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Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

ID OH004.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41m3n

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 13

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Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

ID OH004.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41m3n

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is June 7, 2007. We are in Cincinnati at the home of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your childhood and your parents. How did the war begin for you, how did you come to serve in the army, and what was the war like for you? Please go ahead.

I was born in Konstantinovka [Konstyantynivka], Stalino [Donetsk] Oblast, Ukraine, in 1922.

—Please tell us your name.

My name is Mark Borisovich Klotsman. My father was a public servant and my mother was a housekeeper. After graduating from high school, I attended a factory-training school and worked for a year before applying to military school following a Komsomol recruitment drive. My dream was to become a pilot, either civilian or military. However, the draft board said that I did not pass the most basic test. I had to spin around ten times and walk a straight line. I thought that it was pretty straight, but they said that I actually veered to the right. I took my papers and decided to apply to the Krasnodar Artillery and Mortar School, which had just opened and was recruiting its first class.

There were two training programs there: anti-aircraft and mortar. Only those with higher education were accepted into the anti-aircraft program, but a high school diploma was enough to enroll in the mortar one. I studied there for a year and ten months. I had two months left until completion of the two-year program when the war broke out. A month or two later, I cannot recall for sure, the German forces were approaching Rostov. Over 200 of my classmates and I were sent to the front as soldiers. The result of throwing 200 essentially fully trained officers onto the field as soldiers was . . . only 70 of us survived. They brought us back to the academy, where we were all given the rank of lieutenant. We were then sent to different units . . . we saw that units were being commanded by junior sergeants, sergeants, and senior sergeants. They commanded platoons, batteries, and even companies. In other words, there were no officers. It was such a stupid thing for the high command to do, to just throw away trained officers by using them as regular soldiers. Our unit began assembling in Tikhoretsk, a town in the Krasnodar Krai, near the large Cossack stanitsa Kubanskaya. By that time, Rostov had already been liberated by our forces and we were assembling about 80 kilometers from Rostov and 60 kilometers from Bataysk. With no weapons.

All the sailors from the Black Sea Fleet, which had been sunk, were sent to Tikhoretsk in order to form a marine infantry brigade. The sailors had already been serving for five years and were due to be sent home when the war broke out. Back then a naval tour of duty was five years. These guys were already older and experienced, having gone through naval service . . . When the war began, they became infantry soldiers.

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Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

ID OH004.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41m3n

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

They all arrived dressed in pea coats, even though it was November or December, already winter. We officers were quartered in Cossack homes. The Cossacks were hanging up their chokhas, which they never put on under Soviet rule, in order to give the Germans their warmest welcome. I cannot say that they were hostile . . . but they were not very friendly to us. We were stationed there for about a month and a half while the brigade was being formed. Men arrived in groups of twenty-five or thirty, and we would meet them at the train station. There was a church near the station. When enough men had arrived to form a brigade, we knew that we were going to be sent off by train in a few days, but did not know to which front . . . We were unarmed. They divided us into two teams, handed out dry rations, and told us to board . . . we boarded the boxcars and were taken from Tikhoretsk to the Moscow-Sorting Station . . . Well, what can I say about it, the conditions were terrible. It was a cattle car with two rows of bunks; there was no latrine. We draped a tent over one of the corners . . . We were usually notified when we were stopping for 10 or 12 minutes. We stopped to get hot water, get dry rations, and use the toilet. We arrived at the Moscow station and did not know where we would be sent. We spent a day there without . . . we were not allowed to leave. We only left the train to use the bathroom and take care of other needs. Boiling water for instance . . . A day later we were sent north and only then did we find out that our train was going to Karelia. The commandant of one of the stations, even though it was officially secret information, told us that we were headed for the Karelian Front. Then we knew. The Karelian Front meant fighting in the Arctic Circle, constant cold, and dense taiga. There were no human settlements for 100-150 kilometers around us. No villages or cities. We were sent to a section of the front near Kandalaksha. The Germans had taken all of the high ground and pushed our border guards into the swamps below. We were to replace the battered border guards and take over their defensive positions.

