In search of the lost time   

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The boy in a picture - my uncle on mother. It was it in the summer of the 1942nd, in two and a half years before laying down life near Konigsberg.

The thought to visit the Kaliningrad regions overcame me long ago. And when the case was presented, all short stay of the author the purpose to establish what of local worried (not the fact that it neighboring) villages carried Bergau's name appearing in the front notice in 1945. Guides of a host convinced that it is a problem not of two days off: the city of the terrible, having something in common with Brest destiny, completely replaced toponymics. Having got to the winner country as the hardest trophy, Konigsberg underwent full russification. Here the German population which remains obliged to leave the territory of East Prussia did not remain. Something similar, with the famous amendment on scales and a situation, was made in our city in the 1939th - expropriated from Poland, Brest was "smoothed out" from Poles and other undesirable elements. However, more analogies are caused in me by other parallel - about Brest-Lithuanian of times of construction of fortress. Then at the untouched population at us died the material embodiment of the former city. From kept to the architect (at all destructions) Konigsberg withdrew former soul or, in other words, centuries-old sociocultural contents.

On my good luck, among many cards which were available in a booth was such where near the existing names of settlements were specified old. Dry for our ear in the barking incomprehensibility the German names were rewritten on Luzhki, Ozerki, Cheerful, Solar, by Zhavoronkovo...

Bergau - now Tsvetkovo - lay in fifteen kilometers from line of the expanded city...

The owner of first "Zhiguli" willingly undertook to taksanut - with the income in edge, to put it mildly, not really. I hoped to find some traces a little and greedy peered through an automobile window into a relief and pillboxes flashing in fields. Where there was that attack?.

Tsvetkovo appeared tiny, to ten houses, a village, almost the farm. Addressed a flock of teenagers - the answer did not please: nothing remained any more. Then one bethought: "Or to you ours it is necessary?" Only through a lingering pause I thought that from similar to me pathfinders to them go almost only from the German side now.

... The obelisk stood on entry into the village, surrounded with plates with the cut surnames. Unpretentious as there is a lot of where, composition - not to a delicacy was, - but well-groomed and whitewashed. Modest venochek and standard, hundred times chitanny inscription: "Imperishable memory to the heroes who fell for honor and independence of the Homeland in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". But why heart so beats?

Thirteen plates approximately on sixty surnames - hot there was a fight. I slide according to lists eyes, passing the senior and junior commanders and getting a grasp of privates. "... Gurin E.E., Grintsevich V. V., Grintsevich A.I..." - is! ". Goreva L.A.".

To this day I cannot believe what so happens: it seemed, it is simpler to find a grain of sand in the desert, a needle in a stack. At all did not do in time to date - and suddenly for few days till May 9 (not present - last year's) after 59 years... It is mysticism, God, providence, call as you want, but unaided from there did not manage.

Then... to a postoyta what was then? Cursed himself that forgot in a hurry "soap tray" (only returned from Tashkent, literally jumped from the plane in the bus), missed suddenly to scribble on a surname leaf, but left senseless occupation, sat down...

The driver expecting on the road, understanding my state, smoked at the car and delicately was silent. Approximately in an hour we also without words started in a way back...

For the beginning of war to it was fourteen - the ordinary Kobrin boy. He did not know much and where was to know even if grown wise lived people could not sort that happened in September of the 39th and that the cities, the whole edge inconsistent arrival of the first councils meant to their settled way, to the street. Seniors, hiding from younger the doubts, tried to adapt to the new power as they adapted before that to the tsar, the Pole or the first German.

Boys and little girls whose life not rassek on pieces the axe of the developed repressions, accepted the new power better than parents. Sports sections, festivities in park under waltzes and marches of military orchestras, attributes of the new organizations, the most active out-of-school life, dances and evenings - all this caused positive emotions and could not but attract. Yes, there were arrests and exports - but took out "enemies of the people", and there was it not from them who joined the Soviet youth, relatives...

Lyonya Gorevoy went to the replaced teaching language, now the Soviet comprehensive school and lived in the atmosphere sheathe for peers of an elation. Kobrin was not the border city, in is mute mass, as in Brest, replacement of the population - only evacuation of the "enemies" disturbing new life was not even planned.

