Mama Dora
Every summer, Volodya was sent to visit his relatives in Belarus. There were many relatives, and from the beginning of June, the boy freely ran from one village to another, visiting his numerous aunts, brothers, sisters, and, of course, his grandparents.
Volodya was 11 years old that summer, and his life flowed slowly and carefree, like the lives of all city children during the hot Belarusian summer in the villages near Rogachev. His parents remained in their native Smolensk. His father worked, and his mother administered exams to students, so he was completely free until the fall.
Dora Grigoryevna set out to rescue her son as soon as the war was declared. She tried every possible and impossible means to reach Belarus. But it was like running into a hurricane: the enormous influx of refugees from the west, driven by the German advance, made it physically impossible to travel by road. And who would have let her cross the front lines anyway?
Dora had to return to Smolensk, and from there, together with the institute, she was evacuated somewhere to Central Asia.
For three long years, Dora Grigoryevna lived in fear and terror. She knew nothing about her son. Volodya remained in that small Belarusian village with his grandfather Zakhar and grandmother Fenya.
As soon as Rogachev was liberated, Dora Grigoryevna began preparing to leave again. Obtaining a pass was difficult and not easy. The journey through the devastated and newly liberated territories was a difficult ordeal, but the mother was going to look for her son, and nothing could frighten or stop her.
How Dora got there, she didn’t remember very well: either a car gave her a lift, or she took a cart to the villages where her Russian husband’s relatives lived.
There was nothing in the first village, and there wasn't even a village. A couple of bare chimneys among the ruins and not a soul in sight.
In the second village, no one could tell her anything about her little curly-haired boy either.
In the third village, a few houses miraculously remained standing. No one was visible. Apparently, the women had gone to work somewhere in the forest or field. Dora looked back and noticed a very thin man chopping wood in the yard of the last house.
Dora walked toward him, transfixed with excitement. The young man deftly stood logs on end and smashed them with a single blow. Dora drew ever closer, hesitant to call out to him, as if delaying the moment when everything could be decided.
It was clear the man was tired. He swung again, drove the blade into the log, straightened up heavily, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his hand, and turned to the fence where Dora waited patiently.
It wasn't a man, but a very thin and tall young man. He smiled broadly and said in a very simple, matter-of-fact tone, "Oh! Mom!"
When the war began, Volodya was visiting his grandparents. The Germans arrived very quickly, and the old couple and their grandson didn't have time to leave; they remained under occupation.
Zakhar and Fenya were very afraid that one of the villagers would report to the commandant's office that the boy was Jewish, but, thank God, no one dared to take the sin upon their souls.
The village elder, apparently, wasn't as simple as the Nazis thought. One day, he whispered to Grandfather Zakhar that the boy had been listed for deportation to Germany, but the boy could be hidden in the forest with the partisans.
Volodya was equipped and transported to the detachment, one chain at a time, from hut to hut, from village to village. There he spent the next three years.
Volodya's years as a partisan will be counted as full military service and he will be awarded a medal.
The young man will graduate from school with honors, enter MEPhI, become a student of Kurchatov and Landau, become a nuclear physicist, and my aunt’s husband.
We know this whole amazing story only from the words of Dora Grigoryevna: Volodya never, never, never said anything about what happened in that village and how he lived in the partisan detachment.
What happened to Grandfather Zakhar and Grandmother Fenya, no one ever found out either.