We still did not have any weapons. It was winter, bitterly cold, and the way we were dressed—the sailors were still dressed in pea coats and black pants, making them easily visible from the air. They were ordered to hand in their uniforms and receive new ones, but not a single person obeyed the order. Everyone was issued snow camouflage and wore it, but with naval uniforms underneath. Eventually, two or three months later, we slowly began receiving quilted-cotton uniforms and fur coats for the officers received. I was assigned to a unit that was called the independent heavy-mortar battalion since I graduated from a mortar school. I remember my commander, Major Gromov, very well; he used to command a brigade, but had been demoted to the rank of major due to poor performance. He had a general’s position during the Finnish War and was now offered the command of the battalion once this war broke out. He was quite experienced and was no younger than sixty, while we were all in our early twenties and had finished two years at the academy. He was very experienced and taught me many things. After one month for some reason he recommended me . . . Oh, this was when we were just beginning to receive our equipment. We had not yet taken over the defensive positions from the border guards because we still did not have any weapons. We lived in dugouts that had been built before we arrived. The ground there consists of permafrost and to dig half a meter down you needed a day. First you had light the dry grass on top of the permafrost on fire in order to soften it, and only then could you dig at it bit by bit in order to get at least a

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Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN meter into the ground.

We lived in dugouts and began training after we received our weapons. About a month and a half later, at night . . . yes . . . the officers were taken for a tour of their fighting positions. After that, we rotated in at night. We ended up . . . Oh, the 120mm mortars are supposed to be pulled by horses, but we only had the guns and no horses or trucks. We ended up having to build sleights and drag the mortars and ammunition on them ourselves. A single mortar shell weighs 16.7 kilograms. Plus the mortar itself, which includes the barrel, bipod, and a huge baseplate. It is meant to be pulled by horses or trucks, but we did not have either. When we finally took up our defensive positions, I immediately accepted control of a battery. I had two officers of my rank under my command. For some reason Gromov appointed me to command the battery right away. Usually you first serve as a platoon commander, and later . . . He appointed me immediately. Not even a month later he made me the head of reconnaissance for the entire mortar battalion. This unit included communications specialists, radio operators, rangefinders—about forty-five people total. This was already early 1942, in winter. From then on, I was the chief of reconnaissance for the rest of my time at the front. Here is what the position entailed. I always had to be with the infantry, go on recon with them, and provide them with covering fire, both at the start of a battle and during a retreat. I had to know the coordinates and other operational information . . . This is what I remember about the Karelian Front, where I served until the end of 1943: we were constantly defending our positions. After the Germans had pushed the border guards into the swamps below, we took over their positions and did not let them advance any further. The Germans never made any headway in that area.

The temperatures there falls to -40 or -45 degrees Celsius. In 1942 the Kirov Railroad had just been cut off. The blockade of Leningrad began and we were left with no food or ammunition. There was only one supply road from Murmansk, but we were quite far away in Karelia, maybe halfway between Murmansk and Leningrad. Terrible things began happening when our supply lines were cut. For example, officers received a special ration of 25 grams of butter and a packet of biscuits in addition to the regular rations. Apparently these biscuits contained vitamins that protected us from scurvy. The soldiers, followed soon after by the officers, began to bleed from their gums. At five o’clock in the evening we would begin to experience night blindness. It wasn't dark yet, but our eyes had trouble seeing. This is caused by a lack of vitamins and malnutrition. We began running out of food. We were going to starve . . . We could not eat the horses because we would have been fined tenfold . . . [sound cuts out] Every day we had to walk them at least 100 meters. This was in the taiga, without any roads or paths, just dense forest. There was no food . . . We resorted to a trick. To hell with the tenfold fine we thought . . . who needs money at the front? We had rules regarding the horses . . . when I was at the academy I had two horses assigned to my gun. We had completed cavalry training. So, we had to walk the horses . . . Instead of four horses, we had two very strong ones. Estonian horses, they were called. These are considered work horses in Russia. Their backs are so broad that you could sleep on them. And they were powerful. How did we feed them? We had