Not to us to judge today, it is good or bad that the fear lodged in the city not too concerned the children protected with parents. Seeing as become empty after night visits of the house of quite respectable neighbors, people feverishly dug in themselves and found occasions in which the export fate could not pass also them. For the night at a headboard put a small knot with food and linen, in an outer entrance hall put the packed suitcase. It is difficult to assume that in that situation there was somebody, feeling safe. Except doubts peculiar to human nature there were still denunciations on the basis of which bodies carried out and exceeded the orders lowered by it. From sins and sins of the new power the heaviest sees each other in the low instincts woken in the population, informing encouragement. And people scribbled...

I do not know how the changed reality would turn in consciousness of teenagers, have they the remains of information for the good disappearing house. Ded Lioni Mikhas Gorevoy, all life working at the earth and seeing in it the only value (told, daughters had to wait for a notebook or linen shoes long: earned the father to kopek put in acquisition new as then spoke, earth "morgues", sentencing that after the thief there are only walls, the fire takes away everything, and the earth will not be gone), died almost at once after arrival of councils. Sharply made a speech at meeting on nationalization of the earth on their Goncharskaya (after Proletarian) the street, and later understood, than these words for it will turn back, or felt the hopelessness which hung over economy - having come home, got sick and did not rise any more. It is possible to assume, only therefore the family was not taken out. The speech about the Lyoniny grandfather on the maternal line, and could ring out also on the father. That from Belarusian peasants, unlike the city father-in-law not the hoarder, is potatoes on a table - and is fine, will not take the stranger under torture also from policy aside. And on June 22 the 1941st there passed the hearing that at station there were undispatched papers of People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs - many kobrinets jerked also darkness of interesting there read. And Lyonin the father Alexander Terentyevich Gorevoy ran as if force what dragged. Wind drove sheets of the gutted sheaves on station. Not to learn now, told Gorevoma who or itself on improbable coincidence found - the denunciation of him written by the relative counting on the house...

Under the German lived long three years in which kids became boys, and boys - young men. In which excesses of councils were forgotten, but oppressions of occupation were before eyes every day. Alexander Terentyevich (is farther in the text - my grandfather) had communication with guerrillas, helped old sheets on dressing and medicines. To Gorev' house where two soldiers of Wehrmacht sent to a billeting (whether from them a garrison cap on the boyish head boarded?), young boys from the wood came - there was a case when presented as relatives guerrillas and inopportunely the come-back German lodgers together sat at moonshine, and the grandmother gave on a table, dying of fear... After war the grandfather did not flaunt merits, did not ask privileges - the conscientious man, he not for ideological reasons helped guerrillas and not for fear that the house will be burned, - from compassion, not to vanish in bogs...

Before the release in July the 1944th Kobrin was cruelly bombed by ours, carrying out art and aviapreparation. The grandmother on the seventh month of pregnancy to leave as all city, to the village refused, hid in a cannonade in the "cache" which is dug out in a kitchen garden. Bombardment in the last day before storm was especially terrible. The grandfather's mother, having become puzzled, ran not in "cache", and is farther for kitchen gardens in the hazel grove thickets which were called in the district "luzhky" - and bombed just a zone of Mukhavts on whose other coast the German military camp settled down. Bombs were torn in some ten meters from hiding, and the elderly woman, having grabbed heart, fell unconscious, choked as spoke, air.

On the same day, having buried mother, the grandfather shipped a family on a supply and set to the village of Ostrovo. It appeared, out of the frying pan into the fire: the city was not bombed any more, but through the village on the West vlasovets continually hurried. The senior children - 1 7-year-old Lyonya and 19-year-old Valya - were put behind a shed firewood...

After release called to the colors. Lyonya did not reach military age yet and could wait a house storm quietly. Its 1926th year of birth was the top level in that terrible war, these children were at war not all - Arkady Moiseevich Blyakher told how to Berlin some young recruits arrived to his regiment after the announcement of capitulation. It is unknown how it would develop farther, but in the early fall of the 1944th Lyonya should not have gone to a military registration and enlistment office. However went: took children from the street, and the German fled, and on war it was necessary to be in time.

