Blog_Galina

Hi! I’m Alexander Pateenok. I’m from Belarus, Miory, Vitebsk Region. I’d like to tell you some stories from the life of my dear grandparents connected with World War II.

Victory Day is a great holiday in our family. It is because my mum’s parents took part in World War II. I remember when in my childhood my sister and I visited a small village of Slobodka, Braslav Region where our grandparents lived at that time. One evening my sister and I were playing hide-and-seek. I hid in a big old wardrobe. Having hidden my heard in clothes, I felt something cold. My hands touched something round. My sister moved apart clothes and we saw our grandfather’s costume with lots of medals. Near it there was my grandmother’s jacket with medals too. We knew that our grandparents took part in the Great Patriotic War but we had never seen their awards. There was a great desire to ask them about this terrible war. My grandfather put on his suit with medals. We sat down on the sofa near him and the granddad started to tell his story about war. My mother, my sister and I wrote down these valuable memoirs . We have already been keeping them for five years as a family relic.

My grandfather’s name is Cherkas Michael Boleslavovich. He was born on November7,1926 in the village of Melevtsy Braslav district. When World War II began, he lived with his relatives on the occupied territory and worked on the farm. Soon punititive expeditions began. During the first one my grandad hid in a potato field and was lying there all day long. Next time fascists captured him (it was in October 1943) and sent in a column together with other captured people to Braslav. There was a ghetto for some days until the Germans didn’t have certain quantity of people. Then all of them were sent from Braslav to the city of Dukshtas. The fascists were on horses and the Belarusians were going on foot. There were a lot of children with their parents among the captured people. Grandfather remembers how one teenager tried to run away in the bushes and how he was cut off on the apot by automatic turn. There was a shock from the first seen death. Nobody had a desire to run away then. The captured people were transported by railway to Eastern Prussia. In the city of Senseburg there was a concentration camp. My grandfather stayed there for some time but soon he was redeemed to work for the landowner Okko. But at first my grandfather’s muscles on his hands were checked. Okko’s wife opened his mouth with a stick and checked up his teeth. My grandfather was spld for 17 marks as a slave on a slave market. One more woman was redeemed together with him. Her name was Anna Andreevna Kuzmina. She was also from Braslav district and had 4 children. The woman was the wife of the commissioner of a partisan’s group but she didn’t tell about it. They lived in the village of Zibengeffen, Sensburg territory. My grandfather grazed cows and helped to milk them. In January 1945 he was released by the Soviet Army solders. Many people were put in a train and brought to the city of Grodno, then they were put to prison. It is very difficult for my grandfather to recollect all these events. There were many prisoners and the sea of lice! There were so many lice that it was useless to press them! People took them handfuls in a mouth, pressed them in a mouth and then spat them out! To my grandfather’s luck Kuzmina A.A. was near him all the time. She looked after him as my grandfather was under 19 years old and didn’t look his age. She was the first to be asked for interrogation. She told at once that she was the wife of a commissioner of a partisan’s group and the attitude to her became another at once. After all people were not guilty that they were forced to work for the Germans. She told them everything about my grandfather. Then he was asked for interrogation. The attitude to him was scornful. My grandfather remembers the officer’s reproach that he had been grazing the cows in Germany and his coevals were defending their Motherland. My grandfather answered that he was ready to join the Soviet Army with pleasure and to take part in battles against the enemy and to go on front. Some documents were made and he wasn’t moved to that barrack with lice… After some time he was sent near Polotsk for ten days in a teaching department where my grandfather took a short course of a young soldier. He had time to write a letter to his sweet home of Melevtsy. In ten days Michael Cherkas became a private soldier of the 67^th shooting regiment of the 1^st Belarus Front.

The attack storm of Berlin became an unforgettable event for my grandfather He remembers dazzling light of many projectors and many hours’ artillery attack. The whole Berlin lay in ruins. In one of the parks my grandfather was wounded in a nape. One can touch the splinter in it. His eyes were filled with sand. My grandfather became blind for some time. Then he was sent to hospital in VIttensberge. He was lucky to be made a complicated operation on his eyes by one professor and gradually grandad’s sight was restored. At the front my granddad became a member of the Komsomol Organisation.

The war came to an end. The part where my grandfather served was thrown to the Moldavien Soviet Republic, in the city of Chernovtsy and then in Kremenets of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. He was a reconnaissance, a submachine gunner. He is awarded with some medals “For a victory over Germany”, an award of Patriotic War of the 1^st grade, with many anniversary medals. After the war my grandfather graduated from Borisov Teaching College and was working as a teacher of junior classes at Slobodka School for the rest of his life… My grandfather was given the rank of the Deserved Teacher of the BSSR for his honest work. Now he is retired but can’t live without work. That’s why he began to make beautiful and unique things from straw. Now my granddad is a national master known not only in Belarus but abroad too. As you see, the destiny of my grandfather, the veteran of World War II was complicated, full of misfortune. But at the same time my dearest grandfather considers himself to be a happy person.

And now about my grandmother, Cherkas Ksenia Ivanovna. She graduated from Vitebsk Teachers’ Training College before the war. She worked as a teacher in the settlement of Bigosovo of Vitebsk Region. She got married to Grigory Molohov, a Moscovite who worked as a chief of a raiway station. Then she entered a correspondence education department at the Pedagogical Institute. And suddenly the war began. Already in September the fascists suggested her teaching local population in the German language.

But my grandmother refused to do it because she was the member of the Komsomol organization. Her husband joined the partisans’ group. My granny colleted and gave the necessary information to the partisans, looked for products, went on reconnaissance in the town of Shumilino, Vitebsk Region. She forwarded the wounded soldiers through a railway crossing protected by the Germans. In August 1942 she participated in blasting of a German echelon with military equipment and tanks between the villages of Jazvino and Old Selo. The Germans sent retaliatory groups for destruction of partisans in the woods. The group in which my grandmother was had 12 people. It was a diversionary group. Grigory Goncharov was its commander and Nikolay Miroshnichenko was his assistant. During the retaliatory expeditions the group was relocated into the woods of Rossnshchina, Vitebsk Region. My grandmother made her way towards the front line, met cargo planes, delivered products, weapons for the partisans’ group. She sewed shirts and trousers for partisans from parachute material. Soon her husband Grigory Molokhov was appointed as the commander- in –chief of the partisans’ group. At the end of September, 1943 a child was born in their family. It was my aunt Claudia, my mother’s sister. There were hard years for my granny. Fascists burnt down villages, shot their inhabitants. But Victory Day came! It was the happiest day for all our Soviet people. My grandmother worked as a teacher after the war .In1944 her first husband Grigory Molohov died and in 1952 she got married to my grandfather Cherkas Michael Boleslavovich. They have lived happily for 54 years together and had two children: my mother and my uncle.

I’m very proud of my grandparents. They give us their grandchildren, my sister and me a good example to follow.