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Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN some special prewar feed for them, but we were starving. We would boil the feed, throw out the seed shells and eat it ourselves. But then we had nothing left to feed the horses. So we would clear the snow and feed the horses moss and berries, which they ate with gusto. That is how we kept them alive. One smart man at the front, a medic by training . . . When everyone got scurvy, their teeth began to wobble around and their gums bled . . . He came up with the idea of withholding rations from everyone until they drank a mug of boiled pine needles. Some soldiers would go off into the forest and collect two sacks of needles, which they would then throw into a boiling pot. The pot would then be taken off the flame and the mixture would sit for four hours. Then the commander would stand by the pot along with a political worker, who was sometimes and officer, and everyone would have to drink this brew right in front of them . . . It was disgusting, black and bitter . . . I do not know if there is anything quite as foul in the whole world . . . you would completely . . . And what do you know? Two or three weeks later everyone was cured of night blindness. The night blindness passed, but it was too late for our teeth. Everyone was losing their teeth. Anytime you spat, there would be blood in your saliva from your gums. It was too late for the teeth. But our vision was saved. This went on . . . So here is what we did. We went up to the man in charge of the horses and said to him: “You know what . . .” We would purposely hurt a horse. There were large boulders under the snow where he walked the horses. So he would lead a horse in such a way that it would be caught between two boulders and break a leg. Everyone knew . . . That horse was enough to feed a whole battery . . . Four thighs from a work horse . . . It would last for a month. It took a long time to boil. Horse meat is not too bad, but it does smell slightly like sweat. But when you do not have anything to eat . . . We also began collecting the berries that were under the snow. That's how we survived.

Then the American convoys with canned meat began arriving in Murmansk. As we found out later, half of them did not make it and were bombed and sunk by the Germans. Some of our men were sent to Murmansk to escort the Americans. Many of them had been in the navy after all, and this had to do with an ocean crossing. About thirty men from our brigade were sent to go back with the Americans and help them bring the supplies over. We found out about the overall situation from those guys. Many ships and Americans were lost. Some say they didn't help well. They did: not only did they send us weapons, but also food. They had very unusual food. For example, there were these tall tin cans that had a skinless sausage in the middle, with a half-centimeter layer of white fat around it. We were issued a can for every two soldiers. Everyone in the recon unit had a good puukko [Finnish belt knife] that could cut the can along with the contents into four pieces. You would poke at it, and your share would fall off right with the metal. You would then throw the metal away. We would get the fat, but we had no bread. This went on for about eight months until they managed to break through.

Here is what the Karelian Front was like. Let's say there are 20 kilometers of the front line. Of them, 5 kilometers were a combat line, 3 kilometers were swamps with no front line, then another 3 kilometers of a combat line, and then 10 kilometers were a mix of taiga and swamps. That meant that there was no

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN continuous front line. Their reconnaissance could come to our areas and vice versa. One time I was assigned to a recon team with a mission . . . I was a competitive skier and skis were needed for this mission. I could tell you how we ran into the Hitler Youth, the German reconnaissance. These guys were handpicked, all 1.8 meters tall . . . Our commander called us up at night; none of us knew one another. The brigade had its own reconnaissance team, plus they added in medics, doctors, and me with my artillery men for a total of 140 people. Our task was to investigate a new path through the woods that had been spotted by our aviators. Cleared paths there run east to west and north to south and are all numbered. They were there in case of fires. There were no villages or anything around. It's the taiga. The paths were the only thing we could use to get our bearings. On one of these cleared paths they spotted a new road, some debris and some workers doing something. Our recon team was ordered to stay out of combat and not give away that we were a marine brigade. Our only objective was to ascertain whether the Germans really were building a road through the swamp in order to bypass our defensive positions. I was in charge of the radio and was not supposed to broadcast what we found in plain language unless we were engaged in combat. Otherwise I had to use a code chart. Three days later we reached the area of interest on skis. It was ridiculous how we traveled there on those skis wearing our felt boots. It was a 120-kilometer trip. It would've been 70 kilometers if we could go directly, but we needed to bypass the German defenses. It took us three days to reach the area. Our commanding officer told us to rest; one of the three platoons would camp in the center on a height, and the rest would take the surrounding areas. This was all in the snow. Every man had a shovel. I had a rucksack that I did not even need to take off. We already knew what to do. You had to dig a hole about 50-60 centimeters deep into the compacted snow, which required some effort. Then you'd lean back with your rucksack so that the snow wouldn't melt. You would put pine branches under your feet and cover yourself with your convertible raincoat tent. The skis would be above, with the poles driven down.

