Page 10 - Excerpts from the diary

I will not go to Moscow. The new order under which transfers [...] have been suspended has changed everything.

13.03.1943
I spent the night at Dvoynoy station. The local inhabitants are Cossacks.

People from Stalingrad who had been driven out by the Germans and sent to these parts told us that the people here were bad and would
not even let travelers spend the night in their homes. Fortunately, we were lucky. At the first hut where we knocked, they took us in and
allowed us to spend the night. The owners—an old man and an old woman—treated us...
...us to honey and boiled water. They put us to sleep on a wooden bed. It was warm and pleasant. The insects did not torment me because
I took everything off: my undershirt, greatcoat, and tunic. But now I can feel them again.

We got up early in the morning, had a bite of pies with [...] ([...] the hostess) and were treated to honey. [...] something black, with a
peculiar peppery taste. The hostess told us about the Germans. Five Germans had lodged here, just as in the previous villages I had
passed through. Old men and women were given bread free of charge. Young people were forced to work. The inhabitants were not
killed, although the Germans took whatever they wanted from them. But that did not happen often. The Romanians were the ones who
looted. The Roma among them, of whom there were many, stole especially much. Once they stayed with this hostess. They came in and
tore out the lock because it was cold, but they did not touch anything in the hut. They lit the stove with the chopped firewood they found
there and went to sleep. The owners found them asleep.

For every German killed, local inhabitants were immediately shot, guilty or innocent. So no one here even thought of joining the
partisans. One [...] intelligence agent [...]. A group of people [...] in the leg. The Germans burned the neighboring settlement to the
ground, [...] but first warned the inhabitants to leave, saying otherwise everyone would die. All the Jews were taken away: even
one-year-old children were shot.

In the morning I went to the market. Two women were selling eggs: fifty rubles for ten. Expensive—though in Krasny Kut, they say, ten
cost one hundred rubles.

I went from house to house. No one wanted to sell milk or eggs. Only one woman agreed to sell milk. I offered her about fifty grams of
soap, and she agreed. Bread was baking, and I offered footcloths in exchange for one loaf. She also gave me doughnuts with the milk.
She too told me about the Germans. She is the wife of a Communist. She was repeatedly summoned for questioning and dragged to the
commandant’s offices. There were many Russians serving with the Germans here, Ukrainian and Cossack regiments.

General Krasnov also passed through. The Germans hoped, with his help, to organize the former Cossack kulaks who had remained here.
The woman’s sister [...] knew a former colonel, a three-time decorated officer and Communist who had surrendered to the Germans and
entered their service. He now commanded a regiment of Russian traitors who had gone over to the enemy. He carried his decorations in
his pocket and openly showed them to both women. The Germans had not taken away his awards for past service. He was forever trying
to convince this wife of a Red Army Communist political officer, and her sister, that the Russians would never return, that Germany
would win, and so on. The women argued with him and insisted on the opposite.

The Jews here too were exterminated without exception. Communists were registered, but only the most prominent were shot; the
Germans did not have time to deal with the rest. One Pioneer leader and two Komsomol members were also shot. Communist wives
worked without rest for the occupiers but received only two hundred grams of bread. According to this woman, some local people
sympathized with the Germans and, when they occupied the area, began denouncing Jews, Communists, and even one another to the
enemy. The village elder fled with the Hitlerites because he was afraid of punishment. I questioned the woman for a long time about the
Germans and the atrocities they committed on our soil.

The bread finished baking. With great pleasure I tasted hot homemade country bread.

The whistle of an engine interrupted our conversation. I hid the bread, thanked the hostess, said goodbye, and hurried to the train, which
was already standing by the water pump. The locomotive was taking on water.

When the train set off, broad steppe fields once again rushed past my eyes, completely strewn with wrecked tanks, guns, motor vehicles,
and other debris from the terrible enemy equipment abandoned in retreat.

Soon Proletarskaya station appeared. Against the endless yellow-gray fields it stood out from afar with its large buildings, once beautiful.
As we approached, we saw traces of destruction even more terrible than at the places we had passed before. The station and all the
buildings around it were reduced to hideous ruins. Huge bomb craters, made by bombs weighing no less than a ton, gaped in the streets of
the settlement. All this painfully constricted my heart with grief and fierce anger at those loathsome, bestial Hitlerites responsible for all
these calamities and sufferings of my people and my homeland.

The train stopped here. Two troop trains that had left Zimovniki before us had been standing here for a full day. So there was no hope of
being sent quickly to Salsk. The commandant told me one of the trains would leave in two hours. I believed him and hurried into the
settlement to buy something to eat.

I could not get any eggs. At one house I found sour milk for fifty rubles a liter. I agreed and took half a liter for twenty-five rubles. I ate.
The hostess poured me another half liter, this time sweet milk. I ate far too much. My stomach swelled...
...and for a long time I could not [...]. I decided to sit for a while and let my tired stomach settle.