Already obmundirovanny, he dropped in home cheerful and carefree - embraced mother, kissed the little sister and ran. The grandfather bravo cried out to the son following book: "Watch that a breast in crosses or the head in bushes!" - it the grandmother could not forgive it till last day. Lyonya with a smile turned back and waved with a hand. Such it was remembered.

It was sent for a while to an uchebka to Kozelsk - neither Lyonya, nor the letters receiving it house could know that they four years earlier from there, from Kozelsk camp, sent thousands of captured Polish officers including who are taken out from Kobrin to the Katyn wood which became a grave.

The young soldier with enthusiasm wrote how they will be sent to the front soon. My mother, younger Lyonina the sister, told that these letters were imbued with spirit of deep patriotism and are full of the cliched phrases penetrating the press.

Tone of letters from a front line did not change, only became more careful and exhortative as if it not it, and the family risked each hour themselves. Asked the sister whether the been born brother prevents to do homework, and calmed parents that everything is good that in hours of a respite "sleeps on the German feather-beds". It was infinitely kind - distinctive it since the childhood quality - the boy.

Old trishinets told that they in Brest, as well as in all cleared regions, in field army rowed up all. Young people went cheerfully, lived - with a sigh, knowing about camp addictions of the country which was again sliding from the East firsthand. The little managed to avoid the front, settled on the railroad or other work giving a reservation. Trishinsky without any preparation were thrown under Warsaw. Practically houses did not wait for none of them, and Nikolay Kushneruk who only came back the disabled person told about the meat grinder which waited there...

In the 1944th to Gorevym the Russian fellow sent to Kobrin to the accelerated officer courses - at first to senior of daughters, and then just often came into a family. Told about himself, about parents, about how helped to milk a cow at home, throwing a scarf over the head - otherwise did not admit. In day of release before sending to the front newly made lieutenants all night long rustled on the city, drummed in windows and asked vodka. Gena came as always tidy, said goodbye in a related way and promised to write. But letters were not...

Kobrin's inhabitant by the name of Panchuk (I could not find for him how many I tried: can, with a surname the grandmother confused) with which Lyonya Gorevoy was at war in one platoon of the 248th Guards shooting regiment, upon return told Lyoniny parents of circumstance of death of the son. He in that fight was wounded in a leg. Lyonya dropped in in near scrap, took out to it a pillow - and fell with the ripped-up stomach.

Panchuk remembered that in recent days Lyonya did not take out habitual, appear, sounds of a rupture of shells as if had a presentiment of something. Slept in the German houses - covered not to hear, the head with pillows. And home continued to write fervent, patriotic letters. "Zinochka, probably, it is difficult for you to study now?. Nothing, we will meet soon, here we will only finish a fascist reptile, we will destroy the enemy in his den, we will set up a banner over the Reichstag..."

In one of nights the dream dreamed the grandmother: Lyonya from whose head to the floor the black scarf hanged down entered the house. Having woken up, it told: "Something happened... Lyonya is wounded". Mother could not say more terrible. Every other day the death notification came. "Your son gv. the Red Army man Cinder Leonid Aleksandrovich in fight for the Socialist Homeland, faithful to the military oath, having shown heroism and courage, it is killed on February 5, 1945. It is buried with an afterfeast of military honors in East Prussia, of Bergau of the Konigsberg County".

To get the medal "For Courage" (posthumously) the grandmother did not go to a military registration and enlistment office. How many persuaded, answered: "There is no son why to me a medal?" Listening to Panchuk, could not hide the reproach which was burning down eyes: why live why others are whole, and her Laziness is absent...

Epigraphs can be taken out before the text, but from the short poem of Leonid Filatov not to pull out the stanza. Its "Ballad about the last hero" - an epilog.

... And komol stored shirts as nadezhla...
And war did not go which goal any more...
And the last on a pole was a raid
Also it is put on someone's kitchen garden.
It is so improbable and cruel,
What you cost it is not afflicted, and amazed,
As over a pipe of the dashing buffoon,
About which you learn that he is executed.
And the owner was such cheerful small,
And the owner - to you, likely, is not known –
At the station so ridiculously said goodbye to mother,
That could not die simply....

Sarychev, Century. In search of the lost time / V. Sarychev//Evening Brest. – 2005. – May 6. About the kobrinchanena L. Gorevy who died in days of the Great Patriotic War near Konigsberg.



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