This was on the third day. One of the platoons was sent off with an order to wait until dawn and examine the area to see if they could get confirmation. They were not to come back until they found it. So they left. Two other platoons remained behind and took up defensive positions. This was in the evening. The sun rises quickly in the north, it will be up by the time you count to ten. Same for sunset. At about five in the morning, we were under fire from all sides. I reached for my ski poles, but they had been cut off. What was happening? Where did the Germans come from? Nobody knew anything. It was already light out. The firing went on for about ten minutes. Then there was silence and a voice over a loudspeaker: “Rus! We have been going after you for three days. Surrender!” Then . . . Later we found out what they were doing behind our lines. “Surrender! You have five minutes to think it over.” He told us that they would shoot use to death after that. He spoke broken Russian. Fifteen minutes went by like this, with the first ten minutes being shooting and the next five waiting. Our platoon was only 500-700 meters away. The Germans did not know that it had left. They realized something was wrong and attacked. It was light already . . . You could see the wood debris and the log road. They were making a log road by putting down deadwood, about 6 meters wide and held together by clamps. It was supposed to allow light artillery and light tanks to

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN get behind our lines. So they were building a log road detour. That's what our aviation had spotted. It was 17 kilometers long by then. They were building it along a cleared trail so that they would not need to chop down the forest in front of them.

Yes . . . And the other platoon charged in our direction and shot the Germans in the back. The situation was reversed. We heard the sound of our submachine guns, which we could tell apart from the German ones. The platoon managed to get them from behind. It turned out to be a recon team made up of members of Hitler Youth. They had been handpicked. They had fur boots, sports skis, and aluminum poles. They had been behind our lines for four days and had destroyed two hospitals and a warehouse, ammunition . . . they had done quite a bit of damage. They had only one emergency set of rations with them. Normally during a recon mission you take rations for three days and one emergency set, but that set should never be touched. They only had their emergency set left. They were on their way back when they came across our ski tracks. They'd been following us the entire way without us knowing, even though we had rear and forward scouting positions. They were letting us advance deeper into German territory and decided to wipe us out on the fourth day. To survive far behind German lines . . . It was pure luck, or fate maybe. It was fortunate that our other platoon was away. We retreated immediately without turning on the radio station. We urgently retreated and traveled 10 kilometers. We took some of the Germans who tried to play dead. They were large guys . . . We had two dragging sleds. They were like little light boats that would be pulled by straps. They could be used to transport wounded men or ammunition. We made them drag it. I think there were twelve of them. They were not wounded, not even a scratch. We killed the rest in battle. We put on their fur boots, and we took the skis from the dead Germans. Our skis . . . They would cut an inner tube to get a ring, and put it onto the ski to put your boot through and then tighten it . . . Can you imagine what kind of blisters and sores we would get if our footwraps got loose? We were familiar with all of it because of our month-long training. But they had such fine equipment . . .

We stopped to check how everyone was doing. We counted everyone and realized that we were two men short. A chief starshina, that was his naval rank, was missing. Another sailor, who was older and had already served his time in the navy before joining our brigade, was also missing. We had an order not to leave anyone behind, dead or alive . . . We knew about that order. The commander ordered us to halt. He went back with one of the platoons and found them. It turned out that one had been wounded in the foot and crawled to the nearest rock outcropping while in shock. They found him by the blood trail. The second was had been through the chest. They pulled them back to us on the sleds and we continued onward. We did not have a proper doctor with us, but a male medic. He said: “That one won’t survive, but the one that was hit in the leg might make it.” He gave both of them injections and first aid, and the Germans that we had captured continued to pull them. When we were already in neutral territory, in the sense that we were in the forest rather than near the front line, we turned on our radio station and I reported that our mission was accomplished and that we could confirm the findings of the aerial reconnaissance unit. There was indeed a

