa’s birthday.

That day, October 11, 1944, Lisa came home from her college and Leeba met her at the door. “Lisa, come here!”, she said, barely containing her excitement, quickly pulling her daughter into the next room. Lisa’s eyes lit up. In the middle of the table, covered with their best tablecloth, was a large bouquet of red roses. And the envelope was attached – a letter!

Lisa opened the envelope. It was from Lyonya, from the German front – his photo and poem:

• All fell asleep on that wonderful day
• But I still awake in that poor log house.
• The smoker is flicking and shadow lay
• From bottles of wine that was brewed from the sprouts …

• … let miles between us be burned by all means.
• Let boredom and sadness be drowned in wine.
• And you, who I see every night in my dreams,
• I’ll meet once again in the daylight.

It was Lisa’s birthday. She was 23. “That day became the decisive day in my relationship with Lyonya,” Lisa said. What could be a better birthday present?

Lyonya returned from war two years later. But that will be another story.

P.S. There is that Lyonya’s letter.

• Все спят, пролетел замечательный день.
• Один лишь не сплю я в крестьянской избёнке.
• Мерцает коптилка и длинная тень
• Легла от бутылки с вином-самогонкой.

• Я поднимаю этот бокал
• За радость, за счастье, за встречу,
• За ту, о которой я столько мечтал,
• За ту, что сейчас, в этот вечер,
• В родной стороне за знакомым столом
• Заздравную чашу со сладким вином
• Ко мне протянула навстречу.

• Так чокнемся, милая, ты не одна
• Хоть тысяча вёрст между нами.
• Поднимем бокалы и выпьем до дна,
• Пусть мир разлетится огнями.

• Разлука, та пусть догорает в огне.
• A скука, и грусть пусть утонут в вине.
• Пусть ту, что в мечтах лишь являлась ко мне
• Я снова увижу глазами.