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN road being built through the forest. I also said that we were bringing prisoners. A medical unit quickly got us horses. When we arrived, the chief starshina died. This was in the winter of 1943. Everyone was nominated for a medal. The commanding officer and I were both nominated for the Order of the Red Banner. After that we were dispatched back to our units. A month and a half or two later I received the Order of the Red Star. This was my first award. I received it at the Karelian Front. What else could I tell you about the Karelian Front? If not for the Americans, I do not know if we would have survived. I do not remember when the siege of Leningrad was lifted, but we could only receive supplies after that. There was no other access than the Kirov Railroad. We could not receive ammunition or . . . We had to make do with whatever was there since before the war. It was on that mission that I got frostbite on my foot. When you have valenki on, you cannot feel anything and you think that you are warm. Three or four months later my big toe and the area around it began to turn black. I felt pins and needles there and it kept getting worse. The doctor told me that it was gangrene and that he needed to amputate it. I was never wounded, not even a concussion. One of the native Karelian women who took care of the seriously wounded soldiers told me she could get me some goose fat in Kandalaksha. She began rubbing that stuff in, and . . . the blue discoloration had begun spreading to the sole of my foot, a sign of gangrene. It began spreading and she began applying the fat. It hurt a lot when she rubbed it in. In short, the gangrene began to recede. The doctors were surprised. After some time, it went away and I returned to my unit.

We were dispatched to the 3rd Ukrainian Front. Ah . . . no. I forgot the most important thing. We began preparations to break through the Karelian Front. All the other fronts were reporting successes and we were still on a defensive footing. So what happened? We broke through the German lines, at the cost of many of our soldiers, and 20-30 kilometers later we are told to halt and return to our positions. It turned out that the Finnish and Soviet governments had made an agreement that if Finland expels the German forces from its territory, then the Soviet Union will not invade. Again, there were so many casualties, and for what? They could have come to an agreement beforehand. So, they stopped us. We did not take a single village or liberate a single town. Afterward we were sent to the 3rd Ukrainian Front. At the 3rd Ukrainian Front I was assigned to the 33rd Corps. I forgot to mention that it was while I was having trouble with my leg: the naval brigade was sent to the 3rd Ukrainian Front while I was in the hospital. By the time I was discharged, the brigade was already gone. The order of things was such that after being released from the hospital you were assigned to a general pool of available men and you'd get sent wherever needed. I did not like this arrangement because I had already spent three years with the naval brigade. How could I leave them? I had received awards there and was known by the whole front because I was in recon. I decided to do the following: I received my release paperwork with my assignment . . . I did not go to join that unit, but instead went to see the commandant in Kandalaksha. He told me the number of the train to catch and said I was on my own and that we had never met. So what did I do? Oh, something happened . . . I was 100 percent not supposed to survive. It was fate, 100 percent. I did what the commandant told me and got into a boxcar. There was a conductor there . . . I was wearing my short fur coat, mittens, and rucksack. I had my papers and the rations I was issued at the hospital. I was supposed to be going in the

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN direction of the reassignment headquarters, but I was trying to go in the opposite direction. It was getting dark already. He said to me: "We will slow down soon and you will jump out and run 10 meters to the railway station on the opposite side of the tracks." Everything was blacked out because of air raids, so it was totally dark. I jumped off and ran over, and the train kept going. I took of my glove and put my hand out in front of me and instantly got stuck to something. It was freezing. There apparently was an anti-tank barricade standing there, made up of soldered rails. It was facing my forehead. Had I run one more step, I would have run headfirst into the barricade. I tore my hand away and just stared at it. They had put these up between the tracks to prevent tanks from being able to go across. It was exactly my height. It was certain death, I would have ran headfirst into it. When I went to see the commandant, he told me that he ought to arrest me, but instead allowed me to try to catch up with my unit. I eventually caught up with them since they had not yet crossed the border. Of course everyone was very happy to see me.

We stood in one place for two days. What were we waiting for? This was on the border with Poland. Our brigade was stopped along with other units so that the Polish army formed in our territory could join us. They were still behind our lines and had not arrived yet. We were ordered to wait. In this area, there were camps where Jews were being burned, concentration camps. However, we had not gotten there yet. What I wanted to mention was that . . . I arrived at the 3rd Ukrainian Front. We then went through the left flank of Poland, but were not allowed to enter the camps. Our aircraft would drop leaflets in Russian, German, and Polish. We formed groups of three to five men dressed like Poles . . . It turned out that by that time the SS had been sent to the front. Instead we found the so-called Volkssturm, which included people who were missing legs, had other disabilities, and the elderly . . . they “fought” . . . They were ordered to guard these camps. They put up no resistance and we never had to engage them in combat. The dropped leaflets said that they would be released as long as they did nothing to provoke us. The prisoners were like skeletons, living skeletons. Just imagine, a man tells you that he used to weigh 80 kilograms, but now only weighs 36-37 kilograms. Just imagine it! At 30 kilograms, you are little more than a skeleton. Some idiot wanted to feed him. But you can't do that because you can kill them. We were not allowed to enter the camp and I was not among those who were involved in that. There was no fighting there.

I told you about the recon mission at the Karelian Front. I took part in four recon missions including capturing a prisoner, providing covering fire . . . nothing too difficult. Two months before the end of the war, I was again assigned to a recon unit. Our mission had to do with the Vlasov Army. They had retreated through otherwise peaceful territory in Austria. We happened to be stationed in Austria at the time. Our unit suffered heavy casualties near Balaton and Szekesfehervar in Hungary and was sent for replenishment in Austria. In Austria there had not been any battles . . . the towns were untouched. I was quartered in an apartment with another officer. One night I was summoned and told to get my people ready. I had some reconnaissance and communications specialists left. They quickly formed a recon unit. We again weren't all familiar with one another. The senior officer was a major. A convoy had been spotted from the air some

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

10 kilometers away in the direction of an Alpine pass. Our task was to identify the group of troops and report our findings immediately in an uncoded message. This was two months before the end of the war and we went off at a jogging pace, fully equipped. We alternated between a jog and a march. On the third day we reached . . . it was not quite a village, just five houses and a well. It was evening already. We set up camp for the night. We had to ask the locals about who had gone through there. There was a grove where we spent the night, and in the morning an Austrian woman came out to get water. She told us that some soldiers had been through there. She indicated that they had daisies on their hats and the letters RLA on their sleeves. This was the Russian Liberation Army. We asked where they had gone, and she pointed at the houses where they were sleeping. She told us that they had drank quite a bit of schnapps the day before. It turns out that this was the rear guard of that group of troops. They had gotten drunk.

Well, there were 120 of us, submachine gunners. We were on them in an instant before they could even come to their senses. They had one large-caliber machine gun for ten men, submachine guns, equipment, and German uniforms, with the Russian Liberation Army insignia on their sleeves. In accordance with regulations, we could only capture them, but not interrogate them. We had to urgently report our mission results. I reported in an open transmission that we had caught up with the Vlasovites and captured ten men. The response was “Do not change your position. The corps, division, and regiment chiefs of intelligence are being urgently dispatched to your location.” By evening they had covered the distance that took us three days to travel. They arrived with a submachine gunner platoon for protection. They ordered us to line up the prisoners. We did. I stood to the right of them with my submachine gun while my soldiers rested a little ways off. After lining them up, the chief began asking them “What year were you born?” [They answered,] “1918,” “1919.” "Where are you from?" “Belaya Tserkov [Bila Tserkva]” and so on. “How many have you killed?” Our regiment commander, a lieutenant colonel who had fought in the Revolution, was the one doing the questioning. He had a small pistol that he never used, but always carried with him; it was a gift. He turned to the leftmost soldier and asked him: “You scumbag, how many of our men have you killed?” The guy responded, “Comrade Lieutenant, I have not killed anyone.” He called him lieutenant because he had two stars on his uniform. He came up to the second to last man, near where I was standing, and asked him, “Which of you is in charge here?” The prisoner kept silent. “Who is in charge of your group?” The huge soldier finally points to the man on his right. “What was your role in the army?” He stayed silent. The man next to him said, “He was a senior lieutenant.” He had German insignia on his uniform. The lieutenant colonel opened up his coat and reached for a kerchief. This was a month and a half before the end of the war, maybe in February or March. He just wanted to take out his kerchief, but the prisoner decided that he was reaching for his pistol. The prisoner spat in his face and said, “Shoot, you communist bitch.” Then he tore at his jacket, tearing off all the buttons, and elbowed me as well. The lieutenant colonel was not going to shoot him, he was just reaching for his kerchief. He . . . took out his pistol and shot the prisoner right in the temple . . . Blood began trickling down. He called the major over and asked, “How many men did you take prisoner?” The major said ten. He then asked me. I said that there were nine. “That’s right," he replied. There was a standing order not to shoot any of the prisoners. The

Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

ID OH004.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41m3n

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Vlasov soldiers never surrendered and fought better than the Germans because they knew that they would be killed anyways.

However, the story did not end there. They got into their Wyllis and told the major, “Escort the prisoners to the collection point.” And we set off. The prisoners were in the middle of our marching column, and I was following at the tail end. About 30 minutes later, after we covered 2 kilometers, the Wyllis returned. The regiment commander came up to me and said: “He is going to take them behind the hill and shoot them. You will assign your own men to escort the prisoners. Understood?” I said yes. The regiment commander was accompanied by the corps intelligence chief and another officer. The major said that he would not comply with the new order: he captured the men and he would escort them himself. "Do you want to be court-martialed? Take the prisoners out of the column center!" They were led out. "Assign your guards." I chose two men. We had taken away their weapons, so [the prisoners] were unarmed [and didn't need more than two guards]. They drove off again. An hour later, the major came up to me and said he would take the prisoners back by force. I said, "You won't. I will kill you myself. I will follow orders." "But these are bandits, they've killed so many of our men. I will take them around the corner and . . ." I said I would shoot him with my submachine gun, personally. He said, "To hell with you. Go ahead and escort them." We returned and delivered them to the collection point, where they'd give you a document that they were delivered.

For this mission I was again nominated for the Order of the Red Banner, but again I received the Order of the Red Star. After the war I discovered that there had been a secret order issued in 1943 by the HQ, which stated that people of other ethnicities were to receive awards in unlimited quantities, but that the quantity of awards issued to Jews should be limited. Now I understand why I did not receive the Order of the Red Banner. The end of the war found us in Romania. Now about the Americans. We were told that for that mission we would be nominated for an American award. It turned out that when our commanders had received our radio transmission about the Vlasovites going across, they immediately alerted the American army on the other side of the pass. The Americans deployed three mechanized battalions and captured the whole brigade without firing a shot. They had even agreed to let the Americans issue the officers medals. However, just a month later we were sent to Romania and our unit was disbanded and the men distributed among other units. We never did get that American medal. We later found out that five of those men were hanged with Vlasov, while the rest were released after two years, including the sergeants and soldiers who fought with him. It was even forbidden to record anywhere that they had served . . . It was supposedly because the children should not have to suffer for the sins of the parents who had been traitors and fought against us. So you wouldn't know, except from the fact their service record between 1941 to 1945 would be blank. That's just a side note. Of course, children should not suffer because of the sins of the traitors.

Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

ID OH004.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41m3n

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

I was demobilized. They did not want to let me go. But back at the Karelian Front I was once serving in a guard outpost. And at some point a heavy artillery gun hit the right corner. There were eight people in there, and I was in charge. Here is what guard duty entailed. It was worse than getting disciplined or going to prison . . . First, there were lice. Second, if you stepped too far to the right, you would get blown up by a mine, too far to the left, and you would step on another mine. Our own mines. There was just one narrow path to the post. So when I was on guard duty I was buried under . . . They only dug me out in the evening. Everything seemed fine and I continued serving. But five or six years later I began to feel some pain. I began to feel ill. I was sent to a hospital and they discovered that my right kidney had been damaged. They asked me if I had ever been hit there and I said that I had not. But then I remembered that I had been crushed by a huge log during that incident and had spent ten hours trapped under it. A commission was called together. This was in Georgia, in the Transcaucasian Military District. They asked me how old I was. I said that I was thirty-nine. They said that they needed to put my kidney back into place, but that such a surgery would guarantee impotence because they'd have to make a cut all the way from my belly button to my spine. My other option was to gain 10-15 kilograms. You can guess which of the two I chose. When I underwent the medical exam, they diagnosed me with stomach cancer, but it was actually my kidney, which was in the wrong place. I'll end here, because after that it's all my working record, the veteran organization, the difficulties we, former front-line soldiers, faced . . . but I can say this: regardless of how anti-Semitic or criminal our country was, nobody ever dared to hurt a veteran! Nobody. Of course, what we got was just two cans of peas and half a kilo of meat . . . That's what the country was like. Thank you for your time.

—What about the wounded Germans?

When we left . . . There were walking wounded . . . They were also treated and given first aid by our medics. They were not killed like the Vlasovites. These were all young athletic guys. In Karelia there were no real borders, so we used sleds to transport them like we were supposed to. There was a collection point.

—They were treated too?

Yes. There eight or ten of them and they were all treated and delivered alive to the collection point.

Mark Klotsman. Full, unedited interview, 2007

ID OH004.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41m3n

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

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